The Man Who Heard Voices

by Michael Bamberger

  There were four characters in the scene: Kenny and his sister, Alice; Mr. Farber, the film critic; and Cleveland. Paul had his game face on, muttering to himself between takes, walking around in circles. With his beard and his glasses and Cleveland Heep’s drab green work shirt, Paul looked something like a young Fidel Castro. It was cool at dawn, but by late morning it was humid and hot, and by Take 7 there was perspiration coming through the back of Paul’s shirt. Not what Night was looking for.

  “Can we get wardrobe in here?” Night asked.

  “I am a human being, do human beings not sweat?” Paul said, using the voice and cadence of Shylock. (If you prick us, do we not bleed?)

  Paul was working. Upon seeing Kenny and Alice in the company of children, Paul went for his first big stutter, his own personal child protection act. The way he played the stutter, it was almost an epileptic convulsion. Cleveland was trying to warn Kenny and Alice to stay away from the pool after hours.

  “It’s not a”—suck air, suck air, suck air, suck air, suck air, suck air—“child-friendly environment.”

  Kenny had one line. One lick-slap and one line: “She’s not supposed to talk about the boogers!” That’s it. But the boy kept delivering it in a monotone he could not shake. It was as if the exclamation point meant nothing to him. Night ran through thirteen takes, ate up the long morning on it. In between takes, the boy nervously shifted his weight from one foot to the other, the international symbol for a child in distress.

  Night wrapped the scene. He had been good-natured the whole time. You never would have known he was frustrated. The two kids walked over to a production assistant. She would escort them back to their mothers.

  The boy playing Kenny said to her, “At the end of the movie, like after the credits, are they gonna show all my mess-ups?”

  “Oh, no. They wouldn’t do that,” the PA said.

  The boy was a true local. He lived near Bristol. He had his fingers curled underneath the bottom of his shirt, a mini–football jersey with a lineman’s number on it, 92. It fit, all the way around.

  “But you know, on the DVDs, they have those blooper sections? They put the mess-ups in those blooper sections.”

  Only Night knew that would never happen. For one thing, his DVDs didn’t have blooper sections. For another, he’d be shooting the scene again. But the next time he wouldn’t be casting locally. He’d be going to Doug Aibel and getting two new kids from New York, kids who had done plenty of commercials or Broadway or summer stock, little seasoned pros who could take direction. It was only the first day, and things were not going well.

  In a casual way, Paul had been making a study of Lick-Slap Kenny. He was always watching. If something interested him, if it was peculiar enough, he could remember it for a long time. His range was impressive. He knew the names of various deposed warlords; select Spiro Agnew quotes; the books of the surfing novelist Kem Nunn; the music of the bluesman Skip James. He had a working knowledge of superconductivity and also prizefighting. He and Night were often citing bizarre, hilarious lines from the most obscure movies. From famous movies, he had impressive recall for little-known actors who dominated inconsequential scenes. From American Graffiti, for instance, when the actor Bo Hopkins, playing a gang leader, offers to make Richard Dreyfuss a Pharaoh, a gang member.

  Paul had filed several Bob Balaban roles in his head, especially from the sequel to 2001, called 2010, a movie that had an audience of about eighteen people, by Balaban’s estimate. Balaban was one of Paul’s favorite actors (“I love that guy”), and on the first day of shooting, they had a scene together. Balaban didn’t have a word in it, just a series of quizzical looks. After one of his many silent takes, Balaban looked at Night and said, “Was that too much?” Paul admired that kind of acting in general—raising an eyebrow, cocking the head—and Balaban’s mute work in that scene specifically. But he didn’t tell Balaban that, just as he didn’t bring up 2010. He wasn’t being churlish (although he could be). In between takes, he and Balaban talked and joked about the acting life. But Paul wasn’t comfortable talking about another actor’s work in his presence, particularly an older and well-established actor. In Paul’s mind, why would Bob Balaban, twenty-two years older than Paul, with appearances in Midnight Cowboy and Close Encounters and Waiting for Guffman and scores of others, possibly care what a tot like Paul would have to say about his work? There was a modesty there, the reason Night was so eager for him to play Cleveland Heep. Part of Paul’s code was never to put pressure on another person to say some complimentary thing back to him. He never praised Night for that reason. He found fishing for compliments repulsive. About the only thing worse (in this category) was fulsome praise from an agent (his own knew better) or a producer, somebody like that.

  “There was only one time I got upset during that whole Oscar thing,” Paul said. He wasn’t talking about the ’06 awards, when he was nominated for Cinderella Man, but from the year before, when he wasn’t nominated for a Best Actor award as Miles, the wine snob/crappy writer in Sideways, though many people felt he should have been. “That was when somebody said, ‘I wish that guy would stop whining about it already.’ That was complete bullshit, because I never whined about it.” That had to be true. You couldn’t imagine Paul calling attention to himself that way. Paul took the job on Lady not because Night had directed two monster hits (The Sixth Sense and Signs) but because he liked Unbreakable. Night had worked with huge, flamboyant, outgoing stars: Bruce Willis, who came with an entourage; Mel Gibson, who commuted from Philadelphia to Los Angeles every weekend in his private jet, inviting anybody who needed a lift to come along. Now Night had this guy.

  During the rehearsal period, Bill Irwin was just completing a Broadway run of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? He had won a Tony for his role as George, the alcoholic history professor, a role made famous by Richard Burton. But when Irwin met Paul on the Lady set, one of the first things he said was “I heard you did a pretty mean George.” Paul was astonished. He had done Virginia Woolf at Yale, in front of nobody, fifteen years earlier. He was curious to know how Bill Irwin even knew about it. But he didn’t ask. Paul never wanted to seem like he was fishing.

  It was a sort of situational coldness, what Paul had. I asked him if that quality might have been a taciturn New England trait left over from another generation. (Bart’s mother was as Old Yankee as you could get.) “I don’t think so,” Paul said. “I think it’s more a macho Italian thing.”

  There’s a lot of downtime on a movie set, hours on end of it. You’d see Paul nod enthusiastically while somebody told a pinot noir story or some other wine story rekindled by Sideways. You’d see him grip a balcony railing with ten fingers and watch the dolly grip get ready for the next shot. You’d see him eat in twelve minutes before retreating to a book and classical music in his trailer, or sit around forever and talk about Werner Herzog documentaries. In time, it became apparent that the whole Michael Caine thing—take job, do job—was only an ideal for Paul. It wasn’t his natural move, to make things that easy.

  You could not imagine a less pretentious person, but in Sideways, Paul had owned Miles’s writerly preciousness. (Could they have come up with a better name than Miles? Perfect.) You could hear affectation early on, when Miles goes to an arty coffeehouse and orders a “spinach croissant.” That must take skill, to get so much out of one word. Paul shrugged it off. “Yeah, well, I’ve known a lot of pretentious people. So I just stole from those people.”

  Night saw in Paul not only exceptional humility but exceptional honesty. Paul knew himself. If you went down a road where your need for adulation or money or both was your highest priority, you’d become like a drug addict looking for a fix, selling your body to get stoned again. The need for applause and gaudy paydays could kill your art. Bob Dylan had avoided that road, and Paul was doing the same. He knew when his work was good. If, in your head, you allowed a worshipful public to build you up, then you had empowered those people to take you down,
too. It didn’t have to be a big group. If you measured yourself by the collective opinion of a clique of powerful executives, that could make you crazy. (Night had found that out.) Paul did a lot of smart things to protect himself.

  For Night, the fame-and-money road always beckoned. After the success of Signs, he could have made easy money and mono-name fame his highest priorities. Instead, he made The Village, offbeat and brown. He stuck to storytelling just as Paul stuck to acting, taking over whatever character he had signed on to play next.

  That opening Monday was a field day for Paul, with Super Chris bopping around in his boxer’s robe, kissing people in odd places while union clocks ate up Warner Bros.’ money at the rate of roughly $15,000 an hour. There were all sorts of spectacles for Paul to watch.

  After the final lick-slap, Paul and Cindy Cheung and Bob Balaban assembled to shoot a scene. In it, Young-Soon is wearing distressed low-rider jeans as Cleveland introduces her to Mr. Farber. In rehearsals, Paul would say, “This is Young-Soon. She works in a brothel in Thailand.” With film rolling (Kodak for the inside scenes, Fuji outside), he did it as scripted: “This is Young-Soon. She lives with her mother in 8A.” Above Cindy’s waistband, you could see a glimpse of two fluorescent yellow bikini strings.

  If it was carnal, Chris Doyle would find it. While Night was doing something else, Doyle went over to Cindy and hiked the strings way up high, so they’d be completely in view.

  The director of photography is not supposed to touch the costumes, and Betsy Heimann, from wardrobe, was livid. She went to Cindy and restored the strings to their original modest position. They were making a PG movie. (Nobody had told Doyle that; not that he would have cared.)

  When Doyle saw what Betsy had done, he went over to Cindy and hiked them back up.

  When Betsy saw that, she approached Doyle.

  Cindy backed away and found herself standing next to Paul.

  Betsy said to Doyle in a civil tone, “I think they want the bikini strings lower.”

  “I don’t give a fuck what they want,” Super Chris said.

  The gloves were off.

  “Well, that’s my job, to decide how the costumes should look,” Betsy said.

  “Oh my God, I can’t watch this,” Cindy said to Paul.

  “Really?” Paul said. “I’ve got to look. I’m fascinated. I see everything. That’s my problem.”

  There was a guy who saw everything making a movie for a guy who heard everything—a perfect match.

  Fourteen hours after the start of that first day, Night was in his trailer, drinking a Mike’s Hard Lemonade. He had only a few personal touches in his camper. Two basketballs (there was a portable hoop outside his door). Spare clothes and a rain suit and a parka. Various hats. Several books with markers in different places: a biography of Arthur Miller; Dylan’s Chronicles; A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole. On the wall, two Dylan album covers, Another Side of Bob Dylan and The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, and a couple of drawings by his daughters. Various CDs on a low coffee table: Kanye West and Johnny Cash and the African singer Youssou N’Dour, plus a stack of CDs representing a hundred or so bands Night was sifting through, looking for a group to play a party scene late in the movie. But that Monday night, the only thing he had on his mind was Doyle.

  “He’s messy,” Night said. Brick and I were in the trailer, and Night was unloading. He compared Doyle to Roger Deakins, who had been the cinematographer on The Village. Deakins was a severe Englishman, nominated often for Oscars (Fargo and The Shawshank Redemption, among others), who worked with a toothpick in his mouth, who was always in control, and who made Night look like a goofball. He could outwork Night. Night found him intimidating, but Deakins was a regimented pro. Doyle, in personality and style, was his complete opposite. (But Doyle and Deakins were close friends.) “I don’t know how many times I had to say today, ‘Chris—stay with the human beings.’ He suddenly gets interested in Farber’s key or something, but we don’t need Farber’s key, we haven’t storyboarded Farber’s key, Farber’s key has nothing to do with the movie. Farber’s face has everything to do with the movie. I’m like, ‘Here’s the storyboard. Let’s see if you can beat it. You’re not gonna beat it every time, but if you can beat it nine times out of ten, we’re going to have an amazing movie.’ Then he starts giving me these crazy hugs every time we get a good take. I’m like, ‘Dude, we haven’t done anything yet. Just keep the camera pointed at the actors, okay?’ So then we’re rolling, and I’m looking at Paul’s face, and he’s doing this amazing thing he might never do again. Ever. And I look in the monitor, and I’m looking at the stomach of the guy holding the boom mike!”

  He was being just slightly hyperbolic, to make his point. Doyle’s drinking, the stomach kissing, moving Cindy’s bikini strings, none of that worried Night. (He distinguished between kissing stomachs and grabbing testicles.) The robe and all that, Night liked. Somebody on the crew said, “It’s pretty arrogant, you hire a guy with a drinking problem and think he’s suddenly going to work straight for you.” That might have been a true statement about another director, but not for Night. He was a boy in these matters, devoid of cynicism. Doyle had said to Night before they started that his drinking wouldn’t interfere with his work; Night had believed him then and still did.

  Night was attributing the first-day lunacy not to alcohol but to Doyle’s crazed and brilliant eye, the eye that had helped make In the Mood for Love so beautiful. The actors loved that movie, and they were comfortable with Doyle. All except maybe Lick-Slap Kenny. Doyle kept high-fiving the kid and jumping around in front of him, flapping the arms of his robe like bat wings. Poor kid. He didn’t know what to make of it. There was nobody like that in the suburbs.

  There was a knock on the trailer door. It was Maddie with a hoagie, a staple of the Philadelphia diet, various meats and cheeses with shredded lettuce lubed up by some congealed dressing on a long soft white roll. All the major food groups. Night’s chef wouldn’t make hoagies. Night unwrapped his second dinner, talking all the while.

  “The most important thing is that he has an amazing way of seeing things. Of course, it’s also entirely possible we don’t have anything that’s usable from this whole day. We’ll find out tomorrow at dailies”—the daily review of the film shot the previous day.

  Night took a bite of his hoagie. He had asked for mayonnaise. He always ate his hoagies with mayo. No mayo. It was a conspiracy. A plot. Had to be. The first day was over.

  Call—starting time for work on the set—was widely variable. It could be six A.M. or six P.M. or any other time, all according to what Night wanted to shoot that day and what time the previous day had wrapped. There were September afternoons when the heat was smothering and some of the crew worked with towels around their necks to keep the sweat off their hands as they lugged cameras and light stands and an assortment of director’s chairs. There were October nights when everything was drenched with artificial rain and the wind would blow right through you and the veterans wore parkas and rain pants. Most big movies change locations over the course of a shoot, but in Lady, it was back to the Cove day after day, for workdays that were typically twelve to fourteen hours long. At least eighty people, from various parts of the United States and other places in the world, gathered daily around a real pool surrounded by a fake apartment complex. After a while, you knew the entire wardrobe of the head gaffer’s assistant’s assistant.

  The day’s first meal was called breakfast, no matter what time it was served, and the second meal was called lunch. If call was for four-thirty P.M., breakfast was served first thing and lunch around twelve-thirty A.M. Sometime around three in the morning, the two craft services people might put out trays of steaming Chinese food. Shooting nights, there were many workdays that concluded at sunrise. They were tough, the all-nighters. The union crew members were all getting paid by the hour. But at some point they didn’t care if the producers had mismanaged the day and were in an overtime union penalty period and guys with
paintbrushes were now making eighty-eight dollars an hour. They just wanted to be in bed, and they were waiting to hear Night say, “That’s a wrap.” A half dozen or so assistants would then echo those words throughout the set: That’s a wrap, that’s a wrap, that’s a wrap. In the parking lot, you’d hear people say to one another some variant of “Drive safe, now, hear?” And everybody would head back to their hotel rooms or their rented condos or, if they lived locally, their homes.

  The great Pennsylvania Turnpike was the main street of this movie, the actors, crew, and Night using it as a gateway between the fantasy world of the Cove and the real world. One early morning, a tractor-trailer loaded with sheep and lambs turned over and the animals got loose and the turnpike was shut down and work started late at Bristol that day. Generally, though, there wasn’t much overlap between the two worlds. The lead item on the AM news stations one morning was about three Pennsylvania Air National Guardsmen killed in Iraq. The flags at the rest stops along the turnpike were at half-mast. But once you got past the security guy and into base camp, the real world receded quickly. It was like being in a Las Vegas gaming room, where you can’t tell day from night. In Vegas, they ply you with liquor. On the Lady set, they did it with food. You’d see the crew and Night and sometimes Paul eating oily pizza on cheap paper plates at three-thirty A.M., many of them—New Yorkers at some point in their lives—creasing the slices with the New York fold. The best bad pizza you’ve ever had.

  The crew liked Night. There were tense moments, but many of the union workers on the movie said Night was the best director they had ever worked for. Part of it was his organization. Falling days and even weeks behind is an ordinary occurrence on many shoots, which can further complicate your home life and make planning for your next job impossible. Night was always close to schedule. He allowed for the Lick-Slap Kenny things to happen. Many of the crew had worked with Night on his previous movies and wore the faded crew T-shirts to honor their history with the boss. Part of it was his appreciation of good work. But more than anything, it was Night’s accessibility that they found endearing. He’d talk to anybody about anything and seemed to be unaware of the severe pecking orders within the various guilds.