Emerald City (9 page)

COLIN
: Kate, what am I doing with my life? I've just been to a Film Commission cocktail party and met a Polish director who works under daily threat and yet he makes masterpieces! I have every freedom in the world and I'm writing shit!

KATE
: Not quite
every
freedom. The money men won't look at anything that's not sex, sadism or sensation.

COLIN
: [
at a peak of gesticulation
] That's the
excuse
I use to justify what I'm doing, but honestly, isn't it just that? An excuse? A justification? Couldn't I fight harder? Couldn't I batter at the walls? Couldn't I keep going back, bloody and wounded, until I found
someone
in this merciless money maze who asked what
sort
of film he was putting his money into, rather than the rate of return he thinks he'll get? There must be rich men with the souls of artists out there and it's my responsibility to find them. Why don't I? Why don't I try?

KATE
: Apparently because you want money and power.

COLIN
: I don't want money and power!

KATE
: You did yesterday.

COLIN
: I don't any longer.

KATE
: Good. Want to know my news?

COLIN
: What?

KATE
:
Black Rage
's been selected as a finalist in the Booker Prize.

COLIN
: The Booker?

KATE
: [
nodding
] Everyone in the office went berserk, and guess who was the first to congratulate me? Ian. The man who opposed it all the way.

COLIN
: [
dully
] That's great.

KATE
: I'm being flown over there.

COLIN
: To London?

KATE
: [
nodding
] We've got to be represented in case we win.

COLIN
: What about the author?

KATE
: She'll be there too. They're flying us first class.

COLIN
: First class? I've never flown anywhere first class in my life.

KATE
: The Booker is big time, my dear. Big time. Just in being
nominated
will double our sales and there'll be
huge
sales in the States if we win.
Huge
sales. When Tom Keneally won the Booker, Stephen Spielberg bought the film rights.

COLIN
: [
moral outrage sparked
] Wait a minute? Hang on there! Wasn't
Black Rage
going to be the book that was only going to sell a thousand or two but seep slowly into our consciousness? Stephen Spielberg? What kind of film will Stephen Spielberg make? Aliens descending in spaceships to take our downtrodden Aboriginals off to a loving, more equitable planet? Where are your ideals, woman? What's happened to your ideals?

KATE
: [
defensively
] Nothing!

COLIN
picks up a brochure
KATE
has brought in with her. He reads it.

COLIN
: Thai Airways? You're going to be met at the doorway by an ‘elegant and courteous stewardess attired in traditional Thai dress, and offered your choice of French champagne or orange juice and delicious satay beef cubes and crab claws to nibble on'. How wonderful for you.

KATE
: For once in my life I'm going to have a little bit of luxury and enjoy it.

COLIN
: You're living in a city in which thousands are homeless!

KATE
: I can't do anything about it in the short term, can I?

COLIN
: Not when you're thirty thousand feet up nibbling crabs' claws, no.

KATE
: I voted for the government that should be doing something about it. It's not my fault that they aren't.

COLIN
: You found out that Sue Michaelis had flown first class, and asked her how she could ever justify the fact that the extra ten cubic feet of body space she had bought herself for twenty-four hours, would have kept eight families in Bangladesh alive for a year.

KATE
: I was a little fanatical in those days.

COLIN
: That was just last year.

KATE
: Colin, whether I travel first class or not, the families in Bangladesh aren't going to get any extra money.

COLIN
: They would if you cashed in your first-class ticket, went tourist, and sent Freedom from Hunger the difference.

KATE
: Colin, I'm feeling guilty enough already. Don't make me feel any worse. The minute I have any success in my career you get nasty.

COLIN
: I'm not getting nasty. I'm just pointing out that it only takes one first-class ticket and your ferocious moral standards take a nosedive.

KATE
: Colin, this book has been one of my great triumphs. Can't you be a little bit generous?

COLIN
: Triumph? A mouldy little book in an overrated competition? I'm just about to become the first foreign producer ever to sell a series to prime-time television in the United States.

KATE
: What kind of an achievement is that? Prime-time television in America is to art what McDonald's is to cooking.

COLIN
: Which would you rather have a percentage of? Maxim's or McDonald's?

KATE
: Colin, I think you're coming apart at the seams. You came in here ranting with Polish-fired zeal, determined to make films of quality, and now you're bursting with pride because you're about to sell schlock to NBC. What's going on in your head?

COLIN
: [
gesticulating wildly
] I wish I knew! One minute I want to make a film that's so beautiful and truthful and angry and funny that people in this country who still
care
about justice and truth and compassion will leave the cinema weeping, and the next minute my head is full of images of mansions on the waterfront. I know what I
should
do! Reject the false gods—but it's not that easy! We live in a culture that
worships
wealth and
worships
power and gives artistic success no recognition or honour of any kind!

KATE
: Colin, you're being a
little
bit overdramatic.

COLIN
: [
overdramatically
] Am I? Am I? What do you have at the end of your life to show for your artistic success? An old age pension, a one-bar radiator—if you can afford the fuel bills—and a few yellowing crits in a dusty scrapbook. It's too demeaning, Kate. It's too bloody demeaning! If I've got to choose between money and oblivion, I'll take the money!

KATE
exits.
COLIN
sits at
Mike
's place. He dictates, or attempts to dictate, the script to
MIKE
as of old, but there's a subtle change—
MIKE
is offering resistance.

Let's have a close-up of him kickstarting the bike.

MIKE
: Kickstart shots went out with
Easy Rider
.

MIKE
taps out a few lines rapidly.

COLIN
: [
tersely
] What was that you wrote?

MIKE
: Just a thought I had.

COLIN
: What?

MIKE
: Catch up with it later.

COLIN
: [
quietly fuming
] If kick shots went out with
Easy Rider
, what do you suggest?

MIKE
: Zoom in on the helmet going on with a snap and pan down across his body to the exhaust pipe belching fumes.

COLIN
: [
considering this reluctantly
] Alright. Write it.

MIKE
: I've written it.

COLIN
: [
trying to regain control
] Right, now before Grant rides off he should turn and say—

MIKE
: [
interrupting
] Don't need any dialogue. The intention's clear.

COLIN
: [
clenched teeth
] I'd like him to make the point—

MIKE
: [
interrupting
] You wouldn't hear what he was saying in any case over the exhaust and the rock track.

COLIN
: What are we making here? A cartoon? We're twenty minutes into the episode and only twelve words have been spoken.

MIKE
: This is an eighties series in a visual medium, mate. If you can't tell your story in images, don't tell it at all.

COLIN
: Mike, we share ninety-nine percent of our DNA with the chimpanzee. The bonus of that extra one percent is language. An astonishing facility for language. There are sixteen distinct meanings for the word ‘beat', but we can instantly recognise which of the sixteen is intended by context. When the most advanced language computer tried to translate ‘The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak' into Russian, it came out ‘The vodka's strong, but the veal is pallid'.

MIKE
: What point are you trying to make?

COLIN
: How can we ever know our characters if they're never allowed to speak? We're writing a series about chimpanzees! Before you can be interested in a character, you've got to know how they speak and think, how they justify what they're doing, to themselves and to each other, how they cope with the big questions: life, death and meaning; how they view the tragic irony of being transient specks of living matter in an infinite and incomprehensible universe!

MIKE
: Okay. What do you want him to say?

COLIN
thinks.

COLIN
: ‘We'd better check this one out, Zac.'

MIKE
hesitates, then taps it out.
COLIN
frowns and stares at
MIKE
. He doesn't understand the new assertiveness.

Some weeks later,
MALCOLM
, the merchant banker, enters.
COLIN
and
MIKE
stand in front of him.
MALCOLM
has a thick script in his hand.

MALCOLM
: [
indicating the script
] You really think this is going to sell to a US network?

COLIN
: Yes.

MALCOLM
: You've sent the script across?

COLIN
: Yes.

MALCOLM
: You've had some response?

COLIN
: Nothing definite, but a high level of interest.

MALCOLM
: From who?

COLIN
: The reader at NBC said she found the concept intriguing.

MALCOLM
: The concept is five years too late. It's ‘Miami Vice
'
Down Under.

COLIN
: On the surface it's a little similar—

MALCOLM
: [
interrupting
] Colin, this is the seventh ‘Miami Vice' I've been given in the last six months.

COLIN
: There are a lot of novel twists. One of the cops, Zac, is a PhD.

MALCOLM
: In astrophysics? A cop in Darlinghurst? And the other's an ex-world surfing champion and cordon bleu cook? Colin, this is
shit
.

COLIN
: So is ‘Miami Vice'.

MALCOLM
: That's classy shit. This is
absolute
shit.

COLIN
: I can't see the difference.

MALCOLM
: Which is exactly why the chances of you getting a network sale are about the same as the monkey accidently typing
Hamlet
. The writers of ‘Miami Vice
'
don't sit down and say to themselves, ‘I am going to write shit'. They write at the highest level they're capable of and when they finish they think they've written a masterpiece. When someone who can write at a higher level tries to imitate them it's a disaster.

COLIN
: [
taking the script
] I hope you're big enough to admit that you were wrong.

MALCOLM
: I'll be delighted to admit I was wrong. You get a pre-sale from the Americans, we'll finance.

COLIN
glowers and moves towards the door.
MIKE
turns to follow.

[
To
MIKE
] That project you're working on with Elaine Ross sounds like something we'd be interested in, Mike.

MIKE
: [
embarrassed
] Oh. Right.

MALCOLM
: Send me a script when it's done.

MALCOLM
exits.
COLIN
and
MIKE
stand outside the office.

COLIN
: What's the script you're doing for Elaine?

MIKE
: [
embarrassed
] It's about a guy whose kids die in a fun park accident. Said she offered it to you and you turned it down.

COLIN
: I couldn't see a film in it. Seemed like a worn-out theme to me.

MIKE
: I think it's strong. I think it's a winner.

COLIN
: [
waving the script
] We'll get
this
one up. He's not the only merchant banker in town.

MIKE
: That's the game we're in. When it's hot, run with it; when it's cold, bail out.

COLIN
: We've spent months on it. We're not giving up yet.

MIKE
: It's dead, mate.

MIKE
exits,
KATE
enters,
COLIN
paces up and down.
KATE
watches him.