Free It's All In the Playing by Shirley Maclaine Page A

conjure something up. But I couldn’t get mad at McPherson.
    “Listen,” I finally said. “I’m really trying to get mad and pissed off, but I can’t get it up, so I can only say maybe you guys are mad and pissed off. Maybe you have a problem with McPherson, and I can understand that perfectly. After all, I guess everybody wants to believe their spiritual entity is the best.”
    Soon after that we politely hung up. It was my firsttaste of what would soon develop into the competition of the entities, or as someone put it more succinctly, “the battle of the Gods.” And because I was in the eye of the hurricane of the rapidly developing metaphysical movement, I and my endorsement would be a prized trophy. It was indeed a lot like Hollywood studios. Each was creative, knowledgeable, accomplished, and useful, and each dealt with the stuff dreams are made of. There was no way to choose. I loved them all.
    Bob, Colin, Stan, and I had still not decided whether Kevin and his entities should play themselves. We had some trepidation that “talking heads” would become boring. It was fascinating to witness in person, but how would it translate to film? The entity John was of particular concern, because he lacked “a certain comedic or dramatic flair they like to see on TV.”
    We were sitting in the rehearsal room discussing the problem when, as though on cue, the telephone rang. It was Kevin. (The guy definitely had a hot line to God.)
    “Listen,” said Kevin with no preliminaries, “John will very likely come through ‘on the day,’ exuding an energy overtone with more earth-plane personality, which the television audience would find more similar to the vibration of the present day.”
    I relayed the message to the guys word-for-word, without sarcasm. I hoped they would understand it. They rolled their eyes. I guess they didn’t get it either. I went back to Kevin.
    “So you’re saying John will put some modern-day oomph into his performance?”
    “Yeah,” said Kevin. “By the way, does Butler still think he’s the only sane one on the project?”
    I laughed.
    “Well, then,” said Kevin. “He was just on a location hunt in Peru, was he not?”
    “Yes,” I answered curiously.
    “Get him to tell you what happened to him up there.”
    Kevin hung up and I looked over at the guys. Stan, Bob, the production manager Dean O’Brien, and the art director had done a location reconnaissance since we last met. We had not yet had time to discuss the results.
    “So how was it in Peru?” I asked.
    “Sit down,” said Stan.
    I sat.
    “Okay,” he began. “The four of us were being driven in a car by our interpreter and scouting organizer. We were looking forward to seeing the UFO CONTACT POINT sign that you described in your book. We had taken pictures of towns, llamas, babies, mountains, and every rock we ran across, so of course the pièce de résistance would be the UFO sign.”
    I didn’t know what he was driving at.
    “Yeah?” I asked.
    “Well, the four of us fell asleep in the car at the same time, like we had lost consciousness or something. And when we woke up an hour or so later, we asked our driver when we were going to get to the sign. He looked at us very strangely and said, ‘what do you mean?’ I repeated the question and he said, ‘But Mr. Margulies, you did see it. You all saw it. You got out and took pictures of it. You talked about it among yourselves. Don’t you remember?’ Well, none of us remembered. It was as though it was wiped from our minds. We still can’t remember, and there is nothing on the film we took.”
    I stared at Stan.
    “So,” he said, “Mr. Butler no longer thinks he’s the only sane person on the movie. Apparently either we’re all losing it or something else is going on. Didn’t Tom McPherson say we would get UFOs on film if the collective consciousness is receptive?”
    “Yes,” I answered.
    Stan and the others exchanged looks.
    “Maybe the message was