“It’s precisely like Dunkirk. One of my favorite films, actually—I thought it was so brilliant how Nolan kept us guessing at how all the narrative threads would fit together at the end.” Justin glances sideways at Harvey. “Actually, Chris would be a pretty fun pick for a director, wouldn’t he?”
“Oh, Jesus.” Justin nods emphatically. “Yeah, that’d be the dream.”
“What about Jasmine Zhang?” I ask. I’m a little surprised neither of them has brought her up. Isn’t she the most obvious choice to direct?
“Oh, I don’t know if she has the bandwidth for this.” Justin fiddles with his straw. “She’s a little overwhelmed with work right now.”
“Side effects of winning an Oscar,” says Harvey. “She’s booked up for the next decade.”
“Ha. Yeah. But don’t worry, we have some really special talent in mind. There’s a kid just out of USC, Danny Baker, just wowed everyone with a short film about war crimes in Cambodia—oh, and some girl at Tisch who put out a student documentary on accessing PRC historical archives last year, if it’s important that you have an Asian female in charge.”
The waitress sets my Miss Saigon in front of me. I take a sip and wince; it’s much sweeter than I expected.
“Well, that’s very cool,” I say, slightly flummoxed. They’re talking like they’ve already decided to option the novel. Am I doing well, then? What else do I need to say to persuade them? “So what can I help you with?”
“Oh, we’re just here to hear whatever’s on your mind!” Justin laces his fingers together and leans forward. “We care a lot about the author’s vision here at Greenhouse. We’re not here to mangle your work, or whitewash it or Hollywood-ify it, or whatever. We’re all about the story’s integrity, so we want your input at every stage.”
“Think of it as creating a vision board.” Harvey sits ready with a pen poised over a legal pad. “What elements would you absolutely want to see in a movie version of The Last Front, Juniper?”
“Well, um, I guess I hadn’t thought much about that.” I’ve just remembered why I never order coffee at work meetings. Caffeine goes straight to my bladder, and I have a sudden, vicious urge to pee. “Screenwriting’s not really my thing, so I don’t know . . .”
“We could start with, like, your dream cast?” Justin prompts. “Any big stars you always had in mind while writing?”
“I—uh, I don’t know, really.” My face burns. I feel like I’m failing a test I didn’t bother to study for, though in retrospect it feels obvious I should have put some thought into what I wanted from a film adaptation before I met with producers. “I didn’t have any actors when I was writing in mind, to be honest; I’m not super visual like that . . .”
“Well, how about this Colonel Charles Robertson character?” asks Harvey. “The British attaché? We could invest in getting someone really major, like Benedict Cumberbatch, or Tom Hiddleston . . .”
I blink. “But he’s not even a main character.” Colonel Charles Robertson gets barely a passing mention in the first chapter.
“Well, right,” says Justin. “But maybe we could expand his role a bit, give him some more dramatic presence—”
“I mean, I guess.” I frown. “I’m not sure how that would work—it’d ruin the pacing of the first act—but we could look into it . . .”
“See, the trick with big war epics is that you need someone really charismatic to ground it all,” says Justin. “You don’t get broad crossover appeal if military history is the only marketing point. But put in a British heartthrob, and then you’ve got your women, your middle-aged moms, your teenage girls . . . Again, it’s the Dunkirk principle. What the fuck is Dunkirk? Who knows? We went to see Tom Hardy.”
“And Harry Styles,” says Harvey.
“Right! Exactly. What we’re saying is, your film needs a Harry Styles.”
“What about that little kid from Spider-Man?” says Harvey. “What’s his name?”
Justin perks up. “Tom Holland?”
“Oh yeah. I would love to see him in a war movie. Logical next step, for a career like that.” Harvey glances my way, like he’s just remembered I exist. “What do you think, June? You like Tom Holland?”
“I—yeah, I like Tom Holland.” My bladder bulges. I squirm in my seat, trying to find a better equilibrium. “That would work, I guess, sure. I mean, I’m not sure who he would play, but—”
“Then for A Geng, we were thinking some Chinese talent—a pop star, maybe,” says Justin. “Then that gets us the Chinese box office, which is huge—”
“The problem with Asian pop stars is that they have shit English, though,” says Harvey. “Herro. Production nightmare.”
“Harvey!” Justin laughs. “You can’t say that.”
“Ah! You caught me! Don’t tell Jasmine.”
“But that wouldn’t be a problem,” I cut in. “The laborers are supposed to have bad English.”
I must sound snarkier than I intended, because Justin quickly amends, “I mean, we would never alter the story in a way you aren’t comfortable with. That’s not what we’re trying to do here. We want to totally respect the project—”
I shake my head. “No, no, yeah, I don’t feel disrespected—”
“And we’re just spitballing ideas to package things more attractively, and to, uh, broaden the audience . . .”
I sit back and lift my hands in surrender. “Look. You guys are the Hollywood experts. I’m just the novelist. All of that sounds fine to me, and you have my blessing, or whatever, to package this however you think is appropriate.”
I do mean that. I’ve never wanted to have much control over my film adaptations—I have no training as a screenwriter, and besides, social media is always abuzz with gossip about this or that novelist who had a falling-out with the director. I don’t want to be a creative diva. And maybe they have a point. Who wants to go to the theater and watch a bunch of people speaking in Chinese for two hours? I mean, wouldn’t you go see a Chinese film instead? We’re talking about a blockbuster made with an American audience in mind. Accessibility matters.
“Thanks for understanding.” Justin beams. “We talk to authors sometimes, and they—you know . . .”
“They’re very picky,” says Harvey. “They want every scene in the movie to match the book, word for word.”
“And they don’t get that film is a totally different medium, and requires different storytelling skills,” says Justin. “It’s a translation, really. And translation across mediums is inherently unfaithful to some extent. Roland Barthes. An act of translation is an act of betrayal.”
“Belles infidèles,” says Harvey. “Beautiful and unfaithful.”
“You get it, though,” says Justin. “Which is awesome.”
And that’s the end of it. This is awesome. I am awesome. We are all so, so excited to make things work. I keep waiting for them to offer more substantive details. How much money is on the table? What’s their timeline? Are they going to start reaching out to this Danny Baker kid, like, tomorrow? (Harvey made it sound like he would DM him right away.) But all they’re giving me are vagaries, and I get the sense that this is perhaps not the right context to press. So I sit back and let them buy me some overpriced strudel (named the “Inglourious Pastry”) and chat at me about how gorgeous the waterfront is. Justin handles the check, and both of them hug me tightly before we part ways.
I stroll until they’ve turned around the opposite corner, and then I dash back into the café and pee for a full minute.
THAT WENT OKAY. I EMAIL BRETT A SUMMARY OF THE MEETING AS I stroll back over the bridge to Rosslyn. I think they liked me, but it seems like they’re still feeling out some things before there’s cash on the table. I don’t think Jasmine Zhang is attached, which is weird?