Chapter 175: Stepping Onto the Big Screen
The meeting with the first distributor lasted forty minutes and went nowhere.
The acquisition executive — a carefully dressed man named Delaney who worked out of a glass-walled office on the fourteenth floor of a Century City high-rise — had the particular skill of sounding engaged while communicating nothing. He used the words excited and passionate and really strong material in combinations that meant, in practice: we are not acquiring this film.
Jake had sat across from him and listened to the full performance before standing, shaking his hand, and leaving.
He spent the cab ride to the second meeting thinking about leverage.
The film industry ran on relationships, access, and the quiet exchange of favors that never got written down anywhere. Marcus had been right about that. What Marcus hadn't fully accounted for was that Jake had spent months operating in environments where the power structures were considerably more explicit — where you understood exactly what someone wanted, exactly what you had to offer, and exactly what a conversation was going to cost before you walked into it.
The second distributor's office was in Burbank. The acquisition VP there — a woman named Carol Reiss who'd been in the business for twenty-two years and had a reputation for knowing which mid-budget films could find an audience and which couldn't — took his call herself, which was a meaningful data point.
She was in her late forties, wore reading glasses she kept taking on and off, and had the energy of someone who had seen enough pitches to know within the first five minutes whether a conversation was worth having.
She studied him for a moment when he sat down.
"You're very young to be the primary investor on a feature," she said. Not unkind. Just accurate.
"I'm aware," Jake said.
"And Marcus Webb directed it."
"He did."
She already knew this — she'd done her research before the meeting, which meant she was genuinely interested and managing that interest carefully. Jake noted the fact and moved on.
"The film is finished," Jake said. "Fully edited, scored, ready for delivery. Marcus does strong work. The finished product holds up."
"I've seen Marcus's short work," Reiss said. "He has good instincts."
"He has better instincts than his budget should have allowed. The performances are stronger than the cast's prior credits would suggest."
She turned a pen over in her fingers. "What are you looking for? Wide release isn't realistic for an independent at this budget level without a major festival run first—"
"I'm not asking for wide release," Jake said. "Limited theatrical. Enough screens in enough markets to establish the film's existence as a cultural fact. Reviews, word of mouth, a real opening. After that, streaming rights can be negotiated on different terms than if we went straight to platform."
Reiss stopped turning the pen.
That was the right framing, and she recognized it. A film that had a genuine theatrical run — even a limited one — arrived on streaming platforms with a different status than a film that had bypassed theaters entirely. It had critical coverage. It had a box office number, however modest. It had the cultural legitimacy that came from having been out in the world.
For Jake's purposes, that legitimacy was the entire point.
A film that had been seen, reviewed, discussed — that had generated the kind of real-world cultural footprint that left a mark on the media landscape — was a different kind of dimensional key than a film sitting on a hard drive.
He needed this film out there.
"Send me the screener," Reiss said finally. "I'll watch it by end of week."
"I'll have Marcus send it today."
She nodded, then studied him again with the expression of someone filing information away. "Who are you, exactly? Beyond the investor credit."
"Someone who makes long-term bets on things he believes in," Jake said. "And follows through on them."
He shook her hand and left.
The third meeting was different.
The contact — a man named Harlan Briggs who ran acquisitions for a mid-sized distributor with a strong track record in the independent space — had been harder to get in front of. He operated out of a production building in Hollywood proper, and his assistant had been professionally vague about his availability for three days before Jake had called back and said something specific enough about Briggs's recent festival acquisitions that the assistant put him through directly.
Briggs was sixty, had the weathered look of someone who'd been doing this since before streaming existed, and didn't waste time on social padding.
"Marcus Webb," he said when Jake sat down. "Good director. Under-distributed on his last project. Whose fault was that?"
"Previous investor pulled partial funding twelve weeks into post," Jake said. "Marcus finished it on his own. It showed in the final cut."
Briggs nodded slowly. "You watched the new one?"
"I watched it in the editing suite with Marcus last week."
"And?"
"It's the best thing he's made," Jake said. "It knows what it is, it executes cleanly, and the ending earns what it's going for. It's the kind of film that finds an audience if the audience can find it."
That last sentence was the correct sentence. Briggs had built his career on exactly that category of film.
"I'll need the screener, the budget breakdown, and Marcus's availability for press," Briggs said. "If I like what I see, I want a conversation with both of you in the same room."
"Name the time," Jake said.
He left Briggs's office and stood for a moment on the sidewalk outside, in the late afternoon light that hit the hills at a specific angle this time of year and made everything look slightly more cinematic than it actually was.
He texted Marcus: Three screener requests. Send today. I'll explain when I see you.
Marcus replied in under a minute: Who are the three?
Jake sent the names.
There was a longer pause. Then: How did you get a meeting with Briggs?
I asked, Jake typed back, and put the phone away.
He started walking toward the parking structure, thinking through the parallel timelines.
The film was in the right hands now. Whether Reiss or Briggs or someone else moved first, the outcome was the same: the film would get seen. It would get reviewed. It would exist in the world in the way that mattered — not as a file on a server, but as a thing that had played in theaters, that critics had written about, that people had watched and talked about.
A key, properly cut.
After that, the question became what door it opened.
He'd find out when he got there.
The call came from Briggs four days later, on a Thursday morning.
"I watched it twice," Briggs said, without preamble. "Second time to make sure the first time wasn't me being generous."
"And?"
"It held up. I want the meeting with you and Marcus. Friday, if he's available."
"He's available," Jake said.
He ended the call and sat for a moment with the particular quiet of something falling into place.
The film was going to be released.
Everything that followed from that — he'd handle when it arrived.
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