Chapter 333: You Must Be Crazy
Chapter 333: You Must Be Crazy
With a head full of confusion, Eric finished tidying up the loose ends on set and returned to the hotel where he was staying, only to find that the floor occupied by the crew was cold and quiet. The usual lively scene after the crew wrapped had completely vanished.
Just as he pushed open the door and entered his room, a pink figure cried out sweetly and flew onto him, clinging to Eric like a koala before going through the usual rubbing and kissing routine.
“Alright, alright, Drew. Why did you come to New York?” Eric pulled Drew off him and looked her over. The girl was wearing a pink knee-length dress, and her original bun hairstyle had turned into shoulder-length wavy curls. It seemed she had gotten hair extensions. A slanted fringe across her forehead gave her baby face a somewhat different kind of sexy charm.
“I came to visit the set,” Drew said with a grin, pulling Eric over to sit beside her before straddling his lap again.
Eric looked at the girl’s eyes, which kept darting around, and quickly realized that today’s events definitely had something to do with her.
He slapped the girl’s little bottom and said, “Alright, confess honestly. What exactly are you all plotting?”
“Hehe, I’m not telling you,” Drew said shamelessly, bracing her little hands against Eric’s chest. Eric directly reached out and tickled her armpits. After the girl twisted around while laughing and shrieking, Eric finally let her go.
“Are you going to tell me or not?” Eric made a gesture as if he were about to tickle her again.
“Fine, fine. You’ll know soon,” Drew said as she floated to her feet. After taking several deep breaths, she picked up an eye mask that had already been prepared on the coffee table. “Here, put this on first. I’ll take you somewhere.”
Eric accepted it and played with it for a moment, then looked up and smiled. “What if I don’t want to?”
“Then I’ll… cry for you,” the girl immediately threatened.
“That’s not something I get to see often. Come on, cry for me,” Eric immediately said with great interest.
Drew wrinkled her baby face and sniffed several times, but failed to squeeze out a single tear. Then she suddenly cried out with a “wah” and threw herself into Eric’s arms, scratching at him like a little wildcat. “Put it on, put it on, put it on…”
“Okay, stop scratching. I’ll put it on,” Eric said helplessly. Curiosity also rose in his heart. He wanted to see what kind of trick the girl was planning today.
After he put on the eye mask, Drew pulled Eric up and led him outside.
Eric only felt that he entered an elevator, then was pulled into a car. Soon after, he heard the sound of the vehicle starting.
“Hey, let me say this first. Don’t go too far, or I really will get angry.”
“Do I look like that kind of person?” the girl retorted unhappily.
“Aren’t you?”
“Hmph.”
The car did not move very quickly, and Eric was not in a rush. Wearing the eye mask, he leaned against the seatback, just in time to close his eyes and rest for a while. He did not know how long passed, but he felt the car was still moving, with no sign of stopping. Eric was already growing drowsy.
“How much longer?” Eric could not help asking.
“Don’t rush,” the girl said, glancing at the pager she had been holding the entire time.
In fact, the car had been circling through the streets of Manhattan to delay time. Eric simply did not know it.
Eric stopped talking and leaned back against the seat again.
The pager in Drew’s hand finally beeped. She gestured to the driver. The car sped up a little, and in just over ten minutes, they arrived at the destination.
Drew led Eric out of the underground parking lot and into a direct elevator. A few minutes later, the girl pushed open a door, leaned close to Eric’s ear, whispered “surprise,” then swiftly pulled off his eye mask.
The popping of party crackers and fluttering ribbons came rushing toward him. The people in the hall had clearly rehearsed it, shouting in unison.
“Happy Birthday!”
“Wow,” Eric exclaimed somewhat helplessly. Hearing those words, he finally remembered. Today was May 16, the birthday of this body’s original owner. In his previous life, Eric had not cared much about birthdays, let alone now. On top of that, he had been so busy these days that his feet barely touched the ground, making it even less likely that he would remember this.
Familiar faces crowded around him. Besides the crew members from these days, basically all the actors and directors he had worked with over the past year had come. Firefly and Pixar executives were also here. Eric even saw Stan Winston, who should have been in Los Angeles, as well as James Cameron, who should have been preparing Terminator 2.
Clearly, Drew must have spent a great deal of effort preparing this birthday party for him. Just hiding it from him alone could not have been easy.
After everyone crowded around him and joked for a while, they gradually dispersed.
“Hi, Jonah. How’s post-production on The Silence of the Lambs going… Very good. My film? Of course, it’s almost wrapped too.”
“Wow, I didn’t expect you to come too, Tom. What project have you taken recently… Of course, of course. What I promised still stands.”
“Hello, Julia… Hey, Liz, today’s my birthday. You can’t act like this, like an old mother hen.”
“Robert, how’s Sleeping with the Enemy going… Mm, once I finish Ghost, I’ll come take a look… You should trust Julia. She has enough box-office appeal now.”
“…”
“…”
After circling around the hall and greeting the guests one by one, Eric finally got a brief rest. He found a sofa in the corner and sat down. The little girl, who had been confidently clinging to his side the entire time, thoughtfully brought Eric a glass of juice.
At that moment, James Cameron, whom he had greeted not long ago, walked over again with his wife, Kathryn Bigelow.
“Hi, Jim. And Ms. Bigelow,” Eric straightened up. James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow sat down beside him.
Looking at the couple, Eric could not help recalling some memories from his previous life. There was no need to mention Cameron. Kathryn Bigelow herself was also a legendary woman in Hollywood. The subjects of the films this female director made were completely different from those of other women in Hollywood. It could even be said that the films Kathryn Bigelow made had very little to do with women at all.
Just listen to the titles of the films she directed: The Weight of Water, The Hurt Locker, K-19: The Widowmaker, Strange Days…
Most importantly, in the parallel timeline, Kathryn Bigelow was the first woman in Oscar history to win Best Director. And at that year’s Oscars, Kathryn Bigelow’s biggest opponent was none other than James Cameron, who was currently sitting beside her. The drama of it was enough to make a movie, something like The Ex-Wife Strikes Back.
In Eric’s memory, it was precisely during the filming of Terminator 2 that James Cameron sparked something with Terminator 2’s female lead, Linda Hamilton. After Terminator 2 was released, Cameron swiftly divorced Kathryn Bigelow.
“Eric, actually, I wanted to discuss something with you,” James Cameron said after greeting Eric.
“Mm?” Eric showed a puzzled expression, thinking, It can’t be that he’s asking for more investment already, right? The damn movie hasn’t even started filming yet.
Seeing Eric’s expression, James Cameron looked at his wife. Kathryn Bigelow took the initiative and said, “It’s like this, Mr. Williams…”
“Just call me Eric,” Eric interrupted.
Kathryn Bigelow did not show any displeasure. She nodded and said, “Some time ago, I got a pretty good script. It’s a story about surfers. But because of casting conflicts, Columbia Pictures, which originally owned the rights, gave up the project. So I’m currently looking for investors.”
When Eric heard the word “surfers,” a certain film vaguely came to mind, though he had not seen it. He had merely come across some introductions to it by chance in his previous life, and only remembered the male lead.
“Can you introduce the plot?” Eric asked.
“Roughly speaking, a newly appointed young FBI agent named Johnny is investigating a bank robbery case. After following the clues, he discovers that many of them point toward a group of surfers. So Johnny goes to the beaches of Southern California and meets a young surfing instructor named Tyler…”
Kathryn Bigelow spent five minutes briefly recounting the entire story, and also explained some of her own ideas for the filming.
“So, you want to tell this story in a darker way, correct?” Eric asked.
Kathryn Bigelow nodded. “I think that would allow for a deeper interrogation of human nature and give it more realistic significance.”
“Right, you just mentioned that you and Columbia had a conflict over casting. Who did you choose as the male lead?” Although Eric already had an answer in mind, he still asked cautiously.
“Keanu Reeves,” Kathryn Bigelow said. “That young man played Ted in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure last year. Columbia said Keanu Reeves’s image was completely different from an FBI agent, but I believe Keanu Reeves can definitely become an outstanding action actor. He has that kind of potential.”
Just as expected, Eric thought. After recalling the brief introduction he remembered about this film, Eric had already been eighty percent certain. Now, hearing Kathryn Bigelow say Keanu Reeves’s name removed all doubt.
Although he did not know exactly what this film was like, there was one thing Eric remembered very clearly: in the end, this film succeeded at the box office.
As long as he could confirm that point, Eric had already made his decision.
“Ms. Bigelow, I’ll need the detailed script and project budget materials,” Eric said.
Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow both showed surprise. Since Eric said this, it clearly meant that he had agreed. The couple had not held much hope at first. After all, neither of them considered this a commercial film. Otherwise, Columbia would not have abandoned the project.
“Mr… Eric, I didn’t bring those materials with me today, but I can give them to you within three days.”
Eric nodded. “Right, who will produce this film?”
Kathryn Bigelow glanced at her husband. “Jim originally agreed to do it, but now it looks like we’ll have to change producers. Since we couldn’t confirm when we would get funding, I thought it would be fine even if Jim produced it after finishing Terminator 2.”
“Then I’ll personally produce it,” Eric said after thinking for a moment.
“You?” Kathryn Bigelow immediately showed faint doubt.
“Hey, Kate, don’t tell me you don’t believe Eric has the ability?” Cameron pretended to glare at his wife unhappily.
Only then did Kathryn Bigelow react. Although Eric had only turned twenty today, the young man’s achievements were enough to make more than ninety percent of Hollywood directors feel inferior. Add to that the fact that he now ran a film company second only to the Seven Majors, and producing a single film was certainly more than within his ability.
“Alright,” Kathryn Bigelow nodded. “I was just thinking, Eric, don’t you need to shoot your own films?”
“Of course I do, but there doesn’t seem to be any conflict. As it happens, I haven’t done concrete producing work before, so I believe this will also be a form of training.”
Seeing Kathryn Bigelow reveal the same expression again, Eric quickly waved his hand. “Don’t worry, Ms. Bigelow. You should believe in my ability. I think that as long as someone understands me well enough, no one in Hollywood would doubt I have that ability, right?”
“It seems… yes,” Kathryn Bigelow finally nodded.
Seeing the matter resolved so easily, Cameron’s expression shifted. He wanted to press on while the iron was hot, such as… adding more budget to Terminator 2.
However, Eric clearly saw through Cameron’s intention to take advantage of the situation. Letting Cameron succeed this easily was obviously not a good idea. Eric directly stood up. “Then that’s settled, Jim. We’ll discuss the details later. Today is my birthday, so enjoy yourselves.”
After saying this, Eric let the little girl hook her arm around his and walked elsewhere.
“Hey, Jim, that kid definitely saw through what you wanted to say,” Kathryn Bigelow teased lightly after Eric left.
Cameron shrugged indifferently. “Anyway… he won’t escape sooner or later.”
Although Kathryn Bigelow wanted to persuade her husband to restrain himself, thinking of Cameron’s exacting, almost nitpicking personality when making films, she gave up. She knew her husband definitely would not listen to her.
“Jim, honestly, how much do you actually plan to spend on Terminator 2?”
Cameron calculated briefly, then looked around and sneakily held up one finger to his wife.
Kathryn Bigelow inhaled sharply. “One hundred million dollars?”
Cameron nodded.
“You must be crazy. That kid will be furious with you,” Kathryn Bigelow said helplessly. After all, in all of Hollywood, no film had yet reached a one-hundred-million-dollar budget. Even an investment over fifty million was enough for a studio to hype up.
“He has plenty of money. What else is money for if not making movies?” Cameron retorted confidently.