by Ames, Alex
“You look fa-bu-lous, Lou,” Emile said in greeting. “A million dollars.”
“Don’t paint the devil on the wall. That would be a step back to TV serials or straight-to-video films,” Louise replied.
Emile was maybe her tenth PA and so far had the longest stamina of all, four years and counting. A gay Indonesian immigrant, he had tried his luck as an actor himself in Hollywood in his early twenties but had found out the hard way that there are not many roles for ethnic minorities and that the competition was even harder than for the Caucasian characters. At twenty-eight, he had a lot of relationship and boyfriend drama, but was fiercely loyal to his employer. Louise was his life. He unpacked a little binder and sat opposite Louise, who was eating some fresh fruit and sipping her coffee.
“The morning edition, my dear.” He pushed over some shooting script pages.
“Any changes?” Louise was a perfectionist when it came to her lines.
“I fear so. From what I could see, they added two lines in the fast-paced middle section.”
“Let’s have a look at it first and then you can run me through it.”
Louise memorized the new lines, and the next twenty minutes were spent rehearsing the complete daily shoot schedule, Emile reading all other parts with full concentration, as Louise hated only one more thing more than stumbling over her own lines: costars screwing up their lines.
At six sharp, the bell rang, and Floris glided toward the foyer like a tiger on the prowl to watch the maid open the door. In breezed a power plant on two legs.
“Stop everything and follow me!” the power plant commanded.
“Yes, sir, madam!” Louise said and got up, attempting to finish her breakfast.
“If you put those calories into your mouth, I’ll give you fifty squats on top,” Simona threatened. A compact Italian athlete with a black ponytail and limitless energy, she had been Louise’s fitness trainer for the last ten years. Simona trained the rich and famous, and Louisa was her steady 6:00 a.m. slot. Louise even paid the $200 when she was away on location to keep the time slot blocked for her forever.
“Then I’ll do what you say,” Louise said, putting the piece of melon back and sliding off her chair. Turning to Emile, she said, “We’ll go over the lines in the car once more; the timing is not right yet.”
An hour later, the hot and cold shower took away most of the muscle pain that Simona had been able to induce with her exercises. They had done a twenty-minute run on the belt and thirty minutes of crossover exercises, including everything from plain push-ups to martial arts dropkicks. The last ten minutes were dedicated to stretching. Simona knew exactly what she could put on the bodies of her clients, and as the fitness and ambition of her clients increased, she was able to adapt to it quickly. Louise came out of the shower, drying her hair. The hairstylist would do the daily routine later, so she towel-dried it and gave it a few brushes to be presentable for the early morning paparazzi. With a towel around her body, she went into the bedroom, where Emile was already waiting with the wardrobe of the day.
“What do we have on the agenda?” she asked, eyeing the suggestions from Emile and her personal stylist. Days blurred when she was shooting, and she could never remember what was on her schedule afterward.
“For studio day we give you something practical. The new boot-cut Armani jeans, with some gorgeous ankle boots and this wonderful Ralph Lauren sweater. It’s very loosely knit and under the right light will show of your body nicely. We add this sexy bra so that people get a hint of you.”
“Add a light cashmere jacket against the air-conditioning, please. You can carry it when we’re in public,” Louise said.
“How very sensible of the greatest actress of her time,” Emile said without a hint of irony. “And stylish, too. We’ll take the little light blue thing you got from Donna. Next item: Actors Guild Women’s Association. The poor babies built their event around your shooting schedule, so excited to have you. Red carpet at six, the red dress here, a new Alexander McQueen piece.”
“Alexander McQueen has been dead for years,” Louise pointed out.
“Whatever! Dinner starts at six forty-five sharp; your dinner speech is after the first course at seven.”
“What am I talking about?”
“Spirited performances of spirited women in film. The honoree is your special friend and talented actress, two-time Oscar winner Madge Hardy.”
“Not again!” Louise groaned. Madge Hardy was probably her fiercest competition for acting roles. Each of them had two Oscars under her belt, and they had twice starred in movies together when Madge was an up-and-coming actress and Louise the established star. Those times were definitely over, though. Now they both had their own franchises in the romantic comedy and high-profile action genres. Calling them competitors was a polite way of saying they hated each other’s guts.
“Yes, again, my dear. Accept it—she’s slowly and surely creeping into your spot.”
Louise had started putting on the more casual outfit.
“Dessert spoon down is eight-fifteen. We then switch to this nice little black thing here by your great friend Stella, to give your legs room to move on the dance floor.
“I don’t dance!”
“I know, you know, but no one else knows. It’s a dance club location, so the blogosphere and paparazzi expect a dance outfit. Purely preemptive. Entry at nine, wheels up at ten, back at the ranch at ten-thirty.”
Louise held the black dress in front of her and gave herself a critical eye in front of the mirror. “Should fit. And looks comfortable. Doesn’t seem to press my boobs too much.”
“Next time I’ll tell them to make it one size smaller,” Emile said, noting it in his iPad.
“You want to kill me?”
“Sex sells, Louise.”
Emile wrapped up the rest of the wardrobe, and Louise went back into the bathroom to put on perfunctory makeup.
The studio’s limo service picked Louise up at 7:30 sharp, Floris rode behind in the black Tahoe, and Louise had a second breakfast of a bottle of spring water and an apple. Once more, Emile ran her through all planned lines for the day.
The limo reached the studios after half an hour’s drive. Louise turned to Emile again. “Regarding tonight’s speech for Madge. What spirited performances will I be comparing little Madge’s work to?”
“You know, the usual.” Emile’s eyes flew over his iPad screen. “Bette Davis in All About Eve, Susan Sarandon in Thelma and Louise, Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich . . . All the nice things.”
Louise waved her hand. “I think it’s time we take the gloves off. Madge is out to get me. She’s already reached my per-movie guarantee, while my last deals were 20 percent down. Let’s face it, she’s not out to get me—she’s got me.”
“Don’t put your position under the wrong light, my dear,” Emile said. “But if you want to discuss the speech, you need to talk to Izzy. One of his staffers wrote it.”
“I will,” Louise said, making a mental note to talk to her agent during a break.
The car stopped in front of the studio in which the interior shots for Sell! Sell! Sell! were done. It was 8:05. Louise’s workday began.
two
The Job
Rick
“You won’t believe what I’m about to tell you,” Hal said first thing to Rick.
“I already do,” Rick said, throwing his jacket over his chair. He started to sort some invoice papers and drawings that were covering his desk in orderly stacks. Their office was built as a gallery overlooking the big woodshop downstairs. One look gave him an idea what was going on. And what wasn’t.
“You know? How? You just arrived.” Hal was taken aback. They had been friends since being college roommates, and when they had decided to try something that both of them liked, they formed a shipbuilding company. That had been fifteen years ago, and both their friendship and their company had endured. Hal was a former football jock, wide shoulders and all, and had been single for
years, living in the former house of his parents in Oxnard.
“I said I do. I do believe you, whatever you say.” Rick looked at his business partner. “And why isn’t Styler working on the skiff? We’re already a week overdue.”
“No, you won’t believe this one,” Hal insisted. “Guess who called me.”
“John F. Kennedy, Elvis Presley, Kurt Cobain?” Rick did his friend the favor. “The Pope? Chuck Norris?”
“Close baby, not Chuck Norris, but close.”
“A movie lead?”
“Yup. I got a call from a lady called Zuzu. She’s working for . . .” Hal raised his hands expectantly.
“Got me there.” Rick let Hal ride it out at his speed.
“. . . none other than Josh Hancock! The action star of our youth, burned out in his thirties and now back in the big game as a seasoned action hero and leading man.”
Rick eyed his friend. “That is indeed an impressive claim.”
“What’s to claim? I’m not claim anything,” Hal said, confused.
“No, an impressive claim from a voice on the phone.”
That shut Hal up for a moment. “You mean some sort of prank call? Like analogue spam?”
Rick shrugged and pointed into the woodshop. “Styler? The skiff?”
“Don’t change subjects. Do you really think this is a joke? She sounded professional, not trying to pull the wool over my eyes. I didn’t have to give a credit card or social security number. And she politely made an appointment for tomorrow afternoon.”
“Something about a boat, right?” Rick said. He filled his coffee mug and started to head down to the woodshop to talk to Styler himself.
“Do you . . . ?” Hal started to ask and then saw the lack of sense in his question. Of course. They were a shipyard, so it was always about a boat.
“Flint and Heller Fine Wooden Boats,” as it read on the big sign spanning the street entrance, was a small, exclusive outfit that built and repaired wooden boats. Sailboats and motorboats, plus the occasional old-style rowing skiff. The center of the American wooden boat universe was clearly the East Coast, particularly Massachusetts and Rhode Island, but Flint and Heller had a unique spot on the West Coast, situated near the Oxnard Harbor, northwest of LA, in Ventura County. One big workshop with machinery and enough room to work on anything under forty feet, a yard for storing anything bigger, and a slip and crane to place the beauties into the water was all it took.
Rick roamed the woodshop, shook hands with the two full-time builders, Martin and Morris, called M&M, two rugged gray-haired men in their late fifties who took pride in shaping a boat out of logs, beams, and panels. Besides Hal, who took care of materials, interiors, mechanics, and rigging, the only other employee was Styler, a surf bum in his twenties with long white-blond hair who had a whole different set of work ethics. He had shown up one day unannounced, on a day when a helping hand was needed. He became a minimum-wage fixture, not seeming to care, doing good work when he set his mind to it, which was unfortunately not all the time.
A small sloop was ready for inspection, a maintenance job where they had replaced rotten wood and updated the rigging. It was a beautiful 30-foot boat made of Honduras mahogany, whose owner had abstained up to this date to equip it with a diesel engine.
Hal had followed Rick. “I made sure the interior is clean and all. Outside, Styler . . .”
“Or you . . .”
“. . . can give it a final polish.”
“Mr. Keeler comes at two, should be time enough. He’ll want to take the beauty for a ride, so we should have her ready for inspection and hand-over right after lunch.”
“I can do the honors and accompany him. Fetch a few Coronas on ice to appease him.”
“That would be great. I have Dana pickup duty at five.”
The two men then checked the status of another order, a sixteen-foot skiff that was midway through a restoration after years of neglect. And another twenty-foot motorboat-design job that currently showed only keel and frames, like a bony rib cage. The yard that showed through the big double wing doors was bathed in sunshine. It was pointedly empty, except for some spare wood under a protective shed.
“Doesn’t look good,” Rick said. “We are two orders short to make a real profit this month.”
“Maybe the movie star thing will pan out,” Hal said, hopefully.
“If it doesn’t, we need to let Styler go. That’s three hundred bucks a week we don’t have.”
“Maybe the movie star thing will pan out really well,” Hal insisted. Both men clanked their coffee mugs for a silent amen.
Louise
Wardrobe, hair, and makeup took ninety minutes, and the director fawned over his star, giving Louise last-minute instructions on the new scene. Another half hour of waiting, continuity check, and hair-and-makeup refresh. The scene took place at big Wall Street firm, so Louise’s dress was appropriately a midlength skirt and jacket and medium-high heels. Louise sat down on her designated chair close to the soundstage and waited for the crew to finish the setup. Emile roamed in the background but left his boss alone; she preferred to concentrate before work.
“Hey, honey, you look splendid as always,” Josh Hancock, her costar in the film, said and sat down beside her. He was also already in full makeup and wardrobe, in his case a dark blue pinstripe three-piece suit and tasteful tie.
“The continuity check made sure of that,” Louise replied. They had a friendship, as far as friendships went in this industry, where everyone was out to cut each other’s throat.
“Don’t delegate your beauty.” Josh laughed. He was in his late forties and had shaved his head for the role, giving him a dynamic and sexy look that added to the disarming shy smile that he could produce on demand.
“You can laugh, Josh. Your age is your asset whereas my age becomes a liability.” Where the leading men get to have a second act in action roles, actresses are relegated to TV or to older supporting roles: the wise mom, the tough lawyer, the mentoring teacher.
“That sounds like discrimination to me,” Josh said and took a sip through a straw.
The director came over. “Are you ready, my friends?” Roger Brauer was a German film wunderkind with four Oscars and four billion in revenue under his belt, and he was still below thirty. Many saw in him the next Spielberg. He specialized in smart screwball comedies that went so over the top that people were helplessly trapped in awe and laughter. He was large and thin, with a stoop, and had extremely agile eyes that missed nothing.
“Fine, Rog,” Louise said. “We keep your instructions in mind: enough ‘ball’ but much more ‘screw’”
“Good girl!” Roger’s arms spun around as he talked with a hint of a German accent. “Start the scene first at a regular conversation speed. Then, when you start walking away from the desk, you get faster and faster. Fall into each other’s words. Then when you reach the door, open it and continue talking, but both of you at the same time.”
“Shall we rehearse first?” Louise, the perfectionist, asked.
Roger threw up his arms. “Who is the efficient German here? C’est moi! No, we start rolling from the get-go, and you guys play it through two times. Bits and bytes are cheap; we can always press delete or relegate it to the Blu-ray blooper reel.”
The extras were all placed and waiting for the general cue to play out busy office activity. Louise sat at her desk, four big computer monitors in front of her, showing various tickers, charts, and newsfeeds. Josh positioned himself five yards away. Both of them went into their zone and became different people.
The AD fired up the scene. “Extras: Action! Leads: Action whenever you’re ready.”
The soundstage morphed into a hectic Wall Street trading room, busy, busy, busy. Josh purposefully walked toward Louise, and they went through their conversation while they moved between the desks of their fellow traders, ending up opening a double door that led into the office of the brokerage house owner.
They ran through it twice wit
h slight variations on timing. Roger came over to Louise and Josh. “Okay, number two has movie quality, and I’ll use it in case variation number three does not work out. We’ll run it once more. Timing exactly the same: ‘I thought you meant the dog!’ while opening in the door. But instead of Josh opening it and both of you squeezing through, I’d like Josh to take the right door, Lou the left. You push it as forcefully as you can, try to keep the swing in sync.”
“We can do that,” Louise said, and Josh nodded.
Roger gave them a thumbs-up and nodded to the AD, who started his spiel once more.
Again, the extras simulated the trading floor and Louise and Josh started their conversation at the desk, stepping up the speed. They increased volume and went into their argument about $50 billion worth of junk convertibles, an argument that turns out to be a misunderstanding because both characters were actually talking about their jointly owned dog that was in the middle of their war of roses.
They approached the door, delivering one verbal blow after another, both their lines coming together, both hands grabbing the big paw-handles of the mahogany doors. Perfect timing, pressing the handle, and starting the lin “And I thought . . .”
Then they pushed the doors open, ramming it fully into the face of their costar Walter Brenner, who inexplicably stood on the other side. With horror, Louise felt the hammer blow of the door hitting Walter, the crunch of bone, her and Josh still in walking motion, the camera crews on their sides. Louise saw blood spraying from Walter’s face, his body tumbling back, hands flying to his face.
“. . . you meant the dog!” Both actors finished the line as if on autopilot, staring at the horror that unfolded in real time while cameras were still rolling.
Louise immediately kneeled down to Walter, who screamed in pain for everyone to hear. “My nose for your dog? I mean, really?”
Josh tried to get a glimpse of the damage to Walter’s face. “So sorry! Shit, what were you thinking?”
