In her long experience of trying to get through to producers, River had found that it was usually the third call that was the charm. When you called an office for the third time in a morning, the perky executive assistant was generally done with putting you off with bullshit excuses and would actually ask her boss, in this case Phillip Renfield, whether or not he wanted to speak to you.
‘Hi River, thanks for calling.’ When she heard Phillip’s voice coming out of her mobile speaker, she could actually have given a little jump for joy. ‘I’ve got a meeting in ten, but why don’t you hit me with some outlines, I’ll tell you what I like and then you can send me the full storylines. Does that sound okay?’
He sounded very busy, of course, professional, but definitely open to hearing from her.
‘Phillip, I’m not going to pitch you anything…’
Now she was sure she had his attention.
‘Instead, I want you to give the “High School Musical meets Merchant of Venice” gig to me. I literally cannot stop thinking about it. In the right hands, I think it could be amazing. The play is about racism and exclusion and injustice… in a school setting, with musical sing-alongs, it could be incredibly powerful. Plus, I know Shakespeare. Someone cultured should be working on this, someone who can translate everything that was genius about that play and make it totally relevant for today’s audience.’
With barely a pause for breath, she went on: ‘And high school kids… they can’t make it to the end of a TikTok video, so this has got to grab them, entertain them and make them think, without preaching any kind of lesson at them. I’m thinking I take the script you have to England. I actually go to Shakespeare country. I immerse myself in it all. Go to the theatre, visit Shakespeare’s birthplace, get the feel.
‘Maybe I could script up a little documentary aimed at kids that releases at the same time as the movie? Plus, you know me, Phillip, you know I’ll be way less of a pain to work with than a bunch of kids out of film school. I mean, let’s have an ideation session with the film school kids, I bet they could come up with things we’d never have thought of, but then you need a grown-up to create an excellent script.’
She paused. Screwed up her eyes… and waited for his reply.
You could never tell with a pitch. She’d been rehearsing it all morning. She thought she’d delivered well, with the right level of expertise and enthusiasm. She thought her ideas were great. But you could never tell with a pitch.
The pause went on. Long enough for River to wonder if she’d made a complete fool of herself. Or worse, that she’d sounded desperate for work…
Then finally, Phillip said, ‘I love it.’
And River felt almost faint with relief.
‘I love your ideas, I love your energy, and best of all, I love the way you’re solving one major headache for me.’
Wow! River couldn’t help thinking, her emotions switching direction in a split second, and that’s the way I reel ’em in.
‘But this is a big project. I don’t expect a final draft of the script until August/September. Can we make the figures work, River? I don’t have a generous budget for this. I might not be able to afford you.’
He then hit her with a suggested fee that made her jaw drop. This was his definition of a not-generous budget? She needed to work with him a lot more often. She could definitely go to England, write a script, write a documentary and have months of spare money literally sloshing around in her bank account for that.
But careful, careful, wasn’t the rule to always negotiate? River didn’t have an agent. She’d fallen out in too spectacular a fashion with too many agents in the past, so now she did her agenting herself.
‘Well…’ she said.
And now it was her turn to pause.
Sometimes, people offered you more money without you even needing to say a word, she’d discovered. Sometimes you just… had to… pause…
She let that pause go on almost uncomfortably. She waited for him to say something.
‘Okay, I can probably go up a little,’ he said finally, ‘Let me see what I can do. I’ll come back to you today.’
‘Thank you, Phillip. This is going to be amazing. I’m really very excited.’
‘Yeah, me too, right!’
‘I want to get to the source. I mean, the Shakespeare guy’s material has lasted over four hundred years. We’re still quoting it, still performing it, so he must be doing something right. I think the inspiration for making this script awesome is going to be in England.’
‘Actually, I’ll be in London for a few weeks in the summer,’ Phillip volunteered.
‘I bet all kinds of really great people will be there too,’ River said, feeling an idea coming together. ‘If I’m going to be renting a place – I should have a garden party. Mix it up. Invite some cool LA people, some theatre people and anyone else interesting I can find along the way.’
‘You know how to hold a good party, I remember,’ Phillip said.
‘Yes I do, thank you! Hey, I should let you go, Phillip, you have a meeting. We’ll talk very soon and I’m so thrilled to be working with you again!’
When the call was over, River looked up from her desk, well, actually it was a café table but in one of the quietest, calmest cafés she knew, all shades of greenish blues. And when she was working here, she ordered two espressos an hour, plus tips, to keep everyone happy, so it was practically a desk.
Okay, this project was not signed yet, so she couldn’t celebrate. But it looked really good. It looked like a done deal and she was so happy, she could shout. Or maybe sing… since she was now going to be writing a musical… a ‘High School Musical meets Merchant of Venice’… what the actual hell? How was this going to work? She had no idea. But she was a smart, very creative person, so surely she could figure it out.
And a party… an English garden party. She needed to think about that too. How to find other guests, she wondered… she’d look up the actors, writers and theatre producers involved in the Shakespeare plays she would go and see. She’d put feelers out with her friends. The main thing was not to have too many writers at her party. Writers, goddammit: wonderful people… terrible people… they’d swig down all the booze, they’d tell hilarious stories and then move on to the deepest, darkest opinions that would depress the hell out of everyone, and then they’d corner all the producers and steal the commissions from under her nose. Writers!
And where the heck was Shakespeare country anyway? Where did he live? Where did they put on all those plays every summer? Wasn’t it in London somewhere?
She tapped the questions into her phone and was soon looking at a map of Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire. Warwickshire? Where was that? It didn’t look anywhere near London at all. It looked miles and miles and miles from anywhere except Birmingham. She didn’t know much about England, but she did know that no one was going to travel to a garden party near Birmingham.