Unless I found another way.
I left practice before the final whistle and drove to The Common Thread. The barista with the pink hair nodded when I walked in.
"Corner booth's free. You look like it's a corner booth kind of day."
I took the coffee and the booth and pulled out my phone.
Lenny Roth's name stared back at me from my contact list. He'd been my mentor during my first real documentary job—perpetually rumpled and opinionated about everything from lens choice to the moral obligations of nonfiction storytelling.
The camera is a contract, he'd told me once.The people you film are trusting you with something. You break that contract, and you're no longer a documentarian. You're a thief with expensive equipment.
I hadn't talked to him in over a year. I'd been too proud—too convinced I could thread the needle between what I wanted to make and what the industry would pay for.
Look where that had gotten me.
I hit call before I could talk myself out of it.
"Adrian." No surprise in his voice. "You're in trouble."
"I'm in Thunder Bay. Shooting a documentary. I have footage of someone who trusted me, and the network wants to turn him into a punchline." The words tumbled out of my mouth. "I sent them material that makes it possible, and now I have just over forty hours to give them what they want or watch someone else do it worse."
Lenny was quiet for a moment.
"What do you want?"
"A different path. Something that tells the real story instead of the one they want to build."
"Do you have the rights?"
"No. Contract's clear."
"Does he know?"
I closed my eyes. "Not yet."
"Adrian." His voice softened. "I can't promise anything. I don't have the resources to go to war with a network, but send me what you have. I want to see the footage you think matters. Let me look at it."
"That's more than I expected."
"You expected me to say you should have called two years ago?"
"Something like that."
He laughed—short and dry. "I've been doing this for thirty years. If I only helped people who made the right choices at the right time, I'd have helped about six people total. Send the footage. We'll talk tomorrow."
I made one more call—Sarah Vance, who'd left network television three years ago after a spectacular fight over editorial control and landed on her feet with an independent streaming deal.
She picked up on the first ring. "Adrian Richter. I was wondering when you'd crack."
I told her. The network. The footage. The person at the center of it.
"The footage belongs to them," she said when I finished. "Legally, you're fucked."
"I know."
"So what were you hoping I'd say?"
"That there's a third option. Some way to protect him without surrendering or self-destructing."
