by Omar Tyree
“And that’s why you want to do this, just because you’re curious?”
“I mean, why not? God said, ‘Let there be light,’ right? And Confucius said, ‘If you build it, the people will come.’”
My mother chuckled and said, “Tracy, you don’t have to philosophize. If you want to do it, then go ahead and do it. You’re gonna do it anyway. If you wasn’t, you wouldn’t have called up so late to talk about it.”
I said, “Well, I’m sorry, go ahead and go back to sleep now.”
“Sure, after you ruined my good dream.”
“What were you dreaming about?”
She paused. “That I was nineteen again.”
“Get out of here,” I told her, smiling.
“Same to you,” she said. “You’ll be having those same dreams soon yourself.”
When I hung up with my mother, I felt a poem in me. I wrote it down immediately and called it “Genesis.” I decided that when I had a chance the next day, I was going to call up Susan at home and ask her about the progress on the book deal.
$ $ $
Seven o’clock in the morning, before we began to shoot, I was on the phone with Susan.
“What’s the progress on the sequel book deal?” I asked her.
“Oh, Tracy,” she whined. “I’ll call you back later on from the office.”
“Well, just tell me right quick. I don’t want to have to think about your phone call while I’m acting. I have a lot to shoot today,” I told her.
She said, “Nothing has happened yet. I still say we pass it on to Eric Jerome Dickey. I could have it over to him by tomorrow.”
I decided to stick to my guns. “No, we have to wait first. Maybe Omar is right between projects.”
“Okay,” Susan breathed. I heard movement in the background that didn’t sound like her own. Usually Susan was willing to talk to me no matter what.
I smiled and said, “Tell Michael I said hi.”
She chuckled and gave herself away. “I’ll call you on the book deal as soon as I can.”
I said, “Oh, and I came up with a title for the sequel too.”
“Okay, let’s hear it.”
“For the Love of Money,” I told her.
She paused. “Why would you want to call it that?” she asked me. “That’s like the total opposite of what you’re all about.”
“Exactly. It’s an irony,” I told her. “I mean, I haven’t been busting my ass for free, but if you don’t make any money, then nobody cares.”
Susan paused again. She said, “I see. That sort of makes sense, like an ironic poem.”
“Now you’re thinking,” I responded. “Get those morning cobwebs out of your ears, girl. Or that wet tongue,” I joked.
Susan laughed and said, “I’ll call you later on, Tracy.”
When we hung up, I thought about my idea for a title again. For the Love of Money was perfect; the perfect irony.
Direction Is:
Lights!
Camera!
Action!
Or, in other words:
Ideas!
Focus!
Execution!
Think about it,
and make a feature film
of your OWN life.
Copyright © 1999 by Tracy Ellison Grant
Led Astray,
The Movie, 1999
I had never been in a theatrical play before in my life, let alone a feature film. I didn’t really know what to expect while on the set, but I was prepared to handle anything that they threw at me. First, they gave me the title of associate producer, because I had done so much to push the film forward. They made me earn that title too. Since I had written the script and would be on the set full-time in the lead role, nearly every actor asked me about making changes to their lines and delivery, while explaining this and that. On some of their changes, I agreed with it, but on other changes I had to tell them no and explain why. It was still my vision, and I had to make sure that things never got out of hand. However, the four main “Players” did get to choose their character names, making them feel closer to their roles.
As a director, Poncho Morales was a good choice. He worked with me closely on everything, where he could have been a typical director and taken over. He brought along plenty of people who he had already worked with while directing music videos, and they had a chemistry that was poetry in motion. We had a lot of hardworking people on the set who were all looking for a big break in their professional careers. I had to give credit to Jonathan Abner as the producer and Janet Krantz as the casting director for doing a hell of a job in their choices. And then the magic began, taking the script to the screen.
On day one, the cinematographer told me not to act so much. He said, “We have you in focus, and we need you to be more natural with your movement. There are many things that we’ll do to imply seduction. We’ll shoot your lips, your leg, your neck, a piece of your shoulder. So don’t worry so much about performing for us. We know that you want the audience to get into Cynthia as a character, and it’s our job to make sure that comes across on the big screen. So just be natural for us.”
It made perfect sense to me. I nodded my head and said, “Thanks. So I can conserve some of my energy then?”
“Yeah, but don’t conserve too much energy. We don’t want you to come off as dull.”
I smiled and responded, “Oh, I’m never dull. Trust me.” However, by that time, I didn’t know if it was me talking or Cynthia, because I was fully committed to my character.
Poncho worked more on the feel, the pacing, and the overall look of the film. He and the production designer came up with an ingenious idea to execute drastic environment changes as Cynthia climbed the Hollywood ladder of power. In her own apartment at the beginning of the story, there is no glitz or glamour at all, but at each level, the scenery brightens and looks more Hollywood. With that in mind, the costume and makeup people had to develop stages of Cynthia’s appearance from the alleyway to the ballroom, so to speak, where she looks more attractive and lively at each new level, until she looks fabulous at the end. They got all of that through reading and breaking down my screenplay, where I hadn’t even thought about it. Moviemaking was truly an art, and there was no way in the world that one person alone could make a good film. Everything had to work perfectly, from the script, to the actors, and to the sound.
Speaking of the sound for the film, in a word, it was great! We had a sound editor named Billy Jole, who wanted to hear everything. We had microphones placed near everything that moved, and then he added extra sound which would all raise the human sensory level when watching the film. However, Billy made sure that our voices would always stand out by recording our lines alone in silence first, and then adding everything else later. The soundtrack followed suit with Poncho’s lead of directing the story from dark blue moods to bright yellow radiance. We even got a closing song (called “Led Astray” of course) from super sister Queen Latifah, and Poncho shot the music video with her.
In the process of getting everything done, I had two major issues to handle: one, there was a catch on the use of my name when going through the Screen Actors Guild; and two, how would I deal with the sex scenes in the film, knowing that I was nervous about performing them, whether it was just camera work or not?
I had to be signed into the SAG because Led Astray was a union film, and I was not a unionized actor. That’s when I found out that my name fit too snugly between a Tracy Ellis and a Tracy Ells. I just could not get that thought out of my mind. I wanted a separation from those other two actresses. I guess it was my ego talking, but I wanted to stand out, so I asked Janet, the casting director, to write me in the Actors Guild as Tracy Ellison Grant.
She smiled and said, “I like that. It has a ring to it. Is Grant a family name?”
I smiled back at her. “No. It just popped into my head, and I liked the way it fits.”
“Well, you know that people will think that you’re married with that.”
>
I nodded. “Yeah, I thought about that, but let them assume what they want, and when they ask me about it I’ll tell them.”
I called my parents about the name addition at home, and it was no big deal to them.
My mother said, “Well, if you had gotten married your name would have changed anyway. But what happens now when you do get married? You’ll drop both names?”
I smiled. Marriage wasn’t even a questions of if with my mother, it was when.
I answered, “I’ll decide on that when or if it happens.”
All of my friends liked the name, they just felt that it would create confusion down the road for me. So Tracy Ellison Grant it was, as of April 1999.
However, shooting the sex scenes for Led Astray was a whole different monster for me.
I knew that those sex scenes would cause a stir, but when I wrote them in the script I had no idea that I would be playing the part. I had done enough sleeping around when I was younger, and playing that back out on camera just didn’t settle too well in my stomach. Nevertheless, I had to figure out a way to deal with it and make it happen because I had the lead role.
I had written in two hot sex scenes, one with the screenwriter character, David Bassenger, to let him know how serious Cynthia was about him writing the screenplay to her story, and the other with Player #2, so that she could get more inside information on Player #3.
To execute my plan, I thought about Theresa Randle in the movie Girl 6 again, with her many delusions. I had to delude myself in order to perform my role, and I couldn’t count strictly on my acting. I had to go deeper than that. I had to relate the sex to real feelings and emotions of being used and using others, like I had learned in acting class. I had done some using in my youth myself, but the difference was that I liked the guys who I used (as crazy as it sounds), where on the set of Led Astray, it was only acting. Not that the white actors were bad looking, because they were not, I just had a problem being able to jump right in and make the hot sex scenes happen with them.
In thinking about it, I finally came up with my own ingenious idea, or ingenious delusion. I thought about the day I caught Mercedes in a crack house, where she had been performing tricks for drugs, and I tried to imagine how she could do that to herself. I tried to imagine being high and fiending for cocaine, while using my body to get it. At the same time, I imagined Victor watching me, and wanting to be with me again. I rehearsed those feelings to myself until I could feel it and get it right.
When we shot the first sex scene at Cynthia’s apartment, my delusions worked like a charm. I just did it! I took my clothes off in front of all of the lights and cameras and production people (including Jonathan Abner), and just imagined myself wanting the high and willing to fuck anyone to get it. Once we began the choreographed sex scene, I imagined that everyone watching me was Victor, and that they all wanted to get in on it. Needless to say, it worked, and the scene was dynamite? I left the production team all in awe of me,or in lust of me.
“Splendid job, Tracy,” Jonathan told me with his mouth open.
I said, “I know,” and turned to Poncho. “Let’s set up the other sex scene and get it over with.” We were not ready with the setup for the scene with Player #2 yet, but I wanted to get it done before my delusion wore off. I just wanted to have it over with and out of the way so I could concentrate on the rest of the script without having to worry about the sex any longer.
Poncho just stared at me. I guess he was still in shock. “It may take a few hours before we’re ready,” he answered.
I shook my head, wearing a robe with only my underwear on. “I don’t have a few hours. If we can’t set up the scene at his place immediately, then we do a rewrite where he comes over to Cynthia’s. And in a way it makes sense. She’s sucking them both into her plot, and playing things out on her terms.”
“But then he would know exactly where she lived,” Jonathan commented.
I said, “It doesn’t matter. Her diary has already been sent home to her mother in Detroit. He can’t touch her regardless. And if he really wanted to find out where she lived, that would be easy to do. It wasn’t as if she was hiding from anyone, they just didn’t have any reason to stay in contact with her.”
Poncho nodded and looked at Jonathan.
Jonathan nodded back to him and said, “It sounds like a plan to me. And it saves us more time.”
Poncho said, “Okay. LET’S GET READY FOR THE SECOND SEX SCENE! THERE’S BEEN A CHANGE OF PLANS! WE’RE SHOOTING IT AT CYNTHIA’S PLACE NOW!” he informed everyone.
The production assistants flew into action.
“AND GET HER SOME NEW SHEETS!” I added. “BLACK SATIN!” I looked at Jonathan and Poncho and smiled. “We can even shoot a scene where she’s ironing the wrinkles out of the sheets and throwing the plastic wrappings and price tags away. After all, William Hicks”—the chosen name for Player #2—“is worth much more money than David Bassenger. She has to respect him that way. So let’s jazz up her apartment a little bit. She’s gaining more confidence in her plot now.”
They both smiled and agreed with me again.
“Are you sure this is your first feature film?” Poncho joked with me. “You seem like a veteran actor to me.”
Jonathan said, “She wants my job, that’s what she wants.”
I shook my head and grinned. “I just like things getting done, and I’m not the type to sit around and complain without coming up with any solutions.”
“You got that right,” Poncho said.
“Tell me about it,” Jonathan added. I could just imagine both of them wondering which one of them would get to sleep with me before the shooting of the film was all over. Jonathan made his move first, while we began to set up for the second sex scene.
“When will we get to go out for that lunch date?” He was smiling when he asked me, as if it were all fun and games, but I knew that he was serious. White guys didn’t fuck around with the head games. They came straight at you. Or maybe it was just the Hollywood types, because I didn’t really know too many white guys. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was not exactly a cross-racial town. We usually stayed with our own tribes in Philly. So blame it on my inner-city culture for having such a hard time with crossing over.
I grinned at Jonathan and told him, “We have a movie to make, sweetheart. Don’t get it twisted.”
“Well, don’t call me sweetheart then,” he joked back. I could tell that he was getting irritated with me. Poor Jonathan. He just didn’t know who the hell he was dealing with. He had no idea how many guys I had turned down in the past fifteen years of my sex life. I could have fucked every man involved with the production of my movie, whether they were happily married or not. That was the pure power of the booty, in particular, my booty. However, I wasn’t that kind of a sex fiend anymore, and even in my youth, I was very selective about who I chose to sleep with. Always!
We shot the second sex scene in less than a couple of hours, and moved right along ahead of schedule, mainly because of the well-prepared execution on Poncho’s part as the director. He was proving that he was worth every bit of his five hundred thousand, and some. I was quite sure that he would get his next big deal too, and so would I.
When we prepared the dailies for the sex scenes, I couldn’t watch them. That was some other woman up on the screen, not me. Everyone else couldn’t take their eyes away from it. That’s when I knew that I would have hell to pay when Led Astray hit the theaters. However, just like with my book, Flyy Girl, I would have to live with it. I even wrote a short poem about it called “Human Hypocrisy”: How can I write / what I write / how I write it / and then do / what I do / how I do it?
We all do things that are contradictory to what we think, write, or say in some form or another. That’s just a part of living life as imperfect humans.
$ $ $
We wrapped the shooting of Led Astray in five weeks, before the six weeks that we had planned, and we were well within our eight-million-dollar budget be
fore the editing process began. It was easy to edit Poncho’s work because he shot everything in long natural scenes. It was like fading out a song that had a long fade versus one with a short fade. Longer fades gave you much more material to work with.
For our opening credit scene, we came up with several glamour shots of Hollywood star nights, with fancy outfits, limousines, and photos flashing everywhere, to give the dizzying illusion that sucks us all into moviemaking in the first place; this is where the stars are made. It reminded me of my poems “Led Astray” and “Recognition.”
When we had our wrap party, executive producer Danny Greene showed up with his wife. She could tell that everyone had the hots for me, and they were mostly white men. My few friends from Black Hollywood showed up to lend their support as well. After all, I was still black. Poncho invited some of his Latin friends to the mix, so it turned out to be a pretty colorful and cultural crowd there, all dressed to impress.
Richard Mack showed up with his girlfriend, Kendra was there with her man Louis, Yolanda came by herself (working the crowds as usual), and Tim Waterman showed up with a tall blonde and began to tell everyone how he had given me my start as a writer three years ago. However, my girl Susan shocked me by showing up with a confident, good-looking, dark-haired man on her arm. He was perfect for her, standing around five foot nine, right below me and my two-inch heels.
“Tracy, this is Michael; and, Michael, this is my good friend, and one of the most talented new stars in Hollywood, Tracy Ellison Grant.”
I smiled and shook his hand.
He said, “I heard a lot about you.”
“Good things?”
Susan playfully nudged him in the ribs. “Why of course,” he answered. I grinned and let them fade into the crowd to mingle. I figured I’d pull Susan’s strings about it later.
