one minute || h.s

thirty-five

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Hallie.

The dry Los Angeles heat hit my face hard as I stepped through the sliding glass doors near LAX's baggage claim, and Harry's heavy hooded sweatshirt was miserably hot, but it smelled like him and it kept me hidden from the paparazzi. After the ten hour flight and practically no sleep, I was exhausted. More than exhausted and I only had an hour before I had to be at the IFC Los Angeles office for the meeting. When I'd stepped off the plane, my phone blew up, all messages from Harry and Stephen. Harry was bothering me about whether I'd landed safely or not. I sent him a kissy face and the little poop emoji. Stephen actually sent me thirteen...thirteen text messages. All containing information regarding the meeting and details I needed to be made aware of. After Harry's driver dropped me off at the house, I walked into Jude's caretakers playing with him on the floor. I hadn't been expecting anyone, but they both offered me warm smiles and hugs. The best and most relieving part was that they offered to look after a very sleepy Penny while I was gone. I made sure they stayed outdoors with her, otherwise she could possibly tear apart the inside of the house. After coating my hair in dry shampoo and slipping a tan midi dress over my unshowered body, I was waving goodbye and shouting a rushed thank you to Pixie and Alexa. Of course, with my luck, the traffic heading into downtown was horrendous. Bumper to bumper and by the time I was finally speeding into a space in IFC's underground garage, I had less then two minutes to get inside the building.

Stephen smirked at me as I sat down at the conference table, almost entirely out of breath. He had already given the three spokespeople the copies of the script and they were reading through it. "I'm so, so sorry I'm late-traffic was terrible." The younger man laughed, giving me a look like, yeah, I know.

"Hallie, this is Daniel Dobson, Mark Reiner and Joshua Gibbons." I smiled at the three men, receiving friendly grins back. "Gentleman, this is the lady behind the masterpiece."

"Ms. Mantegna, we've each read through the script multiple times and I must say, it's exactly what we want-what we think IFC would want."

"I-I can't even tell you how much that means to me, really."

"I'm glad to hear it. Now, we've already spoken to Mr. Elliott about financing, but we'd like to go over it with you?"

"Yeah-yes, of course."

"Well, bottom line is, we'd like to finance the film. We think it fits with IFC and what we do...we want to help make it the best independent film that it can be. In fact, we'd even like to start discussing pre-production." Mark seemed to be the head man here, but I liked where this was all going.

"Absolutely, yeah."

"Working with us, we'll be providing the casting directors, we've got a fantastic team set and ready to go, they've read the script front and back. Now, Stephen has already informed us that you two will be working very closely together as the writer and the director, so you'll have to choose a producer and we'd obviously like both of you to be a part of casting-but that won't take place for at least three to four months..." The rest of the meeting went by in a blur. There was a lot of technical talk, lots of movie chatter and Stephen took care of most of it. I obviously put my say in, here and there, but for the most part, I was happy to just sit back and go with what was being said. I trusted Stephen, seeing as how he'd worked alongside IFC for many of his films and he and I had already discussed what we both wanted to come of it, so I knew he'd get us there. When it got close to three o'clock, my eyes were well on their way to shutting entirely and we finally wrapped it up. I shook hands with each of the businessmen and Stephen and I made our way out. We're gonna make a damn good film, kid. A fücking good one, I can just feel it. When an awesome indie film director tells you something like that and you can see the excitement in his eyes...it's a slightly incredible feeling. I was proud of my work. I was proud that someone like him-someone I respected-thought that what I had written was good enough. Good enough to direct. The first call I made was an obvious one.