The rumours flew on this one: Simon Ryan was keen to be there; no-way would he jeopardise his insurance by going somewhere so dangerous; Paolo then got clearances and protection from mafia-like insiders; Paolo was a mafia-like insider. I decided to go, just so’s I could start feeling lucky to be English again.
One of the Assistant Directors in our party had arranged mini-buses and an RV time for our little favela off-shoot crowd. We were already high when we set off from the official party at the Mocidade restaurant dance hall place. Loving Brazil more than ever. Jabbering about how they don’t hold wrap parties like that in Europe any more.
The entrance to the favela looked eerily like Camden Market with an archway decorated with flowers and butterflies. As we got out of the kombi, a group of people shuffled out of the shadows and came over. Paolo went into a major hand-shaking ritual. Nervously we followed suit. They weren’t big, beefy bouncers, though, but boys, children some of them, in faded jeans and brand new turquoise Brazil Brasil T-shirts, so big on one of them it hung down to his knees.
The AP nudge-nudged me. ‘Is he pleased to see you or is that a gun in his pocket?’
All stupid, daft Camden Market thoughts evaporated into a whimper.
We talked nervously together as we walked up the narrow steep paths, all of us, without having to say, feeling like a row of tin ducks at a rifle range, trying to reassure each other. Repeating over and over how we’re in the VIP movie cocoon that goes invisibly everywhere with us. But all thinking yes, but all the same, here we are taking ourselves into one of the most dangerous parts of one of the most dangerous cities in the world.
Then again, after a while, when we discovered we hadn’t been pounced on, it didn’t feel like that at all.
‘I’ve felt more threatened on the Northern Line,’ the AP whispered to me as we were walking up what must have been the High Street. They didn’t have neon Boots-like logos, but I made out boarded up butcher shops, greengrocers, hardware stores, fishmongers, bars, hairdressers, and many, many beauty salons.
The lull into normality continued once we got inside Paolo’s place. Tin roof and a bucket to pee in, it was not. Not much from the front, I’ll grant you, all rough concrete slabs and corrugated iron, but out the back was a massive terrace scattered with hammocks and easy chairs overlooking the bay. Mr Whittle and Ursula began to niggle again. There were even window boxes full of plants and dangling coloured balls.
We all felt pretty, pretty cool, munching away on cheese balls and sipping our coconut cocktails admiring the view.
He arrived late. I noticed him immediately because, as he walked into the room, I’d done one of those psychic turnarounds, like in traffic jams when you know someone is staring at you. I gave a flicker of a pause and turned away quickly. Then I got fidgety, and kept looking fixedly in the opposite direction, readjusting the bottom of my dress. Waiting as I knew he was approaching.
‘How are you?’ kiss on one cheek and a hug that isn’t a hug, more of a distant hug like they do there.
Now, I’ve never gone along with all that stuff about meeting people and feeling like you’ve known them all your life. It doesn’t rub with me. Every relationship’s an unknown at the beginning and full of lies, little fibs to massive whoppers. The longer you know someone the more you find out about them. Simple as that. And, sad to say, the more they find out about you. But all the same there was something, a kind of a feeling there right from the start.
As far as I was concerned he was the only guy in the room. I wasn’t aware of anyone else for the rest of the evening.
We chatted in a group at first, dancing around each other. His quiet eyes, deep brown, slightly hooded never leaving me. I soon became irrationally irritated when anyone else said anything. Wishing they’d just go away and leave us alone. We sidled round to each other instead, my skin prickling as we gradually prized ourselves away from the others.
I’d had a few drinks by then and, though I was being more forward than I usually am when I meet a bloke I fancy, I felt completely relaxed about it. Maybe because there was the tiny fact at the back of my mind that I’d be on a plane and out of there 2 days later.
‘What does he do?’
‘He’s an artist. Don’t look at me like that, Neen. They aren’t all axe murderers and cocaine addicts. Most people who live in favelas are ordinary, hardworking people, trying to get by…’
‘Oh, Suze think of yourself…living in a real garret with an artist…’she sighs heavily and takes a deep sip of her wine, ‘in Rio de Janeiro….’
We smile dreamily at each other.
‘I’d be shot within a week, I know I know.’
‘I don’t have to have been there to know those favelas are seriously dangerous, Suze. Even the safe ones.’
‘Yeah, especially at night. But you know how it is. Film units have special protection. They love all that. I couldn’t ever go there on my own.’
‘Shame aye. But let’s face it, living in a favela, it wouldn’t be you would it?’
‘Naaaah.’
‘You’d never do something so crazy.’
‘Naaah.’
‘There’d probably be a real bathroom problem. Flushing, I mean…’
‘Do you know what was really great though?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Getting off with someone who’s not in the bloody film business for a change.’
‘Ha, he wouldn’t be calling you if he was, would he.’
‘It was another beautiful ending, that’s all.’
‘A good looking guy like that, he’ll already have turnedabout heel and be onto the next one, won’t he.’
I hate it when Nina comes over all sensible like this. But she’s right. I know that. On our way to the airport, I was ready for all the right words, “Hey, yeah, it’s been great fun, thanks and all that,” which is how it is but, OK, I was getting a bit sad.
But he kept on holding on to me like he didn’t want to let me go. I said I’d see him again soon as I peeled my way out of his arms, the way you do. It makes the goodbyes easier, doesn’t it, though I’m not used to it. On-set romances rarely go beyond the wrap party. It’s one of The Rules of Filming, almost up there with not walking into shot or making a squeak of a sound after ‘Action’ has been called. And I like rules. I’ve learned to play within them. A wrap’s a wrap. That’s how it is.
The way Benj was so reminded me of me on my first long shoot away from home. It was a drama documentary in the Hebrides. We’d taken over this isolated whitewashed hotel tucked between its own sandy beach and the mountains. We were there for three weeks in all, while the weather threw everything it had at us: wind, rain, mist, fog, like it had been designed by God to give the director a nervous breakdown. But I had a ball. We held darts and snooker championships between production, artists and crew. I was in the crew team which felt like an honour, my job as a continuity girl hovering, as it does, between production and crew. But eventually the sun came out, the director got what he wanted and it was time to go home. Totally miffed off, I started handing out my phone number and suggested we have a reunion some time. I’ll never forget their faces, all looking at me: the sparks, the grips, the sound men, the cameramen, even my new best mate Sarah the make-up artist, all blank faced, as if I was completely insane. I didn’t know that crews don’t do that. That, no matter how well you get on. No matter who you’ve screwed and declared undying love for. At the end of a shoot, everyone goes home to their separate lives, then onto the next shoot wherever it will take them. Over the years you start meeting up again, on some other location, in some other part of the world, telling a different story, and then you’ll reminisce and the old jokes and gossip will come out… that’s how it goes.
‘Roll end credits, bring up the copyright logo. I did feel like all chaste and wooed.. and…. You know, Neen, I know it sounds daft, but I really think there was something more than just sex going on….
‘Best not to dwell. Move on girl, like you
always do.’
‘Mmm.’
‘But then, he knows you’re not stupid.’
I nod.
‘Maybeee,’ she shrugs and grins, as if she’d just thought of the most bonkers conclusion of all. ‘He’s fallen madly in love with you.’
A flip hits my stomach but I laugh suitably dismissively.
‘I’ll tell you something, they do love Europeans over there. Even me with my hippo hips. You don’t have to squeeze into one of those bum-cracking tangas to attract the guys.’
‘So you had a pick?’
‘Believe me, Neen, that place is heaving with gorgeous men.’
Nina’s looking seriously thoughtful now. She inspects her little pile of pressies from Brazil. Four CDs and two pairs of Havaiana flip flops, one creamy purple pair with pink stripes, one salmon pink pair with purple stripes. She slips the purple Havianas onto her feet and examines her toes.
‘Maybe,’ she says eventually, ‘you should go, but only if you take me in your suitcase. How am I ever going to show these off in London in October?’
‘I’ve got the time, haven’t I, now my next film’s been written off.’
A change in tax funding laws has brought the British film industry to its knees. Dozens of projects have been cancelled, including my own. No work! Freaky. I’m so not used to it yet.
‘What’s going to happen?’
‘Oh I don’t know, I’m not that bothered really.’
Nina laughs. ‘I don’t believe that for a second.’
‘I’m probably still in the super-calm overdrive I always go into when a crisis looms,’ I say as I get up to clear the plates. Nina goes to the front kitchen with one of her new CDs.
My work’s been the big constant. The one thing I’m unquestionably good at in life. What is it I’m such a crack expert at? Stopping the mistakes before they happen. Making sure no trivia can crack the illusion of a night out at the flicks. Being a Film Continuity Girl is like playing an enormous spot the difference game and I was always brilliant at that as a kid. But we’re the black holes of the movie industry. What I do, if I’ve done my job properly, literally isn’t there, our achievement is to be invisible and it’s been niggling me more and more lately.
‘Maybe you could do with a break,’ she says when she comes back, refilling the wine glasses.
We both look at the photo again.
‘Naaah,’ we chorus.
‘It’d never work.’
‘You’ll never know unless you give it a go, Suze.’
‘There’d be the bathroom problem..’
‘There’s always hotels. Supposing……if it didn’t work out with this one, are you saying there’d be plenty of others to choose from?’
‘Neen.’
‘It’d get you out of the Zero rut.’
‘Zero’s not a rut!’
Nina insists Zero’s a hill I need to get over. Crazy, when it was Zero who was the one who taught me how to get over hills in the first place. “Get over it!” that was his motto, AKFM, Always Keep Forward Motion… no matter what. And we did. And it worked for years and years’.
Zero’s a DoP, a Director of Photography. One of the Big Guys. On set they’re more important than the director most of the time. We met on Never Forever, and were buddies from the first technical meeting. Then Never Forever II went into production and we picked up right where we’d left off two years earlier, like there’d never been a day’s gap.
He won the Oscar for that. It was odd, seeing him on TV, without his blue baseball cap on, as distant as Mars, hugging his latest grinning Hollywood blonde before going up to the podium. But then I got the call for Never Forever Revisited, and off we went again, our longest and best time ever on a two-month shoot in Tunisia. It’s the most sustained relationship I’ve ever been in since my university lover Sam, and unlikely to be matched. I know that. There’s only one Zero.
I grab my wine and follow Nina through to the front kitchen, sinking into her soft, flowery sofa. Her one eyed cat immediately jumps up on my lap, purring like a tractor.
‘It’s a crazy idea, I’m sorry.’
‘And Zero’s not a rut,’ I repeat firmly steering the cat’s dribbly chin away from my pale yellow Agnes B cardie.’
‘A rat, then.’
‘Shut it, Neen.’
‘Next Sunday, you around? Oh, sorry, of course you are… it’s Sarah and David’s housewarming, fancy coming?’
‘They haven’t moved again?’
‘It’s in the day, Richard’s got a golf tournament so we can go together.’
‘Oh Neen, seeing that lot’s the last thing I could cope with at the moment.’
‘Why not,’ she says kindly rather than questioningly.
‘You know why. Besides, I’m feeling vulnerable. How’s work? How’s work? That’s all they ever ask me.
‘You can tell them about Brazil.’
‘And how I’m unemployed. Tilly’d enjoy that.’
‘You can tell them about Benj – not the fine details obviously - and the favela…’
Sometimes I get the feeling Nina trowls on the illusion of my glamorous life against the routine of hers a bit thickly, seeing as we both know she’s growing into hers as sure as hell I’m growing out of mine.
‘I’m sorry, Neen, I can’t see any pleasure in driving for hours in Sunday traffic to stand on a patch of grass next to a washing line in a cloud of charcoal fumes.’
‘Oh away with you.’
‘They’re not interested in what I’m up to.’
‘Tell them what it’s like being unemployed, then. Let them feel sorry for you for a change.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You never come out now.’
‘I’m away a lot. Besides it wasn’t me who stopped the pub nights.’
Our crowd’s regular Saturday nights gatherings fizzled out soon after the thirtieth birthday parties slid into the inevitable weekends of B&Q Homestores, IKEA and barbeques, housewarmings and christenings. They’ve long since stopped trying to slot their anniversaries and house moving parties into my unpredictable schedules and why should they?
‘They love your stories.’
‘They used to.’
‘I still do.’
‘I know, Neen. I know.’
‘But then only I get the juicy details.’
‘That’s what I mean. The rest of it’s great whilst you’re there and doing it but it just sounds like bragging in the telling.’
Sometimes I even get paranoid thoughts that Nina’s only humouring me, which sometimes grows into this horrible creeping awareness that every time I get home I have grown a little bit closer to getting a cat and slamming the door. It’s unthinkable I’m even thinking this.
All of them were all gagging to hear all about life on a real movie set when I started out. Loving the irony of how the scriptwriters have busted a gut, been fired and replaced over and over only to reach a story with all its conflicts, crafted to wind the audience up to fever pitch and most of the time what’s happening behind the lens’d make any film publicist choke to death on his or her morning cappuccino.
I can see them all now, hunched around the pub table after I returned from my first major feature, wide-eyed and agog, wanting to know every detail about the month I spent in the jungle with Harrison Ford; and then which way Antonio Banderas really swung (pre the Melanie Griffiths coup, it goes without saying), to how Michelle Pfeiffer looked tucking into a bacon sarnie at 5 in the morning. Detail’s my thing, I have a photographic memory, so I could answer any question, like if her hair hung sexily over her eye like that, or if it was constantly preened to be just so.
But a few years down the line I started feeling like a pub bore, and longed for ordinary things to happen to me too. I ached to fit in. I began over-emphasising the boring bits, the early starts, the fifteen-hour days, the military precision, the dawns after dawns after dawns of hurrying up and waiting. Then, one day, I thought, why. the. FUCK. Do. I .bother with this c
rowd any more?
‘Suit yourself. Sit around waiting for work to pick up if that’s what you want.’
‘I need to shop. I thought I might get the bathroom done up while I’m off.’
‘No excuse. Come oon, you might enjoy it. There could even be another sexy neighbour round the corner… ‘
‘Oh sure.’
‘I don’t think Sam’s’s happy with Tilly you know. I’m sure of it.’
‘I don’t need to know that, Neen.’
Sam was my first boyfriend. We split soon after Nina and Richard’s wedding. He got the idea that I wanted to follow them up the aisle, when it was truly the last thing on my mind. We were a right pair. The pariest pair of the lot of us. But we were young and there was plenty I wanted to do yet. We started having these ridiculous arguments where he’d tell me why he didn’t want to get married, that it was only a piece of paper anyway, and I’d say that was fine by me and he wouldn’t believe me. Nina and Richard’s wedding was the last straw.
I still went to the pub every Saturday. To show him I was so over him. Which, of course, I wasn’t then. I thought it was a glitch we’d get through.
Then he started bringing this Tilly bird along. Tiresome Tilly as she was known to everyone behind Sam’s back. To make me jealous, we all knew that. And it worked. Nobody, but nobody, could work out what he saw in her. What a cow. That was the first time I realised how much hate there is in love.
Sam and I had a few furtive fuck reunions, which were pretty full on. But then it was “oh I can’t hurt Tilly,” this, and “I can’t do that because of Tilly,” After only being with her for a few weeks! The next thing, if the bugger then doesn’t go and marry her a couple of months later! He’d wanted it all along. How could I have been so thick? I should have realised.
Tilly calling me a name-dropper was my wake-up call. The words gathered in a ball and bounced across the table to me, once, twice, over the water. Touché. It’s funny really, because on set we tuck into the insider celeb gossip with as much gusto as any Heat addict. The stars themselves are the worst of all. It’s part of the life. My life.
The Boy From Brazil (1) Page 2