1. Now The Producer

Our little movie that couldn't had a crew size that has become fluid in the retelling, magically growing in the years since Valentina uploaded the screenplay and three photo stills to various online message boards and three brief scenes to YouTube in 2008. Now that I live in Los Angeles (temporarily; please, I'm not a real monster) I can't tell you how many people tell me they know someone or are friends of a friend of a friend who was on-set. Our set.

Like now. I'm having coffee with one of the producers of the Horror Movie remake. Or is it a reboot? I'm not sure of the correct term for what it is they will be doing. Is it a remake if the original film, shot more than thirty years ago, was never screened? "Reboot" is probably the proper term but not with how it's applied around Hollywood.

Producer Guy's name is George. Maybe. I'm pretending to forget his name in retribution for our first meeting six months ago, which was over Zoom. While I was holed up in my small, stuffy apartment, he was outdoors, traipsing around a green space. He apologized for the sunglasses and his bouncing, sun-dappled phone image in that I-can-do-whatever-I-want way and explained he just had to get outside, get his steps in, because he'd been stuck in his office all morning and he would be there all afternoon. Translation: I deign to speak to you, however you're not important enough to interrupt a planned walk. A total power play. I was tempted to hang up on him or pretend my computer screen froze, but I didn't. Yeah, I'm talking tougher than I am. I couldn't afford (in all applications of that word) to throw away any chance, as slim as it might be, to get the movie made. Within the winding course of our one-way discussion in which I was nothing but flotsam in the current of his river, he said he'd been looking for horror projects, as "horror is hot," but because everything happening in the real world was so grim, he and the studios wanted horror that was "uplifting and upbeat." His own raging waters were too loud for him to hear my derisive snort-laugh or see my eye-roll. I didn't think anything would ever come from that chat.

In the past five years I've had countless calls with studio executives and sycophantic producers who claimed to be serious about rebooting Horror Movie and wanting me on board in a variety of non-decision-making, low-pay capacities, which equated to their hoping I wouldn't shit on them or their overtures publicly, as I and my character inexplicably have a small but vociferous, or voracious, fan base. After being subjected to their performative enthusiasm, elevator pitches (Same movie but a horror-comedy! Same movie but with twentysomethings living in L.A. or San Francisco or Atlanta! Same movie but with an alien! Same movie but with time travel! Same movie but with hope!), and promises to work together, I'd never hear from them again.

But I did hear back from this producer guy. I asked my friend Sarah, an impossibly smart (unlike me) East Coast transplant (like me) screenwriter, what she knew about him and his company. She said he had shit taste, but he got movies made. Two for two.

Today, Producer-Guy George and I are in Culver City comparing the size of our grandes while sitting at an outdoor metal wicker table, the table wobbly because of an uneven leg, which I anchor in place with the toe of one sneakered foot. Now that we're in person, face-to-face, we are on more equal ground, if there is such a thing as equality. He's tan, wide-chested, wearing aviator sunglasses, a polo shirt, and comfortable shoes, and younger than I am by more than a decade. I'm dressed in my usual uniform; faded black jeans, a white T-shirt, and a world weariness that is both affect and age-earned.

He talks about the movie in character arcs and other empty buzzword story terms he gleaned from online listicles. Then we discuss what my role might be offscreen, my upcoming meeting with the director, and other stuff that could've been handled in email or a phone/Zoom call, but I had insisted on the in-person. Not sure why beyond the free coffee and to have something to do while I wait for preproduction to start. Maybe I wanted to show George my teeth.

As we're about to part ways, he says, "Hey, get this, I randomly found out that a friend of my cousin—a close cousin; we'd spent two weeks of every summer on Lake Winnipesaukee together from ages eight to eighteen—anyway, this friend of hers worked on Horror Movie with you. Isn't that wild?"

The absurd part is that I'm supposed to go along with his (and everyone else's) faked connection to and remembrance of a movie that has become fabled, become not real, when it was at one time decidedly, quantitatively real, and then the kicker is there's the social expectation that I will acknowledge our new shared bond. I get it. It's all make-believe, the business of make-believe, and it bleeds into the unreality of the entertainment ecosystem. Maybe it should be that way. Who am I to say otherwise? But I refuse to play along. That's my power play.

I ask, "Oh yeah, what's their name?"

I insist people cough up the name of whoever was supposedly on-set with me thirty years ago. I respect the person who at least gives one, putting their cards on the table so I can call their bluff. Unerringly, Industry Person X (now, there's a real monster; watch out, it's Industry Person X, yargh blorgh!!!) gets rattled and is affronted that I dare ask for a name they cannot produce.

The umbrella over our heads offers faulty, imperfect shade. Producer-Guy George's tan is suddenly less tan. He asks, "My cousin's name?"

"No." I'm patient. After all, with my ceremonial associate-producer title, he and I are going to be coworkers. "The name of your cousin's friend. The one who was on-set with me."

"Oh, ha, right. You know, she didn't tell me, and I forgot to ask." He waves his hands in the air, a forget-I-said-anything gesture. "Her friend was probably a grip or an extra and you wouldn't remember."

I lean across the tabletop, lifting my foot away from the leg's clawed foot. The table quakes. George's empty coffee cup jumps, then falls onto its side, and circles an imaginary drain, leaking drops of tepid brown liquid. He fumbles for the cup comically, but he's too ham-fisted for real comedy, which must always include pathos. He rights the cup, then leans in, sucked into the gravitational pull of my terrible smile, a smile that never made it on-camera once upon a time.

I say, "Your cousin didn't know anyone who was there, and let's not pretend otherwise."

He blinks behind his sunglasses. Even though I can't see his eyes I know that look. My power play is a form of mesmerism: calling out the liars as liars without having to use the word.

I break the spell by asking him if I can borrow ten bucks for parking because I don't have any cash on me, which may or may not be true. How to win friends and influence people, right?

Listen, I'm a nice person. I am. I'm honest, polite, giving when I can be, commiserative, and I'll give you the white T-shirt off my back if you need it. I can even tolerate being buried in bullshit; it comes with my fucked-up gig. But people lying about being on Horror Movie's set gets to me. I'm sorry, but if you weren't there, you didn't earn the right to say you were. It's less narcissism on my part (though I can't guarantee there's not a piece of that in there; does a narcissist know if they are one?), and more my protecting the honor of everyone else's experience. Since I can't change anything that happened, it's all I can do.

Our movie did not feature a crew of hundreds, never mind tens, as in multiple tens. There weren't many of us then, and, yeah, there are a lot fewer of us still around now.