What Movies Made Me Do

by Susan Braudy

  Beyond the miles of sand I saw shadowed mountains and the beginnings of a flaming sunset. “Where is he?” I asked. But Paul had disappeared behind the huge blue camera crane. I spotted a silver trailer; Jack’s dressing room. I sat down on a rock to wait.

  The light was superbly bright and clear. No wonder people call it magic hour. I couldn’t look away from the huge bare crosses bathed in the red light. I suddenly remembered how frightened I was as a child of Christian symbols. My Hebrew teacher said the New Testament was dangerous. The eerie crosses reminded me of death. I felt the sadness of things the way I did at the Martin Luther King parade. Why do people hurt each other? Why do they get angry? The crosses shimmered and I clutched the rock, unnerved. I was crying over the young rabbi and prophet who had faced the destruction coming at him without anger.

  Tears ran down my cheeks. I was remembering how my grandmother hugged me and told me to run if kids at nursery school picked on me about being Jewish. “My mother lost her six beautiful brothers in one of their pogroms,” she whispered. “They kill Jews for sport.” I didn’t understand how the mutilated bodies of my young great-uncles in a faraway Russian town came from these empty crosses and what Jesus taught.

  I hated it when the Catholic newspaper boy called me “Carol Christ-killer.” It gave me a terrible shamed feeling. “Bubbe-mysehs,” my grandmother scoffed, “he’s got it wrong, he was born without a brain.” I was in fifth grade. We lived next to an Irish neighborhood, and I was also ashamed because I was bigger than the newspaper boy, and what if we had killed Jesus? That was probably why everybody else was so angry.

  I remember after I read the illustrated pamphlet my mother gave me about sperm and eggs and sexual intercourse how upset I got when I had to sit crammed on the bus next to the soft skirt and thigh of a nun who smelled of strong unperfumed soap. I kept staring at her lap under folds of black skirt. She made me wonder about sex more than any pictures of Elvis or Marilyn Monroe. My mom said nuns wouldn’t kiss a man or have babies or sometimes even show their hands; they were married to Jesus. I was dying to ask this nun if she felt gypped. I had just heard my first dirty joke, and it was about a nun and a candle. I hated the nun’s pasty jowls. I wanted to scream at her to break out of her stupid empty life. I’d never make a mistake like her when I grew up.

  My mother turned away when I recited my new dirty joke about the candle. Religion was a secret in my house—I never got a straight answer about why we didn’t belong to a synagogue. My mother sent me to school on Jewish holidays; Catholics were crazy. She said the men drank liquor all day long. She warned me never to look inside the Irish bar near my house. Gentiles got drunk and picked fights and got violent in the middle of the day.

  Now I was sitting in the middle of a desert, crying and picturing the nun on her knees, her face radiant, transfixed by belief. My mother thought the nun was a freak, but I want’t thinking like my mother anymore. I didn’t need the old bigotries to make myself strong. I didn’t mind suddenly that by my mother’s standards my life was as crazy as the nun’s. I haven’t had the children or the marriage that lasts forever. But I didn’t dislike the nun or my mother. I felt like the nun and I wasn’t a freak. It made me euphoric. It was a good sign the movie was working on me.

  I blew my nose, watching Paul watch a crew member drag a long ladder to the crosses. They were setting up scrims over the lights for the next shot. I smiled to myself; I had to watch out or I’d get carried away by my own movie and convert myself.

  Six stakes went up in flames. People moved back from black smoke that billowed up near me and made my eyes smart. I rubbed my eyes, searching the figures on the bare sand hill for a glimpse of Anita or Jack.

  Two men started unrolling huge spools of black cable. Anita appeared behind them, poking the cable with her crutch, whispering to her cameraman. She looked up and saw me as she pointed her crutch at a gigantic fan, her white chiffon scarf blowing back at her mouth.

  “I’m using a straw filter,” she shouted at me as two men lifted her high up into the seat of the large blue camera crane. “It makes him look like death.”

  This was my fantasy in action. She sounded like she was on the track. But according to Paul, the whole project could still blow up in my face. I slid ten feet across the rock. “Good luck,” I shouted, as the crane lowered her down again.

  Then I spotted Jack crouched on his bare hands and knees by his silver trailer. Bent under the weight of the cross, wearing only a loincloth, he crawled a few feet up the hill. Again I was mesmerized by the scene. It was silly, I knew it was just him, but I began crying again, feeling foolish, wishing for love that had no anger in it. It was silly to have been angry at Jack for six years.

  “You ready?” Anita asked in her most formal voice. Her face was inches away from a gray video screen framing Jack. The screen showed what the camera was shooting.

  “Let’s try it.” Jack’s voice sounded insecure floating over the crew. I held my breath. This was it. Chatter died down. The movie ritual had begun. I heard the night wind rising.

  An a.c. ran past me holding the slate.

  “Camera?” asked Anita.

  Somebody sneezed twice.

  “Rolling,” said the cameraman sitting high up on the camera crane. A moment went by. Jack waited patiently on all fours.

  “Where’s the sticks?” Anita yelped.

  The a.c. jumped behind Jack, holding the slate to his face. “Speed,” drawled the sound man, while the a.c. snapped the slate at Jack’s nose, yelling, “Prophet, take 1, scene 122.”

  The night shooting had begun. I crossed my fingers. Jack crawled forward under his cross, and fell on one elbow. “Stop,” Anita droned without looking up at him from her video monitor. “I need you crawling to marks.”

  “Cut,” said the a.c. in a confused tone. He stood behind Anita, pulling on the brim of his baseball cap.

  Bewildered, Jack twisted around to see her. Then Paul Riley ran to him, and knelt, sticking strips of black masking tape on the sand. Jack put a restraining hand on his arm. “I don’t hit marks,” he yelled. “If I can’t crawl spontaneously to the cross, nobody can.”

  I heard laughter in the cooling twilight. Most of the crew was new to Anita, and by now they were convinced she was making a terrible movie because of her histrionics.

  Paul picked at bits of the tape. Anita snapped, “Hold it right there, Paul, I need to see where he’s going to crawl so we can follow focus.” She craned her neck to look up at her camera operator. He shrugged, refusing to back her up.

  Defeated, she cursed under her breath. Paul backed out of camera range. A Roman soldier wearing a streaming red cloak blocked Jack. I slapped my hand to my forehead. What had happened to the rest of the boisterous crowd of extras who were supposed to be playing Jewish mourners and spectators? When the soldier kicked Jack in the side, I gasped. Jack sprawled forward, smashing his face into the sand, and lay there. “Say something, Anita,” I whispered.

  She just sat on her heels, staring at the video screen. Nobody else moved. Then Jack heaved himself up on his hands and knees, blood and sand caked over his upper lip. I broke into a run. Finally Anita limped over to him. She was kneeling by Jack when I got there. “Nosebleed.” He smiled sheepishly. “Time.”

  Anita muttered, “We’re going to lose the light.”

  The makeup woman, Polly, shook alcohol on a cotton ball and dabbed at his nostril. Her cotton ball came away bloody. She was young and pretty, and she had worked with Anita on two television movies. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the camera operator arguing with the script supervisor. Their voices rose. When I walked over, the cameraman gave me a dirty look. “Okay, but I’m making my notes,” the script continuity guy was saying, “to cover my ass.”

  The cameraman said, “Look, I agree, we need background.”

  I knew what they meant. “What happened to the extras? They’re in the master shot, aren’t they?”

  The cameraman shrugged. “I’m just foll
owing her orders.”

  I dashed back to Anita. “Can I see you for a minute?” I guided her a few feet away from Jack, who was closing his eyes for makeup. I knew I was breaching etiquette. “Where’s the street crowd?” I whispered.

  “Why is everybody directing my film?”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid these shots won’t match the master.” I followed her back to her video screen.

  “A crowd would distract him. Anyway, I’m in very tight on his face.” She frowned at the screen.

  Jack sat on his heels and waved at me, gulping a Perrier.

  I felt a glow.

  Anita whirled to watch me smiling at him. I said doggedly, “You need background.”

  “The two of you should have shown up this afternoon when I storyboarded this shot,” she said.

  I put my arm around her shoulder. “Sorry, I fell asleep, but no director ever really misses a studio executive on the set.”

  “They do if she’s off playing with the star.”

  I flushed. “I was sleeping.”

  “Sure, at your place or his?”

  My face went hot. “Did he miss his call?”

  “Yeah, and you two wasted everybody’s time. I can’t get extras here until tomorrow night.”

  “I slept alone,” I repeated, falling into step with her as she paced in front of her video monitor.

  She pulled a cigarette out of her shirt pocket. A p.a. handed her a coffee mug and lifted a huge Polaroid camera over her head. Anita inhaled the cigarette. “You look guilty as hell.”

  “Where did he say he was?”

  “On the phone to Wales asking his ex-girlfriend to come and hold his hand.”

  I had a surprise twinge of jealousy. “Isn’t that too heavy?” I said lamely, touching the Polaroid camera hanging from her neck.

  She put her hand over it. “It helps me frame shots. Let me alone.”

  “I came to help.”

  “By playing the star-struck groupie?”

  I squelched my anger. I knew her, she was on the verge of tears. She swaggered before a collapse.

  She began turning the video monitor. “You want to see good camera work?” she said in a defensive voice. “I’ll start high above the empty cross and then whirl right in on him, soft focus at first.”

  “I’m sure he’ll love it,”

  “He doesn’t respect me or my ideas.”

  “Anita, he thinks you’re a fancy artist, just cater to him.”

  “I don’t need him, I don’t need his face for any more scenes. I can wrap this movie without him. I’ll get my art director to paint the film stock silver for miracles.”

  “I want him happy.”

  “Some best friend.”

  We watched Polly the makeup girl twist a thorny bunch of twigs into a wreath and set it on Jack’s head. Suddenly he yawned and stood, the cross bouncing up over his shoulders.

  “That cross is just Styrofoam!” I said.

  “What a phony trick.” Anita hobbled over to him. “Want to tell me how long you been carrying a lightweight cross?”

  “I switched over today. The balsam wood was breaking my back,” he said truculently.

  “And never bothered to tell me.”

  I felt crushed between these two angry people. They were making me dizzy; they were burning me up.

  I interrupted them. “What about a yarmulke?” The thorns were scratching his scalp.

  “You’re pushing the rabbi bit too far,” she said.

  “He could wear one under the crown,” I said. “He wouldn’t get his scalp torn up.”

  Jack laughed at me sarcastically. “Everybody’s a director.”

  Anita frowned. “Wardrobe,” she called, “skullcap.”

  The wardrobe girl leaned into a battered gold trunk, selecting scraps of shiny black silk.

  “You both want the same thing,” I said, squeezing my fingers together anxiously. “Stop it, or you’ll ruin this film.”

  They acted as if I hadn’t said a word. Smoke from the stakes blew at my face. It smelled like burnt marshmallows. We had almost lost the sun. Jack tilted his head back while Polly brushed bright red gashes across his forehead.

  Suddenly Anita had disappeared.

  “You feeling well enough?” I asked him. “We can always wait till tomorrow for street crowds.”

  “No, I feel guilty, I missed my afternoon call,” he said, pushing a cotton ball into one nostril.

  “You don’t sound like the same spoiled actor on the daily production reports,” I said exuberantly. Anita was perched high on the camera crane looking through the lens. Then she swung to the ground while the a.c. held the slate again by Jack’s bowed head.

  I backed away, and the crane swooped toward him, a boom microphone dangling. “Turn on the ritters,” Anita commanded. “I want it surreal like El Greco.” A second later huge fans blew Jack’s hair over his face and scattered sand in little waves. I stood next to Polly, who was holding a sponge and a pot of orange makeup in one hand. “He looks fabulous,” she whispered out of the side of her mouth. “My whole family’s jealous of me on this one.”

  “Oh, no,” I groaned, looking up at the solitary camera on the crane. Asleep at the switch, I hadn’t taken it in that Anita was operating only one camera. She wasn’t really covering him. This way she was going to force him to keep doing takes of this scene, crawling over and over to the cross.

  “Anita,” I whispered, standing behind her.

  “What?” She was hunched at the video monitor. I saw a tight shot looking down on Jack’s anguished face, hair blowing in his eyes.

  “Why not use a couple of cameras?” I couldn’t see her expression.

  “I don’t need to cover him except full face.” She didn’t look up.

  “You need profiles, you need insurance, and lots of angles.”

  “I’m shooting quick close-ups to add to a finished scene.” She waved me away without moving her eyes from the screen.

  “Use one more camera.”

  “He doesn’t mind,” she shouted, “and I can always reshoot.”

  I closed my mouth. I was out of line. But this was a crisis.

  Ten feet away Jack cocked a startled eye at her. She had interrupted him. I watched the screen. He started crawling again, low and off balance like a scared dog. He flinched, reacting to taunts from imaginary spectators. I looked over at him. His loincloth drooped loosely from his body.

  A crew member rolled one tall fan at his bare heels.

  “Cut,” Jack finally called out. Before the screen went blank I saw him lowering his cheek on the sand, exhausted. Three crew members untied his cross, turned him on his back, and strapped him to the seat of a second crane for the next setup.

  I saw his chest had been shaved.

  “New magazine,” Anita shouted while an assistant waved a tin can of film up at her.

  “Your loincloth’s loose.” I spoke into his ear while he sat in the seat of the metal crane waiting to be hoisted up to the cross.

  He winked. “Anita says it’s something for the ladies.” I backed away as the crane motor purred. With his wild Jesus hair and beard he looked like a science fiction creature being lifted into the sky on the crane’s metal arm. Crew members spent the next ten minutes scrambling up ladders to fasten him to suction cups against his cross.

  “Lights,” Anita shouted. Magic hour had faded. It was night.

  Spotlights flooded the cross. His body stretched long and lean, the light showing his ribs in high relief. As with most male stars, his legs were short, his torso long. I hadn’t noticed how thin his right leg was. Anita had said he’d had childhood polio. Polly climbed a ladder leaning against the cross to blot his face with a towel.

  “No, dammit,” he said, “leave the sweat.”

  “He’s right, he’s right.” Anita sounded miffed as she moved closer to her video.

  He had a lonely presence up there on the cross without the Bible crowd of spectators.

  “St
art the ritters,” she shouted as the camera crane went rolling toward his cross. The fans began raising his hair.

  I looked up at him, hypnotized. When the wardrobe woman walked by, I tapped her elbow. “Maybe check his loincloth after this take.”

  She tittered. “I wanted to pin it, but Anita likes it loose.”

  I backed away to watch the television monitor over Anita’s shoulder. He jerked his head down to Anita. But he was blinded by the wall of blazing spotlights. “You shooting?” he gasped. Blood squibs spurted from his wrist.

  “Silence!” Anita leaned her forehead on the screen.

  “Silence,” said the a.c. The camera swooped at Jack.

  “I am the truth,” Jack said urgently. Something happy in his voice made my throat tighten.

  “Don’t blink, babe,” Anita interrupted, her back to him, still leaning on the screen. “I want you serene.” The crane was high above us, about six feet away from Jack.

  Then slowly and without warning his loincloth slipped further down his hips. I saw him jam the small of his back against the cross to pin the garment there. Black smoke whirled around him. “Anita,” I whispered helplessly. I took two steps toward him and tripped over my sandal. Anita said nothing. She didn’t move. Dammit, she wasn’t thinking straight. The wardrobe woman dashed ahead of me, while the loincloth opened and drifted past his knees, floating in the fake wind.

  I was horror-struck; he was naked on the cross.

  The woman caught the cloth, folded it, and then ran for a ladder.

  I stared at his genitals against the dark triangle of his hair. A current hit my thighs. “Stop it,” I muttered, and ran back to Anita’s side. But he looked primitive and beautiful and truly like a dying creature hanging there without clothing breaking the lines of his flesh.

  “Clear the set,” said Anita, her voice trembling and ecstatic. She was rubbing her palms, glaring at her screen. “Don’t worry, babe, I’m shooting you in shadow, you look like a dark pagan sacrifice.”

  She was lying. I knew her straw filter wasn’t that opaque.