The Road to Hell

DEVELOPMENT HELL

Marvin Beazle slipped off his tinted shades, tugged at his ponytail and studied the emaciated writer sitting across from him. Skin the texture of paraffin. Stained trousers, moth-eaten frock coat, and a silk cravat dangling like an tattered curtain.

“ Love the Johnny Depp look,” Beazle said. “But why the long face?”

The writer stared back with rheumy eyes. “Like absinthe with its cork askew, I do not travel well.”

A scarecrow in a wool coat, Beazle thought. One of those writers who could use a tanning salon, a tailor, and some Zoloft. “Okay if I call you Eddie? Or do you prefer Al?”

“ I prefer Edgar. Or Mr. Poe.” The writer wheezed an unhealthy cough. “But if you insist, you may call me Eddie. I have never stood on ceremony.”

“ My man!” Beazle beamed, a tiger dreaming of tasting a lamb.

They were in the executive offices of Diablo Pictures on Sunset Boulevard, and Beazle had a rights deal to close. In his experience — and he’d been doing this forever — writers were worms. Drowning in doubt, strangling on self-loathing. A little money, a little flattery, and most scribblers would sell their souls along with their scripts.

Beazle vaulted from his ergonomically correct swivel chair and pointed toward the floor-to-ceiling window. “What do you see out there, Eddie?”

The writer squinted into the afternoon sun. “Houses on a precipitous hillside. A hideous white sign. ‘Hollywood.’ As if the inhabitants need assistance recalling their whereabouts.”

That snooty East Coast attitude, Beazle thought. Like Baltimore is the Garden of Eden. “It can all be yours, Eddie.”

“ All of what, sir?”

“ Okay, not my digs on Mulholland. But a big chunk of this burg is yours for the taking.”

Beazle peeled off his black silk Armani suitcoat and tossed it onto his leather sofa. He plopped back into his chair and swung his five-hundred dollar Matteo sneakers onto the desk. The sneakers — alligator hide dyed red and gold — made Beazle recognizable to everyone who counted, especially the maitre d’s of Prime, Maestro’s, and The Grill, where he ate his steaks bloody.

“ Gotta hand it to you, Eddie. You’re a helluva wordmeister.”

“ So you have read my story?”

“‘ The Pit and the Pendulum.’ Devoured it. The coverage, I mean. Not the whole story.” Beazle picked up three-page synopsis and skimmed through it: “Condemned prisoner wakes up in a dungeon. Nearly tumbles into a deep pit. Falls asleep, wakes up strapped to a board, a pendulum above his head with a razor-sharp scythe, swinging lower and lower.” Beazle looked up from the document, sniffed the air. “I smell franchise, Eddie.”

“ I beg your pardon.”

“ Slasher flicks keep on trucking. Sequels, prequels, spinoffs.”

“ Slasher? What a macabre word.”

Beazle returned his gaze to the document. “Then you throw in some moving walls for a second act complication, and finally the guy’s rescued by the French army. A little deus ex machina, but we can fix that. Our reader — a top film student who happens to be my niece — says you’ve got a bold voice and a literary style. Don’t worry about that ‘literary’ part. We can fix that, too.”

“ I am not certain I take your meaning.”

“ Forget it. Let’s talk money, Eddie. How much you making now?”

“ The Southern Literary Review pays me fifty dollars a month. Occasionally, there is extra remuneration. I was paid ten dollars for ‘The Raven.’”

Like a fisherman with a woolly bugger, Beazle baited the hook. “Diablo Pictures wants to option your story, Eddie. A quarter million bucks for one year against a cool million pick-up price.”

“ The devil you say!”

“ I shit you not, Eddie. Plus three points of the net, which of course is zilch, seeing how ‘Gone With the Wind” still hasn’t turned a profit. But you’ll get the usual boilerplate regarding sequels and merchandising.”

“ Merchandising?”

“ If McDonald’s wants to license the ‘Pit Burger,’ you get some dough. If Gillette markets the ‘Double Bladed Pendulum,’ you get a slice of the pie. Assuming we don’t change the title.”

“ Is this really happening, Mr. Beazle, or is this some phantasm of my imagination?”

“ It’s real, pal. You’re talking to the guy who greenlit three of the top ten grossing pictures of all time. Adjusted for inflation, of course. And here’s the foam on the latte. We want you, Eddie Poe, to write the script. In fact, we insist. Half a mill for a first draft, a re-write and a polish. Whadaya say?”

“ I fear I might swoon.”

“ As long as you don’t piss yourself. Fitzgerald did, right in that chair.”

The writer’s forehead beaded with sweat. Either it was the excitement or the heavy wool coat on an August day.

“ You look a little dry, Eddie. You want something to drink?”

“ Laudanum, perchance?”

“ What a kidder! Okay, let’s do some business.” Beazle pulled out a thick sheath of papers stapled to luxurious blue backing. “All I need is your signature, and it’s a done deal. Check’s already written. A quarter mill up front.”

He brandished the check, waving it like a pennant in a breeze. Handing a pen to the writer, Beazle said, “Before you know it, Eddie, you’ll be sitting in a director’s chair with your name on it, eating craft service omelettes, and banging the script girl.”

The writer searched for an inkwell before figuring out that the pen had its own supply. His hand poised over the contract, he said, “What did you mean a moment ago? About changing the title.”

“ The jury’s still out, Eddie. But we may have to lose ‘Pendulum.’ It’s three syllables.”

“ And that presents a conundrum?”

“ Titles need punch. There. Will. Be. Blood. Get it? Too bad ‘Saw’ is already taken.”

“ But the pendulum is essential to the predicament. The scimitar swings ever closer, magnifying the horror.”

“ So who wants to see a circumcision? It’s a movie, not a bris.”

Confusion clouded the writer’s face like fog over Malibu. “But I thought you liked my story.”

“ Exactly. Liked it. Didn’t love it. That’s why we gotta make some changes.”

The dark bags under the writer’s eyes seemed to grow heavier. “Am I not free to write the script as I see fit?”

“ Sure you are. When hell freezes over.” Beazle drummed a manicured fingernail on his desktop. “Look, Eddie. Do you want the deal or not? I got Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley dying to get their projects out of turnaround.”

“ I daresay some cautious editing might be appropriate,” the writer ventured.

Like taking a biscotti from a baby, Beazle thought. “That’s the spirit, Eddie. So I gotta ask you. Where’s the girl?”

“ What girl?”

“ You got a guy strapped to a board. Talking to himself. Bor-ing! Maybe Tom Hanks can schmooze with a volleyball for two hours, but he had the beach, the ocean, the great outdoors. You got a dark hole in the ground.”

“ The solitude represents man’s existence.”

“ Deal-breaker, pal. If you’re gonna ask Leo or Cuba or Russell to spend the entire shoot in a hole, at least give ‘em Scarlett Johansson for eye candy.”

“ Scarlett…?”

“ In a torn blouse. And instead of those rats chewing off the guy’s straps, she unties him.”

“ The rats represent our primal fears.”

“ Box office poison, Eddie. A one-way ticket straight-to-video.”

“ But a woman…” The writer’s voice trailed off and he scratched at his mustache as if it had fleas. “Writing from the distaff point of view is hardly my forte.”

“ No problema, Eduardo. We’ll bring in Nora Ephron to punch up the he-said, she-said dialogue.”

“ Another writer?”

“ Read me your first sentence, Eddie.”

The writer recited by heart. “‘I was sick-sick to death with that long agony.’”

“ Downer. Maybe we get Judd Apatow to lighten the mood, toss in some fart jokes.”

“ But that would dilute the horror.”

“ Hold the phone, Eddie! Just got a brainstorm. The prisoner falls in love with Scarlett, but she’s got a fatal disease.”

“ Good heavens. What would that accomplish?

“‘ Halloween’ meets ‘Love Story.’ Boffo B.O.”

The writer’s face took on the pallor of a drowning victim. “Perhaps the theme of the story is unclear to you.”

“ Hey, you want to send a message, use e-mail. You want foreign box office, you need stars, action, sex.”

“ I assure you my work is quite popular in France.”

“ Sure, you and Jerry Lewis. The point is, we’re going after the masses, not the art-house crowd.”

The writer still held the pen in a death grip. He stared at the check. Picking up sunlight from the window, the paper seemed to be made of burnished gold. He exhaled a long sigh and said, “I suppose you know best, Mr. Beazle. So if there are no other changes…”

Beazle smiled, his double row of porcelain crowns gleaming. He loved breaking a writer. It was better than sex. Maybe not sex-on-coke, but straight sex. “One more thing, Eddie. What’s the setting? Where the hell’s this prison?”

“ Spain, of course.”

“ Fine. We’ll shoot in Vancouver. But no subtitles and we gotta update.”

“ How? It’s the Spanish Inquisition.”

“ Period piece? No can do. With all respect, Eddie, you’re no Jane Austen. And as for the ending, we gotta lose the French Army. Who’s gonna believe they win a battle? I’m picturing a SEAL team, maybe the Rock in a cameo.”

The writer’s alabaster hand trembled as he fiddled with a loose button on his heavy coat. Beazle made a mental note to send the guy to Melrose Avenue for some new threads before letting him on the set.

“ That is it, then?” the writer asked. “A new title. Another writer. A naked woman. No rats. A SEAL team. And Canada.”

“ Almost there. But tell me. Who’s the hell’s the heavy?”

“ A faceless evil. The horror is intensified by the anonymity of its source.”

“ Muddled storytelling, Eddie.”

The writer’s shoulders sagged. “I suppose you could say the villain is the unseen executioner.”

“ Unseen? It’s motion pictures, not radio. How about Anthony Hopkins? Those creepy eyes will pucker your orifice.”

The writer’s forehead knotted like burls on pine. “Putting a face to the evil is unnecessary. The man in the pit believes he is going to die. True horror is not physical pain. It is the anticipation of pain, the realization that death is a certainty, whether by falling into the pit or being eviscerated by the pendulum. Do you understand, sir?”

“ Sure. You don’t like Anthony Hopkins. You want to go younger? My daughter says Clive Owen makes her panties wet. Whadaya say?”

“ Mr. Beazle, I cannot surrender my integrity.”

“ Not surrender. Sell! I’ll get you a suite at the Peninsula. Room service. Blow. You want a hooker? I got a chippie you’ll love. Name’s Lenore.”

The writer pulled himself up, knees wobbling. “If I agreed to your terms, it would indeed be a midnight dreary.”

“ Sit down, Eddie!”

“ I think not.” He took a step toward the door.

“ You’re saying no to money, pussy and drugs? What the hell kind of a writer are you!”

But he was already out the door.

Beazle couldn’t believe it. A moment earlier, the bastard was perched on the edge of the abyss. Beazle grabbed his suit coat and hurried into the corridor, alligator sneakers clomping on the tile. He caught up with the writer at the elevator bank.

“ Eddie! Is it the dough? I’ll double it.”

Two elevator doors opened simultaneously. One attendant, a smoking hot redhead in a black leotard festooned with orange flames, winked and said, “Down?”

The writer recoiled as waves of heat rolled from the open car.

In the other car, the attendant, a petite blonde in a white leotard with snowy wings, smiled angelically and said, “Up?”

“ Last chance Eddie!” Beazle implored.

“ Never more,” the writer whispered, soft as a lover’s lament.

Beazle sighed in surrender. He didn’t lose often, but when he did, it hurt. “He’s going up.”

The writer stepped into the blonde’s elevator, the door closing with a quiet whoosh.

Beazle grabbed a fat cigar from his suit pocket. A Cohiba, a gift from Fidel himself at the Havana Film Festival. Beazle ran the wrapper paper under his nose and inhaled deeply. Not even burning sulphur smelled this good.

Beazle took a double guillotine cutter from his pants pocket and snipped off the cap of the Cohiba. He snapped his thumb and middle finger together, setting off a spark that engulfed the tip in flame. He drew smoke — his mother’s milk — into his lungs, and held it there.

“ There’ll be others,” he said, exhaling a cloud as black as coal dust.

There were always others, drying to sell their souls. Writers who dream of starlets and red carpets and their own insignificant names flickering across the screen. Vainglorious fools, every one, all destined to spend eternity in development hell.