A movie set is a like an aircraft carrier. One of the grips had told her this. A big guy with a plain blue tattoo on the back of his left hand, Stu had been in the navy for sixteen years before they sent him to the Gulf, where he saw some honest-to-God action. According to Stu, who was also a huge flirt, everything in the navy was built toward that aircraft carrier. It was the tip of the spear. The fighter pilots were the tip of the tip. They were the movie stars. He would grin at her, point. She was the tip of the tip here.
Not that Alison was a movie star. Not yet. But the dailies were phenomenal. She had been warned not to watch them, and in fact she wasn’t allowed to watch them, but the buzz on the set was “phenomenal.” It was a peculiar word, when you heard people say it over and over; it sounded insecure and phony, so she didn’t believe it when it first started floating around the bubble of their own little biosphere. Of course people in show business were always pumping themselves up and no one ever wanted to be caught up saying anything negative, that was the sort of shit that could get you fired. But at some point a different sound entered all the narcissistic chatter. There was, apparently, buzz. The suits started to show up on the set. Everyone started to take credit.
Everyone especially started taking credit for her. “I was thrilled when Lars brought up her name, the first time,” Norbert told Us Weekly. “Gordon said from the start, we need to make a star with this one and I took one look at Alison and said, she’s the one.”
“She’s been on everybody’s radar for a while,” Colin told People. “It was just a matter of time until she made the leap into features. I had seen tape on her a couple years ago, people were talking about her then. I said to Gordon, you have to see this girl. And Gordon totally agreed.”
This account was politely contradicted by Gordon. “She was my idea, from the word go,” he told Entertainment Tonight. “I told all of them, you guys need to look at this tape on this girl before you do anything else. It was Lars who needed a little convincing.”
“So what’s the story? Gordon fixed me up on a date with Lars?” Alison was endlessly on the phone with Ryan now; it was like he didn’t have a single other client. Day or night, she had the hot line.
“You are not to worry about the story,” he informed her.
“People ask, Ryan! People read that stuff and they believe it and then they ask me, did Gordon really fix you up with Lars? What am I supposed to say? You and I both know he fought tooth and nail to keep me out of this.”
“Darling, if Gordon didn’t want you in this movie, you would not be in this movie,” Ryan reminded her.
“That’s not true, Ryan! You told me yourself—”
“I told you there were reservations at the studio level—”
“Oh, bullshit, you told me that Gordon wanted a big star—”
“Alison. Alison. Alison.” She hated it when he did this, it sounded like he thought she was eight years old. She was already struggling with the fact that everyone treated her like a complete child. Whenever she was in hair and makeup, they actually sent a production assistant over to walk her to the set. Usually a total nitwit, someone fresh out of college who had a dad who pulled connections and got little Heather or Connor or Jamie a job on a movie set, where their responsibilities included fetching cappuccinos from the coffee truck and making sure the star didn’t get lost. Not that she was a star. Yet. There was always that caution. She wasn’t a star yet. She had a long way to go, and to get there, she would have to play nice.
What that meant, though, was anyone’s guess. Who was she supposed to play nice with? Lars? She had, and she did, and that situation only got more complicated. Impossibly, he was even more obsessed with every detail of her; every vowel she uttered came under excruciating and never-ending scrutiny. If the line was as simple as, “What do you want, Ben?” there were still thousands of ways to modulate it. He would put her through take after take focusing on a lift of an eyebrow. And then there were the ever-increasing demands on her time off the set. Lars wanted to have sex all the time and it was exhausting, frankly, especially on nights when she had a 4 a.m. call. Also, especially, since his potency waned even as his demands increased.