Milo jumps out of a van that’s brought him over from Peach Street, where they’ve parked his and Lydia’s trailers. His fake tattoos poke out from the sleeve of a white T-shirt, and his hair is perfectly mussed. I feel an instant rush of attraction, but it’s tempered by a sense of unease. I have no idea where we stand, but the fact that this is the first time I’ve seen him since Lydia burst onto the scene (literally) feels like an answer. When he finally notices me behind a camera, he smiles, but it’s halting and doesn’t quite reach his eyes. I have to look away before my face betrays all the confusion and misery I’m feeling.
Ruth tells me to stay by the cart and make sure the extras drop their props between shots, which means I have a front-row seat to the filming, and I quickly realize why it’s going to take so long to get such a short scene. First they have to film it from several angles, including close-ups of both Lydia and Milo. They put a camera inside the bank to get the shot through the window. They spend a couple shots moving extras around, pausing for the extra who sneezed, and the one who got a little too animated about the fake conversation she was meant to be having.
When the camera crew move the equipment to get Lydia’s close-up, Benny has the extras step off to the side. Most of them won’t get seen in the tight shot, but they need to be close by in case they’re needed as blurs in the deep background. They gather next to the prop cart, where I remind them to drop their stuff. Then they turn to watch the train wreck.
Because the thing that makes this whole experience take the longest is the fact that Lydia can’t seem to remember her lines. Not a single solitary one.
She’s supposed to be saying, “I want to help you bust out of this no-good, nothing, nowhere town.”
But she can’t seem to get past the first half of it before stumbling over the alliteration. By the sixth mistake I have to stop myself from shouting the line myself. The extras are sweating, but they can’t fan themselves for fear of making noise that might get picked up by the boom mike. The crew, also roasting, are starting to look annoyed bordering on murderous. I can see a rustle of unease coming from video village, the tent where all the bigwigs are sitting, shielded from the sun, watching the filming on little monitors. When Lydia flubs the line again, I see Rob rip off the headphones that are allowing him to hear the dialogue.
Rob mutters something, and then Kathleen, our script supervisor, comes out from the little tent. She’s got a black binder tucked under her arm, which I assume has the script inside. From my cheat sheet, I know that a script supervisor is the one who makes sure the actors don’t go too far astray from what’s written in the script, and if they do, it doesn’t take the story in the wrong direction. When she exits the tent, it’s never with good news.
“Lydia, I really need you to land this line hard,” she says, poking at a spot in the middle of her binder. “It sets up the following two scenes, and if it’s too soft, we lose that narrative thread.” It’s the nicest way Kathleen could probably ask her to say the damn line, and I’m impressed with her diplomacy.
Lydia’s cheeks redden, because even though Kathleen is being nice, Lydia knows what she really means, as does everyone else on set. But embarrassment doesn’t seem to be an emotion that Lydia Kane is comfortable with, so she quickly adjusts to one that’s more familiar: anger. She calls Rob out of the tent, where he’s working hard to keep his face impassive.
“Can you ask those extras to like, turn around or something?” she says, her voice snapping like a basket of vipers. “They’re staring at me, and I can’t concentrate.”
Rob blinks hard and slow at her, but otherwise his face remains unreadable. He takes a breath, cracks his neck, then turns. “Can we get all the extras to please move over that way?” He gestures with the rolled-up pages in his hand, shooing the extras away like stray pigeons. “And, um, also face that way?”
He drops his sunglasses back down on his face to hide the Oh my God, am I really doing this? expression that I’m sure is written all over it. All around me, I see crew members stomping around set moving lights and cables, dragging camera parts and adjusting props, and they’re all carefully staring at the ground, trying desperately not to roll their eyes. Benny appears quickly to make sure all the extras are following instructions. He catches my eye and shoots me a quick eye roll. The solidarity of Lydia Kane being the worst is comforting. I return the eye roll, combining it with an exasperated head shake.
I let myself consider it a victory. Milo is seeing all this. He can’t like it, surely. He’s going to have a hard time forgiving her cheating if she’s stomping around acting like an A-list diva. At least, that’s what I tell myself until my eyes find him on set. Milo is leaning in, whispering in Lydia’s ear. Her voluminous hair is blocking his face, but when he steps back I see him give her a small smile. He squeezes her upper arm, and she leans into him ever so slightly.
As soon as the camera has been adjusted for coverage, Rob calls, “Okay, let’s go again!” Everyone stops where they are to avoid making any noise that might get picked up on the boom mike. And this time, with the extras facing the opposite direction, Lydia parrots the line just as Kathleen told her to. Finally.
We break for lunch just as the sun is highest in the sky. Everyone on set is fanning themselves with whatever stray piece of paper they can find, and those without have rivers of sweat flowing down their backs and across their foreheads. We load onto a van and are driven a few blocks over to an empty storefront that houses craft services for the day. The extras go around to the back to where their food is waiting while I hop in line behind Trevor, the boom mike guy, with the rest of the crew.
“Don’t you love it when they live up to their stereotypes?” Trevor says to a camera PA in front of him.
“Did you see Milo huffing around the studio yesterday? He looked like he wanted to set the place on fire,” she replies, her voice low as her eyes dart around to make sure she won’t be overheard. Too late.
“I hope he gets a union stunt double before he attempts it,” Trevor says.
I’m glad to hear that Lydia’s arrival drove Milo bats, but it doesn’t make the weight in the pit of my stomach disappear. I try to ignore it (or possibly drown it) by focusing on the buffet. I load my plate with another scoop of pulled pork before sliding on down to the salad bar.
I take my food outside and cross the street to the small plot of grass that makes up Wilder’s town square. I park under a tree, my bum on top of a root, and balance my plate on my knee.
My sandwich smells amazing, and I’m just about to bite in when something else invades my nostrils. Something sour and sulfury and just generally gross.
Cigarette smoke.
Someone on the other side of this tree has just lit a cigarette, and it’s totally ruining my lunch. I don’t know why anyone smokes nowadays. I mean, it makes you smell like an ashtray and, you know, kills you. The hardest thing about being on set is the sheer number of cast and crew who are completely addicted. Smoke breaks seem to be just as important as lunch breaks around here. When I asked Carly about it, she muttered something about how smoking was a thing actors could do that kept them from attacking craft services.
I fan my hand in front of my face to try to send the smell away, but it doesn’t help. I try the exaggerated coughing in hopes that whoever has just lit up will take the hint and wander away, but the smoke remains. Finally I lean around the side of the tree to see who it is. From my perch on the ground, the first thing I notice is a pair of black spike-heeled booties, then skinny jeans and legs for miles. My eyes make their way up to the dark-red mermaid hair of Lydia Kane, a cigarette between her fingers. Why she’s not in her wardrobe anymore I have no idea, but her new outfit scares the hell out of me.
I’m not about to say boo to Lydia Kane about her smoking, so instead I try to quietly stand and skulk away to a smoke-free lunch spot. But I barely get two steps away before my foot catches on another tree root. I start to fall, but fling an arm out toward the tree trunk to catch mys
elf. I manage to keep myself upright but my plate does not follow me, and my attempts to catch it before it hits the ground send it flying into my left thigh, barbecue sauce soaking into my shorts.
“Are you kidding me?” I mutter. Behind me I hear a snort.
“You really need to get that whole walking-while-holding-things situation under control,” Lydia says, her voice somehow venomous and bored at the same time.
“Uh, yeah,” I reply, clutching my plate to myself to keep more food from spilling. I tilt it and scrape the rest of the contents from my clothes back onto the plate. “I was just leaving.”
“I know who you are,” she says, taking a long, sultry drag on her cigarette. The smoke escapes out the side of her ruby-red lips.
I gulp and actually think for a moment, Who am I? “Oh?” is what I finally settle on for a reply.
She gives me a soap opera–worthy stare, one eyebrow arched so sharply it looks like it could cut into her forehead. “You don’t look like someone who’s into the cameras and the gossip and all that. It seems all fun and games, but trust me, it’s brutal. You’ll never survive it.”
She drops her cigarette into the dirt and stubs it out with the toe of one of her leather heels. Then she tosses her hair over her shoulder and saunters back across the street toward craft services, leaving me to do nothing but stare, mouth agape, potato salad congealing on my shoe in the sun.
The heat and the cigarette smoke and the smell of hot mayonnaise makes me feel like I’m going to hurl behind this tree. I need a friend. And fast. I consider calling Naz and confessing everything. Even one of her lectures would comfort me right now. But she’s probably in class or the library.
I hustle back to our temporary cafeteria and find Carly tossing her lunch into one of the giant trash cans.
“I need that big-sister pep talk or whatever,” I say. My voice sounds shockingly small, but at least I manage to keep the tears that are itching behind my eyes at bay.
Carly raises an eyebrow at me, then reaches down and switches off her walkie-talkie. “It was actually more of a lecture,” she says.
“Whatever, I need it.”
Carly takes a seat on one of the gnarled tree roots creeping out of the ground. I plop down in the dirt in front of her.
“I don’t know what’s going on with you two, and frankly I don’t want to know. I’m pretty sure I could guess anyway. One minute you’re a walking Valentine’s Day card, the next you look like a wilted funeral wreath.”
The description makes me laugh in spite of myself, and it comes out a little more sob-sounding than I meant.
Carly’s eyes soften, and she sighs. “Lydia is a dragon lady. No one likes her. I don’t think even she likes her. Anyone with half a brain and two eyes would pick you in a heartbeat. He’s screwed up right now, but I’m sure it’ll work itself out. Until it does, just focus on work. Okay?”
“That wasn’t much of a lecture,” I say through a sniffle, though there’s a half smile that I can’t contain. I never thought Carly, with her clipboard and her rapid pace and her exasperation, would be one for sentiment.
“Midshoot rewrite. The script called for something else,” she says. She rises from her perch on the tree root and offers me a hand. I take it, and she hauls me to my feet. She reaches down and flips her walkie-talkie back on, and in an instant she’s babbling away into her headset.
The show must go on.
CARLY
Falling in love with Milo Ritter is maybe the stupidest thing you could possibly do.
CASTING NOTICE
Party Guests
Seeking men and women ages 18–70, all ethnicities, for a cocktail party scene. Upscale look. Must have own cocktail attire. Work Wednesday, June 23. $80/8 hours, plus overtime.
HOW TO APPLY
Email 3 pictures (one above the shoulders, one above the waist, and one full-body) along with your height, weight, age, and phone number to [email protected]
Subject: PARTY
I sleep only slightly better than the night before. My alarm buzzes at the criminally early hour of five a.m. for our five-thirty crew call. I don’t remember the last time I saw sunrise. I make it a point never to sign up for anything that requires me getting out of bed before seven in the morning. This is part of the reason why I never played sports (the other part being that I have the hand-eye coordination of a drunk toddler).
Today we’re on location again, this time for a really big crowd scene that’s supposed to take place at a fancy party. Production has taken over the Charlesmark House, a historic antebellum mansion right in the middle of town. The whole cast is in the scene, along with a cavalcade of extras in fancy clothes. It’s going to be an all-hands-on-deck kind of day.
I dress in a flash in cutoff denim, one of my dad’s old Harvard T-shirts, and a pair of work boots. The forecast calls for temperatures in the upper nineties today, and with late-June humidity, it’s going to be a real scorcher. I’d wear flip-flops if that kind of thing were allowed on set (which, I learned recently, definitely is not, with all the heavy equipment and rigging, not to mention all the actors and extras stomping around in spike heels).
I pull my car into the Motor Inn parking lot that’s serving as base camp for today. There’s already a tent set up in the far corner of the lot where extras are milling about, some still in street clothes carrying garment bags, others already dressed for our scene in jewel-toned satin sheaths and crisp black suits. Most of them have big travel mugs of coffee in hand, and a few are already smoking early-morning cigarettes, whatever they can do to wake up. I open the door of the Honda just as the crew van pulls up. Rodney, our driver, rolls down the window.
“You coming to set?” he calls.
“Yep.” I grab my bag off the passenger seat and climb into the van, sitting on the first bench seat next to Carly. Eloise, Gloria, and Rob are in the van as well, all talking into their respective phones with the seriousness required to launch a NASA mission. I spot a flash of green in the back row and crane my neck to see Benny, half asleep, leaning against the window, wearing his uniform of cargo shorts, a green T-shirt, and a green bandanna tied around his head. I can’t see his feet, but if I had to guess, I’d say he’s got matching green knee socks on. As the van shudders to a start, he cracks his eyes open, takes one look at me in Dad’s Harvard shirt, mutters “Traitor,” and falls back to sleep.
Carly rolls her eyes. “God, I hate days like this,” she says. “Fingers crossed it doesn’t turn into an unholy disaster.”
“What’s wrong with days like this?” I ask.
“Are you kidding? Location shoots are hard enough, but when you add in over a hundred extras it’s enough to make you wish you’d listened to your mother and become a middle school teacher. At least middle schoolers have some sense of boundaries and propriety. Extras are the worst. Capital T, capital W.”
I shrug. They’re just background. Glorified scenery, really. Sure, sometimes they sneeze or accidentally look into the camera, but really, how bad can they be? Carly sees my doubt and shakes her head.
“Just a word to the wise? Don’t feed the animals.”
I don’t even know what that means, and I kind of don’t want to know. Instead I watch the passing scenery of my town through the van windows as we make our way to the Charlesmark.
The van turns down the circular drive and pulls to a stop in front of the main steps up to the Charlesmark’s hulking front door. The house was built in 1859 by Rutherford J. Charles, our town’s richest resident at the time. He had a massive plantation, along with all that entails in the pre–Civil War South. I’ve taken the tour about six or seven times since I moved here, including two visits as part of school field trips. The place really is a beauty, thanks to Wilder’s restoration efforts, and I imagine it’ll make a perfect backdrop for a scene in which Jonas, our main character, attends a ritzy party and meets Kass. The whole thing culminates with Kass’s mother (played by Gillian) calling Jonas trash.
I cli
mb out of the van, Carly right on my heels.
“I talked to Ruth. She’s got a fleet of PAs working props today, so you’re with me,” she says. “Adrian has point on the extras, but we’re all going to need to help corral them.” Another animal metaphor. Man, extras get no respect.
We head into the Charlesmark, dodging crew members carting camera pieces up the stairs and through the front door. Despite my many visits to the historic home, today it looks nothing like I remember. The original heart-pine floors are crisscrossed with heavy electrical cables as the lighting guys work on their setup. Mats have been laid down all over the place to protect the parquet flooring from the thumping of work boots and rolling of equipment. There are pieces of neon gaffer’s tape marking Xs all over the place, noting marks for the actors in the first scene, and props is crawling all over the set, placing half-empty champagne glasses and plates of hors d’oeuvres on every surface and setting up various fake buffet tables amid all the period antiques. Seeing the heaping tables of cheese, french bread, fruit, and various pastries makes my stomach rumble, even if that food is going to sit out all day and inevitably look seriously wilted by the end of filming.
We make our way straight through the house and out the back door, where a tent’s been set up on the expansive back lawn. A school bus has pulled up alongside it, and extras in their party finery are filing off. The men have their coats draped over their arms, while the women hold the trains of their dresses in one hand, their shoes in the other.
“Ugh,” Carly groans, then calls out, “All right, guys, off the bus and into the tent! We’d like to get things started as quickly as possible, so please save your morning cigarettes!”
My Unscripted Life Page 13
