“Costner has the best food,” Dorian said, stuffing donuts into a plastic bag, which he then shoved into his backpack. “I can’t wait for dinner. The last time I worked a Costner picture, we had filet mignon, lobster tails, and a pasta bar.”
“Yeah, but you still only took home around a hundred dollars. A hundred and fifty max, right?” Isabel said bitterly. “Man may be able to live on filet mignon alone, but his landlord sure as hell can’t. And these days, it takes two salaries to make ends meet. Dominick can never understand why I work in an office all day and then do this all night,” she added. “He says we never talk. That I never see him. You know, he’s right? He asked me, when I got home at dawn last week after doing a day job and a night shoot back-to-back, and was getting an hour of sleep before dragging my ass back in to the law office at nine A.M., why the hell I bothered to get married since I was never home.” She threw up her hands. “He’s right! This is no way for a grown-up to live.”
I sighed. “Well, a woman in her mid-thirties still rooming with her grandmother and doing the same thing you are for a living isn’t exactly doing what grown-ups do, either. Doesn’t there come a time when you have to cut the ties?”
“Well, I’m not sure what you’re considering a perennial adolescence,” Dorian said. “Living with your grandmother or striving to become a full-time working actress. Or both. The only thing I can add to this discussion is, one of these days you’ll want to get married, right?”
I nodded. “Obviously, I’d change my living situation then.”
“What if you got a boyfriend?” Izzy asked.
“Oh, frabjous day, callou, callay!” I cheered, quoting Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky. I’ve had boyfriends since I’ve lived with Gram, but never had them stay overnight unless she was out of town visiting friends. I would stay at the guy’s house, which wasn’t always the greatest situation, either, since they sometimes had roommates. But it certainly does cramp one’s style.
“I want to hear all about this guy at work,” Izzy prompted.
I began to tell them about Eric Witherspoon. We’d had three dates by now: the Yankees game, a really awful Jim Carrey movie, and dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Eric’s Park Slope neighborhood, after which I became violently ill and spent the rest of the evening in the bathroom of Eric’s attractive two-bedroom garden apartment. It was the night I’d sort of anticipated taking our relationship to that Big Next Step, but all I could do was try to stay alive. Making love became the farthest thing from my mind.
“Was he a gentleman about it?” Dorian asked.
Before I could reply, one of the production assistants, walkie-talkie in hand, descended the steps into the church basement and motioned for us to follow her.
“I hope we’re not going to be working through the dinner break,” Dorian muttered.
The PA advised us to bring our personal belongings; in fact we could use them in the scene, as we were meant to portray passersby. While I’m glad for the work, and proud to be a card-carrying member of the Screen Actors Guild, I’ve always thought it was pretty hysterical that production companies had to hire professional actors to walk up and down the street dozens of times in succession, pretending to be average New Yorkers. Honestly, it is a bit silly. It is presumed that those without professional credentials cannot be relied upon to repeat the same “take” multiple times, or not to look into the camera, make googly faces, or wave “Hi, Mom.” I’ve got two initials in response to that, but…I’m reluctant to state them in print, however, lest the union brass swoop down and snatch my hard-won SAG card from my wallet.
Upstairs on the sidewalk, Dorian was separated from us and sent to one end of the block. On the word “action,” he was to pretend to be a harried businessman on the way down the street, heading toward, then past, Izzy and me. While the world, and Mr. Costner, whirled by, she and I were asked to act like pals who had serendipitously run into each other, stopping to chat in front of the window of Tribal Wonders, the exotic Third World tchotchke shop near where we’d been positioned.
Izzy and I got our marching orders from a second assistant director. I was stationed about ten feet from the shop and Izzy was placed about the same distance from the other end of the storefront. On “action,” we were to head toward each other, meet, and begin an animated conversation in front of the shop. Once Dorian got a couple of steps past us, we girls started to walk together in the direction Dorian had come from, continuing our progress until we heard the director yell “cut.”
Not rocket science. But if you have to do it numerous times because, for whatever reason, the take was no good, and you spend hours standing on your feet, it can be pretty grueling and physically exhausting. We’d sat in the holding area for close to six hours. While in real life it was past midnight, in movieland it was supposed to be early evening; and no matter where else we’d spent the rest of our day and how tired we were simply from hanging around an uncomfortable rec room for hours, once we heard “action,” it was time to be peppy.
Thank God it wasn’t raining or snowing or 105 degrees, like it was the day I did an Andy Garcia movie, sitting on the sun-drenched steps of the Metropolitan Museum.
“And—action!” we heard.
It was as good a time as any to continue our conversation about Eric Witherspoon. “Dorian’s going to be pissed that he wasn’t here to get the answer to his question,” Izzy said. “So was Eric a gentleman about you getting sick all over his bathroom?”
“Yes, he was, and I wasn’t ‘sick all over his bathroom.’ I just…sort of…couldn’t leave the room, that’s all. Without running right back in there. I was phenomenally embarrassed.”
Dorian passed us, walking full-tilt, with his game face on. Izzy and I started to move down the block. “I’ve got to ask the $64,000 question now, rather than save it up for later,” she said.
“And—cut!”
We stopped walking immediately.
“Back to one, please,” we heard over a megaphone. The direction was echoed by the half dozen production assistants, telling us to return to our starting positions and prepare for another take. I gave Izzy a little goodbye wave and walked back to my place. We all waited for a few minutes.
“Action!”
We met again and Izzy tugged on the sleeve of my spring coat. “So, do you love him?”
“It’s too soon to tell,” I admitted. “I’m very—”
“Cut!”
“We didn’t get very far that time,” I commented.
“Background, back to one,” the director called.
We’d barely moved. Dorian had only gotten a few feet from his starting position. “I’m very fond of him, Izzy,” I called out to her as we returned to our first mark. “I have a really good time with him. Do I love him? No, not yet. Am I in love with him? I could be, if things continue the way they’re going. I’ve almost grown used to his sense of humor—which is pretty sophomoric, I’m afraid. I’ve seen him be nice to old ladies, waiters, and house pets, and he’s cute. I definitely enjoyed making out with him on our second date.” Good thing the filmmakers had shut down the sidewalk or I might have received some really strange looks from passersby.
“Was that in the Jim Carrey movie, or afterwards?” Izzy shouted back.
“In. I have to confess, it was unwatchable.”
“So why did you go? Am I being too nosy, here?”
“Action!” We began a fourth take.
“Well, fancy meeting you here,” Izzy joked as we reached the storefront.
“No. Eric likes Jim Carrey.” I smiled a cat-that-swallowed-the-canary grin. “So he’s not perfect. But that night, he liked me better.”
Izzy pretended to be fascinated by an object in the Tribal Wonders window. “Now you decide to start acting?” I teased.
She ignored me. “What’s your favorite thing about him? Eric, not Jim Carrey.”
I figured I’d better “act,” too, so I pointed and nodded at an intriguing mask with cornhusks for hair. “
My favorite thing? His integrity, I think. His loyalty. He doesn’t have the obnoxious cutthroat personality of his colleagues—or I wouldn’t be with him—yet he’s a real company man. Which could be a really annoying thing, but the fact that he doesn’t like to hear a bad word said about Newter & Spade, that he really enjoys his job instead of making cynical wisecracks about it, like so many people do—I like that about him. I guess his refusal to say anything negative about a place that too often treats its employees like shit kind of reminds me of the way Gram is about Grandpa Danny. It feels like behavioral comfort food to me.”
Dorian passed us, striding purposefully. “What’s the worst thing about him?” she asked.
“He calls me ‘muppet.’”
“Muppet?”
“And—cut! Background back to one. Right away, please.”
We stopped on a dime and turned to head back to our places. “Yup, muppet. And I’m afraid to ask him why. Do I look like Kermit or something?”
Izzy shook her head. “Not a bit.” She broke into a mischievous grin. “Miss Piggy, maybe.”
I gave her a playful shot in the arm.
“Action!” We were on take five.
The night wore on. Dorian was right; we did eat like royalty. The ambience in the church basement wasn’t exactly Le Cirque, but the crafts service staff provided us with four-star cuisine: all we could eat of salmon filet with a lemon beurre blanc topped with capers, beef tenderloin with sliced mushrooms in Madeira-laced gravy, the fresh pasta bar with the four different sauces that Dorian had remembered from his past experience on a Costner film, and the usual available-all-day table laden with perennial breakfast items: bagels, cereals, muffins, Pop Tarts, and Krispy Kremes, as well as an array of salty items: pretzels, potato chips, Fritos…and, of course, enormous urns of hot coffee.
After chowing down, we returned to the street to continue filming. Just after three A.M. the director determined that he’d gotten the take he wanted for the shot Izzy, Dorian, and I had been working on for the past three hours.
Outdoor shoots depend on light and weather most of all. When things drag on during a day shoot, you end up burning daylight and if you continue to work into dusk, your shots won’t match. In our case, in a couple more hours we’d be approaching dawn and run into the same type of problem. The production team set up for a new scene, the extras were shuffled around, and some of them were permitted to sign out and go home if they weren’t needed for the final shot of the night. Izzy was one of them. Dorian and I gave her a hug and headed back to work. I spent the next two and a half hours walking back and forth across the same intersection. Dorian was asked to look like he was waiting impatiently for a bus. I have no idea whether there was supposed to be any continuity between the first scene we worked on and this one. The focus wasn’t on us, anyway. Background is really a very apt word for what we were doing. Human set dressing. And if those shots survived the editing room, in the cinema you’d still need to keep your eyes peeled in order to catch our “performances.”
After several takes, the director “checked the gate,” liked what he saw on the monitor, and called it a night. We wrapped at 5:47 A.M. My lower back felt sore and my legs felt like Jell-O. There had been no place to sit, or even perch between takes, during all the time we were outside.
“And people think this is glamorous,” Dorian said with a bitter chuckle as we piled into a production company van to take us uptown. The van was only permitted to stop at Twenty-third, Thirty-fourth, and Forty-second Streets. Being dropped off at the Port Authority in the pre-dawn hours was not especially safe, but catching a cab home from there would be a few dollars cheaper than hailing one from our Greenwich Village shoot location.
At Twenty-third Street, I leaned over to give Dorian a hug before he exited the van and noticed that his backpack was stuffed to capacity. His meals for the rest of the week, I presumed.
When the van arrived at Forty-second Street, I climbed out, practically stumbling from exhaustion, and immediately hailed a taxi. Manhattan had already begun to yawn and stretch. The sky had gotten considerably lighter. Garbage trucks were beginning their noisy, quotidian rounds, the rude clanking of canisters and Dumpsters performing the function of an urban rooster. Out of sheer curiosity, I checked my watch. I shook my head, chuckling to myself. I’d been awake for the past twenty-three hours, working my temp job and the Costner film back-to-back. I figured that after a nice hot shower, I could crawl into bed and get about forty-four minutes of sleep before I needed to get ready to head back to Newter & Spade. I could get a head start on that nap if I closed my eyes in the cab.
I leaned back against the seat, feeling the springs beneath my butt bounce and jog as we sped up an empty Eighth Avenue. Yeah, I thought, musing on Dorian’s most recent observation. Hi-ho, the glamorous life.
Chapter 6
“Jesus, muppet, you look terrible,” Eric said sympathetically. He’d made a mid-afternoon visit to the document-coding room to review the hard copy of some documents that looked like “smoking guns,” judging from the digested computer entries. My co-workers had developed the habit of discreetly pretending to ignore Eric’s demonstrations of familiarity with me.
“I’ll cheer you up. Who’s jolly and goes ‘ho, ho, ho?’” he asked. He’d developed the habit of regaling us with jokes whenever he came down to see us.
“Okay, who?” Natalie replied, refusing to venture a guess.
“Santa Claus in a bordello!” Eric grinned impishly.
“You know, you ain’t no Eddie Murphy,” Marlena said pointedly, lapsing into the street attitude she deliberately adopted when she felt feisty. “You ain’t even Henny Young-man. And just because you’ve got a captive audience, it don’t mean you got to torture us, too.”
“You do have the sense of humor of an eleven-year-old,” I added sleepily. I could have used a couple of toothpicks to keep my eyes propped open.
Eric glanced at me and shook his head. “And you do look like shit. I’ll be right back,” he said.
After a couple of minutes’ absence, he returned with a Styrofoam cup of steaming tea and nearly knocked over Ramona, who had appeared in our doorway just a moment before.
“Hey, what brings you down here?” she asked, giving him a megawatt smile. Her eyes sparkled. “Slumming?”
“Just needed to check out a couple of things,” he replied noncommittally, then went over to Natalie to inquire about the memos he wanted to review. Natalie shuffled through her box of documents and retrieved the papers in question. Eric thanked her. But he didn’t leave the room. When Ramona continued to lurk in the doorway, Eric stopped at Roger’s desk to ask him how his son was holding up during the divorce. It became apparent that whatever power trip was going on between Ramona and Eric, it was a war of attrition.
Eric blinked first. He’d had his back to me, leaning against my desk while I worked. I noticed that he had surreptitiously placed the cup of tea on my desktop, right near my left hand.
“I’ll be back in my office if anyone needs to get in touch with me,” Eric said. Then, without glancing in my direction, he sidled past Ramona. She turned to watch him leave, looked at her fleet of temps, then returned her focus to Eric, who must have been halfway down the hall by then. “You forgot your tea,” she called after him, grabbing the Styrofoam cup. When a half ounce or so spilled out, she jumped back to avoid splattering her skirt, and nearly dropped the cup and its entire contents onto the carpet. “Jesus, this is hot!” she exclaimed, seeming as surprised as the infamous McDonald’s coffee plaintiff.
Eric returned to the doorway. “Thanks.” He carefully took the cup from her hands and hastily departed. With no further reason to remain, Ramona pursed her lips sourly and bid us a curt goodbye.
Two minutes later, maybe less, Eric walked back into the coding room and wordlessly replaced the Styrofoam cup of tea where he had deliberately left it. It was full again, the spillage replaced.
Marlena adjusted her swivel chair to face me a
nd leaned forward with a conspiratorial grin. “Someone’s looking out for you,” she said in a stage whisper. “I think it’s time you introduced lawyer-boy to your grandmother.”
I hadn’t taken Marlena’s advice when she offered it, but waited a few more weeks, as spring turned to early summer, to be sure that what was going on between Eric and me was a real relationship. Sure, Gram knew I’d been staying at his place in Park Slope a couple of nights a week and most weekends, but she’d grown accustomed to that behavior whenever I got involved with a guy, just as long as I let her know where I was headed after work. She didn’t want to think I’d gotten pushed in front of the subway and she’d have to learn about it on the ten o’clock news. Having been through her devastating, inevitable I-told-you-so’s whenever I had waxed rhapsodic about a man who was most definitely, absolutely, positively The One, only to have him dump me three days later, I’d promised myself I wouldn’t let it happen again. Invariably, Gram felt that I never found men who were worthy of me. Her own experience with men was in itself a cautionary tale.
Gram never considered any other offers after Grandpa Danny abandoned her. She staunchly maintained that was because he was the irreplaceable love of her life. I, on the other hand, remain hopeful that permanency is just around the corner, but I’m still not immune to the I-told-you-so’s. Therefore, I’d promised myself that the next time I would introduce Gram to my beau, she’d be meeting a keeper.
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