by Nev Fountain
He listened.
‘No’ he said, finally. ‘We’re putting in another tree using computers, because none of the trees here look alien enough.’
‘Can’t I hide behind a real tree, and then you put a CGI tree over the tree I’m hiding behind?’
Ken touched his microphone again. ‘Can the Gonk hide—’
He stopped because there was a tinny noise flooding his earpiece. It sounded very angry, it sounded like a woman’s voice, and it lasted a very long time. Ken closed his eyes as his headache grew and festered. ‘No,’ he told the Gorg, ‘cos it’s going to fall over when Elysia blasts it with her ray gun, and we’ll need to see you after it falls.’
‘But if…’
‘Shut up!’ said Ken. ‘Just do it, okay. Tree, there. You, there.’ He blundered out of shot. Someone else shouted ‘Action!’
The Gorg said his line into his wrist radio, then he jumped behind back on his mark. Holly stepped into the clearing, looking this way and that, using all her acting skills to pretend she couldn’t see the Gorg, who was hiding behind the invisible tree.
She pretended to hear an imaginary noise.
‘I see you, hairy guy.’ She fired her plastic gun at the imaginary tree. ‘Come on out with your paws where I can see them.’ The Gorg surrendered. ‘Fine. There’s a good boy. Now are there others of your kind round here?’
‘Cut. Great. Now, move to scene 52.’
The location team shunted awkwardly about three yards to the left. They did another tiny scene, and another, and another. Ken was charging through the script, putting lines though pages at a furious rate. There were no retakes, even though it seemed very rough and ready.
‘I wasn’t sure about that one,’ said Holly, after a particularly brutally shot scene, ‘I think I said the line wrong. Can I do it again?’
‘It was fine, trust me,’ snapped Ken, and marched his team to another part of the gardens before she could open her mouth again.
Same old Ken, thought Mervyn. I wonder if he makes love like he makes his shows? Three seconds of furious activity and then on to the next position, trying not to notice how unsatisfied everyone else looks.
Holly was obviously not at her best. She looked upset and distracted between takes. It was as if she was part of a gestalt entity and couldn’t function without the other two girls present. Everyone could see she was ready to collapse like a Yorkshire pudding. Everyone but Ken.
‘Okay, this is scene 64. Can we go for a take?’
Holly bit her lip. ‘Ummm… Couldn’t we do a bit of rehearsal first? Go through the lines a couple of times?’
Ken flicked through the script, as if it was something he hadn’t read yet. ‘It’s just six lines. You’ll be fine.’
‘Aaand… Rolling… Action!’
Holly stood there, not moving, not doing anything, trapped by powerful lights like a petrified rabbit on a motorway.
‘Cut!’
Ken lumbered back into the clearing. ‘I’ve told you, you’ll be fine. You can do it.’
‘But… I can’t.’
But Ken had gone again.
‘Rolling… Action!’
Holly flapped her hands helplessly. A tear trickled down her cheek.
Ken came back, sighing loudly, his hands balling into fists. He looked like he was pretending to be a steam engine. ‘Okaay. What’s up? It’s just six lines. One scene. Just say the lines.’
‘But… I should be talking to someone else? Doesn’t someone else have to do the other lines?’
Ken glanced at his script again. ‘Oh,’ he muttered. ‘I see.’
‘I’m sure there’s someone who’s got to stand here with me—’
Ken shushed her, flapping his script angrily. He was conducting a conversation with his own imaginary friend. ‘I thought she was talking to a CGI thing or something,’ he said. ‘Oh. Well where is he?’ He looked up and shouted. ‘Is Roger Barker here? Is he here? Where is the old… Where is he?’
‘Hes wasn’t called till 11.30. He’s in make-up and costume. He should be ready in half an hour.’
Louise strode up to them; it was she who was supplying the voice on the other end of Ken’s earphones.
Ken looked at his watch. ‘So I’m stuck here doing nothing.’
‘Well Ken, we didn’t realise how efficient you’d be. There’s not many directors who can keep the same pace as you.’
Ken didn’t notice the shovelfuls of sarcasm in her voice. He was too busy looking around, trying to think of things he could shoot without Roger. He finally gave up. ‘Okaaay everyone. Let’s be back for 12. Sharp.’ He walked away without acknowledging Holly, and stalked off to harangue costume and make-up.
Holly stood there while everyone raced to find the catering van. She still looked bereft and was teetering on the edge of tears.
‘I was terrible wasn’t I? I was so crap.’
‘Nah, not a bit of it! You were hot, sister! Really on the mark! You go girl.’ Randall was playing the pompom-wielding cheerleader to the hilt.
Her eyes swivelled pleadingly to Mervyn. ‘Is that true? Was I really okay?’
‘I thought you were marvellous, Ugly.’
The world screeched to a halt on its axis as everyone’s brains struggled to compute what Mervyn had just said.
‘Holly,’ said Mervyn quickly. ‘Marvellous, Holly. You were marvellous Holly. Holly. Yes.’
Every word he said plunged him deeper into the abyss.
Then the world started moving again. Holly’s eyes flooded over and she ran from the clearing.
Randall’s eyebrows tickled his hairline. He turned slowly and, without looking directly at Mervyn, patted his shoulder.
‘Good work, Mervyn,’ he said, echoing Glyn.
And then he walked wearily away in the direction of Holly’s car.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
When the Vixens crew raced to the catering van and found it wasn’t there yet, they grumbled darkly and raced for the location bus to get the few up-to-date newspapers lying around inside.
Mervyn noticed that the rest of the production team was joining them. The roped-off area of the car park with ‘LOC’ hanging on it was now full of familiar cars. He got himself a tea and watched everyone arrive.
Ken barged out of the costume van in impotent fury. Mervyn knew that he’d been sent away with a flea in his ear and had been told in no uncertain terms that they couldn’t be rushed.
‘For a man who hasn’t worked in proper telly for over a decade, he doesn’t look very happy.’ It was Steve O’Brien who spoke. He was suddenly at Mervyn’s side, tapping his fag into the bushes with one hand and carrying a polystyrene cup in the other. ‘Hi Mervyn,’ he said, ‘how goes the heady world of Vixens from the Void?’
‘Oh, as well as can be expected,’ Mervyn said neutrally. ‘How’s life in the even headier world of the making of the making of Vixens from the Void?’
‘It’s a complete madhouse. Oh, no, not a madhouse, what are those things that aren’t madhouses? Funhouses. It’s a complete funhouse. Bendy mirrors, air jets up the knickers, silly sirens, the works. I’m getting lots of stuff that is very entertaining, but I can’t use any of it. The “making of” doco team aren’t happy either. Every time they point their cameras there’s some disaster, usually involving Ken.’
‘And that’s bad, is it?’ Mervyn still didn’t quite believe this strange corner of journalism where Bad News was No News. He still had a lingering suspicion that it was some elaborate trap designed by Steve to get him to start dishing the dirt.
‘They can’t use it either. Oh yeah, they can show a few tense faces and the odd star kicking a litter bin to let the great unwashed know that, contrary to their suspicions, making television is quite hard work. But this is in a different league. Their brief and my brief is to cover the making of a television programme. There’s not much they can do if the television programme isn’t actually getting made.’ He blew some smoke out, which was instantly snatched awa
y by the wind. ‘Unless Product Lazarus tells me to write the story of a television disaster, we can’t use any of it.’
‘Well I suppose they have a right to decide what the public should know and what they shouldn’t know, and if they don’t want anyone to hear about it, then you’ll just have to toe the party line…’
‘Yeah, I suppose that’s what we’ll have to do, if they want to keep it quiet,’ grinned Steve.
‘It’s the price you pay,’ grinned Mervyn back.
‘If you want to keep it quiet, then that’s what you do,’ smirked Steve.
‘Well, if news management is your priority, then those are the rules you have to live with.’
‘Yeah, keep it hush-hush.’
There was a long silence before Mervyn spoke again.
‘Sorry, is this another one of those conversations when you think I’m joking, but I’m really not?’
‘Oh, you’re not joking?’
‘No, I’m really not joking!’
It was an odd sensation for Mervyn; he liked Steve, but he didn’t like talking to him. It seemed that when he was with Steve, everything Mervyn uttered was either foolish, or naïve, or both.
‘Oh. Well, it’s the same with any press office of any media company laying down the law with us. It’s not about keeping it secret at all; they clamp down on us because they’re pissed off—because they know everyone’s going to hear about it anyway. It’s your classic over-compensation. Like your impotent man trying to chat up every woman in the room.’ He pulled out his Blackberry and slid his finger over the screen. ‘Here’s a typical fan site from this morning.’
It read: ‘VOICES FROM THE VOID DISCUSSION FORUM’, and a list of subject headings, ‘Gemma to walk?’, ‘Will it get finished?’, ‘Footage of THAT row (spoilers)’, and ‘sign my pertition glin trelorny must go now!!!’
‘And that’s just a tip of a very large iceberg,’ Steve continued. ‘Funny isn’t it? Back in your day Vixens barely had a press office; you had an alcoholic producer, a shag-happy star and directors going berserk on set and no one knew anything. Now you’ve got press officers by the bucketful trying to deny everything—and no one believes them.’
Mervyn drained his coffee cup. ‘Well, “back in my day” there were still press officers, and things did end up in the papers. We were hounded on location. I could tell you some stories…’
‘But I’m not talking about the papers. That’s my point. The papers used to manage the news and decide what became a national scandal and what didn’t. I’m sure there were deals struck between Vixens and the tabloids all the time.’
‘Well of course there was. If they found out anything juicy that would really hurt us, like a happily married actor being gay…’
‘Like Tara Miles.’
‘Um. Yes. Tara being a case in point. Ah… I think she’s still officially “straight” by the way…’
‘Mum’s the word, Mervyn. I’ll never tell. Well, I won’t tell anyone who doesn’t already know, anyway.’
‘Well Tara’s secret was a very good example. The tabloids knew, but they were always willing to do a deal. “Give us an exclusive photo shoot,” they’d say. “Put the Vixens in teddies and pyjama tops for our Naughty Nightwear week and we’ll ‘forget’ we found out about it.” It just becomes one of a thousand stories that nobody is aware of apart from a select few… And if it comes out now, who’s going to be interested?’
Steve smiled. ‘But that’s the thing. Nowadays, gossip has become democratised. You’ll always be able to find one person in the country who wants to know about something, even if it’s the colour of Mervyn Stone’s underpants.’
Mervyn shifted uncomfortably in his seat. At that moment, his ‘underpants’ were bright orange with palm trees running along the hem and pineapples dancing round his crotch. He wouldn’t want anyone to know that.
Steve continued. ‘The tabloids aren’t in control any more, and they can’t dictate what gets an airing and what doesn’t. There’s a 24-hour gossip machine out there and it’s called the British public, with the latest snoop technology at its disposal. The internet’s already in meltdown, there’s videos posted on fan sites of screaming matches between Glyn and Chrissie and first-hand accounts of the whole thing grinding to a halt with barely any footage shot.’
Mervyn felt an icy coldness squeezing his heart. ‘Was there anything about me?’
‘Not that I’m aware of. There’s great phone-cam footage of Chrissie calling Glyn a patronising bastard,’ Steve chuckled. ‘The only people who won’t be reporting this debacle is the DVD doco boys and me.’
‘But who would leak this stuff? Who’s trying to sabotage the production?’
‘No one’s trying to do anything like that. It’s the public again; probably just a fan who’s conned their way on to the set, or a scene-shifter who wants to earn a few bob from the tabloids or just someone who likes to go on forums and say they know something that everyone else doesn’t. It’s the bloody public, Mervyn—they spoil the information machine for everyone. The stars, the press, the PR people…’
The roar of an expensive engine stomped on their conversation. Chrissie the dark-haired one hurtled into the car park in her black Audi R8. The car door opened, and needle-sharp stilettos stabbed the gravel. Mervyn raised his hand and smiled feebly, but she looked right through him—or he presumed she looked right through him, it was difficult to tell what was happening behind her sunglasses. Anyway, whether she saw him or not she didn’t wave back. Mervyn guessed he’d already been submerged in her memory, placed in the file marked ‘Someone who was useful to me yesterday but not right now’.
Her phone exploded into life; a raucous metallic theme that Mervyn guessed was one of her old hits. She looked surprised. Mervyn looked at his own phone and realised there was the tiniest ghost of a signal floating in the area. Chrissie pressed a button and listened—her hard face becoming harder as she listened to a very long message.
‘There’s a good example of the way news management is messed up now,’ said Steve. ‘Take Chrissie. Her footballing grunt of a husband had an affair with a lingerie model six months ago. Not that Chrissie cared much—celebrity marriage of convenience and all that. A trashy newspaper found out about the affair, but the story got spiked because they agreed to do a big exclusive feature in the trashy newspaper’s even trashier sister magazine.’
‘How do you know all this?’ asked Mervyn.
‘Shhh!’ Steve waved him quiet. ‘Unfortunately, the story’s well and truly out…’
Chrissie’s red thumbnail played a random tune on the keypad and she was soon talking loudly into the phone. ‘Michelle it’s me. What’s going on? Well, have you talked to him? I’m sure he says it’s not down to him, what do you think? Well “Probably” ain’t good enough, Michelle—can’t he do something about it?’
Steve winked at Mervyn. ‘She’s talking to her PR person-stroke-manager, asking her if she’s talked to the tabloid editor who’s responsible for keeping the story under wraps. She’s asking her manager if she thinks the editor is responsible for the leak and perhaps, if so, they can buy the editor off again. Unfortunately the answer’s “no” and “no”.’
Chrissie continued a one-sided conversation, in which she listened, said the word ‘bitch’, listened, said the word ‘bitch’ again, listened, and said the words ‘fucking bitch’.
Steve continued: ‘You see, the story is down to a hairdresser who got phone-cam footage of Chrissie’s husband and aforesaid model having a pre-shag dinner in a Beefeater, and it’s taken the hairdresser six months to work out how to upload it on YouTube. Now it’s a free-for-all in the press and they all have to cover it. The only thing that’s left to do is damage control.’
Chrissie frowned. ‘Why should I talk to him? I’m busy.’
Steve grinned. ‘Her manager’s suggested that she actually talk to her husband about it and work on a plan of action.’
Chrissie listened for about 20 seconds, an
d sighed. ‘All right. Christ…’ She redialled, listened to a recorded message and said ‘Vince. It’s me. Don’t talk to anyone but Max, not even to your mum. Especially not that cow. Talk to Max, then ring me. If you can. I might as well be on the moon for all the fucking signal I have.’ She tottered away.
‘How do you know all this?’ said Mervyn again.
Steve shrugged. ‘I’m on Twitter.’ He waved his Blackberry. ‘And I’ve got a mate who supports Vince’s football team. You think Vixens fans know too much about everybody’s business? You should meet your dedicated footie fan.’
The female runner with the purple hair was going round with a pen and paper, talking to the crew. She scuttled up to Mervyn.
‘Hi. Sorry about the coffee mix-up yesterday.’
‘That’s quite all right, no harm done,’ Mervyn lied.
‘As we won’t get the catering van until the afternoon, I’m taking orders from the gardens’ restaurant. What would you like? They do a good selection.’
She handed the menu and the pen to Mervyn. The food looked splendid; all locally sourced, of course. He ticked the gammon and mustard sandwich. The runner went on her way, ignoring Steve. Steve barely noticed, he was examining his Blackberry like a starship captain who’d just beamed down onto a hostile planet. When he eventually looked up, Mervyn pointed to the runner. ‘She’s taking orders for food. You can catch her if you hurry.’
‘Sadly not for me,’ Steve shrugged. ‘I’m not official enough.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. You can have a bite of mine.’
‘No thanks. I’m a vegetarian.’
‘You don’t even know what I picked.’
‘You picked gammon and mustard.’
Mervyn’s mind gaped. ‘How did you know that?’
‘Like I said, I’m on Twitter.’ He waved the Blackberry again. ‘That runner who just took your order is doing a sandwich sweepstake. I think I’m ahead with chicken salad now, but Lucy in costumes is catching up with hummus and mushroom.’
Mervyn felt unnerved. He thought it would only be a matter of time before Steve came up to him, slapped him on the back and said ‘Sorry about your underpants, Mervyn. I hear they could stop a cow dead in its tracks.’
