Page 27 of The Rom-Commers

“Well,” Charlie said, likeWhere to begin?“He’s richer than God, he knows everybody in this town, and he wields a crazy amount of power for somebody who wears a backward baseball cap.”

“All because his dad is Chris Heywood and his grandfather was Christopher Heywood?”

“He’s a classic example of failing to the top.”

“But hestartedat the top.”

“Yeah. That’s how that works.”

Of course it was.

“Anyway,” Charlie went on, steering us back to the more pressing matter of why he couldn’t work withme, “the point is, this you-and-me thing was never going to happen. And Logan should have known better.”

“Agreed.”

“I was never going to agree to anybody rewriting my script. Least of all some unproduced, underachieving, failed nobody writer off the internet.”

Whoa. Could we go back to talking about Heywood Jablowmie?

I sat quietly and waited for Charlie to remember who he was talking to.

But he didn’t.

“It’s insulting,” he went on. “It’s ridiculous. It’s utterly, comically out of the question. It’s like hiring a crayon-toting kindergartner to repaint the Sistine Chapel! It’s like hiring a toddler with Play-Doh to rebuild the Eiffel Tower! It’s like hiring a teenager with a ukulele to rewrite Mozart!”

“Are you Mozart in this scenario?”

“Of course!”

“So your self-esteem is”—I tilted my head to emphasize the sarcasm—“healthy.”

“I don’t need self-esteem! I’ve got a whole drawer of Oscars!”

Ah. Sarcasm ignored. Oh, well. “I’d actually love to hear Mozart on the ukulele.”

“You’re missing the point.”

“No,” I said, with a little wry nod, “I think I got it.”

“Because the point is, someone like you isn’t even remotely qualified to work with someone like me.”

“You’ve made that very clear.”

“Someone who doesn’t live in LA, who’s never done any real work in the industry, and who placed in two film festivals, but didn’t even go? No offense, but that’s someone who clearly doesn’t take her work seriously.”

No offense?Everything he’d said up to now had been harsh, but not untrue. But “doesn’t take her work seriously”? That crossed the line.

“I take my work very seriously,” I said, feeling a sting of—you guessed it—offense.

“Incorrect,” Charlie said.

“‘Incorrect’?”

“Because if you were serious, you’d be taking every opportunity that came to you—and not just taking,grabbing. With both hands. Like nothing else mattered.”

“But other thingsdomatter.”

“The fact that you think that is exactly why you’re a failed screenwriter.”

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