SSC (2011) The Road to Hell Read Online Free PDF

seemed to grow heavier. “Am I not free to write the script as I see fit?”
    “ Sure you are. When hell freezes over.” Beazle drummed a manicured fingernail on his desktop. “Look, Eddie. Do you want the deal or not? I got Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley dying to get their projects out of turnaround.”
    “ I daresay some cautious editing might be appropriate,” the writer ventured.
    Like taking a biscotti from a baby, Beazle thought. “That’s the spirit, Eddie. So I gotta ask you. Where’s the girl?”
    “ What girl?”
    “ You got a guy strapped to a board. Talking to himself. Bor-ing! Maybe Tom Hanks can schmooze with a volleyball for two hours, but he had the beach, the ocean, the great outdoors. You got a dark hole in the ground.”
    “ The solitude represents man’s existence.”
    “ Deal-breaker, pal. If you’re gonna ask Leo or Cuba or Russell to spend the entire shoot in a hole, at least give ‘em Scarlett Johansson for eye candy.”
    “ Scarlett…?”
    “ In a torn blouse. And instead of those rats chewing off the guy’s straps, she unties him.”
    “ The rats represent our primal fears.”
    “ Box office poison, Eddie. A one-way ticket straight-to-video.”
    “ But a woman…” The writer’s voice trailed off and he scratched at his mustache as if it had fleas. “Writing from the distaff point of view is hardly my forte.”
    “ No problema , Eduardo. We’ll bring in Nora Ephron to punch up the he-said, she-said dialogue.”
    “ Another writer?”
    “ Read me your first sentence, Eddie.”
    The writer recited by heart. “‘I was sick–-sick to death with that long agony.’”
    “ Downer. Maybe we get Judd Apatow to lighten the mood, toss in some fart jokes.”
    “ But that would dilute the horror.”
    “ Hold the phone, Eddie! Just got a brainstorm. The prisoner falls in love with Scarlett, but she’s got a fatal disease.”
    “ Good heavens. What would that accomplish?
    “‘ Halloween’ meets ‘Love Story.’ Boffo B.O.”
    The writer’s face took on the pallor of a drowning victim. “Perhaps the theme of the story is unclear to you.”
    “ Hey, you want to send a message, use e-mail. You want foreign box office, you need stars, action, sex.”
    “ I assure you my work is quite popular in France.”
    “ Sure, you and Jerry Lewis. The point is, we’re going after the masses, not the art-house crowd.”
    The writer still held the pen in a death grip. He stared at the check. Picking up sunlight from the window, the paper seemed to be made of burnished gold. He exhaled a long sigh and said, “I suppose you know best, Mr. Beazle. So if there are no other changes…”
    Beazle smiled, his double row of porcelain crowns gleaming. He loved breaking a writer. It was better than sex. Maybe not sex-on-coke, but straight sex. “One more thing, Eddie. What’s the setting? Where the hell’s this prison?”
    “ Spain, of course.”
    “ Fine. We’ll shoot in Vancouver. But no subtitles and we gotta update.”
    “ How? It’s the Spanish Inquisition.”
    “ Period piece? No can do. With all respect, Eddie, you’re no Jane Austen. And as for the ending, we gotta lose the French Army. Who’s gonna believe they win a battle? I’m picturing a SEAL team, maybe the Rock in a cameo.”
    The writer’s alabaster hand trembled as he fiddled with a loose button on his heavy coat. Beazle made a mental note to send the guy to Melrose Avenue for some new threads before letting him on the set.
    “ That is it, then?” the writer asked. “A new title. Another writer. A naked woman. No rats. A SEAL team. And Canada.”
    “ Almost there. But tell me. Who’s the hell’s the heavy?”
    “ A faceless evil. The horror is intensified by the anonymity of its source.”
    “ Muddled storytelling, Eddie.”
    The writer’s shoulders sagged. “I suppose you could say the villain is the unseen executioner.”
    “ Unseen? It’s motion pictures , not radio. How about Anthony Hopkins? Those