“Look, Peter,” I say, “you gotta think big. There ain’t but twenty movie stars could carry that kinda budget into opening weekend. And not one of them plays under five-six, OK.”
He goes, “You think the hero’s too small?” like it ain’t obvious.
I say, “Of course, he’s too damn small. ‘The Rings’, they had that Aragorn guy, but this. Not even Brando at his biggest was big enough to play that short. If we do a full length shot, the screen’s gonna be half empty.”
He says, “OK, but I’ve got dragons and a seventeen foot troll. I could rewrite from their point of view.”
“I don’t think you’re seeing the issue,” I tell him. “Heroes operate in a strictly limited size range, if they wanna be box office.”
He’s disappointed, but you gotta be honest, so I tell him, “Talking of bums on seats, you’ve got this old chick playing the love scenes again.”
He says, “She’s two thousand years younger than Arwen,” or some such nonsense.
I’m like, “Peter, she’s still six hundred years old. That’s the teen audience gone, right there.”
Peter’s tearing his beard out now, ‘cos no one talks to Peter like this, but maybe they should, you know.
“One more thing,” I say. “It’s this one-ring-to-bind-them crappola. You can’t keep doing it. That stuff’s a bit, like, over?”
And he’s like, “Ugh?”
And I’m like, “A ring is so yesterday. The only thing that binds anything these days is a solid pre-nup.”
So then he storms out, but I gather myself, professional as I am, and shout, “Mary, that’s Jackson off the list. Who’s got the next ninety seconds?”
And she says, “You’re never gonna believe this, Max. Some guy wants to make another movie about a lion in a wardrobe.”
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