A-Reel, B-Movie

"Cut!” A plain, sharp bark breaks up the action. Two short buzzes pierce the sound stage, the red-eye near the door snuffs out. With the cameras dead, people are free to move about. All those little elves, the stagehands, fifth business to the Stars, the salted chaf who make all those beautiful people shine. Hollywood is no place for a skeleton crew. 

Brad, Tom pick themselves up and dust off sugar glass, Brad massaging his jaw. Fuck! Most of the action was blocked, but that sucker-punch, that right hook Tom threw, Jesus.

“Leave the door open,” Jean Renoir had said. “You never know what might come in.” What he meant, make room for the spontaneous. That’s how the magic happens. For Brad, it means a cold compress pressed to his chiseled jawline. 

When the dailies are run through later, this take, this goes in the can.   

Rick Laurant, the studio-anointed cuck (talent enough to land him two tiers above ‘hack’) shuffles up to them.

“Bril, baby. Bril. Look at me, I’m fucken Roger Ebert over here, Two thumbs way up,” Rick deadpans, eyes the welt.

A ripe peach, Brad’s bruise. What we call a tap. Bruce Lee would tap, Rick reminds them. Audiences loved it. Rick thinks Brad thinks, This is it. I’m done for. “Relax, kid – if you croak, we’re insured,” Rick winks. He throws a glance around the set.      

“Hoops!” Rick snaps his fingers. A girl with a clipboard wraps up banal, tennis-match banter with this schmucky, wavey-haired assistant gaffer. She bounces over, clipboard held up to her chest.  

Rick Laurant tells her, check if Brad’s on for tomorrow. 

The A.D. - cute, plucky, small brunette – sort of an e-girl - hovers near Rick and flips through the call sheet. Printed on the call sheet, the brief, nutshelled sequence for Friday: parkour, high kicks, crazy stunt work, the whole dude ballet; beautiful choreography, sure, a riff on the sort of screen action that makes us love Tony Jaa. That high-octaine shot of Jackie Chan, Jet Li. Low-rent Sonny Chiba joints. However you get your kicks.

“Yeah, those Asians do it better,” Rick concedes. “So lets crib as much as we can!”

Tomorrow’s bill: Tom dukes it out with the doubles - Brad’s doppelganger gets handed a can of Whüp Ass!

“Shelby.” The e-girl looks up. “Tell Props to buy a can of Whüp Ass,” Rick sez. She nods.

A papery, single-breasted suit slinks over. Atman, Tarwater, one of those names with a production credit. Dress the same. Fit fucken in. Boardroom couture. “Acting busy,” he explains. No one asked.

Brad asks, “What is it you do here, Atwater?”  

Atman hedges. “Mostly, get my name in the credits,” he coughs politely. “Mostly.”

Rick gives a few, brief pointers. Exit stagehands, P.A.’s, the little people. The sound stage is mostly scrubbed. Even as dusk rolls in, heat shimmers outside the door. Through a narrow entry, palm fronds frame the skyline.

“Rick!” A sharp, piercing voice you want to wring. “Uh, hey Rick?” Christ. Con Fegelein pushes through, tries to give notes.

The notes smell of shit.

Can you believe this guy? Line Producer. Crashes at a studio apartment in Century City, acts as though the pad’s his.

He rattles off payroll descrepencies, safety concerns, mutiny in the props department, what shade of hot pink has the most pop. Word is, the teamsters have found out, those dumb little protest signs give one hell of a papercut. Soft, little flecks of bullshit everywhere. “Con, please”. Rick’s fingertips press the bridge of his nose. “You fucken white-ass Urkle…”   

This. This is the shit. What Truffaut meant when he gave that spiel in Day For Night.

…Rumors, a deranged animal wrangler let loose a bed of scorpions. Maybe put a pin in that-

“Tell me, was the animal wrangler Charlie fucken Manson?”

Con flips through his own clipboard, confused.

“Doesn’t say,” Con murmers.

“Did he have matted hair, and did he wave his arms all spooky and declare, From the world of darkness, I did loose demons and devils in the power of scorpions to torment?”

Con huffs, “Do you know something I don’t?”   

Stifled laughter. Fuck. This guy. “Con!” Atwater grabs Fegelein by the scruff and drags him away. 

Rick momentarily presses palms to face. Rubs eyes. Something in his right eye irritates him.

Deep breaths, Rick. Deep. Breaths. “Zen, calm. Frank fucken O’Hara. ‘Meditations in an emergency’ – that’s me. A pile of leaves and all I want is boundless love.”

Tom, Brad have slowly fucked off. Shelby pouts, stares at him quizically. Rick sighs.

Out in the corridor, a slim, angled wraith hauls past Rick, his stately shadow darkens, stalks the wall behind him. No time to shoot the shit, Ed, Parkside’s resident fixer, moves fast, in the flurry of another pay-off. Another casting director to replace. Accounts will have to drum up one more expense that seems good on a spreadsheet.

“You would think, since Weinstein got tanked…” Ed often gripes.

At the editing bay, Rick looms over Evelyn’s shoulder, watches her chop ’n screw raw material into soul. How Evelyn tackles dailies, she’s halfway to Walter Murch. She arranges a sequence. Rick nods, sure, sure. We’ll keep you in our hearts come Oscar season, baby.

 Rick surreptitiously fishes his pocket, checks his phone. More or less, an hour behind the wheel. Depends on traffic. Hoped to be home by eight. White Russians, a nibble of stoner’s delight. Chopping Mall on Retro Redux. The movie sucks, but those killer robots, fucken A…  

A twenty-something convertible sits in the lot. Rick spots Ed, mid-stride when he lights a fag, lets the smoke hover in the late evening air.

Rick calls out, “We really must throw out that musty old casting couch.” Ed laughs, a husk that sounds as though dry leaves were rubbed together.  

Rick reaches the faded white convertible, hops in, yeah, you’re smooth, how you’re forty-one is beyond me, and jacks up the sound. System Of A Down, already selected.

The drop-top passes through evening shadow.

Parkside, small and clean, new but good; a notch above the other B-movie backlots that crop Gower. 

Past the security booth, the open top turns south on Gower, the studio disappears from Rick’s rearview when he’s down the block. “Lost In Hollywood” trails down boulevard. For the early oughts, the convertible purrs real horrorshow.

 Melrose, Irving. Half a block on Wilshire. A stint in Crenshaw country, then merge, merge, motherfucker merge onto Santa Monica. Trailing the freeway west to Palisades, the phone in Rick’s pocket rings. He puts Shelby on speakerphone. She stammers, he can’t make out what. Problem, problem, there’s always a fucken problem, and behind every problem, there’s people. “Whatever it is-”

“No, Rick,” Shelby pleads. “You need to get back here.”

Security got this look. Laurant’s never seen a black man so pallid.

“The lights are dead,” the badge informs.

“Rage, rage against the dying of the light – seriously, what is all this?”

The rent-a-cop shakes his head. “Dunno – Tarwater wants you in his office.”

None of this makes any fucken sense. Rick says so. He says, “start makin’ fuckin’ sense.”

The counterfeit cop backtracks. “What I’m sayin’, Tarwater sent for you, then immediately the power went out.”

Up and down, the boulevard’s lit. Parkside (sexy, dark, brooding, like Dracula’s fucken castle), the only black patch on an overloaded grid. Rick puzzles. “Cut? Like, intentional?”  

 When he waves Rick onto the lot, it’s all so freakin’ quiet. A pall of dead calm hangs, as though the ground he stepped on were the ground at Chelmno, or Neuengamme. Quiet creeps, Rick. Get a move on. Rick kills the engine on the spot where he’d been not a half hour before. Pockets the keys. Somewhere, there’s voices. The electrical crew tool about. Distant pocket-sized beams. The stars are out, and they’re absolutely no help.      

 For a while, there was blackness. Scrapes, bumps. A glimpse through an open door, the odd hell-red EXIT sign. Walls to guide. Step, step. SMASH. Taste of copper.

Rick. Your phone. Use your phone, numbnuts…

Another ten, dancing through the dark, how the Conquistadors must’ve plowed through the fucken jungle, sure, Rick, sure, we bump our asses and shit-heel our way to Eldorado. On this side of the lot, everything about the offices is old-fashioned. Rick finds the spot and slips inside.

Behind the polished doors, a regular freakin’ House Of Leaves – halls, pitch black, and mounted paranoia. Rick waves the phone, passes over every door. Tarwater, Tarwater… The soft pad of his feet - a muted banner of light touches the floor around the bend.

Rick creeps forward. Hedges. Tell me, Rick, are those cajones, or saline in your scrote? Mild jitters, he pokes his head in. A nondescript break room. Kipple and crap. The sound stage is where magic happens. This is the scene between the magic. The time, Rick. So much for Chopping Mall.  What. The. Fuck.    

For a touch of drama, a lamp lies on the floor, still on, throws the room into bizarre, almost expressionist shadows.

A soft creak, Rick whips around – a funeral suit emerges, fades out of the miasma of black shadow 

Fuck - Rick grabs his chest. “Gaskil!”

The way the frame is, Ed has to duck as he passes through the door. Full height, the light makes him unnaturally slender. Ed presses a forefinger to his lips, points at Rick’s shoes. Don’t. No sudden moves, noises or spasms. Be a rock, Rick. Be a fucken rock. The centerpiece of a zen garden. Tepidly, it broaches Rick’s left shoe. The black body with big claws and short, stubby tail. FLASH. Ed shoots out a spindly leg, brings his foot down. The Yellow-Tailed, now gunk on the sole of his suede. Shit.

Rick. This is not for tears. This is not for panic. Go across the hall. Ransack the desks. There’s bound to be a bottle of Klonopin-

Exasperated, Rick stutters. “Ed, what the hell?”

Ed shrugs. “We’re chickens, here, with our asses handed to us. We run around, cluck, we swat these mean mothers,” the short, barbed tail goes limp, the tan legs dangle in a gunky, rancid mess across the rubber. Rick softly bangs his head on a cabinet.

“I’m sorry, is there – has there been a fucken mercury spill?”

An inquisitive mind, that Rick. Without a word, Ed waves him out of the room.    

The way Rick got attached, Tarwater held up a fountain pen. Mephistopheles offers Faust a bum deal dressed as gold. “A three-picture deal, Rick. How’s that sound?” Rick Laurant squared his shoulders, grabbed the fountain pen and gave the contract his chicken scratch. The auteur, the writer-director, the actor’s director- “Which am I?” Rick cut the spiel.

Non-D.G.A. kid, that’s your strength. Pale and desperate. Shorts, ads, A few stints on TV. Not enough to be enticed by membership fees. Tarwater laid it bare, honest. “That’s how we know you’re not a pinko, that you won’t go red on us.” He winks, doesn’t let you know if he’s fucken with you. An awkwardly placed flashback, to be left on the cutting room floor in post.    

Ed escorts Rick up a pitch black stairwell, Rick’s phone battery almost drained. Careful. Watch your step. This way. A heavy creak, a rectangle appears. A door swings out, to a lesser darkness. Thin streams of streetlight filter through. A few doors down. The soft pad of Rick’s feet. A wooden door, to the left of the hall. Stenciled on the opaque glass: FRANCK TARWATER.

Avanti. Rick shows himself in.  

Tarwater grits his teeth, his large palms spread. He stands near the window, eyes fixed on a point past the blinds, a pin-striped, dark purple, single-breasted suit a size too small. 

“Christ. I miss the days of strikebreakers. All those demands sound reasonable, until you find yourself in a line that stretches five blocks for a fucken loaf of rye. As it is, we gotta advertise this production as porn to keep the trade unions off our ass!”

“Uh, yeah. Those Teamsters got ripped, love to show off their muscle,” Rick murmers, noncommittal. Rick’s head swims.

For the first time, Tarwater turns from the window.

“The hell, uh-” He gestures, lifts his right hand. Waves digits around his face.

“The floor plan for this dump makes as much spatial sense as the Overlook.” Rick sounds congested. Tarwater stares, mouth slightly agape. Uh-huh.

Tarwater coughs, claps his chest. “Buck up. Fegelein got double-teamed by two of those big-clawed bastards.”

Already Rick sniggers. “Oh yeah?”

Tarwater makes a snipping motion with his fingers. “One of them damn near sliced off his big toe.”  

Both break down into hushed, cackled laughter.

“I thought - I hadn’t realized you’d left,” Tarwater explains between fits. “That little cam doll, I sent her to bring you in. Wanted to offer some script doctoring. For us.” Down to brass balls, Tarwater pulls a thin stack of sheets from his mahogany desk, hole punched and held by brass fasteners.

“For starters, we got this treatment, uh, ‘A-Reel, B-Movie’…” Tarwater shakes his head. “Christ, it’s rough. But the bones are there.”

Rick. Broken. Fuck it. Sure. “Who’s the author?”

Tarwater, annoyed. “Does it matter? Whole story’s a crapshoot, totally on spec. We need you to clean it. Fill in details. Patch up plot holes. Tack on an ending.” 

Franck Tarwater drops the pages on his desk. Rick picks up, flips through. Of course, it’s too dark to see.

“Here, Rick.” Tar pulls out, picks through his desk drawer. Proffers a torch. Wouldn’t you know, not a moment after Rick flicks it on, the power is back. The lights flicker, steady. AC resumes a steady hum. Both chuckle, wheeze as Rick hands back the torch. The treatment took not more than a few minutes to sift through. It ran like this, “Cut! A plain, sharp bark breaks up the action…”