Eight am. Warner Bros studios. A guard escorts me from the parking lot to the office of Shelly Kind.
I wore matching sweats, an orange Brooklyn cap and purple sneaks you can only get in LA, the brand is so specific. My aim was to look like Jay-Z.
"You're a woman of many fashions," Shelly Kind says.
"It's my day off," I say.
"Well thanks for visiting me on your day off."
"No problem," I say, looking around his office.
Awards, plaques, stuffed animals. Photos from TV shows everyone in the country has seen—the cast posing between takes, that sort of thing.
"How many people have you pitched this story to?"
"Just you."
"Why me?"
"Because me and my assistant ran your profile—along with a number of other producers and execs—through an artificial intelligence program we bought from MIT and you were the most likely to buy it."
"I didn't know people were doing it like that these days."
"I'm kidding."
"So why me?"
"A hunch."
"From you or your assistant?"
"My assistant. She's a genius. And no you can't have her name."
"Fair enough. You know what my mentor taught me, when I came here 20 years ago?"
I wait.
"He said look at the producer Harry O Blackman. So I look at Harry O Blackman and he's produced like 60 films. Most people produce one, maybe five, maybe 10 if they're lucky. And my mentor says guess how many of those films made money. And I say, 'Seventy-five percent.' He says, 'Zero.' Harry Blackman is still making movies. They never make money—he's never made a picture that made money. That's producing. To get people to drop money on your film when your last 60 films were flops. So you might think that everyone in Hollywood is scum, that we're all in it for the money, that all we care about is ticket sales and profits and making Transformers 7. Now that is true about some people—people get caught in that trap. Money is seductive. But some of us—in fact most of us—came here because we love movies..and we stay here because we love movies, and like Harry O Blackman we're basically involved in the business of cheating the money people out of their hopes and dreams of profit so that we can satisfy our hopes and dreams of making audiences laugh, and cry, and come home from the theater changed people."
Shelly Kind opens a fridge and pulls out a Red Bull: The Orange Edition and hands it to me. He pops one open for himself.
"We're going to make your movie. And by that I mean you and me are going to make your movie. Warner Bros would never make this movie. But we're going to do it anyway. We're going to steal it from them. Your movie will lose money. But it needs to be made. What's your background?"
"Waitress."
"Well you've come to the right place."
He cheers me with his tangerine Red Bull.
"Because this is the city where waitresses become directors and dishwashers win Oscars. Your pitch made the hairs on my arms stand up."
"Are you sure that wasn't just because you were taking an epic shit?"
"I could't even shit while you were telling me that story. You've got it, girl—just do me a favor."
"Anything. Except suck your dick."
"I can get my dick sucked anytime I want. What I want you to do is stick to your vision like Christ on the cross. You understand me? You direct the movie that you told me under that bathroom stall—keep that image in your mind—and you will make a movie that no one—I mean no one in the history of the world—will ever forget."
"Ok."
"I'm serious. Everyone will work against you. I will match you with a producer. Listen to me: the job of the producer and the job of the director are exactly opposite. Your job is to make the movie. The producer's job, in a way, is to stop you from making the movie that you want to make. You'll want to spend money; he'll want to stop you from spending that money. Are you god?"
"I don't know."
"Well figure it out. You're the director. You're god. Demand everything you want. The stitching on the inside of the hats in Glory were made to be exactly like the stitching from that time period even though no one ever saw the inside of the hats in the movie! You get what I'm saying?"
"Yes."
"You get the stitching right, ok?"
"Ok."
"Here's your five-second lesson in directing. Be a chess player. What does a chess player do? Go read Bobby Fischer games. He does whatever he has to do to make you do what he wants. You can't control the actors. You control yourself. Don't tell anyone what to do. Tell them something that will make them do what you want them to do. Make them take your queen—you have a bigger plan in place. You understand?"
"I think so."
"When you leave here go to Borders and read famous Bobby Fischer games. You'll know exactly what I mean. Now we do have one little problem."
"What is that?" I say, adjusting my BK hat.
"Getting you to be our director. I can get this movie made. Getting this movie made is doable. But getting it made with a first-time waitress as its director could be tough."
"This is my movie. No one can make it but me."
"Believe me, I know that," says Shelly Kind.
"I have $900,000 I can put up."
"That just might do it," he says.