Emerald City (11 page)

COLIN
: Elaine, I couldn't warn you. I've never seen a word that he's written!

ELAINE
: I've seen several, and they're etched on my brain. ‘Okay, Rogan, this time the game is up.' ‘I've got news for you, Mason: the game has barely begun.' ‘I thought you might say that, Rogan, but there's something I think you ought to know: I shuffled the deck. I hold the trumps.'

COLIN
: I'm relieved.

ELAINE
: I imagine that anyone who didn't have to pay five hundred dollars for that little exchange, would be.

COLIN
: I started having nightmares that the man actually had talent. I couldn't find any other explanation for his meteoric rise to the top.

ELAINE
: He won't last. [
Reassessing
] He probably will.

COLIN
: I'd like to write the Sanzari story, if you're still interested.

ELAINE
: I sold the rights.

COLIN
: To who?

ELAINE
: To Mike McCord.

COLIN
: Elaine, you're joking.

ELAINE
: I wish I was.

COLIN
: You can't be serious. Have you heard about some of the projects they're doing? A fifteen-million-dollar drama about lesbian nuns set in Cincinnati.

ELAINE
: Starring Brooke Shields.

COLIN
: Why did you sell Sanzari to McCord?

ELAINE
: It was the only way I could get my twenty thousand back.

COLIN
: Why did I ever come to this city? The water in the harbour's not blue, it's cold and hard and green!

ELAINE
: Emerald. The Emerald City of Oz. Everyone comes here along their yellow brick roads looking for the answers to their problems and all they find are the demons within themselves. This city lets 'em out and lets 'em rip.

COLIN
: You can't let it off that easily. This city is evil! Glitter, money, fashion, fads, corruption, compromise—

ELAINE
: [
interrupting
] Intelligence, professionalism, hard work, standards, flexibility, dedication. It's got the best and the worst, and if you choose the worst, you've only got yourself to blame.

COLIN
: [
gesticulating
] There's no forgiveness here. No compassion! If there isn't a dollar in it, it just doesn't happen.

ELAINE
: My daughter teaches handicapped kids on a wage marginally higher than the dole. I keep telling her she's exploited and overworked, but she doesn't want to do anything else. She was born and raised here.

COLIN
: Elaine, it's a city that walks over its fallen heroes and picks their pockets on the way!

ELAINE
: [
running out of patience
] Go back to Melbourne then, you whinger! Your inner demons won't get you into trouble down there. They couldn't think of anything to suggest! [
Shaking her head
] Brisbane boys are rough as guts, Adelaide's a shade on the prissy side. Perth persons are a worry, but you Melbournians—you're so stuffed full of moral rectitude, the only time you open your mouths is to lecture. [
She turns to go away, then turns back
.] If you're going to stay here, for God's sake go away and write me a screenplay or we'll both be on the dole!

ELAINE
goes.

COLIN
: [
to the audience
] Go and write me a screenplay. About what? Critical patience for my observations of middle-class life was running thin. Corruption was passé. The boom area was the underprivileged, the unemployed and exploited minorities. Did I have the depth to identify with their anguish and pain? Did I have the soul? Did I have any alternative?

KATE
storms in, slamming things around and looking furious. She sees a newspaper
COLIN
has been reading and hurls it in a wastepaper basket.

Something upsetting you?

KATE
: Bloody journalists! Have you read it?

COLIN
: Certainly have.

KATE
: [
staring at him
] Do you agree with her?

COLIN
: I think she's got a case.

KATE
: She's being totally hysterical!

COLIN
: If she doesn't want to sell the film rights, why should she?

KATE
: A film will triple the sales of the book.

COLIN
: Did you describe the film as being Australia's
The Color Purple?

KATE
: No! I said that
The Color Purple
had shown that films about the mistreatment of minorities could make powerful movies and attract large audiences! She's the one who'll be getting most of the money. We only take twenty percent.

COLIN
: She said she had written the book to help her people, not to gain personal fortune or fame.

KATE
: She'll just have to cry all the way to the bank.

COLIN
: You're going to go ahead and sell the film rights?

KATE
: We've sold them.

COLIN
: Without her consent?

KATE
: Her contract gives us the right to act as her agents. Colin, she's just being hysterical.

COLIN
: She says she's scared the film will sensationalise and cheapen what she's written.

KATE
: It's sure to be less subtle than the book. Films always are, but it will triple the sales of her novel!

COLIN
: Wouldn't it have been smarter to wait and see if she won the Booker? If you're determined to make money with film rights, they'll be worth much more if she wins.

KATE
: She's not going to win the Booker. Ian felt it was best to take the offer we had.

COLIN
: Who did you sell the rights to?

KATE
: [
full of guilt
] I'm sure the film will be hideous, but it will triple the sales of the book, and the book is what is going to have the lasting impact.

COLIN
: You didn't sell it to—

KATE
: They offered twice as much as anyone else.

She sees the look on
COLIN
's face and gets even more defensive.

You can't live in a dream world! You've got to take profits into account.

COLIN
: Kate, can you imagine what someone with the sensitivity of a Mike McCord will do with
Black Rage?

KATE
: They've got international connections. If the film works in the States, the book will sell in hundreds of thousands.

She sees
COLIN
's look.

Colin, when you're in a top-level executive position the pressures are enormous. Ian and I have a board of directors to answer to. How am I supposed to explain to them that we turned down a prime international marketing opportunity because I don't like Mike McCord?

COLIN
: I presume you won't be going to London now?

KATE
: [
puzzled, defensive
] Why?

COLIN
: Now that you know you're not going to win the Booker.

KATE
: We're not absolutely certain.

COLIN
: And now that your author is refusing to go.

KATE
: That's her decision.

COLIN
: Your boss's secretary phoned.

KATE
: What about?

COLIN
: She said the Dorchester was confirmed for both of you.

KATE
: [
embarrassed
] Ian's decided to come now that Kath has pulled out.

COLIN
: [
tersely
] Great.

KATE
: [
defensively
] Surely you haven't got any worries on that score.

COLIN
: [
tersely
] Why shouldn't I have?

KATE
: You've seen him.

COLIN
: Yes. He looks like the young Richard Burton.

KATE
: He looks like a garden gnome. Colin, grow up. Ours is a strictly business relationship. [
To the audience
] He did look more like the young Richard Burton than a garden gnome, and there had been certain indications of interest. I had no intention of taking them up. [
To
COLIN
] Colin, I feel just as badly as you do about a philistine like Mike getting the film rights, but unfortunately that's how the commercial world works.

COLIN
: I suppose there is a certain justice. Without Mike the book would never have been published.

KATE
exits.

[
To the audience
] At least I was able to play that one last trump card on that desolate afternoon. When Kate had left for London I got a phone call from the person I least expected.

MIKE
enters and
COLIN
sits in front of him.

MIKE
: Busy?

COLIN
: Not particularly.

MIKE
: Done a script for Elaine, I hear.

COLIN
: [
nodding
] First draft.

MIKE
: What's it about?

COLIN
: The victims of corporate greed.

MIKE
: Got the money?

COLIN
: No.

MIKE
: Subject like that might be difficult to raise money on.

COLIN
: It will. It's set in Australia, it's saying something important and has characters who spend part of their time outside cars and who occasionally talk.

MIKE
: Got something you might be interested in.

COLIN
: Really.

MIKE
: The Yanks have really gone for
Black Rage
.

COLIN
: I'm surprised.

MIKE
: Colin, I've got to be honest with you. We've already had a writer working on it, but the script's got a fair way to go.

COLIN
: You'd like me to do the changes?

MIKE
: There's eighty grand in it for you if you see it through to final draft. It's going to be a big film, Colin. First writer was a hot-shot young American and he couldn't come up with the goods. If you can bring it off, it'll make your reputation over there.

COLIN
: Why are the Americans interested in the plight of our Aboriginals?

MIKE
: It's been relocated.

COLIN
: Relocated?

MIKE
: It's been reset in Tennessee. The characters are black Americans. Richard Pryor is very interested in playing the lead.

COLIN
: Mike, do you have the faintest idea why I might not want to take this job?

MIKE
: The story is universal. Poverty-stricken black girl grows up to be a human rights lawyer. Could happen anywhere.

COLIN
: Mike, there are vast differences between our Aborigines and the American blacks.

MIKE
: People are people wherever they live, Colin. This is the era of the global village.

COLIN
: Not quite. Hundreds of years of separate histories and environments aren't swept away because ‘Sesame Street' teaches our kids to say, ‘Have a nice day'.

MIKE
: Colin, nationalism is one of the most destructive of all human forces. Caused countless wars. Billions of deaths.

COLIN
: Where are you resetting the Sanzari story? Wyoming?

MIKE
: Nebraska, and there might be some work for you on that one too.

COLIN
: You're a harlot, mate. You've sold your soul to the highest bidder, and you can stick your eighty grand up your arse!

MIKE
: [
puzzled, hurt
] We can't go backwards, mate. I'm flogging myself to within a scalpel's width of major surgery to keep our industry afloat. Trying to generate a hundred million dollars worth of filmmaking—a fair proportion of which will stay in Australian pockets. How does that make me a harlot? I don't understand your point.

COLIN
: [
to the audience
] I wasn't sure I did either. I've always hated flag-waving chauvinism. What's so special about being Australian? What's to rejoice in that I'm a member of this polyglot lot of pale-skinned usurpers who treated their predecessors abominably and resent giving them back some tracts of arid desert and one big rock? Why bother whether we have our own stories or not? My only answer to that is that we have a
right
to them. We are human beings with our own feelings, strengths and weaknesses and we need to know what we are like, and we need to know that we are important enough to have fictions written about us or we will always feel that real life happens somewhere else and is spoken in accents other than our own. But then again, that might be a rationalisation. If there are no Australian stories told I'd be out of a job. If my version of ‘Miami Vice' had sold to a US network, would I be so virtuous today? Who was I to be judgemental? I thought seriously about relocating
Black Rage
to Tennessee and it started to make a certain amount of sense. Eighty thousand dollars worth of sense. But by the faintest whisker some residual integrity, some deep-rooted sense of patriotism, or just the ignominy of having to work for Mike prevented me doing it.

MIKE
: [
to the audience
] The bastard walked out of here and made me feel like a grubby little louse. I sat at my desk and stared into darkness for hours. I finally got up from behind my desk and shouted, ‘Alright! I'm a harlot! Some of us don't have any choice!'