Chapter Text
As it turns out, Ree has some talent for storytelling.
She owes her roommate for this discovery.
Ree’s roommate at NYU is also named Andrea (though she goes by Andi). Neither of them finds this coincidence very funny.
Andi is a film major, and on a Sunday in late February, she walks back into the dorm room and declares herself too hung over to write the plot outline she needs for her Storytelling Strategies course.
She flings herself face down on her bed and says, “I’ll give you fifty dollars if you write it for me, Ree.”
Ree doesn’t feel like writing her comp paper, so she says, “Okay.”
Andi cracks an eye open to look at her. “Really?”
“Sure.”
“Awesome,” Andi says. She pulls her comforter over her head. “The assignment is in my bag somewhere. Money’s in my wallet. I’ll get it for you once you finish.”
It takes her three hours to write. Andi gets the best grade in the class (“the fucking professor went fucking nuts,” she said), so a month later, Ree is roped into helping Andi write the script.
At the end of the semester, Andi tries to convince her to prepare a portfolio and transfer into the film school. Ree declines without providing an explanation.
Still, after graduation, she ends up following Andi out to L.A. (“I mean, come on, what else are you going to do with an English major?” Andi asked.) Ree tells her dad it will probably only be for a year, and then she’ll come back and get an MAT or something. But, then, it’s five years later, and she and Andi are still living in the same shitty apartment.
Andi gets tired of working on other people’s stories. (Ree doesn’t really care because a job’s a job. She works on a bunch of B horror films because, apparently, she has an ear for villains.)
One morning, Andi wakes Ree at four and says, “We’re going to make our own film.”
Ree yawns and says, “Okay.”
“So, get up. We’re having a brainstorming session,” Andi says. “I made coffee.”
Andi drums her fingers against the counter while Ree washes out a mug.
“What about that thing we wrote in college?” she asks.
“What?” Ree asks.
“The thing about the abusive teacher,” Andi says.
“That was shit, Andi,” Ree says. (And, fuck, she does not want to go back there because she knows if she does, she’s going to get destructive again.)
“Well, yeah. But we can make it better. I think the story has a lot of potential.”
This is how they end up writing a script and—after obtaining some crowdsourced funding—making a short film about jazz drumming. (This is also how Ree ends up going back on Celexa because the film reopened that dangerous, scarred place in her head. She wonders if she should still be this damaged after eight years. Andi tells her that she should smoke more pot.)
The film goes to festivals and people are interested but not that interested because they’re two girls making a movie about two women and the characters don’t even act like real women and maybe they should try the movie with two male leads. Then, they’d be cooking with gas.
Ree is mostly glad that no one wants the film (failures should be buried and not displayed on massive screens in surround sound), but Andi is getting despondent, so, one night, while sitting in the bar where they drink for free, Ree suggests that maybe they could make some changes.
Andi says, “Fuck that. I have a fucking vision, dammit, and I’m not going to compromise for anyone.”
Finally, Andi finds a festival in the middle of nowhere that only screens movies by women, and they enter the film and drive two days in Andi’s fucking Geo Metro to get there. Ree thinks the whole endeavor is going to be a waste of time, but there are a couple people there who are as crazy as Andi is, and they get really excited about the film and decide to finance it.
So, Ree polishes the script (and tries to remember that this story is not about her, it is not, it is not, it is fiction and lots of people get fucked over, it happens all the time). There are all sorts of decisions that are made about casting and locations and sets and costumes, and Ree vaguely agrees to a lot of things without knowing what she’s agreeing to at all.
The film turns out to be pretty good. Or at least Andi thinks it does. Ree gets high before the premiere, and lets Andi talk to the press.
The film opens in New York and L.A. the same weekend. The reviews are good.
The Friday after the release, Ree gets a postcard in the mail. The picture on the front is the New York City skyline. On the back, scrawled in neat handwriting, it says “Good job, Neiman.”
Ree finds Fletcher’s email address on Shaffer’s website. She stares at a blinking cursor for a long time before typing “Fuck you, Terry.”
She sends the message before she can reconsider.
She tears up the postcard and throws it in the trash.
Fifteen minutes later, she fishes out the pieces and tapes them back together.