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

The Indie Producer Netori

Late September 1993.

The physical toll of flying transcontinental in a discounted, non-reclining economy seat located directly adjacent to a commercial airliner’s lavatory was catastrophic. By the time Sovereign Media’s two-man executive team touched down at LAX, Paul Rudd looked as though he had aged a decade. His posture resembled a melted candle, and he was muttering incoherently about the structural integrity of his lumbar spine.

Elias van Kempen, however, stepped onto the smog-choked tarmac of Los Angeles looking flawlessly unbothered. His vintage leather jacket remained impeccably draped over his broad shoulders, and his dark eyes burned with the relentless, predatory energy of a man who had just stolen fifteen percent of a future billion-dollar fashion empire for the price of a used Honda.

”Elias, please,” Paul whimpered, dragging his duffel bag across the pavement. ”Take us to the warehouse. Let me sleep on a prop sofa. I beg of you. I can still smell the airplane toilet in my hair.”

”Rest is a luxury afforded only to those who have secured market dominance, Paul,” Elias stated, checking his Rolex Daytona. ”We are heading to a dive bar in West Hollywood. I have a meeting with a mid-level logistics informant regarding a potential distribution pipeline for our upcoming physical media.”

Paul let out a tragic sob but dutifully hailed a cab.

Twenty minutes later, they stepped into the suffocating, neon-lit gloom of The Rusty Anchor. It was the kind of establishment that smelled of stale beer, shattered dreams, and cheap cologne. It was a haven for Hollywood bottom-feeders—the indie producers, the predatory talent scouts, and the desperate actors willing to sign anything for a sliver of screen time.

Elias ordered a single glass of tap water to avoid paying a markup on beverages, much to the bartender’s visible disgust. He scanned the dimly lit booths with a clinical eye, waiting for his informant.

Instead, his gaze locked onto a severe, escalating dispute occurring in a secluded corner booth.

Sitting against the cracked red vinyl was a young woman. She was eighteen years old, but her aura projected an ancient, volatile rebellion. She wore a scuffed, oversized black leather motorcycle jacket, her dark hair falling in messy, unstyled waves around a face of striking, almost aggressive beauty. Her piercing eyes were currently narrowed into slits of pure, venomous hatred.

It was Angelina Jolie.

In the autumn of 1993, she was not yet a global icon, nor a humanitarian, nor an Academy Award winner. She was a fiercely independent teenager who had just suffered through the humiliating, exploitative production of a low-budget martial arts science fiction film titled Cyborg 2. She was currently radiating the pure, unadulterated essence of grunge royalty.

Leaning over the table, aggressively jabbing a thick, ink-stained finger at a stack of legal documents, was a man in a cheap, shiny suit. He possessed the greasy, arrogant sheen of a low-tier Hollywood predator.

”You don’t have a choice, Angie,” the producer—a man Elias’s photographic memory instantly recognized from the trades as Gideon, a notorious B-movie hustler—sneered loudly. ”You signed a multi-picture exclusivity option when we bailed you out for Cyborg. You belong to my production house for the next three sequels. If you don’t sign this extension right now, I will bury you. I will tie you up in litigation so deep you won’t even be able to book a commercial for dog food in this town.”

Angelina’s jaw locked. She looked at the contract with a mixture of profound disgust and trapped desperation. She had hated every second of Cyborg 2. She wanted to act, to bleed for a role, not play a hyper-sexualized robot in a direct-to-VHS cash grab. But she was young, isolated, and legally cornered.

Elias van Kempen’s eyes darkened into endless, terrifying voids of capitalist calculation.

He despised predators who didn’t understand how to cultivate an asset. Chaining a generational talent to a B-movie franchise wasn’t just cruel; it was a gross misallocation of future market value.

”Paul,” Elias murmured, his baritone voice dropping into Mode CEO Mafia. ”Hold my tap water. I am initiating a hostile takeover.”

”Elias, no! We are in a dive bar!” Paul panicked, grabbing Elias’s sleeve. ”That guy has a pinky ring! He looks like he knows people who own shovels!”

Elias smoothly detached Paul’s trembling hand and glided across the sticky floor of the bar. He moved with silent, aristocratic grace, stopping directly at the edge of the corner booth.

”The fundamental flaw in your negotiation tactic, Gideon,” Elias stated, his voice slicing cleanly through the grimy atmosphere of the bar, ”is that you are threatening an asset with litigation when your own legal standing is currently structured on a foundation of severe, impending bankruptcy.”

Gideon jerked his head up, his greasy forehead wrinkling in outrage. He looked at Elias’s young, model-perfect face and scoffed loudly.

”Who the hell are you?” Gideon barked, trying to puff out his chest. ”Get lost, kid. I’m having a private business meeting with my client. I’m a major producer in this town. You don’t want to step on my toes.”

Angelina looked up, her piercing eyes locking onto Elias. She didn’t look relieved. She looked highly suspicious, her posture defensive. Slow-Burn Doubt radiated from her core. To her, Elias just looked like another arrogant Hollywood pretty boy, probably a rival actor trying to start a scene.

Elias ignored her completely. He mentally engaged the digital loan shark resting in his cerebral cortex.

[SYSTEM SHOP ACCESSED.][ACTIVATING: CORPORATE X-RAY SCAN][COST: -10 CP][CURRENT BALANCE: 350 CP]

[CHA-CHING!]

The world around Elias shifted into a matrix of forensic data. A glowing, radioactive-red grid snapped over the leather briefcase resting on the seat next to Gideon. The system bypassed the brass locks, ripping through the dense, hidden financial ledgers and shell company tax returns buried inside.

The data processed in milliseconds, illuminating Gideon’s entire corporate reality.

[SCAN COMPLETE. THREAT ANALYSIS: FRAUDULENT B-MOVIE PRODUCER.][VULNERABILITY DETECTED: GIDEON’S PRODUCTION COMPANY IS A SHELL ENTITY USED FOR MONEY LAUNDERING. THE BOX OFFICE RETURNS FOR ’CYBORG 2’ FAILED TO COVER THE INFLATED PRODUCTION LOANS. HE IS CURRENTLY FACING A SEVERE MARGIN CALL FROM HIS CREDITORS AND IS IN BREACH OF THREE SEPARATE TAX CODES.]

The red grid vanished. Elias’s lips curved into a dark, merciless smile.

”You are not a major producer, Gideon,” Elias corrected softly, leaning one hand against the edge of the table. ”You are a financial liability operating a shell corporation to launder inflated budgets. Cyborg 2 was a catastrophic failure on a balance sheet. You are currently facing a margin call from your primary creditors, and your offshore tax routing is so amateurish an intern at the IRS could dismantle it before lunch.”

Gideon froze. The color rapidly drained from his face, replaced by a sickly, pale gray. His mouth opened and closed like a dying fish.

How did this kid know about the margin call? The shell companies were supposed to be buried under three layers of Delaware LLCs!

Angelina’s eyes widened slightly, shifting her gaze between the suddenly terrified producer and the impossibly calm teenager standing above them.

Elias did not offer the man a chance to recover. He executed The Stick and The Carrot.

He reached into the inner pocket of his vintage leather jacket. He extracted a small, tightly bound bundle of cash—ten thousand dollars, the remaining liquidity from his violent underground boxing excursion the night before.

Elias dropped the brick of hundred-dollar bills directly onto the sticky surface of the bar table.

”This is ten thousand dollars in physical, untraceable currency,” Elias dictated, his voice a smooth, unrelenting hum of rational extortion. ”I am purchasing the entirety of Angelina’s exclusivity contract. You will sign the transfer of rights to Sovereign Media immediately.”

Gideon stared at the cash, licking his lips. ”You... you can’t just buy a multi-picture deal for ten grand. That’s theft!”

Elias leaned in closer, his dark eyes locking onto the producer’s terrified soul.

”The alternative, Gideon, is that I pick up this money, walk to the payphone in the lobby, and instruct my accounting firm to trigger a forensic audit of your production loans,” Elias whispered. ”The LAPD and the IRS will raid your office before sunrise. You will lose your company, your freedom, and your ability to ever work in this city again. Take the cash and save your life, or cling to a contract you cannot afford to enforce and go to federal prison. Mathematics dictates you have precisely five seconds to decide.”

Gideon was sweating profusely. His eyes darted around the dark bar, looking for a way out. But Elias’s logic was an inescapable steel trap. The kid had him by the throat. Taking ten thousand dollars under the table to pay off his immediate, dangerous creditors was the only way he survived the week.

With a trembling hand, Gideon reached into his jacket, pulled out a pen, and hastily scrawled his signature across the transfer of rights on the back of the contract extension.

He shoved the paper toward Elias, snatched the bundle of cash, and practically sprinted out of the dive bar, not looking back once.

The silence at the booth was heavy.

Elias calmly picked up the newly signed transfer of rights. He had just acquired a generational asset for a fraction of a fraction of its future value.

He finally turned his gaze to Angelina Jolie.

She did not look grateful. She did not blush. She remained seated, her arms tightly crossed over her leather jacket, glaring at him with intense, defensive hostility.

”So what’s the play here, suit?” Angelina spat, her voice laced with cynical venom. ”You buy my paper from one scumbag just to lock me in a different cage? What’s the next masterpiece you’re going to force me to shoot? Cyborg 3? Some cheap teen slasher where I die in the first ten minutes? Don’t expect me to thank you for switching my leash.”

She was waiting for him to patronize her. She was waiting for the sleazy smile, the promises of stardom, the creepy Hollywood pitch.

Elias van Kempen did none of those things. He was a Devoted Boss, not a pimp.

He didn’t speak. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy, silver Zippo lighter. He sparked it, the bright yellow flame illuminating the dark booth.

With absolute, unbothered calm, Elias held the Cyborg exclusivity contract over the flame. The thick legal paper caught fire instantly, burning bright and fast. He dropped the flaming document into a nearby glass ashtray, letting the predatory contract reduce to black ash.

Angelina’s tough, defensive posture faltered. Her eyes widened, staring at the burning paper.

”Cages are mathematically inefficient, Angelina,” Elias finally spoke, his voice completely devoid of the sleaze she was expecting. It was cold, clinical, and profoundly honest. ”An artist forced to perform under duress produces inferior work. Inferior work yields negative box office returns. I do not invest in negative returns.”

He reached into his jacket one final time, extracting a single, elegantly printed document bearing the heavy, embossed crest of Sovereign Media. He slid it across the table toward her.

”This is a standard fifteen-percent management protection contract,” Elias stated, sitting down in the booth opposite her. ”There is no multi-picture exclusivity. There are no mandatory appearances. Clause 4, Subsection B guarantees you absolute Final Cut and Script Refusal. You do not step onto a film set unless you believe the script is a masterpiece. I will handle the studios. I will handle the financing. I will handle the parasites.”

Angelina stared at the contract. She read the bolded print outlining her absolute artistic freedom. She looked back up at Elias, searching his striking, stoic face for the catch, for the hidden trap. But there was nothing but pure, unadulterated, sociopathic business transparency.

The massive, impenetrable wall of her rebellious ego finally cracked.

She realized the terrifying truth. The man sitting across from her wasn’t a sleazy producer trying to exploit her body. He was a monstrous, brilliant capitalist who intended to weaponize her talent against the very industry she hated.

A slow, highly dangerous, and breathtakingly edgy smile spread across Angelina’s face. She picked up a pen from the table.

”You’re a maniac, you know that?” she murmured, her voice losing its venom and replacing it with a thrilling, dark respect.

”I am a fiduciary,” Elias corrected smoothly.

Angelina laughed—a sharp, genuine sound that cut through the gloom of the bar. She signed the Sovereign Media contract with a flourish, pushing it back across the table.

”Alright, Elias,” she said, leaning back into the red vinyl, her eyes locking onto his with absolute, terrifying loyalty. ”Let’s go burn this town down.”

In the shadows near the bar, Paul Rudd wept silently into his tap water, realizing he now had to manage the scheduling of a woman who looked like she actively enjoyed throwing knives.

Deep within Elias’s mind, the system registered the acquisition of the Empress of Rebellion.

[CHA-CHING!][SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: THE INDIE PRODUCER NETORI EXECUTED WITH FLAWLESS DEVOTION AND CONTRACTUAL PRECISION!][EVALUATION: YOU IDENTIFIED A GENERATIONAL TALENT TRAPPED IN EXPLOITATION, UTILIZED RATIONAL EXTORTION TO DECAPITATE A PREDATOR, AND SECURED ABSOLUTE LOYALTY BY BURNING A SLAVE CONTRACT. YOUR ABILITY TO MANIPULATE THE HOLLYWOOD ROYALTY FACTION VIA PURE CAPITALIST PROTECTION IS TRULY TERRIFYING.][REWARD: +15 SHAMELESS POINTS (CP) DEPOSITED.]

Elias smoothly folded the contract and slipped it into his jacket. The Hollywood Royalty faction had officially been activated.