Cutting the Comedy

“Cut!”

Everyone snapped out of what they’d been doing. They were like dreamers beckoned back to disappointing reality. They all looked at the one stern face. The room was unfathomably expansive. Everyone watching the filmed version sees the set, but they don’t see the surroundings that seem to go on for miles, with hundreds of people, cameras, microphones on poles. It’s like stepping back from the world and seeing the rest of the universe. You realise that the set only contains a small section of a story, and it often has a different atmosphere to the real stage.

Gil was hollering as usual. He said that Sophie had messed up her line. It was wrongly phrased. She’d swapped a couple of the words around, so the line lost its punch. That was what he said anyway – no one else had noticed.

“I wanted to go to that park today,” had become “Today, I wanted to go to the park.

The next remarkable incident wasn’t announced for another line: she lost her pants to the neighbour’s dog. That was the main event in the script; not an unremarkable sentence stating the location of the upcoming scene, but Gil was a control freak. He sat in his folding chair that seemed to buckle under his weight. He lived on cheeseburgers that he got hand-delivered to his chair at regular intervals throughout his working day. The hands that offered them up were often shaking. He wore a baseball cap that hid his face until he decided to show it. He had a way of looking you dead in the eyeballs whenever he wanted to.

Sophie was ready for the onslaught that came after a small mistake. She was trembling, but she hoped her physical distance from Gil’s chair meant that he couldn’t completely see it. That was his favourite thing to witness though – a person that had arrived with confidence, reduced to a wispy, wavering leaf – something that could be torn by the slightest change in the air.  

She looked around at her fellow actors, hoping someone brave would step in, but Gil had a habit of reducing the most brazen character to a cowering child in the corner.

“Do it right this time, or you lose the rest of your day,” he barked.

The rest of the film crew followed suit. It was like they’d all taken some sort of potion that brought them under his strange spell. No one dared counter him.

The scene should have been relatively straightforward: dog runs in, woman loses her pants, dog transforms them into a chew toy, everyone laughs on cue. There weren’t a million different camera angles – it was just a straight scene. The actors’ delivery was the only factor that mattered. Maybe that was why Gil was being especially harsh. He’d already made them redo it forty times in a row. Sophie could feel her mouth drying it from overuse and underwatering. She’d left her water bottle on the far side of the room, planning to retrieve it after the quick scene had been captured (which she thought would have been done and dusted two hours ago.) She thought about running over to get it, but she was too afraid to attempt it. She knew the smallest disobedience might set Gil off, and she didn’t feel like listening to a day-long, one-sided shouting match.

Curtis gave her a small smile. It would have been imperceptible to anyone on the crew. He knew what she’d been through. He’d had his fair share of criticism too.

The pressure in the room was mounting. Everyone looked like they were sweating enough to create a sprinkler system. Gil looked cool and composed, but bullies always do. They like to see everyone else writhing under their gaze, but they never look the least bit disturbed by it. In fact, they live for it. His chair audibly creaked as he leaned forwards to micromanage the scene. He removed his sunglasses, which he always wore indoors. He said they shaded his eyes from the startling light of the spotlights, but Sophie thought they were just an accessory worn for effect. He pushed the sunglasses on top of his hair. It held his greasy, overgrown strands from his face, but it didn’t make him look any more appealing. He was just had a presence – one of those indefinable ones that fills up an entire room. The fear he produced in others filled the room – growing into every crevice like vines in a fairy tale, and just as destructive.

“From the top,” he said, standing up from his chair, spitting burger gristle onto the pristine floor.

“Action,” said the guy with the clapperboard. He slammed it shut in a way that looked undecided and sloppy. Gil shot him a look of warning.

The film was supposed to be light-hearted – a chick flick that cheered up roomfuls of comedy seekers. The actors hoped that would come across. It felt like it would take a miracle for it to extract a laugh from a single viewer. There certainly hadn’t been a single one on set since they’d started filming.

Curtis was the perfect co-star to have. He had a calming presence, even though he was just as scared as everyone else. Sophie swore that she’d walk away from Gil on the last day of filming, waving her flag of freedom. She almost wanted the film to be a flop, just to spite him. He deserved some disappointment after his months-long tyranny, his self-awarded ruling over all cast members and crew. They were people too, whether they were viewed as such or not. They would return to their own lives at the end of the long day, with volition. If they were lucky, their home lives would show up the inhumanity of the film world.

Sophie’s dreams of what Hollywood could have been ran through her mind as she overthought every one of her gestures, her facial expressions and her vocal tone. She knew she’d never get it quite right. The practice round of lines shared by the actors around the table was the best they’d perform, and no one would else ever see it. It had felt like a special kind of magic there, but here, in front of Gil, they had lost it. He had a way of shattering the magic for everyone. His favourite burger delivery guy didn’t even get a tip. The servitude shown by all the people in that hall was something he had dreamed of since he was a small, round boy in school, named after a famous pig. He could still hear the taunting when he closed his eyes at night and silence found him. When he was in his folding chair, that felt like an uncomfortable deckchair and that didn’t adequately support his generous posterior and that was beneath what he deserved, he could finally stand up to them all. In his little world of film, he could repay his enemies of childhood for stealing something important from him: the right to be joyful and free.

Sophie hoped at the end of filming she’d still remember what that feeling felt like. Curtis hoped Sophie would be OK. Maybe whenever it was all over, they’d go for a drink together – they’d have an unbreakable connection that only a trauma bond can create. In the end, Gil would lose, and they would win. While shooting lasted, Gil could enjoy the false glory in the kingdom he’d created, and maybe they’d even manage to make someone laugh, just to spite him.