Free And Sons by David Gilbert Page A

was just trying to get a sense,” he said. “I guess the writing stuck, which is a compliment in a way. There was nothing I needed to improve.” Isabel came down hard on him, calling him selfish and clueless, insensitive to the world outsidehis own head. And she tried to comfort Richard by telling him that it was a good book, a really good book thanks to his writing, and that Jr. was the rooting force of the story, certainly the more likable of the two Percys. But Richard disagreed. If anything he thought the character was an apprentice idiot, confirmed by the last lines of the book:
    Sr. secretly watched Jr. eat his lamb, and he wondered if they both wondered the same thing, the two of them unspeakably quiet as they managed the tough business on their plates. Pauline was going on about daylight savings and how quickly the afternoon slipped into dusk. Amazing the difference an hour can make. Then she asked which time was the real time, that she forgot? Neither father nor son had an answer. They hardly bothered looking up, between the chore of cutting and chewing. But maybe, yes maybe they shared a thought on that first Sunday of falling back: Am I a cherished thing?
    Curtis gestured for Richard to sit, please. “I really like your script,” he said.
    “Thank you.”
    “It’s smart, it’s funny, the ending sneaks up on you.” Curtis remained on his feet as if playing a game of charades, trying to get you to guess his future success. “We’re all very excited.”
    “That’s tremendous,” Richard said.
    “Where have you been hiding? Do you have other scripts in the top drawer?”
    “Actually—”
    “Because we want to be in business with writers like you.” Curtis checked his phone. “That’s the short answer to what will be a longer conversation. We usually don’t go for movies about movies, I mean
Day for Night
, sure,
The Player
maybe, but mostly they tend toward the solipsistic and too clever by half, and the satire, because it’s always a satire, the satire tends to be a snooze. Actors are self-involved pricks, wow, alert the media. But you’ve done something different here. The setting is both real and absurd, and the characters, well, your MartinForge is right up there with Geoffrey Firmin in
Under the Volcano
and every other loon from
The Day of the Locust
. Reading these pages I kept on thinking of Brando toward the end, in one of those junk movies he did, Brando as played by Richard Burton stooping to the level of the gruff but lovable grandfather in—sorry, what’s the name of your movie-within-the-movie again?”
    “
Dog Daze
,” Richard said.
    Curtis flexed a smile, his bow tie the dumbbell. “Right right right right right right right. I love it. The whole man-switches-places-with-his-dog story is so perfectly high-concept I’m sure half a dozen studios would green-light your fake movie in a heartbeat. I’m almost tempted—it’s crazy, I know—but I’m almost tempted to push Rainer to do both movies and have you write the fake one and we release them simultaneously. How excellent would that be?
Dog Daze
and
A Louse and a Flea
on a double bill, like, like, like a diptych, a
mise en abyme
. Forget sequel or prequel, how about”—Curtis tossed the word forward with both hands—“metaquel? Maybe that sounds too much like a cough syrup. I’m sure we could come up with something better.”
    The funny thing was that Richard had had the same thought when he first toyed with the idea. It usually came to him right before falling asleep, during those moments of pre-dream seeding, where he would start to think about Martin Forge, the once-in-a-generation actor praised for his intensity and admired by the younger set for barreling into life like a bullet, right up until the last stupid movie to pay another stupid debt, and Richard, eyes closing, would imagine both movies intertwined, tragedy and comedy, playing side by side in the same multiplex. Fully awake, he gave Curtis a nod and a