There were one hundred extras, fifty crewmembers and several very important
people waiting. Five days and more than one hundred takes with seven cameras
rolling, three film and four digital, every time the waterworks turned on; but
most times the scene was filmed continuously to save the trouble of worrying
sightline continuity. You get a more genuine reaction that way, the Director
said, when you're watching the genuine reaction.
Now they were starting right at the point when the tap turns from droplet to
deluge. The Director, a British man with a protuberant mole, was beginning to
look worried. The other, bigger, stars were beginning to study the carpeting.
She could feel their limited sympathy. After all, they were trailblazers,
pioneers, award winning icons stopping in to pick up a check, and she was a
flavor of the week. They would go back to their homes outside of Los Angeles
and use the money to make small, worshipped, empowerment films. She would
either make another, larger, romantic comedy or, in case of tanking, go back to
supporting roles. Or television. How did she get here anyway? She arrived at
romantic comedy from a long line of troubled youth parts, and none of those
tears were difficult.
Her eyes flashed over to her mother/manager, sitting unobtrusively behind the
producers. Her mother nodded to her, feelingly but forcefully, as though to
say, My dear, do it now.
Some of the extras were looking bored, some actually sleeping, some smiling
encouragingly, others appeared unimpressed. They were being held up. Five
days watching the same ten-minute scene filmed from countless different angles.
Five days of twelve-hour days, of watching her turn the waterworks on and off,
on and off, without a hitch. Now the last day and they could go to wherever
they lived and sleep for the weekend if she would only go ahead and cry.
She remembered back when she was starting out playing minor roles, troubled
teens. After she turned eighteen she went one day and worked a job as an
extra, thinking she might never get another part, seeing how the other half
lived but not telling her mother where she was going. She remembered now how
faceless it made her feel, like she didn't exist. She was moved about
like furniture, working on the set of a television show the star of which she
had since appeared opposite but who did not remember. She was placed behind
the star in the shot. During the first take she had scratched her neck; the
Assistant Director approached her and told her that in each subsequent take she
had to scratch it in the same way for continuity. By the end of the afternoon
her arm was tired and her neck was red. Most of the other extras were being
paid $45 for the day; some had gone to college for acting, some were demented,
some were regular people. She looked out at the sea of their faces now, most turned toward her, waiting for her to do her job.
The producers were looking anxious; they had grown more stony cold, silent and
motionless. Their brows were sinking into their sunglasses. One of the
stars, one of the venerable matrons of stage and screen, one of the
trailblazers in the area of female character leads, patted her hand where it
gripped the back of the couch the star was sitting on, white-knuckled. Two
quick pats, one for sympathy and one for get-to-it. The crew, always less
decorous, never able to keep quiet between takes, was silent. The Director was
afraid to approach, worried that she might be in process already and that he
could derail it. Her mother cleared her throat. It was time. She had to cry
now. She walked over to a corner of the set and crouched, hugging her knees,
closing her eyes.
Without warning, the soundstage disappeared. All the people fell away and she
was a small girl. She was sitting on the lap of her father. He was rocking in
a rocking chair. It was night, and he was singing her to sleep. She was
wrapped in a blanket and his arms cradled her. He was swinging her gently side
to side as he rocked gently back and forth and he sang to her, a minor key
lullaby. It was dark and sonorous and haunting, it made her think of caverns
under the earth, underground rivers. Had her father ever sang her such a song?
They were on a porch, caged in by screen netting, a ceiling fan stirring the
night breeze. Insects assayed small holes in the netting. His song was deep
and resonant, somnolent; it felt purple and black, luxuriant, sinuously
threading itself about her body, enmeshing her in a chrysalis like her blanket.
The thread of the song pulled tighter until its strings sunk in through her
skin and converged on her heart. It encased her heart in its ever-denser netting and constricted it. It felt like her heart was being
gripped and compressed by a massive warm fist.
Her breath grew short--stopped--then exploded into heaving gasps. She
felt burning rivers of tears pouring from her eyes. Her face was hot, sweating
and swollen, her fists were clenched; she felt herself, still crouching,
rocking back and forth; she heard herself, low and deep, singing the song she
heard in her dream, her father's voice coming out of her mouth. She
choked on her sobs and placed her hands on the carpet to steady herself. A
moan began in her gut and grew. She rolled back into a ball and clamped her
mouth shut but that just made her quake and rumble like she'd covered a
grenade with her body and it had gone off underneath her. Her mouth was closed
but it was escaping, shaking her, steaming out of her skin. The more she tried
to hold it in the harder it fought to escape. She opened her mouth and felt
the night in her dream flowing out of her into the room. It was unwinding
itself from her heart and exiting her mouth, filling the room, drawing her forward onto her knees. The soundstage darkened in her sight as it filled with
her moan, her song, the wordless minor key lullaby. Its last strands left her;
it hung in the atmosphere a moment longer, and dissipated into the air.
Exhausted, she collapsed, feeling the thin veneer of carpet on her cheek.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she started repeating softly,
but
she didn't know who she was saying it to.
Breath crept back into her body hesitantly. She heaved, and breathed, and began
climbing to her feet. At full height she felt impossibly tall and thin, her
limbs too large and unwieldy to be controlled, a giant in a world made for
giants. Blood left her head and she tottered, subtly bracing herself against
the wall of the set. The front of her shirt was damp with quickly cooling
tears.
The world swam back around her, grips and electricians pausing in the middle of
their work staring, the producers stony and silent, the extras gaping
undisguisedly, some looking as though they've seen a ghost, the stars
discretely studying their shoes, averting their eyes, her mother looking,
disapproving.
She shook her head, fixed her hair, raised her chin, stepped forward to her
mark, pointed at her eyes and said, "Is this enough?"
