[Funky Transitional music]
"I have big news, Conrad!" Stephanie announced enthusiastically.
"You finally found a buyer for those tainted covid vaccines?" Conrad guessed hopefully. "Because those crates have been in Craig's parking spot awhile, and they're a real eyesore."
"No, it turns out the only people dumb enough to fall for 'artisan-aged vaccines' are all antivaxxers." Stephanie replied. "Another month in the sun and we can try selling them to states that still do executions by lethal injection. No, I signed on a hot new client this morning!"
"Oh! Do tell."
"Alright, off the top of your head, who was the hottest action star in Hollywood in the eighties?"
"Arnold Schwarzenegger?" Conrad guessed.
"No."
"Sylvester Stallone."
"No."
"Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson, Jackie Chan."
"None of those." Steph said.
"...Sigourney Weaver?" Conrad hesitated.
"It's Bruce Willis." Steph finally answered.
"Oh! Oh..." Conrad said, his tone shifting from pleasant surprise to confused dread. "I thought he quit acting."
"Plenty of actors returned to stage and screen after brief retirements." Stephanie remarked with admirably masked defensiveness. "Clint Eastwood, Rick Moranis, Daniel Day-Lewis, Emma Watson..."
"All fine actors, to be sure." Conrad agreed. "But there is the complication of-"
"Mara Wilson, David Letterman, Joe Pesci, Robert Redford..." Stephanie continued, looking at their phone for more examples.
"All very limber and expressive actors. Also fully mobile, and mostly healthy." Conrad commented. "I saw in the tabloids recently that Bruce Willis is no longer able to walk or speak."
"Exactly! You read about him in the news!" Stephanie declared. "He's in the zeitgeist! All the better to get him involved with something. Strike while the iron's hot!"
"Steph..."
"Plenty of actors continue acting after manifesting debilitating medical conditions!" Steph continued, sounding like they were trying to convince themselves as fruitlessly as they were trying to convince Conrad. "Christopher Reeves, Michael J. Fox, Daniel Radcliffe..."
"Steph, what's really going on?" Conrad stated.
"I didn't know he had frontotemporal dementia!" Stephanie admitted regretfully. "He was there when his old agent transferred the contract. I thought he was just being the strong silent type! I didn't suspect anything until I thought about how happy his old agent looked at the meeting, and googled him. Now I need to get him at least one role or his family can sue!"
"Well, very few contracts are bulletproof." Conrad stated. "Did you ask legal to look it over?"
There's one clause that would revert responsibility to his old agent." Steph answered.
"And?" Conrad said, encouraging elaboration.
"Do you remember that Arbor Day party we went to in 2020, right after we stopped meeting at the office?"
"Yeah?" Conrad lied. With the kind of drugs he liked, he considered any party he could vividly remember a failure.
"Well, she was there, and she got pictures of me.
"Well, that's not too bad." Conrad said, relying on statistics and patterns to fill in the blanks. "You were wearing your shrimp mask at the orgy, right? She can't have anything incriminating with that."
"I absolutely did, but that's not it." Stephanie continued. "She got photos of me with my mask off at the charcuterie spread."
"And?" Conrad asked, assumptions failing him.
"The charcuterie board was made entirely with the cured meats and cheeses of critically endangered animals."
"Ohhh." Conrad said. "That is bad."
"I ate the last northern white rhino, Conrad." Stephanie specified. "It wasn't even that good, but I ate so much of it."
"More than a third of our clients are vegan or vegetarian." Conrad thought aloud. "If those photos got out, we'd lose them all overnight."
"Exactly. If I'm going to have an 'opportunity' to deal with, I'd rather it be finding Bruce Willis an acting role."
"Fair enough." Conrad said. "Let's start with an easy idea: documentary film? Michael J Fox did 'Still' this year. That did pretty well, and it was on Apple TV of all places."
"I already went to the family about that." Stephanie answered. "They all went on rants about how they deserve 'privacy' and 'dignity'."
"Fantastic." Conrad groaned, rolling his eyes. "What about having AI do the work? He wouldn't even need to do anything."
"We tried that. We dressed up a script from the pile and got our AI to make a test render of 'Staunchly Refusing to Die Hard'." Stephanie said. "The focus group looked like the security footage in 'Event Horizon' after ten minutes. Besides, nobody's willing to distribute it until they see how Tom Hanks' lawsuit turns out.
"Fuck. Okay..." Conrad paused for thought. "Have you talked to Balthazar or the doctor? Maybe we could get some regenerative work for him."
"Doctor Nightscream's on medical leave."
"Did the vampire Gerber Babies he was so proud of get out again?" Conrad asked.
"No, he ate some gas station sushi." Stephanie informed. "I asked Balthazar what he could do, but he said there was no way Bruce had enough blood to perform the right ritual."
"Okay, we'll just... Work with what we have, then." Conrad thought aloud. "We need a role that can be performed without moving, or speaking."
"And yet still be dignified." Stephanie added.
"Right," Conrad agreed. "That way, if anyone accuses us of being exploitative, we can can accuse them of being ableist."
"He's so stunning and brave..." Stephanie said with convincing admiration. "Oh, I got it!" They leaned out of their chair, towards the meeting room door. "Doris! Doris get Henry Cavill on the line!"
"Henry Cavill?" Conrad asked.
"I got into Warhammer 40k back in lockdown when all my coke dealers got covid and I needed something to spend unreasonable sums of money on." Stephanie explained. "The Emperor of Mankind is basically a corpse in a chair. Bruce Willis would be perfect for the role in Cavill's 40k series!"
"Oh, that's better than my idea." Conrad said.
"What's that?"
"An animation project at HBO." Conrad elaborated.
"Oh that's perfect, too!" Stephanie said. "I'll call some people. If we can get him on as one of the mute Looney Tunes characters, he'll have steady work until tax season!"