Page 7 of The Love Haters

I mean, probably not. Documentary filmmakers were pretty much never on easy street. Unless they happened to be Ken Burns. It was kind of the lowest-ranked filmmaking passion you could pursue. None of the glamour of Hollywood. None of the money or fame. Just quietly trying to tell the stories that you felt should be told—and then trying to convince the world to listen.

Plus: covering obscure topics that nobody cared about untilafter they’d seen the film? Never easy.

But Cole had a point. Everybody already loved this guy. We were all desperately curious about him, or had been at the time—and our curiosity was still unsatisfied.

The fact that he didn’t want to be famous had made him more famous.

A six-minute documentary about him would definitely get some traction.

And bytraction, I meanmillions of views.

Would it save my career?

It couldn’t hurt.

“Why are you helping me, again?” I asked Cole.

“You’d be helpingme,” he said. “Because I’m actually the one who’s supposed to do this project.”

“You’resupposed to do the promo?”

Cole nodded. “The hero himself requested me. And put in with his superiors to get our random Dallas company hired for the job.”

“So why aren’t you doing it?”

“I don’t want to.”

Why did his voice sound so bitter?

“Why would that guy request you?” I asked. “And why wouldn’t you want this huge opportunity? And, while we’re at it, why would Jennifer Aniston’s Puppy Love let me, of all people, do a ‘Day in the Life’ with him—when he fully refused everything with everyone else?”

Now Cole was nodding. “Good questions,” he said. Then he tapped my notebook, like I should write the next thing down, and said, “And the answer to each of them is the same.”

I got my pen ready.

But then Cole made me wait a good, solid eternity before finally saying:

“Because that guy… is my brother.”

Two

DID COLE HUTCHESON,mid-level production editor at a mid-level commercial video company, seem like he would be the brother of a certifiable hero and internet sensation?

Umm,no.

Cole didn’t possess anything you might callstar power.

In fact, he was one of those people you really didn’t notice much. Unless he was actively irritating you—interrupting you in a meeting, for example, or asking you to do something that was technically his job as if you were his secretary (which you most definitely were not)—he was just kind of… there.

The idea that Cole was the brother of Puppy Love?

Mind-boggling.

And yet, who was I to complain?

If my slightly superior work colleague wanted to help me not get fired, I was hardly in a position to say no. Was it my fault if he had some kind of beef with his brother?

But guess what the beef was?

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