Our plucky heroine’s boss, Sylvia Zimmerman, is unexpectedly called back to New York because of a family emergency, leaving plucky heroine/ingenue Sarah to handle her very first movie set on her own. By the end of the first week, Sarah realizes she’s going to need help, especially since Hugo North, the Executive Producer, keeps piling on more grunt work for her to do:
Print out five copies of this contract for me.
— Complicity, p. 239
Get me a copy of this script.
Connect me with this agent.
She hits on the idea of hiring a personal assistant for the executive producer. As she explains to her line producer (self is aware now that there are many types of producers, and the only one with any real clout is the Executive Producer), “It’s L.A. There’s dozens of film school students who would kill to intern for someone like Hugo.”
She emails the following job description to USC and UCLA:
Feature film production in need of intern to work closely with British executive producer during its six-week shoot. Director’s previous film has played in Cannes. Exec producer has extensive ties in the international entertainment and property industries.
Candidates must be hardworking, enthusiastic, a self-starter. Must have your own laptop and car. We will provide a cell phone. Position starts immediately.
By the following afternoon, we’d received twelve emails and I’d set up in-person interviews with five of the candidates that weekend.
— Complicit, p. 240
The best candidate is a Vietnamese American student who’d completed his BA at Stanford. She nixes him in favor of a woman: “twenty-two, brunette, long-limbed and fetching. Perfect. She was just what I needed to keep Hugo happy.”
Now self understands the choice of title for this novel: Complicit.
Kanlaon 