Page 11 of Hollywood, Ending

In our private dining room, Matthew smiled and said, “One does tire of being an icon. But without them, who am I?”

“You sound like Warhol,” I said.

Matthew nodded, laughed a bit to himself, then took another long pull from his wineglass.

“How was your first day?” Kai asked.

“More fun than making a Marvel movie, that’s for sure,” he said as our waiter arrived with “carrot fries,” which seemed to be raw carrots cut into French fry shapes and sprinkled with salt. “Most days with those, you’re just in a studio doing choreography. How was your first day? It all must be new for you.”

“I was terrified until the second or third take, and then I was…in it.”

“I love that your first scene in a movie was with me,” Matthew said. “I’ll never forget that, kid. Here’s to Kai.”

We all raised a glass—mine some kind of blackberry-infused kombucha—and cheered Kai. He was blushing. “I love you guys,” he said.

“Kai is quite profligate with his I love yous,” I said.

“Well, I love that,” Matthew said. He pressed his napkin to his mouth, put it back in his lap, and then said, “You know, when we were casting this movie, I said I want real kids, real young people, not thirty-year-olds playing young, because there’s an energy to these characters. They’re both yearning—for acceptance, for love, for power. And we found the perfect kids. Truly. I can tell from day one, you’re both—as Kai says—in it.”

It was quiet for a moment when the waiter returned with some kind of cauliflower rice that had been soaked in brine. Matthew asked me what I was working on that I’d initially chosen over dinner.

“It’s this epic fantasy my agent likes,” I said. “Brian Arawas’s next project. It’s based on a book called Gods of Andromeda. So I’m reading the book now.”

“Same studio as Warhol, right?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s set in a world where all the leaders are young women. When you turn thirty, you age out of ruling. And the men are, like, courtiers.”

“Fascinating. I don’t know Brian well, but I know the head of the studio. You’d really like this film?”

“It would be huge for me. I’ve never been in anything with that kind of budget.”

“But do you like the project?” he asked.

“I really do,” I said. When Matthew spoke to you, you felt like you were the only person who existed. His eyes never left yours.

“It’s good of you to read the book,” he said. “I tried to read Warhol’s diaries, but they bored me. Even on audio. My attention span isn’t what it used to be. I prepped by watching interviews on YouTube mostly.”

“Juniper prepares,” Kai said. “Like, didn’t you read everything Warhol ever wrote?”

I shrugged.

“I’ll call Tom,” Matthew said out of nowhere. “Todd’s boss at the studio. I have an iron in the fire with him anyway. This Christmas movie with Brad.” He paused. “Pitt.”

“Right,” I said. “You call Brad Pitt ‘Brad.’ ”

“And you call me Matthew,” he said. “Everybody turns out just to be a person in the end.”

8

I’d begun to see a pattern with Kathryn: She’d let us take each shot according to our own instincts several times, and then she’d slowly ask for it more her way—me as innocent and confused by the Big Boy World, Kai as expressive and entranced by me. I worried she’d cut a movie using only her takes, but at least she was letting me act from within myself a bit, which is more than can be said for many directors.

By that Friday, we were shooting from seven p.m. to seven a.m. to get some night shots. We first filmed Kai and me at Magic Hour on a rooftop talking about Andy, about his genius for not letting anyone get beneath the skin. “I am,” as he once put it, “a deeply superficial person.”

In interviews, I’d noticed how often Andy referred to things as “wonderful” or “excellent” without ever seeming to derive any joy from their wonder or excellence. For someone constantly surrounded by pleasure—fancy food, great parties, celebrities, art, and everything else—he seemed curiously immune to it. So that was in the back of my head as Kai and I sat on that roof.

Then we transitioned to the nightclub set, where my character is partying. I wasn’t in the first scene. Andy and Kai stand outside the club and Andy tells Kai he’s beautiful and Kai says, “If you want to sleep with me, Andy, just ask,” and Andy responds, “I like sleeping I think more than I like the other stuff.” Which I found relatable, although sometimes I think that maybe I’ve just never had good sex, whereas I’ve definitely had good sleep.

By the time I was needed again, it was closing in on midnight. I was tired, but my mom had trained me to use the fatigue. If the fatigue makes you cranky, feel that emotion and know that you can transform it into any other emotion. In the scene we shot next, I snort coke until my nose is dripping blood and Jude screams at me for being a goddamned idiot and he confesses to me that his brother died from a drug overdose after years of them both being beaten by their father. The fatigue helped me, as feeling always does, so that by two a.m. I was a weeping mess, all my nerve endings on the outside of my body, feeling exhausted and exhilarated, fake blood all over my blouse mixing with real snot from my sobbing.