"Landis, Geoffrey A - Shooting The Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Landis Geoffrey A)

"People pay money to see Evel Knievel jump his motorcycle over cars," I clarified. "You know that they wouldn't be paying if they knew for sure he was going to make it. A little risk helps us."
Swiggs nodded. "That's straight. Where's your script?"
Mr. Rich cleared his throat. "No, ah, we were going to just film it as it happens. Give it a feel of veracity."
"A documentary? Babes in the woods. Docs don't fill theaters, dude. No, we need a plot—a little danger, a little romance. Fuck, no problem, I got writers, I buy fucking writers by the dozen, we can have a script next week." He leaned back in his fake-leather chair, and stared up at his reflection in the mirrored ceiling. "Do you assholes know what you have here? Baby, Adventure: Moon has got everything in one sweet deal, spectacle, adventure, exotic locations, sex—you're selling the goddamn American dream here, we are. It's going to be so hot it will make the hula-hoop fad look like old socks. You came to the right place, baby, you came to somebody who knows how to put together a deal."
We looked at each other and smiled. He was hooked.
"If you can pull off the tech shit," he said, "I can find the funding. Are you assholes lucky, or what?"
And that was how we sold our souls for a chance to go to the moon—not even to the Devil, but to Danton Swiggs.
"He's a lizard," Mr. Rich said, when we finally left, outside in that warm Hollywood night.
"But he's a producer," I said, and we both grinned.
"Hey," said the Gecko. "Watch it. You're insulting reptiles."
You understand, we didn't have any other choice. We had cut the budget and scraped and lied and cut every corner. When we started, we'd had plans for follow-up missions, for a whole settlement—we killed those plans, they cost too much. One trip to the moon, paid for by private funds—that was all we thought about, all we talked about, all that appeared in our dreams at night.
And Danton Swiggs knew where to get the money to do it.
It wasn't his own money—Swiggs had money, but not nearly enough to put together the Project Moon expedition all by himself. But he knew people. Kids with inherited millions who liked a little risk along with their blue chips and trust funds. Oil-industry executives that needed tax-shelters to hide windfall profits from the IRS. Drug dealers who needed to put money into a legitimate business. Casino owners looking for new places to invest.
And Swiggs took his cut.
His cut, as it happened, meant a controlling interest in the project.
That was something we fought like wolverines, but it was one thing he wouldn't budge on. Swiggs might consult a personal astrologer to tell him the best hour of day to sign a contract, he might decide to trust somebody because he had a dream about the color of their shoes, but his cocaine-rotted nose was infallible about sniffing out just exactly what was good for Danton Swiggs, and the one rule he didn't break was, take care of number one: always keep control.
When Swiggs told us that this was a non-negotiable, we excused ourselves and held a hasty strategy conference.
"Deal-breaker," said the Gecko. "I say we walk."
"Walk?" Mr. Rich said. "Where the hell do you think we can go?" He laid it out for us. "We've already done everything but rob banks," he said. "And you know we'd do that too, but we need more cash than a bank robbery. It comes to this: sign the project over to Swiggs, and go to the moon, or keep control, and forget we had ever dreamed. Do you see any other choices? I don't. What do you want to do, guys? Just what do you want to do?"
We signed.
We thought we knew what we were getting into. The first thing Swiggs told us—and he told us this even before we signed—was that we could forget the silly idea that we would make the trip to the moon ourselves.
"Actors," he said. "Jeez, I thought you knew that from the start." Swiggs was wearing a purple velvet dinner jacket with a pink velour shirt. As he talked he was pulling Froot Loops out of a box, examining each one before popping it into his mouth. "We need some talent here, and that means actors, not engineers. Some hot numbers who look good on screen. The public plinks down their beer money, and they want to see beautiful people; they want drama and romance, not a couple of pasty-faced whitebread dorks wearing pocket-protectors, no offense."
This had always been the part of our plan that we'd never dared to speak aloud: we were not only going to put together a moon mission, overcoming tremendous odds, but we were going to fly it ourselves. Wouldn't the drama of the mission overshadow everything, and make the nation understand us for what we were—engineers—and like us all the better for not pretending?
"Are you jerking me off?" said Swiggs. "You, in the movie? Get real."
Gecko tried to argue this to Swiggs. He played every card in his deck: that our story was a story of a dream, it was our story, it would only be a shabby lie if they produced Project Moon with actors. Swiggs didn't budge. "So the story's about engineers—fine, the actors play engineers. No problemo, we'll write that into the script. You think that when the public sees a movie about cowboys, they hire real cowboys? Hell, no. They hire Yul Brynner to play a cowboy. Hollywood sells dreams, and that doesn't mean pudgy middle-aged guys in white shirts. Wipe-out, dudes, you sucked the big O. Pick up your boards and get with the program."
He looked at us. "Forget it, it's a done deal. Say, want some Froot Loops?"
"I figure it this way," the Gecko explained to me, later. "We do this right, it's a big hit, there's going to be a sequel." He smiled. "And then—then—who's holding the winning cards? We signed away control—but just for one film. Next time, we're in for sure—and this time we'll have a real budget, not just paperclips and old string."
"You think?" I asked.
"Sure." The Gecko smiled beatifically. "Mr. Swiggs promised me."
Then Swiggs let us know that he would shoot a porn flick.
"It's your idea, guy," he told me. "You said it: we've got to hit every market in America."
I threw up my hands and shook my head: no way. Every market? Sure, but pornography wasn't the business plan I'd had in mind.
Swiggs explained. The film would still be targeted to mainstream America. What Swiggs envisioned was a second film, shot between scenes of his film Adventure: Moon, a porn film in space.
After all, porn was what he was good at.
We didn't like it.
"How much did it cost to shoot Deep Throat?" he demanded.
I shook my head, shrugged my shoulders. "I don't know."
"Fifty grand," he said. "Fifty grand to shoot—that's pocket change. How much did it gross?"
Again, I shook my head.
He pointed his finger at me and laughed. "Bingo!" He snapped his fingers. "You got it. Nobody knows how much it grossed; they've been keeping that figure close. Half that money was under the table anyway. Now, how much have they reported, eh? Reported income only. Okay, hold on to your balls. Three hundred and fifty million smackers. A third of a billion gross for a film that cost fifty grand to produce, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
"And why is that? How come Americans, smart people who like their money, how come they paid three hundred million to see a lousy film that featured crummy lighting, amateur camera work, and actors that couldn't even say a two-line script without flubbing their lines? I tell you why. They paid for the novelty, that's why. They paid to see on-screen fucking like they've never seen on screen before, a new way to do the world's oldest trick.
"Now, you tell me: what kind of property do we have here? Don't answer, I'll tell you. We have got our little hands around a property that will show sex acts that have never even been possible on Earth. A measly third of a billion? Hell, we're going to blow that away on the video alone. We're going to be drowning in money. And we rake the straight stuff, the action-adventure stuff, right off the top. First we sell to the kiddies, make a few billion, then after we've saturated that market, we sell again to their mommy and daddy, let 'em watch some hot action like they've never seen. This is going to be hot, babe, and I mean bitching hot. You guys just don't know, you don't have a clue."
Suddenly he got serious. Swiggs did that sometimes, change moods instantly. "Let me explain this so you can understand," he said. "We got no choice here. You tell me I've gotta line up a billion dollars cool to buy a seat in this poker game—" he held up a hand—"I know, I know, we'll make it back, we'll be rich. I know that, I've got the story. Now you listen. If I don't line up the bones, we don't get rich, we get the big Melvin. I need a pitch I can sell. Investors aren't going for the adventures. I'm hearing don't call me, I'll call you. You don't like porn? Fine. My daddy told me, everybody's entitled to an opinion, you got yours. I respect that. But you gotta realize, I can sell a fuck-flick. My investors understand that.
"So, get with the program, dude. Either we squirt some joy juice in orbit, or we fold right now. Got it?"
We got it. As Mr. Rich explained it, Von Braun made V-2 rockets before he made moon rockets. Was that moral? He got us to the moon. You do what you have to.


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