Moment in the Sun

Short Stories

Dear Friends,

I’m sharing a short story. This is from a collection called A Sketchbook. At the partner site,

Inner Life

,

Joshua Doležal

has a really smart essay on college and sports.

Best,

Sam

MOMENT IN THE SUN

Like just about everybody I knew, I had started off being a creative — wanting to be an artist and nothing but that — and then drifted inexorably into some adjacent field, in my case producing, which was a very popular refuge for artists. It had many consolations in it of course. Besides the obvious — the solvency, the actually physical, pleasurable sinking sensation of giving-in — there was the shrewd sense of being among the pragmatic. I remember being at a film shoot, seeing, on the one hand, the pristine shot that had been fussed over endlessly by the director, the props person, etc, so beautiful, so well-lit, and then turning around and seeing the jumble behind the camera, all the pieces of equipment, the coffee cup, the sandwich wrappers, the PAs in their sweatshirts — and that’s mine, I thought with great pride, that’s my achievement, and that was really the hard part, the money, the logistics, the engine room, the nerve center of the operation; the stuff that actually ended up on camera was, in an important sense, ornamentation. “Everything is producing,” producers said solemnly to one another — and had the pleased purr of successful shopkeepers chatting in the evening, the feeling that they were the ones with access to the ground truth of things.

Most pleasant of all was the camaraderie with the crew guys. When I had started out, as an overeducated creative, they had been the ‘techs,’ the ‘grunts,’ part of another species. It didn’t do to wonder too much about how all their machines worked or what they did — it was enough that the techs knew. And now that I’d crossed over, I got to participate, to some degree, in the general contempt that the crew guys had for the writers, the actors, most of all the directors. It was just amiable chatting while I did the gear checkout or offloaded media, the snug sensibility of people who were going to do well no matter what happened — on the kinds of creative projects I worked on, the crew guys were the only ones who made any money — and, just to pass the time, were curious for the gossip about the ones who were really trying to do something.

My favorite was Florian. He was a grip and operated B-cam. He had a great set of gear and we brought him on set when we needed an extra shooter. What was fun about him was that his problems were different from everybody else’s problems. He would be upset that his wife wanted to buy a house upstate — it was such an obvious escape mechanism from the Trump election, he said, but he somehow couldn’t talk her out of it — or he would claim that he wasn’t able to go on shoots now that he was married. “All anybody does on these shoots is sleep around,” he said, “and girls like crew guys and I’m really trying to be a good husband, so there’s nothing for me to do on these shoots except sit with the other married guys at the bar.” And, in the gaps between his complaints, he was good to commiserate with about whatever was going wrong on my shoot. In this case, it was a diva actor, Oren, who had shut down a whole shoot because he claimed we’d run too long the night before and he wouldn’t have enough sleep and wouldn’t look good and wouldn’t have the right energy. And Florian, as I counted on from him, had an unexpected take on the situation. “Actors have no power,” he said, “they just sit around and they watch all these people who have power and then they have this one moment of power so they have to abuse it — it’s human nature, actors’ nature, they can’t help but abuse it.”

That did make me feel much better about what was really becoming an untenable situation with Oren. He was a terrific actor and it was really considered a coup that we’d gotten him to work on our film — and he and especially his manager never tired of reminding me of it. I’d be on the phone with her and she’d talk about residuals and the size of the credits and I’d have to keep reminding her, or at least reminding myself, that we didn’t have a distributor, that this project was for love, that nobody (except of course the crew guys) were making anything on it. He was very handsome, high-cheekboned, eyes that bored right through you. It was a very classic look, a look that was out of fashion now, he almost wasn’t even thinking about romantic roles anymore, just villains and sociopaths, but he was contemporary in the way he paid extreme attention to skin, to diet, to lifestyle. There was a fuss when we tried to use plastic utensils for the crew meals, a fuss about the nuts that had been included in a food spread — not that he had an allergy, but in case anyone else did and was afraid to speak up, he was just saying. The long, brutal night shoots, which was what we relied on to get the filming done, were a real issue, and eventually he’d put his foot down and refused to do it anymore. The other actors were initially sympathetic to him, both out of camaraderie and because he was so outrageously good-looking — “I mean, we’re kind of mature and everything now,” said Bina, the lead actress, “but can you imagine being in middle school or high school and seeing that boy” — but eventually it got to them too. There was a real row when he’d canceled the shoot day. Bina came to me in tears. “You can’t do that,” she sniffled, “just because he thinks he’s — you can’t let him get away with that – you have to promise me, ok, you have to promise you’ll at least talk to him, you have to promise you won’t let him do anything like that again.”

I did promise. I was going through a real phase right now, I felt like I was developing the morality of a camp counselor or an RA. I’d always been a dark, kind of brooding creature, I made a point of being surrounded by coffee, cigarettes, alcohol, slouched, showed up late for things, stayed up most of the night — this had always been my aesthetic, assumed it was, in some real sense, the only viable way to be, and then I’d gotten a paying job and made rent and got promoted in the paying job and started to smile and to hike and do mushrooms on weekends and had been fully persuaded that I was completely in the wrong in my post-college, vagranty phase. And now there was no feeling of superiority to anyone else — I knew I hadn’t done anything to feel superior — and had a deep, almost evangelistic appreciation for everybody around me, how hard all of them were trying, each in their own way, and a simple, common-sensical approach to life, we were trying to do something difficult with these independent films, something that required constantly pushing uphill, and the last thing anyone needed was for us to get in each other’s way.

This was actually how I thought at that time — cynicism was still ingrained enough in me that I wouldn’t say any of that out loud, but people seemed to recognize it anyway, the cameraman would turn to me, not to the director, when he needed a break, Bina would come running to me in tears whenever she was upset about something — and it wasn’t just that I was a soft touch, could be persuaded of most things, it was a feeling that I had some kind of a loyalty to the community, wasn’t in it completely for myself.

That communal feeling extended even to Oren, who had become persona non grata on set, eating the snacks he brought himself, bits of fruit and meat, who found a room to himself at the start of every day — usually chasing out any PAs or crew people who happened to be there — so he could gurgle to himself, make humming noises, sing up and down his vocal range. I found him there, steadfastly drinking water from his San Pellegrino bottle. He was a very lonely guy, I knew that about him, and it wasn’t working out as well as it could have been, no matter how much his manager talked about his utterly hypothetical scheduling conflicts. I’d happened to have been around a corner and heard him talking on the phone with the tutoring company that employed him, the way he almost spat into the phone, telling them that, yes, he would take this kid, yes he would take that kid, could he please have this time because of an independent film he was shooting, I’d seen how he’d passed his hand over his face and the tips of his hair, like he was trying to wake himself up from a nightmare, couldn’t believe that this was his reality, that these were the people he was dealing with, having to ask things from. I sat on a crate next to him, clasped my hands, I felt like a mother superior addressing a wayward nun.

“We’re going to shoot today,” I said, “reshoot what we couldn’t shoot last time, and there aren’t going to be any issues this time, alright, everybody’s just going to focus in, do their work, that’s all this is going to be.”

“That’s exactly what I was saying last time,” he said, as if someone finally got him. “You can’t work, you can’t focus if people run over the night before, if everybody’s always behind schedule, crew guys dropping something every two seconds.” His voice was very different when he was off-screen or off-stage, it was somehow flat and husky at the same time, like a bullied kid trying to sound tough.

“But it’s not always going to be smooth,” I said in my best camp counselor tone. “We’re paying everybody way, way below what they should be making, what they expect to make, they’re here because they want to be here, just like everybody else, this is where they want to be, this is what they want to be doing.”

I felt like I was a completely different kind of person, like I was in some kind of ‘80s TV special. Oren saw what I was getting at. He was sitting on his own crate, dropped his forehead onto a fist, looked down and away. I had an impulse to reach under him and cup his chin, tell him the rules of basic decency.

“That’s not some studio money that we lost last time,” I said, “when we didn’t shoot — and we had to pay the crew and we had the pay the location that we didn’t end up using — that was our money, money raised from friends, some of it money that the director contributed from her own pocket. There are no underwriters, you know, no big donors, this is something we’re all doing for love, not to get big, just because this is something we believe in and enjoy.”

He still had his head on his fist, he still looked like he was waiting for this to end. “I mean, you get that, right?” I said. “This isn’t Marlon Brando, this isn’t Jack Nicholson, this isn’t some alternate reality where everybody does exactly what they want whenever they want and everybody else thinks it’s cute, this is us trying to make something together, and, for that, talent, skill — all the things you have in abundance — that’s only half of it. The rest of it is, you know, feeling like we all want the same things, like we’re all pulling together.”

He clearly was waiting for me to leave so he could get to his snacks and his vocal warmup, but I was too far into this, too, I suppose, into the sound of my own voice, to stop here, I needed to make him answer me. “Yes,” he said finally, in his husky spat way, “I get it, I get everything you’re saying — I do, I really do — it sounds like a beautiful fiction.”

That was, I figured, as much as I was going to get from him. He was wagging his eyebrows up and down in a way that meant he agreed effusively but meant also that he would really like to be left alone now. And eventually he showed up on the set about a minute before we were ready to start shooting. He made faces as the sound person attached the microphone, held everything up while he asked the girl doing the makeup for more powder. Bina, who was his love interest, glowered at him and he took a last sip of water from the San Pellegrino bottle and paid no attention to her. And then the camera rolled and he took a moment not doing anything, just looking somewhere inside himself, and moved over to where Bina was, which was how the scene was supposed to be, and it was excellent. We did two or three takes, didn’t really have to correct anything. At some point, the director paused, said, “Can we do one more and this time can we — how do I put this? what am I going for? — it’s already really good, can we have a little more chemistry between the two of you?” And I could see what she meant, but, really, it was Bina she was talking to — whatever Oren had done, whatever he’d discovered looking inside himself, he’d come out warm and loving and invested in her, and Bina was supposed to be a little cold and detached in this scene but she was coming across as completely spoiled and self-absorbed. Maybe the problem was that Bina just wasn’t a very good actor. That had been dawning on all of us as we were shooting. She was everybody’s favorite, pure joy to be around even, somehow, when she was in one of her tearful complaints, the way she’d throw open her top when the sound guy came to adjust the mic, the way she’d take a tour of the PAs, putting her hand on each of the shoulders to make sure they weren’t too bored, the little games she’d play between takes, trying to take off her undershirt without removing the top, seeing if she could lick her own elbow, all very loose, very free, and then once the camera was on she was somehow different, just indefinably different, her head moved around on her neck like a hunted animal, her voice became somehow creaky and suspicious. The director had been working a lot with her, it had been sort of alright with the other actors, but, when she was in the scene with Oren, it was impossible to ignore.

They finished the scene. Oren nodded vaguely in Bina’s direction. He seemed to be in a better mood. He had dinner with the rest of the cast — his own food, from his plastic baggie, but sitting at the same long table. When the DP pulled out a guitar and started to play, he stuck around. The hostess of the location sang along, everybody applauded the DP — he’d been so popular with the crew, done so well, and then at some point, in that timid, husky voice of a kid being bullied, Oren reached out and asked if he could play for a bit. His playing was very different, it wasn’t folk songs from the home country of the hostess, there was a lot of Jeff Beck, a lot of Santana. Nobody knew that he played guitar, but somehow it fit. The group gathered around the music started to split off. I wandered upstairs. We had a long, complicated day tomorrow and I was determined to get some sleep. In the room next to me, I heard Bina giggling and making shushing sounds and Florian, who’d been operating B-cam, laughing over them — so, apparently, Florian really had a tough time staying away from sex while on set. These were complicated songs, and no one knew the words or could sing along, but, apparently, Oren had refused to give the guitar back. His playing was excellent, his voice when he was singing was full and rich. I didn’t know how it all worked exactly — if there was some inverse relationship between how lousy he was most have the time and how he was when he was performing, if he truly just couldn’t stand himself, needed to lose himself in a persona, if that’s fundamentally what it was, if he needed it more than anyone else; well, there was endless speculation about this kind of thing, nobody could quite figure it out — but once you were around it it was inarguable. And the movie would be a bust, I could feel that, a sub-par script, a group of ok actors, a lot of good intentions going into it, but it would be just another one of these artsy movies that would never, ever see the light of day, and Oren’s manager had been right to press us to make sure that his schedule stayed open, if not to make such a point about residuals. He would make it, he had it, it was just a matter of time, of the right breaks, and the community wouldn’t matter in the slightest — none of us would come along with him — and in some sense it would all be a great waste of talent, he would be a jerk to everyone around him and he would make lots of money in some Hollywood thing that would do no good to anyone at all, but I had been completely wrong in my Mr. Rogers shtick, and I was loathing my words, the sound of my own voice, and he had been completely right to put his forehead on his fist and to tune me out as completely as it’s possible to tune out somebody sitting a few feet away from you. This was what mattered, this. It was stupid to pretend there was anything else.