The Los Angeles sun was beating down on the concrete of Studio City with a fierce, unforgiving glare. It was noon, the kind of heat that made the asphalt shimmer and the palm trees look tired.
Elias van Kempen stood across the street from the massive, fortress-like gates of the CBS Radford Studio Lot. Unlike the established talent arriving in sleek black town cars or air-conditioned Porsches, Elias had taken the bus. He had walked the last four blocks, his faded vintage leather jacket slung over his shoulder, his crisp white t-shirt perfectly highlighting the hollows of his collarbones.
He didn’t look like a sixteen-year-old kid arriving for an audition. He looked like a European rock star who had just survived a three-day bender and was currently calculating how to buy the street he was walking on.
He approached the pedestrian gate. The security guard, a burly man with a thick mustache and a clipboard, stepped out of his small, air-conditioned booth. He looked at Elias’s lack of a vehicle and his unpolished wardrobe, his face immediately shifting into a practiced scowl.
"Hold it right there, kid. Lot’s closed to the public. You got a pass or an appointment?" the guard grunted, tapping his pen against the clipboard.
Elias didn’t stop walking. He didn’t break eye contact. As he closed the distance, his hand smoothly slipped into his pocket, retrieving a single, crumpled five-dollar bill.
With the fluid, practiced motion of a seasoned mafioso greasing a doorman, Elias slid the bill across the clipboard, slipping it directly under the metal clip. He leaned in, his voice a low, gravelly baritone that commanded absolute authority.
"Elias van Kempen. Room 4B. Closed read," Elias stated. "I am already five minutes late, and if you make me stand in this heat for another ten seconds verifying paperwork, I am going to bill your security firm for my dry cleaning."
The guard blinked. He looked down at the five dollars, then up at the terrifyingly confident teenager. The kid’s aura was so profoundly dominant, so utterly devoid of the usual desperate, pleading energy of struggling actors, that the guard’s brain short-circuited. He assumed Elias was either a very eccentric, very rich European import, or someone deeply connected to the studio heads.
The guard swiftly pocketed the five dollars, a sweatdrop forming on his brow. "Uh, right. Room 4B. Down the main avenue, second building on your left. Have a good audition, Mr. van Kempen."
Elias walked through the gate without a backward glance. He mentally cursed the loss of the five dollars, filing it away as a necessary, albeit painful, operational expense.
He navigated the sprawling studio lot, moving past massive soundstages and golf carts ferrying executives. As he approached the second building on the left, the reality of the Los Angeles commercial casting machine became glaringly obvious.
Lined up along the exterior brick wall, sweating profusely in the California sun, were at least fifty young men. They were all variations of the same 1980s archetype: heavily gelled hair, bright neon polo shirts, blindingly white smiles, and deeply aggressive tans. They were the "All-American" boys, waiting in the heat like cattle for the open call.
Elias walked past the line. A few of the models looked at him, their smiles faltering as they took in his raw, unpolished, grunge aesthetic. They watched in a mixture of confusion and mounting panic as Elias completely bypassed the line, bypassed the frazzled casting assistant holding a clipboard at the door, and walked straight into the air-conditioned hallway.
"Hey! You can’t just go in there!" one of the heavily tanned models yelled from the back of the line, sweatdropping in pure indignation. "We’ve been waiting for two hours!"
Elias didn’t even turn his head. He just kept walking.
He found Room 4B at the end of the hall. The door was closed. He didn’t knock. He pushed the heavy wooden door open and stepped into the room.
The space was a large, windowless casting studio, illuminated by harsh overhead fluorescent lights. In the center of the room, behind a long folding table cluttered with coffee cups and headshots, sat three people.
Two of them were clearly executives. They wore expensive, lightly-colored linen suits, and they both possessed the stressed, anxious energy of men who were currently terrified of losing their jobs. The brand name printed on the folders in front of them confirmed their identity: Levi’s.
The third person in the room was entirely different.
He was young—only twenty-nine years old—wearing a dark, understated t-shirt and jeans. He was pacing behind the table, his arms crossed tightly across his chest, his face contorted in a mask of absolute, perfectionist agony.
Elias’s Photographic Memory supplied the name instantly. David Fincher.
In 1991, Fincher hadn’t yet directed Seven or Fight Club. He was currently a highly sought-after, notoriously difficult commercial and music video director. He was a man obsessed with darkness, grit, and psychological tension, currently trapped in a room with two men who wanted to sell blue jeans using sunshine and smiles.
"I’m telling you, it’s garbage," Fincher was saying, his voice tight with frustration, pointing at a large storyboard resting on an easel near the camera. "It’s completely devoid of any human truth. You want me to shoot a guy smiling while pumping gas in a pair of 501s? It’s a pantomime. It’s a lie. Nobody smiles while pumping gas. It looks like a commercial for antidepressants, not denim."
"David, please," the older Levi’s executive sighed, rubbing his temples. "It’s a classic American aesthetic. It’s safe. The focus groups—"
"The focus groups are composed of people who don’t know what they want until I show it to them," Fincher snapped back, running a hand through his hair.
Elias closed the door behind him with a loud click.
All three men stopped and turned.
Elias stood there, framed by the doorway. He didn’t smile. He didn’t offer a cheerful "Hi, I’m Elias!" He just looked at them, his dark eyes sweeping over the room before landing on the storyboard resting on the easel.
He walked over to it with slow, deliberate steps. The executives watched him, too stunned by his sudden, unannounced intrusion to object. Elias looked at the hand-drawn panels. Panel 1: Handsome boy drives vintage convertible. Panel 2: Boy stops at dusty gas station. Panel 3: Boy smiles at camera, wearing Levi’s 501s, looking incredibly happy.
With a smooth, almost elegant motion, Elias reached out, grabbed the thick, glossy storyboard off the easel, and dropped it directly into the metal trash can beside the table.
Clatter.
The older Levi’s executive jumped out of his chair, his face turning purple. "What the hell do you think you’re doing?! Who let you in here? Get out!"
Elias didn’t look at the executive. He turned his gaze entirely to David Fincher.
"He’s right, David," Elias said, his voice a low, resonant baritone that filled the quiet room. "It is garbage. But calling it a pantomime is too generous. It’s financial suicide."
Fincher stopped pacing. He slowly lowered his arms, his eyes narrowing as he examined Elias. He saw the sharp jawline, the hollow cheeks, the authentic vintage leather, and the absolute, unapologetic arrogance radiating from the sixteen-year-old boy.
"Financial suicide?" the younger executive sputtered, pointing a shaking finger at Elias. "That campaign was designed by the top marketing firm in San Francisco!"
"Then you should demand a refund," Elias said, his tone dripping with clinical sociopathy. He stepped away from the trash can and walked directly into the center of the room, standing on the small ’X’ taped to the floor for the camera. "You are Levi’s. You invented the blue jean. You are currently trying to sell authenticity to a generation that is actively rejecting the polished, plastic excess of the 1980s. The Soviet Union is collapsing. A recession is looming. And your brilliant strategy is to show a teenager smiling at a gas pump like a lobotomized golden retriever?"
The executives were literally speechless. A massive sweatdrop formed on the older man’s forehead. They had never been spoken to like this by an actor, let alone a kid who looked like he had just crawled out of a grunge club.
Fincher, however, didn’t look angry. He looked fascinated. He took a step forward, leaning against the edge of the table. "Alright, kid. If the gas station is garbage, pitch me the alternative. What’s the visual?"
Elias didn’t blink. He accessed his flawless memory of the defining visual aesthetics of the decade, combining it with Fincher’s known, future directorial style. He didn’t pitch a commercial; he pitched a psychological thriller.
"It’s a single, continuous shot," Elias said, his voice dropping to a near-whisper, forcing the men in the room to lean forward to hear him. "The lighting is low, underexposed. It’s an empty, dilapidated apartment in an unnamed European city. Rain is hitting the window. No music. Just the sound of the rain and distant sirens."
He paused, letting the silence hang in the air.
"The camera tracks slowly into the bathroom. In the center of the room is an empty, claw-foot bathtub. A man is sitting in it. He’s wearing a white tank top and a pair of perfectly worn Levi’s 501s. He is soaking wet. He is staring directly into the lens. He isn’t smiling. He isn’t selling anything. He looks entirely dead inside. He looks like a man who has lost everything, but he still owns his jeans. It doesn’t scream ’Buy this.’ It whispers ’You can’t afford to be this cool.’"
The room went dead silent.
The two executives looked at each other, profound terror in their eyes. The concept was so dark, so bleak, it went against every established rule of retail advertising.
But David Fincher... Fincher looked like he had just been handed the Holy Grail.
The director’s eyes were wide. He was staring at Elias with the intense, manic energy of a perfectionist who had finally found the missing piece of his puzzle. Elias hadn’t just pitched a commercial; he had pitched Fincher’s exact internal aesthetic back to him.
"It’s dark," Fincher murmured, running a hand over his mouth. "It’s alienating. It’s... it’s fking brilliant."
"David, no!" the older executive pleaded, sweatdropping furiously. "We can’t put a depressed kid in a bathtub on national television! It’s a denim commercial!"
"It’s art," Fincher snapped, not taking his eyes off Elias. He walked over to the heavy, professional film camera mounted on a tripod in the corner of the room. He swung the lens around, aiming it directly at Elias. "Talk is cheap, kid. You have the pitch. Let’s see if you have the face to hold that shot for thirty seconds without looking like a poser trying too hard."
Fincher hit the record button. The red light blinked to life.
"Give me the bathtub," Fincher commanded. "Give me the dead eyes. Action."
Elias stood on the taped ’X’. He didn’t need to act. He just needed to remember. He remembered the cold apartment in Milan. He remembered the final notice from his record label. He remembered the feeling of thirty-four years slipping through his fingers like sand.
But to make sure it translated flawlessly to the celluloid, he engaged the loan shark in his head.
[SYSTEM SHOP ACCESSED.][ACTIVATING: OSCAR-LEVEL MICRO-EXPRESSIONS (DURATION: 1 MINUTE)][COST: -20 CP][CURRENT BALANCE: 35 CP]
[CHA-CHING!]
Elias’s face went entirely slack. The micro-muscles around his eyes tightened imperceptibly, drawing the light into his dark irises and extinguishing it. His jaw relaxed into a position of absolute, bone-chilling apathy.
He stared into the camera lens. He didn’t blink. He didn’t move a single muscle.
He didn’t just look sad; he looked like a beautiful, hollow shell of a human being who had seen the absolute worst of the world and found it profoundly boring. It was the exact, devastating aesthetic of the impending Grunge era, delivered with a level of cinematic intensity that made the air in the room feel ten degrees colder.
Ten seconds passed. Twenty seconds.
The younger Levi’s executive physically shivered, rubbing his arms.
At exactly thirty seconds, David Fincher reached out and slammed his hand down on the camera, killing the recording.
Fincher stood up straight, letting out a long, heavy exhale. He looked at Elias, then turned to the two pale, sweating executives.
"Throw the gas station storyboard in the trash," Fincher ordered, his voice brooking absolutely no argument. "We’re shooting the bathtub."
The older executive swallowed hard. "David... the focus groups..."
"I don’t care about the focus groups," Fincher snapped, pointing a finger at Elias. "That kid just gave me more truth in thirty seconds than your marketing department has produced in five years. We’re shooting his pitch. And we’re using him."
Elias allowed the skill to fade, his face returning to its normal, sharply aristocratic composure. He didn’t smile. He had just won the principal role in a national commercial campaign, directed by a future Hollywood legend, but he wasn’t here for applause.
He was here for the money.
Elias stepped off the ’X’ and walked slowly toward the folding table. He stopped in front of the older, terrified Levi’s executive.
"I am glad we are in agreement," Elias said smoothly, leaning his knuckles on the table. "My agent at Sovereign Media will expect the revised contract by 5:00 PM today. And given that I just provided the entire creative direction for this campaign..."
Elias smiled. The cold, sociopathic shark was back.
"...I will require a ’First-Dollar Gross’ percentage on the backend syndication. If this airs in Europe, my fee doubles. Have a wonderful afternoon, gentlemen."
Elias turned and walked out of the room, leaving the three men in stunned, absolute silence. He had just walked into a closed room, thrown their script in the garbage, stolen the commercial, and demanded a percentage of the gross revenue.
He was a monster. And Hollywood was going to pay him for it.