owning one store and then two. They traded in their small house for a bigger house, they saved money, and everything just grew steadily upward until now they can retire comfortably.”
“Yes, but they didn’t take any risks.” Something crashed and broke in the background, and RC covered the receiver to yell, “Lucas, go to your room now! … Filmmaking is a totally different industry,” she said, returning. “It’s defined by setbacks and comebacks. Not neat upward parabolas. I’m sure you’re aware of that.”
“Of course,” Claudia agreed. But the truth was that she’d never imagined that you could be going down your carefully chosen path, taking all the right steps, and suddenly find out that it was a dead end. There was no logic to that narrative. Where was the happy ending with the uplifting credit-sequence score?
“I just hope you don’t get cynical. Your sincerity is one of your greatest assets. It’s refreshing to meet someone nice, in this industry.”
“Yeah, well, clearly Hollywood has no interest in sincere . What I really need is to be more of a bitch.”
“Just hang in there,” RC offered. “You’ll figure something out eventually.”
But Claudia couldn’t just hang in there , not right now. The past weeks of stunning defeats had drained something vital away, squeezed her heart out like a sponge and left it dry and empty on a shelf. With her career on hold and her home in imminent danger—an intangibly wrong feeling in the air—something shifted inside her, so that when she thought of the days ahead she saw not a vista of opportunity but a minefield braced with barbed wire. She was growing cynical: There was a germ of anger-fueled pessimism inside her that she’d never really noticed before.
Extreme measures were clearly necessary. So she bit back her reservations about the teaching job and went in for the interview that same day. There she spent two hours talking with Nancy, and then three other members of the school’s hiring board, talking uncomfortably about her film’s critical accolades; about the short film that won her a student Oscar back at UCLA film school; about her time working in the production offices of the famous director. She emphasized the high school English tutoring she’d done back in her post-college days in Wisconsin, in the hopes of proving that she really was qualified to teach (what other option did she have?). And when Nancy called her back, that same evening, to offer her the job—“a probationary position, you understand; we’ll see how this first semester goes, make sure it’s a comfortable fit for both of us, before we talk long-term”—she’d accepted it with resigned gratitude.
Maybe she should have waited to talk it over with Jeremy, but it seemed better to accept quickly, before the pain of her decision sank in. That evening, while she waited for him to come home from work, she sat in the living room and polished off a bottle of shiraz. At first, she tasted defeat in the tannic dregs of her wine, but with a second glass, and then a third, it increasingly seemed like a heroic—and yes, grown-up —decision she’d made. Maybe safe and benign was the proper response to the days ahead. Maybe it would even be a relief not to be battling the film industry for a while. She’d salvaged something important by doing this, she knew: As painful as it was to take a conventional job, homelessness would be worse. That felt like a far more permanent fracture, cracking deep into her very foundation.
This job is only temporary, she reminded herself now: She would come up with a new script idea, devote her evenings to writing, wait out their crisis. By next year, she could be living RC’s comeback cliché, a plot device that—it was true—was nearly as popular in Hollywood as alien invasion destroys New York or man falls in love with hooker with a heart of gold . Still, despite the forced optimism, she sensed something ominous hanging in the air,
“Yes, but they didn’t take any risks.” Something crashed and broke in the background, and RC covered the receiver to yell, “Lucas, go to your room now! … Filmmaking is a totally different industry,” she said, returning. “It’s defined by setbacks and comebacks. Not neat upward parabolas. I’m sure you’re aware of that.”
“Of course,” Claudia agreed. But the truth was that she’d never imagined that you could be going down your carefully chosen path, taking all the right steps, and suddenly find out that it was a dead end. There was no logic to that narrative. Where was the happy ending with the uplifting credit-sequence score?
“I just hope you don’t get cynical. Your sincerity is one of your greatest assets. It’s refreshing to meet someone nice, in this industry.”
“Yeah, well, clearly Hollywood has no interest in sincere . What I really need is to be more of a bitch.”
“Just hang in there,” RC offered. “You’ll figure something out eventually.”
But Claudia couldn’t just hang in there , not right now. The past weeks of stunning defeats had drained something vital away, squeezed her heart out like a sponge and left it dry and empty on a shelf. With her career on hold and her home in imminent danger—an intangibly wrong feeling in the air—something shifted inside her, so that when she thought of the days ahead she saw not a vista of opportunity but a minefield braced with barbed wire. She was growing cynical: There was a germ of anger-fueled pessimism inside her that she’d never really noticed before.
Extreme measures were clearly necessary. So she bit back her reservations about the teaching job and went in for the interview that same day. There she spent two hours talking with Nancy, and then three other members of the school’s hiring board, talking uncomfortably about her film’s critical accolades; about the short film that won her a student Oscar back at UCLA film school; about her time working in the production offices of the famous director. She emphasized the high school English tutoring she’d done back in her post-college days in Wisconsin, in the hopes of proving that she really was qualified to teach (what other option did she have?). And when Nancy called her back, that same evening, to offer her the job—“a probationary position, you understand; we’ll see how this first semester goes, make sure it’s a comfortable fit for both of us, before we talk long-term”—she’d accepted it with resigned gratitude.
Maybe she should have waited to talk it over with Jeremy, but it seemed better to accept quickly, before the pain of her decision sank in. That evening, while she waited for him to come home from work, she sat in the living room and polished off a bottle of shiraz. At first, she tasted defeat in the tannic dregs of her wine, but with a second glass, and then a third, it increasingly seemed like a heroic—and yes, grown-up —decision she’d made. Maybe safe and benign was the proper response to the days ahead. Maybe it would even be a relief not to be battling the film industry for a while. She’d salvaged something important by doing this, she knew: As painful as it was to take a conventional job, homelessness would be worse. That felt like a far more permanent fracture, cracking deep into her very foundation.
This job is only temporary, she reminded herself now: She would come up with a new script idea, devote her evenings to writing, wait out their crisis. By next year, she could be living RC’s comeback cliché, a plot device that—it was true—was nearly as popular in Hollywood as alien invasion destroys New York or man falls in love with hooker with a heart of gold . Still, despite the forced optimism, she sensed something ominous hanging in the air,
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