“Your deal was put in place before Craig Wild died. They’ve had to rewrite the story and made it focused on your character. You should be getting leading-man money, not sidekick money,” he explained.
I shook my head at him to try to wrap my head around what he was saying.
“Saul, if you remember, I got a better deal than Craig,” I reminded him.
“That was because you held out.”
“Which you were against,” I said, starting to get irritated.
“I like the offices,” Tim said to try to change the topic.
“They’re nice,” Lexi replied.
“Nice? Nice is nothing. Nice is bland. Nice is the morning after when you can’t remember her name,” Saul said, showing us his class.
I didn’t know whether to take Saul out back and teach him his manners or laugh.
“Tone it down some. This isn’t the guys locker room at your golf club,” I said.
“Lexi can take it,” Saul replied.
“I don’t care if she can or can’t. You represent me, and I have an image to uphold,” I explained.
Saul didn’t seem fazed.
“When we get in there, let me do the talking,” Saul said.
This was a mistake. I was about to send Saul home when the receptionist told us that Mr. Andon was ready to see us and ushered us into his office. It was befitting a studio exec, with a large modern desk and a comfortable seating area for less-formal discussions.
“There’s my girl,” he said, coming out from around his desk with the intent to give his daughter a hug.
Lexi stuck her hand out to shake his.
“Mr. Andon,” she said formally.
He looked at me.
“Seems I’ve let my professional side down. You’ve done well to get her to act so formally,” Mr. Andon said.
“Lexi has been hands down the best PA I’ve ever had. This is all her doing,” I confessed.
“Paul …” Saul began.
“Shut up, Saul. I’m not renegotiating David’s contract today. We haven’t figured out exactly what his role will be in the upcoming films yet. Once we do, we may make some changes,” Mr. Andon said to shut down my agent.
“I’m not opposed to you paying me more, if you were wondering,” I said with a smile to play it all off.
“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you,” Mr. Andon said.
We sat down and discussed what they were considering. They had three options. The first was to move Ben Doman’s character, Roman, over to be the team lead for our group. Ben played the son of the school’s headmistress and was currently on our nemesis team at the academy. The second was to find another actor to replace Craig. The last was to bring in a new character and move my character, Stryker, into the lead.
“Personally, I think that moving Ben over has some problems because of how we clashed in the last movie,” I said.
Stryker and Roman had a climactic sword fight in the last film. I couldn’t really envision us as teammates without there being a lot of friction. Of course, that could offer its own possibilities for storylines.
“As I said, we haven’t figured it all out yet,” Mr. Andon said.
“I had something else to ask. Lexi pointed out that I could hire people for the movie. It’s why she’s my PA,” I said.
“I do remember something like that in your contract. Did you want to add to your staff?” he asked.
“Not exactly. I was wondering if you might be able to find something for my friends to do,” I said.
At first, Mr. Andon thought I just wanted to give my buddies busy work and use that as cover for adding to my entourage. Wolf quickly dissuaded him from that notion and explained about Tim’s and his internship with Jack Mass doing construction last summer. Tim also shared that he was mechanically inclined, had helped his dad work on cars, and did all the maintenance for Wolf’s lawn care business.
He sent them both to talk to a couple of his managers who handled different aspects of making movies. If they did well in those interviews, he would hire them. I could tell that Wolf was much happier that he might get a ‘real’ job instead of some make-work position where I basically paid him to hang out with me.
Mr. Andon then kicked out both Lexi and Saul to talk to me alone.
“Mr. Andon, thank you for helping my friends,” I said.
“Call me Paul. It’s the least I could do since you hired my daughter. My wife and I had started to worry about her ever getting serious after she graduated high school. We’d assumed Lexi would be off to college, but she shocked us when she said she needed some time to figure things out,” he shared.
“Honestly, I was against hiring her at first. I’d met her at a party, and Lexi came across as a ‘mean girl.’ I couldn’t really see her fitting in with the people I try to surround myself with.”
“What changed your mind?” he asked.
“She did, when I had my accident. Since then, we’ve only had one disagreement, but we worked it out. The people at my management company have nothing but good things to say about her. They would like to see her get her degree. Maybe you could sit down with her and find out what she wants to do long term. From what I’ve seen, she could run this town someday,” I said.
