The Bullet Catch

by John Gaspard

  “Walter said to make me up like an Ecuadorian native,” a familiar voice said.

  “What? Now you’re an extra?” Lauren asked, twisting my head to the other side, rubbing makeup behind my left ear.

  “Not just an extra. I get to pull the trigger.”

  I opened my eyes and turned my head as much as Lauren would allow. I recognized Stewart, the writer, had taken the chair next to me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw one of Lauren’s assistants throw a makeup bib over him and begin to prepare his blond hair for spraying.

  “But I’m the shooter,” I said, trying to turn my head to look at him. Lauren, who was just as strong as she looked, kept a firm grip on my skull, allowing virtually no movement.

  “Not anymore,” Stewart said, not even attempting to subdue his glee. “Walter said he thought he’d throw me a bone, after all the crap he’s given me. I’m really looking forward to this,” he added. He actually rubbed his hands together like a silent movie villain.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said, once again attempting to turn toward him, but Lauren twisted my head back to her desired position. “This effect requires a level of training you don’t possess.”

  “Oh, nonsense,” he said. “I’m pointing a fake gun with a fake bullet at a fake actor twenty feet away. What could go wrong?”

  * * *

  “I’m really not comfortable with this,” I said as I tried to keep up with Walter. He was following the cameraman around the set as they blocked out the shot. The cameraman wasn’t so much holding the camera as he was wearing it. A harness encased his chest like a vest and a metal arm on a pivot jutted from the harness, with the camera securely clamped to the metal arm. A monitor below the camera allowed him to see the shot as he glided through the set, with Walter right on his heels.

  “If you’re uncomfortable, talk to wardrobe. They’ll get you a looser serape. Although tell them I love that color on you.”

  “No, not my costume. I’m not comfortable with Stewart firing the gun in this scene.”

  “Oh, Eli, there’s nothing to it. You showed me the process yourself. A monkey could fire the gun at that point and no one will get hurt.”

  “Unless he wants someone to get hurt.”

  Walter stopped looking at the image on the camera’s monitor and looked up at me. “Are we still talking about the monkey?”

  “No, we’re talking about Stewart.”

  He thought about this for a moment and then shook his head. “Stewart can’t hurt anybody. He’s just the writer.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that. Even at our first meeting, Stewart had exhibited a thinly-suppressed rage at what had been done to his screenplay and at the casting of Jake in the role of Terry Alexander.

  I also remembered his reaction when we both separately came across Jake and Noël necking in the woods. His face had looked nearly demonic, starring daggers at Jake. And there had been a gleam in Stewart’s eye when I left him in the makeup tent that made me seriously uneasy.

  Walter and the cameraman had continued on their rehearsal path and were now on the other side of the large dirt clearing that would act as the staging ground for this scene.

  “I love a martini,” a voice said behind me. I turned to see Arnold, the producer, walking toward me, smiling an uncharacteristically large grin. Also uncharacteristic was his wardrobe. Instead of his usual freshly pressed Hawaiian shirt and very expensive off-white slacks, he was dressed not unlike myself, although about twenty percent better. Outfitted like an Ecuadorian townsperson, he had the addition of an impressively large hat and a slightly tarnished badge, which was displayed prominently on his equally prominent chest. Completing the look were a pair of mirrored sunglasses. Thrown as I was by his wardrobe, I was still trying to figure out why he was talking about martinis.

  “Bit early in the day for a martini, isn’t it?”

  “Not the drink, my friend. The shot.” He threw an arm over my shoulder and began to walk me along the perimeter of the set. “On a movie shoot, the last shot of the day is called the martini. Why, you ask?”

  I hadn’t, but that wasn’t an issue with Arnold. “It’s called the martini because the next shot is out of a glass…at the bar!” He laughed a deep and unsettling laugh. “And in this divine instance, not only is this the last shot of the day, it’s the last shot of the production. After this, it’s a wrap. And not a moment too soon, if you ask me.”

  Once again I hadn’t, but again that didn’t matter to Arnold. I did have a question, though, so I interjected it before he had time to start another soliloquy. “So you’re an extra today?” I asked. “Sort of pulling a cameo, like Hitchcock?”

  He shook his head and laughed. “I’m not just any old extra. I asked Walter if I could play the sheriff in this scene. You see, it will be my revolver that Terry Alexander borrows for his trick. His last trick,” he added ominously.

  “Your revolver? Your personal revolver?”

  Arnold laughed. “Oh, would that it were, but no. It’s coming from props.” He continued to walk and to talk. “I gotta tell you it will be a great relief to finally get this monster in the can. I’ve produced some pain-in-the-ass productions in the past, but this has been a friggin’ nightmare. You know the mystery is ruined, right? Right down the toilet.”

  He obviously still hadn’t put it together that my uncle was the primary cause for this, and I felt no need to disabuse him of that notion at this late date. “Yes, it’s a shame,” I agreed. “So, what will that do to the marketing of the film? What approach will you take?”

  “I have some ideas I’ve been playing with,” he said, his voice dropping in volume, bringing it almost down to the level of an average speaker. “I think—depending on how things go today—we’ll kick a few of them up the flagpole and see who salutes.”

  “And how do you expect things to go today?”

  He took off his sunglasses and squinted up at the sun, then turned and surveyed the entire set before turning back to me. “I expect things to go swimmingly,” he said, smiling as he put his sunglasses back on. “Just swimmingly.”

  While they continued to tweak the camera positions, I paced around the set, running the steps of the Bullet Catch method through my mind again and again, looking for any flaws in the plan. Even though a blank cartridge was being used, it could still cause damage. Actors had died when a gun firing a blank was shot too close to them, and at least one magician was injured when a joker stuffed some lead pellets down the barrel of a rifle containing a blank cartridge. The force of the explosion was enough to propel the pellets at the magician, causing injury but not death.

  And then there was also the issue of someone substituting a real bullet for the blank. My plan made this impossible, I thought, but I had been wrong before. I kept running each step in the trick through my mind, searching for any holes in my plan.

  I was so preoccupied with my thoughts I almost collided with Noël. She was just as at fault as I was, as she was looking into her iPhone as she walked.

  “Oh, sorry about that,” I said as I neatly sidestepped past her.

  “No problem,” she answered vacantly, continuing to look intently at her phone. She stopped and ran a finger across the screen repeatedly, then held the phone up at arm’s length from her face. She twisted her expression into a grimace, looking not unlike Munch’s famous painting of “The Scream,” if that painting’s subject had been blonde and twenty-two. The phone’s camera clicked and she altered the expression again, snapping another photo and then another. She then looked at the phone’s screen, quickly swiping through these most recent photos.

  As I looked at her, I remembered Jake’s story about her heart-broken roommate and his claim that Noël had a temper of legendary proportions. Watching her innocently flipping through photos on her phone, I was still having trouble believing him. I was also having trouble figuring out wha
t she was doing.

  “So,” I said, trying to find the best way to frame my question, “what are you up to?”

  “Oh, just working on my scream face,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Your scream face?”

  “Yeah, I scream at the end of the scene, after Jake gets shot.”

  I wasn’t thrilled with the way she had phrased that. “You mean, at the end of the scene where the character of Terry is shot?”

  “Yeah. Anyway, when I first started out, I did a horror film—it was a vampire movie where the vampires could come out during the day and they didn’t drink blood and they weren’t actually dead.”

  “Interesting twist to the vampire legend,” I said. “Could you kill them with a wooden stake through the heart?”

  “Of course.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  “I mean, that would kill anyone, right?”

  I couldn’t help but nod in agreement.

  “That movie was way ahead of its time,” she said. “Anyway, the director of that movie said I had a great scream vocally, but a terrible scream face. Since then, I’ve actually dubbed a lot of screams in movies you’ve probably seen. I’m kinda known for it.”

  “We live in a niche world.”

  “But now, any time I have to scream on-camera, I always rehearse my scream face, so it matches the volume and intensity of my actual scream. How do you like this one?” She held up the phone and I looked at the photo of her scream face.

  “Very convincing,” I said.

  “Yeah, I like that one,” she said as she walked away. “I think that’s the one I’ll go with.”

  The job of turning one hundred pale Minnesotans into one hundred Venezuelan villagers clearly was a larger task than originally anticipated, and so the day dragged on while we waited for the crowd to be properly coiffed and assembled. Walter and the cameraman blocked and re-blocked the shot as the sun moved across the sky, while Stewart wandered the set, twirling his gun in a poor imitation of Terence Hill’s legendary Trinity character.

  I camped under the shade of one of the sparse trees, surveying the set and again wondered what I had forgotten or where my Bullet Catch method might go wrong. As I mulled, I was surprised to see a familiar mop of unruly hair moving through the crowd, towering ever so slightly above the bored villagers. It was Clive Albans and he was being led through the set by Donna, the movie’s other producer. He spotted me moments after I had spotted him.

  “Eli Marks, what have you done to your hair? And your complexion? And your wardrobe?” He laughed at his questions and turned to Donna, who joined in the laugh a fraction of a second too late to make it convincing. The change in his attitude since the last time we’d met was striking. This was not the Clive I had seen cowering in the festival grounds’ parking lot.

  “Clive, I’m surprised to see you here,” I said. “Really surprised.”

  “Never say never, that’s what I always say.” He stood back and gestured to Donna. “This lovely lady called yesterday and said, if I may quote, all is forgiven.”

  Donna smiled and nodded. She had clearly found her calling behind the camera, because this woman was no actress. “Life is too short to hold grudges,” she said, again smiling unconvincingly.

  “Let bygones be bygones,” I suggested.

  “That’s right,” she said. “We’re so excited about this last day of shooting and we just wanted Clive to be a part of it.”

  Clive wrapped a long arm around her shoulder. “We’re a family again.”

  I cocked my head, looking from her to Clive. “Today of all days, you felt it was important to have a journalist on the set?”

  She visibly winced at the word “journalist,” but soldiered forward. “It’s no secret this production has had its share of bumps,” she said, choosing her words with care. “But I think after today, everyone will walk away with an entirely different feeling about this movie. And we wanted to make sure Clive was here to witness it.”

  She was clenching her teeth so tightly while she talked that for just a fleeting moment I thought it might be Clive they were planning to shoot at the end of the scene.

  “It’s a big day,” I said.

  “It will be memorable,” she agreed.

  “Historic,” Clive added, and then wrapped his arm around Donna and led her away. “I heard someone mention the possibility of a martini? Or was I very much mistaken?”

  The extras who had taken the gig with the hope of hanging out with TV star Jake North were disappointed to learn Mr. North was spending the day in his trailer and would not be signing autographs. To keep people away, they had even gone so far as to assign a production assistant to stand outside the motor home and vet anyone who approached. It took several moments for this production assistant to recognize me through my makeup and costume, but once she saw who it was, she allowed me to climb the steps and knock on the aluminum door.

  “It’s open,” came Jake’s voice from inside.

  Over the past days, Jake’s method-actor use of Spanish on the set had diminished considerably. I opened the door and walked into the dim trailer. All the blinds were pulled and the only light came from the sconces on the wall and a small light over the dining room table.

  Jake sat in a recliner, strumming mournfully on a guitar. He looked every inch the spitting image of Terry Alexander from the grainy video of his final performance. He was gaunt and had dark recesses under his eyes. His skin was ashen and looked paler than any of the Scandinavians who had been made-up as extras this morning.

  “You been to makeup already?” I asked as I moved some books off one of the chairs and sat down.

  “No, do they want me?” he said, starting to rise up out of the recliner. I held up a hand.

  “Not yet,” I said. He stopped in mid-motion and then slumped back into the recliner. “How’s it going today?” I asked, putting as much pep into my intonation as possible.

  “It’s going,” he said. He strummed the guitar and I recognized the mournful tune of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. “How’s it going out there?”

  I shrugged. “Walter is chasing the sun. He keeps re-blocking the shot.”

  “So that’s the hold-up?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “The extras are too pale. They’re working on it.”

  This produced a chuckle from Jake. “That’s the downside of shooting in Minnesota.”

  We didn’t speak for a few moments. I wasn’t sure if I should raise the topic of the switch in shooters, but then Jake beat me to it.

  “I hear Stewart’s my new trigger man,” he said with a wry smile.

  “Yeah, I heard that,” I said, trying not to place too much significance on it. “What do you think of that?”

  Jake shrugged. “At the risk of sounding fatalistic, I’m not sure if it matters at this point.” He stopped playing and took a moment to tune one of the guitar’s strings. “I mean, if I get shot, the headline in tomorrow’s paper is going to be my name, regardless of who pulls the trigger.”

  “You’re not going to get shot.”

  He stopped tuning the guitar and looked over at me. “I can name a dozen magicians who were convinced of that. And they’re all dead.”

  “You’re not going to get shot,” I repeated for emphasis and also because I couldn’t think of anything else to say. There was a knock at the door and a voice said, “They’re ready for you in makeup, Mr. North.”

  “Gracias,” Jake said as he got up, leaning the guitar against the couch. “Me voy a morir pronto.”

  Although I still struggled with the language, I recognized enough Spanish to realize that instead of saying, “Thank you, I’ll be there soon,” Jake had instead said, “Thank you, I’m going to die soon.”

  I walked with him to makeup and on the way I corrected his translation. I also took the oppo
rtunity to set him straight on just how safe I had made The Bullet Catch. After I explained my latest plan, he laughed and slapped me on the back.

  “You just keep thinking, Butch,” he said, quoting a classic movie that also ends with the heroes getting shot. “That’s what you’re good at.”

  Chapter 20

  “Quiet on the set please!”

  Even though I had been on the movie set enough to have heard this phrase dozens of times, I was still always amazed at how effectively and instantly it worked. An immediate hush fell over everyone—cast, crew and extras—as Walter took the megaphone from the assistant director. He fumbled with the on/off switch and managed to create a screech of feedback before the assistant took it back, adjusted the volume, pointed to the TALK button and handed it back to Walter.

  “Good people,” Walter said through the megaphone, “we need to get this in one. One single, uninterrupted take. Not ten. Not two. One.” He looked up at the sky for a moment, then pressed the TALK button again. “The sun is in the perfect position, but that moment is fleeting and we must seize it. And seize it we shall. Our time is now!”

  His ersatz version of a motivational halftime speech concluded, Walter handed the megaphone back to the assistant director and took his seat behind the video monitor. The assistant director announced, “Places, please,” through the megaphone and there was a flurry of activity as cast, crew and extras took their positions.

  I found my mark—a small piece of blue tape on the ground—and the other extras gathered around me, forming the audience who would be witnessing Terry Alexander’s final performance. Off to my left was Stewart, wearing a bright red poncho. A day’s growth of beard had been added to his baby face, but it did nothing to dispel the look of eager anticipation in his eyes.

  “Stand by, please. Rolling,” the assistant director announced through the megaphone. Off to one side, the soundman responded with, “We have speed.” Squatting behind the video monitor, Walter nodded to the assistant director, who held up the megaphone and declared, “Action!”