"Oh, Hi Mark (Zuckerberg)" by Keith Vile
Palm trees thrashed from the turbulence of helicopter blades, bowing toward the aqua waters that circled the island until the spinning slowed and the great noise subsided. From the craft’s door emerged Tommy Wiseau. Long, wavy black hair billowed from his pasty face. He slid on a pair of black wraparound shades, straightened his black sport coat, then almost stumbled over his own feet on the tarmac but caught himself and, with nonchalance, swept back his hair.
At the edge of the helipad stood Tommy’s host – Mark Zuckerberg – surrounded by various crew and assistants waiting at the ready. Tommy strutted to him with an eager step. “Oh, hi Mark,” he said and the two men shook hands.
“Welcome to my compound,” beamed Mark, soaking in the moment, firmly gripping his guest’s hand, then letting go. “It truly is an honor to meet you.”
Tommy also smiled. “You must be kidding! I am honor for your invitation and helicopter ride! But tell me, Mark, why I’m special guest for very rich men dinner?”
“Oh, Tommy, you have no idea how excited we are. We all find your filmmaking…visionary. Now, I forget—How many movies have you made?”
Tommy counted off on his fingers. “I make The Room, you know, then Big Shark. That’s it for meantime.”
“Oh. How many is that?”
Tommy paused, uncertain of the question or its seriousness. “Um, two…?”
Satisfied, Mark nodded. He then described the private cottage where Tommy would spend the weekend, its stunning beach views and all of the facilities offered within the bulwarked estate. But while turning to lead his guest toward the residences, Mark suddenly tripped and fell to the pavement, face-first. Without a beat, several of his handlers lifted him from the ground and steadied his balance. Mark gently touched his cheek where it had been scraped lightly, wincing at the irritation.
“Wow. Are you ok?” asked Tommy with much concern.
Ointment was applied to Mark’s face by two personal medics, already present among the staff. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he answered. He pointed to his feet. “Second time today. My personal shoelace-knotter assistant is on leave, so my shoes aren’t being tied to the correct tightness.” Someone handed him a pair of sandals – a safer stopgap measure until proper knots could again be woven on the island. Tommy, a stranger on strange ground, watched with interest but commented nothing.
A fleet of luxury ATVs transported them along winding paths across the compound and past gardens, tennis courts and a cattle ranch. At the front of the pack, Tommy rode shotgun as Mark steered one-handed while writing messages on his phone, narrowly missing a tree and a landscaper. Eventually they came upon some people hurrying from the beach. Mark stopped the vehicle. Tommy recognized the man leading the way, the only sunbather among a dozen tailored professionals, as Sergey Brin and was awestruck while Mark introduced them. Likewise, Sergey couldn’t contain his excitement at meeting the famed director-slash-actor.
But something else had stirred Sergey. “I was just down at the beach,” he said, “and, this might sound crazy, but the water is moving up the shore. I swear to god. Like, it already rose a few feet since I arrived.” His voice lowered in alarm. “What do you think is going on?”
As Mark pondered the potential dilemma, Tommy attempted a polite interruption. “Is water…high tide?”
Realization took a few seconds for their cognizance to absorb, and then the two billionaires chuckled. “Of course,” Mark acknowledged, relieved. “I knew it was something like that.” However, the concept rang few bells in Sergey’s mind so he immediately tapped on his phone to research ocean tides as Mark excused them and resumed their trek to the guest quarters.
Mark’s personal bag-carrying assistant brought Tommy’s luggage to one of the cottages, bigger than a middle-class home, stocked in abundance with food and alcohol and every possible appliance and even its own bowling alley. A tuxedo hung on the bedroom door, fitted to Tommy’s measurements. He showered, dressed and was escorted to dinner by a pair of handlers, only after they straightened his crooked bowtie.
The weekend retreat was Mark’s and three billionaire friends’ chance to discuss powerful industry maneuvers in private and enjoy the life cushioned by excess affluence. This first night’s dinner was a tribute to their distinguished Hollywood-adjacent honoree who arrived to the patio with wide eyes at the dozens of enormous gourmet dishes, shelves upon shelves of expensive wines manned by accredited sommeliers, a towering ice sculpture carved into a centaur spitting cognac in crystal drinking glasses and, on an arena stage in the courtyard’s center, Maroon 5 in person playing their radio hits to the scant attention of those present.
A glass of wine was handed to Tommy. “This is a beautiful party!” he exclaimed.
Mark and the other guests were lounging around the table with their drinks. They rose to their feet to applaud the hero in their midst. Besides the host and Sergey, the group included Jeff Bezos and Steve Ballmer, and they were introduced accordingly.
“I love that thing you say!” Steve practically shouted in Tommy’s face. “‘You’re tearing me apart, Lisa!’ Ha ha!”
Standing amongst some of the world’s most powerful titans of business, Tommy felt small and trifling and struggled to gather what importance he held in their eyes. Yet, in response to their praise and accommodation, a certain respect was obliged so he followed their conversational lead.
As they chattered, Mark recounted Tommy’s arrival and his own fall at the helipad. Jeff, mouth stuffed with cocktail franks, remarked, “Forgot your shoelace-knotter assistant, didn’t ya? That’s why I don’t deal with that hassle. I just wear these puppies instead.” He lifted a leg to show off his footwear: orange slip-on Crocs.
“Shoes aren’t even necessary, you know,” added Sergey, gesturing to his bare feet on the painted paving stones. “Our soles were meant to touch earth.”
Mark cleared his throat and lifted his wine glass in a toast to their guest of honor, Tommy Wiseau, thanking him for traveling the distance and joining their retreat. “Your work is an inspiration to us, especially The Room. I mean, the way you went about making that movie, it was pure genius. I learned a lot by studying what you did. I owe many of my achievements to your ideas and all of us here feel the same way.”
The other men, touched by their host’s words, nodded in agreement. At this rare outpouring of appreciation for his filmography, Tommy’s smile grew, crinkling his hardened jowls.
Mark continued, “I mean, it obviously wasn’t dedication to the crafts of acting and directing, or a groundswell of organic support or even talent that brought your film to its completion and eventual success. No, it was the money – a considerable personal fortune that you had amassed somehow – which you funnelled into the project to fill every gap in your experience and gloss over every consequence of a bad decision. And you know what? It worked! You showed that, with enough wads of cash, you can plug all the holes in a poorly constructed ship and set it to sail, at least until it can reach the shores of cultural acceptance where even the scent of money is an automatic entry ticket. And you did it with what is commonly cited as the worst movie of all time.
“We used to believe both money and ability drove success, but The Room proved beyond a doubt that that thinking is wrong. No, we don’t need to complicate our journeys by saddling ourselves with these abstract notions of ‘talent’ or ‘intelligence’. With wealth, getting something done is as easy as paying someone else the right salary. And, anything the wealthy accomplish or create will naturally attract attention regardless of merit or quality or benefit. For example, you can help turn an unpopular independent movie into a popular one by advertising it on a huge billboard in the middle of Hollywood for five years, as you did.
“We had all dreamed of such a strategy but never imagined it could actually be pulled off to that degree of success. When you did, though, it inspired a brand new way of thought for us. It has changed our lives. Spending money is easy, so it frees up our minds now for other pursuits, especially leisure. We owe much of our later successes and enjoyment of the world’s finest offerings to this brilliant approach, inspired by you. For that, Mr. Tommy Wiseau, we sincerely thank you.”
Mark raised his glass, and so did the other billionaire guests in genuine salute. They looked expectantly at Tommy. Quiet, his gaze cast downward. His smile faded. These men standing before him, their behaviors and aims were no longer enigmas to him. The naked truth of this tribute, unveiled at last, and the reduction of his life’s work to mere strategy points for failed businesses, offended and infuriated him.
The glass in Tommy’s hand trembled as he raised it like the others. Rose-colored emotion was flooding his face. Suddenly he yelled, “I fed up with this world!” and, as if spiking a football, he threw his glass at the floor.
Broken shards flew everywhere. Hundreds of dollars' worth of wine was spilled. The four billionaires gasped and shrieked and cowered in deathly fear. Maroon 5 stopped playing mid-chorus. In a panic, Mark checked himself for major injuries and asked if anyone spotted blood on him. Jeff doubted his Crocs’ ability to withstand shattered glass and he refused to move. Sergey tried convincing the others that the danger existed only in their minds; after all, humans were meant to walk barefoot over rough terrain.
“Guys, this is dangerous stuff!” yelled Steve. He called to the throngs of staff stationed around them, some of them his own, whose names he did not know, “Hey, uh, do you people have any kind of special tool or device for removing broken glass from a patio floor that’s made of, uh, lemme see…” Phone in hand, he took photos for a chatbot conversation to identify the pavers’ material. “Oh, look. The S&P just went up…”
Tommy ran. He went straight to his cottage, gathered his luggage and fled across the grounds of the Zuckerberg compound, flailing madly, island breeze blowing through his hair, until he returned to the helipad where the chopper rested in silence. There was no crew, no attendant, no pilot – nobody but Tommy.
However, approaching rapidly on the path was an ATV with a sole occupant: Sergey.
The vehicle stopped in front of Tommy. Upon seeing the driver, Tommy grew livid. “What do you want from me? Huh?” he cried. But looking closer, he spotted the ruddy cheeks and wet eyes on the billionaire.
“Tommy, you’re right to be upset,” whimpered Sergey. “They don’t see it, but I do now – you put passion into your work. I mean, yeah, you couldn’t have done it without all that money, but your passion is also important. It resonates and draws people.
“I miss that in my own life. The passion. I used to have it in the early days of Google when our motto was ‘Don’t Be Evil.’” He laughed. “Oh, I was so naive, but I was so right. And back then, my life wasn’t consumed by a never-ending expansion of wealth. And I didn’t feel so…incompetent. I want to be that person again.”
This man who held such power and influence, reduced to sniffling self-pity, moved Tommy. It provoked him to comfort him, as he would anyone in such straits regardless of status. Stepping closer, he placed a friendly hand on Sergey’s shoulder, though he somehow missed on the first attempt.
“We leave island together, ok?” asked Tommy. Sergey nodded. “Everything is going to be fine. Don’t worry about it.”
Sergey wiped his nose. “Oh, I’m not crying because of that.” He lifted his bare feet for a better look. To Tommy’s horror, they were gashed, stuck with glass slivers and slathered in blood that dripped to a scarlet puddle on the ATV floor. “I probably shouldn’t have walked across the broken glass.”
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