"Hello," Ryan said. "I'm Ryan Anderson. Just call me Ryan."
They introduced themselves and walked downstairs together.
Katherine didn't stand on ceremony. "Ryan, I've seen you around a lot these past few days. Do you work here?"
Ryan nodded and kept it simple. "My film crew is holding auditions. We've rented some of Warner's audition rooms and a few offices."
"Your film crew?" Katherine picked up on that immediately.
She ventured, "Is it the crew for The Purge?"
They had been on the same floor for a while. She had picked up bits and pieces.
"That's right," Ryan said. "I'm the producer."
Katherine's eyes went wide. "You're so young. That's rare in Hollywood."
"It's my own company," Ryan said, stepping out of the stairwell first. Katherine caught up, and he continued, "That's the only reason I'm a producer at all."
A flicker of surprise crossed her face. His own company, with a budget in the tens of millions. "May I ask which company?"
She was only twenty and couldn't quite hide the eagerness.
Ryan stayed composed, watching her quietly, and said casually, "Starlight Entertainment."
The flicker faded. She had never heard of it. Had to be one of the small bottom-tier outfits in Hollywood.
Her curiosity dropped off noticeably.
Ryan acted as though he hadn't noticed and said with a mild sigh, "It only took me ten days to pull in $11 million in investment. Unfortunately, time was tight. Otherwise more people would have come on board."
Katherine quietly kicked herself. Eleven million dollars. A small company pulling that kind of investment?
This was probably a company on its way up.
She smiled warmly. "Securing that kind of money is genuinely impressive. Ninety percent of people in this industry couldn't do it."
She meant it. The admiration came through clearly.
Ryan just smiled, modest about it, as if it wasn't worth making a fuss over.
Katherine studied him. The more she looked, the less simple he seemed.
The two walked into the lobby on the first floor. Hurried footsteps came up fast behind them. A man in his twenties, Latino, came rushing over.
"Miss Heigl," he said, catching his breath. "Change of plans. Director Bellin asked me to let you know the voice-over recording starts tomorrow at eight in the morning."
Katherine turned. Her easy smile went cold in an instant. "I understand," she said flatly.
The man seemed used to it and left quickly.
She turned back to Ryan, and just as quickly the warmth returned. "We've been working on the same floor lately."
Ryan asked at the right moment, "Are you an actress?"
"Yes." They had reached the door. Katherine stepped ahead and pushed it open for him. Once outside she added, "I've been on the Roswell set recently. I'm the second female lead."
Ryan nodded. "That's a real role."
Katherine didn't see it that way. "It's TV, not film."
"One step at a time," Ryan said, with a straight face. "You'll find your place."
She almost asked whether there was a suitable role for her in The Purge, but she held back.
They walked into the parking lot and she said easily, "Want to grab a drink?"
Ryan thought for a moment, then said with what seemed like genuine regret, "Sorry, I have work tonight. Another time."
"I'll call you," Katherine said, just as naturally. "What's your number?"
Ryan gave her the digits.
He waved goodbye and drove his Cadillac out of Burbank, heading back to his apartment in North Hollywood.
After a simple dinner and a shower, he went to his study, opened his computer, and found an email from Glen waiting in his inbox.
That was also the main reason he had passed on the drink with Katherine.
After The Purge script was locked, Glen had gone to work refining the script for Final Destination. This was the latest version, and he wanted Ryan's thoughts on it.
Ryan knew perfectly well which mattered more: an invitation from an attractive woman, or a project central to the company's future.
Unlike the first draft he had read, this version was noticeably closer to the film he remembered from his previous life. The coroner, who had barely appeared in the early draft, now had a clearly expanded role.
Several of the main characters had been adjusted too. Carter Horton, fourth in the death sequence, had been written as a hothead from the start, but the revision layered in a more calculating side to him.
The script ran under a hundred pages. Ryan read it through twice carefully, then wrote up his notes in a reply email.
He sent it to both Glen and James.
His feedback was straightforward: the film's surface presentation should read as American as possible, and the horror scenes needed to play to North American horror audiences. When characters died, it should follow the slasher style. Blood, severed limbs, the works.
These were commercial considerations, nothing more.
Ryan had done his research before the Abu Dhabi trip. When it came to gore, horror films couldn't afford to be timid about it.
The Scream series was the clearest example. Even after weaving in teen and suspense elements, it had held onto the core slasher qualities.
Audience tastes varied sharply by region. In the East, blood and gore landed as disgusting rather than frightening. Most American audiences, on the other hand, were terrified by exactly that.
Strictly speaking, Final Destination was an early hybrid of Eastern and Western horror sensibilities. But the Eastern elements in the film he remembered were so faint that anyone without a background in Eastern culture would never even register them. The concept of Death as an invisible force, combined with the parade of gruesome deaths, made it easy for North American audiences to take in.
Just as Chinese food had to be Westernized to succeed in the West, commercial filmmaking had to adapt to its market.
After sending the email, Ryan read for a while. The professional books on film operations stacked around him were dense, and working through them alongside his memories of various productions gave him a real return on the time.
Too many films in Hollywood had mediocre ideas and execution, yet turned massive profits through sharp commercial handling.
Ryan sometimes let his thinking run far ahead, into goals ambitious enough that saying them out loud would invite ridicule. But he was working toward them, and even falling short of the highest point still left a lot of ground to stand on.
Since he had this opportunity, he intended to use it well.
For some people the high ground was pure cinematic art, for others social good. Ryan's version was the internet and commercial entertainment.
The difficulty was real, and the risks were bigger.
To stay safe, he never forgot his fallback.
So he opened the document and looked over what he had already written for Fifty Shades.
The outline for the first part had been done for a while. The first twenty thousand words had gone through multiple revisions. He had even posted six thousand words on his blog.
Current reader count: zero.
He logged in, added another two thousand words, closed the blog, and got back to the novel itself.
His fingers moved steadily across the keyboard. Lines of text filled the screen.
Then they stopped.
Writer's block.
He needed to write the male lead training his first female slave, and his mind was completely empty.
It wasn't that he didn't know how. He had nothing to draw from.
Art came from life, even when it went beyond it.
How was he supposed to write about something he had no experience with?
He sat there for half an hour, writing and deleting, deleting and rewriting, seven or eight times over. Then he just closed the document.
He felt, again, the sharp edge of his own inexperience.
What was he supposed to do about it?
He thought for a while and came up with nothing. The block had soured his mood enough that he couldn't even focus on reading. He went to bed.
The next morning he was up early, went for a run, picked up breakfast outside, and arrived at the Warner Bros. studio on time.
He had contract negotiations with the main actors' agents today.