Shooting Script

by Gavin Lyall

  ‘Hold on a minute.’ I was waiting for the rusty wheels in my head to catch up on a currency conversion. When I had it sorted out, it still looked pretty good: £7 a day for doing nothing plus another £7 at least and costs for flying. Then I remembered something. ‘You talked about flying a camera plane: what about that?’

  ‘Same deal without costs.’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘I want half the scale costs: the Dove’s costing me money just sitting on the ground when I’m not free to fly it. And what camera plane are we talking about, anyway?’

  ‘We haven’t got one yet.’

  ‘Right – then I’ll agree to that part of the deal when I see what you get.’

  Her wide mouth turned into a wide smile, just a little twisted at one end. ‘Are you afraid it might be a bit much for you?’

  ‘Miss Penrose -1 don’t know much about the film business, but I know a little about film flying. Most of it’s done by professional outfits who hire or buy their own planes. You’re trying to do it on the cheap by getting the plane and pilot separately. You might get the plane a little too cheap; this partof the world’s full of planes like that. I’ll agree to fly it when I’ve seen it.’

  She went on looking at me for a moment, then nodded and sorted quickly through a stack of papers on the sofa. She handed one across. ‘Okay. Just sign that.’

  It was a printed contract form running to about eight pages, most of it about what I agreed not to sue the company for. Typed into blank spaces were my name, nationality, the rates of pay and costs. I wondered what all the other papers in the stack had been; probably versions of the same thing but with higher pay scales in case I’d forced a bargain. So probably I wasn’t being too bright. I signed anyway; in the summer season I wasn’t going to do better than this for the next month whatever.

  She stood up and said briskly: ‘Right. We’ll go down to the set and get the Boss Man to sign your copy.’

  I must have been looking puzzled. She said: ‘Walt signs all his company’s contracts; and they call him Boss Man – don’t ask me why. Just the same way they call John Wayne “Duke”.’

  ‘And they call you J.B.’

  ‘Miss Penrose.’

  I winced. ‘A couple of days ago I was offered a job at $750 a week. If I’d taken it, could I at least have called you J?’

  She started. ‘You really got offered that – and didn’t take it?’

  ‘There was a moral question. They call me “Peaceful” Carr.’

  She went on staring at me just a little longer than the crack seemed to deserve. Then she just said: ‘Would you bring my briefcase?’

  I brought her briefcase.

  EIGHT

  She put on her sunglasses, a white towelling jacket, and a pair of blackespadrilles, then led the way to a blood-red space-bomb that turned out to be a Studebaker Avanti.

  Perhaps she felt she’d been trampling my masculinity a little, because she offered me the keys. I took one look at the dashboard and shook my head. ‘Not me. I don’t have an astronaut’s licence.’

  She drove. We went back east on the coast road for a little less than a mile, but even in that distance we managed to hit both verges and only just missed the sound barrier. Just where the road swings right to avoid the White River and it looked as if we weren’t going to, she slid to a stop.

  Just below the bridge on the coast road the river widens out and runs slow and shallow through a flat, soggy coconut-palm grove. Parked at the edge of it were a collection of lorries, jeeps, and station wagons, their drivers sitting in the shadows and drinking Red Stripe or just dozing. We parked alongside them and got out, although my knees would rather have sat quietly for five minutes after that drive.

  At the very edge of the trees a generator truck was chugging softly away by itself; we followed the Uneof cables leading forward through the grove.

  The first thing we passed was a collection of small trolleys, drums of rubber-covered cables, and heaps of tarpaulins; seated on one heap, half a dozen men were playing cards in that private grunting language of men who’ve spent most of their lives playing cards together. Next, a small group of people sitting in folding canvas chairs, reading or sleeping or talking quietly; a couple of them nodded to J.B. as we went past. Finally there was just one man alone, wearing a vivid beach shirt and headphones and sitting at a small desk of electrical equipment, turning knobs and swearing softly to himself. He didn’t even notice us come past. After that we were at the holy place itself.

  There was a crescent ring of more people in more canvas chairs, looking a little older and spreading out of the chairs a little farther. Inside them was another crescent of tall arc lights blazing down towards the river. Somehow I hadn’t thought of anybody coming to Jamaica in high summer and bringing his own light, but I suppose there was a reason. And inside them, the camera itself.

  It took a moment to recognise it. It was mounted on a trolley placed on about fifteen yards of rails laid over a plank floor parallel to the river. Several people were standing around poking bits of the camera; the rest of the trolley was covered with men playing cards. For an epic, it all seemed very quiet and peaceful.

  ‘Are you sure I’m the man you want?’ I asked. ‘I’m lousy at cards.’

  J.B. glared at me, then turned to the nearest chair. ‘Where’s the Boss Man?’

  The man in the chair was youngish, with limp fair hair and a pale smile. He waved towards the river. ‘Over the other side. They’re just going to do the crossing-the-river-under-fire scene.’ He went back to staring at the wedge of yellow typescript. ‘Whatwould Spaniards shout while crossing a river under fire?’

  ‘Caramba?‘I suggested.

  He looked up balefully. ‘This isn’t television, you know.’

  The man next to him stretched his legs and said: ‘How about “Thirty-five bucks a day isn’t enough if I have to earn it by falling on my fanny in this goddamn river”?’

  The young man said sourly: ‘How does it sound in Spanish?’

  ‘Most inspiring but rather long.’ He looked up and gave me a very handsome but rather practised grin. I knew the face: he was one of the Latin lovers with a phoney-Spanish name like Luiz Montecristo or Montego or… yes: Monterrey. Luiz Monterrey. He’d had a few years starring in carnival-in-Rio type films just after the war, but by now the lean hatchet face was sagging a little, the neat black moustache had flecks of grey in it. He’d been playing the bandit chief or the aloof aristocrat in Whitmore films for the past several years.

  This time he was wearing a frilly silk shirt that was torn and smudged, whipcord riding breeches, and a cartridge bandolier slung across his chest.

  A voice by the camera shouted: ‘Where’s the dialogue?’

  The young man called hopefully:‘Viva el liberador!’

  That fell on stony ground all right. The voice said: ‘We’ll think up something later and dub it in. Right, let’s go. Luiz!’

  Luiz called: ‘Here,’ and didn’t move. Neither did anybody else.

  Another voice shouted: ‘Bill says he’s getting wind noise in the mike.’

  ‘There isn’t any wind. Let’s go.’

  ‘We need a scrim on that brute or you’ll have too much underlight by the tree.”

  ‘Put it up, then. Right? Let’s go.’

  ‘With that scrim you’ll have to come up to five-six in the pan.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s go.’

  ‘Bill says it must be the leaves rustling then.’

  ‘The leaves don’t rustle if there isn’t any wind. Let’s go.’

  ‘This is a tracking shot ending in a pan and a tilt with a change of focus and aperture. You want to zoom in as well and make movie history?’

  ‘Sell it to Hitchcock. Let’sgo.’

  ‘Bill says he thinks it must be water running.’

  ‘If he’d come out from behind that bloody tree he’d see we’re taking a shot of a bloody river! Let’sgo! ‘

  Suddenly Luiz put on a broad hat and walke
d down to the bank. The card players jumped off the trolley. It went very quiet.

  Two people shouted: ‘Quiet! ‘

  Then the camera trolley, pushed by the card-players, started to move. A dozen men ran into the water from the far side of the river, waving rifles. Spouts of water spat up around them with gunshot sounds, and several fell down. The rest waded on and threw themselves into the cover of the first palms as the camera reached the end of its rails.

  Although they’d only been some sort of waterproof fire-crackertouched off electrically, the gunshots had made me jump.

  Several people shouted again, the lights went off, the dead men climbed ashore and shook themselves like wet dogs, the card-players settled down on the edge of the trolley. The river flowed quiet and peaceful.

  J.B. said: ‘That looked good; they probably won’t want to go on that again. Let’s get to the Boss Man while they’re setting up the next one.’ I followed her down to the camera.

  You couldn’t mistake Whitmore. You were just surprised, stupidly, to find he looked so much like himself. Maybe you’d read too much about five-foot Hollywood heroes riding tall in the saddle. Not this boy: he was a clear six-foot-four in low-heeled boots, with a chest like a banqueting table and a skin of tanned horse-hide. The eyes really were permanently half-closed against the sun, the mouth really was set in a grim-humorous line, his voice really could have shifted a thousand longhorns up the Chisholm trail on volume alone. Somehow, you’d expected all this to switch off with the arc lights.

  Yet why? He’d been standing and talking and looking like that for thirty years and it had made him several million dollars. Even if it hadn’t begun that way, by now it was no more phoney than the way a bank clerk who’s been at the job thirty years looks like a bank clerk.

  J.B. was looking at me sideways, with a gleam of knowing amusement. ‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ she said softly. ‘I felt the same way, the first time.’

  ‘Him and the Eiffel Tower.’

  Whitmore was talking to the man who’d shouted ‘Let’s go’, presumably the director. About fifty, stoutish, with grey hair and moustache and looking like an English colonel with strong black market connections.

  They broke off as J.B. went forward. Whitmore said: ‘Hi. What’s new at the courthouse?’

  ‘I’vegot your flying boy. All signed up.’

  He looked at me, then reached out a huge bluntfingered hand. ‘Hi, fella. ‘ We shook hands. J.B. passed him the contract and he studied it.

  He was wearing a thin bush jacket, khaki drill trousers stuffed into high-laced paratroop boots, a webbing belt and army holster and a wide crumpled hat with a snakeskin band.

  He cocked his head at me in a gesture I knew as well as he did. ‘You were the boy out in Korea, right?’

  Here we went again. ‘That’s right, Mr Whitmore.’

  ‘How many d’you knock down out there?’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘How many d’you shoot at?’

  Three.’

  He let out a big bark of laughter. ‘That’s good enough for me. Anybody got a pen?’ He reached and tweaked the top of J.B.‘s bathing dress. ‘Got anything down there? No, not much.’

  Several people laughed. She grinned, quickly and vividly, unembarrassed. With him, the gesture had been a simple, boyish dirty joke.

  Whitmore raised his voice to Chisholm trail level. ‘I’m paying three writers and I can’t find a single goddamned pen!’ The director gave him a pen.

  He was about to sign when Luiz came up behind him, squelching in his wet boots and holding his damp trousers distastefully out from his legs. He looked, saw the contract, then looked at me and said sadly: ‘Don’t sign up with the Boss Man, my friend. You only end up with wet feet.’ Then, to Whitmore, he added: ‘He’s Commonwealth, I trust?’

  Whitmore looked at me sharply: ‘Youare a Commonwealth citizen, right?’

  ‘Yes.’ I was probably looking puzzled again.

  He signed with a quick rasping scribble and gave the pen back to the director, who looked at the nib sadly and tucked it away. Whitmore handed the contract to J.B. ‘Explain to him about Eady, honey.’ To me, he said: ‘Stick around for some chow, fella. We’ll talk then.’ Then he walked off with the familiar rolling stride, chatting to a distant group of raggedly-dressed actors in a voice that shivered the palm fronds.

  J.B. was studying me thoughtfully. ‘I think you just joined the club, Carr. The Boss Man likes that Korean stuff.’ Thethought didn’t seem to be brightening her day much.

  I said: ‘It was twelve years ago, for God’s sake.’

  ‘The Boss Man’s been around a long time. Come on: I’ll see if we can’t find a drink. They’ll probably break for lunch after the next shot.’ We went back through the grove to the lorry park.

  By then some of the drivers and helpers were setting up a number of long trestle tables and unfolding more canvas chairs, but not moving as if they were worried about the world ending first. J.B. went over to one of the station wagons, brought out a big Thermos bucket, and produced a couple of tins of American beer. I jabbed them with a pocket screwdriver and we sat down in the shade of the car.

  After a while I asked: ‘What’s all this Eady thing?’

  ‘Eady plan. It’s the ground rules for qualifying a picture as a British production. One’ – she raised a finger – ‘you’ve got to have a British company producing it. Two, eighty per cent of your salary budget has to go to Commonwealth citizens. Three, any studio work has to be done in Britain or Ireland. Then you qualify for Eady.’

  ‘Which is what?’

  ‘Sort of legal kick-back. They take a levy on all movie-house seats sold in Britain and pay it back to the producer as a percentage of his gross box-office take. It’s running about forty per cent, now.’

  I closed my eyes and thought for a moment. ‘You mean if he makes say, a bundled thousand he gets paid another forty? Two hundred thousand and he gets eighty?’

  ‘Right.’

  I stared. ‘Good times are here again, aren’t they?’

  She looked at me coldly. ‘Movies aren’t a way of printing your own money, Carr, the way they were before TV.’

  ‘I know: all that glitters isn’t gold; some of it’s diamonds. Who is Eady, anyway?’

  ‘Some guy in the British Treasury, I think.’

  ‘He knew his Bible, didn’t he? “To him that hath shall be given” and so forth.’

  ‘It works out that way. I guess it was originally supposed to help the small producers.’

  I thought for another moment. ‘Just explain to me how you makethis picture an Eady one. Apart from these boys’ – I nodded at the men setting up the tables – ‘the place isn’t exactly crowded with Commonwealth citizens.’

  ‘They’re there. The crew’s mostly British: director, camera, sound, lights, the grips. We got the script done in London. And you’re allowed to hold out two salaries when you come to figure your eighty per cent. Naturally you make them the highest ones: we made it female lead and Luiz.’

  ‘What about Whitmore?’

  ‘He’s not on salary. He takes a percentage of the picture.’

  I nodded. ‘I’m beginning to see the strategy. And to be a British company, I suppose you set one up specially in London?’

  ‘Nassau. The Bahamas count as British.’

  ‘So this is why you didn’t bring in an American pilot. I suppose I’m really quite a help to you: if you find you’re running under the eighty per cent, you can put up my pay and balance it out again.’

  ‘Don’t hope too hard. If we run under eighty, I’ll be fired the next day.’

  ‘Are you really going to cart everybody across the Atlantic to do the studio stuff?’

  She shook her head. ‘Pictures like this you don’t do studio work if you can help it. You script it so most of it’s outdoors, and when you got to have an interior you do that on location, too: with fast colour film you can do it with the lights you bring along anyway. We’re onl
y doing inside a couple of native huts and a hacienda: we’ll build that in the hangar up on the airstrip.’

  A larger-than-usual lizard with a light-green body, blue hips, and a bronze tail scuttled out from under the car, nodded several times, belched and puffed out his throat in a bright orange sac.

  J.B. frowned at him. ‘Whatever he’s doing, I wish he wouldn’t.’

  ‘Mating call. They call them Croakers. Belch back and you’ll have a new boy-friend.’

  ‘Another Method actor in blue jeans. Them, I can do without.’

  I got out my pipe and started to pack it. ‘Which reminds me -1 didn’t notice the feminine interest in the picture.’

  ‘Boss Man did all her scenes first and sent her back to the States to get her picture in the papers. They didn’t hit it off.’

  ‘Don’t tell me he prefers horses.’

  She shrugged. ‘Horses, guns, dogs, whisky, men. He’s not against women; he just thinks sex and thirst are itches you scratch. You buy a whisky in a bar, a woman in a cat-house. In his time off he goes hunting with the boys – and I mean in the mountains.’ She frowned down at her beer can. ‘I don’t know what damn business it is of yours.’

  I put a match to the pipe and breathed smoke away from her. ‘But he’s been married, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Three times. I got him out of the last one a few months ago. He didn’t exactly notice any of them; it was just the fashion. In those days it didn’t matter who you laid as long as you were married. Does movie gossip really interest you?’

  ‘He’s the man I’m working for. Same as you.’

  She nodded anddiensaid slowly and thoughtfully: ‘Don’t get him wrong, Carr. He’s a pro: he doesn’t act much, but he doesn’t need to. He’s never got an Oscar and never will and he honestly doesn’t give a damn. He knows what he’s selling and he doesn’t sell short: if he wasn’t in pictures he’d be busting horses in rodeos and going hunting and whoring and…’ She took a deep breath, ‘Christ, I don’tapprove of the big sonofabitch, but I like him.’