Everything Happened to Susan (6 page)

She remembers something that Phil had told her in the bed just before they had gotten down to serious business, something that she had possibly put out of her mind before. He had leaned over her, immense, naked, an expression of rage combating shyness in his face, and had said, running his hands over her, “You know what the purpose of these movies is? It’s very simple really and I’m surprised that no one has ever figured it out yet, at least to print. We got to give the guys and girls who watch this the idea that the whole world is a dirty movie because this gives them hope, you understand; they don’t feel so alone and helpless if we can make them believe that this is exactly the way it happens. You see, you’re dealing with a kind of person, maybe, who has had such troubles with sex that he can hardly believe it exists; oh he knows that something’s going on between people but so little is happening for him that he begins to worry if the whole thing is a myth, something invented by the world to keep him frustrated and angry. They can get very dangerous to themselves and others if they stop believing in sex; so what we got to do is to restore it to them in some way that they think it is believable. That’s why we look for a kind of actress who isn’t so experienced, who doesn’t look like she’s been around over the lot; that way the whole thing is more credible and the audience can picture themselves more easily. In the forties they had whores doing this stuff but that hasn’t worked for a long time. You’re really built, you know that? Even more than I thought from a distance; I could hardly believe that you were so built,” and he began to make noises which she or at least he took for passion; bent over her, began to nuzzle and fondle. As he went over the top, a glazed, frantic expression appeared in his shielded face and Susan saw his vulnerability so clearly that just for an instant she thought there was connection but then, as almost always with men the sensitivity went away and there was only greed, insistence, and the juncture of his loins throwing into her a knowledge so hot that all she could do was absorb it.

As they stand naked, in embarrassed, uncomfortable positions, a technician passes among them with a stack of scripts. He hands her one with the name SUSAN crayoned on a piece of paper clipped to it and she takes it, feeling the weight of the pages, looking at the title page. She finds that many of the pages are blank; presumably those in which there are scenes in which she is not participating. Turning at random she finds on page 80 a long scene between a character called Madame Curie and her husband Pierre. Foul words leap out from the page at her and she begins to read avidly but before she can even see what kind of role has been given her, the director claps his hands and climbs a parapet from which he addresses them with his hands held as a megaphone.

“These are your scripts,” he says. “You will study them. You will note that they are not complete; the master copy is only in the possession of myself and a few other people. In order to get the best performances out of you, it has been decided that your knowledge of the script will be limited to your own parts, this means that you will be able to reduce your focus to the necessary. You are to study these scripts all the time; when you are not actually involved in scenes you will be preparing. Later on, a full summary of the plot will be given you but at this time that would only interfere with your conception of the individual roles.”

“Where are we supposed to be when we’re not on the set?” the actor next to her asks. He gives Susan a wicked nudge, his eyes fixed on the director. “Off to the sides?”

“Exactly. You will be constantly called upon to participate and must be near the set.”

“I don’t think that that’s dignified,” the actor says. “I mean to say that doesn’t seem to be right. We’re entitled to separate dressing facilities and a place to relax; we can’t have people staring at us all the time.”

“I’m afraid you don’t understand,” the director says. “That is wholly untenable. We are working with certain rigorous limits here.”

“But it’s not fair,” the actor says. He nudges Susan again; possibly he is pleading for help. “We can’t just come in and act; we’re entitled to some privacy. Isn’t that right? Doesn’t anybody here agree with that?”

“I agree with that,” Susan says. The actor gives a sigh, pokes her again, and the director looks at her with an even, steady glaze in his eyes, making Susan feel suddenly very foolish and dangerously exposed. “Well, I
could
agree with that,” she says. “Maybe we should just not worry about it too much; after all, the important thing is just to get the film going, isn’t it?”

“The hell with it,” the actor mumbles. He moves apart from her slightly, taking a determined stance, his hands on his hips. “Look here,” he says positively. “We’re entitled to some dignity and respect. If we can’t get private dressing facilities, I’m going to refuse to participate.”

“That’s perfectly all right,” the director says. One of the technicians comes over, mumbles something in his left ear, gives him an absent caress of the left shoulder and walks hurriedly away. “You can leave right now,” the director says with even more assurance. “There are plenty of replacements available. Your roles. are quite expendable.”

“Just because we’re doing this kind of work doesn’t mean that we’re not entitled to a little dignity!” the actor says in a harsh, pleading voice. The edge of his assurance has been broken; now fear seems to be tumbling out. “All right,” he says, giving Susan a look of fury. “I won’t object any more. If that’s the way it has to be — ”

“I’m afraid you don’t understand,” the director says. “You’ve made your point very well. You may leave — ”

“Now listen — ”

“I don’t have the time. You people are utterly replaceable. We are not getting involved in negotiations. You will please put on your clothes and leave the set at once.”

“You don’t understand,” the actor says, his assurance now completely gone. “I’ve had dramatic training. I’m a professional. In Seattle in 1968 — ”

“Please leave,” the director says. Technicians once again come from behind the equipment, now gather, three of them, in a wee mass around the actor, staring at him through piercing eyes, hands identically on their hips. The actor gives a shrug, stoops, and begins to assemble his clothing. “Is anyone going to come with me?” he asks. “Am I the only one who had the guts to stand up — ”

“I’m sorry,” one of the technicians says in a lisp. “You are no longer permitted on the set. Please leave.”

The actor turns toward Susan and says, “We at least know each other. There’s some contact here, isn’t there? Don’t you think — ”

“I’m sorry,” Susan says and turns to him fully, trying to explain; it is important to her that she make the boy understand why she cannot leave but before she has a chance to find the words or even the way in which she will approach him, the three small technicians fall upon the actor like a net, grab his arms and legs, and begin to drag him off to the side, one of them cunningly using a foot to kick his clothing toward the wall. The actor struggles soundlessly, all arms and legs and stop-motion, and passes out of the line of sight and behind one of the cameras. Susan feels a shudder inside herself; she must admit that she has been somewhat moved. After all, the actor and she have had a kind of relationship. She wonders if the others are staring at her because she did not show loyalty to him. However, when she peeks from the edges of peripheral vision, she sees that all of the actors are standing in frozen positions, staring at the ceiling or floor, many of them with their hands clasped, a few quietly chewing gum. They look like well-behaved prisoners aligned for a public official’s visit. Susan decides to try to stop taking things so personally; it is, after all and as Phil has said, a business and perhaps she had better detach herself.

“You see,” the director says, “the actor is merely a tool. We cannot tolerate any behavior which takes him out of that role and, if necessary, I will take similar action with any of you. This is a serious production.”

Somewhere offstage Susan can hear struggles and remonstrations, but this does not matter to her anymore.

The first scene goes very quickly and well and Susan decides that this kind of movie is not so difficult after all. She appears in it playing the role of the widow of Warren Gamaliel Harding as she is informed of his rather sudden death while on a vacation trip in 1924. A quick scan of the scene assures her that she will be able to act this role with conviction and, once under the lights, she feels nothing at all except the desire to fulfill its implications as set down on the printed page.

A heavyset, middle-aged actor, also nude, plays the role of the political assistant delegated to give her the news, and one of the technicians hands him a small cigar which he uses as a prop for the first part of the scene. They act on a bare area under heavy lights which cause both of them to sweat heavily, adding veracity to the scene. “Oh Mrs. Harding,” the actor says, “I have terrible, terrible news for you. Your husband has died quite suddenly. I am sorry about this.”

According to the instructions in the script, Susan ducks her head, looks at her breasts, runs her left hand indolently across her stomach. “Oh well,” she says. “I’m not surprised at all. He had no self-discipline and his diet was terrible. I warned him and warned him.”

“Is there anything that I can do for you?”

“Nothing at all,” Susan says. “I’m perfectly all right.”

“I know that this must be a terrible shock to you and stand ready to do anything I can. Should there be any arrangements — ”

“It’s no shock. I saw it coming for a long time. At last I’ll be able to get out of national politics. I never cared for it much at all, being a very quiet woman, and I begged Warren time and again to go back to the statehouse but it was too late.”

“Warren was a very fine man,” the actor says and comes over to Susan, puts a hand on her shoulder, runs his fingers across her back. There is some indication in the script now as to a pause for activity and Susan does not know exactly what this demands; she decides to adapt to it simply by relaxing and feeling the actor’s hands begin to move all over her body. Shortly there is an insistent pressure around her thighs and she closes her eyes, leans back, feels herself being carried down to the hard wood surfaces of the floor. In her next line she is supposed to ask the actor what exactly he thinks he is doing but she is not sure when she should speak it: should there be a substantial break here for sexual activity, or should she, by delivering the line quickly, indicate that Mrs. Harding is resisting. There is no clue in the script. “What are you doing?” she asks, opening her eyes, seeing the actor above her, his tongue hanging out, gasping, his eyeballs distended as he rocks in a sexual posture, “What are you doing?” The actor says nothing. He is concentrating, really bearing down; his erection is small but it is firm and he is doing his best for the situation. “Hold it!” the director says somewhere in the distance and comes into the scene, the script dangling from his hands. He begins to swear at the actor. “You idiot,” he says, “you’re supposed to keep on talking, deliver the
lines,
this isn’t a goddamned show, you’re going to put us all out of business if you don’t concentrate.” “I’m sorry,” the actor says, shaking his head, recovering his feet, “if I only had a little time to prepare — ”

“There is no time to prepare,” the director says angrily. “We are working here on a very quick time schedule. It is your responsibility to have studied these lines, to know the scene, to act instinctively,” and the actor mumbles something shaking his head. “Miserable,” the director says. “Absolutely miserable. If we are starting in this fashion, I ask myself, how will we possibly finish? The girl, at least, the girl is acting with a little conviction but you are being absolutely impossible. What you have to do is to play against the script; you must deliver these lines quickly,
con brio, con gioco,
as it were while performing these acts, and the contrast between the lines and the acts will lead to that certain redeeming sense of irony which is the key to our conception. Do you understand? This is comedy, but it is comedy done with substance and style.” “All right,” the actor says, “all right, I studied, I got some background. I’ll do it. If you had told me in the first place — ”

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” the director says, “you must do this instinctively and professionally. I am very unhappy with the level of performance here, very unhappy and this is merely the first scene we are doing. Fortunately we are shooting out of sequence and doing minor scenes first but even so.” He leaves the area and drops out of their line of sight. “Wild,” the actor says into her ear. “Crazy. I never seen anything like this in my life. If I didn’t need the money — ”

“Please,” Susan says. “I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just do the scene.”

“If I didn’t need the money I wouldn’t touch this place with a ten-foot pole. I have dramatic training. I have some
background —
”

“Listen,” Susan says, “if it’s all the same to you, it’s nothing personal, I just want to do the scene.”

“You really believe this,” the actor says admiringly. “You really are trying to act with conviction.”

“Against the lines. Let’s act against the lines.”

“My name is Murray. I’m — ”

“Against the lines.”

“All right,” Murray says with a sigh. He lifts his head, puts his hands on her, rubs them up and down her arms and Susan feels the damp moving out from his palms to create a kind of perverse warmth. “I’m trying to comfort you, Mrs. Harding,” he says as the lights come on full again. Equipment begins to hum, the director makes a foul comment offstage, and the sound of the technicians’ laughter mixed with the murmurs of the other actors begins to fill the hall.

By the end of the day, Susan has acted in seven scenes and witnessed fourteen others while standing off to the side with her script in hand, learning lines. The scenes in which she has acted have involved roles as Mrs. Warren Gamaliel Harding, Marie Antoinette, Madame von Meck, the patroness of Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky, the immortal beloved of Ludwig van Beethoven, Isadora Duncan, the dark beloved of Shakespeare’s sonnets and the mistress of Nikolo Paganini. These scenes have been heavily slanted toward the musical, the director explains to her, because they are shooting the unimportant, connective, fringe material first before working into the more basic political and sociological focus of the film as the actors warm up and become more confident in their roles All of the scenes are very short, averaging no more than two to three minutes playing time, and all of them involve sexual activity of some sort, although in the Paganini and Tchaikovsky episodes she has only had to stand to the side and witness the actor simulate masturbation. The purpose of the film is to show the basic sexual obsession of all great lives and events although Susan cannot say that she understands much of it.

Most of her scenes have been with Murray who seems to be basically paired with her throughout, but two or three of them have been with other actors: a thin man named William who played Beethoven with a lisp and an immensely tall, disheveled actor named Frank who under the director’s instruction played Shakespeare as if he were a common drunk in search of rough trade. Frank told her in an intense conversation over the sandwiches brought up for a lunch break that he had never seen anything like this in the history of the world but then he was willing to learn. “I think the point is,” Frank had said, chewing and gesturing violently, the towel thrown modestly over his lower sections functioning as a napkin as well, “that these people are absolutely
serious;
they may be the last serious people left, they mean business. This is not a gag. You’re a very attractive girl; how did you get into this, you look a little young for it,” and then, without waiting for an answer, he had gone into an analysis of his background which he said made inevitable what had become of him. He had studied for a doctorate in medieval English at the University of Washington but before the orals had found that he had lost the power to read. “I mean, I looked at the page and it was just letters stuck down in different-sized clumps, but I couldn’t make any sense of them at all; I couldn’t make out the meaning. I had to use my index finger just to pick out the letters and that’s the point at which I decided I had better get out of the business. I mean my subconscious was obviously trying to tell me
something
about taking a doctoral degree in English; so I figured that after hanging around the university for ten years it was time to go. Of course I’m not really interested in acting, I just kind of fell into it.” Susan had found his conversation interesting if distracting. She had wanted to read her script and concentrate on the lines and scenes so that maybe she could get some internal comprehension of what everybody was driving at but everyone wanted to socialize, even the director who had gotten on a parapet toward the end of the lunch break and given them a long harangue in which he had talked about the deeper artistic truth and purposes which he hoped to bring out in this film and how he hoped that they would cooperate with one another to cause their performances to flow together. The talk had been almost incoherent. The director seems to have two modes of speech altogether — one of which (abusing actors) makes perfect sense and the other a more ruminative mode in which he cannot make himself understood at all. Susan knows that she will want to think about all of this later on. She will have to think a great deal. She is really stockpiling a lot of experience. The Marie Antoinette scene had been really difficult to get through what with her head being inserted into a strange contraption that entrapped and choked her while unspeakable things were done to her helpless backside. At that the scene had been nothing compared to what the girl playing Man Of War in another scene had gone through. The girl playing Man of War had been dramatizing the celebrated race in which Man of War, that great thoroughbred, had suffered the only defeat of his magnificent twenty-one race career by losing in a head finish to another two-year-old named Upset, and, in the course of simulating the actions of racing while carrying a jockey, this girl had been the subject of certain demented acts by the small actor playing the jockey which Susan simply did not want to watch. That was the whole point. She did not want to think about anything that had gone on that day. It was a day’s work. That was all there was to it and tomorrow would be another day and in five or six days they would finish the film and then her career would start. But her career was not something about which she could worry under the present circumstances.

The director let them go at six in the evening telling them that the first day’s work had been disgraceful, an absolute abomination and signaled the end of all his hopes if this level of performance continued. He advised them to be back at eight in the morning prepared to act seriously. The technicians, still giggling (they were always giggling) perched now at rest on their equipment like monkeys and sneered at them as one by one they got into their clothing and left the loft. Susan received invitations to go for coffee or drinks from Frank and Murray as well as a third actor whose name she never caught who had played the jockey in the horse racing sequence. She declined them with thanks. Outside, however, turning the corner, she received another invitation from Phil who seemed to have been lying in wait for her, and, for reasons which she could not rationalize, she decided that she better not pass this one up and followed him without a word to the restaurant where he had taken her before, wondering if everybody in New York was looking at her intently, knowing exactly what she had been through that day. She doubted it. You could do absolutely anything at all in New York and then go out on the streets and, for all that it mattered to the people surrounding you, you might not have been there at all because they had been through exactly the same thing. That was why she liked New York and why she hated it.