by Nick Cole
Soon the chopper descended into the north end of a small valley, all farms and two-lane roads. Large eucalyptus trees shielded the crops from the cruel coastal breezes. The co-pilot unbuckled his seat harness, knelt down on the front of the cargo deck, and pulled the canvas cover off a large heavy caliber machine gun. He strapped it to his waist and then the roof of the transport. Gingerly, he stepped out onto the landing skid, trailing a brass linked ammo belt.
The Great Director leaned forward and tapped the pilot on the shoulder, who with a knife-edged wave of his hand indicated he was too busy making the approach to answer questions. Below, trucks, tents, trailers, expensive cars, and costumed and less costumed people milled about over steaming cups of coffee, paper plates of fruit, and scrambled eggs. The chopper came in hard and fast through the light morning fog, flaring just above the ground for a moment before touching down.
Grips and various other techs ran forward, paying no attention to Sir Nigel and the Great Director. They worked with feverish intensity and fearful concentration at the unloading of the fine Japanese steaks and premium American whiskey. All were armed with weapons.
“Go go go!” shouted the pilot, maintaining the hum of the turbines, indicating that at a moment’s notice the deadly blades were ready to bend to his will and launch the whirlybird aloft once again.
The Great Director and Sir Nigel followed the crew as they hefted their burdens back toward the set, tramping through the overturned dirt clods of the field. Behind them, a tall, shaggy-haired assistant director-type, wearing cargo shorts and a logoed t-shirt, exchanged packets and mail with the flight crew.
“What do you think all this is about?” queried Sir Nigel, bending low to speak, as he was much taller than the Great Director.
“I…” started the Great Director as an air raid siren began to rise across the compound. For a moment, everyone stopped. Then with chilling awareness, as the urgent doomsday horn rose in pitch, people began to fling themselves to the ground or run for cover, pulling out rifles and pistols, loading and then aiming them skyward.
“What’s going on?” yelled the Great Director to the assistant director as the chopper rapidly ascended behind them. The co-pilot, standing on one skid, swiveled the mounted gun across the skyline. Wild, short bursts of gunfire erupted from the barrel at some unseen target. The assistant director introduced himself as Tony, and handing them each a pistol, he admonished them not to worry as the weapons were only filled with blanks.
“Why?” asked the Great Director.
“Just shoot back. It makes him happy.”
Tony the AD ran off firing wildly at an approaching P-51 Mustang, mocked up in Air Force silver, with matching bombs and machine guns hanging wickedly from its wings.
Sir Nigel folded his left hand behind his back, assumed a proper Sandhurst Military Academy pistol stance, and fired calculated shots that, had they been real, would have in all probability put a bullet between the pilot’s eyes.
The warplane came in low over the film set, jinking hard, first to the left then to the right. Grips and teamsters, along with make-up girls and PAs, began to fire back as the evil bird streaked across the sky above them, banked steeply to the right, and disappeared around a hill. The crew quickly reloaded their weapons as the drone of the aircraft could be heard distancing itself, and then at once it growled and returned in determined fury.
This time its attack seemed more earnest. A hairstylist screamed in frustration as the blanks she had been busy loading spilled out from between her trembling manicured hands. A soundman whose weapon jammed ran screaming into a nearby tent. The Great Director flung himself to the earth as the approaching plane made a dangerously low pass. Every fear he’d ever known seemed fully realized in the gust of wind that seemed to lift him off his belly as the plane tore itself away from the set.
“I say, I am out of ammunition. May I borrow your sidearm, old boy?” asked Sir Nigel calmly.
The Great Director held up his pistol awkwardly, making it somehow look unclean.
“Thank you so much,” said Sir Nigel. The pistol instantly looked right in Sir Nigel’s hand as he deftly cocked it with one thumb and began to fire back with loud reports that spat out at the approaching vulture.
Now the guns on the plane began to spray bright flashes of sharp light. The crew began to fall over, some flinging themselves to the ground as the imaginary bullets “killed” them. A few fired back, but most chose to die on the first lethal pass. Subsequent passes “killed” more and more of the crew, but not Sir Nigel, who wandered from “dead person” to “dead person,” finding new weapons with which to fire back. By the final pass, Sir Nigel had acquired a British BAR, and with short, timed bursts he stood his ground, firing back at the diving fighter.
As if on cue, black smoke began to emit from one of the pods beneath the plane. Instantly the engine began to stutter, and seconds later it had gone completely silent as the plane drifted low over Sir Nigel. Its landing gear rapidly came out and the plane barely cleared a row of eucalyptus trees before managing to land on a nearby county road.
Tony the AD came up breathlessly from behind some trucks and congratulated Sir Nigel.
“We thought it was impossible to shoot him down.” Tony looked skyward as he wiped a tear, or a piece of dirt, from his eye. “Great job! He said we’d get a special treat if we managed to kill him! Thank you! Thank you!” Tony, now openly weeping, pumped Sir Nigel’s hand up and down. His headset fell around his neck, and his clipboard, which he carried in his armpit, crashed to the ground, scattering important papers everywhere.
“Who was that?” asked the Great Director as he removed bits of earth from his face.
“That was WildBill,” said Tony, wiping away tears of joy.
“Why? Why? Why does he attack you?” screamed the now angry Great Director.
“Thank you, young man,” said Sir Nigel, disengaging his over-pumped arm from the weeping AD.
“He is an excellent pilot,” continued Sir Nigel. “A real professional by the way he made his first pass over the target.”
“What?” screeched the Great Director.
“He’s a professional. I knew it from the way he didn’t fire on his first pass. He was looking for targets. That’s the way the real ground attack pilots do it. Rather smashing show, I say.”
“Why? Why? Why with the running and screaming and the shooting into the air. Why?” demanded the Great Director, incredulous that once again he’d almost been killed while trying to avoid death.
“He says,” sobbed the AD, “he says… we have to die before we’re worthy to capture life on film.”
“Oh.”
***
An hour later, after parting ways with Sir Nigel, who was off to wardrobe and make-up, the Great Director wandered the limits of the set examining the vintage World War Two equipment and vehicles that had been brought in to re-create the era and conflict. Most of these were authentic, or pretty close to. He enjoyed imagining how these things would look and perform on film. For a moment he felt guilty. But he couldn’t name his accuser, and his unease seemed to mostly pass as the morning sun began to burn off the coastal fog. He continued to imagine using, or destroying, the props.
As for the crew, though there was the usual laughter and stories told in gaggling groups that usually befell a film set at mid-morning, there was also a pervasive sense of underlying tension. Sharp laughter often turned to hushed giggles. Stories told were prefaced with wary scans, searching for something or someone. Heads constantly panned back and forth over shoulders and all around, eyes searching for some unrevealed poltergeist.
Shortly, the Great Director came upon a vintage World War Two field tent. The detail and authenticity the set dressers had put into the piece had gone beyond the call of duty. It was a large green animal with two humps and a profusion of sandbags and machine guns. Outside, a small terrier s
lept chained to a signpost. One sign, facing east, read Berlin, and the other, pointing west, Betty Sue. A final wooden slat, indicating the interior of the tent and painted in jagged, white letters, displayed the single word Hell.
The Great Director pulled back one of the canvas flaps and was overwhelmed by a wave of must, sawdust, whiskey, and cigar smoke. Inside, a group of men, headed by WildBill, sat around a small olive green field desk, playing cards. The men finished their hands with various sighs of disgust and resignation. Only WildBill, smiling with his big gold tooth, Stetson hat, and mirrored aviator sunglasses, seemed to be enjoying the game—as evidenced by the small hoard of cash, chips, jewelry, and watches between his hairy paws.
WildBill, happy with his hand, refilled everyone’s glass from a white-labeled bottle of whiskey. His raw cackle machine-gun laugh ended in a terrible wheeze that didn’t seem to bother its owner one bit. For some reason none of the players seemed thrilled at being poured a free shot of bottom-shelf whiskey at nine thirty in the morning.
WildBill organized his cash into neat stacks, muttering happily to himself, and then looked at his compatriots with one final triumphant grin. In an instant his visage changed to mean. At once everyone, with false joviality and a gratefulness that could only be characterized as forced, raised their cut crystal tumblers and drank.
It was here their acting skills failed. The hot rush of burning fuel-grade whiskey was too much. Most managed to escape with a grimace and matching shudder. One had to fling himself up from his chair and rush past the Great Director out into the fresh air, where he made gut-wrenching sounds.
“Hell’s bells!” exclaimed WildBill. “That one can’t handle his liquor. There you are!” he said, acknowledging the Great Director. “Last time I saw you, you were in that field out there digging for dirt with your nose, while that Limey… while that Limey…”
WildBill began to choke. For a moment, he stared off to his left at some unseen event in the past. The rest of the card players used this as an excuse to exit, blaming sleep deprivation, work, and hunger. WildBill held up his hand, fighting back emotions that seemed to be igniting within his core like internal explosions on some torpedoed tramp freighter. He began to tremble.
“… That Limey was…” He stopped again, hunching over to shake like a sick stray dog. The Great Director remained standing, unsure whether to comfort or flee.
WildBill straightened up after a moment, his back ramrod stiff. He poured himself a shot. With one swift motion he set the bottle down and swiped the glass off the table, emptying the contents down his throat. He poured another shot and drank again.
“That Limey was beautiful.” He was steady now. “Glorious,” he whispered after a moment. “How ’bout a drink?”
“No. It’s a little early for me,” replied the Great Director.
“Wasn’t a request, son.” WildBill fixed the Great Director with another one of his evil-eyed grins, concentrating all the hate, loathing, and despair of his years as a complete lunatic into a broad-focused beam that made all who encountered it wither under its weight. WildBill poured a small shot and then a large one for himself.
“Come on, we’ll talk about movies and art. I can tell yer one-a them guys, likes to talk about it and all.” He smiled warmly.
“All right.”
“There’s a boy. Now drink up!”
The Great Director poured a quarter of the shot down the side of his face, instantly aggravating the razor burn from his morning shave, which seemed a thing of the far past in light of recent events and current surroundings. WildBill cackled wickedly, laughing at the Great Director’s wrong, as if there were a right way to swallow gutter liquor at nine thirty in the morning.
“Ah, hell!” cried WildBill, feigning disgust at the lack of technique displayed by the Great Director. He swiped his own shot from the table, upended it into his gaping maw, and instantly poured another two fingers for each of them.
The Great Director tried to decline in a clear voice, but what came out through his watery eyes, convulsing chest, and scorched vocal cords was more man-frog than human voice.
“They don’t make ’em like they used to, that’s fer sure!” proclaimed WildBill. Then he nodded to the Great Director’s shot glass, indicating they should toast something.
“To Hawks!”
Reluctantly the Great Director joined in, and this time got it marginally right. Most of the liquor made it into his mouth and it didn’t burn so much, the first shot having anesthetized, or removed completely, the lining of his throat.
WildBill poured another round with the same swift motions.
“To Ford!” Another round.
“To Capra!” Another round.
“To Hitchcock!” Another round.
For a moment there was an orchestral instance of nothing, as though there had not been a “before” and what was to happen next was just moments from starting. Then the room spun wildly for the Great Director, and he found it easier to look at the center of the table; in fact, it was easier for him to close his eyes and lay his face down on its surface. Somewhere—he was not exactly sure where, but he thought above him was the most likely of directions—he heard WildBill fumble around for the name of another director to add to their pantheon.
“That guy… who made the… the film… you know… ‘We’ll meet again, don’t know how.’ Join me, c’mon… ‘Don’t know how don’t know when, but we’ll meet again someday.’ Then they execute those guys.”
“Kubrick,” mumbled the Great Director.
“Really?” asked WildBill.
“Yup. And it’s two films you’re running together.”
“Well… someone oughta run ’em together and make one giant, great big… film.”
WildBill leaned back in his chair, making a marquee with his splayed dirty fingers slowly expanding. He matched it with an accompanying whispered explosion. “This!” he proclaimed quietly.
“I’d buy a ticket,” mumbled the Great Director.
“That’s what I’m tryin’ to do here. But no one gets it. They never do.”
“What?” asked the Great Director.
“What?” replied WildBill, who had begun to whisper curses at some unseen foe who was not present in the tent.
“What are you trying to do?” asked the Great Director again.
“Get it right. I see it here,” he said, rapping his skull with two thick knuckles. “And I know it’s here. But it never comes out that way. So I try again. I’m always tryin’.”
“I like your films,” said the Great Director, and exhaled in a singsong sigh.
“Man, I hate ’em. I can’t stand to be near ’em once I finish with ’em. I fall in love with every foot of film I ever shoot while I’m shootin’. All of it’s great. I have never been disappointed by one thing I’ve shot. It’s later, when I put ’em all together, I begin to hate ’em. I’ll tell you what I wish I could do, and I’m gonna do it, someday. I’m just gonna shoot random things. Things I like. Scenes. Long shots of an object. The morning ocean from twenty-five thousand feet headed west over the Pacific. A young girl with freckles and red hair eatin’ a green apple. The hoe of an old man working in a field. Things like that. Then I’m gonna tell everyone that none of this means anything. It doesn’t connect, don’t even try. It’s just my mind, man. That’s it!” WildBill paused, seeing everything already shot and cut together. The picture that finally explained who he was to the rest of the world.
“You know what they’ll do?” huffed the Great Director, his eyes closed, his numbed face lying in a puddle of his own drool.
“What’ll they do?”
“You’re challenging them. They’ll make sense of it. They’ll find meaning, closure, whatever. You’ll fail, Bill.”
“Yeah, guess yer right.” WildBill grabbed the bottle and poured himself another shot. The bottle was getting low.<
br />
“Pretty smart though. Make the audience do the work. I’d be your cameraman, Bill. That’s it. It’s a deal. You make that movie and I’ll shoot it for you.”
A reflective whiskey-tinged blast erupted from within WildBill.
“Ooo-weeee, yer a wildcat. You do like to get crazy.”
“I guess I do, Bill. I guess I do,” sighed the Great Director.
“I can tell. It’s the only way to stay alive in this business. Be crazier than it is. Otherwise yer a dead man for sure.”
“That’s for true, Bill.”
“Come on, let’s go for a walk.”
They got up, unsteady on their feet, and moments later they were waddling along a row of tents through the heady late morning air. Tony the AD walked over to WildBill much like an animal control officer might approach a feral bobcat.
“We’ll be ready in fifteen. Should I tell the pilots?”
“Yeah, why not.” WildBill seemed to be lost between the sky he kept looking at and the rock he’d been kicking in front of him as he crossed the set.
They entered a field where a temporary airstrip had been set up. At the near end of the freshly carved gash of chocolate-colored dirt that served as the runway, a B-26 Marauder loomed silently on three long-legged landing gears. Below it lay camera equipment cases, and in the rear gunner’s turret a camera crew could be seen working.
Without the slightest abatement in their meandering pace, the pair walked around the plane to the right side of the fuselage, where they encountered a ladder leading up to the cockpit.
“We’re going to shoot a battlefield scene today, and I want to get some coverage from the air. Wanna go? There’s room,” said WildBill.
The Great Director considered the offer for a moment. He paused to look at the airworthiness of the craft and reassure himself that he’d heard the AD say there were going to be pilots, which meant that someone other than WildBill would be flying the plane. He hoped the pilots would appear instantly to reassure him. They didn’t.