The Martini Shot (16 page)

“Lots of coverage, is all I'm saying.”

“It'll be fine,” said the director, turning his head to us in the back rows of bench seats, interrupting his call to his kid. Lomax was wearing a black Patagonia vest under a black Marmot shell, Merrell shoes. He was overdressed for the weather, a walking billboard for REI. “I storyboarded it and I know what I need. Two hours, tops.”

He was telling us that he was prepared, that the scene wouldn't take long, and that he wouldn't overshoot. But we knew Lomax's MO. He leaned toward artsy, with shots that made no sense in terms of POV, angles and footage we'd never use when it came time to cut. The secretary's arrival, easily accomplished by a walk into frame, would be complicated by his insistence on bringing her in with a dolly shot, which meant laying down track and more lighting, which meant time. We'd get behind, and the rest of the day we'd be playing catch-up, and consequently the last scene or two would suffer. We'd worked with Lomax before. He made the days longer than they had to be, but he was all right.

Louise dropped Eagle off at catering so he could get his usual hearty breakfast, then drove the rest of us to the location. The company trucks were parked on a street in the business district of town, and crew members were milling about, waiting for the AD to call out that we were “in.” First up was a scene in a bank (INT: BANK, DOWNTOWN—DAY), where our protagonist would interview some board members about the death of a teller, whose body had been found in the teaser, a scene we had yet to get in the can. We rarely shot in sequence.

Louise told us to have a blessed day as we exited the van. The lead set PA, waiting on the sidewalk, handed me my sides, which were the day's scenes, complete with dialogue, collated into one stapled set of pages. I folded the sides and slipped them into the back pocket of my Levi's, and asked the PA to order me a breakfast burrito and a coffee from catering.

“You got it, sir,” he said.

I thanked him and said good morning to crew as I walked down the street toward the bank.

This was my favorite time of the day. To step out of the van in the morning and walk onto a set among a hundred other crew members, all of us gathering in one place to build something together, is a feeling of great anticipation and promise. Costumers; hair and makeup people; props; set dressers; scenic, light, and camera crew; sound recordists—all of these people, in their own way, were artists. Unlike a painting, signed by one person, or a book, with one author's name on its spine, the tail credits on a movie or television show carried hundreds of signatures. I
liked
that. I had no illusions that what I did as a television writer had weight or permanence. But, because of my comrades, I was proud to have my name on that scroll.

Inside the bank, the first AD called for a private rehearsal as the actors arrived on set. Eagle had come in with his breakfast and was shoveling it down. The lead actor, supporting actors, day players, and director stood in a circle and read their lines. I stood nearby with Lillie, the script supervisor out of New York, who was wearing New York black. She was by necessity a hyper, detail-oriented person who had one of the most demanding and important jobs in the production. Lillie watched every take in the monitors for continuity and matching issues; she was a pain in the ass, in a good way.

As the actors rehearsed the lines, I looked for trouble spots. Often the written word seems fine on the page, but when spoken it can lose its luster. Occasionally, what I thought was a great scene didn't work in practice, and I was there to adjust lines. The actor might not like something I'd written, and I had the authority to change the words if I felt the objection was warranted, or stand my ground if it was not. An actor could misinterpret my writing and not do it justice, and an actor could also elevate what I'd done. Sometimes the words or sentences were just too much of a mouthful, or there was a redundancy I had not seen before, and I'd subtract. All of this came out on set.

“Scene,” said Lomax, when the actors were done. He then blocked the action, putting the actors through their movements and stops. We were to shoot this one with two cameras, A and B. During the second rehearsal, the B camera assistant laid down the actor's marks with pieces of colored tape. Lomax discussed the various shots with Eagle and Van, Skylar standing close by. Master, medium shot, then the singles, tighter, tighter, tighter, three sizes. Lomax expressed his desire to bring the secretary in with a dolly shot. Van wiggled his eyebrows at Eagle:
I knew it.

“Crew has the set,” said the first AD.

The actors went to their trailers as the crew flooded the set and prepped the first shot. Stand-ins took the marks of the actors so that they could be properly lit. It would be about forty-five minutes before the cameras rolled. My breakfast arrived and I ate it while Brandon, the on-set prop master, set up the cast chairs around the monitors, an arrangement called Video Village. I had my own chair with my name printed on the canvas backing, as well as the name of the series:
Tanner's Team.

The show was a serialized cop drama. It detailed the exploits of an elite Homicide squad headed by a handsome, middle-aged lieutenant named Jeremiah Tanner, a semi-clairvoyant father figure whose detectives, his children in effect (Tanner's Team), consisted of various attractive youngish men and women, a mix of blacks (but not
too
many blacks), whites, and Hispanics, cast to hit all the demographic buttons. The lead was Brad Slaughter, a former film actor who had briefly flirted with cinema stardom and was now highly compensated for his work on the small screen. His co-lead was Meaghan O'Toole, an actress who had come from the stage originally and had won an Emmy for her work in an HBO original. She played Mackenzie Hart, the “hard-charging” assistant district attorney who prosecuted the criminals the squad arrested. Mainly, to the actress's chagrin, she was written as the love interest for the lieutenant.

As we neared the start of the first shot, the executive producers arrived, and immediately the tenor of the crew changed. People stood straighter and worked faster. There was less joking around and grab-assing than there was when I was in charge of the set. The big guns were in the house.

Bruce Kaplan was the show's creator, head writer, and showrunner. His partner was Ellen Stern. Ellen was not a writer but rather a general of sorts who hired and fired crew, kept the trains running on time, negotiated with the vendors, and brought the show in on budget. They complemented each other and made a good, efficient team. The credits listed five executive producers, but Bruce and Ellen were the only two who actually worked on the day-to-day production. Today they looked very tired, with black circles under their eyes, ill-fitting clothing, and uncombed hair. The hours and craft services were a killer for everyone, and they had the added pressure of bringing the show in on budget and taking the calls of the cable execs.

I had no desire to do or learn Ellen's job, and no ambition to become an EP, so there was little friction between us. I had a decent relationship with both of them, though I was “just” a writer/producer and was kept out of the loop on major decisions. As for Bruce, he was respectful to the writing team but tended to rewrite our scripts in a rather mercenary fashion. I was good with that, for the most part; I knew that there had to be one voice for the show and uniformity from episode to episode. But my ego was such that I felt he cut some of my best stuff at random. On the other hand, he sometimes made my writing better, and unlike other showrunners, who put their name on scripts they reworked, he always gave me sole credit. After a while I learned to beat the game and began to write in Bruce's voice rather than my own. It was another thing I'd given up. I was a long way from my youth, when I'd wandered the stacks of the county libraries and dreamed of someday being a published novelist. I
had
become a writer, in a manner of speaking. But mainly I was a well-paid hack.

I said hello to Bruce and updated him on our progress. “We're just about to shoot.”

“You have a laptop?” he said.

“There's one in my trailer.”

“I'm gonna need you to do a little rewrite on scene forty-two.”

“Hold up.” I fished my blue script (the blues) out of my book bag and turned the pages to the scene. It was a restaurant scene (INT. CAFÉ, UPTOWN—DAY) where Tanner and Hart discuss a case in dialogue overripe with lame double entendres. Brad Slaughter was a pro and would read the lines. Meaghan O'Toole would be the problem.

“Meaghan called me first thing this morning,” said Bruce. “She thinks the scene makes her out to be a slut rather than a professional.”

“What's her beef, exactly?” I asked, disingenuously.

“I'm guessing it's the part about the in-box.”

I pretended to study the lines, but I already knew the trouble spot. In the scene, Mackenzie tells Tanner that she needs the arrest report A-SAP so she can get started on the prosecution of the case.

“Oh,” I said. “
That.
How about if I just have her say, ‘Shove it in my box'?”

“Asshole. And what's that bit about what he's gonna have for lunch?”

“
What?
All he says is, ‘I'm partial to fish.'”

“And then the action says,
She smiles demurely.
”

“I'll change it, boss.”

“Get it done. We're publishing pinks today, and the scene's up this afternoon.”

“Right.”

“Crazy fucker.” Bruce smirked a little and went off to craft services for a Slim Jim and some peanut butter crackers.

We were ready to shoot. The second second called “last looks,” and the hair and makeup crew went in to touch up the actors. Lomax and Lillie were in the first row of chairs, right in front of the monitors. I was in the second row, behind them. The second AC slated the scene on camera by slapping the sticks.

“Camera.”

“Speed.”

“Action!”

We rolled. I watched the first take to make sure Lomax was getting what we needed. Among the actors, there was one dreaded ham.

“Anything, Victor?” said Lillie, after Lomax had cut it.

“Tell Board Member One to say his lines as I wrote them,” I said, referring to a day player who was being far too creative.

“I'll do that,” she said, and went in to give him the note.

“He's playing it too defensive, right?” said Lomax, turning to me.

“Well, he did kill the teller,” I said. “But we don't want him to telegraph it. It's a reveal for later on.”

“He's making a meal out of it.”

“Yeah, guy thinks he's Larry fucking Olivier.”

“I'll tell him to bring it down,” said Lomax.

When Lillie returned to the Village, I told her I was going to my trailer for a little while. She said she'd call me if anything came up.

I saw Annette out on the street, showing Ellen something she had drawn in a sketchbook. Ellen was nodding her head in encouragement while giving Annette some suggestions. Ellen's cell rang and she walked down the block to take the call. I approached Annette, who was wearing brown velvet pants tucked into dark brown, buckled boots, and a tan newsboy cap with tiny mirrors across the bill.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hey. What are you up to?”

“Just showing Ellen how I plan to dress the nightclub in one-thirteen.” She opened the spiral book and showed me some sketches. “What do you think of these?”

“They're beautiful,” I said, looking at her breasts, standing up firm in her scoop-necked shirt.

“Stop it,” she said. She had instantly blushed.

I lowered my voice. Crew was walking by us, standing about.

“I can't help it,” I said.

“People are looking at us.”

“No, they're not. Remember last night?”

“I'm not an amnesiac.”

“It was good, wasn't it?”

“Yes.”

“I'm hard as a two-by-four right now.”

“Victor.”

“And thick as a can of Coke.”

“Vic.”

“Okay, I'll stop. But damn, girl, you were hot.”

“
We
were.”

“Will I see you later?”

“I'll be around. Where you off to?”

“I've got to rewrite a scene for Number Two.” We were supposed to call Meaghan O'Toole “Number One,” since she was the lead actress in our show. But we often called her Number Two. As in, doo-doo.

“Good luck.”

“Check you later, beautiful.”

I watched her walk toward her car.

My trailer was around the corner. I went there and rewrote the scene.

The company moved for the next two scenes to a café uptown. The first featured Meaghan O'Toole and a day player, cast as a confidential informant who was also a possible suspect in a rape/murder case, the B-line of this episode. The second featured O'Toole and Brad Slaughter, meeting that same night to discuss the information conveyed in the previous scene, as well as to go back and forth with the aforementioned double entendres, now softened to accommodate the actress. It was improbable that both scenes would occur in the same café, but for the purposes of logistics and scheduling, I had written them there.

Meaghan arrived on set, regally stepping out of her van, trailed by the hair and makeup crew and their Zucas, storage containers on rollers that they also sat on. The makeup department head, Donna Yost, had phoned me on my cell and given me an update on Meaghan's mood. The hair and makeup trailer was a good source of information for the temperature of the actors on any given day. That morning, Meaghan had been complaining about her trailer, how it was smaller than the producers' trailers and smelled of “sewerage,” so I knew her knickers would be up in a twist.