Dress Rehearsal

 

 

 

“Tom?”

Thomas Matthews shuddered, thinking to himself “now what?”

Sitting under a portable light, Bill Paxton beckoned him over.

“What’s the problem, Bill?”

“Yeah, the more I read this,” Bill replied, brandishing the script, “the less it makes sense.”

Tom shook his head, looked around the set.  Complete and utter chaos; they’d never get this done on schedule.

“I mean,” Bill was saying, “I don’t understand this character.  Why is he called Lab Rat?  What are his motives?  Is he in this for himself, or is he working for Münster?”

Tom didn’t have time to deal with this.  “I don’t know,” he said quickly, with venom.  “The writer lives in Chicago somewhere.  Call up all the insane asylums until you find him, and ask him yourself.  Just call collect, because we’re so over-budget...”

“Tom?” The voice came from off to the side.

“I am abandoned,” he murmured, and turned to the new voice.  It was Woody, the assistant director.

“What’s gone wrong now?” he asked tiredly.

Woody was bouncing around jumpily; like most of the work crew, he was doing crank to cope with the schedule.  In one hand was a clipboard, thick with papers.  His tone indicated that he was as fed up with the situation as Tom was.“Alan wants a word with you for a minute.”

“Oh, Gawd,” he growled in despair.  Alan was either going to drive him insane or to homicide.  Well, at least those gits in casting didn’t pick Bruce Willis. “Walk with me,” Tom said after taking a moment to steel himself, and trudged across the sound stage.

In tow, Woody continued, “Also, the guys running the fog machines want to know if we’re shooting today or not.  They’re not union, so if we’re not shooting, there’s no sense in paying them.”

Tom blew a deep breath out in despair.  He steered around an electrician precariously balancing from the top step of a ladder.  “How long ’till we shoot?”

Woody looked at his clipboard, and didn’t see the wiring cable.  He fell smartly on a shin, and his clipboard went flying.

“Shit, you all right?” Tom asked, helping Woody up.  From off to the side, two crew were standing around, chuckling at the slapstick.  Tom glared at them sternly.

“What’re you laughing at, assholes?  That should’ve been taped down.”

The two quickly scampered to duct tape the cable, and Woody retrieved his clipboard.

“We go live in, uh”, he again consulted his clipboard, “eight pages.”

Tom didn’t hear.  One of the carpenters working on the backdrops had signalled him.

“This what you’re looking for?”

Tom glanced over.  The object in question was a moderately sized conference table formed like an elongated octagon.  The first one had been molded plastic.  Not only couldn’t it hold any weight, but it looked terrible on film.  Tom took a moment to compare the new one against the image he had in his head of what it should look like.

“Round the edges a little more, and airbrush several coats of paint onto it so the grain won’t show.

“I really don’t think that lamp’ll hold.  I’d feel a lot better if we took it out and rehung it.”

“No time, no time,” Tom cried, fleeing.

“It’s not gonna hold, Tom!” the electrician called, but the director ignored him.  He ducked past the boom operator, who was totally bored and smoking a Marlboro Light 100.  Woody caught up to him just as he entered the dressing room.

Alan sat in a barber’s chair, stoically remaining motionless while Albert Whitlock applied facial make-up.  He was currently adding the five pits Alan’s face that signified his character’s ordeal at the hands of the Rathgeans.

“Ah, Tom,” Alan said in his refined British speech, “there you are.”

Oh, Christ, Tom though.  He wasn’t in the mood to put up with the actor’s preening.

“Look,” he said bluntly, “make this fast, because I have to get over to the castle set...”

“Sod the fucking Castle set!” Alan announced poignantly.  “Don’t run off to another set until you’ve solved all the problems on this one.”

Touché, Tom thought grimly.  He took a breath.

“What’s the problem?”

Alan snapped his fingers, and Albert stopped applying discolored latex long enough to hand him a gin and tonic (with a twist of lime, please).  Alan sipped, handed the glass back, and then held up a dog-eared, heavily annotated script.

“Have you actually read this, Tom?”

“Of course.”

“It’s written like a bloody novel!  People don’t talk like this in real life.  This is designed to be read, not spoken.  The sentences are all long, complex, and intricately structured.  The bugger probably takes five minutes writing each one, and he writes it one-handedly while masturbating over a grammar manual.  It’s almost impossible to recite.  Tom, there’s no way anyone can talk like this and make it sound convincing and natural.”

“Look, Alan,” Tom snapped, “this is surrealist science fiction.  Matthew has a very clear vision of this world, and in it, the people talk like this.  Now, I’ve read the book, and I’ve talked extensively with Matt about this, and quite frankly I only understand half of what’s going on.  The only person with a clear vision of how this world looks is Matthew.  If he wants people to talk like this, then I’m not about to argue with him.”

“But you’re the director...”

“Hey!” Tom cried.  “You know as well as I do, Ridley Scott, Stanley Kubrick and Terry Gilliam all turned this down because it was too far out for them.  I’m afraid that if I start changing major parts of the vision, it will do damage to it.  You know how the Branch Floridians reacted when Universal released essene.”

He took a deep breath.  He had to resolve this quickly, so he could get over to the Castle. “Look, just do your best, Alan.  Try and keep to the spirit of the dialogue, but if you need to prune here and there to say all that with a straight face and conviction, then do so.”

Suddenly the lights on the sound stage came back on.

“Well, it’s about fucking time!” Tom cried.  “Half an hour to change a god damn fuse!”  He glanced at his watch.  “Woody, how long do we have?”

“About eight minutes.”

Tom shook his head, and walked into the middle of the set.  The table was in place, but reeked of quick-drying paint shining from the precariously hung lamp.  Electricians were setting up qomputers, which were active now that the power was restored.  Tom shook his head.

“No, no, no.  This is much too roomy.”

One of the carpenters pegging together a wall called back, “Well, it’s a board room, isn’t it?”

Tom almost exploded.  “Doesn’t anybody read the script?  This is on board Münster’s satellite ship.  Spaceships are cramped, confining, and claustrophobic.  Move the walls in.”

The electrician on the scaffolding called down.  “Tom, are you moving the walls?”

“Yes,” he called, and looked around for Woody.

“Oh, phuq me,” the electrician called.  “Now I gotta realign all the lighting.”

Tom looked up at him.  “How long?”

“Ten minutes.”

“Five,” he snapped, then resumed looking around for Woody.

“Ten,” the lighting man called back.  “I gotta double check everything through the cameras.

“Don’t even think about touching that overhead lamp,” a techie yelled, “it’s about ready to come crashing down anyway.”

“Five,” Tom called, then finally spotted Woody off to the side.  He was talking with someone dressed like an Italian Renaissance prince.  Fancy clothes, though dark and brooding.  Luthor, obviously.  Walking over, he tried to remember the actor’s real name.

Woody saw him approach.  “I just found out that they’re still setting up the backdrops according to the old script, not the revised.”

Tom slapped his fist into his thigh.  “Shit!”

“Look,” said Woody, “I gotta go over there anyway to oversee Second Set incidental shots, so I’ll take care of it.”

Tom nodded his appreciation.  “Thanks.  Look, since you’re going over, just give Costner some prozac and tell him not to phuq with anything else.  I’ll talk to him when I have time.”

Woody scooted off, and Tom looked around for the girl with the bullhorn.  He waived her over, took her item.

“I need all the actors centre stage immediately.”

Bill ambled over, tucking his script stuffed into the back pocket of his pants.  Across the set, Alan emerged from the dressing room, his face transformed into the five-pitted horror.  Albert came out with him.

“This didn’t take very well,” he was yelling, indicating the work, “do I have time to redo it?”

Tom shook his head, and Albert slipped over to the cameras to smear a little Vaseline on the lenses.

Tom looked around.  One of them was missing.  He pointed to Emelio Estevez, asked “Where the phuq’s your brother?”

“Some teen magazine’s interviewing him.”

“Oh, Christ,” Tom yelled despairingly.  Emelio decided not to mention that it was also a photo shoot, so Charlie wasn’t even in costume.

“Just get him over here now,” Tom yelled, and the sibling ran off.  Tom shook his head: it was, he believed, a tremendous casting error to have brought Charlie into this.  It was only a bit piece (one of Münster’s inner circle), but he did nothing for the part.

“’Scuze me, Tom?” someone yelled.

Through clenched teeth: “What is it, man!”

“Good news.  Giger said to tell you that the Rathgeans came out looking better than he could have hoped for, and he has one working costume you can use right now, and he’ll have two more for you tomorrow.”

Tom thought, that would be great if any of the scenes we’re doing right now involved Rathgeans, but they weren’t due for another 223 pages.

Emilio and Charlie came back over, the latter, struggling into his costume.  Tom shook his head.

“Okay,” he said at last, “as you all know, we are in the weeds both time and budget-wise, and since this scene is scheduled to go in just five pages, we won’t have time for a dress rehearsal.  We’re doing this live in one take, so please make this one count.”

 

 

[continue to next chapter]