Free The Reluctant Tuscan by Phil Doran Page A

American like Taco Bell and sushi, and I know I just got here, but I swear everything seems so loud and vulgar and in your face.”
    â€œThen you’d rather be here?’
    â€œI’d rather be with you.”
    â€œI’m sorry I gave you such a hard time,” she said. “That wasn’t fair.”
    â€œNo, you’re worried about me.”
    â€œI just have to understand that as much as I want to drag you out of there by your hair, your heart’s in Hollywood and mine’s—”
    â€œI’m sick of us living parallel lives,” I said. “This is the time we should be together.”
    â€œThat’s what I want.”
    â€œMe too. We’re just going to have to find a way to make it work.”
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    I had an uncharacteristically good night’s sleep and awoke feeling fresh and not at all jet lagged. I ran out to the market and bought milk, juice, and bagels. Yes, bagels, hot and delicious. I ate breakfast watching ESPN. Life was good.
    I left early for my meeting to allow myself plenty of time so I wouldn’t have to rush. I tend to drive very carefully in L.A., because I’m always afraid that if I’m in too big a hurry, the one car I cut off will be driven by a guy who’s fresh from some impulse shopping at a gun show because those goddamn anger-management classes are just not working out.
    On my way to the studio I concentrated on staying calm. By relaxing my facial muscles and slowly breathing in and out, I was able to generate a certain level of serenity. But as I pulled under the Moorish archway that greets both the meek and the mighty to Paramount Studios, I felt the old anxieties creep into my chest. My innards started vibrating like a hornet’s nest and my mouth went dry. While the guard looked for my name on the list of drive-ons, I told myself that this time it was going to be different. I wasn’t coming here hat in hand. They were excited about my script and they wanted me.
    I was directed to an opulent waiting room richly paneled in exotic wood from some endangered rain forest. After a wait long enough to infuse me with the proper degree of humility, I was escorted to an even more munificent office covered in even rarer environmentally threatened wood.
    Two people rose to greet me. A tall young man with corn-rows and the long, tapering fingers of either a concert pianist or a point guard entwined his hand in mine in a soul shake. His partner was an attractive if Rubenesque Jewish girl in her twenties with hennaed hair cut in a futuristic, triangular wedge.
    After the introductions, the sitting down, and the offering of mineral water, we devoted a moment of foreplay to my house in Italy and its cornucopia of problems. I told them that whether you want it or not, Italy gives you a lesson in patience every day. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day and apparently neither was anything there. They laughed, but I could tell from their comments that, like most Americans, even the more sophisticated ones, their image of Italy was mostly macaroni and mandolins.
    Pleasantries aside, we got down to business. It’s important to understand that these script meetings tend to have a structure as tightly forged as a Kabuki theatrical. The performance invariably opens with a ritual praising of your writing. How much they were moved by your “searing insight” and your “compelling narrative.”
    But just as day follows night, their faces darken and they reluctantly voice their concerns. My script was just too time bound in the late fifties/early sixties and relentlessly mired in a type of factory town that just didn’t exist anymore. They feared that those two elements would make the film inaccessible to the all-important male teenage audience.
    Then, acting like his idea was completely spontaneous, the cornrow guy suggested we update the story by placing it in the present day.
    â€œOkay . . .” I said,