by Nick Cole
I wish further that I could tell you that by the time he had his first mouthful of waffles, chewing hungrily, looking at Mad magazine as he ate, he’d forgotten he’d ever lived an entire life in one night. That he’d only dreamt he died in that office.
I wish I could tell you that.
But I can’t.
The Great Director closes his eyes and prepares to die. He smiles a little. That will make his wife happy. It will be his last gift to her.
When she sees the body, there should be a smile on my lips. That will be a good death, he thinks.
That is the love of wanting something good for someone you love, even when you are clearly dying.
“Oh, you don’t look well.” It’s a calm voice, and it is undoubtedly the voice of Dr. Murata, Chiropractor.
The Great Director opens his eyes expecting to see a wizened old Japanese man. Instead he’s greeted by a well-built young Asian-American, who smiles at the Great Director.
“Can you stand up?” asks the young doctor in his quiet yet powerful voice.
The Great Director shakes his head.
“Okay,” Dr. Murata says gently. He reaches down. With huge, well-built arms, he gently helps the Great Director to his feet. Confidence and strength radiate from his touch. For a brief moment the Great Director wonders if he feels better.
“It’s my heart,” says the Great Director weakly.
“Oh,” says Dr. Murata with such genuine concern that the Great Director allows himself a moment to hope that he might survive. The young doctor raises two nimble fingers to the Great Director’s neck. Then he feels for the pulse on his wrist. Finally he reaches inside the Great Director’s shirt and places his fingers over his heart.
“No. Your heart is very strong,” says the young doctor cautiously.
“It is?”
“It’s good.” Dr. Murata nods hopefully.
A wave of pain sweeps through the Great Director’s body. It radiates out from his spine and into his chest. He grits his teeth, closing his eyes, and says, “Then how come I’m having so much chest pain?”
“Ah,” says Dr. Murata softly. “That seems to be another answer altogether.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Come with me.”
And the Great Director does. Dr. Murata takes him to a room with a table that rises up and down. He explains a few things, the first being that the Great Director has terrible posture. As soon as Dr. Murata told the Great Director his heart was fine, he noticed the Great Director dropped his shoulders heavily, causing weight to come down on his spine. He assures the Great Director this is probably due to his years of craning his neck forward and slumping his shoulders to get his face into a camera eyepiece. This has probably caused a lot of damage to his neck and back. He tells the Great Director he often sees a lot of camera operators with this same problem.
He lays the Great Director face down on the table and begins to firmly massage his mid-back. Instantly, the Great Director’s contracted muscles turn to melting butter. Then Dr. Murata administers a series of short, firm pushes in an upward motion along his spine. A cascade of releasing pops emit from the Great Director’s vertebrae. The Great Director begins to blink and grunt. Dr. Murata raises the table and asks the Great Director to turn over onto his back. He has the Great Director clasp his arms around Dr. Murata’s shoulders. Dr. Murata leans over, almost lying on top of him.
There’s a moment of apprehension at the awkwardness of the position.
Dr. Murata whispers quietly, “Hang on.”
The Great Director is seized by helpless fear as Dr. Murata begins a series of heaving thrusts that cause a symphony of loud, dry snaps to release from the Great Director’s back. The young doctor continues to heave and squeeze long after the Great Director has expelled all the air in his lungs. At one point he even yelps in a loud whisper on one particularly violent thrust. Still, Dr. Murata heaves away until at last he has released all the hidden pops and snaps from the base of the Great Director’s spine to the top of his neck.
He eases the Great Director back onto the table and stands up, breathing heavily.
“Rest for a moment,” says Dr. Murata through short breathy gasps for air. Then he turns and walks out of the room, turning off the light as he goes.
The Great Director lies on the table sobbing silently. Wet tears roll down his cheeks. He feels everything. Even the things he didn’t know were missing. Gone are the chest pains, back pains, neck pains, leg pains, all the pains he has accrued through all the years of lifting camera crates, leaning into eyepieces, focusing on monitors in dark editing bays, sleeping on airplanes, stepping off curbs too hard, getting hit from touch football, falling out of trees, running away from mean dogs, fear, insecurity, paranoia…
Every muscle, from the top of his scalp to the thick muscles on the edges of his feet, is melting into soft butter. Warm chunks, dissolving into waterfalls of liquid. Disappearing forever.
The Great Director lies in the darkness and sobs for himself and himself only. All the years he has spent racked with unknown and forgotten pains are gone. He is left with a fading sense of shame for himself and the way he has behaved. He sees now the meanness of his attitude. How he has treated his fellow men and women. He has not been kind. He wonders if he has ever done any good to any other living being within the span of his life. He sees the sadness in so many lives. He thinks of Mindy, in the other room, reading a trade magazine in all likelihood. Always moving, never stopping. Didn’t she say something to him once? Something sad. Something about a best friend in college who killed herself. How sad that must have been for her, thought the Great Director. Then there is Kim, his assistant. Why is she always so mad? Or is it sad? He doesn’t know. He suspects he has something to do with it. One time, or maybe several times, she mentioned someone named Mark. Mark was always waiting for Kim. Waiting while she ran to pick up the Great Director and do all his endless errands. Mark understood when weekend or evening plans had to be cancelled for late-night script changes. Mark always understood. Lately Kim hadn’t mentioned Mark much. Maybe Mark didn’t understand anymore.
The Great Director weeps shamelessly. He weeps for the loneliness of Kim’s life, knowing he is somehow responsible for it.
He weeps for others: Kurt and Terri, the crew, WildBill, Kip, Scott the AD, actors and actresses, all of them trading everything for a few moments of flickering light in the dark. Gardeners and valet attendants working too hard for his thankless tips. Why didn’t he tip more at restaurants? Aren’t all waiters actors working too hard for far too little? Spending their youth in pursuit of a fleeting dream. If he’d just taken a moment to be involved in their lives or simply told them, “Keep going, you can do it, don’t give up,” maybe it would have made a difference for them. But he didn’t. He merely foisted cash on them and left. Leaving them to themselves. Leaving them to wonder if they were of any value to anyone.
Why did he isolate himself from humanity? He ruined a film that is probably now packing up in defeat. People will lose their jobs and their good standing. But that is not the worst thing he can imagine them losing. What if they lose their faith? What if they give up, because of him?
Dr. Murata returns. “How do you feel?” he whispers softly.
“Sad,” the Great Director confesses after a slight pause.
“That’s normal. The releases we achieved had you really bound up. Right now you’re feeling freedom from those things. Soon you’re going to feel a really nice rush of endorphins. You’ll feel very positive.”
“Will it last?”
“No,” says Dr. Murata softly as he sits down in the chair next to the table. “It doesn’t last.”
“That’s too bad.”
The office is very quiet. They can hear Mindy turn the page of a magazine in the next room.
“No, it’s just right,” begins Dr. Murata. “We need
to feel both good and bad, happy and sad. We can’t ignore one and favor the other. When we do, we get out of balance, just like your body has been for what I can only assume has been several years. Now, when you feel bad in your body, it means something’s not working right. It’s out of alignment or broken. When it does, come to me, and I will fix it, if I can. But that pain, it’s a good thing, a necessary thing. And so is the sorrow. If you were happy all the time, you wouldn’t be able to tell if you were hurting. And you would just go on hurting, pretending you’re really not in pain. The mind is the greatest partner in the lies we tell ourselves. Many people would rather feel nothing than feel pain. So they make themselves happy with other things. Eventually they forget how to feel bad when they need to.”
The Great Director thinks about this. Dr. Murata helps him up from the table after raising it to a more or less upright position. His mind and body feel… what is the word… he can’t think of it… then he does.
Harmony.
He feels great. He can feel oxygen flowing through every part of his body. Upon realizing this, his mind quickly reacts, attempting to stop the waves of good feelings coursing through him. His mind reminds him the production is in all likelihood packing up and going home, shots missing, frustration and defeat abounding. All because of him.
He’s okay with that, for now at least. He can deal with it.
But his mind doesn’t like the new confidence, and it reacts once more, jabbing bitter tendrils of fear into his brain. It won’t last, it screams. These “good vibrations” will fade. Reality will carry the day courtesy of your old friend “defeat.”
Maybe not, he thinks defiantly. Like some tiny yet determined child who’s been bullied long enough. Maybe not.
He walks into the small lobby. Mindy stands up, the page of her entertainment magazine flipped open to a pictorial of some Hollywood starlet’s secret hideaway. A four-story glass and chrome monstrosity the actress calls a “cabin” with a private airport she keeps to “get back to nature.”
“Mindy, call the set. We’ll be there in ten.”
***
The little Volkswagen Bug growls its way into the eastern suburbs. Mindy drives like a madwoman. Had she selected a profession other than the one she has chosen, she would have been well served pursuing anything that required her to drive automobiles like an insane person experiencing brief moments of lucid clarity.
The Great Director reflects on the words of Dr. Murata, who encouraged the Great Director to return often and then admonished him with the word, “Posture!” The Great Director is now to be cognizant, at all times, of his body’s position and the alignment of his spine.
And of balance.
The call Mindy places to the set, while driving, is filled with both good and dire news. The good news is that the Great Director has barely been missed. The special effects sequences took longer to set up than anyone planned, and only now is the set ready. The dire news is that the Fat Man is in a limo and heading toward the set with his lawyers, who are already screaming at Jay Jameson via cell phone to cease production immediately. It is highly doubtful there will be time enough for even one shot.
The Great Director grabs the phone as Mindy blows through a stoplight with the barest of sideways glances while simultaneously popping in a CD labeled Destiny. “Get those choppers in the air now!” he shouts. “We’ll be there in five.” The Great Director ends the call and nods at Mindy. She changes lanes with the nonchalance of a veteran fighter pilot going for lock-on and smashes the accelerator of the Bug to attack speed. He looks at her, laughing.
“What?” she asks.
“Nothing.” He laughs again. No—he LOLs.
“Tell me,” she demands, giggling.
“Just… thanks for coming to get me. I think you saved my life.” He is not laughing now.
“You big silly, I couldn’t just leave you there, lying in the road like a sack of potatoes.”
She chuckles away his sudden seriousness.
He looks down into his lap, thinking for a moment.
“Why?” he asks earnestly.
“Because.” She too stops laughing, but her manner is still light as she stares down the road ahead of them. “We’re all in this together.”
“Thank you,” says the Great Director after a moment.
The little Bug tears down the streets. At one point Mindy accelerates into a hairpin turn, then weaves immediately in front of a transit bus to avoid a slow-moving delivery truck. The Bug shoots forward with almost terminal speed.
The Great Director is no longer afraid.
What had at first been a collection of stirring string music now resolves itself into the full fury of Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries. Horns thunder from the Bug’s speakers.
And still he is not afraid.
Mindy flings the Bug into another turn and accelerates with frightening prowess, never once using the brake. Above, the Great Director can see the eight helicopters, his choppers, to the northeast. They’re setting up for their attack run across the set. The cell phone rings, and would not have been heard if the Great Director hadn’t felt its vibration. He answers quickly.
“They’re at the front barricade!” shouts Jay into the phone.
“Is everything ready?” shouts back the Great Director.
Mindy barely keeps two wheels on the ground as the Bug corners an extremely tight turn, foolishly crowding out a tractor-trailer attempting to make the same turn. The Great Director shoots Mindy a fighter pilot’s thumbs-up. She smiles back bashfully, then returns to her look of fierce concentration.
“It’s ready! It’s ready!” comes the frantic voice across the void that separates the Great Director from the set. It’s Kip’s voice. Jay Jameson can be heard arguing loudly with a cacophony of voices in the background.
“Call action! Call action!” hollers the Great Director.
Yelling in the background leaps skyward with angry shouts.
For a moment Kip says nothing.
That Jay is engaged in a shouting match with a gaggle of men in suits is clear. Now the Great Director is ordering Kip to start the scene.
Of all the people in Hollywood, no one, no professional, would ever call action. No one would take on that liability amid circling lawyers threatening lawsuits of every kind. No one would show that kind of reckless leadership, or brave stupidity.
No one.
“Action!” bellows Kip.
A series of explosions erupts across the sky. The choppers, now in a holding formation making small turns, dive toward the set. Gunfire begins to ring out.
The little Bug roars down the last straightaway. The shot is being captured. The helicopters are nearing the set as the Bug hurtles toward an intersection that begins with a shallow dip and quickly rises up in the middle, creating a small ramp. It is this dip and ramp combination that causes the Bug to at last attain the airborne status it has been seeking throughout the mad dash to the set.
For a brief moment, the helicopters pass in front of the windshield. The sun glares brightly across a burning blue sky. Wagner thunders out his last defiant blasts of glory, a true Valkyrie at the wheel. Years later, when the Great Director is old, he will chuckle and mumble, “Flight of the Mini Valkyrie” to himself. The grandchild playing at his feet will look up at him and smile, and the old man he will someday be will smile back. A small happy memory from a time very long ago. Who will ever believe he experienced such things, lived such adventures?
The Bug brakes to a sharp halt. With only the slightest loss of momentum, the Great Director runs forward to the camera position. Explosions send waves of heat and debris flying at him. He is scarcely noticed as the choppers pass overhead, rattling out gunfire, beating out a cadence of destruction in their whirling blades.
“Hold it!” says the cameraman.
“What?” asks Scott the AD.
<
br /> “There’re two baby cats in the shot.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” someone objects.
“Kittens,” corrects the Great Director.
“Whatever. There are two cats in the shot. They’re crouching near an effect that’s about to go off. They’re going to get hurt. Cut the shot. Cut the shot!”
“Where?” someone else shrieks.
“There! Next to that debris pile.”
“We can’t stop the shot. Jay’s keeping the lawyers busy. We won’t have time to reset and get another. We still have to get Kurt getting shot. It’s coming up,” warns Scott the AD.
And then Kip does the second thing that makes him the hero of the day. He grabs a portable camera and, like some battlefield reporter for some major news outlet, runs into the middle of the Third World conflict unfolding before the crew. An explosion sends a wave of papers cascading toward him. He wobbles, almost losing his footing, but still he manages to race forward and scoop up the two small gray kittens. Only seconds later, the effect explodes, sending Kip sprawling off-camera.
Kurt dashes from behind some oil barrels. Another wounded soldier lies directly in front of him. Just as he prepares to rescue the wounded buddy, a series of blood squibs explode across his chest. A safety cable gives him a short yank back to the ground.
The Great Director yells, “Cut and print!” and the shot is captured.
The crew runs to where Kip is trying to extract himself from a debris pile. After a tense few seconds, a bleary-eyed and slightly dazed Kip, cradling two tiny mewling kittens, is helped upright. The entire cast and crew cheer wildly. It’s a small thing. But after so many weeks of tension, fear, and weirdness, it feels good to cheer for something real. Something good. Almost immediately the women of the cast move toward Kip, cooing at the bright-eyed baby kittens.