“Exactly how does this concern you?” Rodd said, a bit waspishly.
“I seem to be Thistle’s sounding board. I can guarantee you I’m the person she’ll talk to about this scene. I don’t know whether you’re even going to get her out here, once she knows what she’ll have to do, but if anyone can explain it to her, it’s probably me.”
Rodd gave me a long look and then sighed. “In this scene,” he said, “Anna-that’s Thistle’s character-tests the limits of her newfound sexuality. It’s really the pivotal sequence in the first film. It’s also probably the hardest-if Thistle can get through this, everything else should be relatively easy. You see, Anna begins as a totally repressed person, just completely closed off, living in a shell, too shy even to say hello to people. One evening, on her way home to the apartment she lives in alone, she encounters a homeless person who confronts her. She tries to sidestep, like she always does, but no go. He just won’t let her walk past him without acknowledging his existence. She’s a very nice person beneath all the anxiety, and she finds the courage to talk to him. She even gives him some money. We’ve already shot those scenes with the camera behind Thistle’s character, using that mousy girl, what’s-her-name-”
“Ellie,” I said. “Ellie Wynn.”
“Yes, using Ellie. We’ve shot the reverses-those are the shots where you’re looking over Thistle’s shoulder, so you don’t see her face-on a number of scenes, using Ellie. Anything to minimize the length of time Thistle has to work. We’ll shoot the other setups, the ones where the audience actually sees Thistle, later. Three of her twelve days, in fact. So she-Anna, I mean, Thistle’s character-helps the homeless person, and he reveals that he’s actually a kind of, uh, spirit, and he gives her three wishes and tells her to use them well, and then he goes all sort of twinkly and disappears before her eyes, in the one and only visual effect in the film. Anna’s first wish is for the courage to act on her impulses.” Rodd was more focused than I’d previously seen him, walking his own way through the story as he told it. “Her first trial of her new power was to go out with one guy, someone in her office that she’d never had the nerve to talk to, and that worked out fine, I mean, he’s calling her all the time now. But in this sequence of scenes, culminating in the one we’re about to shoot, she takes a giant step. She goes to a bar, and all these men cluster around her, and she decides to take them all home. The bar is over there,” he said, thumbing over his shoulder at a dark set diagonally across the stage.
“She’s supposed to have sex with these guys?”
“A couple of them. Some of it can be simulated, but not all of it. She’s going to have to do some of it, before the day is through. If there are shots she just can’t do, we can shoot some inserts later with a body double and cut them in-”
“A body double,” I said.
“Some girl with the same build as Thistle, someone who’s done, uh, this kind of movie before. Those will be close-ups of the real thing. The audience for a movie like this expects a few genuine money shots.”
I said, “Jesus Christ.”
“Actually,” Rodd said, “I pretty much agree.”
“Call it any fancy name you want,” I said, “but what it is, it’s a gang-bang.”
“Now that we’re actually on the verge of filming it,” Rodd said, “it would probably be disingenuous to call it anything else. But not in front of Thistle, please.”
“You have some good credits,” I said. “Why are you here?”
“Darling.” Rodd put an open hand beneath his face, palm up, as though presenting it to an audience. “I’m fifty-eight years old. In Hollywood, that’s too old to qualify for an obituary. Do you remember those signs they used to have at amusement parks for the kids’ rides? If you were too tall to walk under it, you weren’t allowed on? Well at the networks now they have a picture of a teenager over the door and a sign that says, if you’re older than this, don’t knock. Last job I actually went out for, the network executive wore braces.”
“If it’s any comfort,” Lauren, the cinematographer, said, “he’ll probably be a soda jerk on Sunset in six weeks. Most of those guys don’t keep their job long enough to get the chair warm.”
“Over there,” I said, pointing across the stage. “You said that was the bar set, right?”
“Right.” This was Lauren again.
“Wouldn’t it be better to start with the bar scene? I mean, at least give Thistle a chance to, to talk to these guys before she has to-you know.”
“Yes,” Rodd said. “It would be better. It would, in fact, be the way I had it sequenced in the first place. That’s why the bar’s built and ready to go. But it is exactly not what Ms. Annunziato wants to do. She wants Thistle to cross the great divide, as she herself put it, before one more penny of the Annunziato millions is spent on this film. First the press conference, then this scene. With those out of the way, she figures she’ll have no way of losing her movie. If Thistle can do this, she’ll be able to do anything.”
“For what it’s worth,” Lauren said, “we’re going to talk her through all of it. We’ll clear the set except for the essential people, the minimum crew to get the sequence. Most of them are women. We’ll shoot the action silent and dub it later, so she can call off any activity that she absolutely can’t do, and we’ll find a way to film around it. Inserts, as Rodd said. But she’s going to have to do some of it, or Trey will shut the movie down.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
Rodd said, “Join the club.”
“God damn it,” I said. “I’m going to talk to Trey.”
I went back outside, blinking in the sunlight, and bulled my way through the people carrying stuff until I was back in the building where we’d had the press conference. I looked everywhere-the screening room, the classroom set, the cafeteria, anyplace I’d seen Trey, but couldn’t find her. I was on the way to the makeup room when Tatiana called my name. She was obviously distressed, twisting the tail of her plaid shirt in both hands as she came down the corridor. At the same time, Ellie appeared, coming from the other end of the hall, cell phone to her mouth, talking behind a cupped hand.
“Where is she?” Tatiana said. “Tell me you know where she is.”
“I’m the wrong guy to ask where anyone is,” I said. “Who are you talking about?”
“Thistle,” Tatiana said. “She’s gone.”
28
“Tell me,” I said.
“Well, she got through with her makeup and then put on the costume for the scene, just a kind of nothing dress, a little evening dress, black with-”
“I don’t need to know about the dress. And?”
“And she hadn’t said anything for five or ten minutes. It was like she was miles away, or memorizing something. You know what I mean? Just not there. Anyway, she asked for a few minutes alone. So I told everyone to leave the room, and then we, I mean Ellie and I, we went to the cafeteria and got a couple cups of coffee. Just, you know, giving Thistle some time to pull herself together. Then we went back and knocked on the door, but she didn’t answer, and when we opened it, she was gone.”
Ellie came up from behind me, putting the phone away. “Not on the sound stage,” she said to Tatiana.
“How long was she alone?” I asked.
“Fifteen minutes?” Ellie said, aiming the question at Tatiana.
“Maybe twenty,” Tatiana said.
“Say twenty,” I said. “Enough time for anything.”
“Anything?” Tatiana said. Her fingers flew to her mouth. “Oh. Oh, my God. You said it, if they’re really serious about shutting this thing down, it’s Thistle they’ll target.”
“Let’s not go there yet. Did you both go into the room?”
“Yes,” Ellie said hesitantly. “I went first.”
‘How long ago?”
“Oh, gosh, hard to-I’ve been so upset.”