The Martini Shot (17 page)

She was in one of three rather dowdy outfits that she insisted upon wearing, which drove the cable execs and the costume department batty. She favored black slacks and vertical-striped shirts worn out to cover her widening bottom, and comfortable, asexual clogs on her feet. Meaghan, black-haired with emerald green eyes, was an attractive individual by most standards. In fact, if one didn't know her, a person might even find her desirable. But we knew her.

In the middle of the first rehearsal, she stopped reading from her sides and waved her hands in a theatrical show of impatience.

“Who
writes
this shit?” she said, musically, with a smile, looking around at the crew for some reaction to her joking tone, as if that excused her insult.

“That would be me,” I said, standing nearby.

“I know, darling,” she said. “And ordinarily, Victor, I love your words. Of course, I'm no writer, but…” Here she pretended to carefully study the dialogue. “Why in the world is she asking this guy if he likes her shoes?”

“Well, she suspects he's a rapist and a killer. She's trying to determine if he has a shoe fetish. The victim was redressed after her murder. She'd been wearing flats because she'd just come off work. She was a cocktail waitress and she wore comfortable shoes. But when her body was found, she was wearing ankle straps with four-inch heels.
Remember? 
”

I was asking if she'd read the entire script, and not just her scenes.

“Of course I remember.” Meaghan's eyes went from reason to ice, a change I knew well; it was as if some inner switch had been thrown, like the tilt light on a pinball machine. “But when I ask the CI if he likes my shoes, it makes me out to be some kind of vacuous shopping queen or something. I'm an assistant district attorney, Victor, an
A-D-A
. I'm not a fucking
house
wife.”

The day player had reddened a bit, and grips and electric, bored with her antics, had settled in for what they thought might be a long argument. Some even stepped away from the set. When Meaghan's name was on the call sheet, the morale of the crew went down the toilet.

I could have been contentious, but I had to pick my battles, and wasted time on a shoot meant overages and expenses. Keeping my cool was where I earned my money.

“Okay,” I said. “What would you like to say, Meaghan?”

“
You're
the writer.”

“How about, ‘Do you like shoes'?”

“It's rather generic. I mean,
everyone
likes shoes, don't they? But I suppose that would be fine.”

I was always defusing bombs and putting out fires with her. When she was off her meds, it was even worse. Mostly, she just made us all tired.

The rehearsal ended, the crew had the set, and a half hour later Meaghan returned from her trailer to do the scene and get into her position. We waited for her to do her mouth exercises, and then we shot it. It took a long while; the day player was nervous in Meaghan's presence, and when we turned around on him he continually flubbed his lines. He grew more nervous as she coached him on the finer points of acting, and then directed him, to the annoyance of Lomax, our actual director. Now we were behind.

The next scene, between Meaghan and Brad, had to be lit day-for-night. The camera crew changed lenses and filters, and the grips laid down the tracks. I watched my friend Skylar directing his lamp operators, rigging gaffers, and rigging electricians as they set up the lights. I could tell that he was listless and off his game. And then I saw his girlfriend, Laura, approach him, fresh out of the wardrobe trailer, carrying some shirts on hangers.

Laura Flanagan was a slight young woman who today wore oversized aviators, a shirt off one shoulder, skinny jeans, and leopard-print spectators. She was in her early twenties, but she looked seventeen. The two of them had a brief, joyless discussion before she moved away and walked toward me, her head down, attempting to hide her emotions. I could see tears behind the amber lenses of her shades.

Lunch, scheduled six hours after call time, was in a church auditorium near the second location. Our caterer did a good job of feeding our army, but even a Parisian chef would have trouble pleasing this crew after several months of shooting and eating the same-tasting food, day in, day out.

We served ourselves cafeteria style, with two lines of people filling their plates on either side of a long table. Salad, bread, vegetables, pasta, beans and rice, chicken, beef, pork, fish, and dessert were usually on the menu, with some half-assed food event (Taco Day, Burger Day) thrown in on occasion. Sometimes we just couldn't face the catering grub and went off to nearby restaurants or fast-food joints, and sometimes we substituted naps for chow. The best that could be said about lunch was that the food was free, plentiful, and filling. It was also a needed break in our day.

Tables had been set up, and normally people sat with their friends, which generally meant the ones within their departments. The Teamsters were fed first, per their contracts, another source of Lazy Teamster jokes that went around from shoot to shoot.

What did Jesus say to the Teamsters?

Don't do anything until I get back.

What do Teamsters' kids do on weekends?

Stand around and watch the other kids play.

Teamsters were easy to ridicule, unless you needed one in a pinch, and then they came through. They were some of the most genial people on the crew when you got to know them, and also the toughest, along with our security staff, the gaffers, and the grips.

Some days I sat with Annette and her contingent, if they were around for lunch, and other days I sat with the hair and makeup folks, mostly women, the best-looking and most stylish people on set. I was just a man, no deeper than any other, and I liked the company of nice-looking females when I was breaking bread. But their table was full that day, so I sat with my boys, Van and Eagle, and a few other folks we liked: Kenny “G” Garson (picture car coordinator), Jerome Hilts (a camera dolly grip), and Victoria Lewis, our locations manager, who was normally out scouting but had stopped in for lunch. Lomax was eating with Ellen, Bruce, and the lead actors at another table. Skylar had disappeared.

“When's the next script gonna drop?” said Kenny, looking across the table at me. He was fifty-five, with a gray Vandyke, short gray hair, a barrel chest, and a bearish belly. Kenny found us the cars that were featured on camera. If I was to have another job on a film crew, it would be his. It seemed to me that it would be fun. But he had his pressures like everyone else.

“Yeah, Vic,” said Victoria.
“When?”

Like all department heads, they were eager to get the next script as early as possible, so they could get a jump on their prep. It was counterproductive to give them the details I was aware of, because more often than not, scenes and locations changed. At night, Annette prodded me for the same information, but she had an advantage over them. I spilled for her.

“I don't know,” I said, and then, by way of explanation, “Bruce is writing it.”

“Ugh,” said Victoria, a savvy local who knew the city and its players, and seemed to be able to get us in damn near every door. She also knew that Bruce Kaplan always wrote his scripts at quarter to midnight.

“Sorry,” I said. “The good news is, we're going to beat out one-fourteen tomorrow, and then I can go off and start writing it. So if I have any intel on that one, I'll let you know.”

“So the brain trust is about to meet,” said Jerome, our grizzled dolly grip. Jerome was the senior member of the crew. While producers could work well into their sixties, most crew who worked on-their-feet jobs didn't make it past their forties. The work was just too taxing on the body, and the hours were ridiculously long. Jerome was fifty-eight, an avid reader, curious about politics, with the weathered, leathery face of an old sailor, the under bite of a Cro-Magnon, and the forearms of Popeye. He was an intellectual and a bull.

“What do you guys do in that writers' room?” said Kenny, with a twinkle in his eye. “Discuss, you know, character motivations? Do you talk about your feelings and stuff?”

Kenny, like much of the crew, thought a writer's job was easy, which was not true, and less physically demanding than the jobs of other crew members, which was. Crew liked to believe that writers were soft, which was one reason I did two hundred push-ups and sit-ups in my room daily, without fail, no matter what time I wrapped. It confused the grips to see a guy in my profession who was also in shape. Plus, I was vain. When I stripped off my shirt at night and walked toward Annette, waiting in my bed, I wanted her to want me.

“Yeah,” I said, “we bounce idea balloons around the room. And we wear togas and crowns of ivy, and we tickle each other and laugh a lot, and then we eat grapes.”

“What happens when you get sleepy?”

“We lie down on our sit-upons and take naps.”

“You guys have the best job,” said Kenny.

“I know.”

“But you must get tired sitting in that chair all day. With your name on it.”

“It hurts my back a little. I think I need one that reclines. Like a La-Z-Boy.”

“If it was motorized, that would be my department,” said Kenny. “Maybe I can find you one with an engine in it.”

“That's kind of you, man. That way I won't have to walk, either.”

“I wish I was as smart as you, Vic.”

“You don't have to be smart. Being a writer is easy. Anyone can do it. You should give it a try, Kenny.”

“Nah,” said Kenny. “I'm just a gearhead from Alabama. What do I know?”

“The brain trust,” said Jerome, shaking his head sagely as he forked a mound of cheesecake into his mouth.

Gradually we all got up and prepared to make our way back out to the vans. I went to the dessert table on the way to snag an oatmeal raisin cookie and a toothpick. Brad Slaughter was there, staring at a slab of chocolate cake. He was still wearing his “gun,” a feathery-light plastic replica Glock, in his shoulder holster, and he had his fake badge clipped to the waistband of his slacks. Brad wasn't the type to stay in character. He was simply absentminded.

“I better not,” he said, patting his flat stomach. “I'm trying to watch my girlish figure.”

“The cake's not that good, anyway,” I said.

“I would have remorse afterwards. It would be like…”

“Banging your kid sister?”

Brad's eyes narrowed. “My little sister's dead, you bastard.”

“I, uh…”

“I'm joking with you, man!” Brad smiled a perfect row of ultra-white capped teeth. At fifty, he was a handsome sonofabitch, better looking now than when he had been in the ensemble of one of those teenage-rebel movies Coppola had made in his boy-erotica period.

“Don't do that to me, Brad.”

“Banging your kid sister.”
He pointed his finger at me, pistol style. “That's why you're the writer.”

“I do make my living with words.”

“Let me ask you something. Why did you cut that line, ‘I'm partial to fish'?”

“Meaghan felt it made her out to be a prostitute. She doesn't like that.”

“Yeah?
Fuck
what that whore doesn't like.”

Brad winked at me. His face was caked in makeup. It would play great on camera, but in person he looked like the victim of a drunken undertaker. Still, he had an aura about him, like nothing bad would touch him, ever, in his life. Not until death came to call. Which made me think: someday, this guy is going to make a stunning corpse.

According to plan, we were to have finished our third scene of the day before lunch, but Meaghan's actions had pushed us behind schedule. We still needed the close-ups on Brad, then the turnaround on Meaghan, which meant more mouth exercises, relighting, and three sizes on her to accommodate the peculiar standards of the TV screen. We'd need to get her “clean” (just Meaghan in the frame, medium and close) and “dirty” (looking at Meaghan over Brad's shoulder, which would partially be in the shot). To further complicate issues, Lillie noticed some matching issues with Brad (he was drinking his glass of water at different times on various takes, the kind of mistake that he usually did not make), so we lost some time there as well.

I visited Skylar after he'd finished setting up the lights for the turnaround. He was seated on the largest size apple box, which for some reason this crew called “the Schiraldi.”

“Are you sure about those fills?” I said to Skylar. “I think you put them in the wrong spot.”

It was a joke between us. I would tell him where to “put” the lights, and he'd reply with something like, “Do I tell you how to over-write your scripts?” But today he didn't even smile.

“What's wrong?” I said.

“Nothing,” said Skylar. “I guess my head's somewhere else.”

“Where is it?”

“I was thinking about my father.”

“Your old man's good people.” I had met him, and Skylar's mother, when they had visited set earlier in the shoot. I could tell that Skylar had been loved and carried no childhood scars. It was evident in the type of man he had become.

“I know he is. I just wonder what he'd think of me now.”

“He's proud of you.”

“If he
knew,
Victor.”

“If he knew
what? 
”

The second AD called me back to the Village. Lomax had a question.

“We're gonna talk later on,” I said to Skylar, before I left.

When the last shot of the scene was done and the gate was checked, it was announced that Meaghan had wrapped for the day. She was halfheartedly clapped out by the crew, who were visibly relieved.

We moved on to the last location.

The final scene of day ten was a candlelit vigil on the steps outside a “deep urban” (read: ghetto) high school (EXT: HARRIET TUBMAN HIGH SCHOOL, THIRD DISTRICT—NIGHT) that the murdered teller had attended years earlier. She had been established as a standout high school athlete beloved by her classmates, so they and her former teachers had gathered to honor her and also protest the growing violence in the city. The network execs had asked for the scene in their script notes, to make our show more “socially relevant and responsible” (read: they were hoping for an Emmy nomination), and we had complied, though such a vigil for a student long since graduated wouldn't have occurred and didn't make much sense.