Freaks of the Industry Read online

  Praise for Adam Novak

  “A dark, unforgettable tour inside the belly of the Hollywood beast. Novak knows this world, and it shows.”

  —D. B. Weiss, creator of HBO’s Game of Thrones

  “Actually funny.” —Peter Bart, Variety

  “A slit-wrist wit that invokes the best of Bruce Wagner, with a sweetness in the darkest corners that calls to mind the late, lamented John O’Brien. But Novak’s voice is all his own.”

  —Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight

  This is a Genuine Barnacle Book

  A Barnacle Book | Rare Bird Books

  453 South Spring Street, Suite 302

  Los Angeles, CA 90013

  rarebirdbooks.com

  Copyright © 2017 by Adam Novak

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, including but not limited to print, audio, and electronic. For more information, address:

  A Barnacle Book | Rare Bird Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 453 South Spring Street, Suite 302, Los Angeles, CA 90013.

  Set in Minion

  epub isbn: 978-1-945572-30-2

  Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

  Names: Novak, Adam David, author.

  Title: Freaks of the industry / Adam Novak.

  Description: First Trade Paperback Original Edition | A Genuine Barnacle Book | New York, NY; Los Angeles, CA: A Barnacle Book; Rare Bird Books, 2017.

  Identifiers: ISBN 9781945572067

  Subjects: LCSH Motion picture industry—Fiction. | Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.)—Fiction. | Washington (D.C.)—Fiction. | Scandal—Fiction. | Humorous stories. | Thriller fiction. | BISAC FICTION / Humorous / General

  Classification: LCC PS3614.O9253 F74 2017 | DDC 813.6—dc23

  For Josh Gilbert and Karen Glasser

  —slipped away to the next room

  Also by Adam Novak

  The Non-Pro

  Take Fountain

  Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece.

  —Vladimir Nabokov

  Phone Sheet

  showbiz

  Face Lift

  brain-damaged

  palace intrigue

  street knowledge

  The smartest guy in a room

  Jezebel

  snuff

  C-Section

  jaw-dropper

  royal romp

  Ignition

  spilt cup

  die hard

  the big nipple

  boogeyman

  unplanned pregnancy

  three thousand

  69-ing

  double life

  wages of sin

  Not funny

  Simi Valley Forge

  shark-infested waters

  killed in action

  Betsy Yarborough

  Winner of a script

  one for the ages

  White House Party

  after-party

  A shower sounds good right now

  blaze of glory

  long dark night

  Last Temptation meets Se7en

  The talk

  SIN UTERO

  Superstar

  Screenplay by Manley Halliday

  Ugly death, ugly life in this nasty biopic of Savannah, whose alcoholism, brash personality, and tragic demise make for an extremely compelling portrait of a superstar. Stronger than a Lifetime pic, more artistic than an E! Hollywood True Story episode, ambitious script paints Savannah with surreal touches that elevate an erratic life of botched plastic surgeries, cocaine addiction, and creepy fans. Like Frances Farmer (an institutionalized/lobotomized actress portrayed by Jessica Lange in Frances, which this most resembles; nothing’s changed in showbiz*), SUPERSTAR is about a troubled performer accepting she’s doomed, battling demons, spending the last year of her life with a shady male hustler who tries to help, but even he can’t save Savannah from defeating herself. A diva and a drunk, hideous, gorgeous, unbelievably selfish, this isn’t about redemption or providing any transcendent moments other than the theatricality of watching a porn star stomp herself out of existence.

  showbiz

  At every movie studio, whenever there’s a regime change, the new studio chief is given three envelopes by her predecessor: “Open the first when you’re in a jam, the second when you’re worried, and the third when you’re fucked,” says the outgoing studio head. A few months later, the disaster movie Volcanic ($150M budget/$38M worldwide cume) green-lit by the previous regime fizzles at the box office. Rumors fly about studio stability, so the new chief opens the first letter in her desk drawer: “Fire the head of marketing.” She gets rid of the well-liked marketing president and things calm down. A year later, the space oddity Warlords of Arkadia ($200M budget/$16M worldwide cume) crash lands on July Fourth with such a thud not even the forces of Subway and Burger King can halt the casualties. The studio chief opens the second letter: “Fire your president of production.” After another year of embarrassing flops, the studio is considered a bomb factory, agencies send their clients elsewhere, and the town calls her kaput. The studio chief opens the last envelope: “Write three letters.”

  FACE LIFT*

  Screenplay by Randy Flagg

  Gripping actioner with moments of familial drama and a terrific concept about face-switching could connect with the masses. Smart script has cop Leo Walsh receiving a face-transplant of his worst enemy, Abel Caine, the psycho who killed his son, in order to infiltrate a downtown jail as Caine and prevent a dirty bomb set to go off somewhere in Los Angeles. The real Caine escapes from a state penitentiary, acquires Leo Walsh’s face, and proceeds to usurp his life. Walsh, with Caine’s face, busts out of an impenetrable prison cell, stops Caine from killing his unsuspecting family, and reclaims his identity. In the end, the cop wins but script hints it might be the psychotic Caine who wears Walsh’s face. Engaging, huge in scope, clever concept is bolstered by brawny writing. Emily Walsh is a colonic technician still grieving the loss of their son who realizes her husband is not really her husband. Promiscuous teenage daughter Talley joins a Latino street gang, desperately needs eldering, only to receive the worst possible guidance from the lunatic masquerading as her Dad. It’s Walsh’s family portrait that stands out, just as the marital battle scenes elevated True Fibs. We should be all over this for our directors looking for a fine piece of action.

  Face Lift

  VP Rodney Muir leaves 20th Century Fox for a senior VP job at Paramount after supervising the monster hit Face Lift ($32M budget/$480M worldwide cume). Attending a drug-fueled bachelor party for his brother Scott in their hometown of Washington, DC, Rodney meets Thør Rosenthal, a North Hollywood-based filmmaker and requests a link to watch one of his no-budget movies (the wedding was called off; Scott would later be named White House press secretary after the suicide of Bob McAtee).

  Alone at the hotel, Rodney decides to watch Thør’s latest horror film, Deathbed. One room. One night. One angle. A young couple thinks their mattress is haunted so they set up a video camera in the corner of the bedroom to record all the freaky shit that happens to them after 3:33 a.m. Turns out it’s not the mattress that’s disturbed, it’s the girlfriend, whose family had a death curse put on them for generations by a legendary witch in Roanoke, Virginia. Rodney thought the movie was raw but the idea had potential. He calls the director to say business affairs at Paramount would be making an offer to buy the genre film. Thør tells Rodn
ey his ideas for a Deathbed quadrilogy; Deathbed duvet covers, Deathbed pillowcases, and a promotional tie-in with Mattress Discounters. Rodney humors Thør, never revealing his intention to remake the title and blast the original into outer space.

  Rodney’s splashy arrival at Paramount coincides with the announcement of a development deal remaking an untitled DIY horror film with Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon attached to produce and star. Rodney commissions several scripts and they all came in terrible. None of them kept the fixed camera conceit of Deathbed; “jump scares” were added, along with a needless backstory explaining the house was once a troubled orphanage that burned to the ground in a suspicious fire.

  The senior VP visits Paramount’s head of distribution Steve Bosco and begs him to hold a test screening for Deathbed at the Arc Light in Sherman Oaks. When the audience cards come back, Bosco orders Rodney into his office as if the executive had shit the bed. Bosco says he has never seen such scores in his life. Deathbed got a 92 percent score. Rodney silently thanks the Movie Gods. Bosco says he only pays attention to the combined score of the top two boxes (“Excellent” and “Very Good”) and the “Definite Recommend” box. Deathbed received a deflating 4 percent top two box score and a “Definite Recommend” score of 2 percent. Rodney asks about the 92 percent and Bosco says: “Ninety-two percent said the picture was poor.”

  Rodney remembers the old saw that nothing good ever happens after four in the morning and no horror movie sprung from the legs of a stripper at a bachelor party ever gets a theatrical release.

  FLEA FLICKER

  Screenplay by Ben Sanderson

  Engaging, blackly comic, dimensional script set in the barbaric world of the NFL. These football players are likely to be brain-damaged*, but man, are they hilarious. Like a bruised kid brother to North Dallas Forty, this is a wicked combination of gallows humor and underdog sports movie. Hero Wade Rypien is a rookie starting quarterback who struggles with crippling gonorrhea, devastating knee injuries, a severed ear, and back-to-back concussions while leading his team to the Super Bowl. Script succeeds in creating an “inside” look at the professional game, with an unflinchingly honest portrayal of the team owners as heartless capitalists, the league’s rampant drug use (both recreational and medicinal), and the players as modern-day gladiators sent to die a thousand deaths on the gridiron. Material is confidently executed, with chatter that drips with sarcasm, humor, and the occasionally deep observation. Ending is bittersweet with the unexpected death of Wade in the end zone after scoring the winning touchdown at the Super Bowl. Exuberant, even philosophical, this zany football movie pulls off its ambitious playbook with subversive glee.

  brain-damaged

  Passed over during a regime change, Rodney leaves Paramount to run development for Bellerophon Pictures, a new film financier and independent distributor, when a dead hooker turns up in the backyard Koi pond of Bellerophon CEO Benny Pantera’s Bel Air mansion.

  Lebanese-born car wash mogul Pantera is best known for his lavish properties labeled “henhouses” providing shelter for desperate models/actresses, aka mattresses (part-time prostitutes who sell real estate, read scripts, and/or cut hair at salons on Canon Drive). Turns out the Koi pond victim lived at one of these henhouses until her skull was caved in by a lob wedge.

  Deadline reports the dead hooker’s sole credit on IMDb was “Dead Hooker” in Plasma Sluts, with a public statement from new production chief Rodney Muir released through his attorney declaring neither he nor anyone at Bellerophon had anything to do whatsoever with the dead girl found in the Koi pond, “on any level, personally or company-wise.”

  The letter ignites a multitude of protesters all day long waving signs (“Plasma Sluts”) outside Rodney’s Sunset Boulevard office, urging drivers stuck in traffic to honk in support of the slain prostitute, making any and all phone conversation impossible.

  Police clear Pantera of any complicity regarding the murder on his property, but crude jokes at the mogul’s expense through awards season (big laughs at the Oscars) discourages the town from doing any future business with anyone at Bellerophon Pictures.

  Rodney resigns, swears off the industry, and moves back to Washington, DC.

  TO: Lester Barnes

  FROM: Larry Mersault

  RE: “IGNITION” // THOUGHTS

  DATE: 4/22/13

  IGNITION is off to a terrific start with intriguing characters and spectacular set-pieces. The setting of our nation’s capital is as much of a star as our wheelchair-bound hero HARVEY CROSS. Next draft would be wise to develop more deeply everybody else who interacts with Cross, making this more of a relationship-driven actioner and a performance launch pad for Antwon Legion.

  THOUGHTS:

  —Remember what Mickey Rourke says to Kim Basinger at their first encounter in 9½ Weeks? “Every time I see you, you’re buying chickens.” Cross and Lacey deserve a better first encounter; instead of giving them a “meet cute,” consider having the wheelchair hero save Lacey, not the other way around, at the Washington Monument opener.

  —Set-up needs a tighter focus on Harvey Cross undergoing a personal/professional downward spiral in Act I, setting the table for his last shot at redemption to stop the mad bomber.

  —Act II should have more moments of struggle, joy, and epiphanies for the suicidal Cross through his mentor/informant SKY KING, no-bullshit psychiatrist DR. BURGER, and the brewing chemistry with LACEY TORNADO, who provides him with a reason to live. Everything falls apart for Cross when Burger and Sky King get taken out by the mad bomber and Lacey is next on his kill list. Can he survive Act III by himself?

  —Sometimes the police procedural stuff feels familiar; villain GRIMES could use more touches than his missing thumbs; script only hints at the dramatic possibilities of suicidal Cross and his by-the-book partner LACEY TORNADO. Script might be better off as a romantic two-hander with thoughtfully considered characters who end up saving each other.

  —Second half after “good cop” Lacey gets suspended turns too dark too fast. Her descent into depravity, attempted suicide, and harrowing captivity mirrors too closely what Cross is going through.

  —Consider reimagining Lacey after the suspension late in Act II; turning her life around; quitting drinking instead of drowning in alcohol; escaping captivity from Grimes and finding her inner “bad cop” to pay off the debt she owes Cross by rescuing his ass in the end.

  —For Antwon Legion, engaging action script continues to impress. Let’s see what they do with the next pass.

  Food for thought,

  LARRY

  WHERE’S THE BEEF?

  Screenplay by Abraham Trumbo

  Dry hamburger biopic of visionary salesman Dave Thomas and how he took a popular restaurant in Cleveland and turned it into the ubiquitous fast-food chain called Wendy’s. Role of Dave Thomas is a fat, balding, fifty-something underdog, could be age-inappropriate for DQ, but still a potential signature part for any number of our clients. Dave’s unsupportive spouse Suzanne is a bit one-note, probably not substantial enough to merit attention for Betsy Yarborough. Dull Madison Avenue squabbles and obnoxious Wendy’s boardroom clashes swamp the engrossing narrative of underdog Dave Thomas and his brief triumph over McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Best line of the script is when Dave Thomas is asked who came up with the catchphrase “where’s the beef?” and Dave replies, “My wife.” Script thinks the palace intrigue* of eighties burger wars is as compelling as The Social Network but it’s not even close.

  palace intrigue

  Red and pink static in a circle; eye of an electromagnetic field; jolts of energy pulsing in his veins; flocks of birds morphing into white crucifixes, startling Antwon Legion from his onyx reflection in the bulletproof glass of the Hummer limousine.

  Samoan bodyguards Fruity and Balthazar, formerly with Justin Timberlake, notice Legion flinch, decide it’s nothing, go back to sharing a
cherry blunt, filling up the cabin with ganja smoke. At least the movie star wasn’t having a fitful nightmare about being crucified in Golgotha, which was heavy, and often. Legion takes a massive hit, coughs up a lung, plays with his Doberman, Bulgakov, as the Hummer rolls through Century City, past a homeless guy with a WILL SCREENWRITE FOR FOOD sign, arriving in front of Omniscience/Ragnarök.

  Inside the mausoleum lobby, surrounded by every living soul of the agency, Lester Barnes welcomes the Stygian movie star with a fist bump. Legion appreciates their applause, his favorite sound in the world, all those subservient white faces making him the master, and they, his slaves.

  GANGSTER, GANGSTER

  Screenplay by Tyger McHenry

  Think Yojimbo N The Hood. Stunning depiction of a twelve-year-old inner-city kid escaping his crime-infested community and finds a purpose to his meaningless life. Violent as any war film, unrelentingly grim, young hero Smoke fuels a bloody turf war between Spike, a heroin dealer who murdered his best friend and cocaine kingpin Snowball, who holds his sister Aliqua hostage in a crack house as a doped-up sex slave. Smoke stages a suicide mission to rescue his sister, killing Spike and Snowball, firing all of his ammo, including the extra bullet in his pocket he planned to use on himself if he were captured. Most moving scenes in this gang-related script are when Smoke and his uncle Juwon play Chinese checkers outside their public housing building to the background music of gunfire. Shocking epilogue will leave everyone breathless. A gritty take on The 400 Blows, the dialogue is profane but laced with wit and the power of street knowledge*.

  street knowledge