Chapter 22: Curious Bob
Saturday came around and inside a shop called Creed Toys, an interesting scenario was happening.
"I looked through my father's yearbook and asked him whether we'd be friends if we ever met at that time. How'd you come up with the idea?" A man wearing thick-rimmed glasses asked interrogatively to a boy sitting opposite of him.
"My parents are dead so I imagined having a time machine would help with the problem." The boy answered while sketching and writing something on stacks of paper.
"Why set the character as a bullied teenager when you could have set it at your age?" The man asked again with much scrutiny.
"I'm nine now and there is no news about time machines, so I assumed it would be built when I'm older." The boy answered again while not paying much attention to the interrogating man. "I'm also somewhat bullied now so how could I not be bullied when I am a teenager."
"Why use Doc when you could have used Professor?" The man fiddled with his glasses as this was something important to him.
"Almost everyone can go to hospitals and call doctors as Doc while only the highly educated use professor." The boy ponder a bit before giving a follow-up. "It is like choosing between what is much more cool-sounding between Doc Ock and Professor X."
"Why have the time machine as a car and not something else? Why Coca-Cola and why a DeLorean?" The man asked with specifics.
"I figured time travel meant traveling and what better way to travel than with a moving car and with some Coca-Cola." The boy ponder a bit because he hadn't had the best excuse but he still answered nonetheless. "I picked the DeLorean because it looked cool and alieny."
"Why Biff and why cowboys?" The man asked much lighter this time as these concepts weren't even something he considered before.
"It just felt right to me." The boy muttered while remembering a certain special detail to a story and trying to fix it within his other page works.
"Why do you know so much about adult stuff such as kissing, bomb-making, time period research, and falling in love?" The man turned to the crux of the problem as these things shouldn't have come from the kid in front of him.
"The fact that you're an adult and me answering your questions legibly should put things into perspective." The boy said while changing to something else. "Or maybe because I'm just silent and too observing to know what's what."
The man finally sighed in acceptance and their interrogation scene stopped when an old man approached them after ordering some men to do things.
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"I hope Alex hasn't been much of a bother to you, Mr. Gale." Sullivan smiled and asked to kickstart what is about to happen.
"Not at all, Mr. Creed. In fact, I might be the one bothering him instead." The thick-rimmed glasses man was honest and the talks went to much more important matters.
Alexander didn't mind them as he finally got rid of the curious guy. Seeing the original idea man who he stole from wasn't anything special at all.
As he worked on finishing Top Gun, he still occasionally listened in on their conversation to get an insider's perspective on Hollywood deals.
"So what do you think?" Sullivan asked while patting his grandson. "Is he even better than I said he was?"
"He is really... peculiar. It would be hard for me to fight for the top screenwriter position in the credits." Bob Gale accepted the defeat.
He came to Creed Toys today to officially sign off the deal on behalf of Zemeckis while also requesting to meet the kid the finished their screenwriting jobs for them.
"Hoho! That is my grandson for you." Sullivan already considers peculiar as praise to Alexander so he was happy. "Well, you could still do your work since some parts need fixing up. Changing the character's name to Marty McFly and Doc Brown is regrettable for me but I hope you can keep my grandson's story quite integral as it is."
"No worry on that point. The timeline of things and your grandson's sketches of eventual scenes are already a big help." Bob was frank as well. "Changing character names is regrettable but I hope you understand that the names are probably my only way to make my mark in this well-crafted story. Little Alex here is making me feel irrelevant."
Sullivan only smiled at the man's self-depreciation while handing some papers he got from a copyright lawyer. "This is the official papers that legalized my buying of the script from Columbia. It was fortunate that the Price had already jumped ship to Universal."
Bob didn't comment much on his script's original staunch supporter and did some fact-checking on the documents. Although he was only a screenwriter, he knew a legal document when he saw one. "Everything is in order and I guess everything could finally start."
"If you and Mr. Zemeckis could schedule your agents to come next week and accept reasonable remunerations, then prop designing and actor screening could start without problem as early as possible." Sullivan mused while Bob could only grimace.
"I'm only taking credit as a screenwriter so you don't have to worry much about me. Robert's movie is already starting trial screenings and has high prospects so his agent is probably the one you should worry about." Bob gave some insider information to get in the old man's good books.
Their cooperation was strictly professional and commercial so the matters of pay should be set aside for later.
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The scheduled meeting eventually finished with the written agreement turned into something much more formal.
It was a lot tamer and simpler than how Alexander imagined it would go. Maybe the differences and disagreements would only happen when brokers and lawyers come into the equation.
While the adults were still fixing upon follow-up addendums and schedulings, Alexander tuned them out to focus on the final pages.
It was fortunate that he wasn't drawing full realistically but just a semblance of a confident pilot.
When he finally affixed 'The End' to the final paper and affixed everything to a clip binder, he was weirded out to see his grandfather and the curious Bob eyeing the paper stack with intrigue.
It didn't take long for his grandfather to know he was finished and was quick to ask. "Can I see?"
Alexander didn't resist much as he just handed the papers and went off to survey the Creed Toys, the toy shop that was the progenitor of future CREED.
Sullivan saw off the nonchalant child that just finished another potential project for his film company within a week.
In a different manner to the old Creed, curious Bob looked at the young boy with complexity while wanting to know the content of those stacked papers.
It was only now that he recognized that those messy papers were similar to the Back to the Future picture books that stumped his script ideas with a much more solid and completed one.