KDBookOnline
Share Us
Busy leaned forward and laughed. “Such an effing good idea. And good ideas don’t need a why, do they?”
“They don’t. No one needs permission for a good idea. Honestly, cis white men have a lot of bad ideas, and they don’t ask permission, either. Maybe they should.” Wil crossed her legs as the audience hummed with approval and scattered applause.
Busy reached out across the sofa and took Wil’s hand. “With that in mind, let’s watch the video everyone’s talking about.”
“The one that Katie Price filmed.”
The audience went quiet.
“Yeah. The one I have bookmarked in a special secret folder of bookmarks.” Busy said this with a laugh in her voice, like a close friend sharing an inside joke.
The video came up, and even though Molly’s video was powerful, was hot, was interesting, was in every way a good idea, it was immediately clear on this big screen and in this context that there were many more layers of talent, vision, and gifts on display in the video Katie had filmed.
It wasn’t just that she had the right equipment, whereas Wil just had her phone and a fifteen-dollar phone tripod she’d bought online. It was that you could follow Katie’s eye. You could see and appreciate the very heart of Wil’s project.
Katie hadaskedthe audience to focus, in this video, on what Wil was doing. What Wil was giving Noel. On what Wil wanted the audience to believe about themselves.
In one minute, that was there. Which meant that Katie had, of course, always understood what a minute of film felt like, what it could feel like, and what it could do.
Wil hadn’t expected it, but as she watched it from the stage, the hot lights burning into her scalp, she cried.
Busy and Wil looked at each other at the same time after the video ended, now without any outro music in order to focus the audience at home’s attention on the reverence in the studio. Busy had tears in her eyes, too.
“That’s just so incredibly beautiful, isn’t it?” Busy asked. “It’s like I’m looking at this incredible thing you’re doing, Wil, and at the same time, I’m seeing the birth of one of the most important filmmakers ever. I can’t even with it. It’s so big, and I’m so honored that you and Katie would come to LA and come to me and share this with everyone.”
This was, Wil knew, an important part of the messaging that Katie and Madelynn and April had hashed out—the idea that Wil and Katie had flown to Los Angeles together to share Katie’s video with the world in an expansive, generous way. It was a message to counter the competing narrative, forwarded by Ben, that turned Katie’s video into a pathetic bid for attention.
“Thank you.”
This felt good so far. Wil tried to imagine Katie in the greenroom, where she’d said she would be watching with Madelynn. She hoped it was good for her, too.
“There’s this other thing that I don’t even want to talk about,” Busy said.
“Yeah. Why would you? Why would I?” Wil smiled so the audience would know it was okay.
Busy took a deep breath. “Like, there’s some bullshit? Out there? Namely from the ex types? About your project, and your coming to California, and of course, Katie Price. Do you want to talk about that?”
Wil did. It was a big part of why she’d agreed to do this, that she would get to talk about Katie from her own perspective. “A lot of it isn’t even my story, but I’ll tell you what is. I’ve known Katie since we were babies. Our moms are best friends. They’re out there right now.”
Wil grinned into the audience. She couldn’t see anything but lights and cameras, but she knew Beanie and Diana were there, and the cameras would find them.
“Katie was always around,” she continued, “but she and I weren’t, like, best friends, because let me tell you, just from my perspective, Katie was working so hard all the time. And it was all her. Katie’s mom, I think, would have loved it if Katie did what I did, play some high school sports and be a cheerleader and date and have a lot of fun. But Katie wanted acting and voice and dance lessons. She watched movies—No. Shestudiedmovies. She messed with cameras. She was always making movies and putting on plays and being in plays. She traveled and did this stuff that to me was unimaginable. So it wasn’t until our senior year of high school before she went to Chicago to do summer stock—”
At that, the audience interrupted Wil, not with applause or anything loud, but with a kind of hum that meant they knew what had become the apocryphal story of Katie Price.
Summer stock. Ben Adelsward.
“It wasn’t until our senior year that we became friends,” Wilcontinued. “Best friends. We were doing everything together, and in so many ways it was one of the highlights of my life, because I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but Katie is incredibly compelling.”
The audience laughed.
“Right? And I was compelled. On the surface, it didn’t seem like we did a whole lot more than ride around in my Bronco and eat Twizzlers, but we were telling each other stories about ourselves and each other. She was so excited to go to summer stock. To go to this elite acting program in North Carolina. The rest of that story doesn’t belong to me, but we reconnected recently, and you know those people you can just pick up with where you left off?”
“Yes,” Busy said. “So much of me depends on those people.”
Wil squeezed Busy’s hand. “Yes. You know, I think. And we’ve been doing a lot of riding around in that same Bronco and talking about why neither one of us should have to ever answer the question ‘why.’”
“Because you’re allowed to just have ideas and to do them.”