The Rom-Commers(57)

“I can watch videos on the internet for research.”

“Watching videos is not the same thing.”

“It’s close enough.”

“Why are you fighting this? You love immersion research. You’ve done it for every script you’ve written. You did a cattle drive in Montana for The Last Gunslinger! You lived in a bunker for three months when you were writing Forty Miles to Hell! You got so nauseated doing zero-gravity training for The Destroyers that you threw up three times!”

Charlie looked impressed that I knew all that. “Three times that you know of.”

“That’s exactly my point!”

But Charlie shook his head. “Those were all different.”

“Why?”

“Because those movies mattered.”

That smarted, I’ll admit.

I would’ve expected a comment like that back when I first got here. But we’d been working on this thing for weeks. Talking about these characters like they were real people. Writing scenes that were genuinely funny. Having fun. The scene where they fall on each other that we’d rewritten after we actually fell on each other that now incorporated frozen veggies? Pure delight.

Doesn’t delight matter?

I guess not.

I sighed. “This, right here, is why your screenplay sucks.”

“Because I don’t want to go line dancing?”

“Because you don’t believe in love.”

Charlie snorted a laugh. “Do you believe in love?”

“Of course I believe in love. It’s the best thing humans ever invented. There are books about this.” And then, like books weren’t enough: “There are TED Talks!”

“If you really believe that,” Charlie said, “shouldn’t you be married with like ten kids right now?”

That was so low. “I have to take care of my dad. I can’t get married and have ten kids.”

He clearly wanted to win—and settle this once and for all. “But doesn’t love conquer all? Doesn’t love find a way? Shouldn’t some cartoon woodland animals show up and help you find your Happily Ever After?”

My eyes flashed. “Don’t use a romance term against me!”

“You’re the one who taught it to me!”

“Are you really this cynical?” I asked. “Do you really think that love doesn’t exist? Or are you just saying dialogue that sounds good? Because if you really think love is something Hallmark made up to sell greeting cards, then we should just burn this screenplay right now. The last thing the world needs is another shitty rom-com. Produced or unproduced.”

“I believe hormones exist,” Charlie said then. “And I believe kindness exists. And affection. And altruism, sometimes. And longing. And I believe that every now and then those things can show up at once and knock you out of your senses for a while. But it’s random. It’s like the weather. It’s not something we all should be aspiring to. Or counting on. It comes and it goes, whether you like it or not. And then one day, you tell your wife the results of your biopsy, and she tells you she wants a divorce.”

Oof.

“So you’re bitter,” I said.

“Yes. Absolutely. But I’m also realistic.”

“And you’re lonely.”

“No argument there. But I’m also honest. And I’m not going to get out there and spin cotton-candy fantasies for gullible people who don’t know that’s not how life works.”

“How does life work?”

“People love you for a little while—when it’s convenient for them—and then they move on.”

“Not everybody’s like that.”

“But there are no guarantees.”

“There are no guarantees for anything!” I said. “Would you rather cancel hope altogether than risk the possibility of being disappointed?”

“The certainty of being disappointed,” Charlie corrected.

I sighed. “But don’t you see how if you decide that’s the way it is, then it can’t be any other way?”

“I don’t make the rules.”

“We all make the rules—all the time.”

“I just can’t make myself believe in a total fiction like that.”

I felt so baffled. “But you’re—a fiction writer.”

“Not that kind of fiction, I guess.”

“Then you should write something else.”

“I can’t write something else! I can’t write anything at all.”

“That’s your problem, right there.”

“Don’t tell me what my problem is.”

“Your problem,” I said, “is that you can’t say no to everything,” I went on, “and say yes at the same time. You can’t cancel one emotion without canceling them all. You can’t hate love—not without hating every other feeling, too. Stories exist for the emotions they create—and you can’t write them if you can’t feel them. This screenplay is a chance for you. You can make anything good”—I was almost pleading now—“but you can’t make it good without believing in it. You can’t bring this story to life without coming to life yourself.”

This was my bid. This was my shot.