Rebirth 1991: Keep the Fame, I'll Take the Royalties

The Beverly Hills Summons

The January sun hammered against the cracked window of Room 104 at The Pelican Motel, doing absolutely nothing to warm the damp, cheap carpet inside.

Paul Rudd burst through the door, nearly tearing it off its rusty hinges. He was out of breath, clutching a freshly printed copy of Variety magazine like it was the Holy Grail. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, and gleaming with absolute, unadulterated hysteria.

”We did it!” Paul shrieked, his voice cracking by an entire octave. He slammed the magazine onto the wobbly laminate desk, right over Elias’s neat stack of tax deduction receipts. ”Read it and weep, you beautiful, sociopathic bastard! Read it!”

Elias van Kempen didn’t flinch. He slowly laid down his pen, his dark eyes shifting from his handwritten ledger to the glossy pages of the trade paper.

Charlize Theron, who was sitting cross-legged on the lumpy mattress applying a coat of blood-red nail polish, leaned over to look.

The headline spanned half the page: TARANTINO’S ’DOGS’ BITES SUNDANCE; A BLOODY MASTERPIECE UNLEASHED.

Paul jabbed his finger violently at the second paragraph. ”Look! Look right there!”

Elias leaned forward, his gaze scanning the text with photographic speed. The review was a glowing, almost rabid validation of Quentin Tarantino’s independent debut at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival. The critic praised the non-linear storytelling, the visceral violence, and the sharp dialogue.

But it was the third paragraph that made Charlize pause her nail brush.

”...and what elevates the sheer brutality of the picture is its profoundly unsettling soundtrack. The film is anchored by an unreleased, haunting grunge-rock anthem titled ’Creep.’ The contrast between the visceral on-screen violence and the agonizing, magnetic baritone of the vocalist creates a cinematic dissonance that is nothing short of revolutionary. It is the pulse of the movie.”

”They’re calling it a revolution!” Paul practically vibrated, grabbing his own hair. ”Elias, do you understand what this means? The movie is a hit! The song is a hit! I heard it playing at a Foot Locker in the Sherman Oaks Galleria yesterday! We’re famous! We’re going to be rich! We can finally buy groceries that don’t come in a styrofoam cup!”

Elias looked at the ecstatic actor. He didn’t smile. He didn’t celebrate. His handsome face was a mask of cold, clinical calculation.

”Fame is an unpaid internship, Paul,” Elias stated, his voice a smooth, icy current that instantly killed the celebratory vibe in the room. ”And being called a ’revolution’ by a journalist does not pay my system maintenance fees.”

Paul stopped vibrating. ”What? Elias, the movie blew up! The song is everywhere!”

”Yes, it is,” Elias agreed, picking up his pen and tapping it against his ledger. ”Which means the studio will now spend the next three months deliberately obfuscating the box office returns through Hollywood Accounting to avoid paying out early. We are locked in a Net-90 disbursement cycle for the backend gross. We are, at this exact moment, paper millionaires who still cannot afford a decent steak.”

Charlize laughed, a rich, cynical sound, as she blew on her wet nails. ”He’s right, Paul. Until the check clears the bank, it’s just monopoly money.”

Paul groaned, clutching his stomach. ”You two are monsters. You’re sucking the joy out of my soul.”

Before Elias could explain the mathematical necessity of deferring emotional gratification, the heavy, black rotary phone on the nightstand let out a sharp, jarring ring.

Elias picked up the receiver. ”Van Kempen.”

”Hold for Mr. Ovitz,” a woman’s voice said. It wasn’t a request. The tone was polished ice, the kind of voice that belonged to an executive assistant who routinely denied access to A-list movie stars.

Elias’s eyes narrowed slightly. He didn’t say a word.

A moment later, a new voice came on the line. It was smooth, commanding, and radiating absolute, unquestionable power.

”Elias,” Michael Ovitz said. He didn’t introduce himself. When you were the CEO of Creative Artists Agency in 1992, your voice was your business card. ”You’ve made quite a splash at Sundance. Be at my office at two o’clock today. We have a lot to discuss about your future.”

Click.

The line went dead.

Elias slowly placed the receiver back onto the cradle. A slow, incredibly dangerous smile stretched across his face.

”Who was that?” Charlize asked, noticing the shift in the room’s atmospheric pressure.

”Michael Ovitz,” Elias replied casually, sliding his vintage leather jacket off the back of the chair.

Charlize’s breath actually caught in her throat. Even Paul, who was usually oblivious, went entirely pale.

”Ovitz?” Charlize repeated, dropping her nail polish. ”Elias, he is the king of Hollywood. He doesn’t just represent actors; he owns the town. He invented the packaging deal. If he tells a studio to greenlight a movie, they do it. If he tells them to bury you... you never work again.”

”He sounds terribly expensive,” Elias murmured, checking his reflection in the mirror.

”Elias, you can’t hustle Michael Ovitz!” Paul panicked, grabbing Elias’s arm. ”He’s a titan! He’s an institution! If he’s calling you, it means he wants to absorb you. You have to play nice. We need to rent a limousine! We have to look successful! I think I have eighty bucks left in my shoe, we can rent a town car—”

Elias looked at Paul, his expression one of profound, absolute disgust.

”A limousine costs fifty dollars an hour, Paul,” Elias said, his tone dripping with shameless stinginess. ”The Los Angeles Metro bus route 720 drops off directly on Wilshire Boulevard for one dollar and fifty cents. I am not burning my liquid capital to impress a man who wants to steal my royalties.”

Paul’s eyes rolled to the back of his head. ”You’re going to CAA... the most powerful agency on Earth... on the public bus?”

”The bus,” Elias corrected smoothly, ”is a heavily subsidized chauffeur service provided by the state. It is an exquisite display of financial efficiency. Try not to hyperventilate while I’m gone.”

The Creative Artists Agency headquarters in Beverly Hills was a fortress of glass, steel, and Italian marble. It was a temple built to worship power. As Elias walked through the massive glass doors, completely ignoring the valet parking attendants who gave his thrift-store leather jacket confused looks, he immediately began evaluating the building’s overhead costs.

The Lichtenstein painting in the lobby. The custom marble reception desk. The sheer volume of wasted square footage, Elias thought, his mind tallying the numbers. Extravagance designed to make the client feel small.

He approached the receptionist. ”Elias van Kempen. For Michael Ovitz.”

The receptionist blinked, looking at his entirely un-Hollywood attire, but typed his name into her terminal. Her eyes widened slightly. ”Right this way, Mr. van Kempen. Top floor.”

Elias was escorted into a corner office that was larger than most suburban homes. The walls were lined with original modern art, and the floor-to-ceiling windows offered a commanding view of the Los Angeles skyline.

Michael Ovitz stood by the window, his back to the door. He was impeccably dressed in a custom Armani suit. He radiated the kind of quiet, absolute control that made studio heads tremble.

He turned around. He looked at Elias, his eyes instantly assessing, weighing, and categorizing the teenager.

”Elias,” Ovitz said, gesturing to a massive, custom-leather sofa. ”Sit.”

Elias didn’t sit. He walked slowly toward the center of the room, his posture perfectly straight, his aura completely unfazed by the billion-dollar view. He slipped his hands into his pockets.

”I prefer to stand, Michael. It aids my circulation,” Elias said smoothly, his baritone voice echoing slightly in the massive room.

Ovitz’s eyes narrowed by a fraction of a millimeter. No one, absolutely no one, refused a seat in his office.

”Suit yourself,” Ovitz said, walking to his massive mahogany desk and leaning against it. ”Let’s skip the pleasantries. You’ve had a very lucky month, Elias. A viral song playing in shopping malls, and a gritty little indie film that managed to impress a few critics in the snow. It’s a cute trick.”

Ovitz crossed his arms. ”But Hollywood is not about cute tricks. It is a machine. And right now, you are a loose cog. I saw the paperwork you filed for Reservoir Dogs. You locked Tarantino into a hundred-percent backend sync monopoly.”

Elias smiled. A cold, shark-like expression. ”It was a mutually beneficial transaction. He needed art. I needed equity.”

”It’s a parasitic contract,” Ovitz corrected, his voice hardening into a blade. ”Tarantino is a raw talent. He’s going to be a major director. CAA is going to represent him. We are going to package his next film with our top-tier actors and our top-tier producers. We don’t have room for a teenage hustler holding a lien on his creative output.”

Ovitz stood up fully, projecting the full, terrifying weight of his industry dominance.

”Here is what’s going to happen, Elias,” Ovitz commanded. ”You are going to void that music contract. You will surrender the backend rights to the studio. In exchange, CAA will sign you. I will personally put you in the machine. I can get you a three-picture deal at Warner Brothers by Friday. I can get your song produced by Quincy Jones. I will make you a legitimate star. But you have to drop this ’Sovereign Media’ delusion and join the system.”

It was the ultimate temptation. Billions of dollars of infrastructure, fame, and guaranteed wealth, all offered on a silver platter. All Elias had to do was bend the knee.

In his mind, the terminal blinked.

[SYSTEM SHOP ACCESSED.][ACTIVATING: AURA DOMINASI RAPAT / BOARDROOM DOMINANCE (DURATION: 10 MINUTES)][COST: -10 CP][CURRENT BALANCE: 10 CP]

[CHA-CHING!]

The air pressure in the massive corner office physically dropped.

Elias didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t puff out his chest. He simply let the absolute, crushing weight of his future knowledge and sociopathic ambition flood the room. His dark eyes locked onto the most powerful man in Hollywood, and for the first time in a decade, Michael Ovitz felt a primal, irrational instinct to step backward.

Elias let out a low, deeply charismatic laugh that sent a shiver down the spine of the executive.

”You’re asking me to be a typewriter, Michael,” Elias said, his voice a lethal, velvet whisper that cut through the silence like a scalpel. ”I prefer to own the paper mill.”

A massive, highly visible sweatdrop formed on the side of Michael Ovitz’s temple. He stared at the teenager, completely derailed. No one had ever spoken to him like this.

”You think your packaging deals are a fortress,” Elias continued, stepping closer, his Aura pressing down on Ovitz. ”You take a script, you attach Tom Cruise, you attach a director, and you force the studio to pay you a ten-percent packaging fee off the top. It’s brilliant. It’s an extortionate monopoly.”

Ovitz’s face went pale. How did a sixteen-year-old kid from a motel know the exact, highly guarded mechanical structure of CAA’s corporate strategy?

”But it has a fatal flaw, Michael,” Elias stated, tilting his head, his eyes burning with predatory intelligence. ”Your packaging deals enrich you, and they enrich your top five A-list stars. But what about your mid-tier talent? The character actors? The supporting leads who pay your light bills? You force them into these packages at a discount just to sweeten the deal for the studios. They are underpaid, overworked, and currently suffocating under your ego.”

Elias leaned in, stopping just inches from the billionaire executive.

”If you ever attempt to touch my royalty pipeline again,” Elias whispered, a threat wrapped in absolute, sociopathic certainty, ”I will not sue you. I will simply open the doors of Sovereign Media. And I will steal every single mid-tier actor on your roster who is currently bleeding out to feed your packaging machine. I will gut your agency from the middle down, and I will do it with a smile.”

Michael Ovitz was completely speechless. The king of Hollywood was frozen, his mind reeling as the terrifying, undeniable logic of Elias’s threat sank in. It was a surgical strike at the exact, hidden vulnerability of his empire.

Elias didn’t wait for a response. He had established dominance.

He turned on his heel, his vintage leather jacket swishing, and walked toward the massive oak doors.

”Have a productive afternoon, Michael,” Elias called out over his shoulder, not looking back. ”And you should seriously consider firing whoever negotiated the lease on this building. The amortization schedule on this marble is a complete fiscal tragedy.”

Elias walked out of the glass fortress, leaving the most feared man in the entertainment industry sweating in his own corner office.

An hour and a half later, Elias swiped his bus pass, stepping off the Los Angeles Metro outside The Pelican Motel.

He pushed the door to Room 104 open.

Paul Rudd and Charlize Theron were waiting. Paul was pacing a hole into the cheap carpet, gnawing on his fingernails.

”Well?!” Paul practically screamed the second Elias walked in. ”What happened?! Did you sign with CAA? Did Ovitz make you a star? Did we get the three-picture deal?!”

Elias walked casually to the bed and tossed his leather jacket aside. He reached into his pocket, pulling out a small, crumpled bus transfer ticket, and placed it neatly on his ledger.

”I declined his offer,” Elias said simply, picking up his pen to adjust his balance sheet. ”The terms were insulting, and his office was entirely too extravagant. It suggested a lack of fiscal discipline. I also threatened to steal his mid-tier client roster if he interferes with my backend royalties.”

Paul stared at him. His eyes glazed over.

”You... you told Michael Ovitz no?” Paul whispered, his voice trembling as the reality of the situation crushed his soul. ”You threatened the king of Hollywood... and then you took the public bus home?”

”The bus is highly efficient, Paul,” Elias murmured, already immersed in his math.

Paul let out a high-pitched, wheezing squeak. His eyes rolled entirely back into his head, his knees buckled, and he collapsed backward onto the lumpy mattress in a dead, theatrical faint.

Charlize looked at Paul’s unconscious body, then looked at Elias, a wide, utterly fascinated smirk on her face.

”You really are a monster, you know that?” Charlize said, shaking her head.

”I am merely an active participant in the free market,” Elias corrected, smiling as the familiar, beautiful sound echoed in his mind.