“Something About a Toreador”

The door to the recording studio flew open with a crash. In strode Hollywood icon, YouTube influencer and mega-rich actor Slush Funned, followed by a swirling cacophony of hangers-on, distant relatives, and not-worth-their-weight-in-goldfish assistants, each trying to catch the Slusher’s ear with some detail or update significant only to them.

Slush had started out on the hard south side of Chicago, and had pulled himself up by his Air Jordan shoestrings to the pinnacle of action-comedy stardom. But his star had faded over the years, and his remake of “The Jefferson’s Join the Navy,” a bust-out loser of a film, was only beaten to the bottom by his last film, “Mars Needs Babysitters,” which was a bigger box-office disaster than any film in the past thirty years.

After his agent threatened to quit, and his mistress threatened to run off with his agent if he didn’t start earning some big money fast, Slush had agreed to do the lead voice for an upcoming animated film where the animals take back their world. Since the film was being financed by a famous taco franchise, it was set in Spain, with the main character of a bull who gets even with the toreador who wounded his father. From there, the script wandered into so many bizarre themes that even the screenwriters scratched their heads over how to resolve them all.

But a paycheck was a paycheck, and that was exactly what Slush Funned needed.

He hushed his babbling entourage with a swipe of his right hand, and jabbed the finger of his left hand at an approaching recording engineer heavy enough to double for Marlon Brando on the set of “Apocalypse Now.”

“You da boss here?” Slush asked indignantly.

The approaching rotund fellow laughed self-deprecatingly and waved off such a possibility. “No, sir, Mr. Slush Funned, no. I’m Bill Valente, the sound recording lead.”

A second engineer, as tall and thin as Jack was short and squat, was only a few seconds behind as he tried to untangle his headphones cord from a clipboard.

“You da boss?” Slush asked again.

“Who, me?” replied Peter Hartshorn with a scoff. “No way, dude. Peter Hartshorn,” he added with a right hand stuck way out, while his left hand juggled a clipboard, earphones, and a pencil that had appeared from nowhere.

“Yeah, great, Shortform.” His entourage tittered at his mispronunciation. He pressed an empty jack Daniels bottle into Peter’s hand. “Fill this up, son. Nothing less than 100 proof”

His entourage burst out laughing like it was Oscar night and their boss was hosting.

Peter held the bottle, unsure of what he should do, when Billy ushered him towards a rear door. “You heard the man! Go get that thing filled!”

As the Slusher scanned the foyer of the modern recording studio and Peter shuffled off, now juggling a fourth item in both hands, Billy directed him over to a wide glass window. “Welcome to Hightower Recordings, Mr. Funned. We’re all set for you to record your lines today.” From the look on his face, you could tell Billy had a question he was dying to ask but was unsure what the reaction would be. “Uh, Mr. Funned, I’m sorry but I have to ask: have you read the script?”

The Slusher, known to be one of the premiere slackers in all of California, not just Hollywood, acted supremely indignant. “Have I read the script? Have I read the script?!”

He looked around at his closely-packed entourage, who searched among themselves for an answer, each stammering an incomprehensible and equally noncommittal phrase, mostly in the tone of, “Uh, well, y’see” and “Oh, uh, well, uh,” and more of the same.

Slush silenced them all again with another sliding swipe of his left hand. “Of course I read the damn script! Why wouldn’t I read the damn script! I wouldn’t be here today, right now, in this berry spot, if I hadn’t of read the damn script!”

He pulled on his chin and leaned over to his left as he whispered, “What’s the name of this flick again?”

His Third Assistant in Charge of Finance and Recreational Expenditures whispered back, “Something about a toreador.”

Slush whipped face-forward instantly. “And I ain’t never read no script with as much passion, and-and-intensity, and-and-all-out star appeal, as this film: ‘Something About a Toreador.’ Oscar material! Top shelf! Full power!”

An older man’s calm hand rested on Billy’s shoulder, adorned with a pinky ring and a watch on the attached wrist that cost more than Billy’s condo. “The name of the film is actually just ‘Toreador,’ Mister Funned,” the hand’s owner said calmly. “But for you, we’ll change the name.”

Slush had learned long ago that if you made a mistake, you pushed on with so much energy that no one could stop and correct you. “Yeah, uh, good thing too that you changed it to the right… thing. Yeah.” He squinted through eyes that were still peering through last night’s foggy haze. “And who would you be?”

The hand slid off Billy’s shoulder and grasped his other hand, both resting belt high across an expensive dark blue blazer with a striped cravat and matching striped pants. It was a bold ensemble, but then, its owner was a bold man. He nodded a slight bow in the Slusher’s direction. “Magnus J. Mitterwold, Mr. Funned. Welcome to Hightower.”

The Slusher squinted in reply. “Yeah? What’s the J stand for?”

Magnus smiled like he’d been waiting for the Slusher to ask. “The J stands for ‘Just about time to make a recording, don’t you think?’ ” He indicated the studio behind the glass with an open palm.

“Yeah, yeah, sure, sure,” Slush replied. As he and his entourage made their way over to the expansive recording space, he leaned over his right shoulder and whispered, “I gots to get me a middle initial, too!”

His Fourth Assistant in charge of Transportation and Luxury Food Emplacements tried to tell him he already had a middle initial, but the flurry of activity as twenty people all tried to squeeze into the recording room prevented that bit of discourse.

Billy tried in vain to keep the hangers-on out, but Slush insisted. “They go where I go. If they don’t go, then there ain’t no show.”

Mr. Mitterwold smiled politely and said softly to Billy, “We’ll clean up all their chatter in post-edit.”

The Slusher was positioned in front of a set of expensive mics and handed an equally expensive set of headphones, as Billy and Mr. Mitterwold stepped into the engineer’s booth beside two other engineers. Mr. Mitterwold flipped a toggle on the engineer’s massive multitrack board. “Anytime you’re ready, Mr. Funned.”

Slush tried to hush the group around him. “Quiet, quiet!” He looked into the engineer’s booth, as helpless as a deer in a set of headlights. “Uh, yeah, where we starting?”

Mr. Mitterwold smiled a calm, reassuring smile. “Why, on page one, of course.”

“Oh, yeah, o’course. Silly me.” Slush cast about quickly for a script from one of his entourage, which took some time since none of them had a title anywhere close to Assistant in Charge Of Anything Actually Useful. Finally, one of the engineers brought one to him from the booth, and they all started getting ready again.

Mr. Mitterwold flipped the toggle again. “Anytime you’re ready, Mr. Funned. Just have fun with it.”

Slush Funned rub his eyes a few times as he began reading the script for the first time, mouthing over words he couldn’t have produced stone cold sober, let alone still hungover from three nights of post-NBA Finals revelry.

One of the engineers muttered, “Overpaid prima donna.”

Another chimed in, “How do you say ‘no-talent hack’ politely?”

The other engineers chuckled softly, but Mr. Mitterwold stood firm. “You don’t. Your job is to take that overpriced, no-talent hack and get him to perform like a Lipizzaner stallion.”

He leaned down and flicked the toggle once more. “Mr. Funned, you can just read along in the script, if you’d like. You don’t need to have it memorized.”

The buzzing of concerned hangers-on was shushed once more as the Slusher stood tall among them. “Of course I could read long. I could read short, too. But I think I’ll just read it the length that it is.”

He mouthed a few words to himself as the engineers began rolling the tape. Billy pointed at Slush and said, “Line one, please.”

A hush fell over the studio. Slush Funned cleared his throat. Then, in a surprisingly deep baritone, Slush spoke:

“I remember when I was just a young bull, just a calf. I watched my father enter the ring, only to be tortured by the bullfighter with his swords and his spears and his daggers. I yelled and screamed as I watched my father, exhausted and defeated, drop to the dust in the arena. I knew from that day forward, I would gain my vengeance against…”

He paused for effect, as the entourage sat spellbound. He added, without looking down at the script, “The Torry-ay-dorry.”

The engineers face palmed and Billy chewed on the knuckle of his index finger, as Slusher’s cloud of sycophants sycophanted like never before. Amid tears of pure pleasure and palms waving nonexistent heat away from non-flushed faces, Slush Funned stood tall and proud, nodding up and down like he’d just stolen the ball from LeBron and dunked over Shaq.

Mr. Mitterwold tapped Billy on the shoulder. “Just move on.”

Following Billy’s instructions, Slush Funned continued reading the script, in a surprisingly strong and determined voice, as he botched every Spanish word he came across, and plenty of English ones as well. At one point, he actually said the word “Spanich” as if it rhymed with “spinach.”

Billy tried to help him with some of the words, but it was no use. No matter how Billy tied to sound the words out, whatever unpronounceable soup Slush used the first time, that was the way he pronounced it each and every time. “Hola” became “Oh-lay,” “Adiós” became “Ay-dye-oss,” and “Hasta mañana” became “Hasty mah-nay-nay.”

Some of his malaprops brought tears to the engineers’ eyes. Others brought winces jarring enough that one engineer snapped a pencil in two.

After a solid hour of this, Mr. Mitterwold had had enough. He knew what had to be done.

“Are you gonna pull the plug, sir?” Billy asked him.

Having never tasted defeat before, Mr. Mitterwold was not about to let this idiot bring him low. Instead, he pulled out his cell phone. “I’m going to make a call.”

Billy gasped. “You’re not gonna bump him off, are you?”

Mr. Mitterwold harrumphed. “If only it were that easy.”

The party on the other end finally picked up. “Hey, Jeff,” Mr. Mitterwold said, surprisingly cheerful. “It’s Magnus over at the studio. Have I got a deal for you…”

Two hours later, with engineers biting their own lips to keep from screaming out, Slush Funned, Pride of the South Side, winner of six Golden Razzies, tackled the final line of the script:

“And kids, my little nee-nohs and nee-noritos, remember this tye-empo as one of great success, for your very own pad-ree has defeated the vicious Torry-ay-dorry. No longer will he bring his misery and dollar to our little kay-say. Come now, let us bay-lay en las collers, for tonight, we shall have a massive fee-steye-val!”

Billy, drained of all emotion, shook his head. “How could he mess up festival? It’s the same word in both languages!”

Mr. Mitterwold simply smiled. “It’s all good, Billy.”

“How could this train wreck be anything but a disaster?” Billy asked sincerely.

Magnus smiled. “I just talked Jeff Bezos into buying the entire production. He needs something to drag his profits into a lower tax bracket. And this desastre should do just fine.”