“Guido,” she said, “I think we should have a party. Harry and I always had a hump-day party on our shoots. We’d cook for everybody. What do you think?”
“Un botte di vino,” he said, “fa più miracoli che una chiesa piena di santi.”
“Which means?”
“A cask of wine works more miracles than a church full of saints,” he said.
“Do you think we need a miracle?”
He shook his head. “Not at all,” he said. “I just think it would be a kind of miracle to have a producer cook for us.”
“We always made sauerbraten,” she said, “wherever we were. And potato dumplings. Do you think Italians would like sauerbraten? It’s pot roast, beef marinated in vinegar for three days . . .”
“Maybe like a straccotto?” Guido said. “And dumplings?”
“Potato dumplings. You boil the potatoes and put them through a ricer”—she demonstrated with her hands—“and then you roll them into little balls with some eggs . . .”
Guido nodded: “Gnocchi. Listen, Signora Klein, did you ever hear the story about il Papa and the producer who went up to heaven together?”
Esther shook her head.
“Well, the producer and the Pope go up to heaven. When they get there everyone makes a big fuss over the producer—would the producer like a glass of wine? would the producer like some pasta?—that sort of thing. San Pietro himself shows the producer around: would you like this villa or this beautiful apartment? The producer can’t figure it out. So finally he asks San Pietro: ‘Why is everyone so nice to me, and nobody’s paying any attention to the Pope?’
“Now San Pietro’s surprised. ‘We’ve got a lot of popes up here,’ he says, ‘but you’re the first producer.’”
Esther had heard the joke before, more than once, but this was the first time it made her really laugh.
Esther enjoyed shopping and cooking so much that she forgot to worry about Margot and the love scenes and the crane and Beryl’s affair with Zanni.
On Monday she bought ten kilos of beef at the macelleria in the piazza. She didn’t recognize the Italian cuts of meat, but whatever she bought was expensive and looked like it might be bottom round or sirloin. She bought two liters of red wine vinegar at the Grana Market and poured them over the meat, and then she added two bottles of red wine, six large yellow onions, a handful of bay leaves, caraway seeds, and peppercorns. She sent one of the Italian PAs out to find juniper berries.
On Tuesday she took two PAs with her to the Mercato Sant’Ambrogio, at the end of Via Pietrapiana, and bought fifteen kilos of potatoes, and then she bought two cases of Sangiovese di Romagna, because the Roman crew didn’t like Chianti.
On Wednesday she bought lettuce for the salad and fruit for dessert, and she bought seven loaves of pane toscano at the bakery in Piazza San Pier Maggiore. They were shooting a scene in the piazza, and Esther stopped to watch as Sandro delivered Japanese rice paper to Margot in the convent and the romance got under way. In the afternoon members of the crew kept popping into the kitchen to see what she was doing, and after the wrap several of the men helped her form the potato dumplings, which, as everyone kept observing, were just oversize gnocchi.
The dinner was a great success. No one wanted to leave, and Esther didn’t want anyone to leave, but the crane was arriving that night and Guido and the macchinisti—the grips—wanted to be sure everything was in working order before the six o’clock call in the morning. Double overtime, but Esther didn’t care. Michael, in jeans and a sweatshirt, looked beat, but Beryl was her usual elegant self in a simple black dress and a pearl choker and bright pink shoes. Michael and Beryl stayed on a bit. Three old friends. Someone had brought a bottle of grappa, and Esther poured the last of it into their little espresso cups while the PAs attacked the dishes.
They chatted a bit about the old days, and then it was time to go to bed.
“You know,” Michael said as he stood up to leave, “a movie set is absolute chaos, the work is grueling, the difficulties are overwhelming. But everyone cooperates, everyone works together, everyone cares about everyone else. Wouldn’t it be great if the world worked this way, like a film set, everyone pulling together toward a common goal?”
“You’re absolutely right,” Esther said, and she meant it.
The Crane
It took a week to get the big Titan crane from Rome to Florence and to get all the permissions taken care of. In the meantime, they’d completed a lot of the exterior shots, and the sets in the convent itself were almost finished, so they were on schedule. The director of photography thought Michael should stay on the ground, but Michael now wanted to be up in the air, as Zanni had suggested—up in the wild blue.
Michael had never known how to be anything other than what he was, how to do anything other than what he’d always done. He arrived on the set every morning at seven o’clock, went over the shot list with the assistant director and the DP, talked with the DP about how they were going to cover the first scene, went over the scene with the actors, walked through a camera rehearsal, started shooting, broke for lunch, looked at the rushes from the previous day, started shooting again, wrapped at seven, replanned the next day with the AD, sat in the cutting room with Eddie Franklin to view the day’s editing. Then supper with Beryl.
But up on the crane, which was mounted on the back of a truck, he felt something new happening. At first he thought it was just his fear of heights, but suddenly he wasn’t afraid anymore, and he began to understand how God must have felt on the morning of creation, just before he shouted “Action.” Everything had been perfectly scripted, yet the actors were free to fuck up. All they had to do was follow the script—he could see them below him, in their places (Miranda, Zanni, Mr. Woodhull, holding a cloth Frisbee, and the dog, and the girl, who was one of Woodhull’s students, the extras), and yet they were free to fuck up. Bevilacqua had done the paperwork for the girl actor, but not for the dog. They were supposed to have a licensed animal trainer on the set, but Woodhull, Woody, would have to do.
Esther had grumbled more about the changes in the script than at the expense of the crane. They’d scrapped the original first-meeting scene, where Sandro comes out of the sewer. She had fought Michael till he started to scream, the way Harry used to scream. But he’d brought every day in on time, and they were saving a fortune by using the convent for offices, sets, dormitories, meals.
Michael didn’t like to discuss a shot with Esther because Esther always brought the conversation around to the way Harry would have done it. Esther was a hands-on producer. Michael liked that. He was not afraid of suggestions, constructive criticism. But he didn’t want to hear about Harry. Harry’d had a different approach. Harry was a screamer. Always over budget. It bothered him that he was actually trying to become more like Harry—to take more risks, to go for the jugular, for the primal scream; to plant the camera and let something happen instead of storyboarding everything to death. Harry’d made a lot of bad films, but some great ones too.
And now, up on the crane, not the single long take Zanni had originally imagined, with the camera locked down, but the most complex and ambitious shot Michael had ever tackled. He was nervous, but excited. Looking down like God. He could see all his creatures, right where he’d placed them: Woody and the dog and the girl in front of the Banco Ambrosiana; the others by the Palazzo Signoria. When he closed his eyes, he could see Miranda coming out of the side entrance of the palazzo—another expensive permission. The camera takes in some of the fountain and all of David. It follows Miranda to the Loggia dei Lanzi, panning across the Piazza degli Uffizi, past Benvenuto Cellini’s Perseus, past the Rape of the Sabine Women, past Hercules and Nessus. Margot will stand on the steps. They’ve blocked off part of the piazza—paid for by the square meter—a sort of “path” for Miranda to follow. The camera will have to stay focused on this path and avoid the railings used to keep people back.
The camera will see Zanni walking behind Miranda, following her fr
om the Palazzo Signoria. Then Woodhull will throw the Frisbee, and the dog will run around. Miranda will watch the girl—Woodhull’s student—chase the dog, and Zanni will watch Miranda watching the girl. Then Zanni will come up behind Miranda and speak to her. She will rebuff him. He’ll press her. She’ll put up more resistance. The dog will keep running. Zanni will shout at her, and then she’ll stop. At least Michael hopes she’ll stop. If the dog doesn’t stop, it won’t matter. That’s the beauty of it. In either case Miranda-Margot’s resistance will start to melt. She and Zanni-Sandro will cross the piazza to a bar. The shot will end with them going into the bar.
Cut to the bar.
This was what he could see in his mind’s eye. This was what he was praying for. Miranda would have to hit nine different marks, Zanni six. The camera would have to find fifteen different points of focus as it glided from a wide shot to a close-up and then boomed up, tilted down, and panned 180 degrees to follow Miranda and Zanni across the piazza to a bar. And there were the wild cards—the dog and the people in the piazza. It was almost impossible to stop them from staring up at the camera on the crane. They couldn’t afford to block off the whole piazza. That would just make it worse. Because there would be no way to keep the crowds at the edges out of the frame, even with the long lens. He’d done the best he could. The AD had hired enough extras to surround Margot. Lots of things could go wrong, but that was okay. He was doing what he wanted to do, and something new was happening.
He watched the PAs herding the extras into position— seventy-five of them, whose main task was to fill the frame. Miranda and Zanni were standing outside the doorway at the side of the Palazzo Vecchio. Esther was there too. And Beryl. He could see Woody and the dog in front of the Banco Ambrosiano. The extras were milling around. And then he saw Beryl, who’d skipped her language class to come to watch, reach up and adjust Zanni’s tie. She squeezed the knot of the tie and ran her hand underneath the fabric. And Michael’s heart sank. She might as well have kissed him. Where was Miranda? Miranda was talking to Esther.
The knot in Michael’s stomach tightened when he looked at his wife again. He thought he understood what was happening better than she did herself. He knew he could stop it right now. He could tell one of the PAs to ask Zanni to . . . to do something, or to ask Beryl . . . But what to ask? He was God looking down on Eve and the serpent. And he hadn’t even shouted “Action” yet.
Is this the way God felt? Dizzy? It wouldn’t take much for him to throw up over the edge of the basket. There was no safety railing. He could fall over the edge. He could let Beryl know that he was watching, but that would be like God calling to Eve. He decided to let it go. He’d deal with it later. There was too much going on right now in this unscripted moment just before creation, just before the big bang.
“Two minutes,” the AD, Franco Bevilacqua, said into his walkie-talkie.
Miranda and Zanni disappeared into the Palazzo Vecchio. Woodhull knelt beside the dog on the steps of the Loggia dei Lanzi. The dog looked calm. The girl too. Woodhull had the Frisbee in his left hand. It had gone fine when they’d rehearsed yesterday.
It was time. “Quiet, please,” Bevilacqua yelled through his megaphone, in English and then in Italian: “Silenzio, per favore. We’re going for a take!” It took about thirty seconds for the piazza to quiet down. Most of the tourists were staring up at the crane. “Please don’t look at the crane,” Bevilacqua yelled. “Just go about your business,” and then he yelled, “Roll sound” to the production recordist, who yelled, “Sound rolling, and then, “Sound speed.”
The camera assistant, up on the crane, held the slate in front of the camera.
The camera operator, sitting next to Michael, yelled, “Framed.”
Bevilacqua yelled, “Roll camera.” The camera operator started the camera and yelled, “Rolling,” and then, after a moment, “Speed.”
Bevilacqua took a deep breath and yelled, “Slate it!” The camera assistant said, “The Italian Lover, scene 109, take 1—Mark!” and clapped the slate. Michael put his hand over his heart. He’d been expecting the worst, but everything started smoothly. As planned. The camera followed Miranda from the north side of the Palazzo Vecchio to the side of the fountain, where she stopped to adjust her shoe—unscripted, but a nice bit of business—and then to the Loggia dei Lanzi. Zanni followed and soon appeared behind her, in front of the statue of Perseus. She climbed the stairs and turned toward the piazza. Woodhull tossed the Frisbee and released the dog, Biscotti. The dog started to run across the piazza after the Frisbee, and the girl chased after the dog. The dog kept running, and the girl kept chasing her. Michael willed the girl to keep chasing, otherwise the dog would stop and run to her.
The camera followed the dog till it was time for Zanni to yell, “Down, down.” Zanni yelled, or rather, Woodhull yelled: “Stai, stai, stai Biscotti.” They’d dub in Zanni’s voice later. The dog stopped. Perfect. But then a second dog appeared, a big German shepherd, and Michael’s heart sank. “Stay on the principals,” he said to the camera operator, but it was too late. The camera was already tracking the dogs. Michael started to say “Cut” but couldn’t get the word out. The dogs stopped, circled each other, sniffed each other’s butts. Michael watched them on the video-tape and then over the edge of the crane. The camera stayed on the dogs. The extras were watching the dogs. Everyone in the piazza was watching the dogs. The camera operator was on his own now. The dogs continued to circle and sniff butt.
Where was Woodhull? What was the girl doing? The camera panned back to Miranda and Zanni. They were laughing. They walked across the piazza together. Toward the bar. Zanni opened the door for Miranda. They disappeared into the bar.
Michael yelled, “Cut.”
They had time for four more takes before their permit expired—takes without the mysterious German shepherd, whose owner had appeared, dragging the dog’s leash.
“Boom down,” Michael said into his walkie-talkie. Below him he could see Esther passing out release forms to some of the extras who’d arrived late. Beryl had disappeared. So had Woodhull and the dog. Zanni and Miranda were standing in front of the bar. Everyone was looking up at the crane.
The boom didn’t move. Michael looked over the edge. The crane operator was looking up. “Boom down,” Michael said again into his walkie-talkie. The crane operator turned to one of the grips. Esther was there now.
“What’s going on?” the camera operator asked Michael. The camera operator and the focus puller were both looking down too. The grips were scurrying around.
“This doesn’t look good,” the camera operator said.
“What’s going on?” Michael asked into the walkie-talkie.
This time Esther answered. “Something’s wrong with the crane.”
“Well, get it fixed.”
“Just sit tight.” How could he sit tight?
Esther said. “I’ll let you talk to Guido. The dolly grip.”
“Hello?”
“Hello? Guido? What’s going on?”
“Could be a lot of things. Maybe something caught in the gears.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Can you see me?”
Michael looked over the edge. “Yes.” He could feel his godlike powers ebbing. He was getting dizzy from looking down. He closed his eyes, but that only made it worse. “What the hell is going on?” he shouted over the edge, not bothering with his walkie-talkie.
Everyone in the piazza—cast, crew, tourists, extras—was watching, staring up at him. “Go about your business,” he wanted to shout, but there was nothing he could do. Beryl reappeared. She was looking up at him too. He avoided her gaze. Soon he heard a shout.
“The pivot point’s jammed,” Guido shouted.
Michael nodded.
“You see this box at the end of the beam? That’s what holds the counterweights. That’s why we had to weigh everyone, so it balances just right—the turret at one end, the counterweight at the other.”
“But what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to walk up the beam till I add enough weight to bring it down.”
Michael watched as Guido removed his tool kit and his jacket and climbed up on the weight box and then onto the beam itself. Holding onto the outer edges of the beam he started to climb, like a monkey climbing a coconut tree. Michael closed his eyes and waited till he felt the floor start to sink beneath him, like a slow elevator. When he opened his eyes, Guido had almost reached the turret.
When the boom finally came down, Michael tried not to show how happy he was to be back on terra firma, with his big scene in the can. But it was only when he saw the rushes in the morning that he realized what a gift he had been given. The dogs had said all that was necessary. Dialogue would be superfluous. No, not a gift, he thought, a reward. He hadn’t spoken to Beryl, hadn’t warned her what a dangerous course she was about to embark on. It wasn’t that he didn’t care; it wasn’t that he wasn’t jealous. He didn’t know what it was. Two roads were diverging in a yellow wood. He was taking one; she was taking the other.
Cheval Glass
When Michael arrived on set at seven o’clock to go over the sequence with the director of photography and the production manager, the grips were hanging lights and mounting the camera on a crab dolly. He was excited; he was thinking on his feet, taking risks; he was cutting in camera with only a few additional angles for coverage. It was like working a high wire without a safety net. He’d been awake most of the night, rehearsing the scene in his imagination. It would be so much simpler if he didn’t want the over-the-shoulder mirror shot requiring body doubles. But he did want it, wanted to bring the viewer into the scene, wanted the viewer to be standing right behind Zanni, looking at Miranda in the mirror as her clothes come off.
They were filming at one end of the long chapel, which had been divided into three sets: Sandro’s bedroom, his living room, and the Lodovici Chapel at the Badia, where Sandro restores the fresco. Sandro’s bedroom consisted of two semipermanent walls and a backing for the reflections in the mirror. The set was almost bare—just the cheval glass and the double bed, a matrimoniale. And a big Italian wardrobe, the door partly open, which the production designer had filled with Sandro’s clothes. And he could see the camera already mounted on the dolly, which had an extra seat for the camera assistant, and the dolly tracks and the cables coiling like snakes, and the Chinese lights in the corners, rigged on C-stands.
The Italian Lover Page 17