Chp 68 : Good Morning?

This is my last chapter for this week, damn I almost forgot to update a chapter today, sorry for the delay.

Happy Weekend and Happy Reading Everyone!!!

~~~

Mary got another migraine after Al told her everything he and the other kids knew about her. She cursed her bad luck because of all the people who went with her there, Laura was the one who saw her kissed by Jodie Foster.

Mary then heard the office door opened and saw Al came over while carrying 2 cups with steam coming up from them.

There was not a minute after he left her here alone, she became like this. Then, a sympathetic look appeared from his eyes.

How could he not? Look at her, slumped on her office chairs like a beggar, and with hair tangled because of how she repeatedly scratched her head.

Her untidy office lady suit also gave him the impression of a woman who just came home drunk from a party.

He came over to her and gave the cup filled with warm tea, "Here, at least this will calm you down."

Mary took the cup and gave him gratitude by nodded her head to him.

He paused for a second and decided to ask her that million-dollar question, "So, you and Jodie not a thing? I mean, I'm not going to judge you. You can be anyone you like, hell, even I still friends with Robin even though she was lesbian."

Mary smiled wryly at him, "It's not like that, Al, I still like men. The thing with Jodie was... how can you describe it, an accident. She thought I was a lesbian and kissed me in the changing room. I even almost slapped her."

She sipped the drink and it was able to give the calm she was searching for, "But quickly she apologized to me, and of course, I forgave her. The thing is, she also confessed to me that she loves me. I-I rejected her of course, I'm straight for God's sake."

Finally, she ended her story with a sigh, "Fortunately, we are still friends, although we tried to fix some things so the thing between us won't be awkward."

'But I didn't hear you said that you hate it, maybe she had the potential to be bi.' He secretly speculated.

Thinking that Al assumed her as unsold goods, she became mad, "Okay, I know what're you thinking. Al, I still date regularly and most of them failed because they felt intimidated by me. That was why I didn't introduce anyone to you."

"I'm not thinking about that, wait!? You date regularly and didn't tell me a thing?" He shortened their distance until his face was only an inch from hers.

She looked at him as he was the stupidest person on earth.

He suddenly realized something, turning his back on her, and stared at the wall with a complicated face.

He became quiet and started to introspect himself about how overprotective of him to everyone else, especially with girls and their dates.

He may need to stop interfering with all of his acquaintance business from now on, or maybe just "try" to reduce it.

Mary was amused at his weird act, and also because of this, he was able to cheer her up.

Al came back from his inner world and told her about what will he do to those kids, "Don't worry about those kids Mary, let me explain to them if you are not ready yet. But be sure to keep them informed will you."

"Thank you, Al, I meant it." She smiled at him and decided to shift their attention to other works in Muspelheim Films.

The sun was already set, and the night melodies from insects began to squirm the realm of Muspel.

The only people left in this building were just these two workaholic looneys, who still working overtime.

As successful people used to say, if you want to become rich, you will have to work every day, even on weekends.

As the owner of this film company, he needed to inspect the company's income and expenses. Although he trusted Mary very much, who said that she won't make an unwise decision in the future?

Mary gave him some data from the box office of <The Man From Earth> which surprisingly, got $30 million from the North America region with only 500 screens and finally, the film would be pulled out from the theatre at the end of October.

Not bad for an $800,000 budget film, with some cut from the distribution company, which they owned, and split the profits with theatre's owners, Al got a net profit of at least $20 million.

That excluded the contract for airing fees from some TV stations, which he could get at least $5 million for each TV station for a few years contract and VHS sales from home video income.

Unfortunately, the home video income won't get any breakthrough until the rise of the VCD & DVD era.

In his previous life, this film got a great income from the home video side because it was popularized by how potent piracy was. How ironic it was for the film company when piracy made this film profitable.

Mary also gave him some scripts so he could choose them, but he saw it was approaching their curfew and felt so tired after helping Mary with paperwork.

Weird, he started to think that owned company would be bad for his sanity.

~~~

Al's room, Hope Institute Orphanage,

Somehow, his room suddenly became a gathering place for his orphan siblings.

This time, he will be careful to put something R-rated content on his room so Laura's accident would never happen again.

They made a circle with Al as their center and heard everything Mary has told him. The clueless kids just nod and the grown-up ones would need an extra lesson from Al's class tonight about people's preference.

He saw that it was already their sleeping time and forced everyone back to their room.

Got nothing to do except sleeping for the night, he decided to check some of the scripts that Mary gave him.

He browsed all of the scripts that could weigh at least 10 kg, and most of the content was, how could he spell it, hideous.

He got a ridiculous theme from the script like a Hercules-like man saving the world from an alien lizard that has been taken over the earth since centuries ago.

One script about the love story of a poor girl and rich abusive vampire, he thought that this must be written by a woman in her menopause phase.

And those two scripts were what he thought was decent than the rest of the scripts he brought home.

Fortunately, behind this dumpster, he finally found a few treasures.

"<Good Morning, Vietnam>." he read loudly the words written on the scripts. Well, it looked like his cooperation with Robin Williams would come faster than he thought.

He marked the script with a tick mark and threw it to his desk.

He again browsed the scripts and found an interesting script, such as <Die Hard> written by Jeb Stuart, <Three Man and a Baby> adapted from France film, written by Coline Sereau.

When he found <Die Hard>, suddenly a realization hit him like a truck. He slammed his head to the table and felt dizzy after doing so.

Why didn't he realized it earlier, it looked like having an eidetic memory didn't mean you got a bright mind.

That was why there can only be one Einstein, even though there were a lot of people who were born with a greater IQ than him.

What he realized was that there were a lot of new films in the future adapted from the old ones such as <Mission Impossibe>, <Charlie's Angels>, < I Am Legend>, etc.

And also he remembered that The Lord of the Ring adaptation was still held by MGM.

If he was not wrong, the Spider-man adaptation right should also be held by one of the studios in Hollywood. He felt a burst of joy inside his veins.

If he could take all of those adaptation rights, his film production company would be first ranked on the box office throne for many years.

Then he made a few notes of several films in the 90s and 00s whose adaptation was still held by some people.

If he could compensate those owners with enough money, he could get almost every film with good box office prospects in the future. He can't wait to tell Mary tomorrow.

~~~

A few days later, after he told Mary his brilliant plan, again, she got someone from Muspelheim Films to search for some of the adaptation rights from each film production company that had it.

It would take a while or maybe even years to get the rights, but time was the thing he didn't lack.

After that, he spent his days going to school and sometimes managed his film production company who will start to produce their first film that was not directed by him.

The two scripts that became his center of attention were <Good Morning, Vietnam> & <Three Man and a Baby>.

The former was the promise of him to Robin Williams for them to work together, although maybe what Robin meant was for him to act together with him, not become a producer.

He got a candidate for the director, Barry Levinson who was also the original director of this film.

As for the latter, it got the first ranking of the 1987 box office in the world.

So he would aim for the Academy Awards and Box Office champion in 1987.

Speaking of <Good Morning, Vietnam>, he wondered how his audition for private Joker in Stanley Kubrick's new film went on.

It was already October and he still got no response from Stanley Kubrick's public relations or even Vi's.

Well, he thought he would be stacked it up for a while and maybe call her next time but for now, he got another business to look for.

When he arrived again in Muspelheim Films this time, it was filled with a crowd of people who came here to apply for the film crews.

They still didn't found out the producer for their 2 films.

Barry Levinson still has yet to reply, as for the director for <Three Man and a Baby>, Leonard Nimoy, the one who played Spock from the Star Trek franchise showed interest in directing it.

Nimoy who also got a good relation with Jerome Bixby, was quite interested to know him after he directed <The Man From Earth>, so he happily considered accepting to direct the film.

The only problem was the writer of the script who wanted the film to be handled by bigger studios, not some second-rate production house.

If he remembered well, her scripts were rather quite rejected many times because the French humor was not quite accepted by Americans.

How wrong they were when they realized that this film took first place in the North America Box Office.

But currently, her script was still rejected by big studios and only his film studio got the interest to adapt it to the American version.

Let's just see who gave up first, she or Muspelheim Films.

At the moment, he stood up outside of the studio, wearing a cap and sunglasses to cover his appearance, looking at the people queueing to be signed up as a part of the crews of films.

"Hey, dude! Is this place still recruiting crews?" Suddenly someone asked him from behind.

He turned around to see the person who called him, he was a man with a long face and chin forwarder than his face. He had a big forehead and his hair combed like how Elvis Presley styled his hair.

He just nodded at this weird man who seemed like a lost person.

"Great, this will be my debut in the Hollywood industry, Hollywood I'm coming! Oh right, thanks buddy, you want to apply here too?" He said.

He raised one of his brows and lied, "Yes, how about you, what about this thing you called your 'debut'?"

He smiled widely, even showing his teeth to him and then grinning like a mad man. Then he told him about his first step by working as an assistant director or producer then impress them with his scripts.

He told him about his dream to make his film as the director, about how he was going to make this film so cool with gore, and ninjas, and mafias, and gangsters.

Al was so amused by this man's vision, and even interest him to let him directly became his assistant producer.

Then he asked his name, "Oh, yeah, my name is Quentin, Quentin Tarantino."

He heard his name and surprised to find him here, on the recruitment for crews on their film.

"Hey, Mr. Tarantino, come with me. I knew the owner of this company and maybe he would let you in without a test."

"Damn, that's so cool dude, count me in." He laughed and patted Al's shoulder repeatedly.

Al brought him to Mary and asked him to tell her about his vision.

Mary paled after he heard his film dream but fascinated by his knowledge about films, so she decided to hire him.

He was brought by Al, so maybe Al saw something unique about this crazy guy.

When he asked her if she was the owner of this film company, she hinted at him to glance at his back, which he saw Al who removed his cap and sunglasses.

"Dude!? You are THE Alphonse Brandt! I'm a big fan! God, if anyone told me that this was your film company, I would do anything to work here."

"Then congratulations, you got the job, you would start as an assistant producer first, you had good knowledge about the filming world, but your experience still less."

"No problem, just working here was an honor to me." Quentin held his chest with his hand.

Both of them continued discussing their idea for filming with an enthusiastic tone in their voice and a happy aura radiated from them.

But what Mary saw was different, this guy called Tarantino was the twisted and psychopath version of his little brother which she afraid would corrupt her little brother about his crazy filming idea.

But after a few hours of seeing them debating and discussed film, her cute little brother dominated their talk and made this crazy guy became mild.

She secretly laughed at them both, this turned out to be child banter all of sudden.

Then a call was heard, and these two lunatics were kicked out from her office.

She answered the call and ended with a happy face. Turned out the scriptwriter gave in because the big studios were arrogant and gave her less than them.

<Three Man and a Baby> got a green light and they will be shooting this film in early next year.

~~~

On Saturday, the sun has yet to show her smile but the telephone in Hope Orphanage was ringing loudly.

Al as the one who always woke up early was confused about who was this crazy guy that called them in the early hours.

He answered the call and heard a familiar voice that he didn't hear for a long time.

"Vi? Is that you, it's not yet dawn Vi."

"Really? Oh, I'm sorry Al. I'm calling you from London." She laughed merrily while he helplessly sighs.

"Oh, Al tomorrow I'll go to LA and if there was time, I will visit the orphanage, I got something important to tell you. Will you busy by then?"

"No, I'm free Vi, wait, let me be the one who picks you up tomorrow. What time is your flight."

"Well, it is 7 in the morning."

"Okay, don't worry, I'll pick you up, see you tomorrow."

"Bye Al, love you. (Beep)" Al heard her hanged up the telephone and confused about one thing.

'Love you? That's escalated quickly.' He thought, then shrugged. He went outside and did his usual morning exercise.

To Be Continued...

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Produced by:

JJTS

Emmanuel Sawoka

Directed by:

Jarvis