Free The Reluctant Tuscan by Phil Doran Page B

mourning all the wonderful stuff I’d have to lose.
    â€œAnd instead of a small town, how about setting it in the inner city? Uh, like Harlem, for instance,” the girl with the triangular hair said.
    I pursed my lips and nodded as if I were thinking about it. But I wished I were wearing a Kabuki mask to keep them from seeing my left eye starting to twitch.
    They were congratulating each other over these improvements when I first heard the name Charlie. As in, how Charlie could play the living hell out of a present-day kid from the hood.
    â€œCharlie?” I wondered.
    Hope piled upon hype as they buzzed over the possibility of casting Charlie.
    Apparently Charlie had read the script and expressed interest. But now with these changes . . .
    Charlie Sheen? Charlie Chan? Charlie Manson? I had no idea who Charlie was, but rather than betray my woeful lack of hipness, I grinned back in mindless delight.
    â€œThe songs Charlie could do for the soundtrack!” the girl cooed.
    â€œTotally,” her partner said, suggesting they go for a mix of Charlie’s classic rap hits with some new stuff.
    They slapped hands and she broke into an impromptu riff of what appeared to be one of Charlie’s songs. It was as familiar to me as the Bulgarian national anthem.
    Of course with the casting of Charlie, I needed to rewrite most of my scenes to highlight the Charlie persona. For example, they singled out an easy change I could make. It was in the part where the kid went out to dinner with his parents every Sunday. The parents were morbidly obese, and their favorite restaurant was a place called Paul Bunyan’s, an oversized, all-you-can-eat smorgasbord whose motto was “Big Food on Big Plates.” One Sunday, as they pulled up, the owner spotted them, turned out all the lights, and pretended to be closed so they wouldn’t eat him out of business.
    They loved that scene but thought it needed to be edgier. So perhaps, outraged at Mom and Dad getting dissed, Charlie could kick open the door and spray the restaurant with an AK-47.
    This is madness! I thought. But I said, “Well, that’s certainly interesting, but don’t you think that such sweeping changes will destroy the essential spirit of the work?”
    â€œNot at all,” the guy was quick to say. “Charlie’s acting will bring such poignancy, it can only make it better.”
    â€œAnd with Charlie starring, we’re talking about a whole new thing here,” the girl said in a scolding tone. “Not just a TV movie. This could wind up being released as a feature!”
    And so, like many Kabuki performances that stress the importance of one’s duty over one’s conscience, our play ended with the promise of untold riches and eternal happiness for all. As I started for the door, they suggested we meet the following week so I could pitch out the changes I’d made. I indicated I would look forward to that, but first I had to go home, cleanse my hands, and slit open my belly with a harikari knife.
    I drove down Sunset Strip. My stomach was churning and my brain bubbled with rage. If I worked in this town a hundred years, I’d never understand why they buy a script they love and proceed to change it beyond all recognition. There are fifty thousand scripts floating around—why don’t they just buy one that already has what they want? And if they can’t find one, why don’t they just grab one of the ten thousand writers hanging around Starbucks and tell him to write down what they’re saying?
    For God’s sake, after twenty-five years of shoveling jokes in the sitcom boiler room, aren’t I entitled to something real and heartfelt? How could they take this away from me?
    I stopped pounding on the steering wheel long enough to realize that I was stuck in that knot of traffic that always jams up around Tower Records. I decided to put aside my self-pity and at least see who this Charlie was.