It's All In the Playing (30 page)

It worked. John and I would just have to say our dialogue fast so our mouths wouldn’t stay open long. Obviously the mineral-bath shoot was scheduled for later.

The art department did a superhuman job in the wilds of Peru. So superhuman that the art director had to be sent home with altitude sickness precipitated by movie pressure.

A word about what 11,000 feet feels like. First your head aches, constantly and relentlessly. The food you eat is difficult to digest. The oxygen in the blood is obviously
thin, causing dizziness and heart pounding which can be extremely disconcerting. Those are some of the physical effects. The mental, psychological, and psychic effects are even more profound.

I had been there only a day and a half when my dreams and mental associations began to be unlike any I had ever experienced.

I think it was a combination of the altitude and the Andean energy. Later on I was to hear stories from nearly every member of the crew relating to what was going on in their heads.

Our dreams were more vivid, more definitive, more real than usual. They made me more aware than ever of the possibility that we might very well be living two or three levels of reality at the same time.

   Colin and Simo and I shopped in the marketplaces the day before we started shooting. The Peruvian handicrafts were exquisite: hand-woven shoulder bags of multicolors, and soft baby-alpaca sweaters woven in fairy-tale colorful designs. The alpaca fur rugs were perfect thrown across a bed. I did all my Christmas shopping in Cuzco and never looked back.

Our stomachs were beginning to rumble with the food, even though we had had only soup and bread. Later we would find that we should have stuck to that.

I had brought a quart of chunky peanut butter with me along with a case of crackers. If things got really rough I could live on those.

The company was settled in and ready to work. Then we found out that already someone had stolen my combat boots (boots that I needed to match those in scenes we had already shot). And maybe worse than that, all the booze stored in the production office was stolen.

Joie, our costume supervisor, had thought to bring doubles of my combat boots, but our company manager had no solution for the missing liquor.

We began shooting in the Plaza of Cuzco. Crowds gathered and gawked. The crew was organized, professional, and fast, and even though the rarefied high-altitude light stung my blue eyes (Andean eyes all seem to be brown), Brad was able to rig an overhead tarp to reduce the glare.

Stan had wanted to shoot one of the most dramatic scenes in the script on the first day of shooting because it was much better for the production schedule. I felt that John and I had not had enough time to adjust to the altitude and that we would have a hard time with the screaming dramatic dialogue. John was in a good mood. He had been learning Spanish and was interacting with the local people. When I asked him how he felt about tackling the big Plaza scene he wanted to take the chance. He seemed to relish overcoming the adversity. After that we were scheduled to move out to the airport to do the arrival scene, because that was the only day they would give us permission to shoot out there. And in the afternoon we were to head for Machu Picchu.

We got through the morning, although the airport scene took far too long, headed back and had lunch, and then rounded up the crew, baggage, John, assorted paraphernalia, and technical equipment, and somehow got it all to the station and onto the train going up to Machu Picchu.

   We were on a train that was supposed to take three hours to get there. As it turned out we arrived seven hours later.

The terrain we traversed made it worthwhile. The Urubamba River tumbled from its Andean paradise above, running alongside the train, actually spraying our hands as we stretched them out the windows. Jungle undergrowth, ever-changing trees of storybook varieties, and huge boulders raced past with the speed of the river—which was traveling much faster than our train. Handcrafted
bridges of hemp and mountain vines were the only indication that humans lived in the wild countryside we were passing through.

There was no food other than picnic boxes packed from the hotel restaurant. And at each mountain stop the crew gave away more boxes. Peasant women in bright-colored serapes, their hair dressed in twisted thick black braids, accepted the boxes with dignity for their children. They lined the railroad tracks when the train rolled in. Many tried to sell us handcrafted necklaces and bags.

Tina and Julie, our body makeup girl, cried for the poverty in which they saw people living. John went to a window. He saw the outstretched hands and turned away, unable to cope with it. Then he reached in his pocket and threw all the money he had out of the window without looking at where it landed.

No one else saw him do it. It is one of the strongest memories I have of the trip to Peru.

The bright day turned to darkness as our milk-run trek proceeded. The crew had brought along cases of beer and by now they and John were feeling no pain. He enjoyed drinking with the crew. We swapped movie stories about people we had worked with. Nothing is sacred when a crew gets going.

We hung out of the windows together, with the rain and the Urubamba spray dashing against our faces.

Finally at 2:00 the next morning we pulled into the train station of Machu Picchu. And as we suspected, it was raining.

We loaded ourselves into a bus which would take us up the winding road to the ruins. If the weather broke we would have to shoot in three hours at daybreak.

“Listen,” said Brad. “It’s war. We all know that. We’ll just pull together and make it work.”

And so I returned to the haunting ruin of Machu Picchu which had so captured my heart ten years before.

Machu Picchu was known as the Lost City of the
Incas and was not discovered until 1911 by an American named Hiram Bingham, who was to become governor of and senator from Connecticut and a professor of South American studies at Harvard. The Indians themselves had not known it was there. The ruin is situated at the top of the mountain with no access for vehicles or construction. How it was built, even why, still remains a mystery.

I stepped from the bus into the rain and mist. The old hotel was still there. I looked up and saw the shrouded outline of the ancient stones, and at that moment, out of the wispy clouds stepped a giant alpaca. He stood outlined in the rain—almost as though he were guarding the place until we could be there in the morning.

I climbed the stairs of the hotel veranda. A million tourists had been there since I had first been so moved by the place. So much had happened to me. So much I had learned, so much to understand.

We had to bunk in together because there was a shortage of rooms. So Colin and I stayed together. Even though the rain was soothing, I pulled out my sound machine and turned it on.

“So this is what you sleep by,” said Colin.

“Yep,” I answered. “And you’ll be off to sleep before you have time to wonder what Peru is going to come up with tomorrow.”

Chapter 19

   W
hen we woke it was Colin who came up with something I didn’t expect. Because it was still raining and our shooting call was on hold, Colin felt it was the right time and place to tell me about something about which I knew nothing. It had to do with the dialogue at Machu Picchu.

“I had a meeting with a cultural man dealing with Machu Picchu,” he began.

“Oh?” I said. “What’s he like?”

Colin made a face. “Right out of a bad Costa Gavras movie.”

This was not a good sign. “Well, what happened?” I asked anxiously.

“He says if we don’t take out the references to extraterrestrials in our script, he won’t let us shoot here.”

I looked at Colin, trying to understand. I had been used to ridicule where my views on extraterrestrial life were concerned, but this sounded serious.

“Why?” I asked. “What does he object to?”

“Well,” answered Colin, “he feels there is a neo-Nazi conspiracy in the world spreading rumors that Third
World cultures such as Peru are too backward and unintelligent to have built monuments as splendid as Machu Picchu without extraterrestrial help.”

I had never heard of such a concept.

“You’re telling me that this guy thinks that to speculate that extraterrestrials might have helped build Machu Picchu is a neo-Nazi idea?”

Colin nodded his head.

“According to this character, yes. So we can’t have David speculating that it might be true.”

I thought a moment.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s have Shirley ask him if ETs could have helped, and John could do one of his seductive ‘could-be’ shrugs and not answer. We’d get the same point across but on paper it’ll just say
David didn’t answer.”

Colin smiled that Harold smile. The smile that crossed Harold’s face in the movie just before he strung himself up on a rope to bug his mother.

“Good,” he said. “It’s settled. Shirley will ask and David will shrug.”

“Right,” I agreed. “Then I’ll give a press conference and say that the ETs probably helped because the Incas were the only culture smart enough to understand them.”

“You should go into politics,” said Colin.

“Thanks,” I said. “But the politics of the spirit is enough for me.”

It seemed so simple sitting in a wet hotel room in Machu Picchu. We would change one line, period. But as it turned out, the man called a press conference that day for Peruvian and international reporters. He accused me of being a neo-Nazi and gave them his conspiracy thesis. The reporters were aghast and amused. The Peruvians knew he was a media groper, and the international foreign press knew it was a good story. Because I had refused to give any interviews until after the shooting was complete, I couldn’t, nor did I want to, say anything.

So once again in the papers around the world it looked as if I had gotten myself into yet another controversial, colorful situation. At least they were becoming more and more cosmically oriented.

   When Colin and I left our hotel room for the lobby, we found the crew reloading equipment onto the buses and milling around. I found Stan.

“We’re leaving,” he said. “This has been the most expensive day of my entire career. We’re on double time. The trip here cost, I don’t know. The crew is bone tired. I don’t want them slipping on the rocks. We’ve lost a day anyway, we only have a permit for one day, and the hotel can’t accommodate us tonight, so we’ve made the decision to go all the way back and come again another time.”

Well, that was what I called a creatively risky decision.

“How do we know it won’t be raining the next time we come back, Stan?” I asked—rather legitimately I thought.

“Because
you
are going to project otherwise, Shirley,” said Stan simply. “You are going to show us that positive thinking works.”

Oh, brother. Practice what I preach and all that. If this stuff works, show us. I see. He was absolutely right.

Quickly I said I was going to take a fast hike to the top of the ruins. Stan said fine.

In my boots and rain gear I began to climb the stone steps of the ruins. Misty clouds floated below the mountains. The rocks were slippery as I climbed. I saw what Stan meant. I remembered the story of the Inca ghost at the clock tower who appears often and says he wants no one to be there. I wondered if that was why we had rain as I followed the stone paths. I remembered how some archeologists believe that the Lost City was built solely for Inca princesses. As I gazed over the sides of the mountaintop ruins, I imagined hovering spacecraft levitating the huge stones from quarries that were visible
across the valley. Other than that it was difficult to imagine how the Incas got the twenty-ton blocks up there.

I stopped for a moment as I climbed, still and alone. I tried to evoke the feelings I had had when I was first there, long before I really understood what I was looking at.

I had never felt I had lived there or even really been there in a past life. What I had felt, though, was that I was familiar with an energy that was part of that time, a high technology that spoke to an understanding of forces above and beyond what we were familiar with today. It was almost as though I felt we had regressed in many ways, fixating on priorities that were not serving us properly or wisely, priorities that in the end might just mean the end of us.

Sadly I turned around and headed back to the hotel. The alpaca I had seen the night before stood gracefully in the mist, blinking at me. I wondered if the next time I saw him would be in sunshine.

   When I returned to the lobby, John Heard was sitting with Michael and Cowboy drinking beer. As with Simo and myself, they were there to watch out for John and take care of his needs. They hadn’t informed him yet that he was off the train, hence, no doubt, the beer.

Stan drew me aside and offered me a cup of coffee. He sat for a moment and then he told me something I could scarcely believe.

“Listen,” he said. “I think you should know. Three people have come to say that our bad luck began after you and John had the scene where you shouted ‘
I am God.’
They think it’s God punishing us.”

I stared at Stan.

“Are you serious?” I asked.

“Very,” he said with real sincerity in his eyes.

“But, Stan,” I began. “I’m not sure we’ve really had
bad luck. I mean everyone has been so helpful. And as far as this weather is concerned, well, one of the first things you learn is that nature follows consciousness. Nature cleanses however it has to.”

“Well,” said Stan, “they don’t all know that. Those three think God is having his revenge.”

“Wow,” I said, really shocked. I suddenly felt out of touch with the crew again, even if only three felt that way. I wanted to know who the three were, but I didn’t want to ask. I didn’t want to get into a religious conflict, but I wanted to help them understand my point of view. It seemed so much more peaceful and nurturing than to believe that God was a wrathful, vengeful entity prepared to wreak havoc when not subserviently obeyed. Was God punishing me for blasphemy? No, I think he would want each one of us to recognize the God within ourselves and take the responsibility for that immediately; to recognize that each person was divine. Each person was God. I thought God would have loved that scene. To say “I am God” was to fulfill and respect his love for us, because we were all part of that same divinity.