Strobe Lights

Sleeping Beauty could never be Nightmare on Elm Street. I rolled the script between my hands and angrily threw it on the disheveled desk. “What is this? It isn’t what I wrote. This isn’t my script.” Gary slowly picked it up off the desk and flattened it between his hands. He peered at me above his small-rimmed glasses. “Hattie, I really hate to inform you of this one more time, but it’s editing, and if you don’t accept the editing of me, your editor and basically your agent, then you will never get it into the Sundance festival or actually in any director’s hands. You can go home now if this is how you want it.” I glared at Gary between my angry huffs of air. “You’re trying to turn my love story into some twisted plot. It doesn’t make sense. I like the way I write. Every young woman will like the way I write. No one is going to understand this stuff you’re throwing at me.” I hired Gary to work for me, but I wanted my writing to be my writing. I did not want to see my story onscreen intertwined with so much editing that only a bite of my story still existed. I had come to realize making it in “Hollywood” was a lot harder than I had always imagined growing up. I hadn’t imagined a million producers vying for the same position. I hadn’t put into the equation editors, managers and agents, and I sure hadn’t imagined not making it on my first try. New York was a different world than Texas.

“I’m picking up the vibe things didn’t go so well down at Mr. Perfect Agent’s office today.” My roommate, Corky said sarcastically as I slammed the door throwing myself dramatically over the couch. “When is it going to happen for me, Cork? We’ve been here in New York three months. I mean, we’re college graduates and I’m just scraping by living on bread and faucet water.” Corky laughed and pushed back her curly blonde hair. “I believe we ordered pizza last week. Hattie, college graduates that decided to pounce on the longest limb they could find to try to make it in this acting world, Hattie.” I hated the way she understood everything. It all came so easily to her. Corky and I had been friends since the fifth grade. We were night and day. She was wild and free. I was always secure, analytical in decisions. We stayed best friends through high school and college. After Graduation Corky had this crazy idea to move to New York so she could pursue her dreams of acting on Broadway and I could write scripts for the movies. I left behind my friends, my dad, my younger brother and my dog. Corky left behind her boyfriend of six years. My dad and Corky’s parents banded together to help us pay the outrageous amount for the smallest apartment we could find in New York. We laughed at the fact we thought an apartment close to campus had been expensive in college. Now we were paying in a week what we did a month in that big apartment. When they tell you to follow your dreams when you are ten, what they fail to include is expense, heartbreak and fear.

I sat at the end of the table watching the powerful men exchanging small talk about different scripts they were reading. I tried to focus on their eyes, but my mind kept wandering to the pale walls staring back at me. I tried to stay naïve to the fact everyone was rich and experienced in this field because it kept me from being intimidated. Intimidation brought failure. Gary looked over at me and then to the man across from him. “So what we are saying here, Mr. Fisher, is if we use Hattie Hawthorne’s script it will be sent to the festival?” Mr. Fisher nodded his head. I liked the way Mr. Fisher spoke to me as if he respected my work, though in reality he thought I was a child that should be on the playground. “I don’t understand what these characters want. You need to make that more prevalent to the viewer.” I nodded my head and cleared my throat. “They want to fall in love so badly both of them can taste it, but love is not that easy.” “No. I can’t read that. You read it because you wrote it that way. I am a viewer and I can’t read that.” I had spent four months on that script. Wasn’t he a writer too? Why would they hire a man that could not read into the depth of my script? Being a writer meant the feeling had to hit and I had to pour myself into that piece of work. I did not just sit down and jot some random thoughts about these two characters falling in love. I took what it meant to be in love and wanting more and getting your heart broken. “Miss Hawthorne, for now this just isn’t what we are looking for. I’ll keep the script in my files and as you write more I’ll run them by my colleagues. We’ll get back to you.” Go play outside, Miss Hawthorne where you belong is what he meant. My soul was being trampled and I still trudged through the mud knowing sunshine awaited me at the end of the dark tunnel.

As I walked the blocks on the way home I looked around at the people scurrying like ants looking for their next speck of dropped donut. No one made eye contact with me. The buildings soared above my head and the noise of cabs honking filled my ears. I missed the quiet nights in Texas peering at the bright stars lighting up my sky. So far from home. I felt like I kept trying and trying getting thrown down each time. Everyone I spoke with told me I needed patience. Patience had never been part of me. I wanted things now. I got things now. All my life I had gotten the things I wanted right when I wanted and I did not know how to play this game any other way. I did not want to fail because I had tried so hard. Failing when reaching for the stars is not something they teach you to do. I did not want to fail and let everyone down. People kept telling me the right connections would lead me to the right job. Meaning the right connections would lead me to the perfect movie. I had some of the most powerful decision makers at the tip of my fingers, but if they did not grasp me then I had no hope. It is all about the giving of one’s own self. I was giving and giving, but getting nothing in return. While I waited in the agony of patience in my tiny apartment, those same decision makers were going about their merry day ordering raspberry green tea at Tavern on the Green and picking up their newest Armani suit on the way home from work. My name did not cross their mind. My dreams shown in front of me like a strobe light flashing hope and inspiration.

Corky ran into my room, her curly hair flying behind her. “Hattie, I got the understudy in Annie Get Your Gun. I got it, which means next I move to get the part. I made it, Hattie, I made it.” I hugged Corky quickly trying not to feel any twinge of jealousy that stung at my heart. I was truly happy for her because this is what she wanted since she was a little girl singing into a hairbrush at family barbecues. “You’re next, kid.” She smiled. “Have you told David yet?” I asked referring to, of course, her lifetime boyfriend. She seemed to be so into her own life that her personal life was unraveling. Her radiant smile quickly dissolved into a disappointed frown. “Um, no, I haven’t. I guess I should. I just forget.” She giddily laughed and turned back around at my door. “I believe in you.” She said quietly. I felt myself pushing back the hot tears shoving at my heart. “Ya know, if I get famous enough I’ll request you write me a script and I’ll tell Spielberg to take a hike.” That was my Corky. I threw a pillow at her and laughed for the first time in a week. “No, thank you, Miss Academy Award, I’ll make it the plain and simple working woman way.”

I lethargically walked into the sitting area to find Corky lying on the couch surrounded by ice cream and Oreos. “Is that what Annie is eating these days?” I had been up writing until 4 a.m. and had not even noticed Corky sitting on the balcony for hours on the phone. When I wrote the world turned to mute. “David and I broke up. We’re done. Forever.” She stared emotionless at the television set playing an old I Love Lucy rerun. “You’ll get back together. You two are the super couple of this century. That’s just ridiculous.” She shook her head throwing an Oreo into her mouth. Corky was rarely serious, but often her wisdom amazed me. “Things change, Hattie. People change. I’m here. He’s there. This is my life now. Don’t you see, we have to make sacrifices now. If we start a new life we have to really start it. I moved on and he didn’t. I’m not going to be one of those girls that follow her boy around forgetting her own dreams. I still have my family there. I still have you as my friend here. I needed to let go of him and hold on to myself.” It was strange to hear such chicken soup for the soul springing from my carefree friend. Corky was the one always walking the tightrope never fearing she would fall. She was beginning to see tightropes cannot hold all of your hopes and dreams and failures and darkness. It was real, not some daydream in Freshman Seminar. We had to make it a new journey. And I realized we were going to have extreme highs like Corky landing the role of the lifetime. And we were going to have extreme lows like Corky losing the man she thought would be in her life forever.

Gary’s office was sparsely decorated with a framed picture of his wife and daughter sitting awkwardly in front of his computer. Piles of paperwork and unread scripts sprawled across his desk. I tapped my fingernails on the wood and tried to focus. Waiting for Gary always took forever. He was one of the most talented editors in New York, but he was one of the most unorganized people I had ever met. He came into the room slamming the door and standing in front of it. I was at the bottom of my rope. I had prayed to the point God probably switched his earphones to off when I called out. Nothing Gary could say could bring me further down. If he wanted me to go work in radio, I would. If he told me to go be a beggar in Central Park, I really was not that far from it. Gary crossed his arms. “Got a call today, Hattie.” Nice, Gary, another rejection from Mr. Fisher, eh? I did not say a word, just still staring at him thinking he looked like Bill Gates. “I presented a few ideas to Mr. Fisher about the screenplay. Now, I’m not changing your story, just adding a little depth here, Hattie. You know we have to do that or you won’t get past those guys.” I did not care if he turned Snow White into Texas Chainsaw Massacre; I just wanted a chance. “He liked it. He took the bait.” I still did not comprehend. I stared at this Bill Gates. “So, what’s this mean?” A smile spread across Gary’s face enlightening the fact he had just turned another one of his prodigies into an actual producer. “He’s sending it to a director at the Festival. And that’s not all. He liked it so much he’s going to put first billing that this film go to the big screens.” I felt tears streaming down my face. Tears of joy, tears of pain and tears that were dancing. Gary was probably surprised and scared to see his block of ice finally melt after all of this time. “Welcome to Hollywood. Remember to thank me at the Oscars.”

This game of life was never going to be easy. My lifelong friend and I would start this journey together and along the way lead our separate lives intertwined by the mere fact our souls walked together. Corky would move on and find another man to complete her. I would try to start thinking of life other than writing. I needed to venture into the streets of New York and see what all it had to offer me in my new form. I would still go home every Christmas and laugh as my brother cut the turkey to shreds and my dad sat his grown children on the couch to read us the Christmas story. Life would always have the same roots, yet be in the midst of growing a beautiful tree full of limbs just waiting to be pounced upon. Life would always be a strobe light flashing the good and bad times.