The Hollywood Trilogy

by Don Carpenter

  There was a road cutting down the bank to the river’s edge, and then a large gravel bar jutting out into the middle of the river, making a big green lagoon on this side. The opposite bank of the river was much higher and looked like green rock. She and Maggie walked down to the river and then out onto the gravel bar, where there seemed to be fewer insects to bother them, although out in the direct sunlight it was blistering hot. Jody did not mind though. She was feeling less nervous all the time. After all, she was among professionals and everybody else seemed okay.

  Maggie said, his hands in his pockets, “Listen, I have to apologize to you. Remember that screen test, and I blow up and quit the picture? I want to apologize for that. The reason I blew was because I hadn’t expected you to have any talent. But you do, you have a lot of talent, and I used my reaction to you as an excuse to jack a little more dough out of the studio. I don’t know what Harry’s told you about my little number, but I want you to be my friend. Okay?”

  He held out his hand and Jody shook it, smiling at him to let him off the hook.

  There was a new-looking raft of one-by-eights lashed to steel drums in the lagoon, and Maggie told her that they had spent most of the morning making it and deciding where and how to tether it for the camera. He told about the searches for snakes before some of the crew would come down to the river, and then they discovered that nobody in the company knew what a water moccasin looked like and so when they did scare loose a couple of snakes nobody knew if they were deadly or harmless. It did not matter; the snakes wriggled down into the dark green river and nobody had to try to kill them.

  “Let’s go sit in a car,” Maggie said, and they were slowly walking up the bank when some of the crew started down. “I don’t see any actors,” Maggie said, “let’s keep going.”

  “I want to be by myself for a while,” Jody said, and so Maggie left her in Harry’s car, with the door shut, and the engine and air conditioning running. She could see Harry in the shade, sitting at one of the now empty catering tables, leaning forward talking to Lew, and then he got up and came over to her. He got into the car beside her and sighed for a moment in the air conditioning.

  “You ready for the big moment?” he asked her.

  “Sure,” she said. She was not nervous at all now, and not even impatient to begin. She had waited this long. She could wait.

  “It all looks so goddamn beautiful when you’re sitting in this air conditioning, but then when you step out into the bugs and heat, forget it.”

  “Are those turtles?” Jody asked. She pointed to a jagged stick jutting out from the willows below them along the inside bank of the lagoon. There they were, three shaggy and evil-looking turtles, sitting in the sun with their eyes shut and their necks stretched out.

  “How the hell did they get there?” Harry said in an irritated voice. “We combed this area for a whole damn half-hour already.” He got out of the car and a few minutes later Jody saw some of the technicians walking gingerly along the bank below, pushing the willows away from their faces and poking at the growth with long sticks. Jody’s turtles slid off the bank with a single splash as soon as the men came near them, and nobody seemed to find anything else.

  “Miss McKeegan?” said Bud Hanzer, the assistant director, wearing another of his striped tee shirts. “It’s time to get ready.” He led her to the honeywagon and knocked on the little door. “Miss Rudman?”

  A handsome middle-aged man opened the door and smiled at Jody and let her in past him. She had met the man the night before at dinner in the motel, although she and Harry did not sit with them. He was Elaine Rudman’s husband, Burt Keeling. Jody decided he had probably gone to Abercrombie and Fitch or some place like it and said, “Outfit me for Alabama.” He was wearing a khaki suit, the jacket cut like a bush coat, the pants ending in high cuffs above new-looking lace-up boots.

  “I’ll leave you girls,” he said in his cultivated Ivy-League voice, and started to close the door behind him.

  “Send Harry,” Elaine Rudman said. She looked more nervous than ever. To Jody she said, “Would you mind? I want to talk to Harry for a couple of minutes.”

  Jody went out just as Harry, with a little fixed smile, went in.

  After twenty minutes or so, Lew Gargolian came huffing up the hill, his face shining and red, and asked Jody where everybody was. She pointed to the honeywagon and Lew knocked on the door. Harry stuck his head out, said something to Lew, and then closed the door again. Lew stamped his foot on the ground and then saw that Jody was watching him. He grinned crookedly and went off. A little while later he came back with Burt Keeling, who went into the honeywagon. By this time Jody was back in Harry’s car with the motor running. She could see a few of the crew and the two actors ragged and dirty in their costumes out on the gravel bar playing with a frisbee. Another of the crew was skipping stones out into the river and the rest were hidden in the few shady places, although as the afternoon moved along, shadows grew longer across the bar.

  The honeywagon door opened and Harry came out and over to Jody. He got into the car and sat for a minute, looking straight ahead.

  “What’s the matter?” Jody asked.

  “She’s frightened,” Harry said. “She’s never shown her tits on the screen before and she’s worried that it will change her public image. She thinks it could cost her jobs.”

  “Will it?” Jody asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Anyway, it doesn’t matter because she signed the contract and she knew what the job was. She’s just afraid, that’s all. Burt’s talking to her. He’s on our side.”

  And so eventually Burt and Elaine came out of the trailer, Elaine’s head high and her eyes defiant, and they all went down the road to the gravel bar. Benny checked everybody’s makeup and Nancy fussed with their hair, and out of nowhere came Jack, wearing a white golfing hat, no shirt and a pair of old Levi’s. He took his four actors to one side.

  “I’m sorry about all this,” Elaine said.

  “It’s not your fault,” Jack said. “Let’s get to work.”

  He described to them the way he thought the scene ought to look, and walked them around to their marks on the bank and in the shrubbery. In the first setup of the scene the four of them appear over the bank and Jonathan says they have to clean themselves up, get their clothes as respectable as possible, before they attempt to go through town. They begin to undress.

  But clouds were piling up in the west, cutting the light and heat, and before they had even finished a rehearsal, Bob Teague the cameraman, came over to Jack with his lips sucked into his mouth, shaking his head.

  “We’ll never make it this afternoon,” he said.

  “Oh fudge,” Jack said, and then two of them went off.

  “Well, fuck shit piss balls,” Maggie said drily. “Who’s got the frisbee?”

  “Oh God, it’s all my fault,” Elaine said, looking at Jody. Jody smiled but said nothing.

  Jack came back alone and took Jody and Elaine off to one side.

  “Girls, we missed the light, and it wasn’t your fault, and the person to blame was fired, so let’s make the best of it. We can’t shoot the beginning of the scene, but the light’s going to be right pretty soon for the end of the scene. In fact, maybe everything worked out for the best, because those clouds might just give us a hell of a sunset to shoot into.” The end of the scene shows three of them swimming in the twilight, relaxed and enjoying themselves, even though they are on the run. The only one not joining them is Jonathan, who sits alone on the bank, brooding about his responsibilities.

  “Then we can wear our suits,” Elaine said.

  “You can,” Jack said, “but not Jody. I want to shoot her standing in the water up to about her knees.”

  “Well, then, I won’t either,” Elaine said.

  Benny took the makeup off them and they undressed, as soon as the camera had been moved onto the raft and the raft located in position. Jack was wet to the waist by now, and everybody who was not
needed for the shot had gone up the hill and supposedly out of sight. There were only the actors, Jack, Bud Hanzer, the cameraman and his operator, and, over on the bank, Harry and Burt Keeling.

  It was still so hot that the water felt icy and delightful against Jody’s feet as she stepped into the river. On impulse she waded further out into the water until it came up almost to her waist and then abruptly she ducked under. She was in a patch of sunlight, and when she opened her eyes under water everything was eerie and green, the way she had hoped it would be. It reminded her of swimming parties in Portland, on the banks of the Willamette when she had been a child. But this was the Alabama River, and when she came up she would begin, at last, her career.

  They shot the scene four times. Jody’s part was to stand with the water up to her knees, her head tilted so that her wet hair hung down almost hiding her face. Maggie’s part was to swim slowly past Jody and out of frame. Elaine’s part was to sit in the water near the bank and be washing herself slowly, and of course Jonathan was up on the bank. They shot four times to catch four different arrangements of sun and clouds, and when they were finished, Jack was very happy.

  “I think we got something,” he said to Jody as he helped her out of the water and Bud Hanzer draped a large towel around her. “I think we really got some good footage.”

  Maggie came over to her and said, “See how easy it is?” and Elaine Rudman, when the two of them were in the honeywagon alone getting dressed, said, “Kind of an anticlimax, wasn’t it? I mean, just standing there after all the hassle.”

  “I was a model for a while,” Jody said. “I’m used to it.”

  Harry would never be able to get the picture out of his mind: Jody in the twilight, the sun behind her head, her skin shining like bronze.

  THIRTY-SIX

  THEN THINGS started getting better for a while. The next morning everyone arrived at the riverbank location in good spirits, partly because the weather had cooled a bit overnight (fall weather had been promised to them for weeks) and partly because the producer’s girlfriend turned out not to be the problem everyone had expected. Harry had heard that members of the crew were calling Jody “The Dragon Lady” after she had so efficiently put the June-bug out of its misery her first night on location, but when she had waded out into the lagoon the night before and done her job and looked incredibly beautiful and serene when everybody knew that actresses have almost a right to blow up when they have to work naked, and of course everybody thought Jody was just the producer’s girl, and now Maggie was going around telling the crew she was very talented.

  Harry did not exactly feel as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders, but it was an enormous, incalculable relief not to have to worry about Jody. He knew he would never be entirely free of the worry that she would suddenly go to pieces under the strain, and frankly he would not have blamed her, but she seemed to be bearing up beautifully. Harry thought about all the years she had wasted in her life, when with a talent like hers she could have been a successful actress probably from the beginning. But then maybe that wasn’t true. Maybe she had needed to throw her life away in exchange for the talent. Not every genius was a young genius. Of course Jody was no genius, just a damned talented actress, and once again Harry half-congratulated himself for seeing her and seeing talent in her.

  By the time they wrapped that night up everybody was really in a good mood. After losing half of yesterday, the crew worked hard and the actors worked hard and they got their entire riverbank sequence, a matter of thirty-two setups, shot in a single day, and not even a full day at that since they couldn’t use morning light.

  The only one to complain was Jonathan Bridger, who took Harry aside after one of the rehearsals and said, “My reading of the script and yours must be different.”

  “How’s that?” Harry asked, but he knew what Bridger meant. In the script, Jody’s invitation to the others to come swimming and stop worrying seems like a minor point, a character point and a way to get out of the heaviness of the scene, but the way Jack had blocked the scene and the way the camera was being used, Jody’s bit was becoming the actual point of the scene.

  “It just seems a little out of proportion to me, that’s all,” Bridger said. “I thought the point of the scene was me on the bank unable to unbend.”

  “It’s all in the cutting,” Harry said lightly, and Bridger had to accept that as an explanation.

  Most of the good feelings and energy seemed to come out of the actors, who after the first take really began to have fun with the scene, and there was a lot of rude splashing and horseplay between takes, and at one point Jack laughed so hard at a blown line that he almost fell off the raft, blindly grabbed at the camera, and was nearly responsible for dumping a thirty-thousand-dollar Mitchell into the Alabama River.

  Jody was just great. She did not seem to know that she was naked, and being so unselfconscious herself she made Elaine and even Bridger and Maggie feel at ease with themselves. Nobody wore the flesh-colored suits, and when Jody suggested to Jack that if the women had to show their pubic hair then the men ought to also and Jack laughed and agreed, somebody went up the bank and found Harry and he agreed, and so after a great deal of fussing with reflectors and relocating the camera raft, the longest take in the swimming sequence was enlivened by a flashing glimpse of Maggie Magnuson’s sex organ. And even so they came in on time, and when Bud Hanzer yelled, “It’s a wrap!” everybody cheered and the actors dubbed themselves “The Four Prunes” and rode back together in Jonathan’s car, drinking bottles of ice-cold beer from the tub the prop man kept ready for Bridger.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIS WAS to be Jody’s last scene in the picture: chased by the police, they crash into another car at a little country crossroads. Jody is pinned in the wreck, unconscious and fatally wounded. Jonathan Bridger forces Maggie Magnuson and Elaine Rudman to take the money and escape through the woods to the people who will take them out of the country to safety while he stands off the police in a final shoot-out. While he fires on the two police cars using the wrecks for a barricade, Jody comes to, makes her way dizzily out of the car and staggers into the line of fire. Bridger tries to save her and they are both killed.

  The location Harry and Jack had picked was in the middle of a large plantation which occupied nearly a quarter of Grissom County and contained its own crossroads store and postoffice next to a huge rusting old cotton gin with a couple of empty cotton wagons out in front. The whole place looked as if it had been built and then abandoned in the Nineteen Thirties, but as a matter of fact the plantation was a bustling business, raising not only cotton but soy beans, millet and beef cattle. The attractiveness of this particular crossroads was that since it was on private property and both dirt roads were owned by the Sumner family, it would not be necessary to have Alabama State troopers present for the filming to direct traffic, and Harry did not want troopers around for any of the scenes involving the police. The police in the script were just dog heavies, not people at all, and Harry knew from experience that real policemen had a tendency to resent the theatrical kind.

  But there were other advantages to the location. It was a beautiful setting, for one thing, and for another the usual collection of Sugarville people who had been watching most of the filming were not able to get out here, and Harry did not want any civilians around for these scenes. A lot of explosives were going to be used to make it look as if the cars and people were being riddled by gunfire, and Harry always hated the thought of anybody getting hurt, especially civilians.

  The cars had been wrecked the day before, with cameras mounted inside the cars, strapped to trees, one on top of the Cinemobile and one inside the entrance to the little store, Harry was certain that they had gotten good coverage, although he would not really know until he got back to Hollywood, because they had received their last batch of location dailies three days before, and after they finished this scene, there were only a few pick-ups and run-bys to shoot. And they were only two day
s over schedule.

  Now while the special effects man supervised the placing of the explosive charges for the first setup and the grips were building a long platform for the camera to roll along during the shot, Harry took a moment for himself to walk alone down the road toward a copse of oak trees. He did not know how he felt. Like everyone else he had gone crazy once or twice, and now he had an almost desperate longing for Hollywood, civilization, good food and peace, but there was a sense of regret in him too. This had not been the easiest picture he had ever worked on, but it certainly had the most potential, both commercially and artistically. His telephone calls to Bill Zimmerman the editor had been full of guarded enthusiasm, and of course Harry and everybody else had been seeing the uncut film in dailies shown down at the Sugartown Bijou two mornings a week. The photography was nothing short of brilliant as far as Harry was concerned, although Bob Teague the cameraman always squirmed and writhed in his seat during the screenings and seemed horribly relieved when people did not hate him. And the acting was right on the money, especially Magnuson and Jody.

  In the shade of the oak trees Harry squatted down and rested for a moment, seeing the distant activity of the film company through the wavering heat of the morning. When he had been a little boy growing up in Nebraska he had often gone out into the countryside by himself, hunting arrowheads and imagining he was an Indian, and that was his true secret reason for coming over here now. A couple of days before a member of the crew had found some points—“arrowheads” he had called them—under these trees, and Harry really wanted to find some for himself, remains of the Alabama Indians who used to be all over this land. He had meant to go out hunting artifacts with the local expert, a druggist in the Selma shopping center, but it just hadn’t worked out that way, and now this was going to be his last chance. He no longer worried about Jody at all. She had not had more than two drinks in a row for the entire six weeks, and although she was showing the strain of the production just like everyone else, she was certainly not the problem they had all expected. To the cast and crew she was just another actress in the company now, and the fact that she was the producer’s girlfriend meant nothing. There were too many other things to gossip about: Bridger’s and Elaine Rudman’s brief but explosive affair after her husband had left; Maggie’s sorties into the local communities; the crazy woman who kept going after Bridger’s stunt double, and on and on, just like any other company on location.