​Sleaze Land – Chapter 5 (Dig It) Part 2

In February of 2015, Emile Hirsch was charged with strangling Daniele Bernfeld (a Paramount executive who had previously refused his sexual advances), to the point of unconsciousness - at the Sundance Film Festival. He pleaded guilty.

Sleaze Land – Chapter 5 (Dig It) Part 2
 
 
 
     “I sit on a man's back choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am sorry for him and wish to lighten his load by all means possible… except by getting off his back.”  Leo Tolstoy
 
 
 
 
“But I told you I didn’t want to do a movie with a man like that.  I told you how uncomfortable it made me, especially because he’s still blaming the fact he brutally attacked a woman who refused to have sex with him on drugs and alcohol.  As if any of those things can bring out what isn’t already there.”
 
“Joan, I told you before and I’ll tell you again, it was a good job and jobs don’t just come along every day.”
 
“They certainly seem to for you,” the gorgeous fake-blonde said, just before she ducked under one of his uncomfortable hugs.
 
“But why couldn’t you have gotten me into one of your other films?  You made seven last year, but you only ever offered the one featuring a sexual predator.  For my first film,” the young woman said with feeling, yet without an ounce of self-pity in her voice.
 
The man slicked the fingers of his right hand back through some extraordinarily greasy hair – just like he’d recently seen McConaughey do.
 
And then he sighed.
 
“You just don’t get how the industry works, sweety,” he said shaking his head, just like any dashing leading man might, he thought.
 
“Oh, I think I’m beginning to understand, dad.  But what I don’t think you understand… quite yet… is that there are consequences to your actions – consequences beyond those of your little patriarchal pool party here – that you seem to think you’re king of.”
 
“What?” the man asked, once again slicking his hand back through his greasy grey hair, but this time purely to pacify his growing anxiety.
 
You see… Andrew Jane wasn’t exactly used to being called out on anything, by anyone, especially his own daughter.
 
“To answer your earlier question; no, dad, I won’t lie for you.  In fact, I plan to tell the audience the truth - that you used me to help patch-over a sexual predator’s failing career in order to get kick-backs that only you seem to have benefitted from.”
 
Andrew Jane just blinked, and then blinked again, because he really didn’t have the brain circuitry to handle this type of information.
 
“Furthermore, dad, I’m also going to tell them how you told me I’d only ever work if I was blonde and lost fifteen pounds.  Well, dad, I gained twenty-five pounds and found not only a job but a boyfriend as well.  So… dig that, why don’t ya.  Ya?’
 
Outside of the dressing room the father-daughter-duo where currently arguing in, but only ten-feet away, the Master of Ceremony, Eric Ackles, was pacing up a storm.
 
“We go on in just fifty minutes.  What does everyone think?  That this is some goddamn beach party?”
 
“Relax,” the man’s attorney told the MC.  Just before he took a long toke on his medicinal vape.
 
“Oh, easy enough for you to say, you don’t have a psychotic sister who’s trying to ruin your goddamn career.”
 
The heavily medicated yet extraordinarily gorgeous defending attorney smiled largely, and then took another toke.
 
“That’s not how I see it,” the fake attorney said, as he leaned back against the wall, just like James fucking Dean might have.
 
“Oh, yeah?” the paranoid dark-blonde with the ginger beard asked, as he scratched at it rather aggressively.
 
“These crimes are being drug into the sunlight for all the world to see.  Your sister didn’t start that.  Nor could she have prevented it.  But what she is doing, what my wife and others like her are doing, by-the-way… is trying to control the explosion - so their families aren’t totally ripped apart.”
 
Ackles looked at the man as if he’d suddenly started screaming in gibberish.
 
“Did you ever stop to think that this was all gonna blow up anyway?  That by taking the reigns, the way they have, the women we care about are trying help us?  Otherwise… you and me,” the large man with the rippling muscles said, as he thumbed the shorter man’s chest, “we’d be up front of this firing squad - right along with the rest of these sad bastards.  Eh?”
 
  
 
     “I think what makes us human - is our interconnectedness among people. It's our ability to form and maintain relationships. It's the barometer by which we call ourselves human.”  Thomas Jane
 
 
 
 
 
 
© Raena Exe 2021
 
 
*Inspired by life.
*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.

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