But on the ground, the money was good. A lot of people had a profitable summer working on the film. As with any big effort, there were sexual relationships, babies started, babies stopped, babies born, and of course, a few divorces and emotional breakdowns, plus a number of lifelong feuds begun and exorcised, some in private, others in public.
James had worked for seven weeks on various underwater sequences. Hu had come aboard in the last week as a stunt player, running from the onrushing water. The first few days, there was no actual water. All that was to be added later by a team of talented CGI artists in Hong Kong or New Delhi. Anyone whose name came before the credits would be taking home seven figures and points on the gross, but domestic jobs were shipped overseas in cost-cutting acts of dubious economy. But there was still work to be done locally.
They had to shoot one key scene on a stretch of Wilshire Boulevard—from Rodeo Drive to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel—and they had exactly seven minutes out of every thirty when the Beverly Hills Police Department would block off traffic for the director to capture his carefully orchestrated panic, a frenzied evacuation from unseen waves.
Hu’s job was to be part of the crowd, running down the street, running through the cars, until he finally hit a specific mark, where he would fall to the ground as if he was being swept under the killing wave—except one of the assistant directors liked his look and gave him a different role where he got to be a featured kill.
The camera started at a high angle, looking up the row of stopped cars, with the distant wave roaring toward the foreground. Hu ran toward the camera, running between the line of vehicles. The camera lowered, promising a closeup, but just as Hu arrived at that spot, a panicky driver—another stunt player—opened his driver-side door so Hu slammed into it—and then the wave overtook them both. The unseen side of the car door was carefully padded, so Hu could hit it hard without injuring himself.
The director liked the shot so much that he decided to add a follow-up bit, giving Hu two additional days of work. Finished with the devastation of Wilshire Boulevard, the film moved to a Hollywood backlot for specific closeups of death and destruction.
For these shots, the director needed real water, not virtual, and the production relocated to the Paramount lot, the site of the city’s second-largest outdoor tank—the Blue Sky Tank, so called because its towering back wall could be painted to represent any kind of sky, stormy to cloudless, that a director might need. Although the Falls Lake tank at Universal was noticeably larger, it was also more expensive to fill, filter, and heat.
The filmmakers needed a variety of shots with Asian men and women as background players. This was so their Chinese co-financers could edit a somewhat different version of the film for the Asian markets. The Chinese version would include several characters and subplots not in the American version. The joke had initially been whispered in the front office, but of course it eventually filtered down to the production crew as well—the picture would do well on that side of the Pacific, because Asian audiences like to see white people die. But to be fair, a few Chinese extras had to go down too.
Hu didn’t care, he was just happy to work. Because of his marvelously startled expression when he’d slammed into the car door, the American director wanted to follow up by showing Hu struggling for a while in real waves before finally (fake) drowning. So Hu spent a hot August morning in the tank, pretending to die—“On this next take, could you look a little more terrified, please?” Dutifully, Hu struggled, gasped, and waved his arms for help that would never come, until finally disappearing obediently beneath the surface of the foaming water.
The tank was barely four feet at the center, the waves were machine-produced, and the foam was a specific detergent. Floating across the entire surface of the water was an assortment of Styrofoam flotsam, representing the debris stirred up by the tsunami. The shot didn’t seem very dangerous—at least that’s what Hu believed until he was caught unprepared by a sudden sideways push of prop debris, hard enough to punch the air out of his lungs and leave him gasping for air, involuntarily sucking in a mouthful of water, coughing, and choking desperately as he flailed.
James was one of the safety coordinators. He’d dived into the water, swam under the crapberg, grabbed Hu, and pulled him off to the side of the tank, hanging him on the sloping surface and staying with him until he regained his breath. Neither noticed when the director shouted, “Cut! That’s the best one yet, we’ll use that one! All right, let’s get the camera in the water for the dead body shot—”
The director hadn’t noticed what had happened, but one of the assistant directors had seen, and on James’ direct recommendation, quietly added an additional stunt-fee to Hu’s paycheck. No one said anything to the film’s director—a man notorious for arguing with stunt players about the cost of each gag. He had a bad reputation in the stunt players’ community.
After that, James kept an eye on Hu. In the last shot of the morning, Hu had to pretend to be dead, floating face down in the water while a camera crew in dive gear photographed him from beneath. James had been there to coach the camera crew, showing them how to keep their bubbles out of the shot. And that was when Hu, not knowing James’ name, had jokingly called him the bubble-wrangler.
Later on, at lunch, they sat opposite each other—the group shared a table under a large craft-service tent that dominated the parking lot next to the commissary.
Hu had a smile. James had a grumpy charm—it was enough.
The two began that long careful dance of curiosity that would eventually, though not immediately, lead to James’ little house in Venice Beach. Hu had gotten his nickname—Squeak—from the sound his running shoes made on James’ tile floor.
It began as a physical thing, but eventually grew into a relationship. Bed-buddies became roommates. Roommates became lovers. And lovers became—
One strange stormy night, while the two of them were lying side-by-side, staring at the ceiling and listening to the rain, the usually taciturn James had said, “What do you think—”
“About what?”
“About us, about stuff—”
Hu was still learning how to listen to James, but this time he heard more than the words. He heard the intention.
“I think…” he began. He rolled onto his side to face James. “I think yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, you big bubble-wrangler. Yes, I will marry you.”
“Oh,” said James. “I was going to ask you if we should get a cat.”
“Huh—?”
James grinned. “But getting married—that’s a good idea too.” He pulled Hu close, and kissed him intensely.
The rest was details.
After a few weeks of dithering about plans and schedules, and how much neither of them wanted the gaudy circus of an actual wedding ceremony, they decided to just go down to City Hall, do the deed, and then fly to Hawaii for a week. Hu’s parents, now together again, were initially more concerned about Hu marrying a Caucasian than a man—but finally decided to show their acceptance by joining them on the island.
The plane tickets were sitting on the kitchen table—and the president’s voice was still droning on—now repeating the original broadcast. Outside, the sirens abruptly fell silent. “I suppose—” said Hu, staring at the travel folder, “I suppose—we can get a refund.”