In the conference room at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Catherine O'Connell stared at the signatures on the contract. She then glanced at the handwritten, reverse-contingency clause Link had added, and was quiet for a long time.
Bander's heart was practically beating out of his chest.
Catherine finally spoke, her voice low: "When George [Lucas] dragged me into this back in the day, he was just as crazy as you are now."
She picked up the pen, signed her name with a decisive flourish, and pushed the contract back across the table. A slight smile played on her lips. "The bet's on. Now, let's see how you plan to push an indie film to a hundred million dollars at the North American box office."
Walking out of ILM, Bander's legs felt like jelly.
"Link... We did it?"
"No," Link said, looking out at the gray-blue San Francisco sky. His voice was calm. "This is just the opening move."
---
Back in Los Angeles, the proposal from Miramax came through via fax.
Bander turned red-eyed halfway through reading it and burst into the office: "Link! Harvey [Weinstein] backed down! We're getting a nationwide simultaneous release—over 1,500 theaters in the first week. Twenty million for promotion and marketing, hitting the prime October slot! This... this is **A-list blockbuster treatment**!"
"...Is he nuts?" Quentin [Tarantino] asked, smoking a cigarette and flipping through the documents. "Twenty million P&A? He's trying to sell *Pulp Fiction* like it's *Batman*! What's his angle?"
Bander excitedly rubbed his hands together. "His angle is money! He's a businessman; he knows this movie is gonna blow up! Link, we won! A hundred million at the box office is a lock!"
A round of cheers erupted in the room.
Link didn't say anything. He just picked up the proposal and flipped to the last page, where the draft poster was.
He stared at that poster for a full thirty seconds.
Quentin leaned over to look, and the smile slowly faded from his face, too.
A sexy still of Uma Thurman dominated the center. Across the top, in large, gold-stamped letters, was the line:
**"Miramax Proudly Presents"**... This line was even bigger than the movie's title. Pangu's logo was tucked away in the corner, looking like an irrelevant government approval sticker.
"That fat pig..." Quentin violently stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray. "He wants to take all the credit."
"It's more than just credit," Link finally said, his voice ice-cold. He pointed at the twenty-million-dollar marketing budget. "Lawrence, how do you think he's going to spend that money?"
Bander froze. "How? On ads, on publicity, of course..."
"He could also spend five million to hire his brother's company to throw a premiere party," Link's tone was flat, but every word felt like an ice pick. "He could also spend three million to buy ad space in a company controlled by his brother-in-law. All of that money will be counted as costs. When the movie finishes its run, he'll show you a thirty-million-dollar bill and tell you we lost money. Then, he'll pocket all the box office revenue for himself."
The office fell into a deathly silence.
Bander's face slowly turned chalk white.
"Sh*t!" Quentin suddenly kicked the desk, completely exploding. "**That motherfu—!** He doesn't just want to steal our money; he wants to steal my name! He wants everyone to think I, Quentin Tarantino, am just a dog on Harvey Weinstein's leash!"
The atmosphere in the office was suffocating.
Link didn't try to calm anyone down. He just picked up the poster, looking at it over and over, his fingers unconsciously tapping on the desk, the rhythm growing faster and faster.
Harvey wants to play the mainstream game. He wants middle-aged moviegoers and critics to remember him... Newspapers, TV, Times Square...
A crazy idea instantly sliced through the gloom in his mind.
He suddenly smiled, a fierce, cornered-animal look in his eyes.
"He wants the mainstream?"
Link jumped up, grabbed the phone, and directly dialed the music supervisor, Dick Dale.
"Mr. Dale, how's the soundtrack album coming along?"
A wild electric guitar solo blared through the phone, followed by Dick Dale's husky voice. "Kid, this is going to be the sickest movie soundtrack in rock history!"
"Perfect," Link's eyes were terrifyingly bright. "I need you to get it into every record store and every college radio station across America three weeks early!"
He hung up and turned to the head of the marketing department.
"We are ignoring Harvey's poster! Let him slap it up at the movie theaters!"
"We are going to design a **brand-new street-level poster**! It needs to be retro, like a '70s B-movie! Put the silhouette of Uma dancing, the silhouette of Samuel reading the Bible, right up front!"
"Pangu's logo needs to be prominent! Miramax's logo? Shrink it down to nothing, make it look like an irrelevant watermark!"
"Print a million copies! Plaster them on every college bulletin board, every bathroom door in every live music venue, and every wall in every comic book store across the country!"
He looked at the stunned team, his voice quiet but carrying an unshakeable, fierce resolve.
"Harvey wants to be 'The Godfather' in the newspapers and on TV?"
"Then we'll go where the newspapers and TV can't reach."
"He wants the middle-aged crowd and the critics?"
"We'll turn the young people into our followers first."
"This war isn't going to be fought in the movie theaters."
He crumpled the poster into a ball and threw it into the trash can.
"It's going to be fought **on the street**."