15. Now The Director Part 3

I say, "No one ever believes me when I tell them that all we used for the party scene was a well-placed mini trampoline, distance and perspective, and camera angle."

Marlee says, "You're right. I don't believe you."

"You don't think I had the mad ups to get up and over?"

"Ha! No, sorry. I'm convinced she manipulated it in post somehow."

"Well, the party house was her parents' house. Not the character Valentina's parents' house but the real Valentina's parents' house, just to be clear—"

"Crystal clear."

"Valentina managed to talk her mom and dad into cutting a chunk off the top of the shrub wall prior to the shot so I could make the jump."

"Really?"

"Yeah. The jump was still dicey. How much they trimmed was purely a guess on Valentina's part. It's not like we tested it. Cast and crew took bets on whether I'd clear the bushes or not. Dan Carroll, our DP, didn't think it would work or look good even if I made it over. But I made it. Hardly anyone saw, but I stuck the landing on the other side too, at the cost of shooting pain in my lower back. My proudest moment not caught on film. Not sure how I did it. Adrenaline? Demon power?"

"That's amazing. Well, we're going to use a crane and not rely on demon power."

"Never underestimate demon power," I say.

I don't tell Marlee that after the losing-the-pinky scene, the unwritten rules of no talking or interacting while the mask was on went back into place. Karson could barely even look at me, as though the Thin Kid losing the pinky half was my fault. Even Mark had stopped chatting me up to sell his bootlegs. I stayed in character from the time I was on-set to when I left. When I went back to the hotel I would hole up in my room, read the next day's sides, eat, and sleep, and that's it. The only way I could deal with what was happening to me was to equate it with what was happening to my character. But that bushes jump, I was proud of that, and as surprised as anyone else that I made it. I probably shouldn't have made it. Up to the moment we started filming, Cleo was dubious and kept asking me if I could clear the bushes. I couldn't speak with the mask on, so I nodded and gave her a thumbs-up. Even though they had cut at least a foot from the top, the bushes were still a few inches taller than I was. When Valentina yelled, "Action!" I hesitated, long enough for her to say "action" a second time. The mask and the darkness made it nearly impossible to see where I was going, which loosened any doubts and physical inhibitions I had during my mad, headlong dash. I couldn't see how impossible this was supposed to be. I sprinted faster than I ever had, and I could do so because I wasn't me. I was him. And because I was him, I was partially transformed. There was no question I would make it over the bushes. Maybe it was simply pure belief and commitment that powered me. I hit the trampoline in stride, pushing off and up with both legs, and I rose, and continued to rise, and the upward trajectory was outside of my control. I soared over those bushes and rose so high I thought I might continue up and into the cold forever night, and maybe that would've been the proper ending, an ending in a fair universe. Now, in my memory, the memory is the movie. I saw the teenage partygoers and they saw me ascending, and their beautiful faces were made even more beautiful by their shiny-eyed expressions of awe and adoration, and they would've bowed before me were it necessary but they were already below me, then finally, past the bushes on the way back to the wretched, cursed Earth, the rubber knife taped to my hand got heavier and became real, just as I was real, and those partygoers, they knew what would happen to them—all of them—was real, and their faces filled with the flies of terror and despair, and they knew that their eyes were to be extinguished, that their eyes were to be mine. The landing, which happened before I could prepare with bent knees, jarred me out of the movie, a cruel shock of reality manifesting as my lower back fucking screamed with pain like it had after those miserable summer workdays when I had unloaded the frozen-meat trucks. There were no partygoers with shining eyes in the backyard. Only Mark was there as a spotter, to keep me from falling, though I probably should've fallen and rolled to disperse the energy of my landing. Live and learn. Despite the back pain, I laughed and took off my mask and shouted and celebrated the leap. Mark and I walked around the bushes back to the front yard, and he kept telling me that my leap was amazing. Everyone else on-set applauded when I reappeared, and I took a bow, partly giddy that I could take a break from being the Thin Kid. Mark, without warning, ran at the bushes, and you could tell he wasn't going to make it because he ran like he was drunk and he slowed down before hitting the trampoline, and yeah, he crashed, and we had to pull him out of the bushes. I headed over to the van parked across the street, because as soon as Melanie was finished staining some of the teen extras with blood, she would help fully suit me up. Everyone else prepped to shoot the party and fleeing partygoers. Dan jogged over to me, shook my hand, looked at me side-eyed, shook his head, and said, "Incredible. There's no way you made that jump." I gave him a Who, me? smile and shrug. He said, "But you should stop putting yourself on the line for this. It's not worth it." Still full of adrenaline, full of greed for the quickly fading glow of my transcendent moment, I said, "Totally worth it."

I do tell Marlee an abbreviated version of Mark's failed jump, and I add, "I bet if we could watch the scene after my jump, we'd see the mangled shrubs in the shot. Valentina was not pleased, but it was kind of hilarious."

Marlee says, "I wish we could see what Valentina shot for the party scene."

"That was one of the few scenes when I wasn't onscreen that I watched. She shot what was in the screenplay verbatim. You mentioned adding—I think you said scaffolding—to the screenplay. Are you planning to show what happens when the Thin Kid crashes the party? A lot of horror fans complain there isn't enough gore, not enough onscreen kills."

"No, I'm sticking with the teens' POV. It's important the viewers know only as much as our three teen characters know. Besides, if we shot that scene, it might look too much like the scene in Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2 where Freddy crashes the pool party. And—"

"And?"

Marlee pauses to gather her thoughts, then she speaks in careful, measured sentences. "The story will remain set in the early '90s. Like I said earlier, I plan on shooting on film, and even using some cameras from that era if I can get hold of them. But the movie will be coming out, movie gods willing, in the mid-2020s. In the post-school-shooting world this reboot will inhabit, my filming the mass deaths of teens by a teen-monster-slasher created by other disaffected teens strikes me as too close to the blurry line between transgression and exploitation. Not that mass teen deaths aren't part of the formula for so many slasher flicks. I think the original screenplay being written and filmed six years before Columbine is... if not quite prescient, it taps into something terrible burgeoning within the zeitgeist, which makes the not-seeing-the-violence more powerful in a way. I don't know if I'm saying this well. It's difficult to put into words. The difference between screen deaths as entertainment and art, perhaps. And sorry, that's bullshit, too, as come on, Evil Dead 2 is one of my favorite movies. And people die violently in real life, so they must die violently in our art too.

"So, no, I'm not filming that party scene and I'm not adding any other major scenes, because I want to make this movie. What I love about it, as written and as it will be filmed, is that I honestly don't know what it means, that it makes me so uncomfortable but almost joyously so, and it communicates emotions I can't simply describe with words alone."

"Well said," I say. "As Dan our DP was fond of saying, ‘It's a fucked-up movie.'"

Marlee laughs, and so do I.

She says, "I'm almost done badgering you. Can you tell me about the last time you saw Valentina?"

I tell her in the briefest, broadest terms about my visit with Valentina.

Marlee asks, "She told you then that she would be releasing scenes and the screenplay?"

"She did," I say. "And she did so hoping that one day someone would remake it. She'd be quite pleased by your planned faithful reboot."

Marlee doesn't acknowledge the compliment as, lost in thought, she stares at some spot above and behind me. After a beat she asks, "Have you reread the screenplay, the one that Valentina released?"

"Yeah, I did, shortly after she first uploaded it, and I've reread it a few times recently to prepare for the pitches."

"The screenplay Valentina released online is what I'm working from. Cleo's family negotiated the option to the rights, as you know, but they did not give us a copy of the script. I'm of the understanding that they have some notebooks she used to sketch out ideas, but they didn't save or have a full screenplay. She wrote it on an old word processor, and there are no digital copies."

I interrupt. "The digital stone age of the early '90s."

"I know, right? I can't even imagine it now. Now, I know you know what Cleo's family had and didn't have in terms of the screenplay, and sorry it took so long to get here, but what I've been working up to asking you is— Did Valentina release the original screenplay that you used?" Before I can answer with a simple "yes," she continues, "Have you noticed any differences—major or minor—between the uploaded screenplay and what you used for the movie?"

"Oh. No, I don't think so. Nothing sticks out in my memory as being changed. But remember, I didn't read the entire screenplay in '93. I was only given the pertinent pages the night before we were to shoot my scenes. According to Valentina, since I wasn't an experienced actor, it was her way of helping me to be in character. I would never know more than what my character did while he was on his journey. Sorry, she never used the word ‘journey.' Can you tell I've talked with way too many producers lately? Anyway, I was never given a full copy of the original screenplay, and I only read a handful of the scenes that didn't involve me."

"Did you save any of your sides?"

"No, I didn't. All I have is the mask."

"I wonder how much Valentina changed or added in the years between filming and her passing. Did she mention anything to you about editing the screenplay? I ask because in the comedic scene with the teens walking down the middle of the street and Karson with the chainsaw, the screenplay mentions possible songs to play while they strutted along. One of the songs, ‘Connection' by Elastica, didn't come out until 1995. That song couldn't have been included by Cleo." Marlee's eyes are wide and expectant, and she is as infected with the virus of Horror Movie as the YouTubers and Redditors who spend their free hours speculating, spelunking, and postulating about the movie and the answers they'll never find. People can't help but want their fiction and its players to be real, and they want their reality to follow the comforting rules and beats of fiction.

I say, "Yeah, I'd been made aware of recent online rumblings about that song and when it was released." I play it cool because I am cool on the subject. Honestly, the truth, as far as I know it, is that Valentina didn't edit much of the screenplay. Not everything is conspiracy. I don't tell Marlee about finding the marked-up screenplay on Valentina's desk. Maybe I should. If I give her that little nugget, it will engender more trust between us. However, the danger of my further validating Marlee's discovery of Valentina's edits might lead her down a rabbit hole into a fruitless and time-consuming search for the original screenplay, the original original screenplay, which would delay her movie. I don't want this movie to be delayed. No more delays. It's time to make the thing. It's my job to ensure the film gets made. I am doing my job. I am ready to be him again.

Marlee says, "Occasionally a printed-out script will pop up on eBay purporting to be the original, and I even bought one—okay, two—on a whim. Both were different, had silly add-on scenes that clearly weren't written by Cleo, but the hard proof of their not being the original screenplay was both had the Elastica reference." She pauses, waiting for my response. I don't have one, so she continues, "A minor thing, I know, but with all the camera references and usage of ‘we' to stand in for the camera, I spend a lot of time, too much time, wondering how much of what was written was Cleo or Valentina."

To allay her fears, I say, "Beyond cosmetic changes, which I'll allow could certainly be there, I'm confident there's zero difference, storywise, between the released screenplay and what we filmed."

"So, Cleo wrote that aside paragraph in the first act about why she put her hands into her pockets while walking down stairs?"

"Yes. That I remember reading in '93."

"And that unhinged scene in Karson's house? Cleo wrote that?" she asks with a little self-effacing chuckle.

"Oh, hell yeah, she wrote that. The morning of the shoot, I held up the sides, fanned out the pages, and said, ‘Seriously?' She laughed a mock-villain laugh and rubbed her hands together fiendishly. It was no doubt the longest sides I'd received. We shot a crazy amount of takes to get that scene, especially given its length and that it was one long mostly static shot. More than ten takes. Maybe twenty. Fuck, maybe more."

"Why so many for that one scene?"

"Maybe she wanted Karson and me to have experienced the... the heaviness and gruelingness—is that a word? I'm going with it—of the big wait that the viewers would experience. I can't remember if anyone pushed back on the number of takes. We just kept doing it over and over, and it was like, Okay, this is what we do now, and we'll be doing it forever. It's funny, in general, what I remember from the set I remember in great and terrible detail, but also, there's a lot I forget. After a certain point in the filming, I only remember the filming. I only remember the movie and seeing the movie through the mask's eyes. I don't know. It's all weird. But I do remember they had to peel me out of my costume after we were done with that scene."

There's a pause and we both look at our watches. I can't tell if Marlee is disappointed or excited, or exhausted, by our conversation. Regardless, it's time for me to go. Marlee mentions a call that she has to jump on soon. After an exchange of pleasantries, of looking foward to working with you's, she leads me out front, where the eager sun and heat are waiting for us. She thanks me for coming all the way up to her place, and I thank her for hosting our meeting.

At the edge of her driveway, I ask, "Will there be enough money for hedge trimming this time around? I still can't get over that budget number, and that this grim, fucked-up movie is going to get remade using the original screenplay."

She says, "You mean rebooted."

"I'm not complaining, mind you, but it doesn't make sense."

"You're right. It doesn't. It seemed like the longest of long shots when I pitched it. But I don't know what to tell you. I told them I wanted to make this movie and there was no other way to really make it, and they went for it." She shrugs and shakes her head. "They went for it enthusiastically."

I say, "It's almost like this is preordained." Above us, the Southern California sky, blue and impossible. I spread my arms. "The stars have finally aligned."