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Chapter 15
Shooting was going well. The production was deep into the second week. They had scheduled to shoot Thursday and Friday night on Main Street. Night shoots meant call time was 7:00 p.m. Crew reported to the set so they could prep everything before the sun went down at 9:00 p.m. They would stay up all night filming. Cast arrived an hour later when ready to film. They were all set to go. The street had been decorated with fake snow and lined with Christmas lights. They were about to shoot the Rick and Ilsa shopping on Main Street montages, which would take their characters from ages twelve to twenty. Vera calledaction. The ominous clouds must have heard her. The skies opened up with an unexpected summer thunderstorm. The wind and the rain ruined the set and cut out the power for ten minutes.
The cast and crew who weren’t responsible for trying to save the set sought refuge at Eddie O’Brien’s Bar and Grill. The production had rented it out as the holding location for the crew to stay cool. It was where the cast and crew would eat lunch at midnight and dinner the next morning. Night shoots were weird. Drew and Vera sat at a table by a window watching as the PAs tried to save the set while the rain continued to fall. A PA carrying an inflated eight-foot Santa had slipped, and the inflatable Santa had gotten loose and was starting to fly in the wind, only to land in the middle of the street and get popped by a passing truck. “There goes Santa,” Vera commented. No one was happy. The rain cost them half a day in production. Each moment they were not shooting, they were losing money. “How long is this going to last?” Vera wondered. “Drew, check your weather app.”
“I don’t have a weather app. I live in LA.”
Ivy found Drew and Vera and joined them. She had gotten drenched in the rain. “What a storm,” she said, almost marveling at it. It had been a while since she’d experienced a summer storm. The air would change, and one could almost smell it coming.
“You’re from around here. How long is this going to last?” Vera asked.
Ivy chuckled. “If you want to talk about the weather in Upstate New York, wait five minutes.”
“What the hell does that mean? Why do we have to wait five minutes?”
“It’s just an expression.”
“I don’t need an expression. I need a forecast.”
Ivy shuddered a little. She knew she had somehow developed a small habit of annoying Vera, who was her director and who should not be annoyed. Ivy still answered: “I heard rain for the next two days. But it’s really good.”
Vera tried to keep her cool. “How is it really good?”
“All the farms and the wineries need some rain. And it’s better for the lakes around here.”
“I don’t care about the farms and the wineries and the lakes,” Vera said, smoldering. “I care about shooting the movie!”
Ivy looked at Drew as he informed her, “We had the shopping scenes scheduled for later today and all day tomorrow. The town council agreed to shut down Main Street for us. We can’t postpone and shoot next week because the arts and crafts fair comes in.”
“I love that fair,” Ivy reminisced out loud. Drew was glaring at her. “The following weekend is the Taste of Geneva!” Vera stared at her, annoyed. Ivy stood up, flustered. “I’m going to get a coffee. Sorry.”
“Good idea,” Drew said. “We’ll be right here trying to figure out how to save the shooting schedule.”
Ivy got her coffee. She knew she had to keep her head in the game. She had spent the last few days watching the film shoot (going very well), watching dailies each night (the footage looked great), but in truth, she was most focused on checking Instagram. Amari was all over it. With Nick at the ice cream shop. Ivy doubted Amari ate ice cream. With Nick at the Del Lago Spa and Resort. With Nick at the Corning Glass Factory. Nick would never go to the glass factory, no matter how many times she’d asked him. Too many people, he would argue. But Ivy guessed he had no problem going with Amari. That was all over Instagram. Ivy had cyber-stalked her way to exhaustion.
She shook her head to clear her thoughts, when Griffin stumbled into the bar. He saw Ivy and leaned into her for a hug. She still felt awkward hugging a big star like Griffin and reached out with one arm, balancing her coffee and phone with the other.
“Griffin, are you all right?”
He told Ivy that he had gone back to the hotel to change. “But there they were,” he said, “in front of the entrance. Like Gandalf sayingyou shall not pass!”
“What did you do?” Ivy wondered.
“I had toGoodfellasit.” She knew exactly what Griffin was talking about. In the movieGoodfellas, Henry (played by Ray Liotta) took his date Carmela (played by Lorraine Bracco) to the famous Copacabana nightclub. In one long fluid shot, the camera followed Henry and Carmela as they walked in through the back entrance, greeting and tipping people, tasting the food in the kitchen, and winding up front and center in the club. Griffin had entered through the back door of the hotel, tipping the staff, taking selfies with the chef, and getting into the service elevator to his floor, only to open his hotel room door and find three Griffineers climbing through the window. “My fans. My wonderful fans. They call me, follow me, stalk me. They must have jumped from the tree. They’re like freaks. Super freaks. They steal my underwear and sell it on eBay.”
“That’s really, really sad.”
“This is really, really starting to get to me, Ivy. I’m emotionally exhausted. I miss home.”
“Where’s home?”
Griffin thought about it. “I have no idea. I have gone from production to production for the last year. A part of me just wants out.”
“There you are,” a voice chimed in. Ivy looked at the young woman. “Hi, I’m Rory. I met you at the winery.”
“You work with Kenny on the paper.” Ivy was suspicious. Had Rory been listening to Griffin’s breakdown? But then he snapped up.
“That’s right. We had an interview. Nice to meet the local press.” It was amazing how Griffin could turn it on in a second. He was no longer “vulnerable” Griffin. He was confident Hollywood Griffin. “Have you met Ivy, our fabulous screenwriter?”
