The Movie (22 page)

But now they’d called dinner. Thank God. And David, handsome and confident as ever, was steering her through the marble lobby, past the huge crystal vases heaped with orchids, and through the vast ballroom, with its sea of

‘opulent tables, to one particular table at the head of the room, right under two of the largest cut-glass chandeliers she’d ever seen. Most of the chairs were filled already: Sam Kendrick and his wife she’d met; the middle-aged man and elegant lady in the pink ballgown David had told her were chairman and president of the movie studio; an incredible lo6king blonde girl; another middle-aged man - and oh my God, loxana Felix! Was it? It was! And who was that in the corner, and what the hell was he wearing?

R.oxan looked at Megan with contempt and indifference as David introduced her.

‘Everybody, this is our screenwriter, Megan Silver. Megan, this is loxana Felix, Paul Halfin, Jordan Cabot Goldman - Sam and Isabelle and Tom and Eleanor you’ve met…’ He coughed, insistently, and Megan felt her heart lurch as the figure at the end of the table turned round. He was wearing a crumpled black jacket, thrown casually over a Metallica shirt, and his eyes narrowed, cold and hostile, as he looked at Megan, standing there with David Tauber’s arm round her waist.

‘Zach, say hello to Megan,’ David said. ‘She wrote See

the Lights.’

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Faced with her all-time hero, Megan suddenly clammed up. He was glaring at her. He seemed in a really, really bad

mood.

She just nodded at him.

Utterly unperturbed, David pulled out a chair for her and the two of them sat down.

‘And that makes everybody.’

Isabelle Kendrick looked round at her table with satisfaction, as though she’d personally created each one of them. ‘We must have a toast. What shall we toast to?’

‘Isn’t that obvious, Mrs Kendrick?’ David Tauber asked respectfully. He took the bottle of pink champagne nearest him and filled Megan’s glass, then raised his own. ‘To See the Lights. One thing everyone here has in common: the movie.’

‘The movie,’ everybody said.

Megan “lifted her glass to her lips, terrified, but she managed to smile.

‘The movie,’ she repeated, and drank.

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Screaming kids. Everywhere you looked. Teenagers and twentysomethings in black jeans, plaid shirts, combat boots. Longhairs and skinheads and glamorous babes in bright red lipstick and anarchy Tshirts, they formed one seething mass of rebellion, Generation X in full cry. As far as the eye could see, they crammed the stadium, heads banging, bodies flying, arms outstretched towards the stage, their expressions ranging from adulation to fury.

As the coloured spotlights swept the masses, it was obvious that this was no eighties poodle-rock crowd. Instead of standing demurely in their allotted places, the udience was cramming the aisles and standing on their seats. The crush barrier down the front was ten rows deep in human bodies. Security guards stood to one side shaking

their heads, useless and helpless.

Dark Angel were onstage.

Screaming into the packed darkness, Nate Suter’s guitar announced the beginning of ‘Fighting Fire’, the antigovernment anthem that had started it all. A great howl of approval rose up to meet it, kids slamming forward as they started to chant the words, bodies drenched with sweat, a whole generation of young Americans cursing the system to eternal hell. The peace-and-love boomers were now running the banks, ruining industry, pricing them out of college. They had no jobs, no prospects, and no hope. P,.age and betrayal crackled electric through the humid air. Some security men shrank back against the walls, grateful

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for the San Diego riot squad stationed right outside the venue. But they needn’t have been concerned. All the anger, al/the protest, all the energy, was being channelled into the razor-sharp rifling of this music, the raw harmonies bleeding from the giant speakers, and the furious, intense face of the singer, staring snaight into the camera in front of him, so that his vast image, blown up to thousands of times life-size on two giant screens at either side of the stage, appeared to be gazing directly into the eyes of each and every fan as they chanted the lyric together.

Zach Mason. Lead singer of Dark Angel, the crown prince of the counterculture. As sensual as Jim Morrison, as angry as Malcolm X, as articulate as Kurt Cobain. Never gave interviews. Endorsed no politician. Spoke to the fans only live or through lyrics. And at moments like this, when you saw eighty thousand kids utterly mesmerized, you knew that-if Mason but said the word, they would riot. They would rise up and follow him. The camera panned from left to right, across the throng of heaving, chanting kids, their aggression focused on the music with laser-like precision.

Dark Angel were the first band for years to scare parents. They appealed to fans of REM and Metallica and hardcore rap alike. They were angry. They had something to say. And looking at this wild, incensed, unified crowd, it was obvious that American youth was listening.

Zach Mason shifted uncomfortably on the soft leather sofa. ‘Turn it off,’ he said.

‘But Zach, I thought-‘

‘Turn it off.’ Mason’s voice was a low growl.

David Tauber turned it off.

‘I don’t want to watch that,’ Zach almost snarled. ‘That was three years ago. I’m not interested in the past.’

His gaze swept the Artemis conference room, challeng= ing any one of the suits to disagree. Jake Keller, the vice= president of Production, looked away, unab],e or unwilling

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to meet his glare. Sam Kendrick, the head of his agency and a man whom Mason had got to know a little, nodded sagely. Good. At least one of these fuckers understood where he was coming from. And Eleanor Marshall, the stem-looking lady in the dark green suit, was. completely impassive. Only the dumpy little kid sitting next to David Tauber, the screenwriter, looked anguished. She was staring at the now blank screen with a mixture of wonder and regret. And he’d seen the way she looked across at him while the tape was playing - almost accusingly. Did he need this? He didn’t need this. Not from some kid who was younger than he was. Not from some kid who looked like one of his fans, reminded him of things he preferred to forget. Megan Silver. That was her name. He’d asked Tauber about her; she was twenty-four years old, she’d gone to college at Berkeley, and she’d written an awesome screenplay.

He hadn’t said two words to her, but she still made him nervous. . ‘Sure. I understand,’ David Tauber said smoothly. ‘I just thought it might be a good idea for us all to get a feel for the backdrop of this movie. Fred Florescu messengered over the tape, and I know loxana’s studying them, but since this is our first script meeting together…’

‘I don’t need to get a feel for what it’s like to be around a band.’ Mason nodde, d insultingly at Megan. ‘Maybe she does.’

The girl started to say something, but Taubcr’s hand descended on her shoulder, and she relapsed into silence.

‘Of course, Zach. This was more for Sam andJake and Eleanor,’ David said. ‘re’ve all been examining the script, and I know they have some suggestions. I thought it might be beneficial if everybody knew what they were dealing with here.’

Yeah, right. Like any one of those fortysomething corporate

assholes would suddenly ‘get’ rock ‘n’ roll from watching a half hour video.

‘You have script suggestions? Let’s hear them,’ Zach said, his green eyes narrowing. Personally, he’d thought the script was just fine as it was. But David had told him scripts could always be improved. And he wanted this movie to be the best it could be. Let’s face it, for him, now, to reinvent himself, the movie had to be superb. Millions of dollars were at stake. His career. His future. His I/.

It was the only reason he’d come to this meeting in the first place - artistic control, creative control. He’d had it with his record company and now he’d have it with his film studio. So what if the director was usually the only guy involved in the rewrite process? He was Zach Mason. tLnles that applied to other actors didn’t apply to him. No rules applied to him.

‘OK, Zach.’ Jake Keller was falling over himself trying to kiss his ass. ‘Let’s look at the opening scenes first… I had some ideas for beefing up your entrance…’

As the agents and executives began to rip her opening sequence into tiny pieces, Megan Silver lowered her head, scratching the odd word on the notepad in front of her. She didn’t want to have to look at any of them. It was great being at Artemis, great that she was having her movie made, but.., she just wasn’t prepared for this. The way they were all talking at once, discussing her story like she wasn’t even there. Movie business terms flew around the room - ‘plot point’, ‘the inciting incident’, ‘counterpoint ing with the Morgan strand’, ‘the action sequence, eight through ten’, ‘pushing up the CIA payoffk And they thought she understood?

God, it was such irony. When she’d finally had the guts to call the others back in Frisco, they’d reacted with stunned silence, stammered congratulations and utter jealousy. Only Dec had the generosity of spirit to really be happy for her. He’d enthused about how glamorous her

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life would be now - her own office on the lot, working

with big, shot studio executives, hanging out with tkoxana

Felix, and best of all, getting to know Zach Mason. She

would actually talk to Zach Mason! On a regular basis! Dec

had laughed and told her she’d be the envy of millions.

And he’d been right.

..!

And he’d been wrong.

Megan had got her own office on the set-a windowless

cubicle in the main building, with an assistant who

resented her. She’d got to meet Eleanor Marshall, who

seemed a nice woman but who’d explained that her script

would need ‘a little work’. By the time David had

explained to her what ‘a little work’ meant, Megan was

more upset than she would have believed possible. Artemis

‘ had paid $25o,ooo for her script, but she wondered why

they’d paid anything at all-since it was patendy useless and

would have to be written again. More or less from scratch.

Probably five or six times.

‘Megan, sugar. It’s all in the rewrites,’ David had told her

patiently. ‘It never works any other way. You gave them a

great first draft, but obviously, the movie will end up

nothing like that at all.’

Obviously. And she’d looked at her gorgeous agent,

smiling benignly at her like she was a beloved but rather

slow infant, and felt like a moron for ever thinking

otherwise.

Her first day at the, studios, a vice-president namedJake

Keller had come round and made it very clear that if she

was bothered about rewriting, she could just quit and

they’d hire someone else to do it. Oh, and give them back

$oo,ooo, since that was the part of her deal allocated to

rewriting. Megan had smiled sweetly at him and Said she wasn’t

bothered.

As for hanging out with loxana Felix-well, she’d met

the lady at Isabelle Kendrick’s party and been thoroughly

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snubbed. She’d met her a second time at Artemis and been told ‘You’re the writer? Morgan needs more lines. I think that’s obvious. We need at least fxy per cent more lines for Morgan’ - and here she’d been flashed a smile as cold and deadly as liquid nitrogen - ‘or I’ll have to find a writer who understands this movie better. Character dynamics, Meg

an.’

And loxana had swept out, with a contemptuous glance at her still too-thick thighs.

For a week she’d practically starved herselŁ loxana was so exquisite and so creel she made Megan feel like the ugliest woman on earth. And she had power - she was threatening to have Megan replaced. A writer who understands the movie better? She’d written the damn thing!

But, as Megan was finding out, that counted t’or very little.

A writer is disposable.

A star is not.

In the world of”See the Lights, her movie, Megan Silver had the least money, the least looks, the least knowledge

and the least sle, and no power whatsoever. She was the low girl on the totem pole. She didn’t like it.

And as -or talking to Zach Mason … she didn’t dare. He’d reused to speak to her at the Kendricks’ party, and he was scowling at her every time she caught his eye. The video of” Dark Angel had moved Megan almost to tears, but Zach Mason, sitting there, more physically attractive, dark and brooding than she’d ever imagined even in her fantasies, hadn’t even been able to witch it. Jesus, was he saying that none of-it had ever mattered to him?

light now, f’or her younger self, f-or all her Mends, even for stupid pretentious Sasha weeping her heart out in the Horseshoe Caf”, Megan felt deeply unhappy. Foolish and naive. Practically every kid she’d grown up with had been a f-an of-Dark Angel, had really believed. And was every

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one of them an idealistic idiot? Apparently so. How dumb of her to have thought anybody actually gave a damn.

The young man opposite her had been her idol since she was fifteen years old, and maybe she’d never even known who or what he really was. A star first and foremost. And music was apparently just not part of the gameplan any more.

She hadn’t cried when Dark Angel split up, but she wanted to now.

‘Megan, did you get all that?’ David was asking her.

She looked up, started. ‘Oh yeah, sure. Thanks.’ She patted her notepad. Tll get right onto it.’

‘Well, make it snappy,’ Jake Keller said coldly. ‘We only have a month allocated to preproduction.’

Hating herself, Megan nodded brightly. ‘Sure.’ ‘Thank you, Megan,’ Eleanor Marshall said, more kindly. She and Jake gathered their papers together and stood up to leave. ‘We have another meeting we’ve got to get to, but I know Zach wants to talk to you about his part.’