"Shawn, come on in." Mr. Bronstein said. He nodded to Mom who was by Shawn's side. "Mrs. Cramer." He said in acknowledgement.

"Please, sit down." He pulled out a small piece of paper. "I have some preliminary information about the opening weekend results of the movie. A lot of of the reviews actually focused on your performance, Shawn..."

OOC: Shawn rolls Presence + Expression to determine how his performance influenced the movie results with the following possibilities

0 Successes: "It wasn't good Shawn...."

1 Success: "The movie was, how can I say this, 'Middle of the Pack'"

2+Successes: "Capital!"

OOC: 07:47, Today: Shawn Cramer rolled 1 success using 8d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling on 9 or more with rolls of 7,2,2,4,3,5,10(+2),7. Presence + Expression + WP.

07:47, Today: Shawn Cramer failed (no successes) using 2d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling on 9 or more with rolls of 7,3.  Striking Looks.


Wasn't sure if Striking Looks counted, so I rolled it separately. Didn't make a difference either way, though.

"It wasn't good Shawn." Mr. Bronstein fretted. He spoke frantically. "Let me explain."

"If in the first weekend a movie is out, it makes a certain amount of dollars, and that amount is equal to the amount of money spent on producing the movie then it is a pretty good weekend. Why? because you made up the cost in two days, everything from there on is therefore profit. If you can get more than half the budget made up that weekend than it’s pretty week, and if you make up less than half then it’s bad. It’s a 'bomb' or a Box office 'flop' that’s highly unprofitable."

"Given the numbers for Kid Knight. What we have here is a 'flop.'" He said, shaking his head.

"Oh no..." Shawn felt awful about the whole thing; he'd tried his best, but it still felt like this was his fault. Was he not good enough? Did he fail Mr. Bronstein?

"Sometimes true art is lost on an audience." Mr. Bronstein lamented, seeming to blame the public more than himself. "I don't know. What do you think Shawn?"

"I don't know..." But Shawn did know - the public had met him, and the public had rejected him. It was his worst nightmare, but all he wanted to do was dig deep and try to win them over again. There wasn't any other option.

"What Shawn meant to say, was that it was a terrible. He should have acted or tried harder. Oh my God! What are we going to do!?" Shawn's Mom asked, her hands slapping the side's of her face as she clutched her head. She was having a hard time hearing the news.

Shawn nodded in agreement at his mother's criticism. As mean as it sounded, she was probably right, and it wasn't anything Shawn didn't already believe. "I should've done better..."

"Think nothing of it. You did as well as you could have done under the budget and the circumstances. I think things are what they are. Sometimes an audience just doesn't appreciate art the way it is supposed to turn out."

He looked down at the LA Times movie section of the Newspaper, sifting through the titles and headlines in front of him on his desk. "It probably didn't help that The Never-ending Story opened on the same week." 

Mom chuckled a nervous laugh. "It's obvious that Shawn is just a little nervous." She said, giving Shawn an angry look. "He didn't really mean that he should have tried harder." She said, working her way up to agreeing with what the Director said. "He meant to say that it was the audience's fault."

She cleared her throat. "Like you said, art is hard for people to appreciate. Especially good art."

There was an awkward pause as Mom waited for a response, nervous tapping of her finger on the chair, the Director still sifting through pages.

Shawn, as he often did with his mom, seamlessly switched gears to agree with her. "You're right, I'm being silly. I put a lot of work into my part, I just wish the audience could've seen that."

Mr. Bronstein really didn't seem to be paying attention to either Shawn or his mother, focusing more on the headlines and reading them out loud in a low whisper, to himself. He was unhappy, it was clear. Sometimes he would laugh incredulously at the reviews, commenting that he could write better ones.

"But, I have a few commercials I'm involved in, if you're interested." He said, absentmindedly, as if it was something he really didn't care about.

Shawn looked over at his mom, trying to see if that was something she was interested in before he responded.

"But, Shawn's talents are in the movie industry. He's going to be a great star." Mom said, the look on her face showing one of complete shock that her son would be offered only a part in a commercial.

"Ha!" Mr. Bronstein barked a joyless laugh. "I'd be surprised if they ever let me direct a movie of that kind of budget again given what a flop it turned out to be." He mused, shaking his head in self pity. "And that probably goes with everyone who acted or was a part of this disaster. Unfortunately, that includes Shawn." The Director said, now focusing on Shawn's Mom.

Shawn found himself in the all-to-familiar position of being talked about like he wasn't in the room. His performance, the movie, his future, all the source of an ongoing discussion that he increasingly was not a part of.

The bottom dropped out of Shawn's stomach. Not on his behalf, of course - the idea of not being in movies again sounded pretty appealing to him - but for how this would affect his mother. How would she react?

"And just what do you mean by that?" Shawn's Mom asked. She had that look on her face. The look of someone who had placed all of their bets on someone that had let them down. Now, instead of seeing that judgement on Shawn, Shawn saw Mr. Bronstein under Mom's harsh gaze.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:53, Mon 15 May 2017.

He seemed to be equally, if not more downbeat than anyone who had lost something that Shawn had ever seen. Self-doubt, criticism and worst-case scenarios spewed forth from the Director's mouth as he sulked.

"I mean the movie was a disaster. A flop. A failure." He waved his hand in gesture of dismissal. "Its time to start from scratch. Maybe go back to making independent films. That kind of project. I don't know. It's too soon to say. One thing is for certain, this kind of work hasn't put any of us in the good graces of the studio that's for sure."

"MY SON IS A MOVIE STAR!" Shawn's Mom screamed, getting up from the chair and looking at Shawn. "Come on, we're leaving!"

Shawn wordlessly follows her. He doesn't know what he could say or do to make it better.

OOC: Shawn Join's Thread

Shawn: Dad's Brief Thoughts