When Your Best Idea Is Gay Cats, Get Smart

I would like to pay you to write this script.”

There are few sweeter words, even when the sum following them is 1,200 pounds. After all, I was still a Classics student at Oxford, I’d never written a screenplay, and I wasn’t about to say no. Even when I told him my idea--a romance between a geologist and a cave diver, with digressions on plate tectonics--he didn’t flinch. Before I knew it, I was drinking Bardolino at 3 a.m. in his flat while he sang along to Elvis Costello: “Even in a perfect world, where everyone was equal/I’d still own the film rights/And be working on the sequel . . . “ Different country, different rules.

Magnus asked if I had any other ideas. After three glasses of wine, I have ideas the way hamsters have babies. “This one came to me and my dad when our British Blue got an infection. It’s an animated series about two gay cats. They hang out at this bar called ‘The Hungry Tom.’ One of them, the butch one with a swagger that would scare off a pit bull, has a long-lost son, a little kitten, who comes to the big city . . . “

“I like it,” Magnus said. “Has anyone ever told you you look like Posh Spice?”

Cut to: EXT. OCEAN AVENUE--DAY. SUPER: One year later.

Halfway through my first year of film school in L.A., I am an infinitely savvier screenwriter. I eschew geologists. I make right turns on red, and I know how to use SUPER to indicate the passage of time. I am on my way to yoga. The American Film Market, an annual event where everyone who has a film--and even more people who don’t--descend on Santa Monica to hawk their wares, is filling the sidewalk with baffled foreigners. Still, I’m not expecting to see Magnus.

“Your car looks like a suppository,” he says, which seems a bit rich coming from someone staying at the Travelodge, and not even the one on Ocean. Over coffee on the terrace of the Loews Hotel, I assure him that he mustn’t let me keep him if he has meetings to attend. I am not surprised to hear he has plenty of time.

I am surprised, though, when I see a sharply dressed man with a copy of Variety tucked under one arm walk briskly toward us, waving to Magnus. And I am even more surprised when Magnus, rather than acting like he has some business being here, seems flustered and embarrassed.

Belatedly, almost grudgingly, Magnus introduces me to Adam, the director of development for a major London production company.

“I’m just on my way to a meeting with HBO,” Adam says, “but I wanted to tell you how things are going with your idea.”

“Oh, that,” Magnus protests weakly. “Forget it. It’s not remotely commercial ...”

“No, there’s something fresh about it,” Adam persists. “Two gay cats. Who’d have thought of that? Anyway, I floated it to my boss, and we should definitely have a meeting when we’re back in town. Nice to meet you . . . ?”

“Lydia.”

He’s gone. Magnus squirms, avoiding eye contact. “I was just about to tell you . . . “ he bleats. I go and get my suppository from the valet.

Once, in a bad play, I had to say the line “those who garden in paradise forget the deserts elsewhere.” I didn’t really get it then, but now I think I do: If you’re a writer, you know the ideas are the easy part, so sometimes you forget that, to someone short on creativity, two gay cats might sound like the next “Citizen Kane.”

Maybe I should have gotten mad, set Adam straight, demanded a meeting. Maybe if I had, “Citizen Kitten” would be the new “Family Guy.” But I didn’t. I laughed. And later, I called my dad in England to tell him the story, thinking he would laugh too. He didn’t.

“Two gay cats?” he said. “That was my idea.”