Chapter 015: Pretending to Run Away from Home
Chapter 015: Pretending to Run Away from Home
“Eric, this is really amazing.” In the passenger seat, Drew fiddled with the dress remade from a T-shirt on her body with great interest and praised it in surprise.
Because she had vomited last night, Drew’s clothes were already dirty, and the two of them were rushing to the crew. So Eric had an idea and remembered the method his wife from his previous life used to turn his loose men’s T-shirts into skirts. Fortunately, it was not difficult.
That was why Drew now wore this outfit: a sky-blue T-shirt remade into a dress, with one of Eric’s brown belts, three fingers wide, tied around her waist. This outfit looked very novel and avant-garde in this era. So when they arrived at the crew and had just gotten out of the car, many people could not help turning their gazes toward Drew.
Of course, those gazes also carried some meaningful implications, because Drew had come with Eric.
“Hey, Eric, you changed your heart this quickly? Seeing how gentle and considerate you were toward Annie a few days ago, I thought you’d be a good man.” After discussing the day’s shooting plan, Penny Marshall said this to Eric during a break in preparations. But there was not much surprise in her tone. In this circle, this kind of thing was far too normal.
“Penny, the one I like is still Annie. As for Drew, it was just a coincidence.”
Penny Marshall teased, “Is the clothing she’s wearing also a coincidence? Alright, Eric, I’m too lazy to bother with you young people’s affairs. But you need to pay attention to boundaries. Drew is only thirteen right now, after all. Mm, you understand.”
“Thank you for the reminder, Penny.” Seeing that Penny Marshall had already made up her mind about this matter, Eric could only say this helplessly to end the topic.
Over the next month, nothing particularly special happened. The filming of Back to 17 continued quickly and methodically. Drew changed from originally seducing Eric to openly pursuing him. When Aniston appeared on set, she also easily discovered this matter.
So whenever the two girls appeared on set at the same time, their open and covert struggles around Eric became seasoning for the entire crew during the tense filming process. All the male comrades greatly envied Eric. Even the young man playing bad boy Stan found an opportunity to ask Eric for advice on his methods for picking up girls. Eric also chatted nonsense with him with great interest, fooling the kid until he was stunned.
However, very soon, something happened that made Eric not know whether to laugh or cry. The other young people in the crew all began spreading the so-called pickup manual he had made up. It even accidentally reached Drew’s ears. During a filming break, the little girl clung to Eric and said half teasingly, half resentfully, “So that’s how you got me, huh? You big bastard who toys with girls. What’s even worse is that after getting a girl’s heart, you still don’t want to take responsibility. You thief, give me back my heart!”
Aniston’s crude dieting and weight-loss plan was still ongoing, but after suffering so much, the results were not very obvious. The girl had only lost less than five pounds in a month. Eric became even more worried about this. Originally, there were certain things he wanted to wait until filming ended to discuss.
Things were always full of accidents. Finally, during one shoot, Aniston directly fainted because of low blood sugar caused by hunger. Eric stayed with her through an entire night of IV fluids. The next day, Eric happened to have no scenes, so he took Aniston to the fitness consultant Susan Sarandon had introduced.
It was a very high-end fitness club, mainly serving Hollywood actresses. When the two entered, they happened to run into Sigourney Weaver, who had just walked out of the club, the world-famous heroine of the Alien series. She was one of the goddesses from his previous life. Under Aniston’s slightly jealous gaze, Eric very fawningly went forward and asked for an autograph.
That fitness consultant was a Russian woman whose age could not be told at all. Her name was very long, so she only had Eric and Aniston call her Natasha. The first time Eric saw Natasha, he noticed Aniston’s deep envy toward Natasha’s devilish figure. He could only gently squeeze Aniston’s small hand and comfort her beside her ear. “Don’t worry, baby. One day, your figure will be even better than hers.”
After Natasha learned some things about Aniston, she patiently explained the tremendous harm caused by Aniston’s recent weight-loss method. Then she took Aniston through some tests and spent an entire morning making a weight-loss plan of more than ten pages for her.
When the two left, they deeply understood the meaning of the words “high-end” for this club. It came down to one word: expensive.
When paying, Aniston insisted on paying herself, and as a result, she directly swiped her credit card into the negative. Fortunately, Aniston would soon receive her pay from Back to 17. Although it was not much, it could solve her financial crisis.
By late October, filming for Back to 17 finally approached its end. At the same time, the film’s post-production and publicity had already begun one after another. Occasionally, Eric could already see gossip news about Back to 17 in the newspapers.
After Drew finished her scenes, she unexpectedly took the initiative to request admission into rehab to quit drugs. A fallen girl taking the initiative to turn over a new leaf was such an inspiring story that of course it had to be used for publicity.
Thus, under the planning of Fox’s publicity department, Drew’s change was entirely credited to Back to 17. In the newspapers, Drew originally became addicted to drugs because she lost herself after becoming famous. During the filming of Back to 17, under the film’s warm and inspirational theme, Drew gradually began reflecting again, understood the true meaning of life, found her direction in life once more, and therefore made up her mind to turn over a new leaf. The article was written so vividly, as though the reporter had personally witnessed everything. If Eric had not known the truth, he felt he might have believed it himself.
The film’s other publicity direction was Eric, the eighteen-year-old screenwriter and male lead. The newspapers described the process after Eric finished writing the Back to 17 screenplay, from submitting the script to finally being discovered by Fox’s discerning eyes, as full of twists and turns. It vividly shaped him into an outstanding young man who was unyielding and never gave up on his ideals.
At the same time, through producer James Brooks and director Penny Marshall’s positive evaluations of his acting level, they indirectly highlighted how this newcomer, acting in a film for the first time, possessed extraordinary talent.
Of course, there was definitely controversy. Some newspapers soon began questioning Eric’s screenwriting ability as an eighteen-year-old youth. Some even inferred that Back to 17 was merely a rough follow-up work that 20th Century Fox had hurriedly launched after the success of Big. Its twenty-million-dollar budget would very likely be lost entirely.
This prediction was not without basis. In 1985, Universal’s sci-fi comedy Back to the Future earned two hundred million dollars at the box office and successfully became that year’s North American box office champion. After that, other film companies, including Universal itself, followed the trend and produced several films of the same type at the same time. In the end, without exception, all of them flopped. This could be seen from the 1986 box office rankings.
As for these controversies in the newspapers, as long as they remained within its control of public opinion, 20th Century Fox was happy to see them. One-sided praise and one-sided bad reviews would not produce good results for a film. Instead, only within suitable controversy could audience interest be aroused to the greatest extent.
At the same time, Eric’s novel Jurassic Park also gained quite a few benefits from this wave of publicity.
Originally, after the novel went on sale, Michael Klaus had done a great deal of publicity work with all his strength, just as he promised. The novel’s first-week sales exceeded twenty thousand copies. For a newcomer, this was a very good result. In the following weeks, as publicity followed up and the novel’s good reputation slowly fermented, weekly sales also rose steadily. Although it had not reached an astonishing level, it still met Eric’s expectations.
But after the publicity plan for the film Back to 17 began, Jurassic Park naturally became one of its important publicity points. This practically sent Michael Klaus into ecstasy. Even if a media group took out only one-tenth or even fewer of its publicity resources, the effect it created was not something his small publishing house, with fewer than ten employees, could compare with.
Thus, the book sales of Jurassic Park directly welcomed a round of growth. As Back to 17 gradually became exposed, people became full of curiosity toward Eric, this young man who had almost created a miracle impossible for someone his age.
Unfortunately, Back to 17 had only exposed some stills and crew gossip. Although the public could guess some of the film’s content from the movie title, those were still only guesses. So the public naturally transferred all their curiosity to the novel Jurassic Park.
Entering the first week of October, the novel’s sales directly broke one hundred thousand copies, more than the total sales of the previous weeks combined. It also smoothly reached eighth place on The New York Times bestseller list. Although the ranking was not high, if people compared them, they would discover that almost all the books above and below Jurassic Park on the list were works by well-known authors. Among the entire top ten, only Jurassic Park was a new book by a newcomer.
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Because there were several night scenes today, Eric only returned home after ten o’clock at night.
Just as he drove near his house, Eric saw the courtyard gate of the neighboring Runkel couple’s home being pushed open. A small figure walked out from inside, turned around, closed the gate, then ran beneath a nearby streetlamp and boredly spun in circles.
“Hey, little Stu, sneaking out of the house isn’t something a good child should do.” Eric was very curious why Stuart Runkel, the youngest child of the neighbor’s family, would walk out of the courtyard alone so late, so he stopped the car and asked.
“Come on, Eric. Do you think parents arguing in front of a seven-year-old child is something parents should do?” Stuart gestured toward his own yard with his little mouth and answered.
Eric was immediately somewhat surprised. This little guy could actually argue with him so clearly and logically. In his memories, he really did not remember this little guy being so clever. He tilted his ear slightly, and the sounds of the Runkel couple arguing came from the Runkel house.
“Then what are you doing?” Eric withdrew his attention and continued asking.
Stuart leaned against the nearby streetlamp with his arms crossed, looking like a little adult. “I’m pretending to run away from home.”
“Pretending?”
“Yeah. That way, after they discover I’m gone, they won’t keep arguing.”
Eric also felt that it was too much for the couple to argue in front of the child. So he said, “Then, little guy, how about sitting at my house for a while? It’s dangerous for you to stay here alone late at night.”
“Alright. Thank you, Eric.”
Eric parked the car, opened the door, and brought the little guy into the living room.