Junk Peddler Tries to Make It in America

Tall and pale and young and handsome, the guy from Yugoslavia came walking. He was my driver, taking me from my sterile, corporate Los Angeles hotel to LAX.

“So what do you do when you’re not driving a car?” I asked him, knowing that anyone who is young and handsome in Los Angeles has Big Plans.

“You mean, am I actor?” he said in a thick Slavic accent. “No, I am not actor. I am screenwriter.”

“What kind of stuff do you write?” I asked, amused. I had heard that an L.A. newspaper once put a guy out on Melrose Avenue to ask passers-by, “How’s your screenplay going?” Nine out of 10 responded, “Almost finished.”

“I write crap. . . ,” he said, the way Bela Lugosi says, “I am Count Dracula.”

I giggled, but he continued in a passionately serious tone.

“I write thrillers. I write the crap that these people want to see,” he said, gesturing to the mall-sprawl world we motored through. “What these people want is junk. That’s what they line up for. I write that.

“I do it only for money. That’s all I care about is money. When I sell screenplay, I get $200,000. If I wanted to be Dostoevksy, I’d write book. I want money. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I write.”

He explained that he left Yugoslavia, where he, like his parents, was an intellectual and a writer, to come to the United States. He said no country in the world has as much democracy and freedom as this country.

“And what will you do with all the money?” I asked.

“Ah, that is question, that is very good question,” he said. “I don’t know.”

“So, do you have an agent?” I asked, trying to decide if he was serious.

“No. No agent,” he said, “but . . . I know a guy who knows Stallone.”

What we had here was a 28-year-old man with a degree in philosophy from the University of Belgrade who had been in the United States for 18 months--and already knew a guy who knew a guy.

“This must be very hard for you, writing in a different culture,” I offered. “Are your stories set in Europe?”

“No, I only write about America. It is not hard. I know what to expect when I come here. Nothing surprised me. I drove big American car like this in Yugoslavia. I wrote screenplays there. But they pay nothing--$5,000. Here, you write trash and they give you a lot of money. That’s why I come.”

“But what about the language problem? Don’t you find it hard to write in English?”

“Not a problem,” he said. “I write in Yugoslavian.”

(I was trying to imagine the pitch meeting: “Yo, Stallone, I got piece of trash written in Yugoslavian. Perfect for you.”)

“So you have a story for Stallone. What’s it about?”

“It’s about a bodyguard who catches his boss in bed with the President’s wife. Then he blackmails him.”

The handsome screenwriter does, in fact, have a translator. This driver is no idiot, even if he is trying to write junk that stupid Americans would line up to see. He was inspired, he explained, by one of Hegel’s greatest hits.

“Have you read Hegel’s ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “But I did see ‘Ernest Saves Christmas.’ ”

We then talked about the master-servant relationship--as Hegel saw it, as Stallone might develop it.

“But with your attitude,” I asked, “don’t you think you’ll have a problem at a pitch meeting? Isn’t 95% of what goes on in L.A. just sales? You must agree that the best salesmen are those who believe in their product.”

“Yes, could be problem,” he admitted, “but I will not tell them it is crap.”

This all cheered me up. I was well ahead of the game. See, my screenplay’s in English, and it ain’t half bad.