The actor stomps away from the shoot, handsome and ridiculous in his full-length white fox fur coat and glam-rock eyeshadow. They are shooting a dream sequence, and he's being asked to do something by the second-unit director that the director promised him he would never have to do. Apparently, nobody gave the second-unit director the memo. And where the hell is the director, why is Archie shooting this scene?
The crew take on a studied nonchalance, all turning to look somewhere else as their attention stays riveted upon the actor. The old hands have a way of looking in the opposite direction and knowing more about where the actor or director has gone for their tantrum than were they watching with binoculars.
Stomp, stomp, stomp goes the actor. What an arrogant prick, thinks a minor supporting actor watching the lead. Arrogant prick in a white fur coat. Of course he throws a tantrum in a white fur coat. Everyone's afraid the coat will be damaged, so they'll definitely pay attention.
The actor is veering perilously close to some equipment too costly to replace. The 1st AD has gone off in search of the director and the 2nd AD is fluttering mothlike in an arbitrary circle between the camera and the general vicinity of the lead actor. She is 20. She graduated early from a prestigious east-coast conservatory and knows all about Sondheim. She took a job with her uncle, the producer of this Sci-Fi Film Noir Indie Epic, for the summer. She told all her friends, "New York is not so great, I want to get some real experience under my belt, some hard work." So she took the very first flight she could get from Boston to Oakland, even switching to a flight to San Jose when she saw it was boarding as she waited for the connecting flight to Oakland, so that she would be back in comfortable, temperate Northern California ASAP, pronounced ay-sap, like yay-sap or gay-sap which was a joke some of her friends from the conservatory would make that she never understood. "I just want to get to work ASAP," she confided in her best friend Marjorie Frida-Kahlo Lockwood Lamont, knowing full well that Marjorie Frida-Kahlo Lockwood Lamont would tell everyone how passionate she was about gritty work, and never realizing that all of her friends saw through her purported desire for work to the very real fear of New York and possible failure that was too too daunting for this very young overachiever with decided fundamentalist Christian leanings.
The 1st AD knows precisely where the director is. The director is over behind some bushes -- azaleas? lobelia? oleander? -- sobbing uncontrollably as he tries to tell his mother about a dream he had last night. The director is plagued by dreams about the house his brother lives in with wife and two lovely children. There is something under that house, the director dreams every night, something dark coming for the children. He has tried to keep the dreams at bay with a variety of soporifics, but none have helped. His sleeeeeep has deeeeeeeepened, he is going off the deep end and will soon need depends because he's practically shitting himself. Not literally, but emotionally, and he just can't keep it together long enough to get through one phone call. The 1st AD knows all of this because it's the 1st AD's job to know all of this. He is an exceptional 1st AD. He knows where the director is, and that is why he is going to look for him. In the opposite direction.
The costumer is very worried about that coat. Well, actually, that coat can suck a bag of veinies as far as she is concerned -- she is more concerned about the vintage mink she traded as collateral for the white fox in case of damage. The mink is worth twenty times what the white fox is worth, a fact she is desperate to keep from the manager of the costume shop at A.F. College where she rented/traded/borrowed most of these costumes. Next thing she knows, someone figures out who the mink used to belong to and it's on E-Bay and she's screwed out of a hell of a lot of retirement. Or whatever. God knows, the way things are going, she'll be lucky if she doesn't have to go back to work at a library after Christmas. She's watching the actor and the 2nd AD as the 1st AD goes in the opposite direction, good boy, he knows where the director is, too, and he's letting him get it out, whatever it is. But the costumer watches the actor and she looks around for something to throw to distract him, should he begin to tear at more than his hair. That coat. Christ, what a waste of time. They could have used fake fur. Nobody ever sees below his neck, they could have used a stole. No, that would suck, it has to be the coat. Fucking ridiculous dream sequence. All we need know is a mime with a red balloon chasing a circus dog in a swastika-speckled party hat.
The cinematographer is very upset. The shot was perfect. The light is changing. This is not something we can fix in post. The 2nd AD is hot but useless, too bad her uncle is the producer, or the cinematographer would have to ask what the fuck she was doing dithering like this. The shot was fucking perfect. Where the fuck is the director? The second-unit guy is totally freaking the lead out.
The caterer is not the second-unit director. The 2nd AD thinks he is, because she was told that the second-unit director is Spanish, which to her means Mexican. So she found the first Mexican she could find on set and brought him over because Brick Fetterly had some questions. She walked past several actual Mexicans, including the director unseen behind the oleanders, who looks Irish but is Mexican and can explain why, but this guy with the long hair in a ponytail with a clipboard and dark skin and an accent looks like a Spanxican to her. He's actually from Panama, but he doesn't bother to explain this. He asked the actor what the actor wanted for lunch and the actor kind of fumed with only his nostrils and then turned and stomped away.
The makeup girl and the actor used to fuck. This was a while back, but she totally knows what he's into. It's kinky. She liked it. He stopped calling when he got some out-of-town projects and they haven't really had a chance to talk on set. If he wants sex, she's going to pretend to be seeing someone. She needs to be professional, now. She asks in advance if it's porn these days and has finally learned to turn work and other experiences down. For the most part.
The producer is about two blocks away, in a treehouse. He is watching all of this and whispering it into a mic attached to his iPod. He is writing a book. I am the producer. My niece is totally hot and we are not related by blood. She likes the jacuzzi. She is an overachiever. I am glad my wife and daughter are out of town for two weeks. My niece is an overachiever. I rented this treehouse from the preplexed family standing below on their lovely, idyllic suburban back lawn. This is the perfect vantage point from which I can watch all proceedings and record these notes for my memoirs. I call people via mobile if I need to. I will call my niece with some ridiculous task in a few moments, I will make sure she bends down to pick something up at the right angle. That makeup girl looks familiar.
The third actor in the shot, a supporting lead, watches all from a chair in the shade. He's here for two days. The producer tried to bar him from the production based on some jokes he'd made about hyenas. The director, writer and another producer totally overrode the producer's nay-saying. It turns out that this was good, that actor is good, and there he is, not freaking out. Where did he learn that? Where did he come from? Where will he go?
Whoa! The director is at the lead's side and they are conferring. The lead looks relaxed, like putty, like melting, like happy safe time. The director has this effect on people. He looks sane and normal, not like a man who dreams of ghosts trying to poison his brother's marriage. The 1st AD is miraculously returned and makes a slight gesture with his eyes which is picked up and transmitted to the crew so that now boom mics are readied and things are done and this and that happen and now we're shooting and the caterer is heading back to his truck with everyone's lunch order.
Everything is fine until the neighbors call the police and it's Napa and Napa cops are clearly working for the Third Reich. They ask the director if they can search his car, he tells them he doesn't own a car here, which is true, his car is in Chicago, the producer drives him everywhere, they don't believe him and they demand to see proof that he is a US Citizen.
The producer, in his haste to get out of the treehouse, breaks his ankle. He regains consciousness as the decorative gnomes begin to surround him. They are singing a song, and it's the same song the director heard in his dream last night; it makes the producer cry, because he knows that if the director could remember this song, he would be okay. It goes like this:
Would you have been so lonely
That you had to get in a boat
And sail away to the moonbeam ocean,
Far up in the sky?
