Saturday – A week later

Denise and Carol flew out with Marlene Zanwick to met the team. By now the tour was further east and they were in the flat lands of the Midwest. They drove from the airport and met the team in a campground. They learned that Denise and Marlene would be staying for three weeks and then would be replaced.

Sunday

The held several meetings over the morning. They dialed in a conference call. Fritz had some things he wanted to pass on to the others. In three weeks Susan would be coming home with Marlene and Denise. Lou would be taking the lead with Barb and Donna as support. Over time they would be rotated so that only two of the leads would be on the road at a time. Lou asked what they would be doing on the weeks they were at home.

Donald laughed. “Work, work, work. A busy actress is a happy actress.”

“But I’m not an actress.”

Donald laughed again. “Tell me what you have been doing? You have been some of the best PR I have done. I had several studies done. I asked if someone would come to see a movie if each of you were the lead actress. Carol finishes behind Denise and Sandra. Debbie, Susan, Lou, you finish just behind her. Barb, you and Donna finish behind them but ahead of some of my regulars. I am figuring out what parts you can take. Marlene will tell you that even a minor part in a movie can be economically rewarding.” Marlene nodded. “In addition I need SME’s for the writing staff.”

Lou had come out of her shell in the recent weeks and was often the first to move. “What is a smee?” She pronounced the word.

“A smee is a Subject Matter Expert. It is someone who can help the writers make it more realistic by making the dialog more believable.”

“I’m not a writer.”

“I know. But writers get stuffy. They loose touch. They write crap. Crap hurts the movie.  It is a smee’s job to look at the crap and name it.”

“So you want me to make the writers mad at me.”

“Not unless they want to get mad. They should be listening to you. Be careful with their egos, they are fragile.”

“Oh, I was just reading a book on that. It is called diplomacy.”