Everything Leads to You

So twenty-five minutes later I’m walking into a projection room that is empty besides Morgan and her new buddy Harvey, a guy probably in his sixties with thick glasses and a comb-over. When I thank him for letting us sit in, he tells me he’s just doing his job, but it’s clear that he’s loving having us as an audience. I doubt he usually takes his time the way he is now.

“I’ve set up the dailies almost every night for forty years,” he says. And then he proceeds to tell me forty years’ worth of stories. All the famous films of which he’s seen every take, all the stars who needed a dozen takes to get something right.

“Did you ever show dailies from a Clyde Jones movie?” I ask.

“Sure did. Silver Stirrups. Not his finest film, but certainly his last one. He should have quit while he was ahead. Before that one was Midnight River. Now that would have been going out with a bang. But even in Silver Stirrups he only needed a couple takes for each scene. He was a real professional.”

At that, Harvey ascends the stairs to the projection room, leaving Morgan and me alone.

“Clyde Jones?” she asks. “Are you suddenly into Westerns?”

I just shrug. I’m not even tempted to say something evasive like, I’m asking for a girl, or He reminds me of someone. Even though saying those things would be true, there is something about how I’m feeling right now that makes me want to keep quiet about it. Something about Ava I want to protect. Every time I’m reminded of her it feels like I’m keeping a secret. Not only about her famous grandfather but about her crooked smile and her raspy voice. About her hesitations and her confessions and her focused, private thoughts.

Morgan is heading toward seats in the center and I follow her, sink into the plush red velvet. Some of the most influential people in the business have sat in this screening room, probably in this exact seat. I check out the console between us and see that with a press of a button I could call up to Harvey and ask him to play something over or speed through something else.

A scene begins but it isn’t of the music room yet.

Harvey’s voice comes out of the speakers: “I have to go through scene sixty-eight before I get to the ones you’re here to see. It’s a quick one, though, so hold on to your hats.”

Morgan laughs.

“This guy is amazing,” she says.

I turn to see her face, lit by the screen.

“I like him,” I say.

“Yeah.” She smiles at me. “I do, too.”

“I couldn’t tell if you were being sarcastic.”

“You should hear his other stories. Katy and I ended up at a bar with him a couple weeks ago. He shut the place down.”

On the screen, the father is entering the living room of the house in a hurry. The first shots follow his face closely. But then the next shots show the room. I recognize Clyde’s highball glasses resting on a gleaming bar cart. The sofa and rugs and chairs are all in muted tones and around the room are pops of color: red roses in a vase, full-color family portraits on a wall, a mostly turquoise globe.

It’s easy to see what Ginger was doing when she planned this room. Every detail that we notice is important. The flowers a reminder of the couple’s anniversary. The globe an indication of the distance about to come between them. The portraits depicting the happy family so we can see how much they stand to lose by the misfortune about to strike them.

Even before the scene changes to the music room, I realize why Ginger replaced my green-and-gold sofa with Clyde’s gray one. Then the clapper flashes onscreen, Scene 8, Take 1, and there is my room, larger than life, and my entire body is flooded with my own wrongness.

Ginger has used the same strategy in this room. Almost everything is muted except for the important parts: the music stand to show us the daughter’s talent, the trophies to show her youth and innocence. My sofa would have commanded too much attention for Ginger’s concept, and while her choices are not the ones I would have made, I can see that they make sense. They work well for this film. Really well for this film, in fact.

My sofa would have looked great if this room were in isolation, but it’s part of a film where every scene will be cohesive. When Ginger told me that she was the production designer she probably wasn’t just on a power trip. She was probably trying to tell me that she was the one with the vision for film, that she knew every aspect of the sets and the locations. As an intern I knew only a sliver.

I thought the music room was mine but it was always hers.

“How does it feel?” Morgan asks.

I’m embarrassed to know that I was wrong, to remember the things I said and how ridiculously young I must have seemed to Ginger. And I’m sad to see what this room could have been if I’d had complete control over it. How close it is to my version of perfect. But somehow, I’m also proud of it. I may have just been an intern, fulfilling someone else’s vision, but I did it in a way that was my own. It’s possible that no one else would have chosen that particular music stand or that poster. The sheet music is still scattered and I love the messiness of it, how it feels lived in and more authentic than the living room.