The Fourth Wall

by Williams, Walter Jon

  “A real line, Mr. Makin,” she says.

  All right, I think. I don’t know who the hell you are, but I’m going to knock your eyes right out of your head.

  “Teach not thy lips such scorn,” I say, “for they were made for kissing, lady, not for such contempt.”

  It’s Richard III, Act I, Scene II, where Richard seduces Lady Anne, whose husband he has just killed on the battlefield. I happen to know a lot of Richard’s speeches because last year I was trying to get a production off the ground, with myself in the title role. You might think this an odd ambition, a former sitcom star playing the lead in classic Shakespeare drama…but when I thought about it all through the lens of my perfect desperation, I figured Richard was deformed, and I am strange-looking, so it seemed a perfect fit. In the end no one but me thought I was right for the part.

  I give Carter-Ann the speech at close range, as intense as I can make it, my large eyes staring into hers. I stay more or less in the posture that Carter-Ann set me in, though I allow myself to turn my shoulders toward her and make small gestures with my arms.

  The odd thing is that it’s a speech of seduction—Richard is supposed to get on his knees and offer to let Lady Anne run him through with a sword—but I don’t play it that way. I tower over Carter-Ann, so I loom over her and command her to love me, kill me, love me. Carter-Ann looks up at me with a half-frown, as if she’s trying to puzzle me out.

  “Take up the sword again,” I finish, “or take up me.”

  There is a moment’s silence. Then Carter-Ann offers a sunny smile.

  “Thank you, Mr. Makin,” she says. “That was very nice.”

  Nice. My ferocious Richard of Gloster glare freezes to my face. Carter-Ann turns to go back to her seat.

  If she says your behavior is heinous, I think, after Cole Porter, kick her right in the Coriolanus.

  I restrain my foot and look at Tessa.

  “Cut,” she says. Then, to me, “Let’s move on, shall we?”

  “Sure.” I break out of the stance that Carter-Ann put me into and move around the little set. My nerve endings are still tingling with the aftereffects of the confrontation.

  “Shall we do the first scene?” Tessa asks.

  “Fine,” I say. “Which is the first scene?”

  There is some laughter from out of the darkness.

  “The exposition scene,” Tessa says. “Roheen and Amir.”

  “Okay,” I say. I think about the scene for a moment. “Can I ask a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “What is this scene actually about? And who is Amir exactly?”

  There is more laughter. Tessa comes onto the set so she can speak to me more easily.

  “You know as much as I do,” she says. “The script is a secret.”

  “So you have no context for this?” I ask. “You don’t know what happened in the previous scene, what leads into this?”

  “I don’t know anything,” Tessa says.

  “Why am I saying these lines?” I ask.

  There’s silence.

  “Just act the hell out of the scene,” Tessa says finally. “Screw the context.”

  Carter-Ann’s double-reed voice comes out of her corner.

  “Roheen’s just survived an attack,” she says. “Amir is a young boy who’s helped him out.”

  Of course, I thought, Carter-Ann is the only person here who knows what’s going on. Because otherwise this would not be Hell.

  I walk to the edge of the set and look for Carter-Ann.

  “And these ‘Tellurian Gates’ that I’m talking about?”

  There is a half-second’s hesitation, just enough to convince me that whatever Carter-Ann says next is not going to be true.

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you,” she says.

  I reply to her half-second’s hesitation with one of my own, just to let her know that she’s been busted. “Thanks,” I say.

  I take a little tour of the set, the plastic chair, the little wooden table. Then I decide that the chair is going to stand in for Amir, so I kneel next to it.

  When talking to a child, I figure, you try to get on his level so you can achieve eye contact.

  Tessa gets the set quiet and puts two cameras on me, one in a close-up, the other in a cowboy shot, from mid-thigh upward. The guy with the clapperboard runs in, claps, runs out again.

  “I need the first line,” I say.

  “‘Are you all right?’” Tessa reads.

  “Are you all right?” I say. “You weren’t hurt?” I’m in character now, and I’ve got the lines, and I’m talking to the chair that is Amir.

  One of the worst things about auditions is that you don’t often get to work with another actor. You’re trying to stay in character, but the person feeding you lines is someone’s assistant who speaks in a monotone, or who can’t pronounce any word with more than six letters, or who can’t read at all. You’re trying to do a love scene with someone named Monique, and the person reading Monique’s lines is an unshaven guy named Bernard who’s talking through a mouthful of Fritos.

  Thank God Tessa is an actor as well as a director. She feeds me the lines beautifully, using her own skill to shape the character of Amir. She places herself so that the chair stays between us, and I can look up from the chair/Amir and see her.

  Directors tend to be a bit remote these days, staying in a special room or tent where they can see everything on video and control everything remotely. Some of them might as well be in Tibet. But Tessa is right there on the set, her warm voice supporting me.

  The scene is mostly Roheen explaining things—it’s exposition. Exposition can be deadly, because it’s hard to rattle out a lot of information and make it seem natural. Apparently Dagmar, or Carter-Ann or somebody, wants to know if I can make exposition look good.

  I figure that Roheen and Amir have just been attacked somehow, shot at or whatever, so it’s natural if Roheen is still keyed up. And I am keyed up, I’m pissed at having my future at stake in this audition and not knowing enough to be able to do a good job, so I use that anger to drive my performance, give an edge to the words. I’m right there, I’m completely in the zone, and somehow Tessa and Carter-Ann, between the two of them, got me there.

  Tessa goes into her little tent to review the recordings, and then comes out and tells me she doesn’t need a second take.

  There are lots of takes on the second scene. It’s an action scene, with attacks by an airplane and an armored car and a bunch of gunmen on foot. I have to imagine all this coming at me, and I have to imagine that I’m with another juvenile named Vitalia, whom I’m trying to keep from being killed.

  Dagmar said there would be a lot of green screen in this project. I told her I’d have no problem. Now I have to prove it.

  Tessa helps me locate all the various imaginary objects in space, so I can track them with my eyes. And I spend half an hour hiding behind the little table, or low-crawling from one location to another, or carrying the chair—standing in this time for Vitalia—to safety. At least I don’t have to wear the Dr. Zaius jacket: apparently Roheen loses it early in the movie and just wears street clothes.

  After the second scene we all take a break. I sprawl in a chair with a cup of coffee while Tessa goes into her tent to view the scenes as the camera saw them. I imagine her viewing me crawling around like a four-year-old in a sandbox while I pretend to dodge an armored car, and I laugh.

  Tessa comes out of her tent, and asks me if I’m ready for the next scene.

  “This is an awfully long audition,” I say.

  “The scenes are short.” At least she doesn’t insist that it’s a test, not an audition. By now we’ve all forgotten that we were supposed to believe that.

  “And it’s comprehensive,” I say. Because the scenes call on a number of different skills, so that Dagmar, or whoever, can get a good idea of my range. I deliver exposition, I react to imaginary threats, and in the third scene I have some juicy emotional moments.

 
; The next scene is what you might call a conversion scene, a scene where the character articulates the changes that have occurred in his character during the course of the story.

  It’s a curious thing that the protagonists of films are expected to change during the course of the drama. It’s practically required. What’s your character’s journey? is the question that every half-wit producer knows to ask during a pitch session.

  But in my experience, real people don’t change that much. My father is a con man. I imagine he was a con man when he was five years old, and when he’s on his deathbed he’ll be trying to scam the hospital.

  Cleve will be second-rate no matter where he ends up. No matter how successful Tessa becomes in her new career, somewhere in her head she’ll still be the teenager who lived through four years of the entire country making fun of her weight. My formative experiences all occurred before I was twenty, and since then I haven’t altered to any great extent. I’m the same person I was when I was thirteen, just older, less successful, and much more sexually frustrated.

  Movies used to reflect that. Bogart didn’t develop, he was Bogart all the time. Clark Gable was Clark Gable from beginning to end. So was Joan Crawford.

  But that’s not what happens to movie protagonists now. They change. They grow. They expand, or sometimes contract. And so does Roheen. At some point in his journey, he realizes he owes a debt of gratitude to those who have helped him on his quest or whatever, and he offers his insights on the matter to yet another juvenile companion, someone named Khabane.

  Apparently—in addition to dodging planes and armored cars—Roheen goes around collecting young people of diverse ethnic backgrounds. For what purpose, the three short scenes don’t make clear.

  I look up at Tessa. “Give me a minute, okay?”

  “Whenever you’re ready.”

  I drink my coffee slowly while I review the scene mentally, then I get up and look for Tessa again.

  “What is Roheen changing from?” I ask.

  “Sorry?”

  “This scene marks a change in Roheen, but I don’t really know who he’s been before. Was he confused, or afraid, or a selfish prick…what was he?”

  Tessa raises an eyebrow. For a second I recognize the glance she gave Kendra Toamasina in every episode of Life on Top, just before she tried—and generally failed—to shut her sister down.

  “Sean,” she says, “I have no damn idea.” Her brown eyes travel in the direction of Carter-Ann, who is talking to one of her assistants, a tall, pale blond man. He carries a tablet computer, and the screen illuminates his face from below, giving it a ghostly, bluish quality.

  “You could ask the shrink lady,” Tessa says.

  I raise my eyebrows. “She’s a shrink?”

  She nods. “Psychiatrist.”

  “Whose?” I’m completely at a loss. Who the hell assigns a psychiatrist to a movie set? I suppose I could understand if one of the actors were on the edge of a breakdown, and irreplaceable; but I’m the only actor here, and not only do I not need a minder, but I could be replaced in about ten seconds.

  Tessa shrugs. Her voice is pitched low so that Carter-Ann won’t overhear. “She’s why Joey isn’t here. He can’t stand her.”

  If Carter-Ann interferes with Joey the way she interferes with Tessa, the wonder isn’t that Joey hates her, it’s that she’s not in traction.

  “Won’t hurt to ask her, I guess,” I say.

  I wait for Carter-Ann’s assistant to leave, and then I approach her.

  “Dr. Dixon?” I say.

  She doesn’t blink when I call her Doctor, but stands with her hands folded neatly before her abdomen in an attitude of polite expectation. Her weight is distributed evenly over her feet. I realize that her body is very controlled, that she’s paying as much attention to kinesics as any actor.

  “Can I help you, Mr. Makin?” she asks. We are being very Old World polite today.

  “I can see in this scene that Roheen has changed,” I say, and then I explain my question. While I’m speaking, she cocks her head to show that she’s paying attention, and then when I’m done the head comes level and she looks at me with her blue eyes. She isn’t looking right into my eyes, which could either be erotic or a challenge depending on the context, but instead she has a soft focus on my face. Showing that she’s interested, but not interested.

  “That’s a very good observation, Mr. Makin,” she says. “Let me see if I can help you.” Her eyes look away into the dark distance of the soundstage, and then she turns back to me.

  “Roheen isn’t a bad person,” she says. “But he’s been preoccupied with his own problems. People are after him, and he has to get somewhere in order to accomplish his…”

  “Mission?” I suggest.

  She shakes her head. “No. It’s not like he’s a soldier with an assignment. But he has a task that’s vital to him. And he’s very much focused on that until he realizes…” She thinks again.

  I recall what Dagmar told me at our lunch. “That he’s in service to a higher ideal?” I suggest.

  Her blue eyes glitter with interest. There’s something mantis-like about her gaze, something intent and predatory, and I’m instantly uncomfortable.

  “That’s very astute, Mr. Makin,” she says.

  I want badly to escape her scrutiny. “Thank you, Doctor. You’ve helped a lot.”

  “You’re very welcome.” As I start to move off, she calls after me. “Remember to turn your palms outward, Mr. Makin.”

  It takes a few minutes more before I’m ready to do my scene. I have to think about where Roheen is coming from and where he’s going. He’s not Dagmar’s angel yet, I reckon, but this is where he makes the choice to become that person. He’s been beset by problems, but this is where he realizes that the problems of other people also matter to him.

  Once again I get on one knee, and the chair becomes my interlocutor. Tessa stands off camera, behind the chair where I can see her, and reads Khabane’s lines.

  What’s happening is revelation. It’s Roheen discovering who he’s been all along without knowing, and at the same time it’s me showing Roheen’s discovery to the audience. I try to show the process, the way Roheen is finding out his own nature. It’s not in the dialogue, it’s behind the dialogue, in my expression, in my eyes. It’s a technical challenge and I wish I could call for an eye light—basically a kind of pencil light they shine into your eyes to get a reflection—because that would show a shimmer in my eyes that might help to suggest Roheen’s internal process.

  I remember to turn my palms outward. Screw you, Dr. Dixon.

  The scene isn’t very long. Tessa calls for another take, then another. After the third she goes into her tent to view the results. I amble up to Markie, the grip, and ask if he’s got an eye light.

  “Sure.”

  So when Tessa comes out for the fourth take, Arthur the electrician is lying on the floor shining the light in my eyes while Markie critically observes the effect. Tessa says nothing, just asks if I’m ready.

  After the fourth take, she tells me I can go home.

  I make a point of thanking everybody on the set. I want them all to think, Hey, what a nice guy. How easy he is to work with. If I’m ever in a situation where I can find him work, I definitely want to do that. Because he won’t be a pain in the ass like that guy we just fired.

  When I go up to Tessa, she’s talking to Carter-Ann.

  “You’ll get me the dailies?” Carter-Ann says.

  “I’ll do some cursory editing, then zap them to you.”

  Carter-Ann gets out her cell phone and walks away. I decide that I’ve already thanked her enough, and turn to Tessa.

  “She gets dailies?” I say.

  Tessa nods.

  “Why?” I ask. “What’s going on?”

  She spreads her hands. “I only do what I’m told, man.”

  I thank her for helping me, suggest that we get together some time before she leaves for Namibia, and then grab the Dr.
Zaius jacket and leave. The makeup artist has locked his studio and left, but that’s all right, I can take off the makeup at home. I find Jaydee behind her desk amid a scent of alcohol and citrus. She’s listening to talk radio and drinking a glass of sweet vermouth over ice, with a slice of orange.

  She turns off the radio. “Go well?” she asks.

  “I think so,” I say. “But I’ve been wrong before.” Jaydee starts to stand up, to put the jacket back on its hanger, but I wave her back to her seat and put the jacket in its place.

  “Want a drink?” Jaydee asks, rattling the ice in her glass.

  I consider this. After the rigors of the audition, a muscle relaxant is definitely in order.

  “You bet,” I say.

  She makes me a drink and refreshes her own. I find a chair and take a welcome sip. The mix of sweetness and citrus is welcome. I realize I’m very thirsty and I take a big gulp. Spinal kinks that I didn’t know I possessed begin to relax. I look at Jaydee.

  “Do you know anything about this psychiatrist that’s on set?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why would you have a shrink on the set? During an audition?”

  Jaydee waves her glass. “They’re not movie people, that’s all I know.”

  I start to take another gulp of my drink, then discipline myself to take just a sip. I don’t want to get loaded before driving home, not even on vermouth. The problem with my history of DUI is that the law doesn’t know I was faking it.

  Jaydee, who has no scruples in this regard, takes a swig from her own glass.

  “Have you seen Joey?” I ask.

  “Yeah. He hired me.” She laughs. “It was good to see him.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  Her lips give a little quirk. “He’s more Joey than ever.”

  By which she means aggressive, explosive, controlling, temperamental, brilliant, and short.

  “Jean-Marc is DP,” she continues. “Allison will be editing, and Jane Haskill’s doing the music.”

  I’m impressed. “That’s quite a lineup.”

  “And after all this time,” Jaydee laughs, “we’re all still friends.”