What Movies Made Me Do (14 page)

“Cut,” said the a.c. in a confused tone. He stood behind Anita, pulling on the brim of his baseball cap.

Bewildered, Jack twisted around to see her. Then Paul
Riley ran to him, and knelt, sticking strips of black masking tape on the sand. Jack put a restraining hand on his arm. “I don’t hit marks,” he yelled. “If I can’t crawl spontaneously to the cross, nobody can.”

I heard laughter in the cooling twilight. Most of the crew was new to Anita, and by now they were convinced she was making a terrible movie because of her histrionics.

Paul picked at bits of the tape. Anita snapped, “Hold it right there, Paul, I need to see where he’s going to crawl so we can follow focus.” She craned her neck to look up at her camera operator. He shrugged, refusing to back her up.

Defeated, she cursed under her breath. Paul backed out of camera range. A Roman soldier wearing a streaming red cloak blocked Jack. I slapped my hand to my forehead. What had happened to the rest of the boisterous crowd of extras who were supposed to be playing Jewish mourners and spectators? When the soldier kicked Jack in the side, I gasped. Jack sprawled forward, smashing his face into the sand, and lay there. “Say something, Anita,” I whispered.

She just sat on her heels, staring at the video screen. Nobody else moved. Then Jack heaved himself up on his hands and knees, blood and sand caked over his upper lip. I broke into a run. Finally Anita limped over to him. She was kneeling by Jack when I got there. “Nosebleed.” He smiled sheepishly. “Time.”

Anita muttered, “We’re going to lose the light.”

The makeup woman, Polly, shook alcohol on a cotton ball and dabbed at his nostril. Her cotton ball came away bloody. She was young and pretty, and she had worked with Anita on two television movies. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the camera operator arguing with the script supervisor. Their voices rose. When I walked over, the cameraman gave me a dirty look. “Okay, but I’m making my notes,” the script continuity guy was saying, “to cover my ass.”

The cameraman said, “Look, I agree, we need background.”

I knew what they meant. “What happened to the extras? They’re in the master shot, aren’t they?”

The cameraman shrugged. “I’m just following her orders.”

I dashed back to Anita. “Can I see you for a minute?” I guided her a few feet away from Jack, who was closing his eyes for makeup. I knew I was breaching etiquette. “Where’s the street crowd?” I whispered.

“Why is everybody directing my film?”

“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid these shots won’t match the master.” I followed her back to her video screen.

“A crowd would distract him. Anyway, I’m in very tight on his face.” She frowned at the screen.

Jack sat on his heels and waved at me, gulping a Perrier.

I felt a glow.

Anita whirled to watch me smiling at him. I said doggedly, “You need background.”

“The two of you should have shown up this afternoon when I storyboarded this shot,” she said.

I put my arm around her shoulder. “Sorry, I fell asleep, but no director ever really misses a studio executive on the set.”

“They do if she’s off playing with the star.”

I flushed. “I was sleeping.”

“Sure, at your place or his?”

My face went hot. “Did he miss his call?”

“Yeah, and you two wasted everybody’s time. I can’t get extras here until tomorrow night.”

“I slept alone,” I repeated, falling into step with her as she paced in front of her video monitor.

She pulled a cigarette out of her shirt pocket. A p.a. handed her a coffee mug and lifted a huge Polaroid camera over her head. Anita inhaled the cigarette. “You look guilty as hell.”

“Where did he say he was?”

“On the phone to Wales asking his ex-girlfriend to come and hold his hand.”

I had a surprise twinge of jealousy. “Isn’t that too heavy?” I said lamely, touching the Polaroid camera hanging from her neck.

She put her hand over it. “It helps me frame shots. Let me alone.”

“I came to help.”

“By playing the star-struck groupie?”

I squelched my anger. I knew her, she was on the verge of tears. She swaggered before a collapse.

She began turning the video monitor. “You want to see good camera work?” she said in a defensive voice. “I’ll start high above the empty cross and then whirl right in on him, soft focus at first.”

“I’m sure he’ll love it,”

“He doesn’t respect me or my ideas.”

“Anita, he thinks you’re a fancy artist, just cater to him.”

“I don’t need him, I don’t need his face for any more scenes. I can wrap this movie without him. I’ll get my art director to paint the film stock silver for miracles.”

“I want him happy.”

“Some best friend.”

We watched Polly the makeup girl twist a thorny bunch of twigs into a wreath and set it on Jack’s head. Suddenly he yawned and stood, the cross bouncing up over his shoulders.

“That cross is just Styrofoam!” I said.

“What a phony trick.” Anita hobbled over to him. “Want to tell me how long you been carrying a lightweight cross?”

“I switched over today. The balsam wood was breaking my back,” he said truculently.

“And never bothered to tell me.”

I felt crushed between these two angry people. They were making me dizzy; they were burning me up.

I interrupted them. “What about a yarmulke?” The thorns were scratching his scalp.

“You’re pushing the rabbi bit too far,” she said.

“He could wear one under the crown,” I said. “He wouldn’t get his scalp torn up.”

Jack laughed at me sarcastically. “Everybody’s a director.”

Anita frowned. “Wardrobe,” she called, “skullcap.”

The wardrobe girl leaned into a battered gold trunk, selecting scraps of shiny black silk.

“You both want the same thing,” I said, squeezing my fingers together anxiously. “Stop it, or you’ll ruin this film.”

They acted as if I hadn’t said a word. Smoke from the stakes blew at my face. It smelled like burnt marshmallows. We had almost lost the sun. Jack tilted his head back while Polly brushed bright red gashes across his forehead.

Suddenly Anita had disappeared.

“You feeling well enough?” I asked him. “We can always wait till tomorrow for street crowds.”

“No, I feel guilty, I missed my afternoon call,” he said, pushing a cotton ball into one nostril.

“You don’t sound like the same spoiled actor on the daily production reports,” I said exuberantly. Anita was perched high on the camera crane looking through the lens. Then she swung to the ground while the a.c. held the slate again by Jack’s bowed head.

I backed away, and the crane swooped toward him, a boom microphone dangling. “Turn on the ritters,” Anita commanded. “I want it surreal like El Greco.” A second later huge fans blew Jack’s hair over his face and scattered sand in little waves. I stood next to Polly, who was holding a sponge and a pot of orange makeup in one hand. “He looks fabulous,” she whispered out of the side of her mouth. “My whole family’s jealous of me on this one.”

“Oh, no,” I groaned, looking up at the solitary camera on the crane. Asleep at the switch, I hadn’t taken it in that Anita was operating only one camera. She wasn’t really covering
him. This way she was going to force him to keep doing takes of this scene, crawling over and over to the cross.

“Anita,” I whispered, standing behind her.

“What?” She was hunched at the video monitor. I saw a tight shot looking down on Jack’s anguished face, hair blowing in his eyes.

“Why not use a couple of cameras?” I couldn’t see her expression.

“I don’t need to cover him except full face.” She didn’t look up.

“You need profiles, you need insurance, and lots of angles.”

“I’m shooting quick close-ups to add to a finished scene.” She waved me away without moving her eyes from the screen.

“Use one more camera.”

“He doesn’t mind,” she shouted, “and I can always reshoot.”

I closed my mouth. I was out of line. But this was a crisis.

Ten feet away Jack cocked a startled eye at her. She had interrupted him. I watched the screen. He started crawling again, low and off balance like a scared dog. He flinched, reacting to taunts from imaginary spectators. I looked over at him. His loincloth drooped loosely from his body.

A crew member rolled one tall fan at his bare heels.

“Cut,” Jack finally called out. Before the screen went blank I saw him lowering his cheek on the sand, exhausted. Three crew members untied his cross, turned him on his back, and strapped him to the seat of a second crane for the next setup.

I saw his chest had been shaved.

“New magazine,” Anita shouted while an assistant waved a tin can of film up at her.

“Your loincloth’s loose.” I spoke into his ear while he sat in the seat of the metal crane waiting to be hoisted up to the cross.

He winked. “Anita says it’s something for the ladies.” I backed away as the crane motor purred. With his wild Jesus hair and beard he looked like a science fiction creature being lifted into the sky on the crane’s metal arm. Crew members spent the next ten minutes scrambling up ladders to fasten him to suction cups against his cross.

“Lights,” Anita shouted. Magic hour had faded. It was night.

Spotlights flooded the cross. His body stretched long and lean, the light showing his ribs in high relief. As with most male stars, his legs were short, his torso long. I hadn’t noticed how thin his right leg was. Anita had said he’d had childhood polio. Polly climbed a ladder leaning against the cross to blot his face with a towel.

“No, dammit,” he said, “leave the sweat.”

“He’s right, he’s right.” Anita sounded miffed as she moved closer to her video.

He had a lonely presence up there on the cross without the Bible crowd of spectators.

“Start the ritters,” she shouted as the camera crane went rolling toward his cross. The fans began raising his hair.

I looked up at him, hypnotized. When the wardrobe woman walked by, I tapped her elbow. “Maybe check his loincloth after this take.”

She tittered. “I wanted to pin it, but Anita likes it loose.”

I backed away to watch the television monitor over Anita’s shoulder. He jerked his head down to Anita. But he was blinded by the wall of blazing spotlights. “You shooting?” he gasped. Blood squibs spurted from his wrist.

“Silence!” Anita leaned her forehead on the screen.

“Silence,” said the a.c. The camera swooped at Jack.

“I am the truth,” Jack said urgently. Something happy in his voice made my throat tighten.

“Don’t blink, babe,” Anita interrupted, her back to him, still leaning on the screen. “I want you serene.” The crane was high above us, about six feet away from Jack.

Then slowly and without warning his loincloth slipped further down his hips. I saw him jam the small of his back against the cross to pin the garment there. Black smoke whirled around him. “Anita,” I whispered helplessly. I took two steps toward him and tripped over my sandal. Anita said nothing. She didn’t move. Dammit, she wasn’t thinking straight. The wardrobe woman dashed ahead of me, while the loincloth opened and drifted past his knees, floating in the fake wind.

I was horror-struck; he was naked on the cross.

The woman caught the cloth, folded it, and then ran for a ladder.

I stared at his genitals against the dark triangle of his hair. A current hit my thighs. “Stop it,” I muttered, and ran back to Anita’s side. But he looked primitive and beautiful and truly like a dying creature hanging there without clothing breaking the lines of his flesh.

“Clear the set,” said Anita, her voice trembling and ecstatic. She was rubbing her palms, glaring at her screen. “Don’t worry, babe, I’m shooting you in shadow, you look like a dark pagan sacrifice.”

She was lying. I knew her straw filter wasn’t that opaque.

“Cut,” said Jack in hushed shock.

But Anita said nothing, while her crane continued to pan slowly around him.

“You still shooting me?” Jack yelled incredulously, twisting his head to look down for her. His neck was bent forward, but he still couldn’t see her in the wall of spotlights. He was locked against the cross by suction cups and nylon.

“Stop shooting,” I shouted in her ear. “He’ll kill you.”

“It’s worth it.” She sounded hysterical. “It’s worth gold.” She shot me a quick look. “Nobody move, just a few more seconds.”

“Cut, cut,” I yelled. I was watching a legal case in the making. Nobody shoots a star’s privates without weeks of coaxing and concessions.

She ignored me, mesmerized by the screen. “Jack, you look glorious. The light makes a halo all around you. Just another thirty seconds, babe. Just a few seconds more …”

He came to life, cursing and writhing. The whole cross started swaying. “What is she talking about?” he shouted out suddenly. “Somebody tell me, please.”

“Kill the electricity,” I said, grabbing a handful of Paul’s tee shirt, tripping over a gigantic fan. I yanked off my sandals.

“You almost knocked my ritter down,” she yelled over her shoulder to me.

“She’s losing her marbles,” I said.

Paul threw generator switches and frantically turned dials. “They argued this one for weeks. I thought she lost.”

The spotlights died.

“Lights, lights, do something,” she cried out, pummeling the screen with both fists.

The generator went quiet. The crane slowly lowered the cameraman to the sand. He looked disgusted. Nobody moved. The crew watched her like they were witnessing a traffic accident.

“No, no, no,” Anita shouted in despair. She sat down hard on the sand, peering at the black screen.

Jack had wrenched his right leg free and was kicking his heel at the cross. His whole body convulsed. “Stop kicking,” I called up to him, “you’re going to fall.”

He went limp, as if he’d passed out.

“That’s a wrap, Anita.” Paul nodded while the a.c.
twisted the lens from the camera and handed it to a crew member. Anita leapt at him, tumbling sideways onto the sand, grunting with pain.

“You’re suspended for insubordination,” she told Paul.

I bent over her. Somebody handed me her crutch. She looked wildly up at me. I was furious.