Page 21 of Second Act
“That’s what I think. I really want to do it.” Andy already sounded better than when Dash had seen him. He sounded awake and alive, and excited to write the screenplay. And Dash loved the idea, the more he thought about it.
“What about coproducing with me?” he asked cautiously.
“I’ll do it,” Andy said, and sounded definite about it. He was sure now. Even if it was the only independent film he ever made, it would be an interesting experience, and he could think about his long-term career after. “And I’ll cofinance it with you, fifty-fifty,” Andy added, and Dash whistled into the phone.
“Shit, we’ve got a screenwriter, and we don’t need outside financing. This sounds like a sweet deal to me. I’ll keep my eyes open for a screenwriter just in case, and I’m going to start talking to agents about what actors will be available then. If you get me a script by early June, we could start shooting in August or early September. We’ll have a finished picture by the end of the year. The locations aren’t complicated. We can use my studio outside London. If by some miracle we finish earlier, we might even be eligible for the Golden Globe Awards and the Academy Awards. Andy, this is going to be a hit, I can feel it!” Andy hoped he was right, and it was going to be a fun process getting there. He was going to try his damnedest to write the best script of his career.
After they hung up, he went downstairs and reported to Violetabout the conversation. She was wrestling with a big plank of wood and covering it with felt for the board Andy had said he needed. The property manager had gone to see what they could use as an easel to prop it up on. Violet was excited to hear what Dash had said.
“If we start shooting at the end of summer, early fall, we’ll need someplace to stay in London. I have to give this house up in October,” Andy said. His lease ended then, and the bank was holding the auction to sell it in mid-October. He thought it was just as well, after all that he knew now.
“How long will we be in London?” Violet asked him, looking worried.
“Dash thinks we could do it in three months if everyone works hard, since the locations aren’t complicated, and we’ll be in his studio most of the time.” Dash had invested in an enormous complex of old warehouses that he’d transformed into studios with sound stages several years before.
“Wow, this is really happening,” she said, awestruck again.
“Not till we have a script,” he reminded her. “I’m going to start working on it tonight.” He had always written best during the quiet hours late at night. But this time, he was going to try working day and night, so he could have a script for Dash quickly. And he wanted to turn out the best script he’d ever written, for Violet’s sake.
By that afternoon, they had transformed the dining room into a space that he could work in, and the board was set up on two sawhorses, with something to prop up the back. Violet had gotten him a stack of index cards and colored pushpins, and he had set up his laptop on the dining table, on a pad so he didn’t scratch the table. He disappeared up to his study then with a copy of her manuscript,which was fully typed now, and he began dissecting it into numerous scenes, some of which they wouldn’t use, and others that he felt were vital to the dramatic scope of the plot.
At the end of the day, he came downstairs to the study to talk to her about the direction he was going. She agreed with most of that, made a few changes that he thought improved the flow of scenes, and mentioned several things that she didn’t think were essential to the story. He smiled at her when they finished.
“That’s exactly the feedback I need from you,” he told her, and she smiled at him.
“It’s different from writing a book.”
“Everything is visual here. We can’t rely on the narrative, and so much will depend on the actors and the director, and what they bring to it. Sometimes one look is worth a whole scene.” She left a little while later, and Andy worked late into the night, identifying key scenes and pulling them out of the manuscript. He tacked some of them to the board, and then rearranged the order of them. He wanted to respect the manuscript, but it would undergo an inevitable transformation from book to screen.
He was already at work in the dining room when she came to work the next day. He was working on his computer and had her print the pages at the end of the day.
“How does this sound to you?” he asked, handing her the pages he’d been working on. She sat down in a chair to read them, and looked impressed when she handed them to him twenty minutes later.
“It’s fantastic, Andy.”
“It’s all coming back to me—it’s all about structure, and whereyou put the scenes, to heighten the tension.” He was completely absorbed in what he was doing, and Violet left a little while later and came back to bring him dinner. She had bought sandwiches for him, and a salad. He was staring intently at the board when she returned. “It’s not working,” he said, almost to himself, as he moved some of the cards around again, and then looked up, surprised to see her there. He had been working so intensely that he didn’t even hear her come in. He was completely immersed in her manuscript and the notes he had made to divide it into scenes. She didn’t want to disturb him, so she left, and he found the dinner she had left several hours later. He worked until threea.m., and was finally pleased with the order of scenes he had pinned to the board. He had them pinned up with different-colored pushpins to identify which were part of the support structure and were strategically placed, and which they could use as filler. And the highly dramatic scenes were pinned up with a different color. He talked to himself as he looked at the board, ate the rest of his sandwich, and poured himself a beer to celebrate a good day’s work.
It was a wonderful feeling writing again, and to feel it start to roll smoothly. He used the same techniques that had always worked well for him, and that he had almost forgotten, he hadn’t done it for so long.
Andy worked straight through every day, even on the weekends, and Violet came in and out to bring him food and check on him. And sometimes she sat with him, so he could explain what he was doing and ask her how she felt about it. She very rarely suggested a change, because she liked what he did. He seemed to have an instinct for the storyline, since he knew the original now, and she hadtold it to him, which brought her manuscript even more to life than before.
He spent the entire month of May working on it, and the time passed quickly. The weather had gotten warm, and he didn’t notice. And when he felt stuck, he went for a long walk on the beach, sometimes with Violet and sometimes alone, to talk through where he was going, or just to walk along in silence side by side while he thought about it. She thought it was an amazing process and was fascinated to watch him work.
He typed the scenes up himself and had them in numerical order. Wendy called from time to time to check in and was surprised to hear he was writing a screenplay, but she was relieved that he was doing something and seemed to be enjoying it.
Even Andy realized that it was a healing process for him. Ever since Violet had told him her story, he had felt less sorry for himself, and sometimes not at all. It was two months since he’d been fired, and for the first time he didn’t care. He just wanted to finish the script and get it right. Violet helped him do that, and her comments gave depth to what he was writing. She reminded him of details he shouldn’t leave out that she thought were important. And he wrote in others to create bridges between the scenes to link them together. There was a constant ebb and flow to it, and she could almost visualize the film when she read the daily drafts of his script.
“The actors will want some of this changed,” he explained to her, “if they don’t feel comfortable saying something I wrote.”
Dash called with big news close to the end of May. “We have our female lead,” he told Andy. “Marilyn Gray!” She was a huge hit at the moment, and she’d had a baby and taken a year off. She hadn’tsigned for anything when she went back to work. She was available, flexible with her schedule, and willing to work on theirs. She loved the whole idea of the story and the personality of the female lead, who fought back when her male counterpart threatened to kill her. “She wants the part, whatever our schedule. She’s considering a historical movie that doesn’t start shooting till January, and she says she won’t sign for anything before that, except us.”
It impressed Violet to realize how many component parts there were: all the finances, the insurance they’d need eventually, the cast to line up, the director, the cameramen, the costumes and costumers, all the sound and light technicians, and the script. Dash was handling almost all of it, although Andy would get equal billing as coproducer. He was used to being far up the line at the very top, making the final decisions, now he was down on the ground, in the trenches, working on the script. As the studio head he had had the ultimate control, but as the screenwriter, he had the heart and soul of the film in his hands, and all of Violet’s words and emotions to get right and honor what she’d written. But so far, she was pleased with what he’d done, and amazed by his talent.
The final scenes were the hardest to write, and Andy worked closely with Violet on them. He wrote the last two scenes several times, and wasn’t happy with them, and then finally they slipped into place, and Andy and Violet both agreed they were perfect. Andy looked at her with a broad grin. It was two o’clock in the morning, and she had stayed at the house to work on the scenes with him. Her hair was piled on her head in a clip, and his was askew after he’d run his hands through it dozens of times while fighting with what they had so far. She was wearing an old sweatshirt, and his shirt waswrinkled with his shirttails hanging loose, and he suddenly knew they’d gotten it right, and they were done.
“We did it, Vi!” he said with a victorious look. “That’s it…I’m not touching the last scene again, it’s perfect.”
“I think so too,” she agreed, as they sat in the dining room, exhausted.
