Chapter 20: I’m Not a Businessman. I’m a Business, Man!
Dunshire Equities, LA. January 2006
“I thought you had a heart full of gold! I was wrong! All you have is a mind full of asses!”
Anita Specter, my agent and personal attack shark, had turned her teeth against me.
What I assumed was meant to be a start of the year business meeting with my inner circle ended up being an ambush. No more late night meetings. I’m making sure from now on they’d be during the day and in public spaces.
I tried to defend myself, but even years of martial arts weren’t able to stop Anita’s relentless barrage on my body with a rolled-up magazine.
“Ow! Woman, stop!” I attempted to shield myself, but she was too quick for me.
“You’re a butthead! That’s all you are! A butthead, you hear me!?” she wailed while unleashing the fury of teen vogue upon me. I have to give it up to her though - even in her rage, she kept her mind on the job. She didn’t strike my face - our collective moneymaker - even once. What a pro. I’m glad I hired her.
I threw myself on the couch, used a cushion as a barrier against Anita, and beseeched Ben Wyatt, my financial manager. “Help! Man down!”
“Don’t even bother. You deserve every bit of that.” He abandoned me, not even bothering to call the police. He just reached for the bottle of whiskey sitting on the table strewn with empty pizza boxes, official-looking papers, and, much to my dawning horror, a pile of more entertainment magazines. “Just take your punishment. Then maybe we can try to talk some sense into you.” He poured himself a double, loosened his tie, and leaned back to watch the show.
“But what did I even do!?” I begged for a little context. I’d done plenty that deserved this beating. I just needed to know what specifically, so that I didn’t walk myself into another one that was completely unrelated.
“This!” Her weapon was chucked at me and unfurled. ‘Playboy Potter?’ stamped across the front cover of the magazine with three pictures of me with three different women.
Emma clinging to me at the red carpet, Keiko cozying up to me between takes, and most worryingly me dancing with Gemma on set.
“Ooohh…”
“oOohH” Anita mockingly imitated. Ben snorted through his nose at that.
“How’d they even get the one with Gemma?” I questioned.
“That’s your take away from this?” Anita scolded. “You’re more concerned with the mystery of how someone snuck a celebrity photo, rather than the fact that you put yourself in that position to begin with?”
“Well… yeah? Tokyo Drift notwithstanding, it was a closed set at Leavesden. I don’t understand how anyone got in.”
“Movie studios aren’t airports, security isn’t that tight.” She stole the magazine back, flipped to the article, and pushed back into my grip. “And what’s this about a pool party?”
I read through the paragraph speculating about an unsanctioned party I made happen. The grainy photos of Gemma on my back didn’t help. “This sounds a lot more salacious than it really was. We were just hanging out. I don’t see what the big deal is.” I tried to brush it off.
Mercifully, nothing concrete about me shacking up with either Gemma or Keiko. I’d be in serious trouble then. I guess the security team wasn’t totally useless.
“You think we don’t know about Arterton or the Asian? Cadbury goes everywhere you do, butthead.” My snoopy nanny shifted uncomfortably at Anita’s proclamation, revealing her indiscretion. “That cougar popped your cherry like a bad pimple.”
Ben spat out his drink.
“Cougar!? She’s only like four years older than me.” First physical abuse and now verbal; I clutched the cushion to my chest.
“You weren’t quite as careful as you think, Mr Rhys.” Cadbury inserted herself into the conversation. “I’ve had to intercede on your behalf multiple times since last summer, not always successfully, I should add. Ms Watson is aware of your clandestine affair with Ms Arterton.”
“How!? When!?” I panicked. My eyes shifted while I searched my memory, but I only saw images of jiggling flesh."... Where?
“She endeavored to hunt you down for her regularly scheduled tutoring session, as you were running late.” Cadbury clarified. “She caught you in flagranti in your dressing room. I, of course, extracted a promise of secrecy to which she acceded out of respect for your personal privacy.”
“Okay, fine. So maybe I had relations with Gemma.” Anita brandished her weapon again, “Yes, fine! Keiko too - you knew that already.” I pointed to my photo with Emma, “but I certainly didn’t do anything with her!”
“Not yet, you mean.” Anita was not letting me off the hook at all. She knew me too well. “Emma clearly has a thing for you.”
“Really?” I pursed my lips, averted my eyes, and scratched my cheek.
“Your ignorance rings false, Mr Rhys.” Cadbury helped.
“And then there’s that other girl you’ve been mooning at… the French one. Their breakfast comprises cigarettes, coffee, and coitus.” Anita continued with casual racism. “Are you telling me you’d say no to either of them?”
“I’m an orphan, so Oliver Twist taught me everything I know. When I’m offered a bowl of food, I don’t sit satisfied. I say ‘please may I have some more.‘“
Anita shoved her face into her hands, sighed, and flopped onto the couch beside me. She turned to me and looked so sad. I found my cheeks squished between her hands. “You used to be so sweet, so innocent…”
I gasped in shock, “you take that back! I never was!”
“No… no, I suppose you weren’t. But at least you pretended in public.” She hooked her arm around my neck and tucked me under her shoulder in a hug. “Understand something, Bas. You have to be more responsible for the way you behave - at least where people can see you.” She began explaining, without violence this time. “You, especially, have to be incredibly cautious; your audience is children, teens, and their mothers. Even a photo of you holding hands with a girl might as well be a full-blown sex tape to these people.”
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Uniqlo isn’t happy about this either.” Ben chose to pile on. “The Golden Trio is the face of their merchandise line of clothing and accessories. They’ve expressed their considerable disappointment and have urged me to ensure you understand the value your ‘idol’ status holds in their part of the world. Nothing is allowed to tarnish that; they don’t want you to be seen dating anyone at all, because you’d lose attainability to the average consumer.”
“That’s fucking crazy, man.” I couldn’t help but retort. I wasn’t planning on living my life by the rigid standard of conservative Japanese propriety.
“I don’t disagree.” Ben commiserated. “But it’s your own money you’re fighting against.”
“Puberty is the likely explanation for it, but as it stands, it’s clear that women are your vice,” Anita spoke.
“We all have our faults.” I had to justify my embarrassment somehow.
“Which is simultaneously the least harmful to your personal health, yet also arguably the most damaging to your public standing.” Anita finished.
“Better than drugs, booze, or clout addiction.” Ben added with a tip of his glass in my direction.
“Thank y-“
Ben threw back his shot. “And you seem to like the older ladies; not being a pedo is good too. Lord knows we have too many of those in this part of the world.” C’mon man.
“Orphans and mommy issues. Makes total sense.” Anita teased.
“You people need to chill! Give me a break already.”
“In my many decades of being an au pair, I have worked for several wealthy and influential families. Each of whom has had deep dark secrets that I shan’t share. A majority of them were sexual in nature - as they very much tend to be,” Cadbury suddenly piped up. All three of our heads immediately swung in her direction as she began her bizarre speech. “Mr Rh - Bas - has always been a precocious sort, and I feared his psychosexual development would be too early, which is why I added parental blocks to all of his media and internet capable electronics.”
“That was you!?”
“Evidently, this proved ineffectual, and he has carried on regardless. As such, I feel it is my responsibility to suggest what I have personally experienced to be the most surefire answer to our current predicament. We do what every deviant with a need for privacy and the means to achieve it has done since time immemorial, and get him a mistress. Someone hired specifically to take care of his carnal attention, while disguised as someone innocuous, such as a secretary or personal assistant of some sort.”
Jaws were on the floor.
“That works?” I couldn’t believe Anita was even considering this. It was only a couple of casual relationships!
“I can assure you it most certainly does.” Cadbury stated matter-of-factly.
“L-lets keep that on the back burner. At least let my hormones settle.” I shot the idea down. I’m a pervert sure, but damned if I’m going to feed myself that level of degeneracy.
… Maybe Anita was right. I am a butthead.
I’d better switch topics before we dove even deeper into this rabbit hole straight to hell. “Now that we’ve sorted that, let’s get down to business.”
Ben, finally feeling like I’d taken as much of a pummeling as I’d deserved, decided to throw me a bone.
“Good idea. I’d like to go home for once.”
“Excellent! Then let’s make this quick, use any liquid cash I have to short the American housing market starting next year.” I ordered.
Ben stopped short, poured himself another double, swallowed it down, and collapsed in his seat. “I guess I’m sleeping here tonight.”
“Can he even do that?” Anita asked Ben, unsure of the details, but clearly aware that, from her perspective, I was asking for something ridiculous.
Little did they know.
“He can. No way I’m letting it happen, though. Bas, what you’re asking is insane, you don’t bet against the winning horse. The housing market and mortgage-backed securities are the single most reliable and secure investment instrument in existence. I’m not letting you flush your money away.”
“You said something similar when I made you put money into my other investments. As far as you’ve summarized in my financial statements, they seem to be doing pretty damn well.”
“Playing Devil’s advocate is part of my job so that you understand the risks of anything you do with your money. I never fought you on your decisions before this because they made sense to me. Your face sells merch, so you buy into the company that makes it. You have a career in movies, so you also buy into a company that distributes them. Those are sound and viable. What you want to do now, it’s not sensible.” He ranted.
“This isn’t a negotiation, Ben. You’ll put my money where I tell you to.”
“Or what? You’ll fire me and find someone else who will?” Clearly, the booze was affecting him.
“No.” I stated. “You have my back and I trust that. All I’m asking is for you to trust me, too.”
Ben immediately deflated. “Damn it.” He breathed out. “Fine, if you’re gonna make me do this, I’m going to detail everything you stand to lose.”
Ben stood, went behind his desk, pulled out a file - presumably a summary of my assets - and brought it to the table. “You basically pissed away the salary from your first movie, and Love, Actually was chump change - 350K in earnings. So we’ll start with Potter two. 3 million dollars for that was your salary. You were required to contribute 15% of your salary to the Coogan security fund, allocate 17% of your salary for taxes, which includes all the back end accounting I had to do to minimize it, pay 10% to CAA and Anita as your agency, and I receive another 10% as my fee - making it a total of 52%. Your end of day take home is 48% of whatever you make for each movie. This translates to 1.44 million for Chamber of Secrets.”
I nodded along, already knowing all this, but Ben needed to get it off his chest.
“Then we come to your contract for the next three Potter films; 40 million total for movies three, four, and five. Out of which you’ve earned 8 million for Prisoner and 12 million for Goblet, so far. But that’s not all, is it? Out of that 8 million salary, you took half and put it back into funding the production of PoA - netting you 3.1% of all box office earnings for that movie. A movie which made a billion dollars; you made 31 million dollars off that movie. So, you got 1.92 million from your base salary after all taxes and obligations, and 23.25 million after I paid your taxes and charges on your investment return.”
“Sounds about right.” I tried to wrap up, but was quickly interrupted.
“I’m not done. Now, we come to your most recent projects. For Tokyo Drift, you took what they could afford and your ultimate take home hit a million. Goblet got you 12 mil in wages, 6 of that reinvested into production with a 150 million dollar budget, netting you a 4% stake. Anita, how much is the movie set to make?”
“We’ll cross a billion.” She said confidently.
“Right, that means, come this April, after all your taxes and other financial obligations are paid, you get 2.88 million in salary, and somewhere around 30 million in ROI.” Ben took a breath. “On top of that, the remaining 20 million in salary less the taxes and an additional 6 million you’re using to fund the next movie, since David Heyman is setting a cap on your contribution, gives you another 6.72 million.”
“I’m swimming in doubloons. I get it.”
“That’s over 67 million in liquid cash. You’ve not counted your Uniqlo endorsement and other company shares since you’ve put money into them. You’ve barely let a penny sit in your bank account for five minutes before reinvesting where you can. Fast Retailing Co., Netflix, and the little you had to spare went into a few key blue chip funds I picked out. The numbers are still pouring in between growth, dividends, minus the capital gains you have to pay out-”
“Yeah, I can do basic math. My net worth as of today is right around 160 million dollars.”
“That is an unfathomable amount of moolah, Bas, that you’ve pulled out of your ass in five years from nothing!” I could probably have pulled even more with the benefit of my life hack, but I wasn’t here to min max wolf of wall street. I had the first pieces of a plan that I needed to put together. “You want me to take all of that and throw it into a pit? You still wanna go through with it?”
“Well, I’d rather you not touch the Uniqlo and Netflix stuff, but my next batch of movie earnings and whatever else I can spare is fair game, so a cool 50 milli should suffice. I can swing that even with premium payments, yeah?”
Ben was all business. Despite his clear apprehension, I knew he’d do what I told him - I wasn’t giving him a choice, anyway. “How much do you exactly expect to make from this?”
“Probably somewhere around five times what I put in - net profit. The frauds running the economy into the ground are going to have to pay me at least that much.”
“I think I’m gonna hurl.” Anita was understandably looking a little green.