The First Time I Ran Away
‘I’m sorry, what?’
‘We should just know zat ze ghost is zere, we shouldn’t be able to see it! ’Ave it taken out of ze script. Get somebody else to do it. Sack ’im first.’
You can barely even make out the Spanish accent now, although when my boss first came to this country two years ago, when he first took the job as the head of television development, it was actually impossible to understand three out of four words he said. He told me six months ago, through a toothy Spanish smile, that he swore a lot in those early days, at all of the producers and scriptwriters he worked with, and got away with it. I know that is a lie. He thinks it ingratiates himself with me, with ‘the team’. We know that he would eat his own hands if it pleased the producers. José isn’t fooling anybody any more. It only takes a couple of months for the political animal to show its face.
‘José, I can’t just sack him, I need a reason.’ I don’t know how many times I have had this conversation with him. He still cannot grasp the fact that somebody has to do something wrong before you give them their marching orders.
‘Look at ’iz ’air! It is all wrong. ’E ’as to go!’ José thumps the boardroom table violently.
‘You want me to sack him because of his hair? I don’t think hairstyles are specified in the contract, José – besides, what’s wrong with his hair?’
‘Oh, everything. It is so … so British. ’E ’as no flair.’ He sighs wearily. I too am British, I will never understand. José has slicked back black hair. That apparently is the hair to have.
‘José, why don’t we just ask him to rewrite, if you don’t like it, but in all honesty, I have to say I don’t know how we are going to make the sequel to Evil Ghost without an actual ghost.’
‘Yes, but zis is for TV, it is very different, Nicola.’
‘I know, we’ve got a tenth of the budget.’
‘I cannot work like zis,’ José says, as he holds his head in his hands.
‘Look, why don’t I just tell him to make the ghost a bit more … subtle.’
‘Yes, maybe zat will work.’ José comes alive again.
‘Tell ’im it should be more like … more like a big gap.’
‘Just a big gap,’ I repeat, although I know I am pushing my luck, but it’s just such a stupid thing to say. We are not a TV company who lets our audience ‘sense’ anything any more. If you can’t see it, in all its graphically-enhanced, action-packed splendour, it ain’t us. Subtlety went out with the sequel. And promotional tie-ins. Both of which we are very good at, I might add.
‘Zat’s what I said.’ The toothy grin is warping into gritted teeth.
‘You don’t think we might need to be a bit more blatant than that? You don’t think we could show something a bit scarier than … a big space? You don’t think it will just look like we had no budget and ran out of money before we could do the effects?’
‘No, it will intrigue zem.’
‘You think it will intrigue young males, fifteen to twenty-five, our primary audience?’
‘Zee audience are more sophisticated zan you give zem credit for, Nicola.’
‘Fine.’ The only thing he can’t do in a perfect English accent now is any word beginning with ‘th’ or ‘h’. It kills him, I know. But I give up. I will be told to change it eventually, or be ultimately blamed myself for the idea of leaving a big ‘space’ in our TV movie, if it ever actually makes it onto TV, probably cable at this rate. Play the game, I remind myself, as I click my pen, and write in large letters on my notepad – LEAVE A BIG SPACE. I massage the side of my head slightly, and try not to project ‘attitude’. José stares at me pointedly, daring me to tell him what an idiot he is, but I don’t bite.
‘Maybe a big space is going too far,’ José says, and I realize he is coming to his senses.
‘’Ow about a cloud of white fog instead. Try zat.’ He smiles at me. I smile back. It’s obviously happy hour at the idiot farm.
‘A cloud of white fog?’ I ask, trying not to sound numb.
‘Yes, like a mist.’ He makes a circular motion in front of him with his hands, and then nods at me to somehow ‘write that down’.
‘You want me to tell him to write a mist in. What kind of mist?’
‘A ghostly mist.’ Jesus wept!
‘Look, it’s called Evil Ghost 2: The Return. We need a ghost in it. Come on, he’s doing a good job. If the script is lacking, maybe we need another character or something. Maybe there’s something wrong with the second act.…’
‘Yes! We need … we need … something sinister – who are sinister? Work with me, Nix, work with me … the old, the old are sinister, if zey ’ave lost zer teeth … An old lady mist! It should be an old lady ghostly mist,’ he shouts, his personal Eureka. We have been doing this for over an hour.
‘An old lady?’ There are no old ladies in our script.
‘Yes, shoot it tomorrow, get me a visual, I know it will work. You can use Angela! It will be cheap.’
‘José, we can’t use Angela.’ Angela is his PA.
‘Why not?’ He looks at me, confused.
‘Because she’s thirty-nine. She might be offended.’
‘Thirty-nine? She looks older zan zat.’ He looks down solemnly; I have burst his bubble. José only employs young women, and by young, I mean under twenty-five. Luckily, Angela and I were here before him, and he hasn’t sacked us yet. I’m twenty-eight, but that is middle-aged in José’s book.
‘So?’ He looks at me expectantly, waiting for a solution. By my side, Phil, my assistant, has a blank look on his face that lets me know he has been asleep with his eyes open for the last half an hour.
‘Okay, I’ll drop in an old lady, a proper old lady – she’ll be like, eighty, José.’ He practically retches at the thought.
‘I’ll have it worked up by the designers, so we can see how it looks.’ I surrender, trying to draw the meeting to an end.
‘No, organize a shoot. I won’t attend.’ There’s a surprise.
‘You want me to organize a shoot – for an old woman in mist?’
‘Zat’s what I said.’ I’m going to get told off after this meeting. I’m being ‘negative’.
‘But it’ll cost twenty times as much as just working it up on the Mac.’
‘Yes, but it ’as to be realistic.’ He gives me a patronizing smile.
I sigh, as José sucks on a biscuit with a smile.
‘Set
