But this was an unusual situation.

The studio, having felt burned by a variety of recent directors who’d steered scripts into story and budgetary oblivion, had an experimental business model they wanted to try. Shape the script without external input, set a start date, hire a talented helmer currently residing in “director jail,” and fire up the green light.

Excuse me? Did he say “Director Jail?” What the hell’s that?

Director Jail is a metaphoric condo complex for experienced filmmakers who’ve somehow crashed their careers due to some kind of cinematic flame-out. Usually, a big budget flop or two is the culprit. While serving time in the helmer hoosegow they can usually be found treading water in commercials or episodic television. Once released from the pokey, the theory goes that the reformed moviemaker is so grateful for the opportunity that he or she won’t mind being micromanaged by commissary staff.

The only catch for this word jockey was that I had barely five weeks to deliver a prep-worthy draft in order for the studio to start production and make their precious holiday release date. Cool enough. I informed the War Department (my wife) that I’d be spending nights and weekends in my office so please temporarily count me out of carpool duty.

As for the star, he seemed chill enough. That and while I was supposed to be executing a laundry list of studio notes he’d personally agreed to, he was scheduled to be well out of my way, filming another picture on foreign sod.

And so it began. I bike-chained myself to my desk and attacked the script. The studio notes, most of which I had to figure ways to retrofit into a screenplay the same execs had professed so much love for, required significant thought and rewiring, not to mention finding ways to keep the ripple effect of their notes from turning into a structural tsunami.

Then my phone rang. It was the movie star calling from his exotic locale. After a few days off from filming, he’d had a notion or two he wanted to discuss. Fine, I said. Let’s discuss. Only his notions were mostly dialogue related and in relation to the previous draft. Until I’d executed the studio’s macro notes, the dialogue earmarked for the star’s famed pie hole was pretty much irrelevant. Still, I made scribbles as to his thoughts, bid him a fond adieu, and continued on with my assignment. Until the next day when he called again. And then the next day. And the next day…

Note to writers who think screenwriting is like scrawling anything else… only a notch more glamorous. Sure, I suppose fielding calls from movie stars sounds like something worth fantasizing over. And to some with more shallow ambitions, I admit there’s a certain cache factor in working in those celestial orbits. But when that same big time actor is shoving his or her “genius” down your gullet, all the while unknowingly dismantling what you just constructed the day before, planet earth suddenly becomes the atmosphere of choice.

With my deadline fast approaching and the studio breathing down my neck, I worried that the daily distractions of Mr. Movie Star might hinder a successful delivery of the new script. So I packed a bag, gassed up my car and escaped to one of my preferred hideaways. The desert. Or to be more exact, the La Quinta Hotel Resort and Spa.

Before the War Department and I were blessed with a pair of attention-seeking, private-school-attending tax deductions – and I was crunched for writing time – I found I could double to triple my quality output by shacking up in a suite at a sunny hotel with an attached championship golf course. The routine went like this. Up at seven to a warm room service breakfast to write from eight until half-noon, followed by a sandwich and eighteen-holes of cobweb-clearing golf. Then a shower and dinner in my room, writing from six until midnight. Repeat the next day. It was usually a mash-up of gut-grinding and writerly bliss.

And the only person who knew where I’d vanished to was my beloved. Agents and the studio were both informed that I’d slipped away to better concentrate on the script. I turned off my cell phone, plugged in my laptop, and recommenced.

I know. You’re already way ahead of me. The movie star. He’d gotten used to stepping from whatever film set he was currently gracing, climbing up the steps of his air-conditioned trailer and dialing me for a little script confab between camera set-ups. Once he realized I’d shut off my cell phone, paranoia must’ve crept underneath his skull cap because he assigned his minions to spare no expense in digging me out of whatever hole I’d crawled into.

Then my wife called my hotel room. She told me both the studio and my agent had rung the house, urgently compelling me to call them back. What else was I going to do but as instructed?

“What’s so damn urgent?” I asked the studio exec.

“It’s (the movie star),” said the executive. “He’s flipping out that you’ve gone underground.”

“And to that you said?”

“That I didn’t know where you were. Which I don’t!”

“So we’re good then,” I said.

“Not at all. You gotta call him back.”

“I came down here to escape him. Calling him back would kinda fuck up the whole purpose.”

“Call him back.”

“How’s this?” I suggested. “You call him. Say that I’m executing this draft for the studio. And I promise the next pass will be just for him.”

“Why can’t you tell him?”

“Already have.”

“And?”

“And now I’m here.”

The studio executive cursed a blue streak, confessing to me this was a particular part of the job that he flat-out loathed. His bosses had passed the movie-star-management-buck to him. In essence, he was a lamb to the slaughter. Now he wanted me to wear the sheep’s clothes.

“Please,” he begged. “Why can’t you deal with this guy?”

“Here’s how I see it,” I said. “You, the studio, are paying me to deliver a draft suitable for budgeting. Plus I’m on a time clock. I need to construct your movie. Yet you want me wasting my time talking to (the movie star) who insists on de-constructing the very same movie.”

“Can’t you just hear him out, tell him what great ideas he has, hang up, then go back to working for us?”

“Last time I talked to him he wanted to see pages to prove I was executing HIS changes. Says he has a fax machine in his trailer.” With that I thought I’d rested my case.

That was me being diplomatic. What I really wanted to say was that managing the movie star was his problem. Not mine. And if he thought getting paid a mid-six figure salary wasn’t enough lubricant to ease being stuck between a rock and a hard place, maybe he should try sitting in a cold passenger van at three AM, trying like hell to pen clever dialogue while a hundred-man film crew looks on with blue-collar disdain.

“I’ll deal with it,” was the last thing I recall the executive saying.

An hour later, the room phone was ringing once again. I answered, expecting to hear either the voice of my wife or room service informing me that today’s roast beef had been replaced by braised pork loin.

Instead. I heard the familiar voice of the movie star.

“Found you.”

Next week Part II of A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE.

Read my new thriller, THE SAFETY EXPERT. Available in trade paperback and ebook at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

So now that we’ve established that I possess this soft spot, on with the story.

Not too many years ago, while ego-surfing bulletin boards associated with one of my movies I eventually found myself in an online chat with a fan. The fan was in his mid-twenties, a perpetual community college student, weekly contributor to his local small town newspaper, and master of a website dedicated to – wonder of wonders – film. I found the young man bright, cinema literate, and inquisitive to distraction. He was bursting with so many damned questions that I finally asked for his number and hopped on the phone with him, only to find myself machine-gunned with even more breathless queries. I might’ve been turned off at the intensity of his attack but for his name-dropping of other working screenwriters he’d supposedly connected with. One of whom later assured me that “the kid is just a hardcore fan… harmless… a wealth of excitement. Guys like him should be encouraged.”

Good enough. So I remained in contact with the fan, sporadically communicating until I opened an email announcing that he’d scored an official invitation to participate in a press junket for a big summer blockbuster.

“My newspaper is paying my plane fare,” said the note. “But they want more than just a movie review. Could I interview you while I’m in Los Angeles?”

I kindly agreed, made a notch on the date, and gave him my cell phone number. The plan was for him to ring me the day prior to our scheduled sit-down. I’d every intent of allowing him to conduct his interview in my home office, a mere nineteen steps from my back door.

Then I pressed pause.

I found myself strangely uncomfortable with the prospect of meeting this fan where my wife and kids slept. Call it instinct. Call it paranoia. Blame the little hairs I sometimes forget to shave on the back of my neck. For once I trusted my gut and asked if the fan could meet me down the street at Jerry’s Famous Deli in Studio City.

Agreed. Done. See ya there.

The fan met me in a corner booth. Tall and paunchy, he had sandy long hair and a constellation of acne scars, wore a jean jacket and Chuck Taylors so worn the rubber was on the sidewalls were shredding. We ordered up some lunch and began by picking up on one of our previous conversations. It was a thin slice of film geek heaven. At our marrow, we were movie lovers. And the fan’s depth of knowledge, not to mention the sheer catalogue of the films he’d seen was astonishing.

Sometime between a fifth round of sodas, bathroom breaks, and a restaurant shift change, the fan produced a small tape recorder and suggested we begin the interview.

“I thought this was the interview,” I laughed.

“I wish,” he said. “But I gotta pay for my trip.”

“By all means, let’s make your editor happy.”

Thus he proceeded with some questions. Initially banal. The basic background details such as what part of the United States I’d grown up in, did I have brothers or sisters, and were my parents married or divorced or even living? Eventually, my lunch date served up this honey of a query:

“So what about diseases or disorders? Do you have any?”

I laughed. “And what’s next on your list of questions?” I joked. “Injuries? Major surgeries? Potential or dangerous drug interactions?”

I wondered if the fan had briefly confused himself or flashed back to a moment when he’d been a triage nurse taking medical histories.

“Not a nurse, dude,” said the fan. “Where’d you get that?”

“Okay then,” I apologized for obviously misunderstanding him. “Carry on.”

He got around to asking me what my father was like. How solid was my relationship with him? Did my old man ever beat me? Surely this was a bizarre line of interrogation.

“My dad was old school. Pretty rough at times,” I finally answered, though slightly guarded. “But nothing out of the ordinary. Where are you going with this?”

The fan shifted tack, suddenly seeking to discover if I had any deep-seated issues with my mother. Or how about my siblings? Were my relationships with them malignant?

“Lemme ask you a question,” I glibly shot back. “How’s that PhD you’re working on?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re a psych major, right? You wanna be a shrink and this interview is for a paper you’re writing.”

“I told you,” said the fan, blinking rapidly. “It’s for my hometown newspaper.”

“That’s what you said. But your questions seem more appropriate for a psychiatric evaluation than a newspaper interview with a movie writer.”

“Okay,” he segued. “So what about drinking?”

“You wanna know if I drink?”

“Do you?”

“Occasional cocktail.”

“Sure. But you’re a writer.”

“Last time I checked,” I said. “But am I the type that writes with one hand on the keyboard and the other on a bottle of Jack? Sorry. That’s not me.”

“So what about pot or cocaine?”

“Seriously?”

“Why not?”

“Is this an interview or an intervention?”

“Do you need one?” the fan asked, the heartbeat of excitement raising his voice a half-octave.

Okay. The needle on my patience meter was tipping toward empty. This interview had somehow gone sideways and there wasn’t a waiter or a check in sight. This fan-cum-cub-reporter was turning over piles of my suburban, green sod life in hope of buried treasure that wasn’t there.

“What the hell are you digging for?” I finally said, all the while mentally dialing 1-800-GHANDI for a little interviewee tech support.

“C’mon. You know,” he said.

“Actually, no. I don’t know.”

“I’m looking for the pain.”

“What pain?”

“The pain that makes you write.”

I had to sit back and replay that exchange just to make certain I didn’t have mites nesting in my ears.

“Pain?” I clarified.

“Great pain,” he corrected. “All artists have it. Writers especially. It’s where all the creative comes from.”

“Really?” I said. “I hadn’t heard that.

“Oh, come on,” he prodded.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve studied plenty about the associations between inner pain and great art. And I can almost concur with the notion. After all, as I write this post, Edward Munch’s The Scream just shattered Picasso’s all time auction record for a single painting. And that’s in a bad economy, proving pain exacts prices on both our souls and pocketbooks.

“I can’t make any sense of you,” he said to me.

“What’s to make sense of? I’m here in front of you. What you see is what you get.”

“You seem… everything about you seems, well… normal.”

“So?”

“Normal isn’t good. Normal doesn’t make true art.”

“Maybe I’m not a true artist,” I posed.

“No. You are definitely an artist,” insisted my interrogator, looking as if he was about to bust the vinyl on his seat.

“How can you tell? I work in a collaborative medium. My movies are paganly commercial.”

“You also write books,” he argued. “I’ve read them and you’re definitely an artist.”

“Well, there goes your theory then,” I said.

“No,” he angrily insisted. “You’re just not letting me in.”

“This is an interview. Not a session with my shrink.”

“So you have a therapist?”

“Not presently.”

“So it’s there then,” he said with a lilting aha. “The pain. This whole married-suburban-dad-thing is just a mask.”

“Sorry. No mask. It’s me.”

“And what if I don’t believe you?”

That was pretty much the end of it. I couldn’t help the fan prove his theorem that beneath my skin was a tormented wrestler of demons. In order to speed up my exit, I paid cash for the meal, left a generous tip for taking up the table for so long, and walked away from the booth without even looking back.

Thankfully, the fan didn’t follow me.

If an article for the fan’s Podunk Weekly was ever generated, I was never copied on it. Nor did the fan ever phone or email me again. What a disappointment I must’ve been.

Yet I haven’t forgotten so much as a second of the encounter. Not just because it was such an odd occurrence in my life. I often recall the encounter when I stumble upon tortured souls either parading or posing as artists. Just the premise that a man or woman must suffer to carve something beautiful or moving or entertaining from a piece of unformed stone is annoying and narrow minded.

Not that I don’t have pain. Nor do I stuff it in places I can’t easily access. It’s just not necessarily what makes me who I am. Or why I write. Or what makes you who you are.

Read my new thriller, THE SAFETY EXPERT. Available in trade paperback and ebook at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

Michael Douglas’ current producing partner was Steve Reuther, a silver-haired raconteur with plenty of his own success to brag about: Dirty Dancing, Pretty Woman, and Face/Off.  Together they were a potent duo, housed in an equally impressive suite of offices on the Sony/Columbia lot. I recall the stairs leading up to the “producers’ sanctum” were flanked by a conga-line of framed movie one-sheets, trumpeting the duo’s successes with every step heavenward.

Steve greeted me with an open hand and a face tanned to desert perfection. He apologized that Michael couldn’t join us, muttering something about an out of town doctor’s visit. I didn’t mind, figuring the famed actor-slash-producer was first and foremost a movie star. Meaning the earth and its mortal inhabitants revolved around him and he hadn’t time for general sit-downs with lowly writers.

So Steve and I sat, talked about the usual movies in the works, likes and annoyances about the present state of  film, eventually turning the corner to discuss why I’d been invited to make the trek from the Valley to Culver City.

“Remember a picture called Flatliners?” asked Steve. “Was out a few years back.”

Sure I did. Keifer Sutherland. Julia Roberts. Oliver Platt as comic relief. They played med students who’d gotten caught up in near death experiments, resulting in strange and spooky side effects. Box office was moderate. I remember feeling it was a strong idea not fully realized.

“We’re making a sequel,” he said.

Really? I was surprised. Medium returns at the ticket booth usually didn’t warrant a movie part deux.

“Box office wasn’t bad,” answered Steve before I even asked the question. “But the video was huge. Columbia figures another chapter could go large.”

I had no reason to doubt that kind of wisdom. I’m just a writer. Not a studio bean counter. I did, though, have a pretty simple logistical question.

“So Keifer and Julia?” I asked. “They’ll come back for part two?”

Where it could’ve been argued that Keifer Sutherland’s career hadn’t gotten much wind in its sails (this was before 24), Julia Roberts had since blown up into one of the biggest actresses on the planet. I couldn’t see her returning for a second bite at Flatliners.

“They’ve both said no to a sequel,” said Steve. “Me, Michael, and the studio are thinking we carry on with Oliver Platt and a new cast.”

The gears in my brain seized. Sequel to quasi-box office success without the original two stars? Somewhere between puberty and the Rodney King beating I must’ve forgotten how to count. Because I couldn’t figure how this math problem was going to add up to anything more than another solid script that I’d never get off the launch pad.

That said, I humored my host, brainstormed a couple of ideas that might defy Newton’s Law of Successful Movie Sequels, then bid my adieu with this final thought:

“Thanks, man. But I still don’t see a movie I wanna do without Keifer or Julia.”

And that should’ve been the end to this tale.  But no.

Three days later, the showbiz trade paper Daily Variety trumpeted Columbia Pictures announcement that they’d be making a sequel to Flatliners. And the writer attached to pen the second installment? Yup. Yours truly. El Dougo of Die Harder.

Whatever, I figured. It wasn’t the first time Variety had been wrong. I’d long stopped bitching to and about the daily trades once I’d discovered they were little more than error prone publicity rags.

I did call Steve Reuther in order to make certain that we hadn’t parted with a misunderstanding. Steve kindly apologized, laying the blame on some faceless studio PR flak making less than minimum wage. The end.

Zip forward a few years. It must’ve been a slow news month because the headlines were all about the LAPD sensational bust of a ring of high-priced call girls. At the center of the scandal was a very young madam named Heidi Fleiss. And her client list was a rumored who’s who of Hollywood power players. For weeks, it seemed, there were daily leaks. Tales of a black book with names that made Hollywood husbands nervous and divorce attorneys drool with anticipation. Eventually, Charlie Sheen among other name actors was leaked by prosecutors as one of Heidi’s favored clients. Then came the names of businessmen, movie directors, and studio executives, and one screenwriter. Me.

My phone started ringing. At first, I thought it was a joke. Or an error. After all, mine’s a pretty common name. There was even a well-known banana farmer up in Ventura who shared my moniker. Anyway, those who knew me could instantly see any association I’d have with a prostitution ring was utter bunk. As for those who didn’t know me, I couldn’t have cared less.

Then the Los Angeles Times called. The journalist had barely introduced himself when I told him it was all a load of crap. I was nanoseconds from hanging up when the writer asked the following question:

“Are you the Doug Richardson that was assigned to write Flatliners 2 for Columbia Pictures?” asked the reporter.

“I had a meeting on it,” I said. “One meeting. I said ‘no thank you.’ Variety screwed up and printed that I was attached. It was all an error.”

“So you never wrote Flatliners 2.” 

“Not a word. And what does a script I never wrote have to do with high-priced hookers?”

The reporter went on to tell me that upon investigating the money trail from Heidi Fleiss to the movie business, the LAPD had uncovered that Columbia Pictures had been paying for prostitutes with dollars earmarked for the development of a Flatliners 2 screenplay. Of course, a screenplay needs a screenwriter and the only word-jockey publicly associated with the project was you know who.

I busted out laughing. It was as if the connecting of a mystery and a punch line sent an electric signal to my funny bone. The poor reporter at the other end of the phone line must’ve thought I suffered from some kind of hysterical laughing disorder.

More curious queries followed. The New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly, and reams of other podunk posts found me, listened to my brief tale, and moved on to the next sleazy crumb.

Then my agent called.

“You realize,” my agent said, “That while the whole town is ducking for cover, hoping like hell none of this Heidi shit sticks to them, you’re the only one being quoted on the record.”

“So?”

“So should I be worried?”

“I haven’t said anything out of school,” I assured him. “I don’t know Heidi. I don’t know her girls. And if anyone I know are her former clients, I have zero knowledge.”

“So what are you telling the news people?”

“That it’s a non-story. That showbiz is chock-full-of powerful men with too much money. And beautiful women willing to sell their bodies to get ahead. Put the two groups together and what do you get? Transactional sex. Big whoop.”

“Imagine if you’d said yes.”

“Yes to what?”

“Writing Flatliners 2.” 

“Then I’d have Heidi Fleiss to blame for another of my movies not getting made.”

My agent laughed. And I still am.

In the end, Heidi Fleiss spent 3 years in the federal pokey for income tax evasion. Her public notoriety finally peaked when Sopranos star Jamie Lynn Sigler eventually portrayed the young madame in made for TV movie. According to Wikipedia, in 2007 she opened a laundromat called Dirty Laundry in Pahrump, Nevada’s legal brothel community.

And Steve Reuther? A couple of years back I bumped into a mutual friend who’d informed me Steve’s string of luck and hit movies had run out, leaving him nearly destitute and living in a friend’s guest house. He died of cancer in 2010.

As for me, strangely enough, I’m still here.

Read my new thriller, THE SAFETY EXPERT. Available in trade paperback and ebook at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

*Warning. The following blog, though accurate and intended as comical, absurdist entertainment, uses offensive language and depicts crude behavior. Click BACK now or hold your complaint.

It was an impromptu moment. I was connecting with a movie veep for lunch. After I’d swung by his office, we planned to stroll across the lot to the studio commissary for our protein-rich confab on life and potential picture projects. The quickest route was via a set of back stairs that, as it turned out, swung us by the studio president’s office.

“Hey you guys!” shouted the studio boss as we hoofed past. “Need your opinions.”

As we ambled into the generous power suite, the Boss dumped himself into a leather armchair and placed his stocking feet up on the coffee table.

“I’m trying to cast the girl role in (like the names, the movie will remain for you to guess) and the (director) wants this skinny new actress named Leslie Bibb. Do you guys know her?”

“Heard of her,” said my pal, the Veep. “Got a picture handy?”

“Janey?” shouted The Boss. “Bring in that picture again.”

“Which picture?” asked the assistant.

“That blonde number (the director) is stuck on.”

“Leslie Bibb?” asked the assistant.

“The picture.”

The Boss’s assistant was quick to deliver us a color 8X10 of the actress. I recall she was very young, very blonde, and very pretty.

“Looks familiar,” I said.

“Don’t wanna know if she looks familiar,” said the Boss. “It’s a very simple question. Do you wanna fuck her?”

Okay. So what I’m supposed to say here is that I’m happy, married, and faithful to a fault and that getting jiggy with any actress would never ever cross my mind. That being said, over my years in the trenches I’d been subject to this particular conversation with other producers and executives. I understood the shorthand gist of the Boss’s question. Did I find the actress so attractive I’d be more inclined to buy a ticket for a movie with her in a romantic role?

“Wouldn’t kick her out of my hotel room,” I said glibly.

“Not a ringing endorsement,” said the Boss, turning from the writer to the Veep. “What about you. Would you fuck her?”

“Wouldn’t fuck her,” said the Veep.

“Exactly what I told (the director),” said the Boss.

“That it?” asked the Veep.

“No, that’s not it,” said the Boss. “We gotta nail this thing down today. So I need to know who you guys would fuck.”

“Okay. I’d fuck Jessica Alba,” said the Veep.

“Who wouldn’t want to fuck her?” said the Boss. “But she can’t act for shit.”

“Jennifer Connolly,” I volunteered.

“You’d fuck her?” asked the Boss.

“Plus she can act.”

“Does nothing for me,” said the Veep. “Too cold.”

“So who’d you fuck?” asked the Boss.

“That girl in The Island.”

“Scarlett Johansson,” I said.

“Yeah,” said the Veep. “I’d definitely fuck Scarlett Johansson.”

“Who else?” The Boss was looking at me again.

“Halle Berry?”

“Need to go younger,” said the Boss. “What do you think of Rachel McAdams?”

“Good actress,” said the Veep. “But she’s not hot.”

“She gotta be hot for you to fuck her?”

“It helps.”

“Who’d you say you’d wanna fuck?” asked a voice behind us.

We all swiveled to discover the studio’s Production Head leaning in the doorway, trailed by a Senior VP who – as it just so happened – was a woman. Not that her presence meant anything, as you’ll soon discover.

“Scarlett Johansson,” said the Veep.

“We were talking about Rachel McAdams,” I said.

“Not a fan,” said the Head. “What about you?”

“Me?” said the Senior VP. “Do I look like a lesbian?”

“Do you want me to answer?” joked the Boss.

“No,” said the Senior VP. “But if I was a guy? I’d soooooo wanna do Keira Knightly.”

“Way too skinny,” said the Boss. “What’s with all these women with no boobs or ass? Men don’t wanna fuck that.”

“You asked. I answered,” said the Senior VP.

“Penelope Cruz,” I added trying to move the conversation. “Salma Hayak.”

“Says the guy who married the Irish girl,” poked the Veep.

“Amazing Irish girl,” I defended.

“That girl on the O.C.” volunteered the Senior VP. “Mischa Barton.”

“Never heard of her,” said the Head. “Does Lindsay Lohan work for this role?”

“Wouldn’t trust anyone who’d wanna fuck that,” said the Boss.

“I did,” said the Veep.

“Slut,” said the Senior VP.

“Me or her?”

“I meant you. But what the hell? Both of you.”

“Who’s (the director) got for the guy?” asked the Head.

“Paul Walker,” said the Boss.

“Now him, I’d fuck,” said the Senior VP.

“Not me,” said the Veep. “Kind of a stiff.”

“Rather we went after Jude Law,” said the Boss. “He’s the next Brad Pitt. Women will wanna fuck him all the way to the bank.”

“Would you fuck him?” asked the Head.

“You’re asking me?” I said.

“Sure. What’s the writer think?”

“Asking about Law or Walker?”

“Either.”

“I like ‘em both.”

“But who’d you rather fuck?” pressed the Boss.

“Hard time relating to that question.”

“It’s not a gay thing,” said the Veep.

“I know what it is,” I said. “Just don’t feel strongly one way or the other. Law’s the better actor. Aside from that, you want me to call my wife and have her weigh in?”

“Unless she’s still in high school she’s not our demo,” said the Boss.

“Guess I’m no help,” I shrugged, looking at my lunch date. I was hungry and the discussion was devolving.

“Hey,” said the Head. “Know who I’d really wanna fuck? That girl on Lost.”

“Nuh uh,” said the Veep. “Psycho.”

“No way,” said the Senior Veep.

“Way,” said the Veep. “Agent had her in for a general last week. Wanted to crawl out my office window.”

“Too bad,” said the Head. “Cuz she’s hot.”

“Maybe TV fuckworthy,” said the Boss. “Not quite movie fuckworthy.”

“Did you really just say that?” I asked.

“What?”

“There’s television fuckworthy and movie fuckworthy?”

“Sure there is.”

“And the difference is?”

“TV screen is this big. Movie screen is this big.”

“I don’t buy it,” said the Head.

“Jennifer Aniston,” said the Senior Veep. “Hot on TV. Hot in movies.”

“So what?” said the Boss. “She’s fuckworthy in two mediums. She’s the exception. Not the norm.”

“Okay,” I argued. “So now we’re actually engaged in a discussion about a supposed difference between advertiser-supported fuckworthiness and ticket-supported fuckworthiness?”

This is where my words drew momentary stares.

“What about pay cable?” I added. “Where’s HBO in this equation of fuckworthitude?”

“Fuckworthitude?” asked the Boss with a rhetorical lilt. “Fuckin’ writers.”

“We’re going to lunch,” said the Veep.

“Thanks for the help,” said the Boss. “Not really. I’m just being polite.”

“Anytime,” I said.

We walked down the back stairs and made our way to the commissary, talking a bit longer about the crass and shallow nature of show business. That and if such a conversation had broken out inside the offices of a major corporation it might’ve resulted in some kind of soul-sucking employment lawsuit.

Am I proud of being part of such discussions? Not really. Especially now since my daughter has expressed an interest in acting as a career. So I need to ask myself these two questions:

One. How do I feel about my daughter’s future being decided by rainmakers using their libidos as barometers for theatrical talent? And two. If I get roped into that kind of lowbrow conversation again, would I participate or walk away?

Still processing.

Read my new thriller, THE SAFETY EXPERT. Available in trade paperback and ebook at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

On one of my early career assignments, I became acquainted with an older, gregarious producer who, by my count, had made nearly twenty movies without a single one having been a hit until his most recent. And but for one of the films that was considered a quasi-cult classic, the rest were as unremarkable as stucco houses in Burbank. Studio flotsam. Not the first producer a writer would want to fall in business with. Still, the old pro had sold the assigned project to the studio. Not to mention he was a big fan of moviedom’s fresh flavor of the minute. Otherwise known as me.

This old producer – let’s call him Mr. Hollywood – was a repository of Tinsel Town tales. Meetings with the man were twenty percent business, eighty-percent studio gossip, and usually as entertaining as a team of monkeys playing basketball on roller skates.

The first sign that the usual laws of physics didn’t apply to Mr. Hollywood became clear to me upon my return from a research trip. I’d already sealed the gig, signed the contract, and cashed the commencement check. All that was left to get my green flag to type “fade in” was a sit-down with the studio boss where I was expected to give a reportage of my adventures in one of society’s nastier underbellies. It must’ve been a slow day in Studioville, because there were three extra VPs and even more creative execs assembled for the “pitch.”

“Pitch?” I asked. “You said this was just to talk about my trip.”

“Sure, sure,” said Mr. Hollywood. “But you’ve got characters and a story to tell, right?”

I’d sketched some characters and the basic story beats, but had nothing that I felt was yet presentable in such a forum. I scraped the recesses of my mind wondering if I hadn’t gotten the memo. Panic formed in my arteries.

As the meeting unfolded, my blood pressure normalized as the studio boss kept his inquiries brief and to the subject of my research. I entertained the room with tales from my week exploring the underside of the script’s subject. Twenty minutes. In and out. And I was off to write. Hurrah.

The studio boss was rising from his chair to shake my hand when Mr. Hollywood, in a moment that escapes good sense, had to make himself heard.

“Doug. Tell ’em about the two characters,” encouraged Mr. Hollywood.

Okay then. The studio boss reseated himself and politely listened as I casually laid out my Romeo and Juliet characters. After which Mr. Hollywood asked me to talk a bit about this story beat followed by that set-piece scene and “the cool second act twist” I’d only contemplated up to that point. And while answering my producer’s rat-a-tat queries, I tried like hell to keep the narrative in context for the rest of those held captive. It was excruciating. With every question asked out of context, I worried my answers made the story sound like an incomprehensible slush of action, corruption, and romance.

Writer’s nightmare #384: Pitching a story that confuses. Only in this bad dream, the befuddlement was caused by my own producer who didn’t know when to shut his yap. Then as if every soul in the room, including me, was in sync ‑ thinking the same damn thought ‑ Mr. Hollywood said it aloud:

“I’m confused,” he said in the most bewildered way.

That’s it. We’re sunk, I thought. Return the new car I’d just paid cash for. The studio lawyers were going to ask for the check back before lunch.

“I think Doug has it figured out,” said the studio boss in a moment of utter mercy. And with that, the meeting was over.

But for me, it was just beginning.

Once I’d completed a first draft of the screenplay, I had my first “notes meeting” with Mr. Hollywood in the kitchen of his Beverly Hills home. With a constant supply of Dr. Pepper within quick reach, he pored over his copious and confusing notes, each thought represented by a red scribble in the script’s margins and in every available white space. And I’m talking on EVERY dog-eared page.

Holy Crap, I thought. The man not only had issues on every page… but thoughts that could only be quantified by the linear inch. Mr. Hollywood took over four hours on a sunny, Southern California Saturday afternoon to go through his screenplay notes. We continued on Sunday.

But upon reflection, were the notes so damaging?

None were really attacking the macro. Zero questioning of character or story. Most were of little or no consequence, confined primarily to word choices and phrases he found… well, confusing.

“Does it really have to say that he ‘twists the cap’ on the Coke bottle?” asked Mr. Hollywood. “It breaks up the dialogue and I get lost.”

“No,” I’d say. “I guess I could change that.”

“Now right here,” Mr. Hollywood explained about another one of his notes, “You write that he ‘smashes the man’s face into a toilet bowl filled with piss and cigarette butts.’”

“And?”

“It’s just gross. I don’t need to read about piss and toilet bowls. It’s yucky.”

“Now I don’t get this here,” he said. “You introduce her as a dancer. But later on page forty-eight she’s working as a cocktail waitress in a nightclub. Now which is she? A dancer or a waitress?”

“Both.” I tried to explain the obvious. “When he first sees her, she’s practicing her dance. But dancing doesn’t pay her bills. So later, we discover she’s working at this club as a –”

“You don’t find it confusing?”

“I don’t.”

And so it went. On and on and on. From one crimson scrawl to the next.

Now, for the wannabe writers out there who are gagging while reading this – or even worse – terrified that one day your most molecular choices will be put to a similar test, let not your hearts be bothered. Not since working with Mr. Hollywood have I been at the receiving end of such bizarre and compulsive notes. And though so painstaking a Frenchman might’ve rightly screamed, “Enculer une mouche!” none of the changes mattered a whit to the tale, let alone the true readability of my written work.

Fade up a few years later. I’m seated at a movie premiere, only minutes before the lights are about to be extinguished. Next to me are the pair of seats my attorney has asked me to save for him. Unfortunately, because my lawyer is caught in a quagmire of schmooze taking place at the rear of the theater, those two empty cushions to my left are becoming harder to hold.

“Are those taken?”

Yes. There he was. Mr. Hollywood. Hoping to find a decent last-minute place to rest his butt is none other than that friendly blow-hard who’d employed me not so long ago.

“Oh, hey Doug,” said Mr. Hollywood, finally recognizing me. “Can me and my wife sit next to you?”

Before I could say I’d been saving the seats, Mr. Hollywood and his sprite of a wife are doing their best to avoid stepping on toes as they make their way to the pair of empties next to me.

The lights go down. The reels spin. And the movie premiere is underway. But as soon as the story is unwinding Mr. Hollywood nudges me and begins to half-whisper questions.

“Why do you think the boy wants those ice skates?”

“Just the first reel,” I said, quite hushed. “I’m sure we’ll find out eventually.”

“I’m lost,” Mr. Hollywood said only minutes later. “Is she his wife? Or are they just shacking up?”

“I dunno. Let’s just watch the movie and find out.”

That’s the way it went. Thoughout the entire movie. Questions about story. Questions about dialogue. As if while watching the actual movie, Mr. Hollywood had his ballpoint pen and was trying to write every little confusion and query in red ink somewhere outside the movie’s sprocket holes.

I began to openly wonder how this man ever got through school, raised scads of very bright and literate children, let alone mounted a very successful career as a film producer. Whatever undiagnosed malady ailed him seemed entirely antithetical to his job. Yet he’d persevered.

Why?

One simple word. Hustle. Mr. Hollywood was, simply put, one helluva salesman. What he lacked in cinematic or narrative acumen he had more than made up in a ferocious tenacity.

This is when I learned this very powerful truth about success. That purely relentless people will usually outshine the equally talented by their sheer force or will. And that for the talented to survive in show biz, they must learn to compete or otherwise see their dreams fizzle and fail.

For years and years following that early assignment, I’d bump into Mr. Hollywood. Usually at a screening of some kind. I’d be saving seats for somebody and moments before the lights were set to dim.

“Hey look. It’s Doug,” Mr. Hollywood would usually say. “Are you saving those seats for us?”

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But on my first night under a starry Texas sky the conversation turned curious to this writer. And I’ve never forgotten it.

I don’t recall how the discussion began. Though I’m certain it had something to do with me being both the token client and the only writer on the adventure. Just six agents who’d left their designer suits in L.A. and Mr. Yours Truly. And it went something like this:

“Hey Mike, what’s your best way to know it’s a shitty script before you even read it?” queried Rick.

“Oh, easy,” said Mike. “Cover page.”

“Cover page?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said Rick. “Anything other than the basic font. Then I know the script sucks.”

“What a bunch of hooey,” I said.

“Seriously,” chimed Carey. “And it’s gotta be in Courier or some kinda standard typeface. Any special kinda printing is a sure sign of screenplay suckage.”

“Can’t believe I’m hearing this,” I said. “You guys are that lazy?”

“Not about lazy,” said Carol. “Do you know how many scripts I’ve read? Thousands upon thousands. And most of them stink. Some more than others.”

“So you look for shortcuts?” I asked.

“You do what you gotta do to cut through the chaff,” said Mike.

“Okay,” I said. “So let’s say it’s me. A so-called ‘valued’ client handed you—”

“Who said you’re a valued client?” joked Mike.

They all laughed at my expense. A deserved poke leveled at the defender of all writers.

“Only reason we brought you,” said Rick, “is so we could expense the trip.”

“That’s the only smart thing you’ve said since we left L.A.,” I jousted.

Score one for writers.

“But seriously,” I pressed on. “Let’s say I handed you a script with some fancy font on the cover page.”

“And we don’t know you?” asked Carol.

“Right.”

“Shit outta luck,” said Carey.

“Okay,” I said. “Forget me. It’s a script by (Academy Award Winner) Alvin Sargent.”

“Moot point. Great writers don’t make those kind of mistakes,” said Rick. “It would never happen.”

“Also. Artwork on the cover page or jacket,” said Carey. “Kiss of death.

“I got one,” said Carol. “Weight.”

“Weight?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “Good scripts are light. Easy to read. You can hold ’em like a cocktail tray and tell if they’re too heavy.”

“Or you can just turn to the back page,” said Mike.

This is where they all chimed in with nods and beer bottles in a toast to their own collective, script-reading genius.

“How many pages?” I asked.

“My limit?” finished Carol. “One-twenty-five.”

“Oh, you are way too easy,” said Rick. “Mine’s one-fifteen.”

“One-fifteen max,” chimed Mike.

“I’ll go up to one-twenty,” said Carey. “Otherwise it’s in the circular file.”

“You’re all are cruel,” I said, feeling the need to defend all the unrepped and unproduced writers toiling between day jobs and doomed relationships. “What if it takes more than a hundred twenty pages to tell the story?”

“Make it shorter,” said Mike, big grin, but not altogether joking. “New writers can’t afford to appear boring or unprofessional. Especially when I have fifteen scripts to read over a weekend.”

“But you don’t read all of ’em,” said Carol.

“I try to,” said Mike.

“If I get past the cover page,” said Carey, “but get bored by page fifteen, I skip to the end, skim backwards. Done in thirty minutes. Next.”

“Unless there’s coverage,” said Rick. “Then you can just skim that.”

They all saw my disapproval. I was sick that they were willing to appear so callous in front of a writer. Maybe it was the beer or that they outnumbered me.

“I see you shaking your head,” said Mike. “But believe me. If you had my job? You’d find ways to thin the herd.”

“My biggest tell a script is crap before I read it?” continued Carey. “The binding.”

“Definitely the binding,” said Rick.

“Like what kind of binding?” I asked.

“Anything that’s not three brass brads in three-hole punch paper,” said Carey.

“So the spiral kind?” I asked.

“The worst!” said Carey.

“Total amateur move,” said Rick.

Whoah. Wait. Stop the bus.

Not too long ago, before scripts were emailed as .pdfs and downloaded (legally and otherwise) to executives’ iPads and Kindles, writers were responsible for making copies and distributing the result of all their hard efforts. Ergo, the script. Thus, the evolution of some many copy stores tucked into SoCal strip malls between the nearby 7-Eleven and Vietnamese nail salon. Each copy shop had a variety of services—including binding. The cheapest, of course, was three-brass brads poked through pre-punched holes in the margin. More deluxe options—not to mention pricier—were spiral or plastic coil binding, tape binding, or velo binding. Each was neater and, in my opinion, looked very pro. But for a broke-ass scribbler like myself, the cheapest choice meant that I might be able to dine out on a Whopper that week.

“So what you’re saying,” I said, incredulous as hell, “Is that if I hadn’t been broke as a joke back when I was starting out, you wouldn’t have even read my stuff?”

“Probably not,” said Rick. “Truth hurts. But it’s real.”

I found myself crushed for all the poor word jockeys with dreams of a movie career who weren’t getting their scripts read because of this ridiculous profiling by agents and their ilk. It was my opinion that if a writer had slaved over a script for days, weeks, even years, it deserved to get read by somebody with a enough sway or good sense to give it a thumbs up or down.

Then I did the math. Tens of thousands of screenplays are logged every year into the WGA database. And that’s just the ones that are registered. There are even more sprouting up like opium poppies in Afghanistan. And with the proliferation of the world wide web, easily accessible writing software, how-to-books, and stories of one-script wonders who squirt a hundred plus pages of yuks through their word processors, attach Jonah Hill and find themselves having penned a go movie, more and more and more writers and wannabes are flooding into a market that is short on quality readers and longer on odds.

To get through all those scripts—most of which they know WILL be God awful—an agent or buyer or producer must construct some sort of threshold for a screenplay to clear in order to warrant a pair of bleeding eyeballs. Arbitrary though these red flags may appear, they are not entirely without merit considering the numbers game in which they are engaged.

So all you showbiz wannabes, listen up and pay attention. Ask questions. Check out what sells and why in order to avoid amateur pitfalls. And do what you can to understand the gatekeepers and their potential prejudices against your work. I’m not suggesting you morph yourself into the artist they want to hire. I’m only suggesting you make sure to wrap yourself in a professional bow before catapulting over the over the wall.

Read my new thriller, THE SAFETY EXPERT. Available in trade paperback and ebook at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

“They want you to dial back on the f-bombs, partner,” I said.

“Like they don’t know this movie’s gonna get an ‘R’ rating?” said Bruce.

“Matter of tone,” I countered. “That and the F-word is like a money bunny.”

“Money bunny?” smirked the star.

Yes. Money bunnies. I described them like this: Adding F-words beyond what I’d already carefully written in the script was like a rabbit mating ritual. Once one actor starts tossing out extra-curricular curse words then it catches on like a virus and soon everybody but the extras feel it’s open season for improvised expletives. The money part comes from the increase in looping costs to complete a broadcast version of the film.

“Think of it this way, Bruce. Every extra F-word you put between my commas is another ten minutes of hearing ‘beep beep beep’ in the ADR booth.”

“Ha. I’m a fuckin’ ADR commando,” said Bruce.

“Help me out, dude,” I said. “My mom’s gonna see this movie.”

Bruce busted out a sympathetic laugh.

“Your mom and my aunt,” laughed Bruce. “But since we got forever until the next setup. You first.”

So I started with this one. I was just out of high school and I’d written a little twenty-minute short. I had a script, a cast from the local community college theater department, and a high school that had agreed to let me use the campus as a location on a forthcoming weekend. All that was left was the cash to pay for the film and processing. So I sought out my dearest financier. My mom.

Now I won’t say my mom was cheap. But she was frugal to a fault. Still, she liked my pitch and ponied up a couple of hundred dollars. Thanks mom.

Then a slight stumbling block. The principal of the school I was planning to shoot at wanted to see the script before giving final permission to film on his campus. What the hell? I thought. I’d written what I felt was an accurate depiction of high school drama. After all, I’d graduated only a couple months earlier. I dropped off the script with the principal and shuffled off to my job hauling bags of mail in the back of my pick-up.

Late that night, after I’d returned home, my mom was waiting for me at the kitchen table, her trademark lit cigarette, cup of black coffee, and a half-penciled crossword puzzle angled between her elbows.

“I got a disturbing phone call this afternoon,” said my mom with her patented direct and unwavering eye contact. “Do you know the principal over at Oakmont High?”

I gulped.

“He said you showed him your script for that little film I financed and was totally offended by all the foul language.”

“Just some curse words, Mom.”

“The kind of curse words you’d use in front of me?”

“I don’t curse in front of you.”

“But you curse around others?” she asked, smoke-reduced nicotine smoke curling from her mouth.

“The film’s about high school. It’s how everybody talks.”

“Everybody including my son?”

There was no climbing out from the trap she’d so aptly set. Inside I fumed that the nitwit principal hadn’t the stones to confront me directly with his complaint. Not only that, he’d called around until he’d procured my family’s unlisted number and narced me out to my mom. Now she was distressed.

“I’d like my money back, please,” she said.

“I’ve already bought the film,” I said. “Can’t return film because they can’t tell if it’s been exposed –”

“You know how I feel about coarse language.”

We argued. Her primary concern was that in using her money for my dirty little movie, I’d heap shame on our good name. In the end, we agreed that I’d use a pseudonym instead of my own baptismal name. Not that anyone with a room temperature IQ wouldn’t know that Barbara’s boy was the film’s auteur. But for my mom, it was a simply a matter of principle.

“Great story,” said Bruce. “Stuff with my aunt wasn’t near as melodramatic. After Die Hard I did one of those interviews in Playboy. Never used to curse around my family. But this was Playboy. So who’s gonna read it, right? Well, I’ll tell you who fuckin’ read it. My Goddamn Aunt! She calls me up and gives me earful of grief, man. How disappointed she is in me, blah blah blah. And all I could do is apologize. Tell her how sorry I am and how much I’d try to watch my fuckin’ language.”

“Just like now,” I said.

“Yeah, I’m hopeless,” said Bruce. “But you already know that.”

“Here’s one more about my mom,” I said. “Die Hard story.”

Die Hard 2 was about to open. Expectations were high for the massive summer sequel launch. Because it was my first screen credit, the distribution folks at Fox told me to pick an opening night showing at any exhibitor in the nation and they’d arrange however many tickets I’d require for friends and family to see the movie. I chose the best screen in Sacramento and invited fifty or so people. The theater roped off the block of seats.

The atmosphere, as one might imagine, was pretty electric with anticipation. My wife and I sat in the rear-most row, flanked by my sisters and their husbands. My mother and father sat directly in front of us. The lights dimmed. The movie unspooled. And so began Die Harder, or as my mother came to call it, The Attack of the F-Bombs. I’d already seen the movie quite a few times. And not once had I noticed the cornucopia of four-letter utterings. And not just from Bruce Willis as John McClane. Dennis Franz joined the parade as well as William Sadler and John Amos. The Money Bunnies were flying as fast as the bullets and explosions.

When the picture finally concluded and my birth name appeared on screen, I received applause from nearly every quadrant of the house. From everyone but my dear and disappointed mum. And when the house lights eventually pushed out the darkness, my mom turned around in her seat, looked me dead in the eye, and said, “Nice language, dear.”

I know they sound like cold words from a mother immediately after witnessing her son’s big-screen debut. But if my mom was anything, she was consistent in both her praise and her criticism.

“Thanks, mom,” I said. “Glad you liked the movie.”

This past Thursday, my mom left this world after sixteen years of suffering from a DMV-sized line of painful maladies. When she finally passed, I was holding her hand and she was looking me firmly in the eyes, full of both conviction and unconditional affection.

I firmly believe that she’s in heaven where, if four-letter words are spoken, they tickle her ears and remind her of how much her only son adored her.

Read my new thriller, THE SAFETY EXPERT. Available in trade paperback and ebook at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

Tomorrow we’d be going home, assuming we could scheme out a way to pay off our hotel and other sundry bills we’d accumulated during our week. We’d been cashed out to get into the country and, once we’d checked into our hotel, discovered that the U.S. embargo prohibited us from using our American credit cards.

Oh. And we hadn’t yet succeeded in procuring a single stogie for studio honcho, Mike Medavoy, who was expecting my partner and I to deliver him boxes of hand-rolled Habano cigars.

But never fear, Propaganda Tony had some hopeful helium to fill our balloon. He’d concocted a cigar-seeking adventure that began with a three-hour drive in our rickety rental bus. Along for the trek were Tony’s physician wife and his two adorable boys. One of his promises for the day was a visit to Varadero Beach, advertised by our host as one of the most beautiful stretches of sand on the planet.

As waterfront real estate goes, yes, Varadero Beach is pretty damn special. Miles and miles of powder-white sand and blue-green water that is as warm as a mother’s embrace. Only the portion of shoreline allotted for recreation was rump-to-rump with sweaty Cuban men who, like Propaganda Tony, had each slipped into his one and only banana hammock and rustled his family, friends, and distant cousins to the few acres of beach the government had dedicated to swimming and sun worship.

In order to be a licensed doctor in El Republica Mrs. Tony was required to be a loyal member of the Cuban Communist Party. But as pristine as Propaganda Tony’s English was, Mrs. Tony spoke nary a word. Or at least didn’t want to get caught speaking the language of the Great Western Satan. We’d dined with her early in the week and I’d found Mrs. Tony to be taciturn, a bit mousy, and quite suspicious in nature, only allowing her personality to spark when she could tout the “unsurpassed quality” Cuba’s nationalized health care system in answer to our translated questions.

That said, Mrs. Tony was none to pleased when her husband informed her of his clever plot to assist his Hollywood guests in procuring boxes of cigars for the studio jefe. His simple ruse went like this. Some twenty kilometers down Varadero Beach was a spanking new hotel owned and operated by an Italian company. Surely the Italians would allow his trio of cash-stripped Americans to use their credit cards to purchase a few boxes of souvenir Habanos.

Mrs. Tony flew into a rage, spewing a fusillade of angry Spanish mere inches from her husband’s face. The argument lasted only seconds, but the divide it highlighted was crystal clear.

“Wanna explain the domestic disturbance?” I later asked Tony.

“My wife is a loyal Party member,” said Propaganda Tony. “Of course, so am I. But she’s afraid of how it might look.”

“How what might look?” I asked.

“The Italian hotel is off limits to Cuban citizens,” explained our host. “But you are neither Cuban nor restricted. And since I’m your official host, I see no problem with our visiting the Italian hotel while you purchase cigars for your studio president.”

Sure. Propaganda Tony was splitting hairs. But the hairs in question were Cuban and marital and none of my business. We needed smokes for Mike Medavoy and if Tony thought we’d succeed at some Villa Italia, who were we to turn him down? For the ride to the new hotel, Mrs. Tony sat in the very rear of the bus in silent protest.

Fade up on the Italian Hotel or, errr… Five-star resort.

But first a little context. At that time, Cuba was in a state of arrested development. Sure, with the revolution came the end of a corrupt regime. But with the dictator came decades of poverty. What was once a country rich in resources and trade had become a western pariah. And after forty years of “better red than dead,” pretty much everything from buildings to cars needed new paint and a valve job.

So here we were, in Cuba and subject to the communist rule of collectivism, yet parked at the gates of a gorgeous new hotel that was modern, built for luxury, and unambiguously designed to serve the vacation whims and desires of European capitalists.

So much for the revolution.

“Well,” I said, clapping my hands. “Let’s go buy Mike some cigars.”

While Gary, my wife, and I strolled in as comfortable in the opulent surroundings as Paris Hilton’s dog in a Prada purse, Propaganda Tony trailed with his two boys looking like they’d just been transported into the Emerald City. Of course, Mrs. Tony refused to get off the bus.

And then we found the cigars. Just around the corner from the lobby was a beautiful walk-in humidor stuffed with boxes of hand-rolled Habano smokes. But as much as we pled our poor Hollywood case, the Italian hotel manager was as restricted as the next Cuban businessman when it came to accepting American credit cards. Damn the embargo.

“So sorry,” said the hotel manager, “but please. Feel free to explore our beautiful resort hotel.”

Why the hell not?

In five minutes we discovered the real Varadero Beach. Not only had the Cuban government sold the rights for this Italian company to build a luxury resort on its Leninist shore, but they’d also agreed to give up the most spectacular strip of sand in their real estate treasury. I can seriously say I’ve never seen a beach so stunning or well appointed, complete with tented sun shelters fit for oil sheiks and rows of linen-covered loungers tended by cabana boys and girls dressed in vintage 1950’s whites.

“Hey, Toto,” I said. “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Meanwhile, Propaganda Tony stood stock still, stared for the longest while, and for the first time in a week, his perfect English escaped him, replaced by a few choice Spanish curse words.

As spoiled Americans, we thought nothing of staying awhile on the Italian Hotel’s private beach. We swam, frolicked in the sand, and gamely tried the fine rum concoctions offered by the management as an apology for not being able to sell us cigars.

And Propaganda Tony joined in, insisting his two boys had a chance to swim and play with their old man on Cuba’s finest slice of shoreline. All the while, Mrs. Tony, afraid she’d be jailed for even knowing that such a luxury resort existed, remained hunkered under her floppy straw hat next to a stand of cork trees at the edge of the property.

“So help me out,” I said as Propaganda Tony watched his boys splash in the crystal surf. “What’s it say about a government that, on one hand, practically starves its people in the name of the common good, then with the other hand sells its finest real estate to build a resort that caters to a bunch of rich European capitalists?”

“While the rest of Cuban people aren’t even allowed to set foot here,” Gary chimed in.

“I’ll tell you what it says,” said Tony. “It says that things in my country are really fucked up.”

It was as if all that had been bottled up inside of dear Tony was released in an avalanche of angry invectives toward his beloved government. We sat at the edge of those luxury loungers, stared out at a setting sun and listened to years of pent-up-propaganda-fatigue release into the atmosphere. To Tony’s Moscow-educated mind, what had begun as a good idea had naturally devolved into a system as nearly corrupt as the last.

“Cuba really needs America,” said Tony. “She is a better mother for us than Russia.”

With that, our Cuban adventure pretty much came to a close. Though the research for the movie had gone better than expected, we’d failed in our mission to procure boxes of cigars for studio boss Mike Medavoy. As for the hotel bills and beaucoup dollars we owed for other services, Tony asked us to leave it all to him. With some luck and sleight-of-hand, he’d find some grease to make our exit persecution-free.

Our last goodbyes were at the airport. Propaganda Tony wished us well but didn’t let on if our Cuban exit had been properly foamed. Fully expecting to be arrested at any moment, we began to thread our way through the security gauntlet of khaki uniforms and AK-47s. Once again there was an issue with our three heavy bags of dive gear. We were ordered to hand over American cash or risk having the equipment confiscated as they jack-booted us from the country. Our only play was to repeatedly drop Tony’s name in a panicked chorus, which led the Sarge-in-Charge to eventually get on the phone.

“Swell,” I said to my wife. “This is where they discover about all the bills we just skipped on.”

It was a breathless hour. All the Miami-bound passengers had boarded but for the three Hollywood treasure researchers. Finally, the desk phone rang and, moments later, we were allowed to hike across the blazing tarmac to the old Russian aircraft without a clue as to whether or not any of our luggage would be traveling with us. At that point, we really didn’t care a whit about suitcases. We were a mere hour away from touching down on our home soil where I had every intention of kissing the ground.

As we parked in our assigned seats, I remarked to Gary how we’d failed in our cigar quest. He patted his jacket pocket, then revealed a cheesy Habano three-pack of stogies he’d spent our last few dollars on.

“Least we’re not coming back empty handed,” Gary said.

He was so right.

That said, Bossman Medavoy was disappointed in our token trifecta of novelty smokes. Then, by the time I’d delivered a script about a pair of brothers on a quest to find the sunken treasure that had sent their father to an early grave, the studio maven had shifted his interest and wanted the subject matter to serve as a backdrop to a tale that would appeal to his married friends, Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan. Let’s just say Gary was willing to bend to the honcho’s whims and I wasn’t. Thus came the end of our producing partnership. We didn’t talk for years.

As for Propaganda Tony? We later succeeded in smuggling some cash into the country via a foreign news crew. Our outstanding bills were finally paid and Tony’s neck was no longer hanging from the deadbeats’ noose we’d fashioned for him.

Aside from memory and some old photos, my only remnant of the trip is Soviet-styled propaganda poster celebrating Revolution Week. It was hanging from a derelict doorway when I remarked how much I admired the artwork. When I asked if I could snatch it as a souvenir, Tony warned me that removing it would constitute a crime punishable by years in prison. With that, Tony strode across the street, plucked the sign from its mooring and handed it to me.

“Something to remember Cuba by,” said Tony in his pitch perfect English. “Hang it on your office wall when you write the movie.”

I did hang it on my office wall. And there it remains to this very day.

Read my new thriller, THE SAFETY EXPERT. Available in trade paperback and ebook at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

It was more of a pronouncement than a statement, I thought, for ears other than our own. Nonetheless, we played along. I recall the way I’d pictured the famed Cuban leader. Clad in fatigues, always bearded, and smoking this heater of a cigar. I wondered if we’d get a chance to meet the iconic revolutionary. Would he make us feel like we were family? Or would he look down his smokestack at us with a reserved distrust? After all, we’d already been caught bringing drugs into his country. We had been plucked of all our cash and told our credit cards were unusable and still hadn’t the foggiest how we were going to pay for our hotel, bus, driver, and interpreter.

Yes, but surely Fidel the Afficionado could hook us up with a few boxes of cigars for our studio jefe, Mike Medavoy, who’d told us not to return to Hollywood without his pirate booty.

So somewhere deep in Havana, producer Gary Foster, my wife Karen, and I sat in an ornate government anteroom in a building leftover from robust times before the revolution. There were no fans or air conditioning to cool us. I was sweating through my dress shirt, sipping hot Cuban espresso with a warm water chaser, all while politely describing to the politburo-styled panel of humorless party members my interest in their country’s rich history of lost Spanish treasure.

“They will discuss the matter,” said Propaganda Tony in his perfect English, “We will eat lunch and we will return for their decision.”

“Decision on what?” I asked.

“We will find out after lunch,” said our smiling tour guide.

We snacked on street-fare toasted ham and cheese and licked melting cones of what Tony had advertised as the finest ice cream on planet earth. Propaganda Tony might’ve been trained to sell cheap candy to the collective, but he’d clearly met neither Ben nor Jerry.

Upon our return to the government meet-up, we were introduced to Roger, the man charged by El Presidente with documenting Cuba’s unearthed treasure history that, to date, remained unsalvaged off the island’s coast.

“Roger Montagnes,” he’d introduced himself in a serviceable, yet swaggering English, “I’m Castro’s personal underwater archeologist.”

Castro? I instantly thought. What happened to “we all call him Fidel?” I caught the instant look of disapproval on Propaganda Tony’s face. But Castro’s personal underwater archeologist was undeterred, dropping four or five more “Castros” before Tony briefly asked us to excuse Roger and himself for a few moments. Minutes later, the pair returned. Tony’s Moscow-trained smile was intact while Roger’s joi de vivre had all but vanished, replaced by some Spanish that required Tony’s translation. And the rest of Roger’s presentation was littered with “Fidels” in place of “Castros.”

What kind of screws had Tony put to Roger to cause such an obvious change? I didn’t want to know. But was pleased we’d made it through the bureaucratic red tape and were on to the business at hand. Treasure diving.

The following day, Roger motored us out to an underwater site not far from Havana harbor, chucked an anchor, and guided my trio twenty-five feet down to the grave of a seventeenth century Spanish galleon. Whatever treasure went down with her was buried in fifteen feet of sand. The only markers were the ship’s massive cannons that lay on the sea floor like fallen tree trunks. We fanned at the surface sand, hoping to uncover a single golden ingot – but not to smuggle the treasure out of Cuba. My plan was to use a found trinket to trade for cigars and/or to cover our soon-to-be-unpaid hotel and transportation bills. Alas, we only uncovered timber slivers and handfuls of lead musket shot.

All the while, keeping a watchful eye from the boat was Propaganda Tony with his white linen shirt, sunglasses and porkpie hat. Between dives, he and I would talk of Cuban/American relations, history, and the march of communism in the Caribbean. His chest would puff out when defending his country’s post-revolution history on human rights. He easily blamed America for all Cuba’s ills – or what ills he’d concede to. Still, Propaganda Tony showed a sense of humor when ribbing me for my use of slang or errors in my own poor grammar.

“English is such a beautiful language,” Tony would say with Armande Assante cool. “I don’t understand why Americans choose to torture it so.” This from a man who’d never stepped in foot in the U.S. or any other English-speaking country. Everything he’d learned was at the behest of the Cuban Communist Party and their older cousins, the Soviets.

Oh, Propaganda Tony. There was nothing about the man that appeared as if he’d crack. I wonder if it was my arrogance as an American or the playful-but-impenetrable nature to all his defenses that invited my continued anti-collectivist shots. As if this was going to help us pay our hotel bill or get us an audience with his beloved Fidel.

It turned out we were in Cuba for Revolution Week, aka Carnival.

While most of the Latin American countries put on their Carnival celebrations during winter, Cuba parties in late July to commemorate the Fidel-led rebel assault on Santiago. For seven straight eves, the winding boulevard that hugs the walls of Havana Harbor ignites with music and dancing and wildly colorful Caribbean costumes. A million people gathered nightly to guzzle cheap cerveza from cardboard cups and rub sweaty body parts with their neighbors, not to mention we three Hollywood Americanos.

The beer must’ve gone to Propaganda Tony’s head. Because at some point he started to pretend he was one of us. An American. His perfect English so fooled his drunken countryman that he began telling whoever would listen that he was part of the Hollywood film crew. Yes! That he lived in Los Angeles and learned his Spanish in American schools. This act drew more people to us. And the more Cubans that joined our entourage the bigger Tony’s tales would become.

My producing partner, Gary Foster, was clearly concerned. Not that Tony was three-quarters tanked. But that our official propaganda officer was going to play his Hollywood American act on the wrong reveler. A government party member, perhaps.

“He’s gonna get arrested,” said Gary, pulling me off to the side. “Then what happens to us?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe they give us another propaganda officer.”

“Maybe they blame us for corrupting him?” said Gary.

Okay. Gary was drunk, too. And for that matter, so was I. Before I could come up with an audible answer, Tony broke in.

“I have an idea,” said Tony. “For getting cigars for your studio boss.”

Oh, that. So far we’d failed in procuring a single cigar. We had no cash and it appeared that no merchant in Cuba was willing to touch our credit cards.

“I’m told there are hotels on Varadero Beach,” said Propaganda Tony. “New hotels owned by Italians. They will sell you cigars and take your credit cards. Even give you cash for your hotel. I’m sure of it!”

“When?” I asked.

“On Sunday,” said Tony. “All your money problems will be solved.”

Next week, the final chapter of RUM, GUNS AND CIGARS.

Read my new thriller, THE SAFETY EXPERT. Available in trade paperback and ebook at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

Studio boss Mike Medavoy answered by telling us it was a great idea. Go forth and learn. Just don’t forget to turn in your receipts.

Neither Gary nor I had ever donned scuba gear. I could barely recall the last time I’d held my breath underwater for more than game of Marco Polo. I discovered that first we’d need to get certified. Before I knew it, Gary, my dear wife, and I were enrolled in an intensive course in all things scuba, training for an advanced underwater certificate in order to indemnify the studio from liability if any of us were to swallow a lungload of sea water or morph into shark appetizers whilst we satisfied our yearn to learn. That and we needed lots of the newest and grooviest dive equipment.

To which the studio jefe agreed, adding the simple reminder not forget to “keep all our receipts.”

Because I wanted to dive on actual archeological treasure sites, we told the studio that we’d need to travel to where treasure was currently being salvaged: South Florida and the Dominican Republic.

To which the studio said something like, “Whatever. Just go. And make sure you…”

Yeah, yeah. Turn in our receipts. We gotcha.

As we plotted our three-week reccy to dive for treasure in the bathtub-warm waters of the Caribbean, further study led me to discover that the biggest and sexiest old world treasure wrecks had sunk in the shallows off the coast of Mother Cuba. A few diplomatic phone calls later and we received invites to the communist republic and permission from the U.S. Department of State to travel to the island nation of sugar cane and cigars. All we needed was a thumbs-up from the movie studio.

Studio boss, Mike Medavoy, agreed whole-heartedly that by all means we should go.

“Yeah, yeah,” we said. “And make sure to keep our receipts.”

“Screw the receipts,” said Medavoy. We weren’t going to Cuba on the studio’s dime without bringing him back a box or three of pure Havana smokes.

“No problemo,” we said.

Belts fastened in our first-class seats we were wheels up to Miami, then in a rental Cadillac bound for Key West, where we met with famed Mel Fisher to receive his blessing to accompany his crew aboard the salvage ship the MacGruder. His team of professional treasure divers were still recovering the record-breaking cache of gold from the remains of the Atocha, a Spanish Galleon that was lost in the Florida Keys during a hurricane nearly four hundred years before.

From the moment I splashed into the Caribbean waters and joined in the search for golden ingots buried in just a few feet of sand, I was hooked. I even contemplated giving up the movie career for the treasure salvage life. But after seven work-hard-play-harder days in Key West, we were back in the Miami airport with our sights set on our next destination. Cuba.

Unknown to much of the American population, there are daily flights to and from Miami and Havana. Yes, there is an embargo between the U.S. and Cuba and no official diplomatic relations. Yet it is legal in Cuba for citizens over the age of fifty to travel to the U.S. for a short visit with relatives. We were hitching a ride on the return leg that departed at 2:00 A.M. Though we had prepaid for our tickets, the airline insisted on charging nearly double our fare in baggage fees for our three heavy bags of spanking new dive equipment. Our instinct was that this was a plain old third-world extortion scheme. But it was pay or cancel the Cuban portion of our reccy. The Cuban airline took neither our credit cards nor travelers checks. The only remedy left for getting onto the damned aircraft would be by maxing what we could bleed from our ATM accounts. We paid cash. We filed down the JetWay. We buckled ourselves into an aging, Soviet-built aircraft that, when airborne, sounded as it was a single rivet-pop away from coming unglued over open water.

It was dark when we landed in Havana. There was no taxiing to the gate. The aircraft came to a stop on an acre-sized slab of dark tarmac about three hundred yards from the terminal and was instantly met by military vehicles bearing what appeared to be fifty uniformed men armed with machine guns. We deplaned and were ushered into a hangar where we were reunited with our luggage and dive gear. We then patiently waited for our diplomatic passports to impress the English-challenged soldiers. Clearly, they hadn’t read the memo that we were Hollywood filmmakers on a research reccy to best figure out how to romanticize their iconic island nation. Instead, they inspected the contents of our bags with the zeal of Israeli guards on the hunt for explosives. Their attention was piqued when they found our drugs.

Yes. Drugs.

At the recommendation of a physician with vast experience traveling in third-world countries, we’d packed a load of prescription meds—mostly antibiotics and such—for worst-case scenarios. Of course, one of those scenarios didn’t include getting hauled off to a Cuban gulag for entering the country with illegal meds. So here we were with this cliché’d Sarge-in-Charge as he shook baggies full of prescription bottles in my face, spitting a fusillade of speech so intense I was cursing my lack of attentiveness in high school Spanish. It felt as if our research holiday was going to turn from bad to worse in a matter of microseconds.

Then about as quick as I could say “political prisoner,” we were rescued by a smooth and handsome customer in civilian clothes. This was Tony, our government-assigned propaganda officer. He instantly took the soldiers to task for harassing “Cuba’s special filmmaking guests.” Talk about a breath of fresh mints. That and despite the awful hour of five in the morning, Propaganda Tony was groomed, smiling, and speaking English more perfect than the Duchess of York.

We were summarily delivered from the airport to our hotel for a quick shower and change before our first official government meeting. Upon checking in to Havana’s (if this were still 1950) finest hotel, we were greeted by a gorgeously coiffed desk girl. At the moment I expected the desk girl to swipe my credit card in order to guarantee room charges and (thinking of a mini-bar filled with baby-mojitos) incidentals, she informed me that because of the embargo they couldn’t take our Americano plastic. No problemo. I’d wisely brought thousands in American Express Travelers Cheques.

“No, señor,” she said with a fixed smile. “From Americans, we can only accept dollars or Cuban pesos.”

Right, I nodded. But we had no pesos. And we’d emptied our money clips of Yankee greenbacks paying the damned baggage fees.

“ATM?” I innocently asked.

The clerk shook her head. Not because the hotel didn’t have an ATM. It’s because she hadn’t a glimmer what an ATM was. I swallowed my concern with a polite nod, headed with my wife up three floors to our room, then as the door clicked shut behind me, began to loudly wonder how the hell we were supposed to pay our bill without access to cash. Karen waved at me, bringing her index finger up to her lips.

“The room could be bugged,” she mouthed. “They could be listening.”

“Why would anyone want to listen to us?” I mouthed back.

“Because we’re Americans.”

“From Hollywood,” I said. “They wouldn’t waste their time.”

My wife gave that dismissive shrug she usually reserves for when certain I’m being ignorant and/or naïve. As a student, she’d spent some time traveling in the former Soviet Union. Before Cuba, the closest I’d ever come to experiencing life under a dictatorial regime was during my two-year deal at Disney.

When we rejoined Propaganda Tony in front of the hotel, he introduced us to our official translator, our personal driver, and the thirty-seat school bus we’d be touring the country in. Of course, it went without saying that we were expected to pay for these additional personnel plus the rickety coach.

“How are we gonna pay all this?” I whispered to Gary.

“Not our biggest problem,” said Gary.

“Really? Then what is?”

“Cigars for Medavoy,” he said. “I know Mike. We come back without the smokes, we’re screwed.”

“At least our priorities are in the right place,” I yucked.

“I’m serious,” said Gary. “All the money the studio’s paying out before we even give ’em a first draft? The least Medavoy can expect is that we come back from Cuba with a box of Cohibas.”

“And how hard can that be?” I said.

After all, we were in Cuba. Cigars probably grew on tobacco trees. Ripe for the picking. The government would probably give us crates of Cuban smokes as party swag just for surviving the twenty years in prison we were going to be sentenced to as deadbeat diplomats.

No matter. I still had a movie to research. Jail would have to wait.

Next week: Part 2.

Read my new thriller, THE SAFETY EXPERT. Available in trade paperback and ebook at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.