Previously on My Troma Summer:
Part One, Part Two & Part Three
After consolidating all of Lloyd’s bizarre Kabukiman tangents into a more or less comprehensible outline, I delivered the document to Andy and began work on a new phase of my P.A. duties: setting up a production office for the movie.
The Troma building on 9th Avenue was far too cramped to house all the staff and activity of the upcoming shoot, so Andy, the intense, hyper-caffeinated first A.D., had secured two floors of a small brownstone overlooking a debris-strewn vacant lot several blocks away, and I’d been tasked with much of the grunt work involved in getting the satellite location up and running. I was happy with the shift from the constant squawking and ballbusting of the Hell's Kitchen hive to the quiet solitude of the empty production office, alone with my thoughts and the junkies shooting up in the lot next door.
Eventually, another P.A. showed up: an insanely hot, baby-voiced 19-year old girl with short-shorts and perky, untethered breasts poking out from a tight white Cocteau Twins concert T. “Hi,” she called out, stepping through the door with an uncertain expression. “Andy said you’d tell me what to do.”
Yet sadly, despite the juicy Penthouse Forum set-up, all we did together was clean and paint the office for the next couple of days. As far as I could tell, the new P.A. had no discernible interest in me, sexually or otherwise, but was friendly enough and didn’t seem to mind when she caught me sneaking the occasional glance at her ass.
Perhaps with a little more time (and a lot more booze) I could have weaseled my way into her affections, but my window of opportunity slammed quickly shut when three more conventionally handsome production assistants arrived on the scene in quick succession, bombarding Baby Voice with charm as I was recalled to the Troma mothership, where Lloyd informed me the screenwriters for the movie...the movie we'd be shooting in six weeks...had either quit or been fired (the details were hazy) and now I had until Friday to come up with a script based on the outline I’d concocted for Kabukiman. I also learned I was to receive $500 for my efforts, which translated as an increase in my P.A. salary from $50 to a princely $100 a week during pre-production and the first month of production.
“This is a huge opportunity,” Andy informed me after the meeting. “I totally went to bat for you, so don’t fuck me on this...now, be honest, can you really do the script by this weekend?”
“Yeah, I think so,” I said, conveniently forgetting it had taken a month to finish the script I’d originally shown him as a sample of my writing.
“Okay,” Andy nodded. “And how’s it going with the production office? Think you can get the phone company in there to hook everything up before the art department arrives on Wednesday?”
“Uh...yeah, probably,” I stammered, checking the legal pad I’d started carrying around to keep myself organized. “I mean, I left a message with AT&T, but...”
“What?”
“Well, I mean...I’m going to be writing the script, right?”
“At night.” Andy gave me a look of annoyed surprise. “What, you thought you were just gonna sit around here and write all day?”
“Actually,” I replied, trying to be practical, “it’s a little noisy here...and, y’know, the production office doesn’t have any desks yet, so...”
Andy released a humorless chuckle, wise to my game. “Oooh, right, I get it...so you’re just gonna sit home and let all the other P.A.s do the heavy lifting, even though I put you, specifically, in charge of desks and chairs for the new place."
“What? No! Look, I'll write at night!” I said, feeling and sounding defensive. “I just don’t know if I can finish the whole script by this weekend if I don't...”
“No, no, no...” Andy smirked, like I was Little Lord Fauntleroy, patting my arm as he led me to the door. “You go home and write, and I’ll see you on Friday. I'm sure the other P.A.s won't mind picking up the slack.” Then, a final warning: "Just don’t fuck me on this.”
Four and a half days later, I delivered my first draft of the Kabukiman script, and Andy called soon after with congratulations:
“You fucked me.”
To be continued...
