Teddy walked between them and the camera and, after being sure that no one was watching him, drew a knuckle across the lens as he passed the equipment.
“Let’s shoot it,” Baxter said, and everyone assumed their positions. The plan was: the Steadicam would pick up the protagonist as he dismounted his horse in front of the saloon, then follow him inside as he fended off swings from several people, returned some punches, and, finally, outdrew two men and shot them both. The take lasted about fifty seconds, and the director yelled, “Cut! Print! Absolutely perfect!”
“Let’s look at it,” Baxter said, and the group huddled around a monitor and watched the take.
The cameraman spoke up. “What’s that smudge across the screen?” he asked.
“I don’t see it,” Baxter said.
“Neither do I,” echoed the director.
“Watch it again,” the cameraman said, and they all did.
“I see it,” the director said. “Shit! Doesn’t anybody know how to clean a lens around here?”
“I cleaned it about three minutes before the take,” an assistant said.
“There it is,” the cameraman said, inspecting the lens. “We’ll have to do another take.”
There ensued a comedy of errors as they screwed up take after take, and they finally got it right on the eighth.
“Anybody know what those retakes cost me?” Baxter asked nobody in particular.
Nobody in particular answered.
“All for a dirty lens?” he added, unnecessarily.
“It won’t happen again, Dax,” the cameraman said, glaring at his assistant, who could only look at the floor.
“Break for lunch!” the assistant director said.
It was quiet around the chuck wagons while everyone ate.
Teddy enjoyed his burger and tried to look glum, like everybody else.
Sally sidled up to him with her plate and sat down beside him. “What happened in there this morning?” she asked. “Everybody looks like death warmed over.”
“Somebody screwed up on a perfect first take of an extended shot, and it took seven more to get it right.”
“What was the problem?”
“A smudged lens.”
“Does our cinematographer still have a job?”
“It was just one of those things, I think, nobody’s fault,” Teddy replied.
“Everything is somebody’s fault,” she said, “and it’s easy to see Dax is pissed off.”
“That’s life,” Teddy said.
“Don’t you ever say that to Dax.”
“I wouldn’t.”
? ? ?
THAT AFTERNOON, another three scenes required multiple takes, and for no good reason. Teddy walked past Baxter’s double-wide and heard the male star yelling, “What the fuck is wrong with this production? I don’t appreciate having to do everything half a dozen times because of some fuckup! I had expected better of you, Dax.”
“Jake, we just had a bad day,” Baxter replied soothingly. “It happens sometimes, in spite of everybody’s best efforts.”
“Well, it better stop happening,” the actor said. “I signed up to do one movie, not seven or eight. I’ll have trouble sleeping tonight, and that’s not good for the production.”
“I’ll send the nurse over with some Ambien,” Dax said.
? ? ?
THAT EVENING, at Sally’s house up in the hills, the four of them met for dinner. Dan had brought the makeup artist’s assistant, Mara, who seemed bright as well as pretty.
Dan raised his glass. “To fewer days like today,” he said.
“Hear, hear,” Teddy said.
“Did you notice that Dax ordered the cameraman to stop moving the camera during scenes? He had to throw away the storyboards for practically every one.”
“Everybody was pretty rattled,” Mara said. “I could hardly get the cast to hold still for makeup, they were all so fidgety.”
“Dax was worse than fidgety,” Sally said. “He was practically volcanic. I heard our leading man, our Jake, nearly walked.”
“That would scare Dax shitless,” Dan said. “He hates to be in a position where he’s not perfectly in control. He had to pay Jake Preston more than his usual fee, because Jake thought the part was beneath him.”
Sally grilled steaks and baked potatoes, and Teddy had picked up an especially good cabernet. Everybody relaxed after the first bottle, and they began to have a good time. Then Dan’s cell phone went off.
Dan looked at it. “It’s Dax. I’m going to have to take this.” He grabbed the phone, walked across the room, and flopped down on the sofa. “Yes, Dax?” For the next ten minutes Dan sat and gave monosyllabic answers to nearly every question. Finally he was able to hang up and come back to the table.
“It’s worse than we thought,” he said. “He wasn’t able to get Jake to say he would continue, so he’s been on the phone all evening with agents, trying to scare up a new leading man, just in case. In the end, he had to pay Darth Kramer half a salary just to stand by, if Jake walks.”
“Well, doing nothing for half a star’s salary ain’t too bad,” Sally said.
“I’ve never heard of anything like that,” Teddy said. “I mean, in the old days, when the studio was king, they’d have half a dozen actors under contract who could step up in a case like that.”
“Them days is gone,” Dan said.
? ? ?
AFTER DINNER, the girls did the dishes while Teddy and Dan sat on the front porch with a brandy and gazed down at the lights of Santa Fe.
“What do you think is going to happen, Dan?” Teddy asked.
“Well, we’ve got two possibilities,” Dan replied. “One, things will continue to go badly, and Jake Preston, who has a loose grip on reality anyway, will get on his jet and go home to L.A., then we’ll start the production over with Darth Kramer in the part. On the other hand, things could smooth out, Jake could calm down, and we’d add a day or two to the shoot, because he’d demand a lot of vanity retakes and close-ups, knowing that Dax was worried. I’m not sure which would be worse for us.”
Teddy thought he had an idea which would be worse for Dax Baxter.
When the guests had gone, Teddy said, “What say we start again at square one?”
“It ain’t gonna be square,” Sally said, getting out of her clothes.
11
ON SUNDAY MORNING, Teddy got a call. “Hello?”
“Billy,” Stone said, “it’s Stone Barrington. You free for lunch?”
“Sure, Stone.”
“Let’s meet at the Tesuque Market at noon, if that’s okay.”
“It’s right in my backyard,” Teddy said.
? ? ?
“YOU LOOK FIT and well rested, Billy,” Stone said after they had gotten a table and a menu.
“I feel a lot better than I’d hoped to,” Teddy said. He looked a little embarrassed. “I’ve even got a girl.”
“Good for you!”
“I would never have thought it could happen this fast, but I’ve no complaints at all. She’s a lovely person, works on the shoot, name of Sally Ryder.”
“I hope to meet her one of these days,” Stone said.
“She’s picking me up here at one o’clock. We’re taking a hike up in the hills, so you’ll meet her.”
“I’ll look forward to that,” Stone said. “Tell me, how’s the shoot going?”
Teddy pulled a mock frown. “Not as well as could be expected,” he said. “Lots of small problems are slowing us down and costing Mr. Baxter money of his own. He has a contract price with the studio, as it turns out, and any delays or reshoots come out of his own pocket.”
“That must hurt,” Stone said.
“Not only that, but we could lose our leading man and have to start over, since he’s in practically every scene we’ve shot. Baxter is paying another actor half his usual salary, just to have him standing by.”
“Can the leading man get away with just walking off the movie?”
“I expect there’ll be litigation, or the threat of it,” Teddy said. “But who knows?”
“In the meantime, Baxter loses everything he’s shot and everything he’s already paid the leading man?”
Teddy nodded. “I hear it could cost Baxter upwards of two million dollars, when you add in the extra shooting days. He has to pay the whole crew for those.”