Lustucia Writers Meeting

We were standing around in the writers' lounge, playing darts. Peter had just brought up to Bruce, "How do you picture the balcony scene?" Bruce stood there, dart in hand. You'd believe he was actually thinking of an answer to Peter's question. More likely, Bruce really had his mind on that throw. Especially with the benefit of looking back afterwards, knowing that after a day of puncturing new holes in the drywall, he then took his time on that one, maybe had something click or, sure, maybe got lucky, but some way or another he threw and got damn close to a bullseye.

Seriously, Bruce hadn't made contact with the target in at least a hundred throws that day, and then on that one, whack!, his dart smacks onto the target in the ring outside the bullseye, and only a hair's breadth away from the edge of the bullseye too.

So there was clapping, telling him good job, when the door, BANG, gets busted open, pieces of it around where the knob was flew off and landed on the floor. And Flint--you couldn't mistake him for anyone else, six foot five, aviator mirror shades, salt and pepper beard, hair down past his waist that was dyed green in some other millennium but is mostly the underlying bleached white now, the grey bathrobe with a black F embroidered on the breast--Flint came marching in wielding a big aluminum garbage can. And he went right to the middle of the room while we all jumped back against the wall. And there in the middle of the room he dumped out a whole garbage can's worth of loose papers, and then turned and threw the empty garbage can at the wall like a discus. It took out a huge chunk of the drywall beside the door, and landed on the carpeted floor with a muted clank.

Flint then turned to face us. He pointed down to the mound of papers that was still in a lively tumult at his feet, and he shouted at us, "What the fuck is this!"

He turned his head in sharp jerks to stare down each of us one by one.

Bruce, maybe feeling emboldened by his last throw and not really having a good sense of how statistics works, threw Flint an answer: "It's a whole lot of papers, Flint!"

Flint bent down, swiped up a handful of papers from the pile, and shook his fistful of papers at us, and said, "What the fuck is this script!"

Glancing down at the papers, it did look to be photocopies of the draft scripts for the entire season of Lustucia. In among the script pages were photocopies of Bruce's storyboards so far too.

Peter gave an open palm gesture down to the pile of papers, and said, "They're just a first draft."

Flint threw down his handful of papers, and pointed at Peter, and said, "Don't FUCK with me."

"Do you need to get some water, man?" Peter offered. "Some air?"

Flint bent down and grabbed some papers again, and started balling them up and stared at Peter as he asked, "What is the logline of Lustucia?"

Peter answered, "A bartender gets supernatural powers from lustful acts."

"You, Tightlips," Flint said, turning to me, "is Lustucia a show for kids?"

"No, sir," I answered, not sure where the sir came from, it just slipped out.

"You, Peter, did you hear that I was excited to spearhead this project because I like being censored by eighty year olds who have it in their head that some fuck ass swearing makes something unfit for adults to fuck ass watch if they fuck ass want?"

"The show is going straight to streaming," Peter answered.

"You, Giggles," Flint said, turning to me again.

I tried to get to a straight face, but couldn't manage it.

Flint tossed the balled up paper over to the side, and said, "Every one of those I finish I'm cutting ten thousand dollars from the writers budget."

"Woah woah woah, Flint," Bruce said.

"Go on," Flint said, staring at Bruce as he bent over to grab another handful of papers.

"What's this about?"

"You tell me, writers!" Flint said, and started mashing another paper ball together. "From all of the vision meetings and planning and preliminary notes, WHAT is missing from my show?"

We looked back and forth between each other.

"My UNCENSORED show, ABOUT perversion and sex positivity that is engaged in so painstakingly sincerely that it's giving a woman FUCKING SUPER POWERS."

Flint's fingers were clutched around the paper ball like he was strangling it in revenge of something. He held the ball towards Peter, and asked, "Going once?"

Nothing.

"You two?" he asked, holding it towards Bruce and then me.

I had an inkling, but my throat was closed up. If I was the one who guessed the wrong thing and made it worse...

Flint threw the paper ball over by the other one.

He then scooped up another handful of paper, and said, as he started balling those papers into a third ball, "Peter: Why is bestiality GONE from Lustucia? That a 'first draft' omission? I remember it being pretty FUCKING important to the plot! Episode FUCKING ONE, Lu feels mysteriously called to the woods, turns out she's unwittingly dialed in to a wolf pack's communications because her empathy for all beings is so profound, she gets a wolf to fuck her at the end of the episode's first act. Act two she starts presenting werewolf abilities. Act three she harnesses the powers mindfully by recalling the carnal oneness of getting mated and she uses these powers to save her roommate from an abusive ex, she gouges the man and puts the fear of the devil into him. WHERE IS THAT?"

Peter made a gesture with both of his palms upturned, and said, "We thought of another way. If you read those scripts, and if those ARE the ones we wrote and there wasn't just some mix up, then you saw right in there, she gets monster powers from BDSM. She gets invited to a kink thing, it's outside of her usual routine but she's been looking to try new things, she gets tied up, another woman hits her around, uses a whip and stuff, and dialing in on that feeling is her awakening. Later she remembers THAT to get her powers to freak the roommate's ex out."

Flint pointed at Peter with the hand that held the paper ball, and said, "That's vanilla. I could put that on TV after Jeopardy and you know it. I will not be censored, Peter. Where's Jason?"

Peter answered, "He said he might be in today or he might be busy, I haven't seen him."

Flint asked, "Did he put you up to this?"

Peter gave a wavering hand gesture. "I think he brought it up, suggested that Jessica might be uncomfortable with the role if we went too far in that direction. We all started spitballing, and that new direction seemed to have legs as much as the sodomy version did."

Flint sneered at Peter, and tossed the paper ball over with the other two.

Peter sighed.

Flint told him, "I have been to Jess's ranch, she is excited for the 'sodomy version,' I'll tell you that, Peter. I will tell you that. Ohhhh when I see Jason, I am going to..."

Flint kicked the mound of papers, sent a bunch of them sliding around.

He then pointed to Bruce, and said, "Episode seven, she still transforms into a horse to run into town in time for the dance thing. Where did she get her horse powers? Was that at least implied bestiality?"

With a smile, Bruce reported, "She sleeps with a guy who's hung like a horse!"

"You are pathetic and weak."

Bruce's smile drooped into a confused look of hurt.

Flint took a deep breath in, and sighed. He went and grabbed the garbage can, brought it over, and started scooping the papers into it. "I'm gonna find Jason," he said. "Disregard his suggestion, alright? I will replace him as director with a snap of my fingers and do it my fucking self if he suddenly decides now that he's uncomfortable with the project he knew he was signing on to, I fucking swear."

Peter assured, "We'll get to work on it."

"Write it right this time."

"Sure."

"Alright. When I have a script that does do it right, I will rescind those budget knocks. But I'm serious. Like we discussed at the start. We're making something that speaks a truth a lot of wusses aren't ready for. But it's overdue. I'm not fucking around. I'm not writing for grandmas. I'm not writing for pretentious fuckers who like 'innovative style' or 'cool shots' as long as the message is already the most baby food palatable paste that they wanted to fucking agree with anyways. We're not making some softcore BDSM bait. What we are making, is a badass series about a badass who taps in to the enormous sexual magnitude of beasts: wolves, horses, past societies knew that other species had sex appeal. We're bringing it the fuck back without dressing it up any different than if this was a show about Spiderman. Understood?"

"Yes."

"Godspeed," Flint said, and then with his garbage can full of script papers, went off to hunt down the director.