A phalanx of PAs—production assistants, like Joey—deflected diversions and held at bay eager beavers who all just need a tiny piece of Mason, right this minute, so I was able to fire off some pretty decent frames of him posed in costume against elements of the lynching tree set built outside the airplane hangar in Jersey, close to the Meadowlands. That is, after Mason waved away his bodyguard, who pricked up like a pit bull on my approach. I got some up-angles that were shadowed a bit ostentatiously, but for this movie, melodrama played. Later I found out the setting sun threw an interesting glint into his left eye in the last shot we grabbed by the tree, which was a gypsum-and-plaster fake, apparently from a haunted house yard sale. Mason Stone bid adieu and promptly forgot my name when an effects assistant stopped by with what looked like an enormous stuffed vulture to chock into the tree. It wasn’t dead or taxidermied but was instead fabricated by the makeup department, which promptly nicknamed their creation “Lurch.” The faux vulture was used for setups and focus-pulling; it looked dopey and I opted not to use it.
Later I got to meet several real vultures, trained—insofar as scavengers could be “trained”—to food-based commands by a genial guy named Hunnicutt who told me that at one point, one of these monsters would soar into frame and land right on Mason Stone’s shoulder without clawing his star face off or pecking out his eyes for hors d’oeuvres. I tried to imagine the rehearsals. It would be like trying not to flinch while a helicopter tries for a two point on your shoulder. None for me, thanks. They trained falcons; I guessed they could train vultures. Hunnicutt had three, a hero and two backup birds in their own spacious travel caddies. Like wardrobe and props, even the scavengers in this movie came in multiples.
The optical and digital effects team had the entire movie already on an animatic, prearranging scenes that had not been shot yet. An animatic is basically a moving storyboard, like a cartoon, that can impart a crude sense of movement within a shot and changing camera angles. These omnipresent keyboard jockeys also had lockdown plates of the bigger exterior Arizona sets—like the period Western town—they could factor into their compositions. They had a wireframe model of the fake plaster tree they could shrink, enlarge, rotate, and plug into their pictures. The little flying vulture in the animatic was wearing aviator goggles. They showed me a shot of the vulture swooping down to light on the tree and sit there, glaring. The cartoon vulture hunched forward and little black lines shot out of his head, just like Sunday funnies. In fact, the caricatures provided by the effects team put me very much in mind of that old Tom K. Ryan strip, Tumbleweeds, a kick in the pants to everything Western and clichéd. The actual shot would not see live film for another four weeks.
On another monitor they demonstrated how treelines, mountaintops, and green-screen sets could be made to match lighting in postproduction. This same midnight-oil magic could also put your head seamlessly onto another person’s body, or erase your limbs to order in case you’re playing a cowboy who lost an arm or leg inside a mine collapse or dam explosion. For the climactic throw down where the ex-sheriff faces off with his old enemy of a century earlier, the CGI guys were removing a third of the bad guy’s head so you can see the exposed skull and a few convolutions of brain matter. From there, I met the antagonist of the piece.
Garrett Torres had a trademark toothy sneer and a complexion like indifferently mixed concrete. You’ve seen him bite the big one in a dozen movies, and he loved his status as a bad guy character player. His voice was chipped ice, raspy, from the back of the throat, and bespoke visions of whiskey and cigarettes. In the feature film of my regrettably short life, Garrett would have played Gun Guy. He was currently trying to bed one of the camera assistants, a woman he met four days ago named Aspen DeLint. She wore cutoffs and work boots that molded her legs in a showy way; the way her set tool belt was slung around her hips was an angle most appealing. She was obviously a runner and a climber. Burnished chestnut hair cascaded in a horsetail from the gap in her gimme cap. Possibilities, there. The left ridge of Garrett’s skull had been shaved to allow the makeup guys to glue on a partial skullcap, bright green with coordinate pips—tracking dots—to aid the computers in later removing the appropriate section of his head; Garrett was concerned his weird haircut might make him look too freakish as he pursued his mission of getting into Aspen DeLint’s cutoffs. But he was game enough to allow me to shoot pictures of him on his absolute worst day for photogeneity.
No one busted me. When I awoke the next day, I felt better, as though I was now part of this movie, on the job, ready to work and in full command of my senses. Never mind that I knew where Char and Clavius were holed up, across the city. I would be leaving in two weeks. It would be child’s play to avoid them. At least, until my first and only day off.
* * *
“No, it’s a kick, you should see it. In fact … hey, where’s that fucking photographer, whats-his-name?”
Mason Stone was cranking up the charm and firing it straight toward costar Artesia Savoy’s all-too-willing wide eyes. She was working with an icon, so she nodded attentively, and went “um-hm,” and encouraged him to say more for as long as he could stand talking to her without having an actual conversation. Inside of two weeks her conditional misgivings would crumble and she would be rocking Mason’s world with a live replay from another of her early video successes, Cuntfinger (1998). Right now she was still working up the nerve, knowing that their affair would last exactly as long as the shoot—six weeks, if that. Mason was already playing her like a Stradivarius, maybe a Stratocaster. He already knew how this dynamic worked, what the unwritten rules were, and was so good at cherry-picking young talent that he could probably circle, on the call sheet, the soon-to-come date at which he and Artesia would mix fluids.
Next Thursday was my guess.
I came up on Mason from behind and told him my name again. Not my real name, but my name-name. His face went all friendly and he clapped me on one shoulder like an old war buddy. Artesia’s expression shifted into neutral, vaguely hostile, judgment pending. Mason told her I was the unit photographer and her face changed channels so she could invest some of her energy into guaranteeing I’d flatter her with my camera. She nailed me with her frank brown eyes and cornered me into the Man-Woman Standoff—you know, when you maintain eye contact and jabber away until your gaze finally drops to her chest and back, at which point she “wins.” It’s not my fault the female breast was composed as a bull’s-eye; three concentric circles, breast, aureole, and nipple. Targets.
Conversely, I zapped energy directly into her eyes, determined to outlast her until she dropped her gaze, not to look at any part of me, but as the more primitive submissive response to direct scrutiny. I won this time, because it was my job to look at things.
“It’s called the Salon Fantastique du Exotique,” said Mason. “I was just telling Artesia. Just the ‘Salon,’ for short. It’ll be somewhere in the Village. It’s at a different place every time. Very expensive and strictly A-list.”
I told him I’d heard of it. Poor Artesia didn’t have a clue, but by god she was willing to learn.
“The Salon hasn’t been in America for nearly seven years, but things loosened up once the Iron Curtain fell down.”
“That was like recently, right?” said Artesia.
“They stuck to Russia and China,” said Mason. “Picked up a few new members in Xiang Province—at least, that’s what I read on the Salon Web site before that ate shit and died. And they’re finally coming back to New York. And when they do, I think we should go, and see if we can get Jules here to shoot some pictures, right?”
Jules?
I allowed it, seeing as how Mason Stone could buy my entire family tree several times over, or shitcan me because he disliked the cut of my jib. I asked him how he has come by this information, which usually classed at about the same stature as an urban legend.
“I subscribe to their newsletter.” He pulled a broad reaction so everyone would get the joke and Artesia laughed poli
tely. “Naw, you know how it is—I know some people who know some people. Who know.”
Artesia had a dragon tattoo encircling her left ankle, something that Makeup would blot out for the camera with a special matte base cream and a layer of powder to match her skin tone. A removable mask for permanent ink. They used this stuff on some of the models I had shot, the ones shortsighted enough not to want a career.
Mason cut to the cookie: “I can get us in. Maybe even you,” he said, meaning me.
“Only if you promise it’s as weird as you say,” said Artesia, in full coax mode.
“Weird is the word,” said Mason. “Double scoops.” Nearly everything he said was convincing. He had once played the president of the United States. Viewers wanted to believe everything this man told them. But his talent was the artful depiction of human emotion, and I wondered what he was really feeling behind the firewall of his broadcast persona. I let him know how to find me if I was not at hand, and if he turned out to be for real.
Then I snapped the first photo of them together ever printed, one that later did good traffic on wire services and Web sites. Mason turned his head so his profile was emphasized. Artesia lit up as though on a hot switch. She could carbon copy that smile any time she spotted a camera lens. She derived energy from exposure.
Artesia was not wearing a bra, and had nipples the size of the crown on a Tootsie Pop. She caught me looking. I lost.
* * *
My so-called office was one floor down and on the opposite side of the building from Andrew Collier’s spread. Somewhere in the maze between was my benefactor, Tripp, crunching schedules with first AD Gordo. And three feet away from me was Arly Zahoryin, videographer.
Not “playback.” That was a more essential cog in the modern moviemaking mechanism: the person with the video links to all the operating cameras, who supplied instant playbacks for the director and thereby kept hard evidence of every take. That guy’s name was Sinkevitch (I think) and we had traded cordialities, but nothing real. To him I was a glorified paparazzo. But if Arly Zahoryin could befriend him, I could too.
“Sinky’s invaluable,” said Arly. “Especially if you need fresh batteries on the fly; he’s got a whole drawer of them. I get a spare set of phones and a radio hookup to the audio feed from him every day, if the actors don’t hog them all. You might wanna try that, too—when you can eavesdrop the feeds off all the live mike channels, it’s a heads-up on where to be.”
As long as I didn’t cheese Arly out of the set of headphones on which he had permanent squatter’s dibs—that was pretty clear.
We were in a ten-by-ten afterthought of a room mostly consumed by a very large and apparently decommissioned ceiling duct and two big desks, the old, drab, metalwork, military kind. Both desks locked, which was an advantage since both of us could store valuable gear here. Arly had four cameras that each cost about five grand, not to mention two computers and a bewildering array of auxiliary gear, including a double-handled stabilizer that, when he wore it with the camera, made Arly look as though he had been in a serious automobile accident since it was a square frame of metal that fit around his head and neck.
Arly himself was endomorphic and gawky, with a prematurely sloping neck and a notable degree of pattern baldness for one so young—he could not have been much more than Joey’s age, but could probably have passed for Joey’s dad. Sometimes genetics really fuck us over. Arly was dead-earnest and clueless all at the same time. Yes, he wanted to direct. No, he had no idea what. He had been prepared for opportunity’s knock for nearly a decade. Yes, he would tell you all about it at length if you did not flee. That boy was a talker.
“Studios keep trying to do all the supplements in-house now,” he said as I shucked gear in the office, much like an infantryman dropping pack and rifle to catch sleep against a tree. “But I’ve done Andrew’s last three movies and he requested me. The budgets for add-ons to the DVD are drying up. The golden age for video is already over. But people want to buy discs that have extra stuff, even if they never watch it. They think it’s more bang for the buck but the studio gets it, not me.”
There followed a lengthy and complex explanation of budgets for such things. Arly seemed deeply organized, but not very inspired.
“Tripp probably told you that rap about how the videographer is the lowest form of life on a set. That was a joke we started.” Arly clearly did not appreciate the longevity of the humor. “See, I’m one of the few people that has to make nice to every single person on the set, because even the caterer can make me move out of the way. The camera crew doesn’t have to know the grips except when they need something from them. The effects guys don’t talk to the actors unless the actors request a peek at the green screen stuff on monitors. The stunt guys don’t know who the gaffers are. But I have to know everybody and depend on their tolerance. Then there’s Tripp and Gordo, who’ll come along with that little wave that says ‘don’t shoot this,’ y’know, when somebody pitches a fit or things go wrong on the set and I’m there, recording. I shoot it anyway ’cos, what the hell, I’m not gonna betray them and stick it on YouTube or something. That guy, Richard? Mason Stone’s bodyguard?”
“Black trench coat,” I said.
“Yeah, his name’s Fearing. Richard Fearing—Dick Fearing, how’s that for appropriate? He comes over to me. ‘Whatchoo wanna shoot that for?’ he says. ‘Nobody wants to see that.’ Mason had ducked behind a flag to change his shirt. That’s great for the video because it shows Mason is down with the crew, not flippity enough to have to go back to his trailer just to switch shirts, right? But now I got Dick Fearing all up in my biz, protecting his client from exposure, like, literally, he thinks. Now, I can pussy out and run to Tripp. If I run to Gordo, Gordo will make that face that says I’m wasting his time again. Or I can come back at Dick, who is a foot taller than me. So I lay it out for Dick: all my footage has to clear a thousand levels of approval, one of which is Mason Stone’s. Nothing gets out that the company doesn’t want out. And I tell Dick, this was like, yesterday, that he can look at anything I shoot on playback anytime he wants. I’m supposed to be here; I’m part of the crew. And he backs off, man, and goes, ‘Naw, it’s okay.’ It was like a friggin’ test or something.”
The subliminal was clear as vodka, too: I took on Mason Stone’s bodyguard and won. These were the kind of hurdles jumped during the beginning of actual production. Arly’s fervent hope was that by week two, nobody would care if he was around; he would blend.
“That reminds me,” I said. “I’d prefer not to be visible on your footage, if you know what I mean. It’s a tax thing. I’m not really here, okay?”
“Well, it’s inevitable that you’ll be on some footage. But I won’t post it for a podcast or anything. It’ll be on my log and here in the office, but if you don’t want it out there, it won’t be.”
I had to trust him that far. He gave my proposition a swift nod as if he did not want to be distracted by the main thrust of his next point.
“We’ve basically got the same job, y’know,” he said. He was constantly trying to upgrade his own status, even tacitly. He felt pilloried and unappreciated. Deeper in the resentment lobe of his brain he knew that perfectly acceptable hero shots could be culled off his video, but I had the “photographer” designation and he did not. More than once I would probably position myself in what he saw as his roost for a shot, and in a very real sense, I outranked him.
Which was itself strange because I was used to being the boss of my own set during shoots. Here on the flip side of the country, I was part of a team and much more vulnerable to the opinions of others as to what I should or should not be doing. Yet within limits I was relatively free-range. I still could not shake the feeling that at any moment a grown-up would wander in and say, “What do you think you’re doing here? Who said you could be here?”
In the most oblique way possible, I asked if I could use Arly’s computer to check some stuff on the Internet. Generally, if you claim some softwar
e foul-up, people will accept your need even if you are standing there with a laptop in your hand, due to the common acceptance of technology as evil. Every such “deal” I made with Arly was based on a polite lie—my imaginary tax bogey, my non-fouled-up laptop, which worked fine. We were all trapped in this big machine together.
“Sure, no prob,” Arly said. “I’ll make a log-on for you. What do you want to be called?”
I thought about it for a minute. “Mister Kimber,” I said.
* * *
That Sunday it was Mister Kimber who staked out HawkNest, Clavius’s Upper West Side base of operations, hoping for a glimpse of Char. I wore a Panavision gimme cap (courtesy of Arly Zahoryin’s coat rack) and big sunglasses, feeling like the idiot I was. The new Mister Kimber had no class at all when it came to disguises.
Knowledgeable producers call it “film jail”—the removal of yourself from the world at large while a production is shooting. Calls don’t get returned, bills stack up, friends and lovers go unanswered … unless they are inside the hermetic universe of the movie, which demands to be the only thing that matters for a large chunk of time. Urgent world news items had only the vaguest echoes here, akin to village rumors. Stepping beyond the boundaries of Vengeance Is, even for a single day off, felt like a loss of rhythm. Smart crew members slept and got drunk (or vice versa) and never “left” the persistent bubble of the film at hand, even on their days off. For overtime days there was a thing called “turnaround,” which was supposed to guarantee a worker eighteen hours before the next call-time, but this margin got cheated more than the unions would like to admit. One of Tripp’s solutions to last-minute schedule trims was to admit we had to go to six-day weeks when he had originally planned for five. That made the whole shoot more intense, but also more exhausting, overtime be damned. It solidified the chain-link limits of the Vengeance Is universe. Active movies were very much like cocaine. You accomplished a staggering amount in a short moment of time; then, when the hot period passed, the slowdown felt deadly, like walking in sudden hypergravity.
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