The trailer has dropped for Marvel and Disney's upcoming Hawkeye series, a little too late to be announced on the now defunct Jeremy Renner app.
The series seems to be going for a Die Hard vibe, as the everyman hero with the bow and arrow tries to spend Christmas with... Huh?
Yeah. The app. You know, the Jeremy Renner app. What do you mean you didn't know? Jeremy Renner had an app. An app about Jeremy Renner.
...okay. Clearly we need to go over some stuff. I'd hoped never to talk about this, but we're going to have to go back about a while. To a time I'd hoped was long buried. To the year 2010, in a far off land called Hollywood.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The early 2010s were a different time in a lot of ways, when print journalism was on its knees. Unlike now, when it's on the skeletal remains of gristle and cartilage where its knees used to be. Still, back then, I wasn't the burned out internet writer you've come to know and tolerate. I was a wannabe journalist with fire in my belly. Which was good, because my belly contained fuck all else. I was flat broke.
That much, at least, has not changed.
Another thing that hasn't changed is that the easiest stories to sell were celebrity stories. I didn't know how I was going to get one, but I knew it was my best chance at paid employment. I knew I had no chance at talking to a really big name, like Susan Boyle or Taylor Lautner, but Hollywood is rife with the rich and famous, and I figured if I hung around long enough I might strike lucky and bump into someone I could write about.
This is how I ended up bar hopping around Hollywood Boulevard, nursing my drinks and emptying the last of my anaemic bank account. After several hours I was ready to throw in the towel, and I ended up wandering to a dive bar offering kareoke and cheap liquor. The second would at least help me tolerate the first, so I made my way inside, where someone was really going to town on "Wonderwall." Whatever. I ordered something cheap to drown my sorrows and slumped at the bar, doodling idly on my notedpad.
The guy who had been hamming his way through the Oasis number finished up and came to the bar next to me. There was no sense in kicking someone else while I was down, so I said "Nice set." I didn’t even bother looking up.
"Thanks, man!" He said. "I'd have done a couple more hours but they introduced this bullshit 'nine song max' rule last month."
"That's rough," I said, barely paying attention.
He shrugged. "Fuck it. It is what it is."
I turned to face him and nearly fell off my stool. It was Jeremy Renner, the actor. I'd been looking for someone like this and he just fell into my lap.
Renner was hot off of The Hurt Locker, Katherine Bigelow's Iraq war drama about a burned out bomb disposal expert who begins taking increasingly crazy risks just to feel alive. It got Oscars. Renner himself was nominated.
"Holy shit," I said, "You're Jeremy Renner!"
"I know, right?!" he grinned. There was something behind his eyes - some hint of madness that wasn't just the usual showbiz shine imparted by multiple grams of Hollywood grade cocaine. Although, to be clear, he was absolutely on about five grams of Hollywood grade cocaine. He was just fucking nuts, too.
"I thought you were great in '28 Weeks Later...'", I said.
"Oh, yeah, that was a good one," he nodded. "You want a beer?"
"Sure!" I said. I was feeling a lot better about things. My mind was also working overtime on how I was going to get material out of this. Jeremy Renner's love of kareoke could be a money spinner. Jeremy Renner's everyman hobbies? The only celebrity who doesn't fear the public? Any of this could work.
"So, what brings you to a place like this?" I asked.
"Ah, I could go to the fancier kareoke places but they're all too high-toned," he said. "Always throwing people out for the slightest thing. It's all 'Sir, you're drunk,' and 'the other guests get uncomfortable when you rap' and 'Mr. Renner, please stop urinating in that fern.' Who needs 'em?!"
"Well..." I said, scrabbling for something neutral to say, "It's good to meet an Oscar nominee who is so down to earth."
"Thanks!" He said. "What about you, what's your deal?"
I couldn't really avoid this. I bit the bullet. "I'm a journalist in search of a story," I said, a little embarrassed.
"Man, let me tell you, we are ALL in search of stories," he said. "Fuck it, you wanna get out of here? I know another kareoke place that's open until two."
"Uh, sure. I guess. You don't mind?"
"Nah, man. I could use someone to write my story. Maybe you're the guy."
We jumped into a cab and Renner lit a cigarette. "So what kinda stories do you write?" He asked. "You ever done a biography?"
"Uh, no, not so far," I admitted. "But I'm trying to break into that kind of thing,” I lied quickly.
"Well," Renner said, lighting another cigarette and putting it in the opposite corner of his mouth to the first one, "I'm always looking for storytellers. I love stories. I might need someone to tell mine, you know, spread the legend. You want some of this?" he produced a bag of powder from inside his jacket. "It's used to treat metabolic slowdown in timber wolves, so I'm not really sure what it's gonna do, but it should be a blast..."
I gave him a slightly nervous look. "How the hell did you get hold of it?"
"Ah, when you're famous they'll pretty much let you do anything," he said with a dismissive wave. "Just have to go down to the zoo, sign a few autographs, hop a couple of fences, you know how it is."
"That's... Incredible..."
"Right?! See, this is the thing, man, you GET me. I've been looking for someone who gets me. This might sound crazy, but how would you like to be my new manager?"
"Are you serious?!" I knew nothing about being a showbiz manager. On the other hand, I realised, it probably paid pretty well. "Wait, what's wrong with your current manager?! Didn't they just get you Oscar nominated for The Hurt Locker?!"
"Pfft. Hurt Locker. They talked me into doing that one, and let me tell you, I MADE that movie. I told them at the time, I don't want to do a gay love story about aid workers in Afghanistan."
I stared. "...That… That wasn't the plot of The Hurt Locker..."
"It was when I signed on! But I said to them, fuck Afghanistan, Iraq is where people wanna see shit get blown up, and you know what? That movie needed more shit blown up! They were trying for some sort of slow burn emotional shit, but I thought: You know what audiences like? Explosions! And you know what explodes real well? Bombs! Eventually I just paid for the flights myself and we went to Iraq and started dismantling IEDs on camera, man. It was fucking nuts!"
I couldn't even begin to process this. I already had about forty seven stories worth of material from the one cab ride. Which came to an abrupt end when Renner saw a sign for a bar with a mechanical bull that it turned out he couldn't ride but did try to fight. It might have been some vague dream of Gonzo journalism, it might have been the dizzying effects that come with proximity to fame, it might have been the fact that Renner was definitely putting wolf amphetamine in my drinks, but when I woke up, I had made a lot of bad decisions. And the worst of them was that I was somehow Jeremy Renner's manager.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I met Renner in a coffee shop near Sunset Boulevard. It had taken two days for my hangover to abate, but Jeremy was his normally upbeat self. We found a table and a waitress took our order.
"Thanks," Renner said. "Here's a signed photo."
The waitress looked at him skeptically. "Uh, thanks...?" She said. She took his photo and slid away to get our drinks.
"So, here's what I'm thinking," Renner said, turning to me. "Marvel. Superheroes."
I wasn't going to take anything on faith by this stage. I needed clarification. "When you say you're thinking about Marvel Superheroes, you mean you're thinking about getting into the movie franchise, right? You aren't just thinking about action figures or something?"
He grinned, and punched my shoulder harder than was strictly necessary. "You're hilarious, man. We're gonna make a fortune."
The waitress brought our coffee. "Thanks," Renner said. "Listen, I gave you a signed photo because I'm famous. That's what that was about. I wasn't being weird, I just... I'm Jeremy Renner. Y'know. The actor." He raised his voice a notch. "FAMOUS ACTOR JEREMY RENNER." He glanced around to see if anyone was looking.
"Oh," said the waitress, entirely without inflection. "That's... Great. Anyway, that'll be seven dollars."
"Nahhhh, don't worry about that," he said. "Trust me. It's good for business that JEREMY RENNER LIKES THIS COFFEE PLACE."
"Oooooohkay," the waitress nodded, slowly. She backed away with the polite, empty smile of someone who is just hoping an interaction won't last any longer.
"Sorry," Renner said, turning his attention back to me, "where was I? Oh, yeah, Marvel superheroes. I'm gonna take a leak, then we have a meeting about that and I need you there as my manager, so get ready!"
Before I could ask any questions, he bounced up and vaulted the nearest table on his way to the bathroom. I made my way back to the waitress station.
"I don't fucking know," our server was saying to the others, "He said he was Remedy Jenner or something, he must be related to the Kardashians..."
I cleared my throat awkwardly. The waitress turned to me. "Can I help you?" She asked, in a tone that was exactly half way between polite and "why are you back here?"
"Hi, uh, here's seven bucks for the coffee," I said. "Sorry about my friend, he's a little... He has an artistic temperament. He really is a fairly well known actor, he's not just a crazy person."
"Let's go man!" Renner hollered from the table. "We've got big Hollywood meetings to attend! Rennertime!"
The waitress took my money and gave me a sympathetic look. "Good luck," she said.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"I actually think the Marvel thing might be smart," I told him on the ride to the studio. "Those movies have the potential to be huge. Iron Man made a ton of money, and that Samuel L. Jackson scene at the end? If they really do a whole franchise it could be a very good idea to be in on the ground floor."
"Oh yeah, I'm all about savvy business," Renner said. "Did you know I flip houses on the side?"
"I did not," I admitted. "What made you get into that?"
"Y'know, it's the weirdest fucking thing," he shrugged. "I moved into this neighbourhood and within a few months my neighbours on either side both sold their houses for a knockdown price. I bought them with some cash I'd made from a couple of small parts, but then when I next moved, the exact same thing happened again. So I kept doing it. These days I've kinda got it down to an art. The neighbourhoods I USED to live in? House prices bounce right back up. Go figure."
I said nothing for a long minute.
"But the movies? The house flipping? All part of the bigger plan. You know what else?"
I was afraid to ask, but I had to.
"Theme park." He said, with a significant look.
"…You want to invest in a theme park?" I asked, more out of doomed optimism than any real sense that that was what he meant.
"Invest? Fuck that. I’m gonna have my OWN theme park. One about me. I mean, Dolly Parton did it, and that place makes a ton of money. Why not get a piece of THAT action?!"
"I mean... Sure..." I managed.
“We could have Renner Rides and, like, games based on my movies… So like in one section you can get chased by zombies, and in another you have to defuse a bomb before it blows up a bunch of Iraqi kids… I got pretty goood reviews when I played Jeffrey Dahmer a few years back, but I don’t know how I’m going to work that in, yet…”
“Oh, well, make it the theme for the restaurant, clearly,” I muttered.
“Dude! Yes! This is why I hired you, I love it!”
I made a small, pained sound that he didn’t seem to notice, along with a mental note to never employ sarcasm around him ever again.
"Also, I'm thinking my next movie, I wanna be The Rock."
"...You mean you want to be in movies like the ones The Rock makes?"
"No, man, I wanna be The Rock. Like, everyone loves The Rock, and he's always just The Rock in every movie, so why can't I be him, too? I know they've got some Samoan guy doing it right now, but it should be like James Bond. Every few years, new Rock. I think I have the range."
The rest of the cab ride wasn't much different, but eventually we made it to Marvel studios and were shown to a plush office. Kevin Feige, the head of Marvel, welcomed us in. We all shook hands, Feige was good enough to attempt to hide his skepticism about my being a professional talent manager, and we got down to business.
“First of all,” Feige began, “We’re so thrilled to hear that an actor of your calibre wants to be involved with the Marvel movies. As you can see from our recent films, we’re all about hiring top-tier talent.” He gestured to the posters for Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, showing Robert Downey Jr. and Edward Norton.
“Thanks, man,” Renner said, still not taking his offered seat. Instead, he struck a grandstanding pose to make his pitch. “Here’s what I’m thinking: I, Jeremy Renner, am Iron Man.”
Feige laughed a little, and got nowhere with it. He realised that Renner was serious. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“You, uh… You can’t be Iron Man. Robert Downey Jr. is Iron Man. He’s really famous for it. It’s a whole thing.”
“Yeah. Yeah. Okay, I thought you might say that. What if I’m just Iron Man when he’s in the suit? Downey can do the Tony Stark scenes and I’ll just fly the suit around. That would be pretty sweet.”
“Well… I mean, first of all, it’s not actually a real suit. It’s a special effect. We don’t actually have an armoured, flying battle suit that we use for those shots.”
“Pfft. Lame.” Renner snorted. “Okay, I know you’re working on some other movies, so how about if I’m Thor?” He gestured at himself with an up-and-down, “check this out” motion with both hands. In terms of height, Renner is about the same as me. Which means he doesn’t have very much of it.
“We… have… already got someone lined up for Thor, I’m afraid.”
“Alright, you’re right, I’m Captain America or I’m nothing.”
“We also have a guy for that.”
“Alright,” Renner nodded at both of us, “You’re playing hardball, I can see that.” He leaned over Feige’s desk, conspiratorially.
“How about I slip you fifty RennerBucks?” He winked.
“…What are RennerBucks?” Feige asked.
“They’re going to be the currency at his theme park,” I said, staring blankly into the middle distance. Feige took a long, slow nod as he processed this.
“Y’know what?!” Renner erupted. “Fuck it! I don’t need this! I can do my own superhero shit! I don’t have to be a part of-”
“Jeremy, Jeremy…” I interrupted, “Why don’t we let me handle this? You go on downstairs and I’ll negotiate with this guy.”
"Yeah," Renner sniffed. “Yeah, you’re right, you’re my manager, you should talk to him.” He straightened his jacket and nodded to himself, heading for the door. “I’ll see you later.”
There was a long and awkward pause as we waited to hear the elevator go down. Then I turned to Feige with naked fear in my eyes. “What the fuck have I gotten myself into?!”
“Jesus, man, I don’t know,” Feige said, with a pained expression. “I’d heard rumours, but…”
“What have you heard?!” I demanded. “Is it true that he just flew to Iraq and started improvising The Hurt Locker with bombs he found?!”
“No, of course not, don’t be silly,” Feige said, placatingly. “He WANTED to do that, but eventually they just tranquilised him and put him in the back of a truck and drove it around for a few hours. Then they dumped him on the set and told him it was Iraq. All the bombs were duds.”
“Oh Jesus,” I sighed. “I don’t know if that might be worse, from my perspective.”
“Yeah… Some of these actors are… mercurial. They have rare talents but it’s all about harnessing them in the right way. Did you see The Town?”
“Yeah!" I said. “He was legitimately great in that!” Renner had played a loose cannon bank robber who threatens the fragile hope of Ben Affleck’s reformed life with a school teacher.
“Well, I hear that movie was originally a romantic crime caper. A lot of the other stuff just kinda happened when he showed up.”
“…That movie opens with a violent bank robbery and a kidnapping,” I pointed out.
“Yeah. Wasn’t meant to. That lady they kidnapped wasn’t even in the movie, they just had to write around it and pay her after Renner threw her in a van. She ended up having to join the Screen Actor’s Guild and everything.”
“Why the fuck did you invite him to be in YOUR films?!” I spluttered.
He shrugged. “I was hoping the stories were exaggerated. You know how Hollywood is.”
I didn’t, but I was rapidly finding out.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I managed to convince J-Rens that negotiations with Marvel were ongoing. Although I failed to talk him out of having me call him J-Rens, so that was kind of a tie in terms of successes. What followed over the next few days was a series of exhausting phone calls with my increasingly anxious client as I explained to him that they weren’t going to let him be The Hulk, Captain FuckAwesome (his own idea) or, eventually, Black Widow, “even if he got his tits done.”
On the fourth day I got a call from Marvel. This was more than a little unexpected.
“It’s about a client of yours,” Feige explained. I silently wished that I had more than one. Or, ideally, less than that. “Go on,” I said.
“I’m talking about Jeremy Renner. We… We’re willing to offer him a part, on certain conditions.”
“Name them,” I said. This was potentially good news.
“He has to stop coming down here,” Feige said, wearily.
“Wait, he’s been coming to your office?”
“He’s been coming down, trying to bargain. He’s stood outside the window with a boom box held over his head playing the Spider-Man song. He’s been making it difficult to work. The crying is getting embarrassing. He’s outside in his car right now, threatening to cut himself.”
This explained why Renner had had me source a prosthetic arm and “a lot of blood.” I’d quitely chosen to interpret the latter as meaning the fake kind.
“Okay, I had no idea, I’m sorry about that,” I said, rubbing my face wearily with one hand. “What are you offering him?”
“Well, in this Thor movie we’re filming, we have a scene where Thor is trying to break out of a military base and all the soldiers are trying to stop him and he’s kicking their asses, so we thought he could film a cameo as, the… uh…” I heard him yell over his shoulder to someone in the office. “Who’s the fucking guy with the arrows? Hawkeye? Yeah, him. Tell him he can film a cameo as Hawkeye.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “If you were trying to stop a Viking God breaking out of an army base why the fuck would you use a bow and arrow?”
“Take it or leave it,” Feige said.
“No, fuck, of course, we’ll take it! Thank you.” I said.
Renner was elated. He was in the movie for about ten seconds, and he had no idea how to shoot a bow. His argument of “how hard can it be?!” was all over the screen, but I’d done it. I’d been a successful Hollywood manager.
Over the next few weeks, I somehow managed to convince movie producers on a couple of Jeremy’s other ideas. He wanted to be Jason Bourne, and I damn near managed it, and then he wanted to be Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible and I got pretty close, after promising Cruise himself my eternal soul would perform five million years of galactic servitude on L. Ron Hubbard’s space yacht. It couldn’t have been any worse than my current gig.
I had no luck on convincing the Rock to let Jeremy Renner do the next movie for him as him, and it took me a while to convince him that sky-writing as an art form wasn’t detailed enough to have a plane draw a big picture of his face. It was a constant struggle to explain to him where he was and wasn’t allowed to take a bow and arrows to improve his chances at recognition. But I was still proud of all I’d improbably accomplished.
Sometime around there, I got what would prove to be my last assignment in Hollywood. They were writing a full-blown Avengers movie and Renner wanted in. He called me to tell me that I had to get Hawkeye into the movie.
“Jeremy,” I said, my eyes sagging and red-rimmed from exhaustion, “I have to tell you, buddy: I’ll try. You know I always try. But this is it. This is the last job. After this, I’m going to retire.”
“No shit?” Renner said.
“Yeah. No shit. I can’t do it anymore, man. I’m exhausted, and I think I need to move on.”
“Yeah, I understand. You gotta keep things fresh in life, man. I’m gonna do a few more movies and then pursue singing full time.”
“That’s great, Champ,” I said, robotically.
“So, look, get me the Avengers gig and we’ll call it a day, huh? Go out on a high? What do you say?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said.
“You’re the best! When you retire we’re getting a yacht and we’re gonna fill it with ayahuasca and strippers and sail that motherfucker into a typhoon!”
“I look forward to it,” I said. I think at that moment I might have meant it.
I hung up with Renner, found a syringe in a drawer and used it to inject Red Bull directly into my carotid artery. The bubbles didn’t even make my brain itch anymore. Then I found a number for Joss Whedon.
His machine picked up and I put on my best professional voice. “Hi, this is a meesage for Joss Whedon, I’m Jeremy Renner’s representative and I just wanted to touch base with you as I hear you’ve-”
“Whedon here!” he picked up, cheerfully. He sounded like a man who could still taste the sweet release of sleep without anyone he worked for swinging through the window on a rope to make him check if their new tattoo was spelled right in Mandarin. He sounded like someone whose nerves weren’t shot from having someone in his life constantly communicate with notes tied to arrows, haphazardly fired in his direction, in order to remain “on brand.” I envied him.
“Oh, hi, Mr. Whedon,” I said. “I’m glad I caught you.”
“Please, please, call me Joss,” he interjected.
“Thanks, Joss. Listen, they tell me they’ve asked you to write and direct this new Avengers movie. Great choice, by the way, I liked your work on X-Men comics a couple of years ago, I think you’ll nail it. But as I was saying, I represent Jeremy Renner and I wanted to know what your plans were for Hawkeye. You might remember he was briefly in the Thor movie.”
“Uh-huh. What else did you like?”
“…I’m sorry?”
“What else did you like, aside from when I wrote X-Men?”
“Oh, right. Well, I thought Serenity was honestly one of the best films I’d seen in years, and obviously that means I’m a fan of Firefly, too. I think that actually proves that an ensemble picture like The Avengers is in good hands.”
“Yeah, I always check that people aren’t just blowing smoke up my ass,” Whedon chuckled. “But I’m glad you liked Firefly. I just thought it was really important that we had a series that showed how the Confederate South was right all along.”
“No… kidding…?” I managed.
“Yeah. It was originally just a straight period piece, but the studio got nervous and we ended up setting it in space. Anyway, yeah, Jeremy Renner. Where are his people from?”
“Uh, genealogically?”
“Yeah.”
I tried to remember what Renner had told me “…Uh, Scots, English, Swedish…”
“Great, beautiful…” Whedon nodded.
“…I think there’s some German in there…?”
“Even better! How would you describe his skin tone?”
I blinked, slowly. “Caucasian?”
“Great. Well, if he’s half as caucasian as you say he is, he’s in the movie. Don’t sweat it. I’ll even give him some stuff to do with whoever the tits are in this one, although I imagine his character will get friendzoned because they always fucking do that unless you have money, am I right?!”
“Do you mean Scarlett Johansson?”
“Scarlett, huh? Like Gone With The Wind? And Johansson, Scandinavian, perfect, she can be in it, too.”
“I’m pretty sure she’s already-”
“I’ve gotta go, dude, I have a script to write, but it’s been great.”
He hung up and I stared at the phone for a long moment before deciding that I was under a lot of stress and I’d probably misheard a lot of what I was forever going to tell myself I misheard. Then I called Jeremy, told him he was in The Avengers, bought a plane ticket home and threw my phone into a volcano.
I don’t know who ended up managing Jeremy. I know that he has released albums. I know that at one point, he had his own app. The Jeremy Renner app. It was eventually shut down.
For my own part, I decided that being a broke writer was infinitely preferrable to a life in Hollywood. I’d only had to deal with one client, and that was enough.
He paid me in RennerBucks.
At the time of writing, they were still not redeemable.
Luke Haines is a British writer who made almost all of this up - he genuinely did think Jeremy Renner was good in “The Town” and “28 Weeks Later…” and also “Arrival.” Renner really did have an app.
Haines is hoping that he doesn’t get sued, and if he does, that the Streisand effect will make it worthwhile.
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