HELL OF A DEAL, a supernatural satire

Thirty

30

Smith emerged from his elevator on the top floor of the Smith Tower.

All of the employees laughed loudly, across the entire floor. Their roars came from the cubicles and the offices, and even the new intern girl sitting at the front desk. Laugh is all they did and all they could do, seemingly. They cackled uncontrollably as Al stepped by them. The men and the women threw their heads about with giddy abandon.

Al avoided the revelers. He stared starkly at the individuals as if they had gone mad. Al wasn't certain if any of his experiences were real anymore, or if this was all just some prolonged hallucination.

Shuffling past Anna Holt, as she howled into her telephone, Al found his sanctuary door locked shut. He flipped awkwardly through his keychain, and he raced so that he could go hide inside. All the while he fumbled, the entire floor of executives, assistants and producers guffawed heartily about nothing.

As Smith slammed his sanctuary door shut behind him the raucous laughter instantly ceased. Al clutched the door handle, unsure if it was wise to open the door again and check on them. A more terrifying question presented itself, and Al wondered for whom they all actually worked now. He backed tensely away from the door.

Smith paced to and fro in front of his office desk as the sun set over Hollywood. Darkness intruded. With it Al's dread and foreboding increased exponentially. Shadows sliced into his fears, and he steadily rose toward a state of panic. Smith huddled alone in his big office chair squeezing his knees in tight to his chest. Al's mind schemed at length to somehow oppose these malignant dark forces of the universe.

By cell phone Al contacted Dick Winford, his head of legal affairs. Al asked, "Is there any way to block distribution of Terra, even if Seaford finds another studio to buy us out?"

Al already knew the answer. Obviously, there was not. Al Smith Sr. had personally insisted on a "buy out" clause in the company's standard boilerplate. It was something Al had inserted years ago in case he needed a way to dump a particularly odorous picture onto some other suckers. The idea was to let his competitors take the hit, and Al was guaranteed to break even. No harm, no foul.

Only in the case of Terra: Earth Under Terror there could be harm. There may indeed be a foul to place Al firmly on the wrong side of the universe. After hanging up his phone Al sat in the darkness for hours, afraid to venture back out of his sanctuary. The moonlight bathed him in crisp blue shadows as he pondered the depths of his morality, as well as his mortality.

Smith replayed the crazy sounding bluster that Lou Seaford had bragged to him, after the screening. Accepting Lou's war goals at face value his mind succumbed under the weight of these globally significant threats. Al soon fell asleep resting his head on his desk.

In the morning, Smith flickered to life with several ideas dancing about in his mind. He sprang up and into action. Grabbing a pen he jotted some quick notes.

Al activated his headset, and he marched to his treadmill. He wanted to jumpstart his blood flow in order to prepare for the impending conflict. Al's finger punched in a code on the screen before him, and he dialed up the op-ed editor at The Chronicle.

"That's right, Al Smith Jr., the new CEO of The Smith Company."

The assistant connected the call through to the next level. Al introduced himself, and he explained his situation.

The editor seemed a bit confused. He said, "You want to warn people not to go see a film that you just produced? Your latest film?"

"That's right. My company has severed all ties with the producer/director, Mr. Seaford. And we believe this movie is harmful, immoral, and the thinking behind it is negative in the extreme, and quite possibly rising to the level of evil."

"Evil?" The editor didn't seem explicitly certain about the definition. "Well, okay. You send me that op-ed, and I will definitely be interested in what you have to say, Mr. Smith."

"Thank you, sir."

"Thank you."

Al punched the accelerator, and he ran faster on his machine. By lunchtime Al had banged out a first draft of his op-ed letter, and he'd sent it over to the Chronicle's editor in an email. Al was pleased with himself, and he moved on to consider other strategies in the battle against Seaford 's schemes.

News came in to the Smith offices that Terra was picked up by another major. Details were sketchy, but control of the hundred million dollar project was lifted right out of Al Smith's hands. Rumors and speculation hit the entertainment blogs immediately. A minor whirlwind of industry ink splattered across town.

Al's op-ed letter, as published the next day, told the world, "It was a mistake to produce Terra: Earth Under Terror in the first place. This was the first project that I approved after taking the place of my father, "Big" Al Smith as CEO. My father founded The Smith Company in 1985, and he is well known as a legendary producer with over half a century of great, enduring entertainment to his credit. My father would not have green lit such a weak premise as Terra nor such an unskilled neophyte director to helm it. I take full responsibility for this debacle. Let the blame besmirch my reputation, and leave my father's film history unscathed, as his work stands the test of time. Having now seen Lou Seaford's rough cut of Terra I wish only to spare the audience from having to endure this horrid, juvenile, vulgar and dare I say 'evil' piece of entertainment. I am truly sorry that this production wasn't aborted sooner. Mea Culpa. –Alfred Smith Jr., CEO and Executive Producer, The Smith Company"

Smith also crafted a press release. He had Anna Holt disseminate it out to the world.

"The Smith Company has come to a pained decision not to release Terra: Earth Under Terror. The final product was deemed so egregious that it was an affront to decency and morality. This product does not deserve a wide release and is a true filmic abomination. Audiences will hate it, and any money spent promoting this flawed product will be flushed away and never recouped."

Firestorms of opinion burned across the world's press. Al Smith had just invited every critic, every blogger, and every message board typist to skewer and lampoon his entire life's work. To say that many disagreed with his fawning appraisal of Al Smith Sr.'s film canon would be unnecessary. They seized on Al's loving defense of his career, and they vomited their objections across the world for days and even weeks thereafter. Al Smith was the latest joke. His cinematic efforts were re-analyzed in a much less favorable light than even at their initial public releases. Al was reinvented as a garbage man, and all of his movies were trashed, mercilessly.

As for Terra, Al's op-ed letter only piqued people's curiosity, and it prompted them to want to find out about all the fuss. The warning backfired, and Terra was given a massive advertising budget by his competitor that injected it everywhere in people's faces, on their computers, on their radio waves, and on their televisions.

News coverage helped increase awareness of the film even further, especially stories about the high-profile lawsuit for libel and defamation filed by Lou Seaford against Al Smith Jr., when Lou sued Al and The Smith Company for one billion dollars.