SF Chapter 84: Script II
The next day after his conversation with Samantha, Daniel was at Spago, an upscale restaurant in Beverly Hills.
"Hey, Amanda. Glad you accepted my lunch invitation." Dani stood up as soon as she arrived.
Amanda Seyfried smiled and gave him a brief hug in greeting. "Wow… fancy place." She glanced around the restaurant.
"Yeah, it's a nice place," he agreed. "But don't worry, this isn't one of those 'three peas and artistic sauce' kind of restaurants."
He raised a finger pointedly. "They only scam us on the price, not on the portion sizes."
She let out a small chuckle and sat down across from him.
They looked at each other for a moment until she suddenly blurted out, "I just want you to know I'm not that kind of girl."
He raised an eyebrow. "Are you rejecting me?"
"Oh, come on, you can't reject me right after a simple hello. Where's your sense of fairness?" he gasped.
"I'm just being honest," Amanda said with a small smile. "Not a rejection per se."
Daniel ended up pulling his chair closer and sitting beside her. He leaned in slightly and whispered, "So... we're splitting the bill, right?"
Before she could even react, he smirked. "I'm kidding. I'm the one who invited you."
"I'm a gentleman, even though I'm clearly being treated unfairly here."
"Would I want something with you?" Daniel paused and glanced at her. "Totally. One hundred percent. No doubts about it. Did I invite you here because of that? No."
Amanda raised an eyebrow.
"I invited you because I have a job proposal for you," he revealed. "To be fair, this is my first time doing this. Most of the time, I have zero involvement in the casting process."
She looked at him with both surprise and interest.
He grabbed a folder he had left on the table, pulled out a script, and handed it to her.
Amanda took it, and he started explaining. "The movie is called Easy A. I'll be honest, I used some ideas I discarded while writing Mean Girls."
"Are you trying to ride Mean Girls' popularity to make something similar?" she quickly understood where he was going with this. Amanda wasn't dumb like her character in the movie.
"Yes, and the best way to do that is by using one of the main characters from Mean Girls as the protagonist of Easy A," Daniel nodded.
"Lindsay is filming another movie right now, and I think Rachel is too associated with Regina. And I believe you're better for this role than Lacey," he said openly.
"Wait... seriously?" Amanda reacted with genuine surprise.
"You don't need to give me an answer right now. You can talk to your agent and everything. And yeah, I want to capitalize on the momentum, but I think my script is good, not just a scam for money."
"Thank God I said that at the beginning of the conversation, or this would've been a lot harder to say now," she joked, looking at him mischievously.
"But I'm still not that type of girl."
He made a face. "You don't know what you're missing. You would've made an incredible third friend with benefits."
Amanda, who had already gone back to reading, slowly raised her head. "Third?"
"Oh, let's order something to eat." He ignored the question and grabbed the menu.
Amanda kept staring at him while he started looking up and around nervously. "My brownie points. My brownie points are all gone! There is nothing left!"
"No, no, you still have a single point for being incredibly honest," she said mockingly, trying to hold back a laugh.
"I'll take that as a win," he smiled and called the waiter over. Amanda ended up ordering a few appetizers that could be eaten with her hands.
She couldn't seem to stop reading the script in front of her.
After a while, occasionally picking something from the plate and bringing it to her mouth, she finally looked at him.
"So Olive is basically going to be the sole protagonist?"
"Whoa, you still remember I'm here," he fake-scoffed.
Daniel wasn't actually bothered by the fact that she had completely immersed herself in the script. He himself had done something similar a few times before.
At least she made a slightly sheepish face afterward.
"This is my first chance to be the lead," Amanda remarked. "And I'm really liking the story and Olive as a character."
She smirked. "Besides, you admitting you already have two girls makes it a lot easier for me not to feel any guilty about ignoring you."
But she wasn't finished. "And because of you, people keep asking me if it's going to rain." She playfully pouted.
That made Daniel glance quickly at her breasts. "If you accept the role, we should totally do the joke again," he snickered, immediately receiving a stomp on the foot.
"Oh yeah," Amanda finally put the script aside, "you told me at the premiere that you had published a book when you were 13."
"I didn't think much of it at the time. But then I found out it was Wimpy Kid. You never told me you wrote a massive bestseller!"
"Eh," Daniel shrugged. Then he received a message and gave it a quick glance.
"Juno just officially entered production," he revealed.
"Oh, this is the more 'indie' one, right? I heard about the auditions for it."
"Yeah," he agreed. "It's the movie with the smallest budget out of everything I've done so far. I think the script turned out really good, and it was by far the hardest thing I've written for movies... but it's also the one I have the least confidence in."
"I just hope it doesn't lose money," he joked.
They continued talking about movies and a bunch of other things. Later that day, Daniel received a message saying that Amanda had accepted the role.
Since they wanted the movie to be released as quickly as possible, the production would be kept as lean and efficient as they could make it, with Paramount fully supporting the project since they also saw the film's financial potential.
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