From here it’s wardrobe. From wardrobe, it’s makeup. From makeup, it’s to the set for my next 20-second scene.
Ah, the life of a movie star is a wondrous thing, indeed.
* * *
Everything’s going fine. I’m nailing my lines and I’m solid on the acting. Really, I should be feeling pretty good about myself right now.
That’s what I’m thinking right up until it’s time for my first scene with Damian.
When he’s not in my trailer acting like he’s the secret and mystical key to an aspiring young actor’s dreams and ambitions, apparently he’s on the set, arguing with the director and basically anyone else that strays too close to ground zero.
It used to be I was waiting for lighting or my makeup artist. Now I have to wait until there’s nothing even close to the set that doesn’t meet with Damian Jones’s odd and often contradictory standards.
After he’s finished a particularly nonsensical tirade regarding the reflection off one of the framed pictures hanging on the wall, he takes a moment to pace and I’m just trying to stay as far away from him as I can.
Unfortunately, that’s become rather difficult, as he’s now walking right toward me.
I turn to leave, but am nearly run over by one of the prop guys.
If this really is all an act on Damian’s part, he’s a more skilled thespian than anyone I’ve ever known. He’s absolutely nailing the role of irritating douchebag.
“Emma,” he says, and I give up hope of escape.
I turn and face him, responding, “Damian.”
“Things still going well?” he asks. “I know that it can be difficult being so close to one of the great cinematic gods of our time, but I’m sure you’ll get used to it. Anyway, I just had a couple of ideas for you.”
“Ideas?” I ask. “What kind of ideas?”
“Well,” he says, “we’ve never worked together before, and I thought maybe I could give you a couple of ideas on motions and tones you can take to get the best response out of me.”
“Acting tips?” I ask. “Are you seriously trying to make your performance my responsibility?”
“Well,” he says, “at the end of the day, it’s everyone’s responsibility, including mine. If there’s anything I can do to help get the best out of you,” he winks, “you just let me know.”
I’m pretty certain he just propositioned me.
Twelve-hours-ago-me would have ripped her top off, shoved it (the top) into her own mouth—for reasons which are unclear to me still—and leapt spread-eagle through the air at such a suggestion.
Twelve-hours-ago-me was an idiot.
“What did you have in mind?” I ask him.
“Well, I was thinking that if you say this first line with a kind of restrained anger, something just boiling to the surface rather than going straight explosive on it, that’d really be the way to go with the scene. We’d have somewhere to go, you know,” he says.
“What did you think I was going to do?” I ask. “Did you think I was going to come into the room screaming and throwing stuff?”
“A lot of people would,” he says. “But you’ve got to remember, this is Glen on the screenplay, so you’ve got to realize that there’s more to the page than the sum total of the words on it.”
“And you’ve got the only correct interpretation of it?” I ask. “You sound like you’re trying to start a religion.”
“How were you going to play the scene?” he asks.
“I was thinking that I would come into the room, see him sitting in the chair by the dresser and start soft, but deliberate, so that I could build into the climax of the dialogue,” I tell him. It’s exactly what he was saying I should do, and I know that he knows it. “By the time you get into the room, I’ll be yelling—otherwise your character would never hear me well enough to know what’s going on—but I wasn’t just going to go in there guns blazing.”
“I think that sounds like a brilliant plan,” he says.
Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I’m happy enough that he doesn’t know I was absolutely planning on coming into the room at the beginning of the next scene breaking a few things while I screamed at Mack, the guy playing my husband, in the first 20 minutes of the film. I had the whole scene played through in my head. That blue lamp was going to be the first to go.