Twenty-Five

Cut!" Max gave the assistant director a thumbs-up for a good take.

Next to him, Rodney screamed, "MOVING ON."

Max cocked an irritated eye at the first assistant director before remembering this was why he'd hired him. To give the crew someone to hate so he could get his own job done.

"Coming in," the crew called out as they started to reset the camera and lights.

Max told MacDougal, his suffering director of photography, where he wanted the camera for the next shot and what lens should be used. Then he told his annoying assistant director to take five.

"Happy to, boss," Rodney said.

The man stiffened his spine and pluckily raised his hand with the palm facing out. Max regarded him with a baleful stare.

"I didn't ask you to give me five," he grated. "I asked you to take five. What I'm trying to say is go somewhere else so I can think."

While the assistant director walked off sulking, Sally and Clare wrapped themselves in their bathrobes and returned to the waiting area. Judging by her self-flagellating scowl, Max could tell Sally disliked her performance.

He did like it. In fact, it had delighted him.

He'd hoped to see the hot steel she'd shown near the end of her audition. A ferociousness that brought Wanda to life. Something about Jim Foster pulled it out of her.

Max eyed the sandy-haired young man but couldn't figure what about him got Sally boiling. Visually, he was striking but not overly attractive. Max wanted regular people in his movie instead of the usual Hollywood Ken and Barbie dolls. Good-looking but not models. In fact, among the cast, only Sally and Ashlee were what one might consider beautiful in a movie-star sense.

He caught sight of Nicholas and Bill Farmstead, whom he'd cast in the other male roles, standing around ogling like this was a free peep show. Nicholas leaned to whisper something in Jim's ear. The man's face darkened to despair.

"Get lost," Max said. "There's no need for you to stand around gawking."

"Oh, sorry," Bill told him. "It was a hell of a scene."

"Yeah." Nicholas wore the impish smile he put on after he'd stirred up trouble. "Sorry about that."

Jim sagged. "I guess I'll—"

"Not you," Max said. "You can stay."

"No, thanks. I think I need to be alone a while."

"But I'm curious about you. Tell me about yourself."

"Well, I love acting, I've got a little corgi named Niro, my girlfriend Wanda and I have been talking about getting hitched, I—"

"Nero? You mean like the Roman emperor?"

The actor started to perk up. "It's short for De Niro."

"And when you say Wanda, you mean…"

Jim pointed. "Wanda, right over there. She's my girl. Soon, my fiancée, if she'll have me." His eyes took on a wistful glaze. "We just need time to work some things out—"

"You're talking about Sally, right?"

"Who's Sally?"

Max stared at him.

"You're deep into the Method, aren't you?"

"I'm pretty strict about it, yes." The young man chuckled. "I read this article about how Dustin Hoffman does it. I admired the commitment."

Max went on staring. "You're perfect."

"Wow. Thank you, Max."

"Where do you live? I mean, what part of town?"

"Malibu. You know how it is, still living with the 'rents, but that's the career I picked. After this movie, though, I'm hoping to get my own place." He eyed Sally with a hopeful smile. "Maybe one that's big enough for two."

"You got any plans after we wrap?"

"None at all, so if you need—"

"You should go straight home afterward and rest up. Big day tomorrow."

"Okay, I'll do that."

"Great. Let me get back to work. But stick around for the coverage."

Jim beamed at all the attention. "Anything you say."

MacDougal's growly voice intruded. "If you want emotion in this film, it wouldn't kill us to try doing a few close-ups."

This said, the squirrelly bearded man nipped from his flask. Max's director of photography reeked of whiskey. As the cinematographer, his job didn't involve capturing images but how they were captured. The film's overall look and feel based on the director's vision.

MacDougal squinted at the rumpled bed, quietly calculating the emotional sum of composition, color, and exposure.

"We'll do them when we need them," Max said. "Not because we can."

A movie was typically shot on a single camera. A scene often started with a wide master shot in one or two takes, followed by coverage, or doing it again and again with multiple angles and close-ups. As for Max, he'd always held to a classical if workhorse style of filmmaking.

No showing off, no following the latest trends like blasting sets with light and garish color. Just a simple playbook of shot/countershot with the one-eighty rule. Bare-bones filmmaking using an anamorphic camera lens for a widescreen visual field and an epic feel. It had always worked for him.

"It's an intimate scene," the man grumbled. "We need intimacy."

Max cast a sly, private look at Jim.

"Dorothy!"

She appeared at his side. "You rang?"

"Shot list, if you please."

She handed it over, and he scanned the remaining shots scheduled for the day. After Sally and Clare's scene, he had an important scene to shoot with the whole cast. Ashlee's games had thrown him off schedule, but he now no longer needed to do this last scene.

He'd do it tomorrow. Which meant he could afford to indulge MacDougal a little.

"Okay, Spence," he said. "You can have your close-ups."

The director of photography returned the flask to his back pocket. "I'll take what I can get from you. Every meager little crumb."

Dorothy looked around beaming. "You know, usually, I think most things in my life make a better story than when they actually happened."

Max grunted. He had a similar point of view. He didn't think any real-life event that wouldn't happen on camera was truly memorable.

"But this," she added. "You take it for granted, but for me, this is all like a dream. I feel like I'm behind the curtain meeting the Wizard."

"I'm sure it'll make a good story too."

"It's weird how all this started with a story. And your vision."

"Seven hundred fifty thousand dollars buys quite a bit of vision."

Dorothy took in the whole operation again. "It sure as shit does!" Then she frowned. "Though now I have to wonder what would happen if that money had gone to something like curing cancer. Making people's lives better in some way."

"We are making people's lives better," Max said. "We're making a movie."

The crew signaled their readiness to shoot coverage. Sally and Clare returned to set, disrobed again, and got back on the bed. Sally still fuming. The endless tweaking of angle, light, and focus began. Seeing Jim still hanging around, her eyes sizzled. Max took a look through the viewfinder, now filled with her face, and let out a little gasp as his heart thumped and stirred in its cage.

So lovely, it mesmerized him.

Sally elevated his film to art. She was the Mona Lisa in motion, warm vitality and hot steel captured in twenty-four frames per second, demanding patient study. She brought so much life to his film about death, in particular this scene with its no-nonsense, mundane eroticism. Yes, they'd shoot close-ups today, and he'd order them sent to the film lab for overnight developing to make dailies.

She'll understand,Max thought.

The drive to perfection. The willingness to do whatever that took.

It was in their blood.

Sally might even applaud him. Either way, he'd make her immortal.

Raphael had been right about him. He was falling for her—had in fact already done so. Maybe Dorothy had been right too, and these emotions came through the voyeuristic lens. Jordan, meanwhile, had expressed a certain truth Max couldn't escape. That his very feelings for Sally had compelled him to cast her in the movie while also making her an ideal candidate for the human sacrifice necessary to bring his magnum opus to life. Maybe the critics had it right as well, that horror embodied a perverse desire to worship youth and beauty and then see it destroyed. To live and love is to invite the wrath of the gods.

Rodney screamed orders. The cadence of call and response wound down to the critical moment, all the moving parts of production falling into place.

And when it was all over, when every take that tied off this beautiful scene had completed, Max felt a rare and precious moment of contentment.

He said, "Cut! Print it. That's a wrap."

Scattered cheers broke out across the set, the long-haired and mustached film crew already picturing themselves kicking back with ice-cold bottles of beer.

They were done for the day, though not Max. He had work to do.

One more important task for his movie. Something he didn't want to do but must. Something he couldn't put off.

Call it a demonstration of commitment. A proof of concept.

And if he didn't do it now, he'd be stuck doing a ton of reshoots. If he didn't do it at all, he might have no last act.

Max had no choice but to keep going.

As always, the show must go on.