by Lisa Ferrari
An hour later, we’re in a red Jeep Wrangler, a courtesy vehicle provided by the hotel, trundling down a dirt path, which comes to an end several twisty miles into the mountains. The trail ends and we get out and hike, using Kellan’s phone’s compass app. It’s a serious hike. It takes more than an hour but we finally break out into a clearing, revealing one of the most spectacular sights I’ve ever seen: a tree-lined lagoon fed by a beautiful waterfall which comes cascading down a series of smooth, black rocky shelves. It’s like something you only see in a wall calendar, with clear blue water and pristine beauty.
We strip down to our bathing suits, dive in, and swim over to the waterfall. The water is warm and clear. It doesn’t take long for us to find a large boulder behind which we can go at it. At first I’m a bit reserved because the last thing I want is for a couple of park rangers or a group of Hawaiian school children to catch us doing it.
But we haven’t seen a single car or any other people for almost two hours, and we are fully hidden behind the boulder. Kellan goes down on me, gently at first, and, with his tongue inside me, I soon forget about being caught. I am once again reminded how long Kellan’s tongue is. Within a few minutes, I can bear it no longer; I push Kellan onto his back and mount him. We both wince slightly because we’re both a bit sore, which makes us laugh. But we proceed slowly and it’s not long before we’re both coming our brains out in perfect, synchronous, yummy, newlywed unity.
I collapse on top of Kellan and we lie together in the warm sun. I think we even fall asleep. When we get too warm, we pop our heads up to confirm that we’re alone. We ease into the water and swim naked together. I’ve always wanted to go skinny-dipping in a place like this. It’s every bit as exciting and scary and thrilling as I’ve always thought it would be.
All we need now is for some tribal people to come out of the jungle bearing spears and wearing loin cloths, forcing us to stay in the water until some great and terrible creature comes to get us for supper, like in King Kong, or that movie where the college kids visit that pyramid in Mexico and get eaten by the vines.
Claire…
Right. Sorry.
At last, we must head back to our hotel room. We hike back to the Jeep before the sun goes down.
We get back to our room, take a hot shower, and collapse naked on the massive four-poster bed (Kellan takes a moment to straighten the mattress, and we make the bed after we find all the pillows, one of which was in the bathroom sink; ???). We order room service and enjoy a sumptuous meal naked. It’s been some time since we’ve spent this much time naked.
We eventually go to bed, happy and replete, as husband and wife.
PRODUCTION RESUMES AS scheduled the next day.
Things return to normal, insofar as shooting a movie and working constantly and barely sleeping and living in a trailer can be normal.
But I still love it.
Being a married woman helps, too. It’s a secret Kellan and I share with Sheila, Aaron, and Rami.
We fly back to Los Angeles. We shoot for two days on the sound stage and Kellan and I are able to sleep in our own bed and do our laundry and work out in our own gym.
But then it’s back to the airport to begin another location shoot. We begin on a plane somewhere in Iceland (where it’s not icy at all this time of year, but actually very green and beautiful). A full-scale mock-up of our shuttle has been built. And crashed. There is a huge gouge in the earth where it slid to a halt. They fly us out in a helicopter. I’m blown away. It looks like a real space ship has crashed. Kellan and I climb into the cockpit and Aaron spends six hours filming us in there, climbing out, walking around the ship, and looking sadly at the enormous JUST MARRIED sign on the back of the ship. If everyone on set only knew!
After that first week, we travel so much that my passport is nearly running out of places for it to be stamped.
And it’s wonderful.
The weeks and months pass.
Holidays come and go.
Birthdays, anniversaries… they all happen on set. Everyone takes ten minutes to commemorate and then we get right back to work. Kellan I don’t fly home for Thanksgiving or Christmas or New Year’s. (We all get drunk and exceedingly high on New Year’s Eve during a quick three-day stop in Amsterdam, including Aaron, who is so hungover that we all take New Year’s Day off and most of us spend it in our hotel rooms. This mistake is not repeated the next New Year’s, where we’re all camped out somewhere outside of a small and very old-world village in Estonia.)
The first time I tell my mother I won’t be home for Thanksgiving, she goes ape shit. When I tell her we won’t be home for Christmas, she goes King Kong-level ape shit. When I tell her we won’t be home for Easter (which she says is the most important holiday because without the miracle of the Resurrection, we’d all be lost sinners. I do not repeat any of Beth’s endless jokes about Zombie Jesus), she is surprisingly quiet. She stops answering my calls or texts after that. Beth becomes our go-between, one-sided though it is. If my mother is this pissed over my not being able to join the family for holidays, I can only imagine how berserk she’ll go when I tell her Kellan and I got married and she wasn’t there. I suspect she won’t recognize the marriage. She’ll say it was illegal or whatever. There won’t be any crystal gravy boat from her. Kellan and I can always get married again so our families and friends can attend. That would be fun; who wouldn’t want two weddings?
As we travel around the world, I take so many pics and vids on my phone that my laptop’s hard drive fills up almost immediately and Kellan and I go online and buy two more. And then two more a month later. Aaron and Sheila remind me constantly to be careful what I post to social media because they don’t want to give away too much about the movie. But everywhere we go there are already paparazzi waiting for us. They camp out on ridges and rooftops, utilizing giant zoom lenses to try and get photos from the set.
Sheila has hired a documentary filmmaker to document the entire process of making this movie, the now-renown Biggest Movie of All Time. So he and his crew are following me around constantly. They have three different crews, one of which is permanently assigned to me. They’re there when I come out of my trailer every morning, they’re there when I work out, they’re on set, they film everything I eat, everything I drink.
One morning, in Belfast, it’s freezing and drizzling and I’m not in the mood and they’re waiting for me when I come out of the port-a-potty. I’ve just shat boiling diarrhea for the millionth time after picking it up in Thailand ten days ago. I’m dehydrated, despite twice-daily IV infusions from the set medics (I’m running out of veins!), I’m eating Immodium like they’re Pez, and I have a constant pain in my abdomen. I lie whenever Aaron or Kellan asks me about it because I don’t want to slow down the production, but if it doesn’t go away soon, I’m going to have to say something.
And then I realize why I have a constant knot in my stomach. It’s got nothing to do with what I ate or drank (although pissing out of my ass ten times a day isn’t helping). It’s because Kellan’s death scene is coming up. I’ve been dreading it for a long time. A long time. I can’t bear to think about anything like that actually happening to Kellan so I sure as heck don’t want to enact it on camera.
But I have to.
It’s in the script.
The other issue is that Kellan will be wrapped after that, meaning he won’t be needed on set any longer. Sheila and Aaron will send him home. I’ll be here without him. We’ll be apart. For how long I do not yet know. I’ve hinted at it to Sheila a couple of times but she’s so overwhelmed that having a normal conversation with her is pretty much impossible.
I repeat to myself over and over and over in my mind that it’ll be okay.
It’ll be okay.
It’ll be okay.
It’ll be okay.
THE DAY ARRIVES.
My diarrhea has mostly abated. Mostly. I’ve been eating lots of rice, and bananas, trying to bind myself up t
o stop the diarrhea. The added carbs have caused my muscles to fill out, which everyone on set has noticed because they’re all telling me how awesome I look. Kellan is constantly coming up to me and pinching my skin on my stomach and on the back of my arm and on the front of my thigh, measuring the amount of water I’m holding. He never says anything, but I’m waiting for him to assign me an extra hour of fasted cardio every morning.
On the day of the big scene, we shoot for 20 hours.
I’m taken hostage by the aliens and their asshole human henchman played perfectly by Garth. My wrists are bound in chains and I’m suspended in the air half naked while Kellan and Garth proceed to beat the holy bloody hell out of each other for eight hours. Aaron shouts a lot, mostly “Yes!” as the two of them wrestle and fight. They really get into it. Several times it looks from my vantage point as if they’re truly hitting one another. They both have cuts above their eyes and blood is running down their faces. Kellan has blood in his mouth and his teeth are red. He tackles Garth and lands on him and Garth gets up limping.
They go at it for almost an hour nonstop. From where I’m hanging in the air, I can see Aaron rolling additional cameras each time a mag gets low. After an eternity of combat, Kellan and Garth are both exhausted.
Aaron yells, “Kill!”
This is the cue to Kellan and Garth for Kellan to go for the kill shot.
Just as he’s about to crush Garth’s face with a boulder, Aaron yells, “Now!”
Calista stabs Kellan in the back with her alien tail. The camera goes in close on Kellan’s face while one of the effects guys slaps a giant adhesive spike on his chest. It’s a frightening prosthetic device that squirts fake blood. Kellan looks down at it, looks up at me, and collapses.
I scream.
Aaron coached me many hours ago to really, really, really let ’er rip when I scream, not to worry about being melodramatic or over the top. He wanted to get it all in one take with as natural a reaction from me as possible.
I scream so hard, so loud, I strain my voice. I feel it happen. I’m instantly crying and shaking and thrashing against my chains in a pathetic, useless attempt to get to Kellan.
A camera on a crane comes up and hovers in front of my face.
Three green drones flit about, recording the whole thing, painted green so they can be digitally removed in post production.
A smoke machine is filling the stage with ghostly mist.
There are hundreds of extras dressed in frightening alien costumes.
The whole scene is so real, so convincing, I feel genuine fear and dread as Kellan collapses on his face, dead. Lifeless and unmoving.
Calista cackles her alien cackle and the hundreds of aliens around us thump their alien tails on the ground, creating a terrifying sound.
My eyes are fixed on Kellan’s bloody red back. Tear stream down my face.
They lower me down, release me from my bonds, and I want to run to Kellan.
Several of the aliens pick up Kellan’s body and carry it away, into the darkness.
Several others restrain me. I fight against them as hard as I can. I nearly get away, but several more come forward and grab me.
And then Kellan’s not there. He’s gone.
AARON YELLS CUT.
He consults with Sheila and Rami for about fifteen minutes while the rest of us stand around the set. I sit on the cold, hard rocky floor, with my back against a boulder. I can’t get the image of Kellan dying out of my mind. I know it wasn’t real. But it sure looked real. I wait for him to appear on set or for Aaron to yell for everyone to reset so we can do it all again. But he doesn’t yell for a reset. He yells to move on. So we move on to the next shot. I keep waiting for Kellan to come out wearing jeans and a tee shirt, with all the blood and dirt washed away, fake though they may be.
But he doesn’t; he doesn’t appear with a coffee cup in his hand and a twinkle in his eye, smiling at me and encouraging me.
I want to go to his trailer and see him and hug him before we move on but Aaron says no.
We shoot for another six hours.
By the time we wrap for the day, I’m exhausted.
But when I get to my trailer, it’s empty.
I check Kellan’s trailer but it, too, is empty.
I march back to the set and find Sheila. I ask her where Kellan is. She checks her watch and says by now he’s probably halfway back to Los Angeles.
Before I can pitch a fit and have a furious, raging meltdown unlike anything she’s ever seen, she takes me aside and explains that Aaron insisted Kellan fly home immediately in order to help me with my process.
I couldn’t give a fuck about my process.
Sheila explains the situation as though I’m a child. Because I’m cold, exhausted, thirsty, dehydrated, hungry, feverish, and terrified, I’m furious.
But she perseveres and manages to convince me to channel my emotions into my performance, to take it out on Garth and Calista as I’m supposed to do per the screenplay.
I hate to admit it, but I see the logic in this argument.
Aaron walks by several times but barely looks at me. I get the impression he feels bad but doesn’t want to give me a chance to argue. I also get the impression that he wants to keep me isolated. Lonely. So I’m at the end of my proverbial rope when the climactic scene between Calista and me comes.
It takes almost two weeks.
I thought I was at the end of my rope when I spent the night on the mountain.
I then thought I was at the end of my rope when Kellan was taken away.
I was wrong.
Each morning, when I get to set, Calista is there, already in full alien queen bitch regalia. She grabs me and throws me into a cage and I stay in there for several hours until Aaron needs me.
At first, I think it’s a joke.
But when they don’t let me out, I begin to think otherwise.
Each time I call to Calista, she comes and bangs on the bars and screams at me in some weird alien language. She’s so in character that I start to get scared.
After the third day of this, a shift happens in my mind; a break. I become like a prisoner, sitting on the floor of the cage, with my knees drawn tight to my chest, and my head down.
Calista walks past my cage periodically. She leers and hisses; she’s enjoying this.
It becomes very easy for me to hate her.
ONE DAY, WHEN, for some reason, I’m not immediately thrown in my cage, we’re shooting a scene in which I stumble across our downed shuttle. I go inside and sift through the detritus of my former life, photos of Kellan and me, clothing, books… I catch sight of myself in the bathroom mirror. It’s cracked and I move side to side, studying myself. I see two women: the old me and the now me.
I pull my bowie knife from the sheath on my thigh and proceed to cut all my hair off. It takes several minutes. Aaron keeps rolling. I manage to cut my hair into a kind of Mohawk style I’m satisfied with.
I punch the mirror and it shatters.
My hand is cut. I study my clenched fist, covered in blood and broken glass. I lick it.
I taste my blood. I crunch the glass. I turn and leave the bathroom.
Aaron calls cut. Followed by, “Um, Claire, what the hell was that?”
I shrug. I don’t know what it was, where it came from, or why I did it. It certainly is not in the script. But it’s done now. I’m tired and afraid and lonely and I don’t give a shit what he thinks. (Am I too in character? Am I Claire or Nisa?)
We watch it played back on the monitor on the video capture system. It’s not as good as the final product will be on film but it gives us an idea of what the scene looks like, if it works or not.
Aaron loves it. Really, really loves it.
I’m indifferent. Though my head is definitely cooler now.
BY THE TIME the day of my big fight scene with the alien queen comes, I’m rabid.
I’ve spent the entire day in the cag
e. At least, I think it’s day. We’re inside some actual ancient ruins, so I haven’t seen the sun for what feels like forever.
I’m startled when the alien queen rattles my cage.
Two of her cannibal minions open the door and yank me out.
I stand on one side of the set, with the cannibal aliens holding me firmly. The alien queen stands on the other side, pacing, hissing, and looking only at me.
Aaron readies all of his cameras, cranes, drones, actors, and extras.
Just before we roll, Aaron comes up to me and whispers, “Tear her fuckin head off.”
Gladly.
Aaron yells, “Action!” and I charge Calista. We’ve already said our lines in previous takes. It’s time to get it on. I’ve stood mindlessly half-listening as we’ve discussed the fight, and choreographed a few key points, so we have an idea of what we’re going to do. But Aaron wants it to be organic. He keeps saying that over and over again. Organic. Organic. Organic.
By the time he calls action, I want to rip the queen bitch’s head off and shove it up Aaron’s organic ass.
In my blind lust for revenge, I make a mistake, leaving myself wide open, and the alien queen clocks me. She has big, heavy, claw appendages. She knocks me on my ass. I see stars, my vision turns yellow and green, but I scramble back to my feet, resume my charge, and we go at it.
I’m not sure how long it lasts, but I eventually wear her down. Each time I’m about to kill her, she throws me off of her and leaps to her feet.