At the Movies with Governor Tom: Crazy Heart

I almost never go to the ArcLight Hollywood on Saturday nights. In fact, Hollywood in general is a place I avoid on weekends after dark. Too crazy. Well, once you're there, it can be fun. I suppose I really mean the traffic, the very thing that makes going anywhere on any weekend night kind of hairy. Living in the East Valley as I do, Hollywood's not that far, just ten miles or so, but the main artery leading there is the 170 Hollywood Freeway. Can you hear the silence? That's the silence of zillions of cars parked on the 170. Actually I exaggerate, at least in terms of tonight. I left over an hour ahead of time. It wasn't really necessary. Traffic wasn't much. As far as the ArcLight Hollywood is concerned, another reason to avoid going there on weekend nights is the parking. That seven-story garage fills up super fast. I had to drive around and around and up and up and up until I found an open space on the sixth level (the last level's the friggin' roof). Still, I was there early enough to walk down to the Starbucks about two blocks east on Sunset, where I hadn't been in years.

It was like I'd never left. There those kats were, playing their chess tournament. That Starbucks is so interesting, situated smack in the middle of Hollywood as it is. Those older guys playing chess seem so completely separate from the Hollywood world of glitterati. But then, as I sat there at one of the indoor tables (the chess tournament monopolizes the outdoor tables), sipping a peppermint mocha and reading TIME, I'd occasionally see a lone female patron come in who was obviously a model or aspiring actress. I mean you can just tell after living here long enough. They're usually dressed in something totally out of sync with everyone else in the joint (not that I mind), and their hair is almost always a very bright blonde. Places like that Starbucks are an anthropologist's wet dream.

Anyway, while getting to the ArcLight wasn't an issue tonight, getting out of the parking garage was. It's happened to me before, but I always block it out so that it seems like a fresh nightmare when I have to endure it again: The single-file gridlock of cars stretching from the top of the garage to the pay booths on the first level. I pulled out of my spot and drove maybe fifty feet before coming to stop. When I sensed nothing was going to happen for a while, I put my car in park. Shit, I must've sat there for a half-hour. This young couple behind me finally said fuck it, parked their car, and stayed a while longer. I wonder if they saw another movie. It was kind of late for that. They could have gone next door to Amoeba Records to kill some time, or gotten a bite to eat at one of the many restaurants in the Sunset and Vine area.

Now why, you might ask, if going to the ArcLight Hollywood on a Saturday night is such a to-do, did I put myself through it? One word, dear reader: Duvall. While I've known of Robert Duvall as far back as I can remember, it wasn't until he played the title character in the 1992 HBO movie Stalin that I really sat up and took notice of this guy's talent. In the days before DVRs and DVDs and Amazon.com, and when I was still too young to have the money or the driver's license to head to the local video store, I taped Stalin and watched it, oh I don't know, maybe ten times or so from 1992 to '94. Only since Stalin have I gone out of my way to see everything Robert Duvall is in. And I've gone back to see older stuff, like the Godfather movies, Apocalypse Now (one of my faves), Tender Mercies, etc. In the eighties I watched The Natural all the time. In hindsight that might be one of the first, if not THE first, movie I saw him in. But after Stalin, I watched it with more appreciation for his performance as that reporter Max Mercy, even though, yes, it was a small role. Right after Stalin, Duvall was in that Michael Douglas movie Falling Down, where Michael sort of loses it and walks across L.A. to visit his estranged wife in Venice. Duvall shot that literally right after Stalin. He still had his Stalin gut and even kept a bit of that Georgian mustache. His performance as a robbery detective who's about to retire is of course a total one-eighty from playing a tyrant responsible for wiping out thirty million of his own people, and that's what's amazing about him. You totally buy him as Stalin, and you totally buy him as a mild-mannered cop struggling to keep a brave face while privately grieving his daughter who died of infant death syndrome. And then right after that he was in Geronimo with Gene Hackman. Duvall and Hackman started out together as starving actors, working dollar-a-day jobs in L.A. while auditioning for stuff at every opportunity. After Geronimo came Ron Howard's The Paper, which reunited Duvall with The Natural costar Glenn Close. A few years after that, just before I moved out to L.A., Duvall directed that movie The Apostle, in which he starred and for which he received a Best Actor nomination. He lost to Jack Nicholson for As Good as It Gets. I really liked the latter in that film, but I don't think he was anywhere near as good as Duvall. Silly as it sounds so many years later, but I still get kind of bent out of shape that Duvall was robbed. It's funny, when they were interviewing Duvall in the days leading up to the ceremony, they asked him what he thought his chances were for winning, and he said something like, "Oh I don't know, it's all political." I wasn't sure what he meant, but a few days later, I sort of figured it out. Whatever the reason was for giving the statue to Jack instead of Duvall, it couldn't've been solely due to talent. Yes I know these things are subjective, but everyone I've spoken to agrees. And this is no disrespect to Jack, by the way. He's awesome. In fact, as with Duvall, I try to see everything he's in. Although I should say I've never referred to Jack as God. I have used that nickname for Duvall.

So when I saw that Robert Duvall was going to be at the ArcLight Hollywood tonight for a screening of Crazy Heart, going was a no-brainer. Are you kidding? The chance to see Duvall in person? The ArcLight only announced this a few days ago. Crazy Heart opened last night. When I saw the announcement, I didn't hesitate to buy a ticket, and for the front row to boot (the ArcLight is all about the reserved seating), Saturday night Hollywood chaos be damned.

If you're a Duvall fan and you haven't seen Crazy Heart, you should know that Duvall's role is pretty small. He's a bar owner in Houston and a longtime friend of Jeff Bridges' character Bad Blake (yes, it's a stage name). Bad lives in Houston, but because he spends the first half or so of the movie on the road, it takes a while for Duvall to enter the picture. Duvall also produced the movie, so there's that. Whether or not you're a Duvall fan, see this movie anyway. It may very well be THE performance of Jeff's career. Well, maybe after the Dude. Personally I'd pick the Dude as his best character, but I'm being very biased since The Big Lebowski is one of my favorite movies. The only reason Bad Blake might be placed higher is because it's, ya know, more serious and dramatic and so on.

Bad Blake is a country singer. You do eventually find out his real name, but not until near the end. And no, I won't tell you what it is because I want you to see this movie. Anyway, Bad used to be hot shit. While his time has passed, he's still sort of legendary in the southwest, a status he, with the help of his tireless manager back in L.A., is trying to milk for everything it's worth. Bad drives (mostly drunk) around the southwest in his piece-of-shit pickup. The first gig we see him do is a bowling alley, which sort of sums up his sorry state right there. If that weren't enough, in the middle of this one song he has to head out the back in a hurry so he can puke. My mentioning his drunkenness parenthetically is sort of misleading. It really is the conflict underlying everything else and something Bad will have to face up to before the end credits roll.

While doing a gig in Albuquerque, he's approached for an interview by a local journalist named Jean, played by the adorable Maggie Gyllenhaal. They do a couple interviews back in his motel room. At first he only talks to her reluctantly. And he dodges some of her more personal questions. That first interview ends abruptly when she asks him if he has any kids.

Eventually Bad tells her, and without her having to ask, that he does have a son he hasn't seen in twenty-some years. The last time he saw him, the kid was four. Jean, it turns out, has a son of her own, Buddy, who happens to be four. That helps explain why Bad gets along with Buddy so famously. Soon enough Bad and Jean are having a passionate affair. Any downtime Bad gets is spent at her place.

Country's biggest star at the moment is Tommy Sweet, played by Colin Farrell. By the time we meet him about a half-hour into the film, we've already heard a lot about him, most of it from Bad, and most of it not very flattering. Tommy was Bad's protégé. And then at some point Tommy's career blasted off into the stratosphere, and Bad was left behind to suck on the fumes. Bad's obviously bitter. His manager lands him the gig of opening for Tommy at an upcoming concert in Phoenix. At first Bad's like no way, he couldn't abide opening for that youngin'. But the man's gotta earn a living, right? And he's gotta keep the booze flowing, so in the end he gives in and goes to Phoenix. When we meet Tommy, he's actually a pretty decent guy. He still holds Bad Blake in high regard. For his part, Bad warms back up to him in no time. One of my favorite scenes is when Bad's doing his opening act. Tommy surprises him by coming out on stage. They perform this one song together. I'm not a big country fan, but that was a pretty cool scene.

Anyway, it's Bad's alcoholism that the film keeps returning to, because it's his alcoholism that keeps screwing everything up. At the top of that list of casualties is his budding relationship with Jean. Despite their age difference, it really does become serious. And then Bad fucks it up. He's hanging out with Buddy in a Houston mall. Jean has to go somewhere and do some stuff related to her job as a reporter. So Bad and Buddy are wandering around this mall. Like a lot of malls, it has restaurants. With bars. Sure enough, Bad spies this one bar in this one restaurant and takes Buddy in for a refreshment. No, he doesn't get Buddy a real drink. He gets the kid a soda while he gets himself a few measures of his favorite poison. It's early in the day so they're the only ones there. While the barkeep prepares the drinks, Buddy heads back to the restroom...and doesn't come back. Bad goes back to see what's up, but Buddy is nowhere to be found. He becomes frantic and looks all around the mall and reports Buddy missing to the security guards and so on. Jean shows up. She knows what happened before Bad can say anything. They sit in the security office while the guards continue their eventually successful search for the little man. That Buddy is found safe and sound doesn't matter. Jean's done with Bad. It's over. She and Buddy head back to Albuquerque.

Although Robert Duvall's role as the bar owner Wayne is a small one, it's also pivotal. Wayne's a recovered alcoholic who's been dry for years. Funny that he'd run a bar, right? Masochist much? Although I do remember that Ted Danson's character in Cheers, Sam Malone, was a recovered alcoholic, and he also ran a bar. Anyway, Jean's dumping him is a real wakeup call for Bad. With Wayne's moral support, he embarks on the road to recovery. Will he make it? Will Jean take him back? Will he ever have a stable career again?

I'll stop right there. Seriously, even if you're indifferent to Robert Duvall and Jeff Bridges and country music, do see this movie. It's worth it for the performances alone. I love it when actors, especially ubiquitous ones like these two, disappear into their roles to such an extent that you forget they're actors.

The Q&A after the film was with Robert Duvall as well as writer-director Scott Cooper. Scott was introduced first. He came up and took his seat. And then Duvall came up. I don't need to tell you that everyone in the sold-out house gave him a standing ovation. Because Crazy Heart is such a mature film peopled mostly with characters who are much older than Hollywood's target demo, I suppose I took for granted that Crazy Heart was made by someone who was, well, a little bit older, which is why I was startled by how young Scott Cooper is. I'd say he's in his mid thirties or so. What's more, Crazy Heart is his directorial debut. Good lord, what a debut! He's not new to Hollywood, mind you. He's been acting fairly steadily since the nineties. I'm not sure he's played the lead in anything, but he's found supporting work in film and TV, a season seven episode of The X-Files, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, The District, etc. Kid's got a pretty diverse resume. He also had a role in the 2003 film Gods and Generals, the prequel to Gettysburg. Despite the fact that it's a terrible movie, based on perhaps the worst novel I've ever read, it was during the production of Gods and Generals that Scott met and befriended Robert Duvall, who played General Robert E. Lee (Martin Sheen played Lee in the far superior Gettysburg). In fact, Scott and Duvall became such good pals that Scott's wedding was on Duvall's sprawling Virginia ranch. He and his wife have a youngin' who's now four (what's with the recurring four-year-olds?!). Apparently Scott's kid likes to say he was made at "Bobby Duvall's ranch." Lucky bastard. During the Q&A Scott and Duvall shared this one funny anecdote about the wedding. One of the guests was actor Adrien Brody. Well, after the wedding was over, Duvall had to leave town to shoot a film. And Scott and his woman went to the Caribbean for their honeymoon. As for the guests, they all went back home...except Adrien Brody. Apparently the dude stayed there for three days and only left because the ranch proprietor called Duvall to ask what they should do with him. And then Duvall called Scott in the Bahamas or wherever, since Adrien was Scott's friend after all, and asked him what the deal was with that weirdo.

When asked about the genesis of the project, Scott talked about growing up on country music in Virginia. For a long time he's wanted to do a biopic about Merle Haggard. He thought if and when he finally had the chance to direct, a Merle movie would be just the ticket. When he thought about who could help him with this, Duvall was the obvious choice. During his decades of acting experience, Duvall has also racked up credits as a producer and director. And he's a country music fan. He said he started listening to it when he enlisted in the Army right out of high school, in the late 1940s and early '50s. When Scott pitched Duvall the Merle Haggard idea, Duvall told him he also wanted to do a Merle biopic. He'd been ruminating about it for years but just hadn't gotten around to it. It's next to impossible to write and direct something when you're acting in seemingly every other movie. Duvall saw the perfect opportunity here. Young Scott could do all the writing and directing legwork while Duvall could sit back and produce.

Ultimately the Merle project fell through. Unlike a lot of fact-based films, they didn't have a specific book to adapt. A lot of biopics and what have you are based on a book, for which the author has already done the historical research while you, as the writer-director, only have to worry about being faithful to the result of all that labor: The book itself. No such luck here. Of course, Scott could make up for that by interviewing not only Merle but also the people Merle has known throughout his long career (he's about Duvall's age). Pretty soon into the interview process Scott realized it just wasn't going to work. Among the interviewees were Merle's ex-wives. Their accounts of various periods in Merle's life were inconsistent with what Merle said. Sometimes Scott would be told stuff that flat contradicted what someone else told him. Finally he and Duvall said fuck it. They could do a country music character piece, but the character would have to be made up.

Eventually Scott came across the 1989 novel Crazy Heart by Thomas Cobb, a fictionalized version of the life of Hank Thompson. By sheer coincidence, Hank was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1989. He passed away in 2007 at the age of 82. Scott didn't go into detail about how much of it was pure fiction and how much Cobb drew from Hank's life. Hank started recording in the 1940s and pretty much went nonstop until he died, a good solid sixty years of steady work. He literally died five days after his last concert. At first blush he doesn't seem to have had any serious mishaps like what we see Bad Blake go through. Maybe Cobb knew stuff we didn't. At any rate, there you have it. Plus, having a book to draw from meant Scott's research, such as it was, was already done for him. All he had to do when writing the script was, ya know, keep the novel at his elbow.

Like all good screenwriters, though, Scott didn't let himself be a slave to the source material. The most glaring example of that is the last act of the story. Bad Blake makes some strides against his alcoholism. When he goes to patch things up with Jean (she's still mad at him for losing Buddy in the mall), she rejects him outright. In the novel, this pushes Bad off the wagon. He drinks himself silly and wakes up in a ditch. Scott changed that.

If you've seen Tender Mercies, you'll recognize some obvious parallels. Like Tender Mercies, Crazy Heart is about a washed up country singer who falls for a woman with a four-year-old son. Mac's got a daughter from a previous marriage he's trying to patch things up with. Bad Blake's got that long-lost son. The big difference, though, is that in Tender Mercies Rosa Lee supports Mac. He has a support system through all his troubles while he pieces his life back together. In Crazy Heart, Bad Blake has no one. Jeff Bridges, who just turned sixty on December 4, is also ten years older than Duvall was when he played Mac Sledge. I haven't seen Tender Mercies in years, but in general it's much more upbeat. In Crazy Heart Bad Blake hits rock bottom. It's a much more intense, in-your-face depiction of someone truly down and out. Speaking of parallels with country singers, both Scott and Duvall mentioned Jeff Bridges being long-time pals with Kris Kristofferson. Apparently Jeff not so discreetly set out to make himself sort of look like Kristofferson, what with hair and beard all over the place. Jeff never said anything to his good friend, but when Kristofferson attended a screening of Crazy Heart, he recognized himself immediately and playfully gave Jeff a lot of shit about it.

Speaking of Jeff, one thing Scott said that surprised me was that Jeff Bridges has a reputation in Hollywood of being the single most difficult actor to attach to a project. I could've sworn I already heard that about Bill Murray, but I suppose such a claim is relative. At any rate, Scott cited The Big Lebowski as an example, saying it took the Coens a solid year to convince Jeff to play the Dude. Duvall went out of his way to say that Jeff isn't difficult to work with, just difficult to get a commitment from. I can only imagine that Jeff is snowed under scripts all the time. He has to pick carefully. What's more, when you read a new script, even if it's a good one, it's almost impossible to tell if it'll be a good movie. Good movies are made by a great cast and great direction as much as they are with great writing. You could have a so-so script and still end up with a great film. History is rife with examples that would fill up a hundred blog posts.

I'm sure Duvall was key to getting Jeff. When a big Hollywood star produces a movie, one of their main contributions is using their clout. Duvall said he's been friends with the Bridges family for decades, since Jeff's late father, the great Lloyd Bridges, was younger than Jeff is now. They didn't say how long it took to rope in Jeff for this gig, but they obviously convinced him somehow. Maybe the short shooting schedule had something to do with it. One of the things Scott said that blew me away was that this entire film, with a budget of seven mil, was shot in twenty-four days. That's kind of amazing. With a final cut that's almost two hours, you've gotta figure they shot a lot more that was edited out. The rule of thumb with movies is that you try to shoot three pages of the script per day. They must've been doing double that. One bit that Scott said they cut was when Bad Blake confronts his long-lost son in person. In the final cut, they only talk once, and it's on the phone.

Man, I can't tell you how cool that is, that they shot it all in barely more than three weeks. It gives me hope that if I ever have the funds to shoot a feature, the shoot itself need not consume huge gobs of my life, not if it's budgeted and scheduled appropriately. Scott said the script was shot wildly out of order. This one very poignant scene toward the end between Jean and Bad was actually the very first scene they shot on day one of the production. That's kind of baffling. So Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal had to pretend the first hundred-plus pages of the script had already happened so they could be in the right emotional state. Scott said Maggie had a very tough time with that scene. No kidding.

The kid who played Buddy had an even harder time during the shoot, it sounds like. Scott said it was hard for him to know when everything was make-believe. There's this one scene, shortly after the mall fiasco, when Jean goes back to Bad's place, collects her things, and gets a cab. She and Buddy drive away in the cab while Bad pleads with her to give him another chance. Well, Scott said the kid who played Buddy thought they really were leaving. And during that first take he started crying. Scott had to explain to him that it was just pretend and they weren't really leaving Jeff Bridges. They waited for the kid to recover so they could shoot it again. When you see it, you'll notice that the kid doesn't say or do anything while his mom takes him away. He just looks calmly out the cab window at Jeff Bridges. Now you can appreciate how much effort it took to pull that off.

Besides the kid crying and Maggie struggling on the first day, the set sounds like it was drama free. Duvall had high praise for Scott as a director. As the producer, Duvall visited the set a lot. He said Scott did a great job keeping the set relaxed. The only obstacle to their staying on the tight schedule was Jeff Bridges' habit of checking his performance on the feedback monitor after each and every take. Control freak? Obsessive compulsive? What's the guy worried about? Scott and Duvall laughed it off. They sort of made fun of Jeff for having to do that. During the Q&A, that is. I'm not sure they made fun of him to his face, although I'm sure Duvall would have no problem doing that.

Regarding the concert scene at the Sun Pavilion in Phoenix, Scott said those were not extras in the crowd. They had all come to see a Toby Keith concert. Before the concert, Duvall asked Toby if he'd allow them to shoot their scene. Toby said sure. His handlers said sure, but you only have ten minutes. The approximately ten-minute gap between the opening act and Toby. That means the duet with Jeff Bridges and Colin Farrell was shot almost in real time. Their duet goes for several minutes, and it's not one long take. There are cuts from different angles. They did all that in ten minutes? God damn, that's something. I can only assume Jeff Bridges and Colin Farrell rehearsed that song ahead of time. Although, now I think about it, with such a tight schedule, how would they've found the time? Scott said shooting that scene was chaos. He hadn't a clue if it would work. Jeff and Colin stood at the mic and sang and played guitar while Scott ran all over the place like a madman with his Steadicam strapped on, gathering as much footage as possible.

Speaking of Colin Farrell, Scott had high praise for him. Colin's got range, he said. He'll do any part you throw at him. Colin, Scott claimed, is actually a character actor masquerading behind his movie star good looks. His being Irish came in handy, Scott half-joked, since we know all Irish can sing. He purposely wanted the audience to think Tommy Sweet was an asshole by the time we meet him a half-hour into the film, just before the Sun Pavilion scene. Then we see how deferential he is to Bad Blake. This allows us to see that bad-mouthing Tommy Sweet before we meet him is a reflection of how wounded, and maybe jealous, Bad Blake feels behind his tough, booze-swigging facade. It shows Bad Blake's a complicated human being like the rest of us. I have to admit that was a shrewd writing tactic. You don't see that very much in mainstream films.

When Scott finished his final draft of the script, he gave it to Duvall and said he needed two people to make the film work: Jeff Bridges as well as T Bone Burnett. He obviously got the former. And he got the latter too. T Bone handled the soundtrack. Do you know who he is? I didn't come across his name until the Coen Brothers film O Brother, Where Art Thou? He did the soundtrack for that, one of my favorite soundtracks ever. I got it in 2001, soon after the film came out. Indeed, the O Brother soundtrack became so successful that in 2001 or '02 or thereabouts, T Bone went on a nationwide tour with all the performers from the soundtrack performing their songs. Even old Ralph Stanley, God bless 'im. I think they had one L.A. stop, the Universal Amphitheater if memory serves. I didn't go, but writing about it now sort of makes me wish I had. Seriously, how often have you heard of the soundtrack to a movie going on tour?

T Bone was in his fifties when the Coens tapped him to do O Brother. He'd been producing country music for years. The Coens already had a rapport with him from The Big Lebowski, which they did just before O Brother. T Bone was their music supervisor on that, helping them select the appropriate classic gems for certain scenes, like that one sequence when the Dude passes out and has that weird dream after being drugged by the porn producer Jackie Treehorn. Since then, T Bone's done other soundtrack work: The Ladykillers (another Coen Brothers flick), Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Don't Come Knocking, Walk the Line, Cold Mountain, All the Kings Men, Happy Feet, Mad Money, and, most mysteriously, Did You Hear About the Morgans? He'd done soundtrack work before the Coens came calling, but only sporadically. O Brother really changed his life. I remember him saying as much in an interview shortly after that came out. He didn't compose the entire soundtracks of all those films, but if he didn't, he at least wrote original songs that appeared on them. For Crazy Heart, he was the composer, and he wrote one of the songs Jeff performs in the film, "The Weary Kind." Speaking of songwriting, I mentioned Bad Blake doing a gig in a bowling alley. Well, he has a backing band there. The foreman of this band, who plays guitar and provides backup vocals and only appears in this one scene, also had a big part in the soundtrack. Scott said Ryan Bingham helped write the songs. All of the songs in the film are original, which is kind of amazing if you think about the schedule. I wonder how much lead time T Bone, Ryan, et al had before the shoot started. Scott never said. The late Stephen Bruton also helped with the soundtrack. The film is dedicated to his memory, as he passed away from throat cancer at the age of sixty back in May. Stephen performed with Kris Kristofferson for a long time. He also worked with T Bone, including on Don't Come Knocking.

In talking more about his directing style, Scott said he watched the two films Duvall's directed in the last ten years: The Apostle and Assassination Tango. One thing he noticed was Duvall's penchant for using non-actors. He tried to emulate that in making Crazy Heart. One such example is Rick Dial, who plays Maggie's uncle, the pianist in Bad Blake's backing band during the Albuquerque bit. Duvall told us his very interesting backstory. Rick Dial is originally from Arkansas, the same part of Arkansas as Billy Bob Thornton. He owned a furniture store there for a long time. He and Billy Bob are longtime pals. Well, when Billy Bob made Sling Blade back in the mid nineties, he gave Rick Dial a supporting role. It turned out Rick wasn't such a bad actor. Right after Sling Blade, Duvall cast him in The Apostle. This was followed by more roles while he continued running his furniture store. He landed parts in The General's Daughter, Mumford, Secondhand Lions (also with Duvall), and a few other films. When he's back home, Rick's also the official announcer for both the football and basketball teams at Malvern High School. He's lived in Malvern his whole life. Like all good things, Rick's run was bound to end. The recession hit him so hard that he finally had to close his furniture store. He'd been running it for decades. His part in Crazy Heart wasn't that big so he couldn't have made too much. A budget of seven mil stretches more thinly than you might think. Duvall said he's doing everything he can to find Rick more jobs. In addition to living in Malvern his whole life, by the way, Rick's been married to the same gal since he was eighteen. He's fifty-five now. That's awesome.

Scott also mentioned how he wouldn't shoot coverage in certain scenes. You know what coverage is? Basically, when you shoot a scene, a rule of thumb is that you shoot it from multiple angles. You won't necessarily use them all in the final cut, but in case one of the angles doesn't turn out right, you can use another one. You're covered, if you will. In some scenes, though, Scott couldn't imagine doing it from any other angle except the one he'd storyboarded, so that was the only one he'd shoot. That was very shrewd because a youngin' like him wouldn't have final say on the final cut. The studio would. If the studio sees a scene from an angle they don't like, they'll go ahead and use one of Scott's coverage shots. Only, they couldn't do that if Scott hadn't shot coverage. One example Scott cited was from the second half of the film, when Bad Blake's back at his house in Houston. I think it was in the morning. Bad Blake was hung over. For most of the film he's hung over or drunk. But in this one scene he was especially screwed up. He stumbles into his bedroom and collapses on the bed. For that scene, Scott put the camera at the back corner of the bed, adjacent to the pillows, so as Bad Blake fell across the bed, his face would land literally right in front of the lens. The audience could then see Bad Blake full on in all his screwed up glory. Scott only used one camera for that scene. Something told him that, because it showed Jeff Bridges in a hideous light, the studio wouldn't like that angle and go for another. Only, they had no coverage to turn to, so Scott, a young filmmaker with no clout in the studio system (although being friends with Duvall has got to count for something), outsmarted his would-be bosses. That's pretty cool. And again, it gives me hope should I--no, when I--make my own feature.

Scott was nervous as hell when time came to watch the film with Thomas Cobb. Would he hate it? Especially considering how vastly different the ending is from the novel? Apparently Cobb loved it. He cried even. At first Scott thought he was crying because he hated it. But no, apparently those tears were his seal of approval.

As for what's next, Scott's not sure. For Duvall, probably a million things. The guy doesn't miss a beat. He did mention one of his upcoming projects will be playing Don Quixote for Terry Gilliam. That elicited a lot of applause, including and especially from me. How awesome is that, not only that Duvall's playing Don friggin' Quixote, but that Terry Gilliam's resurrecting that project from the dead? If you follow the movie biz, you may already know that Terry "Monty Python" Gilliam tried to adapt Don Quixote several years ago. But the thing ran so over schedule and over budget that the production was finally shut down. They even made a documentary about it called Lost in La Mancha. A doc about an aborted production. How about that? But you know why? Because, like any great film, there was so much drama. It was made by these two guys who went to the same school as me, Temple University in Philly. Terry Gilliam had hired them to document the production of 12 Monkeys back in the mid nineties, a lot of which was shot in Philly. When they started out on the Don Quixote project, of course, they thought they'd just be documenting its development like they did for 12 Monkeys. When the whole thing imploded, they figured their doc was a wash, but then Terry Gilliam, proving he's one of the best sports around, went to them and was like, "Well, someone should get a movie out of this. I guess it'll be you." Or something like that. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote has long been one of Terry's passion projects. You could say his vision of it is quixotic. And now he's getting another chance. The shoot starts next spring. Johnny Depp's playing Sancho Panza, as he was going to do originally. You'll see him in the documentary. Isn't it awesome Terry's getting another chance, and that Duvall's going to be front and center? What a role, huh? Don Quixote. Directed by Terry Gilliam. I can't wait!

At the Movies with Governor Tom: James and the Giant Peach and Coraline

I remember when James and the Giant Peach came out. It was the spring of 1996. I was closing in on the end of my sophomore year at Temple University. The first Toy Story had just come out the previous autumn, and that slick new style of CGI three-dimensional animation was beginning its encroachment in earnest on the 2D hand-drawn style. Whoever was in charge of marketing for James must've targeted college students hard. I remember clear as day seeing posters for it at campus bus stops.

It didn't work on me unfortunately. I didn't have much time for movies in those days, what with five or so classes and a part-time job on the side. Finding time to eat and sleep was rocket science enough. I hadn't seen Toy Story at that point either, so I only knew about the new animation by reputation thanks mainly to the attention Toy Story had just gotten at the Oscars. Perhaps I would've been more creative with my time and found a way to see James had I known it was adapted from a book by Roald Dahl, author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, one of my favorite childhood books, and directed by Henry Selick who, just before this, had directed The Nightmare Before Christmas, which I did see on the big screen thank you very much.

As it was, I didn't see James and the Giant Peach. I didn't even rent it, although I did rent Toy Story eventually. No, good ol' James was one of those flicks you always meant to see but somehow never got around to. That's why I say God bless movie theaters like the ArcLight. Not only is the ArcLight a first-run house, it's also home base for the American Film Institute. AFI has screenings there all the time for both new films and old, and oftentimes they have people from the films show up for Q&As.

Today the ArcLight Hollywood had a Henry Selick triple feature: James and the Giant Peach, Coraline, and The Nightmare Before Christmas. James kicked off at 5 p.m., which meant leaving work much earlier than usual. Hollywood isn't exactly down the street from Burbank. After James was over, they went straight to Coraline, and that was followed by a Q&A with Henry Selick. I could've stayed for Nightmare, but it would've meant spending yet another twelve bucks, plus I'd already been sitting there for too many hours for my numb ass to count. No matter. Like I said, I've seen Nightmare on the big screen. I'd already seen Coraline when it came out earlier this year, but it's so awesome I certainly didn't mind catching it again.

Just barely eighty minutes long, James and the Giant Peach is a pretty straightforward story, as a lot of the best stories are. It takes place in the fifties (when the book was written). Roald Dahl doesn't waste a minute making life a living hell for our young hero. The first scene shows James hanging out on the beach with Mom and Dad. They're an English family. Dad tells him they're planning a hoilday to New York. He shows his boy a New York postcard, which gets James all psyched up. And then out of the blue a rhinoceros (don't ask) comes along and tramples Mom and Dad to death. So just like that, our hero's an orphan. Steven Culp plays Dad, by the way.

Cut from the gorgeous sunny beach of England's south coast to some anonymous and very grim-looking English hamlet. It's not raining, but the weather is nonetheless dominated by a drab grayness which, like the worst colds, never goes away. James is living with his two terrible aunts. Were they Mom's sisters? Dad's sisters? We don't know, and it doesn't matter. They suck. Shit, just look at their names: Aunt Spiker and Aunt Sponge. Like a lot of villains, they have awesome names. And they're played by a couple of Britain's top actresses: Joanna Lumley of Absolutely Fabulous fame and Miriam Margolyes. When she did James and the Giant Peach, Miriam Margolyes had just finished making the HBO movie Stalin with Robert Duvall and Maximilian Schell. Man, you talk about doing a complete one-eighty, from a movie as heavy as that to playing a wacky evil aunt in a Roald Dahl adaptation. I saw her on stage here in L.A. in a production of The Importance of Being Earnest. Miriam's one of those consummate professional actors, ya know? Nothing flashy. You won't hear about her at the Oscars. She just gets the job done and doesn't make a fuss. Joanna Lumley, one of the great comic geniuses in Britain today, did actually make a fuss while they were shooting James and the Giant Peach. More on that below when I get to Henry Selick's Q&A.

I forgot to mention that this first part of the film is live action. The very end is live action as well. The middle eighty percent or so, when James is journeying across the Atlantic on the giant peach, is where we get to the animation. It's not the sleek CGI animation Toy Story had just made famous the year before. Nope, as he'd already demonstrated in spades with The Nightmare Before Christmas, Henry Selick is old school. No, I don't mean the hand-drawn stuff. I'm talking stop-motion. Think Harryhausen.

Back to James, he's so lonely and desperate for companionship, he actually befriends a spider that's spun a web in the window of his prison. I mean, bedroom. No, the spider doesn't talk or anything. Yet. We're still in the live action world. Just because the spider doesn't talk or doesn't (seem to) understand him, though, doesn't stop James from feeling affection for it, or from freaking out when his aunts try to kill it and sweep away the web.

One day, while putzing around outside and avoiding Aunts Spike and Sponge, this guy shows up. By his voice you know it's the guy who was narrating at the beginning. He's just this nameless guy played by Pete Postlethwaite, that tall bony English actor I know you've seen in films and on TV, even if you haven't bothered to learn his name. He just has that unique face coupled with great talent that makes him the quintessential character actor. I mean the guy can do it all: Funny, dramatic, evil. He especially looks evil when he's completely bald. When he keeps his hair, or what's left of it, he looks goofy. Anyway, so Pete plays the narrator as well as this nameless guy who shows up and gives James a container with boiled crocodile tongues. Yes, you read that right: Boiled crocodile tongues. He tells James the tongues are magical but to be careful with them.

Pete takes off, and in no time James spills the tongues all over the place. One of them sinks into the ground at the base of the big tree in the front yard before he can collect it. Yep, you guessed it. Thanks to the magical boiled crocodile tongue, this otherwise barren, dead, and hideous tree starts growing a bright and healthy peach on one of its branches. The peach grows. And grows. And keeps on growing. Before you know it, Spike and Sponge have this peach the size of a small lorry in their front yard. Always ready to take advantage of people, they surround the peach with walls and a gate. They then advertise the bejesus out of it and make people pay a fee to go into the enclosure just to look at the peach. People do pay too. In no time the peach becomes the talk of the British Empire. Folks flock from all over to get a look-see.

One night, really late, long after the tourists have left, James goes and gets his own private look at the peach. He rips out a small hunk of it so he can taste it. And then he falls into it. This is where the film turns into stop-motion animation. Inside the peach he discovers that the boiled crocodile tongue also had a magical effect on some of the local wildlife, including that one spider who'd been living in his window. Miss Spider, as she's conveniently known, is voiced by Susan Sarandon, who affects a vaguely Eastern European/Transylvanian-type accent. Rounding out James's new friends are: Mr. Old Green Grasshopper (Simon Callow), Mr. Centipede (Richard Dreyfuss), Mr. Earthworm (David Thewlis), Mrs. Ladybug (Jane Leeves, a.k.a. Daphne from Frasier), and Mrs. Glowworm (Miriam Margolyes...again!).

Like James, the bugs aren't very happy in this hamlet. They dream of a better place. For his part, James is still dreaming of New York. He goes on and on about it until the bugs are sufficiently interested in going there too. Maybe this giant magical peach can help them get there. Mr. Centipede devises a way to sever it from the branch. Aunt Sponge comes out of the house just as the peach starts rolling down the yard. You'll cheer too as you watch her ugly visage steamrolled under the peach. Before it falls into the ocean, Miss Spider spins a ton of silk around the stem and uses it to link the peach to a flock of seagulls flying by at that particular moment. The seagulls aren't fazed by the silk. They keep heading west while towing the giant peach beneath them.

And that's how James and his new pals cross the Atlantic. They do a great job making the peach their cozy little home. They can hang out on top of it, or along the side on a makeshift wooden path they build. And of course they have awesome aerial views of the ocean in all directions as far as you can see. Of course the journey isn't all peachy. Indeed, they encounter one mishap after another, including a giant robotic shark. My favorite part is when they have to contend with undead skeleton pirates in a sunken galleon. Even that rhino that killed James's parents shows up at one point, barreling through the clouds (again, don't ask).

When they finally reach the skies over Manhattan, it's truly a sight for sore eyes. The peach lands on top of the Empire State Building. The cabbies and pedestrians and everyone else down there notice it. Suffice it to say James has a tough time explaining himself to the crowd that's gathered once he reaches the ground. The kids believe him. The cops? Eh. This is where the film returns to live action. For the most part. He'll need the bugs' help convincing the New Yorkers he's not crazy.

James and the Giant Peach is a sweet film. It's not a masterpiece. It's not as good as The Nightmare Before Christmas or Coraline, but it's good stuff. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it, as I do Coraline. Also stop-motion, Coraline has the bonus of being in 3D. During the break after James and the Giant Peach, the nice folks at the ArcLight provided us with those bulky 3D glasses. Seriously, those things are big, more astronaut visors than glasses. That's right, younglings. Long gone are the days of the paper blue and red glasses. I didn't know until today that movie theaters use different brands of 3D glasses for the same 3D movies. When I saw Coraline earlier this year, I saw it at the AMC in downtown Burbank. The 3D glasses there were much less imposing. They looked like sunglasses actually, the Ray-Bans from Men in Black. What Tom Cruise wore in Risky Business.

Like James and the Giant Peach, Coraline's adapted from a book, only this one's much more recent, a novella written in 2002 by Neil Gaiman. I've yet to read a single word by Neil, but I know him well by reputation. He's the brain behind the Sandman comics, which one of my stepbrothers collected for a time back in the late eighties when it was brand new. His novel Stardust was made into a pretty decent movie a couple years ago. A contributor to other series like Hellblazer and Swamp Thing, the guy's very prolific.

The title character of Coraline, voiced by Dakota Fanning, is about the same age as James, almost but not quite pubescent. No, her folks don't die, no tragedy befalls her at the outset. What does set the story in motion, however, is still at the expense of her happiness. Like James, she has to leave the world she's ever known, in her case Michigan, for completely new digs in the Pacific Northwest. Her folks decided to move there for their careers. Like James, Coraline's an only child. Her folks work at home, which is nice, but they work all the time. Whenever she tries to get their attention, they don't hide the fact that she's annoying them. Her mom (voiced by Teri Hatcher) can get really nasty. Dad's kind of a nice guy, just aloof. Coraline does make one friend. Sort of. He's this kid about her age named Wyborn. Wybie, for short. Wyborn. I love that name. He's kind of goofy and grates on Coraline, although that doesn't say much, as Coraline seems easily grated. She's almost a teenager, so I suppose she's getting warmed up for being irritable and difficult twenty-four-seven. No, but really, Coraline's awesome. She doesn't take shit from anyone. Anyway, Wybie's family has an interesting backstory that becomes very relevant toward the end.

Wybie lives with his grandmother, landlady of the Pink Palace, the two-story Queen Anne that's been converted into apartments. Coraline and her folks live on the first floor. The second floor and basement are also apartments. More on their occupants in a sec. Wybie's grandma doesn't want him going near that house, for that's the house where her twin sister disappeared when she was a little girl. Wybie comes over to the house now and again anyway. He's a fairly easy going guy who doesn't seem to let rules get in the way. He even pilfers stuff from his grandma's trunk, including this one button-eyed doll he gives to Coraline because it looks just like her. This is the doll we see being sown together during the opening credits by a pair of spindly metallic hands, the owner of which we meet much later.

A black cat with knowing eyes (don't all cats having knowing eyes?) wanders around the grounds. He doesn't seem to belong to anybody, but he does seem keen on keeping those eyes on Coraline. In the basement apartment live two retired actresses named Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, voiced by the terrific British comic duo of Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French. Up on the second floor is a retired Russian circus performer named Mr. Bobinsky (Ian McShane), as tall and bony as the actresses are rotund.

One day, bored out of her skull, Coraline wanders into one of the empty rooms in her apartment and finds a little locked door that's been wallpapered over. She nags Mom to unlock it only to find a brick wall on the other side. Bummed out, Coraline moves on and forgets about it. Until that night, that is, when she wakes up to find a mouse squeaking near her bedroom doorway. She follows it down the hall and into that room with the small door....which now opens onto a passageway. Not missing a beat, Coraline gets on all fours and crawls through.

On the other side is basically the same place. Only it's different. The "other world" is the only name ever applied to it. Her parents are there, only they have buttons for eyes, the same style of black buttons as that doll Wybie gave her at the beginning. If you don't count how creepy they look, her "other" parents are much nicer than her real ones. Other Mom is a great cook. By this point in the story it's clear that whenever Coraline feels any trepidation at all, she gets over it pretty quick. And so it is here. At first she's kind of weirded out by this other world and her other parents and the fact that the black cat can now talk (Keith David), but soon enough it doesn't faze her. She sits down at the table and enjoys Other Mom's great feast. She even stays the night and falls soundly asleep in her other bed. When she wakes up, though, she finds herself back in the real world. No, don't worry, it wasn't all a dream. The threat emanating from the other world is all too real. It's a good thing the cat can talk in the other world, as he's basically the only one there interested in helping Coraline.

Without giving too much away, but as you've no doubt guessed, this other world is not all it's cracked up to be. And Other Mom is not really as nice as all that. Not only is it a very sinister place lorded over by a witch, but it also holds the key (literally and figuratively) to what happened to Wybie's grandmother's twin sister. Coraline uncovers all this after Other Mother kidnaps her real parents. Anyway, great stuff. Do see it if you haven't already.

The Q&A with Henry Selick was moderated by Charles Solomon, a historian specializing in animated films. The first thing he and Henry talked about was Henry's early, pre-Nightmare animation career. In the eighties, when Henry was in his thirties, his first big animation break came when he was hired to do the Pillsbury Dough Boy commercials. That's kind of awesome because I remember those commercials quite fondly. I was a youngin' back then. Henry sounded like he kind of enjoyed that job. And the Dough Boy was animated in stop-motion style, which has always been his preference. One thing he said that cracked me up was that he and his crew had to make "twenty different facial expressions for the Pillsbury Dough Boy, all of them happy." Like a lot of directors, Henry tends to surround himself with the same crew and support staff from project to project. Once you have a team you're comfortable with and with whom you've established a solid rapport, why mess that up, right? The crew he works with now is the same crew he's been working with since his Dough Boy days. That's pretty cool, and no doubt why he's grateful to the Pillsbury Company for giving him that opportunity. It's helped his career in more ways than one.

So why does Henry love stop-motion so much? Well, it's for the same reason that any stop-motion animator would prefer that style. One word: Harryhausen. If you haven't heard of Ray Harryhausen, even if you're not much of an animation buff, well, good for you! That would be quite an accomplishment. Even if you don't know the name, you must've heard of some of his stuff: Jason and the Argonauts, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, One Million Years B.C., Clash of the Titans, a couple other Sinbad films. Seriously, it's no exaggeration to say Harryhausen is a god in the animation world. Professional animators today, even if they're not into stop-motion, usually cite Harryhausen as an influence. I myself have had the good fortune of seeing him in person. The Egyptian Theatre, one of the venues for the nonprofit American Cinemateque, held a retrospective of his career a few years ago coinciding with the release of a new book about his animation. I attended one of the screenings, Jason and the Argonauts, which was followed by a Q&A and book signing with Ray. Pretty awesome. And I have to say the old coot is remarkably cogent and together for someone his age.

Ray Harryhausen wasn't just an influence on Henry Selick, he was THE influence. This is when Henry mentioned he was from New Jersey. That's cool. I did most of my growing up in Jersey also. Only, Henry's from Glen Ridge, which is in the northeastern part of the Garden State, just outside New York. I grew up in Mount Holly, which is in the southwestern part of the state (South Jersey as they say), just outside Philly. When Henry was six or so, Mom took him to see The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. It scared the shit out of him. Henry reiterated that he had no idea that's what he wanted to do at that point. He was only six, don't forget. Indeed, that film gave him nightmares for years, he said. As the years went by, though, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad scared him less and impressed him more. By the time he was in high school, he knew stop-motion was where his heart belonged. Wouldn't it be cool if he could whip up stop-motion movies that had the same effect on kids that Sinbad had on him? I'm a little old for animated kids' films to give me nightmares, but if I were in elementary school and saw a movie like Coraline, I could imagine being pretty creeped out. It definitely has a thick edge of darkness and danger to it, perhaps more than anything Henry's done at this point. Henry's met Harryhausen a couple times and has hung out with him at animation festivals.

Another influence on Henry has been Terry Gilliam, one of the Monty Python troupe and the only Python alum who's gone on to direct. It was cool hearing how much Henry admires him. One of Terry's earlier films, Time Bandits, was one of my favorite films growing up in the eighties. I remember seeing The Adventures of Baron Munchausen on cable while living with my mom in North Carolina in the late eighties. Fisher King, which Terry did in the early nineties, is another terrific film. And then of course there's Brazil, his masterpiece. He'll probably never top that. Admittedly it can be hit and miss with Terry. He's done great stuff, but he's also done a lot of forgettable stuff. I saw that movie The Brothers Grimm he did a few years ago with Heath Ledger, Matt Damon, and Lena Headey. In fact I saw it in the Cinerama Dome, but I remember virtually nothing about it. Except Lena Headey. This was shortly before she signed up to play Sarah Connor in the short-lived Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles. I haven't seen Tideland, but if the critics and their cousins are to be believed, seeing it would be hazardous to my health. But ya know, that's kind of why you've gotta admire Terry. The man takes risks even though he doesn't really need to at this point in his career. He's pushing seventy. Why not just sit back and be complacent with mainstream commercial work? From what I hear, he was offered the chance to direct the first Harry Potter film. I think he wanted to, but Warners thought his vision for it was too out there. The thing about taking risks and doing things your own way: If you fail, you do so spectacularly, but if you succeed, ditto. Life's too short otherwise.

I have to say it's kind of interesting that Henry was influenced by Terry Gilliam. By the time Terry started making films, Henry was already in his thirties. Nonetheless, Brazil and Munchausen were big influences on him. And yes, Henry has gotten to meet and hang out with Terry. One episode Henry related was when he and Terry got drunk at London's Groucho Club. It's this private club across the street from the house where Groucho Marx lived. London law says you can't drink after a certain time, but private clubs provide a loophole. Anyway, Henry and Terry got drunk there. If Terry's brain is as wild as his films suggest, he's no doubt a fun guy to drink with.

It was inevitable that Charles would ask Henry about his relationship with Tim Burton, who produced both The Nightmare Before Christmas as well as James and the Giant Peach. Henry's known Tim since the early eighties, before the Pillsbury Dough Boy gig, when they were both cutting their teeth at the bottom of Disney's totem pole. Tim already had the idea for Nightmare, but he couldn't sell it to anyone because he didn't have the clout. So he shelved it. Fast forward a good ten years or so. Now Tim's pitch worked, not because he modified the script or anything, but because he was now, ya know, THE Tim Burton, director of Beetlejuice, two Batman movies, Edward Scissorhands, all that stuff.

Working together as long as they have, it's inevitable they'd have creative differences now and again. While they were able to get through James and the Giant Peach without much drama, that wasn't the case a couple years earlier with Nightmare. The way it worked was, Henry would shoot a scene, and then show it to Tim. The production was in Burbank, but Tim was up in the Bay area. I'm not sure if that's where he lived at the time or what. I think he lives in London now with Helena Bonham Carter. Anyways, so he'd show the dailies to Tim up north, and Tim would always approve them. Henry said Tim approved everything all the way up to the end. When it came time to shoot the showdown between Jack and Oogie Boogie, though, everything stopped getting approved. People were laid off until eventually it was just Henry and one other person working on the film. Man, that's crazy. I wish he'd gone more into that in terms of what bug had suddenly crawled up Tim Burton's ass. Henry eventually said fuck it and went ahead with shooting the scene the way he wanted to, and behind Tim's back. Tim didn't find out about it until Disney approved the final cut. And apparently Tim never made a stink about it or confronted Henry. I have to say, as it was Tim's pet project, it's kind of bizarre the production would end that way, although it does make it a lot more fun to watch now that I know the drama behind the drama. I mean I know all movie sets can be hectic and that producers hire and fire as a matter of course. It's a brutal business. Still, everything had been going perfectly until the end. Why did Tim try to screw it up and for no reason that anyone, not the director, not the studio, could discern?

It's all good, though. Henry and Tim are still tight. In fact, Henry said there's this guy in Jersey who thinks his mom is Tim Burton's mom. Henry's mom has been running the same consignment shop in North Jersey for over thirty years now. She puts the posters from all her boy's movies on the shop walls. Well, she's got this one regular who is absolutely convinced she's Tim's mom. And nothing she can say will dissuade him otherwise.

I have to admit I've always thought actors took on animation work because it meant they didn't have to get all dolled up and dressed up and do all the traveling and so forth. According to Henry, actors also think that. That is, actors who've never done animation. Henry said it never fails. On each and every film, he has some animation newbies who think it's all going to be a breeze. And then comes the inevitable disillusionment. For the most part, they get over it. They are getting paid quite handsomely to sit in a temperature-controlled studio, after all, but sometimes it can get hairy. One anecdote he shared from James and the Giant Peach concerned the drama queen Joanna Lumley from Ab Fab. As I mentioned above, she played Aunt Spiker, one of James's two evil aunts. Well, apparently she was kind of evil even when the cameras weren't rolling. While they were preparing to shoot this one scene, Henry was using a puppet to show Joanna what he wanted her to do. Apparently that's part of his M.O., directing people with puppets. At this point Joanna was grouchy about all the work involved, more than she'd anticipated, even though she was only in a handful of scenes in the first part of the film. So when Henry tried telling her what to do through a puppet, she finally blew up at him with: "I'm not one of your horrible puppets!"

It doesn't seem like he had much drama making Coraline. Dakota Fanning signed up right away, a good two years or so before the production actually started. Terri Hatcher landed the role only after a ton of other actresses were considered. Keith David brought his own style to voicing the cat. Henry didn't have to do much directing with him, although he did say he tried to edge Keith away from his gargoyle voice and more toward a sing-song voice. It worked great. Keith took the sing-song direction and ran with it, but he didn't overdo it. When Henry cast Ian McShane to play Mr. Bobinksy, he specifically didn't want him using his Deadwood voice. I'm not sure why Ian would've done that. Mr. Bobinsky's from Russia. It would've been awfully weird if Bobinsky had sounded like Al Swearengen. Maybe it's because Deadwood was popular at the time. Whatever the case, and however Ian McShane was planning to voice the character, Henry had to tell him to learn a Russian accent. Oops, I wonder if Ian was ready for that. If there was any drama surrounding that bit of extra work, Henry didn't mention it, but it does seem like yet another example of an actor getting more than they bargained for. As for how Henry landed Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, that's thanks to Neil Gaiman. I have to admit casting them was a masterstroke. It makes Coraline relevant not only to American audiences, but to the legions of fans Dawn and Jennifer have in the UK.

Henry went out of his way to say he's not anti-CGI. He's a big fan of the stuff Pixar and Dreamworks churn out. It's just that stop-motion is what he does best. He did admit to using CGI now and then. He guesstimated that he uses it about five percent of the time, to edit out things like wires and so on, and seams in the puppets. For Coraline, which is the first ever stop-motion film made for 3D (The Nightmare Before Christmas was only 3Ded in post production), he came up with literally hundreds of combinations of eye and mouth expressions for his characters, especially for Coraline. It paid off. Coraline's expressions are one of my favorite things about the film. Same with her dad. And the cat. Henry would've loved to keep the seams between the upper and lower halves of the faces, but he chose not to. He didn't say why. Was it the studio's call? Could be. At any rate it's immaterial to me. Coraline's such an engrossing story, I'm not sure I would've noticed the seams.

Jellwagger - Episode 19: Looking for Mr. FUBAR

All right! How ‘bout that Jellwagger?! The first act of Exit the Danish done and done. And all he had to do was get shot. Sure, it’s still only the first draft. And yes, when he eventually goes back to revise and rewrite, some of these pages may be deleted. Maybe most of it. Shit, some revisions are page one rewrites. But Jellwagger didn’t want to think about that. No, any excuse to break out the beer and microwave ‘corn was a good one.

In addition to making progress on Danish, Jellwagger’s week off afforded him the opportunity to sample other beers. Since he started working for Carla, it had pretty much been all Spaten all the time. He still loved it, and he always would love it, from the bottom of his Jersey-bred heart, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t step outside his brewski comfort zone. Shit, if the Germans could make something that spectacular, maybe they had some other gems for Jellwagger to discover. And maybe other countries had their own answers to Spaten. Hey, the car and electronics industries weren’t the only hyper-competitive markets. They got all the ink, but no one talked about the cutthroat culture of breweries. They were constantly trying to outsmart each other. Of course they each had their own recipes that have been around, so they say, since 1587 or whenever, so keeping their brand fresh just means marketing the living bejesus out of it, shoving their logos down our throats and so forth. The beneficiaries of all this, of course, are us! The drinkers! And so Jellwagger got drunk every night of his week off on the likes of Hoegaarden (Belgium), Franziskaner (Bavarian, like Spaten), Löwenbräu (a true Bavarian classic), Kronenberg (France), and Singha (Thailand). And of course all the drunken revelry happened while scarfing down the ‘corn and getting caught up on Bruce Willis classics he hadn’t seen in years (he forgot how much he loved and adored The Last Boy Scout).

Still, it was a lonely week. And frustrating, sometimes simultaneously. Lonely because he hadn’t realized how much he appreciated the company of his coworkers. He missed Betsy’s smile and especially her smell. And he missed Grant’s e-mails and deadpan humor and non sequiturs and off-the-wall declarations about how random everyday shit was “gorgeous” or whatever. He missed all that, but therein lay the frustration. Grant had stormed out of Jellwagger’s apartment last week after Jellwagger, drunk off his ass courtesy of prescription pain killers washed down with Spaten, lost control upon seeing Grant, Zach, and Stu standing side by side. And now Jellwagger would have to face Grant when he went back to work. Once in a while during his week off he thought about calling him to see how bad the fallout with Zach had been. Would Zach really leave him? Their relationship seemed stronger than that. But even if that happened, in the end it wasn’t Jellwagger’s fault, was it? Just like Grant and Zach (and now Stu), infidelity couldn’t stay in the closet forever. Even if Grant and Stu had kept the action at work after hours, what wouldn’t stop the odd attorney from stumbling upon them? Attorneys worked late all the time. If Grant had gotten busted that way, he’d’ve been fired on the spot and left to explain the whole mess to Zach.

This was the kind of logic under which our poor beleaguered Jellwagger sought shelter whenever he felt like complete shit for the fubar with Grant, which was most of that week. The beer helped, but the resulting hangover always amplified Jellwagger’s feeling like a complete asshole.

The one good thing was that he and Grace made up. Sort of. She wasn’t pissed at him anymore, and she went along with his logic, but she was still taken aback by his behavior. When she said she wouldn’t have time to get together until next weekend because of another sculpture she was slaving over, Jellwagger couldn’t help but wonder about her sincerity. Plus, there was Stefania. Would he ever see her again? Our man just couldn’t buy a break. At least Betsy had left before the inciting incident, but would Grant tell her about it? Jellwagger drove himself bonkers wondering how much Betsy would find out.

Bottom line: It was a suck-ass week. He was only able to focus on Exit the Danish in spite of himself. He almost wished he didn’t have the week off. Living inside your head twenty-four-seven can be hazardous. He even started not minding his Donald Duck cane. He spoke to it occasionally, especially whenever Chump was asleep, which was most of the time. I mentioned Jellwagger’s going bonkers, right?

By the time Monday morning rolled around, Jellwagger welcomed it with gusto. He practically jumped out of bed, his wounded thigh be damned. He was so thrilled to be going back to work. His leg certainly still hurt. If he didn’t stay on top of the prescription, that pain could be something else.

And so when he pulled into the red line subway station in North Hollywood for the first time in what seemed like forever, our dear Jellwagger had to limp his way down the seemingly bottomless escalator with his Donald Duck cane for all to see. It wasn’t so bad. I mean, if you were to see someone limping around the NoHo station with a Donald Duck cane, would you really give him a hard time? Especially if they were a young buck like our Jellwagger here, which would tip you off that he was only using a cane because of some injury or other? You might do a double-take or something, or wonder about Jellwagger’s sexuality, but only to yourself. And so it was here. Jellwagger kept his eyes on whatever inanimate object was around—the tiles, the signage, the monitors—while with his peripheral vision he noticed people check out his cane now and again. Whatever. He got used to it soon enough. When a particularly adorable college-age Latina told him his cane was cute, he decided he didn’t mind Donald at all.

Speaking of cute Latinas, this babe magnet of a Jellwagger found himself sitting next to a very well dressed and professional-looking Latina on the subway. She was one of those people you see who look so familiar it drives you mad. Jellwagger was already dangerously close to losing it thanks to his week off. He really didn’t need this brain tickle. But he couldn’t just ask her, could he? While she read the Times, he once again used his trusty peripheral vision to check her out while racking his brain.

Finally, around fifteen minutes into the thirty-minute trip, Jellwagger gave up. As if the hottie was a mind reader, she turned the page while grunting a laugh. “You still haven’t fallen asleep,” she said. “I assume you’re better rested than the last time I saw you?”

Of course! This was the hottie in front of whom Jellwagger had embarrassed the shit out of himself week before last. He’d fucking walked to the station from Azure’s place in Glendale and gone straight to work. On the ride down he’d conked out on this babe’s shoulder. Wait. Don’t panic. She’d been cool as a taco shell then, and she seemed equally mellow now. Hopefully she’d have enough tact not to ask about the Donald Duck cane.

“So what’s with the Donald Duck cane?” she asked.

“Oh, you mean Donald here?” He impressed the hell out of himself with how he smiled and just rolled with it.

“It’s cute.” She offered him a smile of her own before turning back to the paper. Damn, she was gorgeous. And she smelled fantastic. Eat your heart out, Betsy.

“Thanks.” Should he tell her he’d been shot? Jellwagger didn’t have the energy to explain all that nonsense right now. But what the hell else could he say? Pulled a hamstring? How the hell would he have managed that? Then again, he did manage to get shot.

“So?” She was looking at him intently. What the hell was she, a lawyer? She spoke in a very official and clipped manner, like lawyers you see on the news.

“So…?” Jellwagger pretended not to know what she meant. Was the bitch really going to make him say it?

She turned back to the paper. “If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine.” She grunted another laugh. “None of my business.”

“No worries, lawyers ask questions all the time.”

She turned to him with a start. “How’d you know I was a lawyer?”

“Oh come on. Helen Keller could see that you’re a lawyer.”

She turned back to the paper again and continued scanning and turning the pages without another word. Was that it? Jesus! Jellwagger didn’t have the energy for hot women’s mind games. Not today. “Okay fine, I was shot.”

“What?” The hottie folded the paper and faced Jellwagger head on. Aw look, she even had a little mole on her cheek. “Seriously?”

“No, J. Robert, I made that up.”

She made these quick little shakes of her head like Chump E. Chips did now and again when he wanted to get Jellwagger’s germs off him. “Wait a second. When did this happen?”

He told her the whole story except for the part about having a nubile Filipina and an escort in his apartment.

“So you knew this person?”

“Meh…” Jellwagger tilted his head from side to side.

“What does that mean?”

“It’s like, do you know that one suck-ass judge or opposing lawyer the very sight of whom pisses you the hell off? You don’t see them much. You never talk to them beyond the occasional hostile ‘Hey!’ or whatever. And then suddenly there they are. And they shoot you. And then I ask you if you knew the person who shot you.”

“So we’ve established that it wasn’t a stranger.”

“Oh is that all you meant? Why didn’t you just ask it like that?”

“But was it random? Or did this Aaron guy target you specifically? By the way, Roxanne.” She offered her hand.

“Jellwagger.”

“Seriously?”

“Michael Jellwag. Just about everyone calls me Jellwagger. Except my dad. Only, he’s a goner. But you’ve also got my sister Jo. My boss calls me Michael. She’s a hot Latina also. Holy shit, did I just say that? I’m sorry, I’m sort of doped up on painkillers right now.”

“Where is Aaron now, Jellwagger?”

“You’re not mad at me?”

She just looked at him as if she hadn’t even heard the “hot” comment. Lawyers, huh?

“I, uh, I don’t know. He just took off.”

“He’s missing?”

“He’s going to have to come back at some point. His mom lives in my building. Although she did kick him out. That’s why he was busting into my place, see. He’s desperate. Aaron’s busted into a lot of places in my gorgeous Van Nuys neighborhood. I have to say I feel kind of sorry for him.”

“Would you press charges if he were caught?”

Jellwagger turned almost to the sheer black window. In the corner of his eye he could see his reflection. It seemed like his reflection was staring right at him, an extremely disturbing thought to our boy here, so much so that nausea punched him in the gut before he turned back to Roxanne. “Boy oh boy, I’m going to have a ton of e-mails to catch up on.”

“You okay?”

“I was shot, Einstein. Figure it out.”

Her all-business demeanor was pissing him off now. They were coming up to the Westlake/MacArthur Park stop. Good, almost there. Her hotness no longer meant anything. Jellwagger’s pits were dripping. God damn her. He faced forward and looked at all the people sitting and standing, including a particularly attractive Asian. She didn’t look like an attorney at all, not with those jeans and that long-ass purple scarf and woolen hat. Maybe she was an artist chick like Grace. Suddenly Jellwagger felt a deep longing to keep the Asian’s company instead of this hard ass’s.

Jellwagger didn’t even wait for the subway to screech to a complete stop at the Seventh St./Metro station before jumping up and scooting past Roxanne. It was then that he came upon one great benefit of being an invalid: Everyone gave him the right of way. This was by far the most popular stop downtown because of the blue line transfer. Tons of people got on and off here, but they all allowed Jellwagger through first. While limping down Seventh St. towards Figueroa, he noticed people affording him extra personal space as they walked by.

“Jellwagger!”

He turned to see Roxanne speed-walking toward him while stuffing her newspaper into her compact leather briefcase.

“I thought people like you used those rolling suitcase jobs.”

“Hey there, sorry about that.”

When she caught up, they started walking together toward Fig. “Not too fast. I’m literally lame here.”

“I have a nasty habit of coming on strong,” she said as she pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit up. She offered one to Jellwagger.

“Looks like that’s not the only nasty habit you have.”

“You don’t know how many times I’ve tried to quit.” She stuffed the pack of cigarettes into her coat pocket as she exhaled and slowed her walk. Her all-business countenance, at long last, melted away. “I went three months without a single cigarette. This was last year.”

“So what happened?”

“This bitch of a case. I shit you not, Jellwagger, it was a twenty-four-seven operation. I would literally go an entire day without taking a meal break. Not because I was on a diet. I was forgetting to eat.”

“That’s fucked up.”

“You’re telling me.”

“I work in a law firm too.”

Roxanne was in the middle of inhaling when he said that. She looked at him and raised her eyebrows before turning back to the street.

“Powell and Powler.”

“Not a bad firm,” she said as she exhaled. They walked in silence for a bit.

Damn, look at this. Not only did smoking relax her, it completely detached her from the whole planet. Jellwagger figured if this woman had love in her life, she wouldn’t need to smoke. There’s nothing like lots of love and the volcanic orgasms that went with it to make you relax and forget about your cares. Not that Jellwagger knew anything about that. He wondered if Grace might be the ticket. Ostensibly they had nothing at all in common. She looked nothing like the woman Jellwagger figured he’d spend the rest of his life with, but they’d really hit it off, hadn’t they? Surely one bad drunken night wouldn’t undo that chemistry.

“Hey.” Roxanne tapped his arm with her cigarette hand, causing some ash to snow onto his shoes. “Penny for your thoughts.”

“All you need is love, Roxanne.”

“I’ve always thought it was ironic as hell that my folks named me Roxanne.”

They reached the corner. “Just to show you the drugs haven’t made me a complete fruit loop, I recall that you go that way.”

She dropped the cigarette and stamped it out with her black boot. “And Powell and Powler’s down there.” They shook hands again.

“Can I just say that ten minutes ago I thought you were a four-alarm bitch?”

“I get that a lot.”

“You’re hot, though. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind saying that since you didn’t seem to mind before.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll tell you what’s ironic as hell: That a spicy mamasita like you is still single.”

“You’re not so shabby yourself, Jellwagger. What’s your excuse?”

“Ugh, look at us, Roxanne.” He smiled at all the folks zipping by, many of them engrossed in their Crackberries or in the middle of a hands-free conversation on their cell. Some of them shot ugly looks at his smile, but who gave a shit? “I figured my first Monday back would be friggin’ hard, but look. I’m having this cool existential conversation with a hot uptight Latina lawyer.”

She unzipped her briefcase and dug through it for a few seconds. “Oh come on, why is it when I actually need one…?” Roxanne dug some more before pulling out a business card.

“Holy shit, you’re a partner!”

“Try not to hide your surprise too much.”

“Roxanne Soto of Soto and Samuels, LLP. Well you get an A for alliteration.”

“If you need anything, give me a call.”

“I’m sure that’ll lead to a nice chat with your assistant.”

“I’m not that kind of attorney. If you call, and I’m there, I’ll take the call.”

“So what kind of lawyer are you? Like, what areas?”

“Maritime.”

“Sounds like a thrill a minute.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“I wish I had business cards. You haven’t asked me what I do.”

“Well listen, Jellwagger, I hope I see you again sometime. And really, don’t be shy about calling.” Without waiting for a so long, she turned and zipped away.

For some reason Jellwagger couldn’t take his eyes off her. It wasn’t just that she had the hottest and tightest little ass this side of the Valley, although that definitely helped, but how she immediately went from being chilled out to all business. I mean look at that spitfire. Look at how she whipped out the Crackberry, brushed aside some hair so she could ram the bud into her cute little ear, and dialed a number without even looking. “Fucking amazing,” he said out loud without meaning to.

When Jellwagger limped into the lobby of the Sanwa Bank building, he did something he’d never done when getting to work: He smiled. Jellwagger never thought he’d miss the sight of that long-ass line for coffee.

“My man Jellwagger!”

And look, there was Dathan at the security desk, standing as always with his hands in his pockets, greeting each and every working stiff who walked by. Thousands of people worked in this building, and Dathan seemed to know the name of each and every one of them. “’Morning, Dathan.”

“Welcome back, sir. How’s that thigh? Not too well cooked, I hope. Ha ha!”

Shit, how did he know?

While riding up the elevator, Jellwagger decided it didn’t matter if Dathan knew. In the ultimate, bitter end, it didn’t matter if anyone knew. Shit, if anything, it would score Jellwagger sympathy points. If people were nicer to him simply because of his horrible luck, he couldn’t be too sore about that, pun intended.

Unfortunately, nice was the furthest thing from the reception awaiting this particular Jellwagger at his cubicle. His desk, chair, and keyboard were covered in kitty litter, as was the carpet around his workspace. And both his wastebasket and recycle bin were filled to the brim with the pebbly stuff. But wait, it got even better.

While standing there and taking it all in, Jellwagger noticed little lumps here and there throughout the sea of litter. No sooner did he step into the workspace than the smell smacked him upside the head with a force to rival the bullet from Aaron’s peashooter, as if an invisible wall had formed there and waited for him to shatter it. Or maybe whoever played this prank had somehow manipulated the stench to go off like a time bomb upon Jellwagger’s arrival.

“Compliments of the cat who lives in the alley near my house,” came the unmistakable deadpan voice.

Whenever you think and rethink and overthink how an event will play itself out, especially if it involves people you (think you) know, the reality usually turns out to be far different. So it was for Jellwagger. It started with the litter. He knew Grant was pissed at him and that things would be slow going at first, but shit, look at this. “So Grant…” Jellwagger turned, but Grant had already gone.

From the other direction came the unmistakable squeak of the mail cart. Jellwagger turned just in time to meet Stu’s glare. If there were such a color as jihad, that would’ve been the color of Stu’s eyes. He opened his mouth as if to exclaim Jellwagger’s full name in that whacky way he always delivered stuff. He even spread his arms. But just as the first syllable of Jellwagger’s first name escaped his lips, Stu stopped short and dropped his arms. Maybe pretending to have a package was his passive-aggressive way of payback. If that’s all he was going to do, that wasn’t so bad.

Stu continued on his way. And then:

Bam!

Something smacked Jellwagger in the back of the head.

“Michael Johnson Asshole!” Stu squeaked the cart away in a hurry.

At Jellwagger’s feet was a package from Just Because.

“You there, bitch?” Carla’s voice squawked from the walkie-talkie in Jellwagger’s backpack.

He noticed the message light on his phone. Who the hell had called him at his work number? Everyone knew he had last week off.

“Wake up, skinny bitch.”

That one middle-aged heavyset attorney who occasionally wobbled by was doing so just then. He stopped and looked around for the source of the voice when he was knocked back by the sight of Jellwagger’s cubicle. “Lord have mercy. What happened here?”

Jellwagger had never heard this guy talk before, but judging by how his face was always red and how his breathing always sounded laborious, our main man wasn’t too surprised by the phlegmatic voice. He was wearing a hands-free earpiece. Was he even talking to Jellwagger?

“What happened here, young man?” He peeked over the surround before lifting his baggy eyes at him.

“I had an accident,” was all Jellwagger could think of saying. Jesus, that sounded lame.

“Your computer is destroyed, young man.” The big man seemed engrossed in the litter-drowned keyboard. “Destroyed. Uh huh. You call IT?”

“Jellwagger?” Carla said. “Just because you and I fucked in the shower doesn’t mean I’m going easy on you.”

The big lawyer looked around and frowned.

The phone rang.

“Just the opposite, bitch. You read me?”

“I’ll clean it up,” Jellwagger said.

“Someone needs to learn how to close their door if they’re going to use speaker. Mercy.”

“I’ll clean it and get a new computer.”

“Have you called them?”

“Jellwagger!”

The big lawyer pulled out his Crackberry and stylus and tapped the screen. “Mahoney here. We’ve got a situation. Cubicle on my floor has a computer that’s been destroyed by cat shit…Yes, sir…No, sir, I’m not joking. You don’t have time for jokes when you bill by the quarter-hour…What’s your cubicle number, young man?”

Jellwagger slipped one arm out of his backpack so he could unzip the pocket containing the walkie-talkie. “Hold your horses, carrot top.”

“Where are you?”

“Young man?”

“Drowning in cat shit.”

“What?”

“What’s your cubicle number?”

“I don’t know my fucking cubicle number, Boss Hog.”

“The young man doesn’t know the cubicle number, but he works on my floor if that helps. Just follow the stench. It’ll take your breath away.”

“Did you get the package?” Carla asked.

“Maybe my name would help,” Jellwagger said. The big lawyer walked away.

“Who are you talking to, Jellwagger?”

“What do you want, Carla? I literally just fucking got here.”

“Enjoy your week off?”

“Do you really give a shit?”

“There’s lots to do. Have you gotten caught up on those e-mails?”

“Maybe you didn’t hear me, Deep Throat. I just. Got here. Capeesh?”

Just then Betsy walked by with some papers fluttering in her hand. She flashed Jellwagger a gorgeous smile. “Welcome back, Michael. How’s the leg?”

“Eh.”

“Listen, when you’re settled, could you stop by my office?” She looked at the litter and laughed. “You boys and your pranks.” She walked away.

At least things were hunky dory with his boss. That was something, right? Jellwagger clung hard to shit like that, what with the nightmare this morning had already become. Speaking of clinging and shit, when he tipped his chair forward to dump off the litter, only the topmost pebbles and clumps fell. The lower layer clung to the chair’s fabric. “So what’s in the envelope?” he asked while sweeping the rest off with his hands. At least the shit was hard and dry.

“You’ll find out soon enough. But listen, I don’t like how chummy you and Pat were last week. I’ve warned you before, and I’ll warn you again: He’s an oily bastard. He convinced Stefania to go from nun to whore. He could convince a dog it’s a cat. Be careful with him.”

“What’s with all those pills he takes?”

“Has Sam T. Lee been in touch with you?”

“Who?”

“You told me you met him that first night with Pale Cock. They treated you to Lagavulin.”

“You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”

“Jellwagger, I’m serious. You cannot trust them.”

“What does he think about me knowing you?”

“Exactly. He doesn’t seem fazed by it at all, but secretly he might suspect you’re working for me. And if he doesn’t figure it out, Sam T. Lee will.”

“I only talked to that guy for, like, five seconds or something. I wouldn’t be worried about him.”

“Five seconds may have been all he needed, Jellwagger. Don’t let your guard down, you read me?”

A young unshaven buck in a T-shirt and sweats appeared at Jellwagger’s cubicle. “Hey man. What’s up?”

“Oh nothing,” Jellwagger said. He went back to the walkie-talkie. “I’ve got to run, Carla. Seriously. There really is cat shit all over my cubicle, I wasn’t kidding about that.”

“’Fuck did that happen?”

“Later.”

He chucked the walkie-talkie into his backpack as the helpdesk guy came around and turned on the computer. “Your computer works.” He turned over the keyboard and smacked the bottom of it to get the litter out. When he put it back on the desk, he tapped the delete key several times. “You need a new keyboard.” And then he just sat there while the computer slowly but surely labored its way toward logging in.

During that eternity, Jellwagger looked around to see if anyone else was coming by. In particular he wanted to see Grant. And now. He was sorry if Grant and Zach were on the outs, but this was bullshit if he was going to get in trouble for the litter.

When the screen finally arrived at the desktop, the IT guy wiggled the mouse. The arrow wiggled accordingly. “Mouse works. So you just need a new keyboard. But next time, man, be careful.”

“You got it. Next time I bring up a year’s worth of kitty litter, I’ll spread it around in a more responsible manner. Thank you so much.”

“I’ll be back.” The IT guy left without even trying to dodge the litter. He stepped in it and tracked it across what little bit of workspace carpet had still been clean.

Six messages waited for him on his voicemail: Two from Jo, three from Rosamund Powler, and the most recent one from Pat Dinner. Jo and Roz were checking up on him, but Pat’s was urgent. He needed Jellwagger to call him, stat.

First, though, Jellwagger needed to clean this shit up. He went stalking around the office looking for a supply closet or something that had brooms and whatnot. While doing so, he racked his brain about something he’d never thought about before: Who kept this office clean and how did they do it? Finally he grabbed some paper towels from the kitchen, thinking he could at least wipe off the surfaces. He also snagged the kitchen trashcan which, in stark contrast to his own can, was still mostly empty.

His phone was ringing when he got back: Powler, Rosamund. How many people in this firm got to see that on their caller ID? “Hiya, Roz.”

“You get here this late every morning? No wonder you’re still just a lowly data flunky.”

“I love you too.”

“I heard you got your ass shot off. You alive or what?”

“Sure.”

“What?”

“I mean, yes. But my desk is drowning in cat shit.”

“Is that a metaphor?”

“I wish. Don’t we have a cleaning crew?”

“Hold on a second, Jellwagger.” She put him on hold for a few seconds, then came back with: “They’re on the way. Now what else?”

“What else?”

“What else did you fuck up? I don’t have time to be your nanny.”

“You called me, remember?”

Just then a man and woman in white shirts and khaki pants appeared at Jellwagger’s desk with brooms, dust pans, a vacuum, and a couple of those cylindrical containers with anti-bacterial wipes. “Here to clean?” the man said.

“Damn, Roz, you’re good.”

“Talk later. And remember: Whatever else happens, don’t be a pussy.” She hung up.

Jellwagger went to the kitchen to collect his thoughts and caffeinate himself. It wasn’t even ten o’clock, and he was already exhausted. How was he going to make it? This coffee wasn’t doing it. He could go to the café downstairs, but this Jellwagger just didn’t feel like standing in long-ass lines. He hadn’t even gotten to his e-mails yet. After refilling his mug, he plodded back to his desk.

In the measly ten minutes he’d been gone, those two cleaners had completely renewed his workspace. The desk was polished, the carpet was clean, and his trashcan and recycle bin were empty. The IT guy had been by to drop off the new keyboard.

He expected a lot of e-mails to catch up on, but not over a thousand. “What the fuck? Who…?” As he scrolled down, it became clear: The vast majority were from Grant.

Just then Stu was coming by. He slowed down upon passing Jellwagger’s desk, which made the cart squeak even louder.

Jellwagger jumped up. “What the fuck is your problem?”

“You talkin’ to me, Michael Johnson Asshole?”

Jellwagger marched around the desk and up to Stu until they stood inches apart. It was like coming face to face with a bearded beanbag. “Listen, you insult to Jenny Craig. If you have a beef with me, you settle it like a man. You don’t go around with this passive-aggressive bullshit.”

“If you can’t talk to me—”

“You’re the shit-for-brains who had sex with someone who was already committed. In the office!”

Stu looked ready to unleash his own outburst. But instead he broke down and cried. “I didn’t know he was committed, I didn’t know he was committed, I swear.” He fell to his knees while gripping the cart’s handle like his life depended on it. “I swear to God, Michael. I swear.”

“Get the fuck up. Jesus.” Jellwagger went back around while Stu rose shakily to his feet. “So are we cool? You won’t be a dick anymore?”

Stu nodded. He untucked his barely tucked-in shirt and used it to clean his glasses.

“Awesome. Have a good day.” His phone rang. “What’s up, Betsy?”

“Caught up on those e-mails yet?”

“Very funny.”

“So you think you might have time for a quick chat?”

“Aw fuck, I totally forgot.”

“We can talk now.” She sighed heavily. “It’s not good news, I’m afraid, Michael. The firm won’t pay for your time off.”

“Is that a joke? Did Grant put you up to this?”

“Look, it upsets me too. I got into a pretty bad argument with payroll. They wouldn’t budge. You need to be at a certain pay grade.”

“Like, say, Grant’s pay grade?”

“Or higher.”

“So if I were to go shoot Grant in the leg right now and make him take the next week off, the firm would pay for it?”

“Yeah, he’d be covered. But you’re one grade below him, so.”

“Listen, do you know if he and Zach broke up?”

“I have no idea. Where’d that come from?”

“So he hasn’t said anything? Nothing at all?”

“It’s funny how we always think we’ll miss something when we’re away. That’s good, it means you’re committed to your job. But no, last week was boring if you don’t count my argument with payroll.”

“So let’s recap. I’m not getting paid for last week, and Grant’s just fine. Un. Fucking. Believable.”

“I feel horrible, Michael.”

“Well listen, I have to run. Christmas tree’s on fire.” He dropped the phone onto its cradle so it made a loud thud.

“I’m sorry, Michael!” Betsy yelled from her office.

“I’m not!” Grant yelled from his cubicle.

Just looking at all those e-mails made Jellwagger feel sick.

Now was as good a time as any to open Carla’s envelope. Inside he found a letter and a bunch of large glossy photos. Jellwagger flipped through the photos first and was struck dumb by what they showed: Pat Dinner and Kit Figures eating together in some swanky restaurant, Pat and Kit outside perhaps the same swanky restaurant, Pat and Kit getting into a limo. “What the fuck?”

His phone rang again. It was an outside number with a 310 area code. Jellwagger had a hunch who it was, and it was instantly confirmed by the cackling laughter. “I’ve been trying to reach you forever, my man!”

“What in hell for?”

“Someone’s on their way to see you. I wanted to give you a heads up.”

“Who? When?”

Just then both questions were answered. Walking up to Jellwagger’s cubicle was an impeccably coiffed, expensively suited Asian man whom Jellwagger might have had trouble recognizing if not for Carla’s call earlier.

“Hello there,” the man said. They shook hands. “Remember me?”

“Sam T. Lee,” Jellwagger said.

To be continued...