by Davis Bunn
Kip Denderhoff laughed out loud.
“Whatever,” Britt sighed. “Look, since most of you are here already, how about if we just have the rest come up? I’ve got something that needs saying.”
“You’re the boss,” JayJay said.
The director pointed at his AD and then the phone.
JayJay asked, “Would you like some coffee?”
“Black.”
JayJay moved to the trolley at the back. “How about you?”
“You’re asking me?” Denderhoff looked shocked. “White, one Sweet ’n Low.”
By the time JayJay made the coffees, other people had started straggling in. Britt asked one of the newcomers, “How come you weren’t up here for this meeting?”
The chief lighting guy shrugged. “Didn’t feel like it.”
“Feel like what?”
“Praying, was what she told me.”
“She who, Kelly?”
Claire said quietly, “That’s all it was, Britt.”
Britt took a contemplative sip. “Okay, enough. I’ve got some good news.” He set his cup to one side. “The special has been canceled.”
The room expelled a single unified sigh. Claire, their unappointed spokesperson, asked, “This is good?”
“It is when you hear the alternative,” Britt replied. “We’re doing a feature.”
Peter felt an invisible hand reach across the distance separating him from the director. And grip his throat. And squeeze.
Claire was the only one able to answer. “So tell us the good news.”
“Oh, like you get these offers every day?”
“Come on, Britt. A lot of these guys are new enough to swallow this whole. But we’ve been around, you and me. This just doesn’t happen and you know it.”
“It has this time.”
“What’s the budget?”
“That is confidential. Big enough to give you a trailer and a limo. And a raise.”
She fished a cigarette from her pack and lit up. She said with the first smoke, “So I’m being bribed not to ask these questions, right?”
“No. You’re being hired to do your job.”
“I’m a professional, Britt. A professional needs to know what is really happening. We don’t even have a finished script yet.”
“Which gives us an advantage in making the switch. Come on, Claire. Any number of successful films started shooting without a completed script.” Britt shut off her next point by saying, “You want to walk, now’s the time.”
“These are valid questions.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Britt turned to JayJay. “You are now officially the star of a feature. Your contract has to be renegotiated. Contracts has contacted the kid you used for your initial agreement, unless of course you’d prefer to go with a more seasoned pro.”
“Looked to me like Ahn handled you folks pretty good.”
Britt almost smiled. “No argument there. You’re also entitled to star treatment. Kelly, your situation has just been upgraded as well. I’ve spoken to your agent personally.” Britt addressed the room at large. “Same goes for everyone else. Notify your agents. As of today, you’re moving to feature scale.”
JayJay turned and gave Peter a look the writer could not fathom. “Just exactly what does that mean, ‘star treatment’?”
“I’m not going to tell you the sky’s the limit. You’re new to the game and your drawing power is untested. But basically if you have a request within reason, we’ll oblige. We’re trying to locate better accommodations in the area for the film’s principals. Maybe a dude ranch.”
“Where we sleep is not the issue,” Claire said.
“I’d rather stay where we are now,” Kelly agreed. “With the rest of the crew.”
Britt asked, “Why is that?”
“The prayer group, for one thing. We can’t make it work if we’re all spread out from here to tomorrow.”
Britt and his AD exchanged another look. “Anything else?”
JayJay leaned forward. “So now I’m a star and I get to make demands. A limo and all that stuff.”
“Didn’t I just tell you that?”
“Okay. Here’s what I want.” JayJay pointed at Peter. “I want that feller over there to be moved into my suite. And I want the limo to head back down and pick up Peter’s wife.”
“This is a joke, right?”
“No joke. And I’m not done. I want somebody to find the best baby doctor they got in these parts. I want, what’s your lady’s name again, Peter?”
“Cynthia.”
“I want Cynthia to know she’s gonna come up here and get better treatment for her and them babies than she’d be having back home.”
The first thing Britt asked Peter when they were alone was, “Did you put JayJay up to this?”
“Are you kidding? I didn’t know a thing until you walked in that door.”
It was just the four of them. Derek, Peter, Kip, Britt. The behind-the-camera chief and his deputies. Britt looked like he had not slept at all the previous night. He said to Kip, “Call downstairs for more coffee. Order us some breakfast. Tell them to hurry.”
Kip leaped to obey. He had always been silent and attentive in the presence of bosses and front-office types. It was one of the reasons they put up with his attitude to the hired help. But something was different. Not just with the AD. With both of them. Britt had a quiet dictatorial approach around the set. He never raised his voice. He never worried. He rarely showed emotion of any kind. But today the two of them were frayed. Exhausted. Genuinely concerned.
Kip returned to his seat. “Ten minutes.”
“Fine.” They were seated at a circular table set in the corner opposite the windows. Britt leaned his elbows on the table and rubbed his forehead. “The truth, guys. What was going on down there?”
“What JayJay told you,” Peter replied.
Derek added, “We got together last night. Kelly came by my room and asked if we wanted to meet up for a time of prayer. They must’ve gone by everybody’s room—”
“They who?”
Peter replied, “Kelly and JayJay. He was the one that invited me.”
“We decided to do it again this morning,” Derek continued. “And it looks like we’re going to try and keep it up.”
Britt looked from one to the other. “We’re trying to handle this the best we can. There are bound to be some hitches along the way, switching from TV to feature in the middle of a location shoot.”
“This was not union.” Peter gave emphasis to each word.
When the silence held, Derek said quietly, “You should include them in this conversation, Britt.”
Britt huffed a laugh to the table. “What, you’re after a little more mayhem?”
“Derek’s right,” Peter said. “These guys are not after giving you trouble.”
Britt said nothing. Just sat and stared at the wood’s grain.
Peter took a long breath, and added, “Three of my favorite films started location work without finished shooting scripts and ended up being successes. Casablanca, Gladiator, and The Big Chill. In all three cases the principal actors were included in story discussions.”
Britt did not raise his head. “You’re giving up control of your script?”
“No, Britt. No more than you’d stop being our director.”
“You heard what JayJay’s been saying,” Derek added. “You’re the boss. I think he means it.”
“Me too,” Peter agreed. “And if he leads, the others will follow.”
Britt said to the table, “Kip. See if they’re still in his suite.”
When his AD moved to the phone, Britt muttered, “This is a serious mistake.”
“I don’t think so,” Peter said.
When the three principal actors were assembled, Britt continued to address the tabletop. “Everything you were asking I’ve asked myself. About a hundred thousand times.”
Claire sighed but did not speak. She and Kelly occupie
d the remaining two chairs. JayJay had waved the others back into their seats and positioned himself against the side wall.
“No, I can’t explain what’s happening,” Britt went on. “No, I can’t ever recall a television company going to feature with a series that’s in decline. Or switching from a two-hour special to feature. Or starting a feature with no shooting script. Or going in with an untested star, a brand-new cinematographer, and a writer who’s never worked on the big screen.”
Claire said, “He wants us to fail. Allerby.”
Britt said nothing.
She looked at the AD. “You’re the one with connections to the Hollywood rumor mill. You hear everything almost before it’s said.”
Kip just looked at his boss.
Britt pushed himself away from the table. “Well?”
“Nothing. I’ve heard zip. Which is so totally strange I can’t begin to tell you.”
Britt hesitated, then replied, “Our new budget is twelve million dollars.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“No,” Britt said quietly. “I agree.”
Kelly asked, “What’s wrong with the numbers?”
“An hour of television costs out at one to two mil. Three mil tops, for the hottest miniseries.” Claire kept her gaze upon the director. “Martin might’ve wanted to use a feature to announce in a big way that the series is back. But not with this budget. It’s an in-betweener, isn’t that what it’s called these days?”
“Among other things.”
“Too big to be costed out in direct-to-DVD sales and a TV gig. And too small to make it out of the art-house theaters.”
“A Heartland story won’t play there anyway,” Britt agreed.
Kelly asked, “Why would the head of a studio want a project to fail?”
Britt said nothing.
The silence held until a knock on the door signaled the arrival of breakfast. Britt refused the waiter’s offer to serve them. He accepted the plate of food from Kip, looked at it, then shoved it to one side. “I don’t have any answers, Claire. Can you live with that?”
“You’re the director, Britt. Can you?”
“Yes. I can.” For the first time since they had entered Britt’s suite, he looked squarely at the actress. “You want to know why? Because I’ve waited all my life for the chance to work on a screen project. It’s why I went into television. It was my dream. I wanted to direct features. At one point I had a chance. But I was under contract at the time to ABC. By the time my series ended, the studio had hired another director. I never got another offer. Until now.”
He looked around the room. “So yeah, I think you’re probably right. Martin probably has a hidden agenda. But at the same time, he’s handed me a chance to work on a feature project. Is it how I’d like to see it play out? No. Would I like to have a more seasoned team and a finished script? Of course I would.”
He studied each face in turn. His eyes were rimmed by plum-colored circles. But his gaze was steady. “But will I go with what I’ve got? Absolutely. So what I want to know is, are you with me?”
When he received the expected chorus of assent, he motioned to Kip, who drew out a notebook and pen. “Okay, let’s go through what we’ve got. Derek, you’re first. How much can we keep?”
“The sets have to be tightened. Makeup will have to redo everything. Shoot for the big screen and a lot of what gets lost on TV will show. But from the standpoint of what’s already on tape, I think we can keep pretty much everything.” When Britt gave him a skeptical look, Derek continued, “I’ve been working on high-gamma resolution since JayJay’s first test. I figured the hi-rez would give me more room to play if I got the colors or the lighting wrong. And I figured Martin was going to watch the dailies on the big screen.”
“You figured right. How many more electricians and lighting geeks?”
Derek hesitated long enough for Claire to say, “Go on, tell him.”
Britt tightened instantly. “What, you’re already working behind my back?”
“It ain’t anything like that,” JayJay replied. “Derek brought a problem to the prayer group. I don’t understand it any more now than before, but that don’t mean we can’t ask for help.”
The director scoped the table. “That was it really, a prayer group?”
“Yes, Britt.” Claire said it again, more softly this time. “Derek, you really need to tell him.”
Derek took a very hard breath. “I don’t want this to sound like I’m criticizing. Especially now.”
Britt crossed his arms. Still very tight. “Is that so.”
“We’re lighting these scenes all wrong.”
The director pretended a laugh. “How on earth could I possibly consider that a criticism?”
Derek glanced at JayJay, then Peter. Both of them just gave him the look. The one that said they were with him. He went on, “We’re lighting this for film. Film needs the back light, the coloration, the tighter illumination. But digital is different. It takes the film lighting and makes it into something that looks sandpapered. The colors are painted, unnatural, rough. The edges become razor-sharp.”
He gave Britt a fearful glance, who said, “You’re not fired yet. Go on.”
His voice trembled, but he persisted. “I say, let’s hold to digital. It’d cost us a ton to bring in the new film equipment and switch over. Holding to digital cuts the per-frame cost by a factor of fifteen. Ditch all the lights except for one main and two spots for the close-ups. But keep the electricians. I know them and they trust me. Plus the digital cameras have maybe eight times the cable hookups as film. These guys will handle the wires and the reflectors. I’ll need seven reflectors at a minimum, maybe as many as twelve for each outdoor shot.”
Britt gave him stone. “You’ve thought this through.”
“A lot.” He swallowed audibly. “Can I say one thing more?”
“You’re on a roll. Why stop now?”
“With the money we save from the lighting, let me have a second cameraman. And an assistant for each of us. These digital cameras are a monster to shift. And a steadicam for as long as I want.”
Even Peter knew the request for unlimited steadicam was a serious breach. Steadicams were rented by the day. They came with their own operator. Steadicams were carried on a gyro-based unit strapped to the operators’ bodies. Batteries were held in a canvas belt. The cameras moved on a hydraulic lift that worked with the gyros to smooth out all motion. Even walking over rough terrain was rendered smooth and seamless. The problem with steadicams was weight. A steadicam and gyro frame and battery pack weighed a hundred and twenty pounds. The cameraman was required to move at a slight crouch to keep his eye on the aperture.
A steadicam cameraman was always young and extremely fit. Even so, steadicam operators usually blew out their spines by age thirty-five. Steadicam operators were the only members of film crews who were never covered by studio insurance. Which was why they were always outsiders hired on a daily rate. A steadicam’s contract was three hundred pages long, and protected the studio from everything up to and including typhoons. It was not just the cost of steadicam equipment that lifted their per diem into the stratosphere.
But all Britt said was, “I’ll think about it.”
Derek was still expelling his captured breath as Britt turned to Peter and said, “How do we stand on story?”
Peter knew it was coming. And still felt his gut freeze at the simple question. But he had Derek’s courage to stand by. So he spoke more calmly than he felt. “I’ve never written for a feature. Well, I have. I mean, I’ve done a couple of spec scripts. They got shopped around and basically shelved. So I can give you what I think might work. But I’m ready to have you tell me that you want something different.”
“Honesty. An interesting approach. Go on.”
“Okay.” He switched his gaze to Kelly and JayJay, basically because he found more encouragement there. “The first writer on the show, Ben Picksley, set the rules that I still
follow. One moral and one action per show. We had planned to follow the same for the two-hour special. Commercials would have cut it down to eighty-nine minutes. Basically what we’re talking about is adding only seven minutes more to the film time. But time is not the issue. A ninety-minute special would have a series of mini-climaxes timed around the commercial breaks, leading up to the final bang. A film runs to a more classical three-act structure.”
He turned back to Britt. “I’d say there are two problems. But neither of them have to do with the action.”
“The wildfire.”
“Right. That still works. We could just expand it from threatening the ranch to the town.”
Britt mulled that over. Then, “Two problems.”
It was Peter’s turn to swallow. Hollywood Boulevard was littered with failed writers who proposed concepts their directors loathed. “Ben’s rule for the moral was that it could never hold more weight than a sick puppy. Cute, sentimental, and reducible to one line of dialogue.”
Claire smiled. “I remember him saying that.”
“Right. So I want to heighten the moral issue into something that generates a sense of audience identity. Something that defines this film. Something so big, so important, it holds equal weight to the action. Something that our core audience will recognize as being a genuine part of their world.”
Britt’s gaze had hardened. “You’re talking about restructuring the core concept behind the series.”
“That’s right.” His voice sounded strangled to his own ears. “I am.”
“You’ve obviously been giving this some thought. Why wait until now to bring it up?”
“Because Neil Townsend could never have carried what I’m suggesting. He would have mouthed the words and made the whole concept a lie.”
Britt nodded slowly. “Okay. That’s problem one.”
“The other is the story’s hook.”
“You and I have discussed this.”
“Right. I think I’ve found what I’ve been looking for.”
Britt rolled his finger. Action. As in, keep shooting.
Peter continued, “JayJay Parsons could be revealed as a lodestar. A moral compass. Not for the ranch. For the world. He stands up for what is right. This isn’t about JayJay against the fire or the twister or the runaway cattle. This is JayJay against today’s moral drift.”
