A Writer’s Curse?
/99.998% of the people who move to Los Angeles every year come with the expectation of making it big in show biz. Only 00.002% of them will succeed.
One such inspired emigré was a starry-eyed dreamer from Chesterville, Michigan, named Calvin Mott, a guy who chucked his job in check-out to go bang out movie blockbusters and top-ten television hits in Hollywood after earning his xeroxed sheepskin from a Hoboken, New Jersey, correspondence scriptwriting school.
The professor’s unabashed praise of Calvin’s “exceptionally florid storytelling style” compelled him to make the life and career-changing decision to go big time. He was sure that with his diploma in hand, and the polished talent it took to earn it, he would be a LaLaLand A-Lister in no time; besides, with the school’s “100% Satisfaction or Your Full Tuition Refunded!” guarantee, he really had nothing much to lose.
Ready to entertain the masses, he rented a shabby studio apartment in Van Nuys, and practiced his Oscar, Emmy, and Golden Globes winning acceptance speeches while unloading the two cardboard boxes that were his life. This dump would be temporary, soon to be replaced by the most lavish palace in Brentwood.
He opened the water-stained curtains in the one-room, third story walk-up and stared down at the panoramic view of the building’s dumpsters and the cinderblock wall behind them — it was the same panoramic view Calvin Mott stared down at every day for the past twenty-three years.
You see, the disillusioned screenwriter was not 100% satisfied with his outcome in TinselTown because in the over two decades since he left Chesterville he had not sold one written word to the tv networks or to the movie studios, and the only wealth he accumulated was a slush pile of template rejection letters, a stack of bills from here to Malibu, and plenty of sage advice to go back home and stock soup cans. When he contacted the scriptwriting school to get his full tuition refunded as promised, he became more vexed and disillusioned because their post office box no longer existed and that their phone line had been disconnected.
Calvin was getting desperate. He folded the bed back into the couch and set his laptop on the rickety TV tray that doubled as a rickety desk that doubled as a rickety dining-room table, dreading to begin typing out his next box-office smash only to be ridiculed and passed-on again a couple of months from now.
“I’d die if I could write just like the great ones,” he sighed as his computer and imagination booted up.
“What’s that?”
“I said, I’d die if I could write just like the great ones,” Calvin replied nonchalantly to the disembodied voice coming from the kitchenette.
His focus was on a catchy title for the medical drama that was fermenting in his mind not on imaginary company, until a man began to materialize through a cyclone of red smoke, accompanied by a lightning show of blood-colored lasers and Black Sabbath music thundering in 7.1 Sensurround—a boffo entrance even by Hollywood standards.
Calvin was shocked, naturally; even more so when he noticed that the apparition, sporting a flaming Armani suit, horns, and a tail, looked like the scriptwriting school’s president whose picture was posted with the ad on that matchbook cover so long ago. Because the one-room dive suddenly reeked of sulfur, he guessed that this spectral intruder was either Lucifer or his former esteemed educator who had just eaten a bean breakfast.
“I can make that happen! I can make you write just like the great ones!” the man promised sweetly, like in agentspeak.
“Mmmmmmmmm....”
Calvin looked around the four grimy walls last painted when he moved in nearly a quarter-century ago, his interest piqued. At this point in his career he might consider anything since the writing degree didn’t take, obviously. He was growing older, more despondent by the day and this could be his last, best shot at fame and fortune and literary immortality. Ah, immortality! That’s what everybody wants, isn’t it? “So . . . what’s the tuition fee?” he asked, as if he didnt know.
“Just the spirit swilling around inside you, Mr. Mott, collected after your death is mourned by millions of hysterical fans. It will be my 'royalty’, let’s call it, because you signed on the dotted line and achieved your dreams. Besides, you’ll be so rich and famous you won’t need a conscious anymore, anyway.”
“Well . . . your invitation to permanently retire to warmer climes sounds interesting, but I haven’t decided where I want my soul to go after my beloved corpse is laid to rest inside the grandest mausoleum marked by the tallest obelisk at Forest Lawn. I’ve read some bad things about Hell in the New Testament, so I’m going to have to think your offer over a little.
The Prince of Darkness pooh-pooped the holy shout-out. “Falsehoods and innuendo scratched out with pointy sticks by a few apostles sporting ZZ Top-like beards who wrote a sensationalized book that sold in the millions. I promised them the world but they followed Jesus to the light side, allegedly gave all their earned drachmas to charity, and now are lost to history.”
“Au contraire!” Calvin’s temper started to smolder and flare like the devil’s suit was doing, always ready to defend his fellow wordsmiths.
“You are wrong, my friend! History still remembers and venerates the Bible writers, even 2,000 years later,” he replied, almost spitting fire now himself. “Matthew, Mark, Luke, Jo—”
“Oh yeah?” Satan cut in, wickedly. “Then tell me, Mr. Mott…what were their last names?”
Calvin leaned back on the lumpy couch that would be a lumpy bed later that night in deep thought. You know, the Father of Lies is making sense…
“Okay, then describe Hell to me…you know, like travelers do on TripAdvisor.” He was drifting towards the dark side, his interest heightened.
“Certainly. Well, right off the bat, I’ll give it 5 stars, Mr. Mott! Although the weather can get a bit intemperate at times, I think you will enjoy the place, my dear boy, because it’s one star-studded cocktail party after another: celluloid luminaries, beloved television stars, and eminent writers all bragging and boozing in climate-controlled comfort! Hell is a damned opulent mansion of Hollywood royalty because Hollywood hopefuls have been selling their souls to me since the first film rolled…hell, come to think of it, hack writers have been selling their souls to me since cuneiform was invented,” the Devil cooed seductively, remembering Enheduanna, a 2300 B.C.E. Mesopotamian poet and priestess, his very first sucker … eh, client. “And they all wanted what you want, Mr. Mott, and I am how they got it!” He grandly raised a shot of Fireball whiskey as if it was a gold-plated statuette and toasted to “the world’s next literary giant!”
Calvin studied a smiling Satan (briefly, because he wasn’t wearing his cheap sunglasses to shield his eyes from his glowing couture), stared vacantly down at his computer (whose keyboard walkabouts the last 23 years produced absolutely zero dinero), then did a slow 360 of the dirty walls (hoping his landlord wouldn’t use his damage deposit for the smoke and scorch marks that were probably going to be left after the intruder’s likely flaming farewell.)
The man in red watched the man in sweats weigh the pros and cons of eternal damnation so he added a little more Tabasco to the soup: “should you decline my generous offer, Mr. Mott, I shall make it to one of your other desperate friends.”
“Friends? I don’t have friends—I’m a writer!”
Beelzebub knew that was true so he offered up a different apple: “100% satisfaction or your soul refunded, Mr. Mott!”
“Sold!” Calvin signed on and the dirty devil dirt-deviled off.
Feeling unstoppable, “Hollywood’s next literary giant!” opened up his laptop and began rejuvenating his career:
EXT. EXCAVATION SITE - NINEVEH - DAWN
An OLD MAN in khakis works at section of mound with excavating pick. (In BG there may be TWO KURDISH ASSISTANTS carefully packing the day's finds.) The old man now makes a find. He extracts it gingerly from the mound, begins to dust it off then reacts with dismay upon recognizing a green stone amulet in the figure of the demon Pazuzu.
CLOSE SHOT - PERSPIRATION POURING
DOWN OLD MAN'S BROW
CLOSE SHOT - OLD MAN'S HANDS
Trembling, they reach across a rude wooden table and cup themselves around a steaming glass of hot tea, as if for warmth.
CLOSE SHOT - OLD MAN’S FACE
The eyes staring off, haunted, as if by some chilling premonition — and some frightening remembrance.
“Holy, shit! This ain’t bad!” Calvin yelled, shocked and amazed. He spent the next four days and nights typing without food or sleep growing the script, his fingers dancing across the keyboard as fluidly as Tom Hanks’ feet across the giant piano keys in “Big”.
After finally pecking out The End. Fade to black, and querying the script to Warner Brothers, Calvin emailed his widowed mother back in Chesterville that he had just finished the story that is finally going to make him rich so start packing for her new digs at a swanky Malibu retirement high-rise overlooking the Pacific; then he turned the couch back into the bed and fell dead to the world.
Seventy-three hours later, Calvin awoke and stretched and ironed out with his palm a wayward wad of cushion that had become a brick of a pillow and smiled, knowing for sure this time that his miserable life in this dump was near an end. He yawned and reached for his laptop, anxious to see what kind of multi-million dollar deal Warner Brothers was going to offer for the thriller he sent them a couple days ago.
But the only email posted to his inbox was a reply from his worried mother asking if “my little Calvie” was drinking again because the message he sent made absolutely no sense. She implored him to please finally leave that evil town and come back home and dry out. She was sure that even though the grocery store where he worked as a kid closed its doors for good 17 years before, he could still mist carrots somewhere else in town.
Calvin trashed the depressing missive, not planning on an early morning guilt-trip to Chersterville, Michigan, and sighed. When he clicked on what he had written to her, he gasped:
Ma, you are slinging insinuations at me again. Such as “where did I get the money?” and “the company I kept” in San Francisco. Why I sold “wildcat” mining ground that was given me, & my credit was always good at the bank for two or three thousand dollars, & is yet. I never gamble, in any shape or manner, and never drink anything stronger than claret or lager beer, which conduct is regarded as miraculously temperate in this country. Love Sam.
Initially, the gibberish he read four times jolted him like a Godzilla stampede, then Calvin chuckled to himself that he must have channeled Mark Twain’s brain somehow while dashing off the message to Mom–the mind plays tricks like that after stringing words together for 144 straight hours. He closed the app, googled the author’s autobiography, and scrolled through its appendix–and there it was! His email was identical to the letter Sam Clemens mailed to his mother from Virginia City on July 18,1863, with $20 included.
Nothing in Hollyweird surprised Calvin Mott any more, so he laughed the coincidence off, emailing Mom back to assure her that no, he wasn’t drinking again, that he was sober as an owl. That he just wanted to send her a sample of dialogue for a western he was developing for HBO. What’d she think?
He covered his lying ass, again, and was staring up at the unbalanced ceiling fan that resembled a helicopter going down, when an email notification from Warner Brothers dinged. Calvin beamed, ready for his date with destiny. It read
Dear Sir:
This is the legal department at Warner Brothers. We are placing a cease-and-desist order against you and the screenplay you recently submitted to us because it smacks of plagiarism at the highest level. You have knowingly infringed on several copyright laws and may be held liable in a civil court for reported violations.
As you have copied verbatim and submitted an exact duplicate of William Peter Blatty’s “The Exorcist” shamelessly and blatantly, we will contact the author and decide how to proceed legally. We suggest you take this matter seriously.
Calvin fumbled for the remote, clicked on Netflix, and watched the opening scene of the supernatural horror film in a supernatural horror film of his own.
He tossed the laptop on a brittle armrest and wondered what the hell was happening. Hollyweird is right! Right now he needed some Fireball whiskey–sorry, Ma, I also lied about only consuming claret and lager beer–and became more flummoxed when he could only sign the check to Star Liquor, Orson Welles.
Panhandling enough change on Ventura Boulevard for an 80-proof breakfast, he returned to his third floor dive and thought things through.
“Of course my first submission was about demonic possession–it was just my new business manager reminding me who's in charge,” he concluded.
Calvin, declaring the legal matter resolved, sat down at the desk/dining room table and hammered out a pilot sit-com for Fox. Draining the bottle as he hit send, the cursed man considered what he had written simply genius, and shouted to the cracked ceiling, “this is the one, damn you, Cal! The opening scene alone will still be considered a classic five hundred years from now.”
Egeus: Full of vexation come I, with complaint against my child, my daughter Hermia. Be it so she will not here before your grace Consent to marry with Demetrius, I beg the ancient privilege of Athens: As she is mine, I may dispose of her;
Which shall be either to this gentleman or to her death, according to our law Immediately provided in that case.
Theseus: What say you, Hermia? Be advised, fair maid, To you your father should be as a god. Demetrius is a worthy gentleman.
Hermia: So is Lysander.
Theseus: In himself he is. But in this kind, wanting your father’s voice, the other must be held the worthier.
Hermia: I would my father looked but with my eyes.
Theseus: Rather your eyes must with his judgement look.
Hermia: I do entreat your grace to pardon me.
I know not by what power I am made bold: But I beseech your grace that I may know the worst that may befall me in this case, If I refuse to wed Demetrius.
Theseus: Either to die the death or to abjure forever the society of men.
It was almost the one! In their NON-TEMPLATE! rejection letter, Fox’s comedy development department thought the arc using five interconnected subplots at the celebration of a wedding set in the realm of Fairyland was original, funny and ‘archaically modern’, but in the end decided not to green-light his “A Midsummer's Night Dream” because it seemed just a little too highbrow for their dumbed-down demographics.
Calvin was deeply encouraged, even by failing again—original, funny and archaically modern–his first positive review since college! He was getting close to success now, by-damn, he could taste it. “Hell, even Hell wasn’t torched in a day. Success takes time,” he crowed on his way back from Star Liquor after buying a case of Fireball whiskey with his new debit card.
During his next frenzied nine-day writing-and-drinking session, he dashed off a period-piece crime story script and sent it off to Paramount, an action-adventure script that takes place in a distant, distant land, and sent it off to LucasFilms, a fantasy-adventure script and sent it off to New Line Cinema, a script for a comedy pilot and sent if off to CBS, a musical-drama movie script and sent it off to Argyle Enterprises, Inc., then slipped into a four-day coma.
It was the email notification ding that stirred him back to life.
“Ka-BOOM!” Calvin shouted, now up and aroused by the five show-bizzy-addressed messages that were waiting in the inbox.
“Hmmmmmm. Wonder what deal I should take first?” he asked himself as he paused for a quick, but sincere ‘thank you’ to his unholy benefactor, and to pee.
“Paramount might request five or six movie scripts a year, whereas at CBS I’ll only be dashing out a 14-script-season of 22-minute episodes . . . unless the network throws in some added incentives, like allowing me to spit out a couple mini-series per annum.” He returned to see what great things his future held:
Dear Sir:
This is the legal department at Paramount Studios. We are placing a cease-and-desist order against you and the screenplay you recently submitted to us because it smacks of plagiarism at the highest level. You have knowingly infringed on several copyright laws and may be held liable in a civil court for reported violations.
As you have copied verbatim and submitted an exact duplicate of Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather” shamelessly and blatantly, we will contact the author’s estate and decide how to proceed legally. We suggest you take this matter seriously.
Dear Sir:
This is the legal department at LucasFilm. We are placing a cease-and-desist order against you and the screenplay you recently submitted to us because it smacks of plagiarism at the highest level. You have knowingly infringed on several copyright laws and may be held liable in a civil court for reported violations.
As you have copied verbatim and submitted an exact duplicate of George Lucas’ script for “Star Wars” shamelessly and blatantly, we will contact Mr. Lucas and decide how to proceed legally. We suggest you take this matter seriously.
Dear Sir:
This is the legal department at New Line Cinema. We are placing a cease-and-desist order against you and the screenplay you recently submitted to us because it smacks of plagiarism at the highest level. You have knowingly infringed on several copyright laws and may be held liable in a civil court for reported violations.
As you have copied verbatim and submitted an exact duplicate of “Lord of the Rings” written by J. R. R. Tolkien, adapted to the big screen by Peter Jackson, shamelessly and blatantly, we will contact representatives of both parties and decide how to proceed legally. We suggest you take this matter seriously.
Dear Sir:
This is the legal department at CBS. We are placing a cease-and-desist order against you and the comedy script you recently submitted to us because it smacks of plagiarism at the highest level. You have knowingly infringed on several copyright laws and may be held liable in a civil court for reported violations.
As you have copied verbatim and submitted an exact duplicate of Norman Lear’s pilot episode of “All in the Family” shamelessly and blatantly, we will contact the comedy writer and decide how to proceed legally. We suggest you take this matter seriously.
Dear Sir:
This is the legal department at Argyle Enterprises, Inc. We are placing a cease-and-desist order against you and the screenplay you recently submitted to us because it smacks of plagiarism at the highest level. You have knowingly infringed on several copyright laws and may be held liable in a civil court for reported violations.
As you have copied verbatim and submitted an exact duplicate of “The Sound of Music” (including song lyrics) shamelessly and blatantly, we will contact the author’s heirs, as well as the von Trapp estate and decide how to proceed legally. We suggest you take this matter seriously.
Left dangling like one of his poorly written participles, Calvin seethed as he deleted the soul-crushing emails, wondering how to contact the devil to give him the devil because he was certainly not 100% satisfied—only 100% angry, dejected and confused. He should be sitting at the head table of Spago right now, regaling his equals with show biz stories and $2,000 bottles of wine.
“Hey Satan, you around?” he shouted towards the kitchenette.
“Yeah. yeah. What do you want now, Mr. Mott?” He whirl-winded in again.
“I demand my damned soul back!” he replied, short-tempered. “For not delivering what you promised!”
“But, Mr. Mott, I did deliver what I promised. Open up your laptop and I’ll prove it to you.
It's just a matter of nomenclature.”
Calvin did as told and waited for a cue.
“Okay. Ready, Mr. Mott?”“Quite.”
“Okay, Mr. Mott, type out an original wisecrack.”
Calvin took his time to form the perfect bon mot–easy since they practically shared the same noun—and proudly typed out one he thought the Supreme Hedonist could relate to: When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.
His critic sneered and replied, “Very funny, Mr. Mott—original, alright! Original when Oscar Wilde wrote it! Try again!”
Calvin was determined to impress the devil out of him this time. He stared at the faded Polaroid that Mom had snapped of him standing proudly at the mailbox in cap-and-gown holding his diploma bound in a 100% cowhide leather cover that only cost seventy-five bucks extra, typed and smiled:
People think that I must be a very strange person. This is not correct. I have the heart of a small boy. It is in a glass jar on my desk.
“Stephen King. Try again. This is your last chance, Mr. Mott.”
Now with the pressure of a deadline beading down on him just like in college when the professor only gave the class two weeks to compose a 500-word improv sketch, his palms began to sweat, his nerves twitching from both fear and laughter, and composed: We are sure that the familiar sounds of Verdi will come back to you tonight, and Mrs. Claypool’s checks will probably come back in the morning.
“George S. Kaufman, Mr. Mott. For Groucho Marx!”
The guy at the computer was becoming more baffled; the Devil in the kitchenette more entertained. “Now get a piece of paper and a pen and write out your own name, Mr. Mott.”
Easy–yet the cursive signature spelled out F. Scott Fitzgerald, like an autograph. “Just a mental glitch, like at the Star,” Calvin reassured himself.
“Again!”
Emily Brontë (in calligraphy).
“Again!”
Plutarch (in Latin).
“Again!”
Imhotep (in hieroglyphs).
“Don’t you see, Mr. Mott? You got your wish to write just like the great ones–just exactly like them. Not one letter, punctuation mark, or cartouche in deviation. Exactly as I promised. And so now, Mr. Mott—God, I love saying this—it’s time to go to Hell, dear boy!”
The bamboozled writer, realizing he would surely be blackballed in town now anyway, took a pen knife to his vertebral artery and bled out on the beat-down gold shag carpet, last shampooed sixteen years before. Van Nuys police thought the blade’s fatal entry at the backside of the victim’s neck was an awkward place for a suicide stabbing, but chalked it up as that, and as another lost soul’s lost dream: The End. Fade to black.
Right now, the soul of Calvin Mott, trapped inside a failure in life, is relishing a star-studded literary cocktail party in death, schmoozing over by the fire pit, sharing laughs, stories of how they got here and shots of Fireball whiskey in air-conditioned comfort with the ghost writers of ghastly tales Edgar Allen Poe, Mary Shelley, and noted influencer of the resort, Dante.
Yesterday was a gas as well, soaking in the hot tub (hot tub indeed—the thermostat was set at 211°F) sipping hemlock mojitos with Herman Melville and Homer, enjoying slideshows of their vacation cruises back in the other realm.
Later this afternoon, he, Robert Lewis “Bobby Boy” Stevenson, Rudyard “Kip” Kipling, and Ernie Hemingway will be going down to the River Styx to fish for piranha, where there would be plenty of chum made from ground-up legal department lawyers and a boatload of Fireball whiskey waiting for them.
“5 stars indeed, Sir! Being a damned writer has finally paid off.”
By CraigE
From: United States