Hella Nation - Evan Wright [149]
“Berg’s a sensitive matter,” Dollard says, sounding oddly calculating—more like an agent than I am accustomed to hearing. “I can’t blow him off, but I have an obligation to show it to Mike Simpson first.”
“How do you know Berg?” I ask.
“Business,” Dollard says. “We crawled through the slime together.” (Dollard later explains that Berg once provided him with helpful advice on a deal.)
Outside William Morris, Dollard is seized by a fit of self-objectivity. He admits to qualms about involving an old, loyal friend like Simpson in his current scheme. “People who get involved with me tend to end up feeling that they’ve been put through the wringer at some point,” he says. “Oh, well. What the fuck.”
Inside the lobby, receptionists do double takes as he approaches their desk and announces himself. God only knows what they make of him. He’s too old to be a recent vet, but his digital camouflage trousers, with their futuristic abstract pattern, have only recently become standard issue. Perhaps they think he’s a homeless man from the future.
An assistant escorts us to a screening room on the fourth floor. Mike Simpson, over six feet tall, lanky and fair-haired, approaches in the hall, grinning. In his early fifties and dressed in his regulation William Morris blue suit, Simpson looks more like a small-town banker than an industry player. He is originally from Texas, and his voice retains a rural twang. Patting Dollard’s shoulder, Simpson seems slightly in awe of him, like the strait-laced kid in high school who secretly yearns to be accepted by the delinquents.
To help evaluate the potential of Dollard’s film, Simpson has invited fellow agent John Ferriter to the screening. Simpson believes the agency ought to sell Young Americans as a hybrid documentary/reality-TV series, for which Dollard’s rough cut would be a pilot.
When I ask Simpson if he’s at all worried about representing Dollard, whose drug lunacies are a known quantity, he replies, “What we look at is the success of films like Fahrenheit 9/11 and the ability to go into that territory with Pat’s very different point of view. As far as his personal issues, this is the entertainment business. It’s not banking.”
John Ferriter enters the room, dressed in a baggy black suit like the hit men from Pulp Fiction—a look that has never gone out of style among some agents. In his early thirties, Ferriter has earned a reputation as one of Hollywood’s top reality-TV agents. As they make introductions, Ferriter drops his business card (Senior Vice President, Worldwide Head of Non-Scripted Television) on the table, then flips it like a blackjack dealer. Dollard appears momentarily unsure of himself. He tries shaking Ferriter’s hand, but fails to connect on the first pass.
“How are you?” Ferriter asks.
“Fine, good,” Dollard says, sitting down.
“You just got back from Iraq?”
“A few months ago.”
“Are you OK?” Ferriter leans closer to Dollard.
“Fucking fine.” Dollard fidgets.
“I mean, how are you doing?” Ferriter radiates deep concern.
“Dude, I didn’t fucking come here for fucking psychotherapy,” Dollard says.
(Dollard later tells me, “It’s important to show your agent he’s just the fucking cleaning lady. Ferriter obviously has good agent training. He didn’t even act insulted when I insulted him.”)
Simpson, watching from the back, laughs quietly.
Dollard feeds his DVD into the player by the TV at the head of the conference table. Ferriter sits about four feet from the TV screen, shaking his foot, tugging at his cuffs, running his hand through his longish black hair. When the “Blood for Blood” song begins to blast, Ferriter seems to relax, bopping his head to the rhythm. At about the twenty-minute mark, he stands and hits the stop button.
“Great, great,” Ferriter says. “I totally get it.”
“Is that all you want to see?” Dollard asks.
“This is going to be like The Aristocrats,” Ferriter says. “Every college kid in America is going to want to see this. It’s like Tom Green, Jackass in a war zone. And it’s real.”