Page 8 of Hollywood, Ending

But before we could get to my scene, we needed the exterior shot where Andy prattles on to Jude about a cocktail party he’s planning and who needs to be on the invite list and where to throw it and whether it should be an Interview Magazine Party or just an Andy Party, and Jude is feverishly taking notes and trying to keep everything in order.

_____

We’d already met the hair and makeup team during rehearsals. Belinda was on my makeup and Crystal on my hair. B and C. Easy to remember. But soon the names pile on—there’s Sean the props master and Marina his assistant and Monique the costume director and Alicia the costuming assistant who’d just steamed the white miniskirt and low-cut orange blouse I was wearing. Kathryn explained to me during prep that orange was “my” color, and that turquoise (Kai’s color) and orange were in battle, alternately collaborating and clashing in the film. Kathryn was all about color-blocking, as she told me. Everything a singular tone. It seemed a bit over-the-top to me, but her first movie got a Golden Globe nom and I got beat out for a Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Award by the girl from the second reboot of that show about proto-YouTubers, so what did I know?

Monique looked me over once I was dressed and pinned the back of my shirt to tighten it up a bit. Then Chris, the PA for the trailers, told me to get in a full-sized white van waiting outside my trailer, which was driven by Trish, who took me the half mile to set, whereupon I met a bespectacled PA named Alistair who offered to get me coffee. We were in a working-class Pittsburgh neighborhood set up on a street lined with rowhouses.

Video Village—a dense cluster of monitors and chairs—was set up in the driveway of a house across the street from the one that passed as Andy’s. The producers were huddled with Kathryn discussing the weather forecast for Thursday and what rain might mean for the production schedule. Matthew said, “I’ll just ensure it’s a dry day. I have a direct line to the Big Man.”

“And you use it to prevent rain delays?” asked Kathryn.

“Exclusively,” Matthew answered, then laughed that brash laugh of his. “Juniper!” he said as he saw me. “Look at you. Orange as can be.” He was wearing a black turtleneck and acid-washed jeans, his black hair tucked underneath a Warhol wig, spiky white hair shooting out in every direction.

“I guess this is really going to happen,” I said.

Kai was sitting on the front lawn of the property across the street, all by himself, picking at grass. I walked over toward him and knelt down, not wanting to stain my white skirt.

“Actors are cattle,” he said. “Ever since you quoted that, it’s rumbling around my head.”

“Takes the pressure off, doesn’t it?” I said. “You show up on time. You stand where you’re told to stand. You say what you’re told to say. They herd you this way, then that way, and then you go to sleep.”

“Easy job, really. Only if you forget your lines and they have to shoot for an extra day, it costs a hundred grand.”

“Two hundred!” shouted Lon from over by Video Village. “I hear everything,” he added. “Every word on this goddamned set I hear. Two hundred if you forget your lines. Which you won’t, Kai. You’re a pro. A rookie, but a pro.”

“Thanks, Lon,” Kai said.

“And actors aren’t cattle,” Lon added. “You’re more like dolls. Ten or twenty years from now we’ll have good animation that replaces you entirely but for now we’re stuck with goddamned humans.”

“As if your job can’t be automated,” Matthew said. “You’re just a machine that turns money into movies.”

“Putting that on my business card,” Lon answered.

_____

A PA came to take me inside the house. I wasn’t actually in this first scene, but Carly was watching it all from an upstairs window, and so they needed me to stand in the window for the wide shot, looking down with concern because my silhouette might be visible. Andy’s old house was supposed to be vacant when they visit for the interview, so the idea was that I’d already made my way inside to his furnitureless, dustbunnied, shag-carpeted childhood bedroom.

_____

I was ninety-nine percent sure this shot wouldn’t even make it into the movie, but I still tried to do the work to be in character, to forget about actors and cattle and the huge lights and the camera out on the street and Lon and Natalie watching us on the monitors. I tried to forget about Kathryn, about wearing an outfit I would never wear, about my ex and his avarice for my body, about my body more generally. Instead, I thought about Carly’s body, her relationship with it, her simultaneous desire to be beautiful and horror at being objectified as beautiful, about her desire to harm the body, to drink and smoke and snort her way out of the body. And then I watched below as Kai—no, Jude—slammed a car door and scampered up to Matthew—no, Andy. Fame makes you big but it also makes you two-dimensional.

_____

I couldn’t really hear them from my vantage point, but it looked good—Jude nervously scrawling in his notebook as Andy rattled off names for the party.

“Yeah, cut!” Kathryn shouted after a minute. “Great. Great first shot. Looked beautiful.” She turned to the producers in Video Village and chatted with them before saying, “Let’s go again.”

“Going again,” a PA shouted, and then others down the line, including the PA downstairs in the house with me.

_____

I knew Matthew would deliver, but I felt a measure of relief seeing Kai fumbling expertly with Jude’s notebook, convincing me he was struggling to keep up with Andy. The problem with acting is that no one can tell you how to do it well, not really; they can only indicate the paths one walks to do it well. People talk about committing and forgetting and letting go and trusting—all those acting gerunds that point the way toward the work but aren’t the work itself. Watching Kai and Matthew outside, I let myself dream that Kai wasn’t just good but maybe truly special, perhaps special enough to make our movie special.

They did six more takes while I stood there in that upstairs window, looking down and not hearing much, feeling the awe that one feels in the presence of renowned individuals. In that sense, Carly looking at Andy wasn’t too different from me looking at Matthew Malone. Matthew Malone—Avenger, action star, popcorn actor extraordinaire—was no Andy Warhol, of course, but the fame radiates regardless. My ex told me once that star is the perfect word for celebrity actors, because they burn so hot and bright that you feel warmer in their presence.

“And cut,” Kathryn said, waking me from the reverie. I realized I hadn’t been even remotely within Carly during that last take, but of course it didn’t matter much. Insofar as I existed, I was only a silhouette in the window. “That was great,” she said, after consulting with the producers. “Let’s move on.”

The words repeated and grew louder as they spread. “Moving on!” the PAs shouted. “Okay, moving on!” I heard the first AD shout from the street. “We’re going tight on Matthew. Tight on Matthew.”