“I could write you a script,” I said.
He gave me such a side-eye and ignored me.
“No, I’m a writer,” I said.
He laughed at me. Just fully laughed in my face. Now I understand because I have had a thousand people say those sentences to me and not one of them gave me something remotely usable. He’d been pestered for years by people saying, “I have an idea,” thinking it’s so easy to write a porno. I get it and forgive him now, but in the moment? No.
“Go fuck yourself!” I yelled. I went and got my laptop, then stamped my feet down the hallway to the other room to start working on a script. I gave it to him a couple of days later. The look on his face is forever burned into my brain, and I go to it when I am blocked in writing. It was a look of Holy shit, she actually can write. He bought it from me right then and there for seven hundred dollars. He shot the film and then knew exactly how to tease another one out of me. “Think you can do it again?”
I wrote another script, and another script, and another. He was in heaven because he didn’t have to write. I was in heaven because I got to write and got paid to write. Then the other directors at Wicked, who were now Jonathan Morgan and Michael Raven, wanted to buy scripts. I started writing for them. The word got out in the industry that I was a really good writer, at which point Wicked put the kibosh on that and added writing to my contract. So now I was a contract star and contract writer. I could write for anybody in the company but not outside it. After that, I wrote every Wicked movie that I starred in.
When I write, the movie plays in my head as I work. I see it as I write, and because of my memory, when it’s time for the shoot I remember every beat and angle of the film I envisioned when I first wrote the script in longhand. This isn’t a knock on anyone at Wicked, because they’re all fantastic directors, but it was like I had already watched my movie in my head and I hated not seeing it exactly that way on the screen. It could be as simple as imagining the girl wearing a pink dress, not a yellow one, but some of it was bigger changes, and I started to get in huge fights with Brad.
“I’m just gonna have to have you stop coming to set,” he yelled at me after one too many objections from me.
“You’re ruining my vision!” I yelled. Oh, gosh, that sentence haunted me for years. “Don’t ruin her vision” became a running joke in the company. I got in a huff, let’s call it a hufflepuff, and I went in to the owner of Wicked and convinced him that I knew how to direct. Just once I wanted to see if I could take something from my head, to paper, to life. And he said yes. Keep in mind they were still making money to burn if they wanted to. No one could afford to take this risk these days, but back then a thirty-five-thousand-dollar gamble to appease the star was nothing.
So now I had to do it.
I wrote a script called One Night in Vegas with Kaylani Lei, one of our contract stars, in mind. The first day on set, I sat down at the monitor and realized that I’d done the blocking and told everyone what to do, but I didn’t know how to start. Everybody was listening and looking at me and I was like, Oh shit.
Jake Jacobs, the cameraman on my first day as an extra and then my first Wicked film, was standing right there by me with the camera.
“What do I say now?” I whispered to him.
He didn’t blow my cover or rat me out. He whispered, “You say, ‘Rolling, speeding.’”
“Rolling!” I yelled. “We’re speeding.”
He waited a beat, then whispered, “Now say ‘Action.’”
I swallowed.
“You can do it,” he whispered.
“Action,” I said in a voice only loud enough for him to hear.
“Say it louder.”
“Action!”
Thank you, Jake. Halfway through that day, we were shooting a party scene with a bunch of people coming in and out. Of course, I had to make my first movie as difficult as possible with extras and moving parts. As I was standing at the top of this staircase looking down to figure out blocking and timing, I suddenly realized that everyone was looking at me and I was commanding a room of twenty people. I was twenty-two years old, and I had the epiphany that so many people go through life never having that moment where you can say, “This is it. This is what I was born to do.” And I’ve been drunk with power ever since.
One Night in Vegas turned out great, and when the owner of the movie company saw the finished film, directing was quickly added to my contract. Now I was a Wicked contract star, writer, and director.
“Who the hell is that?” I whispered to Jessica Drake. We were on set for a movie I wrote called Highway. We were Wicked’s most successful contract stars and had hit it off. I had written us a buddy movie just so we could have fun together. It was based on Thelma & Louise, and I chose Michael Raven to direct. We were shooting at Four Aces Movie Ranch, a set you’ve seen in a hundred movies, with a fifties-style diner and motel. It’s an hour northeast of L.A. in the middle of nowhere, so if you’re there, you’re there for a reason.
“One of them’s got a camera,” said Jessica. “They press?”
“I’m gonna find out,” I said.
The guys had walked over to Lyle and Jim, who were Wicked’s in-house art department. They were hugging, all buddy-buddy.
“Who are they?” I said, not looking at them.
“This is Keith Munyan and Dean Keefer,” Lyle said. “Keith is shooting the box cover.”
Now, I am a creature of habit, as you know. I don’t like change. Brad Willis had shot the stills for my previous box covers and publicity. I didn’t know that Brad had moved on to doing more design than photography, I just knew that it looked like Lyle and Jim had hired their friends to shoot our box cover. I was sure they sucked, and I told Jessica as much when I walked back.
“I don’t really like people photographing me when I haven’t seen their work,” she said. “How do we know he’s not gonna try to sell the photos?” She was older than me and had been in the business longer. I always trusted her opinion and admired her business acumen.
“You’re right,” I said. “He might make me look like shit. I need to see his test photos. Let him audition.” Or quit.
I sat for Keith that first day in the corner of the diner set in the ranch. I sat in a booth across from a weathered bumper sticker on the wall reading AMERICA: LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT. Keith is a talker, and I immediately picked up a strong Louisiana accent. I resolved not to acknowledge it or speak to him to reveal mine.
He showed me the first shot on his camera. I smiled and yelled to Jessica through the window. “Okay, we’re gonna be nice to this guy now,” I said. “We’re gonna keep him.”
“What part of Louisiana are you from?” I asked.
“How did you know?” Keith asked.
“I’m from Baton Rouge,” I said.
“I’m from the swamps.”
We laughed, kindred spirits. Keith and Dean were in their forties, partners in business and in life. They’re both good-looking guys, and Keith was a model before he was a photographer. When I become friends with someone, I am all in. I practically say, “We’re gonna be friends now. We’re gonna get bunk beds and do activities.”
I had a shoot coming up, just some content for my website. My photographer canceled and I immediately thought of Keith. I did a day alone with him, and they were the best pictures ever taken of me up to that point. Pretty much instantly, I told Wicked and anyone else who wanted photos, “No one else is allowed to shoot me.” From that day forward, just about every professional photo ever taken of me was by Keith. He had never shot layouts for magazines, and many editors understandably didn’t trust someone they hadn’t worked with before. But I told them that if they wanted me they had to hire Keith Munyan. I didn’t care if it was Penthouse, or Spencer Gifts doing my calendar. He’s with me.