The Movie

by Patti Beckman

  There was a moment of silence. Ginny’s expression was one of concern and sympathy. “I—I guess you still must care for him in spite of everything....”

  “I guess so,” Natalie said. “Why else did I get involved in this project in the first place? I could have said no. But I just couldn’t stand by and see Kirk lose this last big chance. Well, it’s strictly business with him from now until we get through shooting this movie and then I hope I never see Kirk Trammer again as long as I live!”

  Late that afternoon, Natalie and Ginger had supper at a sidewalk café. They sat in the shade of a large umbrella and ordered a typical Brazilian dish, feijoada completa—black beans, rice and meat.

  “I see what you mean by the heat,” Ginny said, sipping a tall drink filled with tinkling ice. She touched the frosted glass to her damp temple. “Have you spent any time at the beach?”

  “So far, I’ve only had time to get to the beach one morning. I told you Kirk is running us ragged.” Then she added grimly, “Wait until he gets us up in the jungle.”

  “If he gets us up in the jungle,” Ginny corrected. “Remember, he still has to sell the studio on the extra expense.”

  “I guess we’re going to start the battle over that tonight at the meeting Kirk has called for the principals and production heads.”

  * * * * * * *

  Kirk paced restlessly, his hazel eyes flashing sparks as he spoke to the group assembled in the production office. “These additional scenes I plan to do, carrying the story to a Central American setting, are going to add an important dimension to the story. It gives us the opportunity for some tight, dramatic action scenes and heightened suspense.”

  Natalie glanced around the room, taking in expressions ranging from surprise to stunned disbelief on the faces around her. Sally Dentmen looked pale. Bill, his teeth clamped furiously on a pipe stem, was frowning darkly. He removed the pipe and cleared his throat. “Kirk, you’re talking about a major rewrite of the entire story. It’s more than throwing in some scenes. We have to make big changes in the story that follows.”

  “I know that,” Kirk said calmly. “That’s your job, Bill.”

  “You’re asking for a lot...,” Bill Dentmen objected.

  The associate producer, Howard Ansco, leaped to his feet, his face livid. Ansco was a slender individual with a nervous habit of blinking rapidly when he talked. He brushed a hand across the thin strands of sandy hair and waved his arms in the air. “Kirk, you can’t do this!” His voice was several decibels past yelling.

  “Sure I can,” Kirk replied calmly.

  Ansco made an appealing gesture to the group in the room. “He’s insane. Max, tell him he can’t do this.”

  As producer and director, Kirk was commanding general of the film production. His production manager could be likened to the chief of staff. The job was held by a tall, bald individual named Max Singler, dubbed “Max the Clax” for some reason no one could remember. Max had been in film production work for twenty-five years. He looked tired and disillusioned.

  Max’s job covered a staggering amount of intricate details. The script had been broken into basic segments. Everything was planned to the most minute detail to conform to schedules that included transportation, travel time, hotel accommodations, costumes, even the number of meals needed by the entire company. Included in the careful time schedule was an estimate covering how much time was involved in shooting X number of pages of the script. That information, relayed to the studio offices, gave an indication of how well the director was staying within the budget and on shooting schedule.

  Now Max Singler said wearily, “Kirk, you can’t do this. You know the studio has approved the script we’re working with. It’s all been figured down to the last foot of film and minute of shooting time. Already you’re in hot water with the home office because you’re behind schedule. They expect you to make it up, not add a few million dollars to the budget.”

  “I’m making a major motion picture,” Kirk said coldly. “This is going to be the year’s big blockbuster. I’m not going to let some myopic, tightfisted studio heads ruin a chance like this. They’ll get their investment back ten times over if they’ll keep out of my way.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Jungle....

  “All right, people,” bawled the assistant director. “Action! Cameras!”

  A crew member held a blackboard scene marker in front of the cameras.

  Rebecca Abrahms came awake with a start. She looked around the small room with its dirt floor and whitewashed adobe walls. The only furnishings in the room were the bed, two wooden chairs and a ramshackle table. On one wall was a faded bullfight poster beside a picture of Fidel Castro. There was a heavy silence except for the patter of raindrops on the thatched roof and broad-leafed tropical plants outside the window.

  Standing tensely near the window was Clay Winters, unclothed except for undershorts. He had drawn back so as not to be visible from the outside as he peered around a broken shutter.

  Hearing Rebecca stir, he turned quickly. She started to speak, but he put his finger to his lips. He crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed.

  Rebecca was sitting up, holding the sheet over her bosom. “Clay...what is it?” she whispered.

  “We have to get out of here,” Winters said hoarsely. “There’s a patrol of government soldiers out there. I saw them moving through the brush past the clearing. They’re watching the house.”

  “Oh, Clay, I thought we were safe here....”

  “Somebody tipped them off. Get dressed. Hurry.”

  Rebecca swung long, shapely bare legs from under the sheet, off the side of the bed.

  The camera panned to the window, framed it, then made a fast zoom to the fringe of jungle where a uniformed officer was holding a pair of binoculars trained on the house.

  When the camera turned back to Rebecca Abrahms, she was hastily stuffing the tail of her short-sleeved white shirt into a pair of torn jeans. She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on boots. On the other side of the bed, Clay Winters was also finishing dressing.

  They ran to the door, holding hands. “We have to make a dash for it,” Clay said tensely. “I have a feeling they’re going to level this house with a mortar shell any minute.”

  Rebecca’s face was pale. The cords in her throat were rigid. Her eyes were large with fright. “They’ll open fire on us when we leave the house.”

  Clay nodded. “I hope if we duck out of here and run fast we can take them by surprise. They think we’re still asleep. If we’re lucky, we can get into the jeep before they have time to take close aim.”

  Her arms went around him. She pressed her tear-streaked face against his shoulder. “Clay...Clay, it’s my fault you’re here. Why didn’t you stay in Rio?”

  “You know why. From now on, whatever happens to one of us happens to both of us, Rebecca.”

  “Oh, Clay, my darling.”

  They kissed—a long, searing kiss.

  Breathlessly, she continued, “Last night...together. Clay, it was heaven. If that’s all there’s to be, we still had more than most people have in a lifetime.”

  “I know,” he nodded gravely, his eyes focused intensely on hers. “I love you, Rebecca.”

  “And I, you, my dearest.”

  He drew a breath. “Ready?”

  She swallowed hard. “Yes.”

  He put his hand on the doorknob. “This has to be fast. I’ll kick the door open. Bend over so you’ll be partly hidden by the jeep. Run like you’ve never run before.”

  She nodded.

  The door slammed open.

  The two burst from the small adobe building.

  Almost at once there was an eruption of machine gun fire from the jungle.

  Ginny Wells had planted a row of small explosives, called squibs, in the dirt. As Rebecca Abrahms and Clay Winters ran to the jeep, the squibs were touched off by remote wiring. The effect was the very realistic appearance of a hail of machine gun fire ki
cking up the dirt around their feet as they ran a zigzag course to the waiting jeep.

  At the same time, Ginny closed another switch that set off dynamite charges planted in the adobe house. It exploded with an ear-shattering crash, hurling a cloud of shattered adobe clay sky high. On the screen it would look like the result of a direct mortar shell hit.

  Clay and Rebecca piled into the jeep.

  At that point, Kirk signaled his assistant director, who bawled, “Cut!” through his bullhorn.

  The guns in the brush stopped firing their fusillade of blanks. A momentary hush settled with the dust from the squibs and the dynamite explosion.

  Natalie wrenched herself out of the character of Rebecca Abrahms and scrambled from the jeep, followed by Tom Sacks. Their places were taken by a stunt man and stunt woman wearing identical clothing and makeup.

  “All right,” bawled the A.D. through his bullhorn. “Let’s get right back with it before the sun changes. Cameras one, two and three. Let’s roll ‘em. Action. You guys in the trees start shooting. Damn, how do you say ‘start shooting’ in Portuguese?”

  He handed the bullhorn to an interpreter who had been hired to communicate with the extras.

  Natalie ran out of the camera range and watched the action sequence.

  The jeep starter spun furiously, but the engine didn’t catch.

  “Cut! What the hell’s th’ matter with the jeep?”

  The stunt man held up his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Won’t start.”

  Kirk gave vent to his exasperation in a string of expletives. “I knew the guy who sold us those jeeps was a crook. Where are the mechanics?”

  Two men in grease-stained coveralls ran to the jeep, yanked open the hood.

  Kirk paced restlessly while the mechanics chattered in Portuguese and tinkered with the engine.

  Ten minutes passed. Several more attempts were made to start the vehicle. Kirk lit a cigarette, took one puff, angrily ground it in the dust under his boot, then lit another and did the same to it.

  Finally, the jeep engine spluttered to life.

  “All right, people,” the A.D. yelled through his bullhorn. “This time it’s a take.”

  He handed the horn to the interpreter who repeated his words in Portuguese.

  Film was racing through the cameras as the jeep took off in a fresh hail of special effects gunfire. Squibs planted along the street and in the adobe walls of the little deserted village exploded in puffs of dust, simulating bullets striking all around the wildly careening jeep. More charges of dynamite were set off to indicate the explosion of mortar fire. At one spot a dynamite charge was timed to go off as the rear wheels of the jeep raced over it. The force of the explosion hurled the jeep several feet into the air. For a frightening moment, it looked as if the vehicle would flip over, but the highly skilled stunt driver behind the wheel managed to regain control. The jeep slithered and spun around, then righted itself and continued its final dash out of the village into a jungle road.

  At Kirk’s signal, the assistant director called, “All right. That’s a take. No more for today, people.”

  After washing the dust and perspiration of the morning’s work away in an improvised outdoor shower made private by canvas walls, Natalie changed into a clean shirt and jeans. She crossed a clearing to the tent that she had shared with Ginny for the past two weeks.

  They were surrounded on all sides by tropical vegetation growing in uncontrolled profusion. Giant roots were smothered by plants and vines that writhed around each other in a perpetual embrace. Tree branches had furry coatings of green moss. Vines as thick as Natalie’s wrist festooned the tree branches, dangling to the ground.

  It was a world saturated with the color green except for the brilliant hues of tropical flowers. Fragile orchids grew wild in the trees among clusters of bamboo, brilliant red bougainvilleas, passionflowers, tree ferns, trumpet trees and Brazilian spider flower trees. Begonia blossoms created brilliant yellow splashes with their blossoms among the sago palms, jacarandas and lobsterclaws. There were great wild fruit trees like the jackfruit tree with its enormous thirty-pound fruits.

  Parrots adorned with yellow, green and purple feathers flittered through the trees. Monkeys hung by their tails, chattering and jeering at Natalie as she passed. She laughed and made faces back at them.

  It was both beautiful and dangerous. They had been warned of the death that lurked in the branches, such as the jararaca snakes, whose fangs carried a deadly venom.

  Attempts had been made to give them a few civilized comforts. Gasoline generators ran day and night supplying power to the camp and providing electricity to run air-conditioners that kept some of the jungle heat and molding dampness out of the tents.

  When Natalie entered the tent she found her cousin, Ginny Wells, sprawled on a cot, looking utterly exhausted.

  “Thank heaven this is over!” Ginny said with a great sigh.

  “You did a fantastic job with all the effects, Ginny,” Natalie exclaimed, sitting on the other cot.

  “I’ve been scared spitless the entire time. I just knew somebody was going to get an arm or leg blown off. D’you know that maniac, Kirk, had a thousand pounds of dynamite flown up here? The whole camp could have gone sky high any minute.”

  Natalie shuddered.

  The past several weeks had been a nightmare. First there had been the bitter conflict with the studio over Kirk’s demands for extra financing and shooting time. Kasserman had flatly refused. There had been a lot of furious yelling over long-distance telephone lines. Kirk decided to fly to Los Angeles for a face-to-face confrontation. He pleaded with Natalie to go with him. “I can’t get anywhere with that blockhead,” he said. “Maybe he’ll listen to you.”

  At first Natalie refused. “It’s not my place to get involved in this, Kirk. You’re the producer and director.”

  “But we’re all in this together. It’s our production company. You have a stake in it, too,” he argued. “And you have more influence with the studio than any of the rest of us. They won’t listen to Ginny or the Dentmens or me. All the other people down here like Howard Ansco—that assistant producer they hung around my neck—are studio stooges. They’re siding with Kasserman. Please go with me, Natalie.”

  Furious with herself for giving in to Kirk again, she had thrown a few things into a bag and let him drive her to the airport. On the flight to Los Angeles, she had refused to sit with Kirk or even speak to him. When the plane landed, she took a separate car home and avoided Kirk until the conference at Sam Kasserman’s office.

  It had been an angry meeting. Kirk presented a strong argument for the scenes he wanted added to the film. Kasserman was stubborn, not wanting to commit the studio to a larger budget.

  Natalie finally broke the deadlock by taking sides with Kirk, persuading the studio head that the added scenes could result in a much stronger, more suspenseful story, giving it the added global political impact that Kirk was striving for. “It’s a big picture, Sam,” Natalie said. “It doesn’t make sense to pinch pennies when we’re aiming at such high stakes.”

  “Pennies!” Kasserman laughed bitterly. “Natalie, honey, we’re not talking pennies; we’re talking millions. New York is going to ask a lot of questions about this.”

  His fingers drummed nervously on the vast expanse of his bare mahogany desk as he wrestled inwardly with the problem.

  Natalie felt a wave of sympathy for the embattled studio head. She knew he was in a precarious position, balancing the prospects of a big box office success against millions of dollars of the studio’s money. It was the biggest kind of high-stakes dice roll in the world.

  Finally he threw his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “I’m probably cutting my own throat. But you’d better bring this thing in on schedule, Kirk. You’ve already got shooting time to make up.”

  “Don’t worry, Sam,” Kirk said confidently.

  “Hah! Don’t worry, he says!”

  Transporting an entire film pr
oduction crew including the cast, extras and equipment by helicopter and primitive mountain roads to the remote jungle location had been a monumental undertaking. There had been endless problems involving supplies, hiring local extras, dealing with labor unions. Nothing had gone right. Equipment had broken down and had to be flown into Rio for repairs. There had been a tropical rainfall that lasted the better part of a week, delaying them further. They were bitten by insects, tortured by the heat, frightened by jungle snakes.

  The only good thing Natalie could admit to was that the scenery was breathtaking. She envisioned the audience impact of the sweeping panorama of jungle-covered mountains on a wide screen.

  Now the last foot of film at this location had been shot.

  “Well,” Ginny said, “with this out of the way, I’ll be flying back to Los Angeles. Why don’t you come with me, Natalie?”

  “I might do that,” Natalie replied thoughtfully. “The scenes Kirk is going to be shooting in Tunis for the next several weeks will involve Tom Sacks and Marsha Sanders. He doesn’t need me there. I thought I’d either spend some time in New York or Los Angeles before going on to Tunisia.”

  “Come back with me,” Ginny urged. “We both need to get out of this jungle and go on a shopping spree.”

  “That sounds enticing. You’re about to convince me.”

  “I hope I can. I’d like to show you what we’ve done on the outer space sets.”

  “Yes, I would like to see those. I’m always fascinated by the magic you special effects experts can create. There seems to be no end to your ingenuity.”

  “If I have any ingenuity, Kirk is making me stretch it to the limits,” Ginny muttered. “He never does anything on a modest scale!”

  “I know. This picture is going to have some staggering visual effects if he pulls it off.”

  “Also a staggering budget! With the equipment breakdowns, the delays the rains caused and the other problems we ran into up here, he’s fallen even further behind the shooting schedule. The cost here ran way over the studio’s projections. And some of the most expensive stuff is yet to be made, the space station scenes and the action episodes in Tunisia.”