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Chapter 4
Ivy was asleep when her phone freaked out, waking her up. She had been dreaming of being lost in a vineyard. Naked. No one was around. And then she heard a voice, calling her home. Not any voice. His voice. He was saying “If you film it, I will come” in aField of Dreamshomage. Those were the words Ivy thought she heard in the dream. She rarely had dreams she remembered, but when she did, she gave them deep thought. Now she did not have time for deep thought. Her phone was blowing up. Texts and Instagram posts.
YOU’RE IN DEADLINE!!!!the text screamed. Deadline was the go-to site for breaking Hollywood news. The text was from a friend from film school. The friend had screen-grabbed the headline. AMARI TO STAR IN CHRISTMAS MOVIE! Another text popped up. Another friend. Another website. Ivy read the articles. Her eyes found what she was looking for—her name.Written by Ivy Green. There it was. Someone reporting that her dreams were coming true. Ivy texted the links to her sister’s and her parents’ cell phones, and then she grabbed some leggings and flew out the door.
Since her car was on the fritz again, she did the most unheard of thing in LA and walked the mile to the “rock and roll” Ralphs (it had earned the nickname as so many musicians aka wannabe rock stars worked there during the day)—and bought five copies ofHollywood ReporterandVariety. The movie announcement was on the cover of each one.
“What did you do?” the Bon Jovi look-alike working the register asked.
Ivy pointed to the article on the front page. “That’s me…I mean, my movie. I wrote it.”
Bon Jovi high-fived her, announcing on the PA, “Customer at register five sold her script. Front page ofVariety,” and then handed her his demo CD. “Just in case your movie needs a kick-ass song over the closing credits.”
Ivy hit the gym. She resumed her barre classes. It was nice to be back in the gym. She had tried working out in her apartment, but her HIT classes did not do the job and had annoyed the neighbors below her.
Ivy showered. She had missed a text from her agent, Charlotte.GREAT PRESS. COME TO OFFICE @ 10 a.m. TODAY.
Ivy rarely visited the agency office, which was located on Wilshire in the heart of Beverly Hills. Seven floors of modernism holding two hundred and fifty agents. She had gone there once before when she first met and signed with Charlotte. Her correspondence with Charlotte over the years had been via emails. And they’d been few and far between. Ivy wasn’t even sure Charlotte liked her. At one point, Charlotte had loved her—and her potential—but Ivy still had not been able to generate enough money to quit her many day jobs. She had done some tutoring. The one thing she was never going back to doing was working at a coffee shop. She couldn’t imagine working in a coffee shop in Los Angeles, where every table was filled with screenwriting squatters working on their script for the price of one coffee and five refills. But unlike ninety percent of those squatters, Ivy had just sold a script that was green-lit.
Ivy quickly changed into something professional/presentable and exhausted herself getting from Los Feliz to Beverly Hills. If only she had checked her text before her barre class. She was drained because the thirty-minute ride took an hour.(Thank you, 101). She decided to cut over on Coldwater Canyon, hoping to avoid the 405, but it seemed like all the drivers were using the same GPS. It was an ungodly hot day in Southern California. Everyone around her in traffic was doing the same thing. Rolling calls. Listening to music. And blasting the AC. Ivy’s air conditioning in her car had broken, and she didn’t have the money to fix it. Hence the second reason she was exhausted. Her car was hotter than it was outside. At every stoplight, Ivy would hang her head out the window.
Whenever she would go to the agency, she would never valet park. She had a fear that her car would break down in the valet and Peter Sherman, the CEO of the agency, would not be able to get out, find out it was Ivy’s car blocking his exit, and have her dropped as a client.
But she was late. And she had no choice. She handed the car keys to the valet and sprinted for the elevator, not waiting to hear if her car would start or not. She went up to the lobby, gave her name to the receptionist, and was prepared to wait.
“Follow me, Ms. Green.”
“You can call me Ivy.”
The assistant smiled and escorted her to Charlotte’s office. Ivy remembered it. But this time it seemed like the office had gotten bigger. Charlotte was waiting for her.
“You areen fuego. I’ve been fielding calls about you all day,” Charlotte said.
It was still the morning, but Ivy wasn’t going to correct her. She wondered who was calling, and why? Charlotte was up and hugging Ivy. Then she was out the door with a “Walk with me. Your team’s in the conference room.”
A team,Ivy thought.I have a team?Ivy was confused but smiled and kept pace. Assistants walking her way parted as Charlotte marched down the hall.
“You’re like a caveman,” Charlotte told her.
“A cavewoman?”
“Caveman. Cavewoman. Who cares? You created fire with your script. And just like the caveman, you’re who everyone wants to hang around with. The caveman who can make fire is the hottest person in town and gets paid lots of money because now the rest of the town can eat.”
Ivy had never learned about cavemen in film school. Charlotte continued: “Your script is the fire. Two of the hottest stars have signed up to be in your script. We have to get your next job lined up while you’re hot.”
“Like the caveman fire.”
“Now you’re getting it. Yes, it’s important to set up something now just in case…”
“In case of what?”
“In case the movie sucks,” Charlotte said as the doors to the glass conference room opened. Ivy followed inside to a room of twenty eager waiting agents. They were all excited to meet her. She was still reeling from the “in case the movie sucks” line as the agents introduced themselves. There were three from TV Lit. Ten from Motion Picture Lit. Two book agents. One podcast agent. Somebody from Audio Books. Someone from New Media. And two from Talent.
They all had ideas about what Ivy should do next. Almost as a collective hive they told her:We can’t wait. We have to set up your next job right away. I had one client who had a major movie star walk off the set twenty days into production. Killed the writer’s career. And he had bought a house. What about interactive fiction? Game show? It’s not what you can do for me today—what you can do for me tomorrow. You fail upward.
It gave Ivy a lot to think about. She was still worried about Charlotte’s clarion call of “in case the movie sucks” as she and Charlotte sat down to lunch at the Grill on the Alley. Ivy had heard about this place. It was where studio heads and high-powered producers had their reserved tables. She looked around. People were wondering, whispering, and learning who she was. Ivy remembered some of their faces from earlier meetings.
“There’s Carl Angelo. Great exec at Universal.”
