by Meg Howrey
“Hey Kati, Luke and I are going to take a class in mime,” Mark said, very deadpan.
“You are going to do what?”
“Oh cool,” I said. “Will that give us enough time to make our own hand puppets?”
“A consideration, for sure,” said Mark, peering at the board.
“Very funny,” Kati said.
“I was thinking, though,” I joked, laying down my word, PRAY, earning myself a triple word score. “We should go to one of those medieval-themed restaurants. You know, where they have jousts and quaff mead and stuff? That could be good research for you, Dad, in case you ever play King Arthur.”
“Oh shit, we have to go. Seriously,” Mark said, laughing. “Medieval Times, it’s called. I think there’s one out by Disney Land. No, seriously. I used to know a guy that worked at one of those places. That would be hilarious. Kati, wouldn’t that be hilarious?”
Kati agreed, tolerantly, that it would be hilarious.
“Check it out.” Mark added a CLEPT after the “Y” in my PRAY.
“Yclept?” I asked. “That’s a word? An English word?”
“Are you challenging me?”
“Hold up,” Kati said, touching a button on her headset and listening.
“Okay, copy that. Mark, Pete is on his way over. Anton wants to take another look at the fight.”
“Yup.” Mark stood up and stretched his shoulders, swinging his arms in arcs.
“Can I come too?” I asked. I think if I drink protein shakes until the end of time I still won’t have arms like my father.
“Yeah, sure, come. It’s hot, though. You’re gonna sweat your balls off.”
“Mark!” Kati said. “You shouldn’t talk like that in front of Luke.”
“I think Luke knows he has balls. Do we have a hat for him to wear?”
There was a tap on the trailer door.
“Ready?”
“Let’s do it,” Mark said. He opened the door. “Oh, Pete, this is my son, Luke.”
A young guy, wearing a headset and a sweat-soaked T-shirt, looked at me blankly.
“Oh!” he said. “Oh, hey man.” We shook hands. Pete laughed.
“They said your son was here,” Pete said to Mark. “But I was thinking he … I thought he’d be in a stroller or something.”
“Luke was born fully formed.” Mark took a baseball cap from Kati with “The Last” printed on it, and handed it to me. “You know, like that God that sprung from the eye of whoever. You know the one I mean. Luke, who am I talking about?”
“Well, there were a couple,” I said. “It’s kind of a popular form of childbirth in mythology. Saves a lot of time.”
“Yeah. And that’s why we don’t hear about the early years of many gods. Like, ‘Zeus: The Teenage Years.’ ”
“Before he got handy with the thunderbolts,” I added. “And just keyed chariots and was really awkward around mortals.”
“They’re like this,” Kati told Pete. “You get used to it.”
Mark and I made the upside-down smile at each other, proudly.
Outside the trailer there was a golf cart, which we all climbed into.
“We’re moving,” Pete said into his headset, as if he were driving a SWAT team–style van. I started to laugh at this, but nobody else did, so I turned it into a cough. Pete drove us about two hundred feet to a canopied area where a cluster of people were waiting. I got introduced to Neal, the actor who plays “Doctor Grant” and to Anton, the stunt coordinator. “This is my son,” Mark said again. “My son, Luke.”
“Are you ready to watch your father kick the stuffing out of me?” asked Neal, who has a British accent in real life although he doesn’t on the show.
“We can stand over here,” Pete told me, moving us off a few feet. Neal put on knee and elbow pads.
“Wow,” Pete said quietly. “So Mark’s your dad?”
I nodded.
“I’m visiting him for the summer.”
“I didn’t know he had kids,” Pete said. “I mean,” he added quickly, “not that I would know. I’m just a lowly PA, so it’s not like I have long personal conversations with your dad. Not that he’s not nice to me. He’s nice to everyone. He’s a really nice guy.”
“Normally I live with my mom in Delaware,” I said, in an offhand way.
Anton was telling Mark and Neal to move at quarter speed. The action seemed to entail Neal shoving Mark, then a pause, then Neal raising an arm to hit Mark and Mark making a swift karate-style chop to Neal’s arm, then grabbing him by one shoulder, flipping him around, knocking one of Neal’s legs out from under him so that Neal twisted and fell with Mark landing more or less on top of him. They rolled over a couple of times, punching at each other, before Mark pinned Neal down on the ground, one knee in Neal’s back, one hand holding his neck. Once they had done that a couple of times, Anton told them to move at half speed.
Mark seemed totally comfortable with the whole thing, as opposed to Neal, who needed to talk through the action as they worked: “Right, right, so here I go, and now you spin me, and this one is all me, and down I go, and I let you take that wrist, right-o, that’s the ticket, easy does it for safety,” etc.
Sara always says that physical violence is a failure of the imagination to settle differences peacefully. She doesn’t even like it in sports. She thinks there are more creative ways to release aggression. When I wanted to play on the junior high football team, Sara took me to t’ai chi class instead, and gave me a bongo drum. I liked both of those things, but come on.
When my father and Neal started moving at three-quarter tempo, Neal stopped talking.
I’ve seen Mark fight in movies—get bloodied and cut up, smash through a window, fire guns, get shot. Mark told me that he almost always does his own stunts. Not that he particularly wants to, he said, but it always looks better if you do it yourself, and anyway, he doesn’t want to be sitting in his trailer sipping tea while some stuntman takes the knocks for him.
“This is all going to get changed once we’re on set,” Pete explained to me. “It’s always like that. They’ll figure out that half of it won’t read on camera, or the angle is wrong, or something. Your dad really knows how to sell this stuff, though. People always ask me, when they find out I work on the show, ‘Hey, what’s Mark Franco like?’ I always tell them that he’s actually this really laid-back guy. Very mellow.”
I wonder if Mark had been around in my childhood, would he have convinced Sara that it was okay for me to play contact sports? He might have seen that I had aggression, but not an aggression problem. Then I would have spent my Saturdays playing football instead of playing the bongo for Sara’s Ecstatic Dance Class. At the very least I would have watched football on television, instead of all that figure skating.
Mark and Neal both started making sounds as if they were really fighting, although the punches were silent, since no connection was actually being made. “Sound effects are all done in post,” Pete told me. “But it helps the actors to make the sounds.”
It looked like fun. I haven’t ever been in a fight. I haven’t even wrestled that much, just goofing around. Sara is very huggy and everything, but it’s not like she ever initiated mock combat. I wonder if by the end of the summer my father and I will be at a level where we can throw each other around like this, or he can teach me some moves.
It’s a good idea, I think, to start at slow speeds, and then work up to real time. For safety.
An hour later I stood next to Kati and one of the producers, watching as they shot the fight scene in front of the camera. There was a lot of stopping and starting. Pete’s predictions were correct: most of the sequence got changed. It got more violent.
Actually, in second grade Kyle Grenbacher shoved me down to the ground during recess. I don’t think either one of us knew why. I stood up, and Kyle called me “crap head” before running off to join the kick-ball gang. I didn’t tell anyone about it, but I think for a long time I sort of replayed the scene in my
head, enacting various forms of physical revenge on Kyle. I hope this doesn’t mean I have some kind of weird backlog of violence stored in me.
Everyone seemed very professional and serious on the set to me, although the director kept shouting things like, “Okay, the fat lady has not sung, people. Let’s stay focused.” The director also had a British accent. Between takes a makeup lady would dart in and apply something to Mark’s face. It’s kind of funny to see someone put makeup on your father, and then see him take a swing at somebody.
I was pretty blown away by Mark’s ability to pretend. On the monitor it seemed as if James was looking out at the desolate landscape of ruined Earth when he said to Dr. Grant, “Take a look at what men do,” and in reality Mark was looking at the boom operator wearing a South Park T-shirt and holding the microphone on a long stick over his head. I don’t how my father was able to appear both mournful and cynical while gazing at what was, essentially, an armpit.
I knew that my father was not that person with the scar over his ear, the dirty T-shirt, the battle-weary eyes, but I was impressed all the same.
My dad is the kind of guy other guys wish they were like.
“All right!” the director shouted, suddenly. He hopped off his seat next to the camera and moved over to Mark. They had this huddled conversation, with some arm waving, at the end of which Mark walked away abruptly, as if the director had said something upsetting. Mark walked in circles, agitated.
“Let’s try to get this right,” the director shouted, I wasn’t sure to whom, as he settled himself back in his seat.
“One minute,” Mark snapped, in a tone I hadn’t heard before. He squatted down, put his head between his knees. I watched the muscles of his back flex and unflex. He looked pretty scary, and everyone got really quiet. I got nervous, and looked over at Kati.
“Is everything okay?” I whispered. Kati nodded slightly.
“Fuck,” Mark said to himself.
I looked at Kati again, but she was stepping away, texting into her phone. Crew members shuffled around, looking at their feet.
“Okay, let’s go,” Mark said tensely, standing up.
They started shooting again, the camera moving smoothly on its track, following the action. Only when they got to the final position, the director didn’t yell, “Cut.” Mark was breathing more heavily. He made a frustrated gesture, then stopped himself.
“Enough!” Mark shouted. “ENOUGH!”
I looked around at the crew. Everyone on the set was staring at Mark and not moving.
“I said, ENOUGH!” Mark shouted. “Do you hear me? ENOUGH!”
The sweat on my back turned cold. I actually felt it do that. Mark sobbed, out loud, a choking sort of sob, and tears started running down his face. Real tears. That’s when I panicked. I felt like I should do something. I mean, everybody was just staring, looking freaked out.
“ENOUGH!” Mark shouted, screamed really.
Then Mark took his knee and hand from Neal’s back and neck; he moved a few steps away from Neal, who rolled onto his back and coughed. Mark squatted down and put his head in his hands, like before.
“Enough,” he said, quietly.
That’s when I realized it was all part of the scene. I think I said the words “Holy shit,” to myself.
Mark scooped up some loose dirt and gravel from the ground, held it in his hand for a moment. He threw it angrily away from him and stood up.
“CUT,” the director said.
People applauded.
“Got another one in you, love?” the director called out.
Mark, whose nose was running, gave a thumbs-up to the director.
“Lovely,” the director said.
“Everyone back to one,” the AD shouted. “Fast, people.”
They shot the sequence three more times. Mark cried every time. It was totally brilliant.
The producer turned to me.
“You know your dad is a real badass, right?” he asked. “Your dad is the man.”
“Yeah,” I said. I had gotten this huge surge of adrenaline when I thought everything was going wrong, and I felt it starting to leave my body. I felt a little tired, and almost sad. “He’s awesome,” I said.
Crew members moved in and began laying down a new track for the camera, fitting it to a longer track that extended away from the set. Mark stayed squatted down.
“However you are moving, move twice as fast,” the director shouted. He lit a cigarette, and moved over to Mark, hunched down beside him, said a few words. Mark nodded. The director stood up and bent over Neal, who reached for the director’s cigarette.
“Two minutes!” the AD shouted. “I want this done in TWO MINUTES.”
The makeup woman came over to Mark carrying an umbrella. She sat down next to him, holding the umbrella over his head. Mark took the umbrella from her, and put his arm around her.
A caterer appeared and offered mini club sandwiches from a tray. Kati materialized behind her.
“I’ll get you something vegetarian,” she said.
“No, no, I’m okay,” I said, but she disappeared again. The makeup woman had her head on Mark’s shoulder now, and Neal joined their circle. Neal put his arm around Mark. Someone came forward and took their picture. Mark looked around and spotted me. He said something to the makeup girl and pointed. The makeup girl smiled and waved at me. I waved back. Kati appeared carrying a yogurt-and-granola parfait. We were in the middle of the desert and Kati got parfait.
“We need to be rolling in THREE MINUTES,” the AD shouted. “WE ARE GOING IN THREE MINUTES. I AM TOTALLY SERIOUS.”
Twenty-four minutes later they were filming again.
This time, all Mark had to do was stand still while the camera rolled on its track away from him. They did this once and then the director stood up on his seat. Someone handed him a bullhorn.
“Ladies and gents,” he said. “Some applause for the actors, please.” There was clapping and some cheering from the crew. “Okay,” continued the director. “I did my whole big speech yesterday and it’s hot as fuck out here and you know I can no longer stand the sight of each and every one of you and I’m only showing up to the party to get the free alcohol that has been promised me. That said, I love you all madly and you sweated blood for me this season and I’m a lucky, lucky bastard and this is … officially … a WRAP.”
People cheered again for a minute and then immediately started working again, dismantling the track and breaking down cables.
“So what did you think?” Mark asked me later, in the car on the way back home.
“You’re really, really good,” I said. “I know you say that it’s mostly just sitting around, but it doesn’t look like that to me. It was so cool … seeing you do all that. I’m impressed.”
“Thanks. It was cool having you there.”
“What did the director say to you? You know, when you suddenly got all intense.”
“David?” Mark laughed. “He said, ‘Okay darling, let’s have it. Bring me the juice, baby.’ ” Mark does a very good imitation of the director’s accent.
“You learn to save your moments,” Mark said. “For when they’ll count.”
“You must be really tired,” I said.
“I’m okay,” Mark shrugged. “I’m a little wired actually.”
When we got home, Mark unpacked the two boxes of things from his trailer that he had collected, and I made my special tofu Thai salad for us to eat. He said he had some work to do, and I said I would write even though I didn’t really have any essay ideas. I was hoping one would sort of emerge.
I don’t know what Mark’s doing. I’ve heard him pacing around the house the entire time I’ve been writing this.
Luke pauses, listens to the sound of Mark coming down the hallway, turns to see his father standing in the doorway.
“So,” Mark says. “I actually have something for you to read. Actually.”
“Oh, great,” Luke says. “What is it?”
Mark holds o
ut not a book, but a couple of typewritten pages. He hands these to Luke.
“Is it a script?” Luke glances down. The pages look to be in script format.
“Sort of,” Mark says. “It’s something I’ve been working on.”
“Oh,” Luke says. “Wow. That’s great. I’ll read it right now.”
“Actually, give it back to me.”
“Really?” Luke holds out the pages to Mark.
“No,” Mark says. “No. It’s okay. Read it. Come find me when you’re done?”
“Sure,” Luke says. “Absolutely.”
Mark nods, and leaves. Luke settles himself to read.
INTERIOR: KARA’S BEDROOM,
UPPER WEST SIDE NEW YORK CITY
KARA (mid 20s? very attractive, bohemian) lies in bed. Next to her is a fancy pink cradle with a yellow mobile hanging over it. TONY (barely 20 years old, nervous and awkward) stands just inside the door, holding a cheap bouquet of flowers. The sounds of two little girls playing can be heard intermittently throughout.
TONY
Hey!
KARA
Hey yourself! Thank you so much for coming.
TONY
(waving the flowers)
I brought you these.
KARA
(holding her arms out)
Oh, thank you so much Tony. Those are beautiful.
Tony moves over to the bed (on the opposite side of where the cradle is) and hands Kara the flowers. She smells them and places them in her lap. Tony retreats to the foot of the bed.
TONY
So … Mazel Tov!
KARA
(startled)
Oh! Oh, thank you. I … I didn’t know you were Jewish, Tony.
TONY
I’m not. I thought you were.
KARA
Really? You thought I was Jewish?
TONY
You said, “Oy vey.” When I was … you know … here. Before. I said something to you and you said, “Oy vey.”
KARA
Really? Well, you know lots of people in New York say, “Oy vey.”
TONY
People in New York who are Jewish say, “Oy vey.” Everybody else says, “Holy shit.”
KARA
