For Those Who Dream Monsters (8 page)

A
few minutes later the required crew members filed into the room.

“Good
God, man, what happened to you?” Eli enquired of Bob, who slinked in
sheepishly, carrying his boom and sporting a fresh black eye.

“Nothing.”

“Come
now, unless you walked into your own boom, I would say that
something
happened.”

“Sylvia…”

“Ah,
Sylvia! Really?” Eli laughed. “And what did you do to provoke her?” No
response. “Tell me!”

“She
didn’t like my Jack Nicholson impersonation.” Bob admitted quietly.

“Aha!
And to think I doubted her good taste… Speak of the devil!” Eli got up and
walked over to Sylvia, who’d just entered the room. “Come on in, my dear, we’ll
do a walk-through.”

“What?”
asked Sylvia suspiciously.

“We’ll
walk through the scene.” Eli explained. “Just don’t give me a black eye; I’m
not the boom operator.”

“He’s
a prick,” Sylvia growled.

“Now,
now, children, play nice… Andrea! Call a rehearsal, please!”

“Hold it like you mean it!”

“What?”

“The
machete! Hold it like you mean it!” They’d been rehearsing for almost an hour
and the camera still wasn’t rolling. Eli was beginning to lose his patience and
Sylvia was getting increasingly agitated – to the point where she could no
longer remember the couple of lines she’d been reciting in a startlingly wooden
and inappropriate fashion when they’d first started.

“But
it’s not real!”

“Of
course it’s not real. It’s a prop!” Eli was flabbergasted, and relieved that
Mark had gone back to the production office and was not here to witness their
disastrous walk-through.

“How
can I hold it like I mean it if it’s not real?”

“It’s
called acting,” the Director of Photography hissed under his breath, loud
enough for Sylvia to hear.

“You
fuck!” Sylvia glowered at Graham, her face reddening with rage. Eli could swear
that the woman’s already frizzy hair was standing on end like that on an
enraged, bristling cat.

“Good!”
he bellowed. “Now use that anger, grab the machete and go for Clive.” Clive
looked at Eli pleadingly, his eyes those of a startled deer. Sylvia made a move
towards the plastic machete. “Wait!” shouted Eli. “Wait for Andrea to call it!
We’ll go for a take… Andrea!”

“Quiet
please, we’re going for a…” But it was too late. Screaming like a banshee,
Sylvia grabbed the machete and ran.

“Roll
camera!” Eli managed to shout, but Sylvia raced past the cowering Clive and
headed straight for the Director of Photography, knocking over the monitor in
the process. The camera operator tried to pan the camera after Sylvia, while
Graham raised his arms to fend off the attack, yelling for someone to get her
off him. Andrea ran at Sylvia, but Eli stayed her with a hand gesture. He
watched with keen interest for a couple of seconds as Sylvia pelted the
Director of Photography with the plastic prop, before finally relenting.

“Cut!”
he shouted. Sylvia stopped – the result of running out of steam rather than
anything Eli had said. “Good!” cried Eli. Graham stormed out of the room,
cursing. The remaining crew stood in stunned silence.

“Put
the prop down, Wendy,” Marty whispered to Bob, with a dry smile. Eli came up to
Sylvia, removed the machete from her hand and led her to the side.

“That
wasn’t bad,” he told her. But I have two directions for you. One: you wait
until I say ‘Action!’ And two: Clive…” Clive glanced over on hearing his name,
his face positively ashen. “You go for Clive – your fellow actor, not for my
Director of Photography. Other than that, you do everything the same. Do you
understand?”

“Yes,
Eli.”

“Good…
Andrea!” The First A.D. turned her attention away from the monitor that the
camera assistant had managed to reconnect.

“Yes,
Eli?”

“Get
someone to fetch the Director of Photography and then call a take.”

“No, no, no!
No
!” Eli leapt from his director’s chair. “What did I tell
you?”

“What?”
barked Sylvia.

“I
told you to do everything the same as before!”

“I
am!”

“No,
you’re not! You’re not waiting until I say ‘Action!’ and you’re holding it like
it’s a limp kipper… Here, look…” Eli took the prop from Sylvia and acted out
the scene with Clive. “That’s how you do it… Do you think you can do that,
Sylvia?”

“Yes,
Eli.” Eli was making her look bad in front of the crew and Sylvia was feeling
increasingly resentful. Normally she wouldn’t let anyone talk to her like that,
but there was something about the man that made her – and everyone else on set,
it seemed – want to please him. Sylvia figured it must be something to do with
being the Director. Nevertheless, she just couldn’t see what all the fuss was
about. She was doing what Eli told her – most of it, at any rate. Okay, so
sometimes she forgot to wait until he said ‘Action’, but she was waving the
pathetic plastic machete at Clive, so what was the problem?

Minutes
went by, then hours. Then it was time for lunch. As usual, the caterers put on
a good spread. Sylvia followed the others to the catering van, then took her
tray onto the coach that had been turned into a mobile dining room, complete
with tables and seats. She was convinced that the crew were giving her funny
looks. And she could swear that even that gay-looking pathetic piece of shit
Clive – or whatever his stupid name was – smirked at her as she walked past.
She wondered how fast that smirk would disappear if she stuck his head down the
portable toilet – or ‘honeywagon’ as it seemed to be called around here.
Eventually she found an empty table in the corner and settled down to her
three-course meal, glaring at anyone who ventured close.

“
Bon
appétit
, everyone!” Eli had entered the coach with Graham. He spotted
Sylvia sitting by herself, murmured something to the Director of Photography,
then came over to the actress.

“Mind
if I join you?” he asked, sitting down.

Sylvia
shrugged, not bothering to look up from her plate.

“Look,
Sylvia, the first day of shooting is always the hardest.” Eli was doing his
caring, empathetic director routine again, and Sylvia cast him a cynical
glance. “Once we’ve all eaten, everyone will be in a better mood, it’ll be
easier to concentrate and everything will be fine. You’ll see. You just need to
follow my directions to the letter and everything will be okay.”

But
everything wasn’t okay. Eli tried to be patient, taking Sylvia to the side and
calmly repeating over and over what she needed to do. But nothing worked.
Sylvia’s acting went from very bad to atrocious; she came in at the wrong
times, fluffed her lines, dropped the machete and was unable to follow the
simplest instructions. What’s more she didn’t seem to care, and it was her
attitude more than anything that was driving Eli to distraction.

“Am
I speaking English?” he finally burst out. It was six p.m. and they still
didn’t have any useable takes. “What is it that I’m saying that you don’t
understand? How can you call yourself an actress if you can’t follow directions?”

“Oh,
fuck off, you stupid old fruit!” And that was it. Eli sacked his leading lady
in front of the entire crew. Sylvia let off a tirade of obscenities at the
director, then stormed off set, pushing aside anyone who didn’t move out of her
way fast enough.

Eli returned home exhausted and humbled. He’d had to swallow a whole lot of
pride where Mark was concerned. After they’d wrapped for the day, with footage
in the can which came to a shocking total of probably no more than one screen
minute, Eli had had to phone the producer, apologise for his lack of judgement
and ask Mark to help him re-cast the female lead. Luckily Mark had behaved like
a gent.

“Of
course,” he’d said with a logic-defying lack of smugness that Eli appreciated
greatly at that particular point in time. The young producer had then taken Eli
back to his place, where he’d fixed him a stiff drink, and the two of them had
sat together for four hours, reviewing the audition tapes until they’d picked
out an actress they could both live with.

“I’ll
phone her straight away,” Mark told Eli.

“Thanks,
old boy,” Eli relaxed into Mark’s leather sofa and took a sip of Scotch.

“I’ll
just get the casting file and check her number.”

Fortunately,
not only was the actress still available, but she agreed to learn the
minimum-dialogue scene that Sylvia had massacred – overnight – and start work
the next day.

“I’m
having the script couriered to her right now. She’ll be in first thing in the
morning and we won’t even have to rearrange the shooting schedule.”

“A
helpful producer,” Eli raised his glass to Mark and smiled at the younger man.
“That’ll be a first.”

Mark
had called him a cab and Eli staggered up to his front door, a little drunk,
but relieved that with Mark’s help he’d be able to save face in front of the
crew. Tomorrow he’d act as though Sylvia had never even existed, and everyone
would follow suit. Perhaps Graham would make some snide little remark, but that
was Directors of Photography for you – an inflated sense of self-importance,
the lot of them.

Eli
took out his house keys, and that’s when he noticed that the front door was
open. His usual astuteness dulled by the whisky he’d had at Mark’s, he simply
put his keys back in his pocket and went in, shutting the door behind him.

“Honey,
you left the front door open,” he called, looking around for his wife. “You
should be more careful, you know.” Getting no response, he assumed that she’d
already gone up to bed, and padded over to the fridge to get himself a beer.
There he stood stock still for a while, as his brain grappled to work out what
it was that his eyes were looking at. His mouth opened in a scream, but the
scream was totally silent. Finally Eli backed away from the open fridge, spun
round, clipped his side on a worktop, fell over and hit his head. When he
regained consciousness, Sylvia was standing over him with a meat cleaver.

Again
Eli tried to scream, and again found that he couldn’t make a sound. Too shocked
to get up, he backed away from the looming apparition – on his backside, his
mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. He tried to cry out for
help, and couldn’t for the life of him understand why his vocal cords wouldn’t
oblige. And then the weirdest memory sparked in his brain. Eli had once filmed
an interview with an old man who’d been a British spy during World War II. Once
they’d finished shooting, Eli had commented on how brave the man was, and how
he was sure that he himself would blab under torture within a couple of
seconds.

“You
don’t know that, son,” the man had told Eli, gazing benevolently at the young
director through rheumy eyes. “Sometimes you just freeze up and you can’t say
anything, even if you want to. You never know how you’ll react in a given
situation until you’re in it.” And now Eli finally realised what the old man
had meant. But nobody was going to give him a medal for it.

“I’m
sorry, Eli!” Sylvia took a step forward and Eli nearly pissed himself. “I
didn’t mean what I said today. You’re not an old fruit, and you’re right: I
can
do better.” Eli threw a devastated glance in the direction of the fridge; any
doubts that he really
had
seen his wife’s decapitated head stuffed in
between yesterday’s pot-roast and the cauliflower dispelled by the presence of
the homicidal maniac now towering above him. Sylvia followed his gaze. “Oh …
her? She wouldn’t let me in. I tried to explain that I needed to talk to you;
to straighten things out. But she wouldn’t listen. She told me to get out, and
she just went on and on. What a bitch! I don’t know how you put up with her, I
really don’t.” Sylvia was getting worked up and Eli almost started
hyperventilating in his ineffective effort to scream for help. “I did you a
favour, you know. You should be grateful. You should take me back, you know. I
can do better. You said if I follow all your directions to the letter,
everything will be okay.”

Speechless
still, Eli continued to inch backwards on his buttocks, feeling his way behind
him with his hands. He winced as wooden splinters broke off in his fingers, and
regretted having ignored his wife’s entreaties to sand and polish the floor.

“
Look
,
Eli!” The longer the director was unable to speak, the more desperate the
actress became to elicit a response. “Look! I
can
act! I’ll prove it to
you!” she cried, brandishing the meat cleaver in a manner that could only be
construed as threatening. “I’m acting … see? I’m holding it like it’s real …
see? I just want another chance. I just want you to take me back!” Tears rolled
down Eli’s face. He gasped as he felt the wall behind him. He had run out of
floor space; he could back no further. Sylvia cornered him, the meat cleaver
raised high above her head. “I’m acting … see? I’m following your directions …
see? I’ll do whatever you say! Just tell me what you want me to do, Eli! Just
tell me!”

Eli
was close to choking in his attempts to cry out; to make the whole nightmare
that was Sylvia go away … to articulate the one word that would make her stop.