Curse the Writer
From my upcoming published collection, COMMON SENSE & Other Tales of Disillusionment
Up in the hills, behind single-lane roads that were winding and steep and quiet, the film director inhabited a home that was narrow and old and was, for the large sum it was worth, relatively tiny. On clear days, it took in full the sweeping valley below and city beyond. Most days, though, the sun could not reach in, and a broken dark lingered in the cramped rooms, the thin halls, and it crowded especially in the director’s office.
The office above all else.
In the kitchen, the director paced restlessly one evening with a tightly rolled film script clutched in his hand. Colored Post-it notes protruded from its curled and dog-eared pages. The script’s title, partially concealed by his hand, read The King in Yellow.
Over the phone, the director confirmed he’d gotten the script sent last week and confessed he’d read it in one sitting and then revisited it three more times over the weekend.
He said it’s dark, it’s brooding, it’s a slow burn, that’s for goddamn sure, but the dark and the brooding, he’d seen dark and brooding done before but not like this—and it was so devoid of cliches, he said. ‘The themes really, truly, honestly resonate with me, way deep in my bones. I’m not kidding. They speak to me in ways nothing else ever has.’
A script like this, he said, not everyone gets a chance script like this.
‘Studio wants to meet Friday,’ his agent said from the other end. ‘I heard from one of the assistants there’s a real chance they’re seriously considering you for this, really giving you a hard look.’
‘Who else are they looking at?’
‘I only heard a few names.’
‘Like who?’
‘Don’t make me say.’
‘Are they looking at Joe for it?’ the director said.
‘You always bring up Joe. Then you regret bringing up Joe.’
‘They’re looking at Joe?’
‘They’re always looking at Joe; everyone looks at Joe first.’
‘Joe would mangle a script like this.’
‘Go in Friday, chat with the studio folks. Bring your usual stuff, the tropes and well-worn plots, this script doesn’t have any of those, so it needs some. Those studio folks adore predictable plot lines; they love knowing what’s coming in the story. You’re good at that in your directing, predictability, and if there’s a way to weave in flashbacks, you should do that; you’re really good at that, too, and I noticed there weren’t any montages. Did you notice that? In the script? There’s no montages.’
‘I’d do this one different,’ the director said.
‘Different?’
‘There’s so much to work with in here, so much art and character work, good character work, so much to explore.’
‘No one is asking you to do it different.’
‘Did they bring in Joe yet?’
‘Yesterday,’ his agent said.
‘Christ.’
‘No one is saying for you to do it different,’ his agent said.
The director wasn’t listening.
‘When you go in Friday, keep to stuff like you’ve done, okay? That’s why they’re bringing you in, they love what you’ve done, okay?’
The director began work in his office that evening, well into dusk.
After the sun had fallen below the rugged valley, he heard Dennis pull up.
He heard him come in the front.
The director waited, but Dennis did not come say hello and did not come give him a kiss or come discuss his day.
Discussion, lately, of any sort, led to arguments, bad ones, ones that went for hours, and so conversation had dwindled into stony, stained exchanges that were infrequent, until it was clear the relationship had ended, but neither could admit it.
The director heard him in the kitchen.
Moving around.
A house between them.
The director returned to the script, seated at his desk, and read of The King in Yellow, immersing himself once more in the unfolding scenes and characters and the sweeping, nightmarish landscapes described in the pages, the pivotal, artistic choices that needed to be made, reading and deciding what he wanted to inject from himself into the material, what ugly and terrifying reflection.
Near midnight, Dennis looked in and said he was sleeping on the couch tonight.
The director said no, take the bed.
‘That’s where you’re sleeping.’
‘Fine. Then don’t,’ the director said.
‘Stop putting my balcony furniture in the garage.’
‘I never liked it.’
Dennis said nothing to this, just looked at the director.
‘I like to walk out there, and think out there,’ the director said. ‘It takes up all the space out there.’
Dennis was quiet in the office doorway. ‘Are you working?’
‘Yes.’
More quiet.
‘Would you like to see?’ the director said.
‘No,’ Dennis said.
After a moment. ‘Are you sleeping in the bed?’ Dennis said.
The director continued work but did not answer.
‘I’m sleeping on the couch,’ Dennis said.
Dennis left the doorway.
From the hallway, the director heard, ‘And stop putting the balcony furniture in the garage!’
Friday morning the director drove out of the hills, chasing cold and rising sun down into the city that lay like a waking beast and found his way into a waiting room with his storyboards and his ideas. He declined bottled water from the young woman at reception, who sat surrounded by logos and branding, then he changed his mind and asked for bottled water, please.
He was soon brought down long halls filled with office noise and taken into a conference room with a long, dark table and uniform chairs. One wall was glass and looked into the office, the other held successful film posters, the rest was window to blue sky and warmth that would not enter. It was cold, very cold in this room.
The director waited alone.
Muffled office noises filled the quiet.
Then a procession of men in suits filed along the glass wall and, one by one, entered and seated themselves, small-talking among each other and giving the director none of their attention until the man seated at the table’s head formally began the meeting.
Then there was quiet.
The man at the head of the conference table thanked the director, so much, for coming, as did his entourage, and then asked what’s he got, inviting the director to share his take on the script right at the start.
The director said, all right then, and led the room clumsily through his storyboard images, weaving the material’s surrealism and horror and absurdity, and the madness of it all, behind it all, the absolute sheer madness of a cosmic horror script like this, and he wanted to put it through a lens of visionary imagination, subverting, he said, usual cinematic narrative for dreamlike visuals that were anything but quiet and mundane. And the ending, he gave precisely how he saw it all concluding, and it was here his passion was shown to the suits watching him, and he delivered to them every detail, every story thread brought to a chilling and upsetting close, and it was here he said that it would be up to the audience to interpret, that they weren’t going to tell them the ending, you know, shove the ending in their face and digest it for them. He said he would let the audience do some of the work and interpret the ending how they did with the evidence he’d leave for them in the film, in the narrative.
When he finished, the room was silent.
The man at the head of the table was nodding, perhaps processing. The man, a very important man, adjusted how he was sitting and said you know what movie he loved of the director’s, he said he absolutely loved Safe and Sound. ‘Talk about eerie events and chilling discoveries, right? You had teens forming unlikely alliances but keeping those meet-cute moments, and the hero’s journey, mentors and plucky sidekicks, and a-and a-and, what’s it, a crisis, midpoint, heroes and allies at their lowest, and you still kept the humor and the villain, I don’t remember his name, um, the guy with the mind control, and who would have seen when you brought him back for Safe and Sound 4, Beyond the Ordinary, I mean, what a treat. What. A. Treat. I really loved those films.’
The director smiled but did not offer thanks.
‘Those films were so comfortable, weren’t they?’ the man said to the suits on either side of him. ‘Weren’t they light, undemanding? Didn’t they get us out of our heads for some camp, some scares, some fun?’
The suits on either side of him agreed, yes, those films did those things.
The man said, ‘And they each have a hidden gem, something for fans to cling to, something to brand, and it’s kind of a charm, isn’t it? It’s a charm. Really.’
He asked the suits on either side, it’s a charm isn’t it?
They said yes.
‘Yes, yes exactly,’ he said.
Then he thanked the director for coming and said they’ll be in touch.
He and the suits waited patiently and silently while the director collected his storyboards and items and waddled from the room, and they watched him through the glass wall, he tried not to look back, while he exited the office and had his parking validated.
Weeks later, the director’s agent phoned and said they wanted him, they sent an offer, he was sending it over now. He told the director it wasn’t bad; he’d seen better, but lately, he’d seen worse too.
A lot worse, he said.
‘I hadn’t heard anything. I’ve been waiting.’
‘Yeah, the offer just came through.’
‘I didn’t think they’d want me. I’ve been thinking that for weeks. This whole time.’
‘Well, I guess there was a scheduling thing, they were waiting. I don’t know, but the offer came and it’s on the way. I think it’s real good.’
‘Christ. I mean it, Christ. This is, I mean, I was heartbroken about it the other day, I swear it. This whole time I’m thinking, Christ. What were they waiting on?’
‘Ah, come on,’ his agent said from the other end.
‘What?’
‘Don’t make me say.’
‘What were they waiting on?’
‘Come on, we got an offer,’ his agent said.
‘Christ!’ the director said.
‘You always regret asking.’
‘They were waiting on Joe?’
‘Everyone’s always waiting on Joe.’
‘Well. Do they want me or they want Joe?’
‘Everyone wants Joe. Okay? Everyone. They waited to see if he’s available, but he’s not. I wish you would stop asking about Joe and putting yourself down.’
‘I mean I was heartbroken the other day, thinking I didn’t get this,’ the director said.
‘We got an offer,’ his agent said.
‘So. I’m their second choice?’
‘You don’t want it?’
‘No, of course I want it! But Christ, they were waiting on Joe?’
‘Okay, I’m telling them you want it.’
‘Of course, I do.’
‘Okay, because them waiting on Joe has put production behind a bit, you’ll see in the offer, but I still think it’s good. I think it’s real good.’
The director said nothing.
Then he said, ‘Joe would have mangled this script.’
The following week, the director was down at the studio, in a small building on the lot with offices and beat-up furniture and more framed film posters.
He was meeting the film’s executive producer.
A gentleman only just entering his winter years was waiting for the director before he went in. He wore a faded, beat-up ball cap with the movie title Safe and Sound written in bold. It identified him as crew, specifically the director of photography. It noted the date of shooting, some eleven years before.
The man’s movements and eyes yet had youth in them.
They shook hands like teammates.
‘What did you think of the script?’ the director asked.
The gentleman, whose name was Lenny, said he read it, loved it, and said he was thinking, and he asked the director to hear him out, they should do this one completely different.
‘That’s what I said! That’s exactly what I said.’
‘This feels like one you don’t ever get again.’
‘I said that too, I said this one’s, like, it’s like a Shining.’
‘It’s like a Shining, yeah,’ Lenny said. ‘It’s like a Kubrick, exactly!’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m already thinking camera angles, framing, I got my camera guys already learning some really interesting techniques for act three.’
‘Were you thinking cranes and wide angles?’
‘I was. I was thinking sweeping, you know, but vast, wide angles.’
‘Lots of them, right?’ the director said.
‘I was thinking lots, make the audience feel lost.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Remember what we did after Safe and Sound, with, what was it?’
‘The Visitor?’
‘No,’ Lenny said, ‘It was—?’
‘You’re thinking when we did Possessed Toaster?’
‘No,’ Lenny said. He plucked the cap off his head to think better.
‘Eerie Echoes?’ the director suggested.
‘Eerie Echoes, the jump scares characters laugh off and the foggy cemetery, characters splitting from groups to search, I was thinking we don’t do anything like that here.’
‘No, no, nothing like Eerie Echoes.’
‘There’s something real in this one,’ Lenny said.
‘That’s—that’s where I’m going with this, you know, this one is, it’s all in the craft of it; it’s Cosmic Horror but it’s, it’s an artist’s craft.’
‘Whatever you’re seeing in your head and planning, I’ll make it happen for the camera.’
‘You always do,’ the director said.
The director shook Lenny’s hand again, and the men went in with grins and waited in the EP’s waiting room. The secretary apologized, but the EP was running a bit behind, and he would be on site any minute. She offered free water. Both men accepted. The director asked, more than once, logistical questions for images he saw and would like to see, and Lenny answered each with flexibility and positive tone.
The EP entered thirty minutes late and went right into his office.
A few minutes later, Lenny and the director were allowed back.
The EP was on the phone at his desk when they entered; he raised a finger and silenced greetings and welcomed them to sit.
Lenny and the director waited. The other end of the EP’s phone call did all the talking and him all the listening, and he nodded and, now and again, said yep, yes, uh-huh, yep, yes, okay, yep, yes, yep, okay.
Then he hung up.
He stood and came around his desk and the men stood and he shook the men’s hands and said it was marvelous to meet the director and his director of photography.
They sat once more and let greetings settle.
‘Can I just say how personally thrilled I am we got you on board?’
The director tried a smile in thanks; it was loose and weak, but the EP wasn’t interested in an answer. He was pulling together budget sheets for the director to look over. He licked the tip of his finger when papers refused to separate.
The EP said, ‘Thanks again for sending over all that material last week. Love seeing the vision stuff; it was all great. Oh! Hah! You sent it to staff finance teams, not the project finance teams, hah! It’s fine, it’s no big deal. Stuff gets sent wrong all the time; you’re not the first. We got it where it needed to go, just a little corporate workflow stuff, so, just make sure you send creative to the correct email. Corporate ins and outs, you know? You artists are always a trip.’
The EP stapled a packet for the director and a packet for himself.
‘So, what you’re looking at, first page, that’s the shooting schedule.’
The director and Lenny shared the packet.
‘Now I know that’s tight—’
‘It’s real tight,’ the director said.
‘The studio still thinks it’s realistic,’ the EP said.
‘This leaves no time to explore creative nuances, depth—does this look realistic?’ the director said to Lenny.
‘Looks unrealistic,’ Lenny said.
‘This is—this is a lot of one-takes? Right? This looks like, almost, all one-takes?’
‘Looks like we’re doing one take for each scene with this.’
‘We have to rework this,’ the director said.
‘Yeah, no, the studio looked at it a bunch a ways, and this is where they landed, so.’
‘Well, I’ll call them.’
‘Yeah,’ the EP said. ‘Yeah. I’m the in-between on this one, so don’t call the studio. You tell me, and I’ll reach out. They are just so busy, and they need someone to just, you know, and that goes for anything with the studio guys, really, if it’s budget or set or spats, you need anything, you tell me and I’ll talk to them, so, don’t reach out to them, reach out to me.’
‘Oh. Well. You talk to them then. Because. This schedule, there’s no room to explore the material here,’ the director said. ‘Because this, we were saying, Lenny and I, this is, like, a Shining, you know Kubrick? This script could be, I’m thinking, it could even be bigger than a Kubrick, don’t you, Lenny?’
‘I do, yeah, we said outside. It’s like a Shining. It’s like a Kubrick.’
The EP heard them and nodded.
‘I’ll make a note to call and see; it’s pretty set in stone but, yeah, so, and then if you flip, you’ve got all your location options there, super cost-effective, you see the photos there?’ the EP said. ‘Locations look just fantastic, right?’
‘These—I sent over some locations I thought fit the script well, and I’m not—’
The director flipped ahead in the packet, then flipped back. ‘I don’t see any I sent over?’
Lenny borrowed the packet from the director and flipped too, but flipped back after a brief search.
‘The locations I sent had great bones for the overall creative vision, for thematic impact. These are, who picked these? These are not interesting, are they interesting to you?’ the director asked Lenny.
‘They don’t look interesting to me,’ Lenny said.
‘Who picked these?’
The EP said the studio had relationships with each location there, and that meant discounts, that meant budget-friendly, and he said if they flipped a few pages, they’d see the full line details.
The director flipped and saw a total budget number that was significantly smaller than he’d hoped and said, ‘That’s the budget?’
The EP confirmed.
Lenny said, ‘Wait. That’s the budget?’
The EP confirmed, yes it was, again.
‘Yeah, this has to be reworked, right?’ the director asked Lenny.
‘There’s zero wiggle room in that number,’ Lenny said.
‘You can’t make a Shining like this,’ the director said.
‘No, that’s gotta be reworked,’ Lenny said.
‘You’ll talk to the studio,’ the director said to the EP.
‘Finance spent a long time coming to that number, meetings and meetings and, but, so, I’ll make a note to call but, oh!’
He then said he’d waited to tell the director this in person, before they went into casting later in the week. He heard, and he said this hasn’t been confirmed, but it sounds like a certain A-lister is interested in the lead.
‘Who?’ the director said.
The EP gave the A-list actor’s name and said he was red hot right now; he had some big things out, and the guy was just on fire!
‘No, no, no,’ the director said. ‘The guy’s wooden, he overacts, you’ve seen?’
‘Yeah, I’ve seen,’ Lenny said. ‘I’ve definitely seen. He’s an overactor.’
‘Same with his on-screen chemistry, it’s overbearing, don’t you think it’s overbearing?’ the director asked Lenny.
‘I think it’s a little overbearing.’
‘He’s very interested, I heard. He loved the script, loved the part.’
‘Well. Yeah. It’s a good script,’ the director said.
‘Great script,’ Lenny said.
‘But the guy has no range; he’s the same in everything,’ the director said. ‘You’ve seen him in one thing, no need to see his other films, he’s the same.’
‘Can’t tell his performances apart,’ Lenny added.
‘This script needs better,’ the director said.
‘Yeah. Yeah. So. I hear you, I do, I’m acknowledging I hear you on all of that,’ the EP said. ‘Part of my job is making sure you’re heard, okay? So, consider yourself heard, okay?’
‘Well. Yeah. Okay,’ the director said.
The EP continued, ‘Buuuut the studio invited him for a read Thursday during casting. No decisions, no commitments either way, just a quick, informal, easy, uninvolved audition to make his people happy and quiet and to make the studio happy and quiet so we can say we saw him. That’s it. He’ll be in and out. You don’t like him after, not an issue. End of the day, it’s one hundred percent your choice. Okay? Sound good?’
‘And you’ll talk to the studio about the other stuff, reworking budget and location?’
‘Um. Oh. Yes. Sure. Yep. Got a note to talk to them right here.’
‘Anything else?’ the director asked Lenny.
‘Nothing else.’
‘Everything sounds good?’ the EP said.
The director nodded.
‘Can you verbally say, though? That all sounds good? I need verbal agreement,’ the EP said.
The director verbally agreed.
On Thursday, the director was in a mostly empty room with a casting assistant, the EP, and two representatives from studio management who were in the corner, away to themselves, and who intrusively chatted in the worst moments. They all sat on stiff chairs. For most of the morning and into the afternoon, actors of all size and caliber were brought in and allowed five minutes to introduce themselves, inform what role they were reading, and perform. Some needed warmup, some needed a moment to step into character, some came in costumes, and, when their five minutes were up, they were thanked and shown out.
More than once, the casting assistant mixed up paperwork that had been collected in order, causing mismatches between the actor auditioning and the documents before the team, which caused delays for accuracy, and more than once the casting assistant was sent into the waiting area to ask the actors waiting to be quiet.
After lunch, auditions resumed, and a skinny fellow with ear-length hair, moppy and frizzy, but with eyes deep and full, came into the room. He gave his name in a quirky manner. He was an unknown; he had never had his name in credits before, but when he was told to begin, from him came a drama with absolute magnetism. He read a monologue from near the end of the script, when the story’s cosmic horror was closing on madness, and the drama he delivered was liquid, a lightning, a dance. His gestures were grace and they were power and they were insanity; in his face was pain and delight and madness, and in this plain and boring room, he created atmosphere with his eyes and body, and when he was gone from the room, the director knew he had seen something rare, and he said as much to the others. That, he said, now that was our lead!
Neither the casting assistant, nor the EP, nor the studio reps disagreed, but nor did they agree.
They were quiet.
More auditions proceeded.
Only a few were memorable.
Near the end of the day, which had been taxing and overwhelming, and after all actors had been seen, a woman in a flowy pant suit came in the room with a phone to her ear, her hair tightly pulled back, and told the EP that she was the personal assistant to the A-list actor, and that he was en route and would arrive in ten minutes.
Not a moment later, a stylist, a make-up artist, two bodyguards, and a second personal assistant penetrated the quiet audition room, bringing noise and individual phone conversations and questions—can we set up here or there, let’s move this over here and move that there and, oops, sorry we knocked that over, oh, it’s broken, sorry about that.
The EP allowed their chaos to rob peace and to consume and overtake authority of the room.
When it settled, the room returned to quiet as assistants and stylists and guards stood still and were on their phones, ignoring the world around them, waiting.
Thirty minutes passed.
The woman in the pant suit and sunglasses apologized, he’ll be here any moment, she said.
Thirty more minutes passed.
Then thirty more.
And then there was noise in the hall outside the audition room and it grew in volume, and then he entered.
The A-list celebrity.
His entourage in the hall passed him to the entourage waiting in the room, and he was swarmed by his assistants and stylists and guards, and they touched him and perked him and made micro-touch-ups to his face and hair and clothing, all while he stood smiling with teeth as white and perfect as fresh snow.
Small talk exchanged between the EP and the A-list celebrity.
The studio reps, who’d been in the corner, scooted closer and leeched on the man’s presence, inserting themselves into the small talk, greedy for just a second of his attention.
A quick introduction to the director was given but no more, and it seemed the director was shoved into the background of the A-lister’s audition, which was dull and given with creative choices the A-lister made, which were far from the vision the director held of the material.
The room applauded when the A-lister finished.
The director did not.
Glowing compliments and praise spewed forth, and the A-lister gave back humility, which was flat and not at all discouraging of more praise and more compliments.
Then the A-lister and his circus departed, and the EP and studio reps descended into exclusive conversation, which the director was not invited to join.
Three days of auditions continued.
None arrested the director as the skinny fellow’s performance had.
In a final casting meeting, the director, role by role, gave his selections to the EP and casting assistant.
One by one the cast was built.
When all that was left was who the director would like in the lead role, the EP said an offer already went out; he thought the director knew.
‘An offer to who?’
‘The A-lister,’ the EP said, quiet and distant.
‘No, no, we were just supposed to see him, so we can say we saw him. What happened to that?’
The EP said, ‘The studio guys were so impressed when the A-lister rolled in and gave his audition, they sent an offer. He accepted this morning. Congrats! You have your lead!’
‘They offered him?’
‘And he accepted. This morning.’
‘Christ.’
‘Congrats! You have an A-list lead.’
‘The skinny guy was way better. Didn’t you think so? I mean, for a script like this?’
‘He was okay,’ the EP said. ‘I’ve seen better.’
‘Christ,’ the director said.
‘This guy brings star power, he brings audiences, wider releases, we could even be talking franchise if this goes the way we’re all thinking,’ the EP said. ‘Everyone loves a good franchise.’
‘Christ …’
Preproduction went for three weeks, and each day the director came down from the hills to the studio lot in the morning and went back up well after the sun had died at night.
In a soundstage, the oldest on the lot, he and Lenny sat with set designers and talked them through what the director saw from the material, what he hoped they could capture and create of the material’s physical world and how each angle, each shot was intended. The director wanted purposeful shadows, esoteric geometry; he wanted to give the audience a feeling of vastness but also confinement. He wanted reality to blur, he wanted incomprehensible, he wanted an abyss audiences had never seen!
He was meticulous in reviewing sketches of each set piece, and many times they were not approved and needed revision until he was satisfied.
Each prop he inspected with the prop master following, collecting his feedback, which was harsh and picky and defended with reasoning of craft, of vision.
Every actor was made to parade through the soundstage in costume for the director and Lenny and costume designer, and the director said the cloaks for Eldritch Occultists should not be red, they should be black and tattered, not clean and pressed, and he didn’t want to see any of their faces. He wanted masks, ornate yellow masks, and he wanted more decadence, and he asked for more dread!
‘Bring out The King in Yellow,’ the director said to the costumer. He wanted to see the entity, The King. The actor and costume were sent for and brought out.
The actor beneath the costume was not visible; there were no traces of their humanity or identity.
The figure stood silently, elegant and horrific and draped in yellow, and was studied closely by the director and Lenny.
The director, after a time, said yes, yes, I see abstract, I see forbidden knowledge, I see despair, I see profound, I see destructive, but I also see mystery, misery, I see overwhelming presence, I see something I don’t understand but I see that I want to, I see, no, I feel powerlessness, helplessness, I feel desolation, I feel no control over my life, I feel my sanity shattered, I feel unfathomable awe … I feel insignificant!
The director was quiet for a long time, circling the actor in costume and then stopping and then circling more.
He held tears.
Lenny and the costumer refrained from disrupting the director’s quiet, introspective study.
That night, the director ate leftover dinner in the living room, looking out and down into the void, the black canyon below, and the lights of the city dancing beyond.
Dennis was reading in the kitchen, wrapped in a wool blanket and with tea. He was half-hidden from the director by the wall.
‘Please be quiet in there,’ the director heard from the kitchen. ‘I’m reading.’
‘I know you’re reading.’
They were quiet, the director eating and Dennis reading.
‘I said please be quiet.’
‘I’m quiet,’ the director said. ‘I’m eating.’
‘I hear you.’
Neither spoke for some time.
‘I hear you,’ Dennis said.
The director continued to eat.
‘I said I hear you,’ Dennis said from the kitchen.
The director stared deeper into the canyon, into the void.
‘I’m seeing a house tomorrow,’ he heard Dennis say.
‘You said you weren’t moving out.’
‘I’m not living on our couch,’ Dennis said from the kitchen.
‘Sleep in the bed.’
‘That’s where you’re sleeping.’
The director went quiet and could not finish his food.
He said, sometime later, into the kitchen, ‘We could share the bed.’
The director heard the book placed on the table.
‘Don’t do that,’ he heard Dennis say.
‘You said you were staying, you weren’t moving out.’
‘Goddamn you,’ he heard Dennis say.
The director sat in the quiet with his plate in his lap, and the black was around him, it was in the home, in the corners, and it was everywhere outside.
Black.
An empty room around the world.
Dennis spoke from the kitchen. ‘When we said this wasn’t working, when we did that whole thing weeks and weeks ago, and you blew up at me and I blew up at you and I was crying and-and you were crying, and when we were quiet, I told you I’m looking at places.’
‘We didn’t say that,’ the director said.
‘What?’
‘We didn’t say that. We didn’t both say this wasn’t working. We both did not. I did not.’
‘We did, we both—’
The director heard Dennis stand and come into the living room, into the dark.
He was a shadow.
‘We both sat where you’re sitting and cried our eyes out and we said, both of us, this wasn’t working.’
‘You didn’t say you were looking at places,’ the director said.
‘Well, I’m looking at houses tomorrow.’
‘A house.’
‘What?’
‘You said you were seeing a house tomorrow.’
‘Goddamn you, you know that, just goddamn you.’
Dennis collected his book from the kitchen and left upstairs and came back with pillows and a blanket and said get out of the living room, he was making his bed, get out.
The director slept alone, upstairs in the bed, in the dark.
Filming began on the soundstage a few days later. Before cameras rolled, the director shared—with cast and crew huddled round and with Lenny at his side and with a set surrounding them that was both beautiful and terrifying—what he hoped this film, this work of art, could be, what it could show people, what it could disrupt for them in their everyday lives, and what it could cause by ways of new thinking, what he hoped, he said, this piece of art could say. Because, he said, that’s what this is, it’s art, it’s craft, it’s human experience, and it is not shallow, he told those gathered around, it’s not shallow, it’s not content, it’s not mediocre.
Here, he said, they have a unique opportunity to say something new, and goddamn if they weren’t going to say it!
Cast and crew separated with this energy and prepped for the first scene.
The EP came to the director where he sat in his tall chair, with Lenny and the cameraman and film monitors deep in talks of angles and movements, and the EP asked right in their conversation what the director thought if they put a Pizza Hut pizza in the first scene. Maybe, he said, opening on the pizza and the melted cheese and roasted veggies and, maybe, a sign on the back wall with the Pizza Hut logo with some sort of coupon deal advertised.
Perhaps, the EP said, the next scene could take place in a Pizza Hut?
‘Studio was wondering what would you think of that?’ he said.
The director sat with the question and looked at the EP and all his outward signs of sincerity.
Sincerity for Pizza Hut placement.
‘Is it my choice?’ the director said.
‘Of course, yeah, your choice,’ the EP confirmed.
‘You’re not just saying it’s my choice and then choosing?’
‘No, no, nothing like that here,’ the EP confirmed.
‘Then absolutely not.’
The director and Lenny and cameraman returned to talks of how to capture the first scene’s unsettling closeups but were interrupted.
‘Or. What if the Pizza Hut delivery guy knocks, brings it in, camera gets a nice shot of the pizza box, and it opens to golden crust and pepperoni, and one of the actors can lift a slice, all that stretching delicious cheese, and you can still have all your dialogue and keep all your marks?’
‘You’re not shoving ads in my film,’ the director said.
He entertained no more of this talk.
The EP stayed where he was standing, removed of all attention.
‘Maybe we can think on it, you know, think of some ways we can work in Pizza Hut, because the studio guys were brainstorming cross-promotion ideas with cosmic horror and Pizza Hut, and they were super excited about it, and Pizza Hut loved it when we pitched the idea, you know, Summon the Eldritch Flavor, Tentacle Breadsticks, and, I’ll just say, that’s cash back in the budget. So. Maybe we just think on it.’
The director said he wasn’t thinking on it, it was his choice and don’t bring it up, and continued his talks with no more interest in the EP.
Not five minutes later, the A-lister’s assistant came before cast and crew and stood on the set and did not ask, but told them, to please applaud when the A-lister comes out, when he finishes a scene, and when he exits set. And she said not lazy applause but good, hearty applause and—oh, she said, here he comes.
She moved off set and traded out attention on herself for attention on the A-lister, who entered in costume and who received the room’s lazy, not hearty, applause and who basked in it with the same glowing showmanship and lack of humility as if he’d been given a standing ovation.
The director pulled the actors together and rehearsed the scene several times over, and the A-lister, who was flat in delivery and tone, gave fellow actors very little to react to, which produced clunkiness, but when it was time to film, they were already running behind, he said he was ready, no worries.
‘You’re sure?’ the director said. His concern was genuine and, at this point, not yet irritated.
The A-lister confirmed he was ready.
Cast and crew found their places, cameras rolled.
The director called for quiet.
Then he said action!
The first take went for less than a minute before the A-lister delivered to the camera silence, then apologized. He had the mindset, he said, he was right there, in a good head space, then lost it.
The director called cut!
The A-lister said he’ll get it this next one.
The director called out for quiet again and made sure the A-lister was ready before he called action!
During this second take, the A-lister made his marks on time and gave his dialogue from memory, but his tone was a mismatch for the content of the scene; it wasn’t genuine and stood out, ugly.
Cut!
While crew started resetting, the director leaned to Lenny and said, ‘Didn’t I say he was flat? Didn’t I say that? Christ, I wish I had the skinny fellow.’
The director stared at the actors on the monitors, shaking his head, then came out from behind the camera onto the set and was brusque with the A-lister from the outset, not too brusque, but he sternly reset the A-lister’s headspace, forcing him to find the despair the character suffers in this scene, the utter fucking despair over the truth he discovers—everything we do is meaningless, that none of this has any meaning other than the meaning we assign to it, that life has no outward meaning, only inward.
‘Are we good on that?’ the director said when he finished.
‘But I don’t like that headspace. I don’t think it’s good for me.’
‘I said, are we good on that?’
The A-lister said he got it.
Behind the camera once more, the director said quiet!
Action!
The director, Lenny, and the EP watched the scene unfold from the monitor. The actors performed, and it pleased the director, what he saw, until a light rig above the set came loose and swinging into set pieces.
Cut!
After fifty minutes of investigating, the crew determined the rig failed due to age and wear. One of the crew said that rig must be thirty, maybe forty years old.
‘Why aren’t we using new?’
‘Wasn’t in budget.’
‘Christ,’ the director said.
He told the crew to reset, and an hour later they were ready to film again.
The director shouted for quiet. He didn’t ask. He shouted.
Action!
The director, Lenny, and the EP watched, again, the scene unfold in the monitor.
Lenny leaned over and whispered a suggestion to the director, respectful of his volume against the performance before them. He proposed playing with framing, he knew they had set it up how it was, but if they played with composition, it could enhance the feel the director was going for in the shot.
It could help the vision, his suggestion.
The director said no, he didn’t like that. He liked it how it was at the moment; this was exactly how he saw it. So, no. Don’t do that.
Lenny made no more suggestions.
The scene continued.
‘Where’s the jump scares?’ the EP said. He was not mindful of his volume.
‘We’re not doing jump scares,’ the director said.
‘No jump scares in a horror film?’
‘We’re not doing them.’
‘Nothing coming out of a closet?’
‘I said no.’
‘But how else are people going to be scared?’
‘No jump scares,’ the director said.
‘They create tension, that’s what audiences love, our marketing department will confirm that.’
‘Not in this film,’ the director said.
‘One jump scare, for flavor,’ the EP said.
‘Flavor? We’re not making dinner here. Are we making dinner here, Lenny?’
Lenny said nothing.
The EP said, ‘I see.’
The three returned to watching the scene through the monitor.
‘What does that mean? You see?’ the director said.
‘I have to tell the studio you’re giving them a horror film without jump scares is all.’
‘Want me to tell them to their face?’ the director said.
The EP said no more.
The A-lister broke the scene and called attention, in front of all cast and crew, to the themes the director was hoping for in the scene, what his dialogue was to reinforce, and said he didn’t think it was working, and gave his own interpretation of the scene, which his assistant reinforced from off set, saying she agreed, she thought that was a better interpretation.
The EP agreed with the A-lister and added the only thing missing was Pizza Hut.
After many moments of frustrated quiet, the director said, ‘Did we revisit the shooting schedule?’
A week of filming passed painfully and slowly. It was full of friction and delays and passive aggression.
The second week of filming began with the director arriving at the studio lot early, before the sun had risen.
At the security checkpoint, while the director waited to be allowed entry, a man flagged him down from the sidewalk.
He came over to the director’s vehicle, gesturing to roll down the window so he could talk.
The director did, with confusion.
The man said, ‘Oh my God, it’s you!’
The director agreed, it was him.
‘I heard you were working on something new, and I said to my friend, that director is working on something new, and he said no, no, that mediocre guy, no, he’s not working on something new,’ the man said.
‘He said mediocre?’
‘I went online and found a forum, they said you’re doing The King in Yellow!’
‘Oh, you’ll have to wait and see. Haha.’ The director faked his laughter.
‘I knew it! I can’t wait to watch it already, haha! I’m such a huge fan.’
‘Oh, thank you, haha.’ The director faked another laugh.
‘From your first film, in art school, I’m saying, all the way to Safe and Sound 7, Resurgence.’
‘Art school?’
‘You did a short film about a family on a farm, and they just wanted an escape, but they couldn’t help themselves, they couldn’t escape because they weren’t capable, they wanted it so bad, I’m saying, your directing showed how badly they wanted a new start, but your directing showed, some people just aren’t capable of change, and that affected me, I’m saying. Really really affected me. And. I’m such a huge fan, oh gosh I’m going to cry, I’m not like this, haha, I’m sorry, I’m crying, haha!’
The man, the huge fan, wept and laughed. It was unsettling.
‘You enjoy my work?’
‘So much!’
‘Do you want to take a picture with me?’
‘Oh my God!’
The huge fan laughed and wept and slid out his phone and snapped a picture with the director.
‘Want me to sign something of yours?’ the director said.
He was being waved onto the studio lot by security.
He ignored them.
‘I don’t have anything to sign,’ the huge fan said.
‘Well, you got a picture, so you can show people.’
Before the director drove inside the lot, he wanted to confirm the man’s friend had called him mediocre. He asked twice, but the man walked away and down the sidewalk, still weeping and laughing, without confirming.
The director then parked and walked onto a new set.
Reflected before him was a surreal dreamscape of endless, rolling black plains, where the horizon appeared to recede infinitely. Colossal, shifting monoliths stood, unsettling and disagreeable in their design, strange stars hung in the dark.
Illustrated in the distance, in the backdrop, barely visible, was a small, horrid city where black rivers met.
The director sat with the false illusion of the infinite, in the dark, and he breathed its wood odor, and slowly bodies arrived, sleepy and cold and shuffling, and then came in the lead actress.
She was a gentle woman, both in voice and how she moved, as if she were glass.
She was offered good mornings but returned few.
After a bit of morning rehearsal, the director heard her snap at a craft services gentleman, over something or another, and in between scenes, she refused hair and makeup with harsh words.
When filming resumed, she slapped the A-lister in the first take too hard and bruised his eye.
The director pulled her aside, and she unleashed horrible complaints against the studio’s legal team constantly sending her NDAs. She told the director it was goddamn constant! Every morning, she said, I get a new NDA! Sometimes at night too, she said. A knock at her door and an NDA waiting on the ground and the deliveryman gone from sight, she said.
‘Well, you can’t slap like that, and you can’t snap at the food guys like that,’ the director said.
‘It’s been so many NDA’s!’ the lead actress said.
‘Well. Talk to legal, but you can’t keep doing that on set.’
‘They don’t have phone numbers; you can’t reach them. Some of the NDAs mention earlier NDAs, and some mention upcoming NDAs. I can’t keep any of it straight. It’s driving me goddamn crazy! I don’t know what I can and can’t say, about anything. I’m not sure I should even be saying this, I’m serious!’
‘Can you keep going? We’re already behind.’
‘Yeah. I can keep going, but it’s compounding and driving me crazy, I’m serious.’
‘Well. Come on set. We’ll keep going. We’ll talk to legal,’ the director said.
Before they resumed filming, the A-lister’s assistant came to the director and asked he please do not approach the A-lister with feedback; all feedback was to come through her, and she would discuss with him.
The director received this like stone.
Cameras rolled, and filming began.
The scene opened, and the A-lister had begun with a strong performance but slowly declined in authenticity and, before the director called cut, was downright unbelievable in voice and tone.
The director gave feedback, which went unacknowledged, so the director gave it again, and when this went unacknowledged too, he went for the assistant and gave her the feedback in very clear detail, which she took to the A-lister.
They spoke at length while the set was in pause.
From the A-lister, she brought the director a reply. ‘He disagrees,’ she said. ‘He’s going to do it the way he’s doing it.’
‘He’s killing the scene, he’s killing it dead, right, Lenny?’
The director swirled and looked for Lenny, who hopped from behind camera to say, ‘Oh yeah, just murdering the scene.’
‘Goddamn murdering the scene,’ the director said into the assistant’s face.
The EP stepped in and talked the director away a few paces then told him he would handle this, it’s what he’s here for, so, he said go take a seat and let me. It’s good feedback, he assured the director, so just let me handle this, he said.
The EP took the A-lister aside.
A few moments later, the EP returned and said the A-lister’s going to do it his way, so.
‘Well,’ the director said.
Nothing more came from him for many long moments. Then he said, ‘Can we fire him?’
The EP took the director from earshot of cast and crew, into a dark corner of the set. Here, the dreamscape had been painted into a flurry of nightmarish swirls. It hung over the EP and director.
The EP approached what he said next with care and fragility but delivered it with honesty. He said, ‘You’re not the sole creative force here. You understand that, right?’
‘Well. I understand that,’ the director said, ‘but—’
‘Filmmaking isn’t about individual brilliance, you get that? Right?’ the EP said.
‘If I can just get everyone in sync, you’ll see what I’m doing. You can’t see it yet,’ the director said.
‘You get that you have a team; a cinematographer, designers, crew, I mean, you’ve got actors to do what they do; you understand you’re not all those things, right?’
‘I mean, I value their input but you can’t see yet, I have a vision for this—’
‘I’ve watched plenty of films fail because a director couldn’t take a step back, couldn’t keep himself from strangling and choking and stifling a film to death. I’ve seen so many films just fall to their death, just into an endless black abyss these films fall,’ the EP said.
‘No. No. No. I’m not—that’s not—’
‘Leave the A-lister alone, let him perform; that’s why we hired him.’
‘I didn’t hire him!’
But the EP had already walked away and was no longer listening.
The director returned and stared into the camera monitor while the scene reset, looking deep into the nightmarish dreamscape coming through the lens, into the vast infinite it offered, and then he noticed a Pizza Hut logo in the infinite.
‘What is that?’ the director snapped.
‘Oh. That. Promo deal was struck, it’s staying. Chat with legal if you want it out.’
‘Good Christ,’ the director said.
The director, who’d had it for the day, called lunch.
Cast and crew enjoyed complimentary Pizza Hut delivery.
While the set was quiet with chewing and small talk, a courier arrived for the lead actress.
It was another NDA that required her signature.
‘What can’t I talk about now?’ she shouted at the courier. She chased him off set, shouting it over and over.
Late that evening, the director was seated cross-legged on the living room couch with lights out and black masking up, blocking the kitchen, so light would not enter and sound would not escape.
He was alone in this black, quiet world.
On the TV was playing the director’s first feature film.
The glow filled the room, filled the director’s face.
The first frames flickered on screen.
The cinematography was undoubtedly distinct, nods to great auteurs of cinema genius.
Each shot was canvas, drowned in striking composition, lighting, and attention to detail.
Yet, as the film unraveled, it was clear there was no compelling narrative. The story was a maze of abstract symbolism with little context and enigmatic characters trapped in a plot with no clear destination. The characters of this film remained emotionally distant and inaccessible and unlikable, as the director had thought then, and still did, this was the true nature of people, but it made the material difficult to digest.
Each sequence of the film left the viewer with more questions than answers, and the dialogue, which was sparse and cryptic, made the film impenetrable and unenjoyable and confusing, and left the viewer in a state of bewilderment and introspection.
But to the director, it made perfect sense.
The director heard the black masking pulled free, and light entered from the kitchen, breaking the dark in two.
Dennis looked in.
Into the dark.
‘Never mind, I’ll come back,’ he said.
Dennis attempted to redo the black masking.
The director paused the movie and asked what?
‘No, I’ll come back.’
Sounds of masking moving and not refitting correctly upset the silence and the dark.
‘What did you want?’
‘I wish you wouldn’t do this; it’s not good for your eyes,’ Dennis said of the masking.
Dennis couldn’t get the masking to sit correctly.
‘Dark and light ruins your vision,’ Dennis said.
The director looked at Dennis, whose head was poked around the masking, light full and bright around it.
‘What?’
‘A director needs his vision.’
The director pressed play, and his film began again.
Dennis paused redoing the masking and watched with his head poked in the room, and the director watched from the couch, one man in light, one in dark.
‘Want to come watch?’ the director said after a moment.
‘I used to like this one of yours,’ Dennis said. ‘When you first showed me, I liked it then. I thought it was strong and poignant.’
The director paused the movie to listen better.
Dennis hovered between the masking and the kitchen light.
He said, ‘The visual mastery, and I did think there was mastery in it, I really did, but the story is a maze. And. Honestly. It’s all you wanted to talk about back then. I just don’t think I like it anymore, and I don’t know if I ever did like it, because I tried to get it, for years I’ve tried to get it, understand the film, I mean, and I couldn’t, I can’t watch it anymore. I hate watching it. It’s dense, it’s trying too hard, desperately it tries, I mean, and, honestly, it’s a mess, and I don’t know if I ever truly enjoyed it or if I just wanted to enjoy it because you don’t talk about anything else but your work.’
The director said, ‘Can you close that please?’
Dennis tried to refit the masking. Before he got it just right, he said, ‘I saw houses today. I made an offer.’
The director fell silent. Then he said, with coldness, ‘This film’s meant to be watched in the dark. Please.’
Dennis shut the masking tight, closing the director in black.
The director started the movie once more and attempted to watch but found he could not. He wanted to think, he wanted to walk. He went on the balcony where Dennis’s patio furniture had returned, and he made no attempt to quietly drag it off the balcony, drag it down the hall, drag it into the garage, piece by piece.
In fact, he did it louder than needed.
Then he paced on the balcony and thought.
The following week, cast and crew were on location, shooting the streets and outskirts of a small fishing community along the New England coast, hidden deep in forests and back roads and rocky coastline. From cool to warm, the seasons were changing, and the air was sweating and the ground damp. The schedule would keep them here, in a foggy, forgotten harbor and inlet, the remainder of the shoot.
On the third morning of filming, crew started prep outside of a rustic bed and breakfast under a dusk of gloom and bloated gray clouds that hid breaking sun and kept night’s chill into late morning.
It was discovered and brought to the director’s attention, an hour before filming, that the first unit camera was not properly working.
‘Can’t we fix it?’ the director said.
Heavy sleep had yet to release his tired brow and tired eyes, and he held coffee with both hands, for its warmth.
‘It’s outdated; it was barely working as is,’ the crew said.
‘Well. I know. But. Can’t we fix it?’
‘We’ve been using duct tape to keep it from falling apart, like, into pieces, we’re saying. The tape is the only thing keeping it together.’
‘More tape won’t help?’ the director said.
The crew did not respond.
‘Christ, goddamn Christ,’ the director said. He tried a sip of coffee but it was yet too hot. ‘So, what am I losing?’
The crew handed the director an edited shot list with red X’s.
‘All your wide shots.’
‘All of them?’
‘All of them,’ the crew confirmed.
‘Fucking Christ, where’s Lenny?’
The A-lister’s assistant inserted herself between the director and crew and asked hurriedly and breathless if they’d seen the A-lister?
‘He wasn’t in his hotel room this morning, and he’s not answering his phone,’ she said. ‘I’ve called both his phones, well, all three of his phones, and he’s not answering and, and, and have none of you seen him?’
The director and crew said no, they had not seen him.
The A-lister’s assistant berated the director for pushing the actor into a terrible headspace and barking and commanding the A-lister into the character’s despair, the utter fucking despair over the truth the character cannot reconcile, shoving into the actor’s head ideas that everything we do is meaningless, that none of this has any meaning other than the meaning we assign to it, that life has no outward meaning only inward.
She argued with the director and told him the A-lister deals with a lot, and the actor was fragile, just this delicate fragile actor, and-and-and to put garbage in his head, she said, with all the pressure and attention and, she said, he knows he’s not a strong performer, he knows!
‘What is wrong with you?’ she shouted at the director.
One of the crew volunteered to help the assistant search, and after an hour, more crew joined, along with a few from the cast. They searched the location from top to bottom, then two of the crew got in a car and drove up and down the small community’s streets, asking town folk if they’d seen the celebrity.
They returned later with no news or leads.
Cast and crew filmed what scenes they could and canceled the remainder of the day’s scenes.
The A-lister did not appear.
A missing person’s report was filed.
Four days of filming were lost.
Word reached the director, the studio was flying a replacement actor out to reduce costs. The schedule was tight, and any more delays meant more money.
Frugal reshoots, the director was told, were being worked in by the studio, and the skinny fellow, who had been the director’s first choice, was on his way out.
Though the director worried for the A-lister, he was pleased to have received good news, and by the next morning, worry for the A-lister’s well-being was entirely back of mind.
Front of mind was the renewed possibility of a bright, distinguished performance.
One that delivered.
Delivered the vision …
He worked with the skinny fellow over breakfast on location, sitting near the camera and monitors, going through the material and catching him up to speed.
Nearby, two crew guys were chatting.
Now and again, their volume was distracting.
One said to the other, ‘You missed the point. Utterly missed it.’
‘Get out,’ the other said.
‘How do you work on a cosmic horror film like this one and get the whole point wrong?’
‘That’s my take; you can’t tell someone their opinion is wrong,’ the second crewmember said.
‘It’s wrong,’ the first said.
‘That’s what I get, whenever I pick up cosmic horror literature or film; for me, it’s an exploration of human limitations. That’s all I said. It’s about the absurdity of all this, everything. All of it. That’s my take.’
‘And that’s wrong,’ the first said.
‘Get out.’
‘Cosmic horror is about fear of the unknown, how fragile we are, it’s a warning. It’s man’s arrogance daring to glimpse forbidden knowledge and being punished for tampering with things we think we understand but have no fucking clue. It’s hubris, that’s cosmic horror.’
‘It’s not hubris,’ the second said.
‘Yes, it’s hubris,’ the first said.
‘It’s curiosity, we’re curious animals.’
‘We’re not animals.’
‘We’re animals,’ the second said, ‘and we’re curious animals. That’s our nature. That’s not hubris. If that’s our nature, that’s what we are. So, no. It’s us finding strength in the face of overwhelming dread and despair, it’s us questioning our place in all of this, which is absurd, because nothing out there cares about us.’
‘That’s what I mean. You’re reinforcing my point. It’s a warning! Cosmic horror always ends with madness or despair or death.’
‘Get out.’
‘It always ends with madness and death. It’s all external,’ the first said.
‘No, it’s all internal, it’s fears, it’s anxieties.’
Their conversation diverged into insults, and the director asked that they please continue elsewhere, which they were about to oblige when onto the location ran the huge fan of the director’s, the one from the sidewalk, from the city, from a dozen states away.
Yet here he was, crewmembers chasing him down, the huge fan running and shouting stop-stop-stop-stop, stealing an idle script from a chair, running it to the director, out of breath, saying oh my God hi, panting, breathing, saying he drove all the way out here, saying he came to see the director, saying he came just to see him, only him, asking, demanding the director please-please-please sign the script he’d stolen, saying stop-stop-stop-stop and wait-wait-wait to the crew rushing him before he was tackled to the ground and dragged off location, begging the director please-please-please sign the script, crying and laughing he was such a huge fan.
‘Come on, do you need to handle him like that?’ the director said to the crew. ‘He’s just a fan, he’s harmless, you don’t—that’s not necessary.’
Energy settled and peace returned to set.
The director asked the skinny fellow, ‘So are you good with the material, or should we keep rehearsing?’
In a local diner with designers, Lenny, and the EP, the director began the discussion of shooting the film’s ending climax scene over dinner. The climax was one week out and was to be the last scene of filming. It was the most important, pivotal the director called it. All threads of the plot, all character choices, all consequences lead to one single moment, the director said, and it had to be done perfect!
A few townsfolk enjoyed quiet meals around the bunch.
The director was not monitoring his volume as he imparted granular and meticulous details. He drew looks from the rest of the diner that went entirely unnoticed.
He went on and on until he was finished.
‘No one took notes,’ he said to the designers, Lenny, and the EP, who were looking at him and nodding.
‘I took notes,’ Lenny said. He showed a napkin he’d written on.
‘Thought we were brainstorming?’ one of the designers said.
‘I laid it all out for you, no brainstorming necessary.’
‘You want to change locations? Just for this scene?’ the set designer said.
‘It’s the most important scene, and we’re just moving a few miles deeper in the woods. I mean, it’s like five miles.’
The table was quiet.
‘Like, eight miles,’ the director corrected. ‘Like, nine. This scene is the most important.’
‘If we do a low-light, oh man, the atmosphere you’ll get, the impending doom of it all,’ Lenny said.
‘No, no,’ the director said. ‘No, that’d be terrible. I don’t want low-light, that’s no good here.’
Lenny went quiet and offered no further suggestions.
‘I want bright, I want strange starlight, I want infinite cosmos raining down, that’s what I want.’
The EP, who had been quiet, said, ‘Yeah, I don’t know we have budget for any of that; you’re talking VFX, you’re talking, gosh, that’s, I really don’t think we have money for that.’
‘I’m not budging,’ the director said. ‘On this, the most important scene of the whole piece, this whole work of art, this odyssey into human goddamn nature, I am not budging.’
The table went quiet.
‘That’s going to be real hard to reach,’ the set designer said. ‘Nine miles into the woods?’
‘Like, ten miles, eleven, maybe.’
The table continued silence.
‘It’s the most important scene,’ the director said.
The waitress came and asked who wants a coffee refill?
‘Yes, please,’ the director said, offering his mug first.
After dinner, which ran late, the director walked through dark and quiet to his motel room.
The night was oil, a bowl of black crude oil.
Homes were dark.
Streetlights were sparse and strangled and decayed, and under these the director seldom passed; mostly he was kept in black and cold.
The director saw the lead actress outside her motel room smoking, up on the second floor, which was open to the night. She was leaning on the guardrail, looking over the parking lot.
Her face was buried in one hand; the other had her cigarette and paperwork. A single light above held dark away from her.
She heard the director walking in from the night and stood upright and fixed her hair and smeared tears from her broken eyes. She said, ‘Don’t mind me.’ Her voice was weak.
The director did not mind her; he went for his room but was stopped when the lead actress said, ‘I don’t know what I did.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I don’t know what I did.’
‘Oh, okay,’ the director said. ‘Good night.’
He continued. The director unlocked his room, and the lead actress leaned out to see him below.
She said, ‘I received a phone call is all.’
‘Oh,’ the director said, standing half in and out of his open room.
‘Yeah. Yeah.’
The director waited, as if she might add more. She did not. He was about to enter his room when she began again, interrupting his attempt to end the night.
‘They said I breached an NDA,’ she said.
‘How’d you do that?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve no clue what I did.’
‘What’s your lawyer say?’ the director said.
‘He was who phoned. He said they let him know I breached an NDA and that they were pulling together a suit against me and to expect to receive a filing soon with appearance dates.’
‘Geez.’
‘I don’t even know which one of these I broke!’ she said. She waved the paperwork for the director to see. ‘I looked through all these; there’s dozens here, and I don’t know what I did! I just don’t know!’
She started shouting she didn’t fucking know what she did!
Room lights went on when she didn’t stop shouting.
Guests poked from their rooms. One said to be quiet.
The lead actress threw the NDAs over the guardrail and let them flutter over the motel lot, falling like snowflakes, and screaming what did I fucking do?
The director went in the room and closed out her noise and drew the curtains shut.
Filming, the following morning, began in a grueling manner and remained so into the afternoon. The director pressed actors in their scenes, and he griped and complained, and then he pressed them harder.
The skinny fellow received the worst of it. Between scenes, the director harped on him and placed demands on him, and the skinny fellow took all of this in silence, with no disagreement. So large was his hunger for acclaim, it seemed, he would do whatever the director asked of him, no question.
During a break, the EP mentioned the director might consider easing off the skinny fellow a bit.
The director asked the EP if he was seeing the performances he was getting from the actor. ‘You see the quality he’s giving?’
‘Sure, he’s good, I see it,’ the EP said.
‘Well. Okay then.’
‘It’s just the crew and some of the other actors are saying you’re digging a bit hard.’
‘I’m not digging that hard.’
‘You’re digging hard.’
‘Look at what he’s giving, though,’ the director said.
He had Lenny replay footage for the EP.
‘No, yeah, it’s good, it’s great, a little artsy but, maybe come down a little, let him breathe.’
‘He’s breathing fine.’
‘I mean give him a breath, give him some room.’
Later, when the EP left for lunch, the director locked him off set and resumed pressure on the skinny fellow, squeezing out of him the best performances he’d seen, capturing all of it on camera; the stress, the terror, the breaking point, and when the skinny fellow’s scenes were finished, he received no applause. What he was given, instead, was stoic silence, a lingering fear on set of the painful depths to which the actor had descended, the trauma, unearthed and clear on his face, to deliver what the director craved for the camera to see.
Production took a break for the weekend, and the director caught a flight home.
It was late when the director entered the silent, black house.
Dennis was on the couch, sleeping on a bed of blankets.
If he heard the director, who was purposely loud with his bag and movement through the house, he did not say and did not rise.
The director struggled and found very little sleep.
Nightmares filled his dreaming, horrible ideas and visions that, when he woke and lay in bed with sweat and loss of breath, needed proven as dreams and not factual events.
He came out of the lonely bedroom.
Dennis was eating breakfast on his bed of blankets on the sofa, watching morning news.
‘You woke me last night,’ Dennis said.
‘I got in late. Sorry.’
‘No, the screaming,’ Dennis said.
‘I wasn’t screaming.’
Dennis chewed loudly; it was distracting.
‘You did. When you went to bed. I knocked on the bedroom.’
The director poured coffee in the kitchen.
‘You need to think about other things,’ Dennis said from the living room. The director could hear his chewing.
‘What things?’
‘You think about stories and characters and making everyone see the world the way you do too much.’
‘No, I don’t,’ the director said into the living room.
He sipped coffee where he stood.
‘You were screaming about story and character last night. You woke me with it,’ Dennis said. ‘I turned the TV on so I wouldn’t hear it.’
Dennis’s chewing was so loud, it grated in the director’s head.
‘It’s too much,’ Dennis said.
The home went quiet, but for the news, which was grim, and Dennis’s chewing.
‘I think about other things,’ the director said. He came to the threshold between kitchen and living room.
‘Oh, what else do you think about?’
The director was quiet many moments. ‘You moving out,’ the director finally said. It was sadness he shone.
Dennis almost laughed, perhaps the thought so absurd. ‘Goddamn you, you know that?’
‘Stay,’ the director said.
‘I offered on a house. It was accepted, I’m leaving.’
‘Please. Stay.’
‘You know what? I really wasn’t going to move. Three weeks ago, I would have gladly lived on our couch, hoping we’d work this out, but then I said I was going to look at a house. I don’t know why I said it, I really wasn’t, I mean it, I wasn’t going to look at a house. I just said it to see what you’d do, and then, all of a sudden, you’re paying attention to me, and then I really did go look at houses because I thought that’s how this will always go, won’t it?’ Dennis said. ‘You’ll always be thinking on your characters and stories, and I’ll get what’s left. I’ll get to comfort your loneliness when all the stories and characters are quiet. I’ll always be an afterthought.’
‘That’s not all I think about!’
‘You think about them so much, you’re goddamn screaming about it in your sleep. Scream about me in your sleep! Goddamn. I mean, at least think about me in your day, or a moment while you’re working, give me some time in your goddamn head, but you can’t! You’re not capable. You’re not a person. You’re a paintbrush that never stops painting, never stops creating, and then you act so tortured, so cursed by this need to create. Stop! You could stop right this instant! You stay! You don’t leave! Quit the film and stay here with me!’
The director took Dennis’s shouting.
He said nothing in return.
Except, ‘I do think about other things.’
A few days later, the director was back on location. A meeting was held to report progress on the climactic scene’s filming. The director wanted updates on the set, lighting, he wanted to hear about all the details he imparted during their previous meeting, and he didn’t want to hear anything to the contrary of his ask.
He was told they’d scouted deeper into the woods, miles into the woods, like the director had asked, and it would be tough, but it was possible. The crew had already started work on a good location they’d found and would be ready in time for filming.
They talked through logistics, and someone warned of weather advisory; a storm was bringing rain.
‘It won’t rain,’ the director said.
‘There’s a seventy percent chance,’ the crew said.
‘It’s too cold; we’ll get clouds, but there won’t be rain,’ the director said.
‘Smells like rain’s coming,’ Lenny said.
‘It’ll pass.’
The other designers reported no issues with what they’d been given as tasks, and all seemed ready.
The director was pleased; he was getting his vision.
The day then came to film the climactic scene.
Morning brought gloom.
And rain.
Light at first, patters and taps, but as the day went on, it came harder and never lessened.
Not one moment.
It turned the earth to mud.
Trucks and carts heading through the woods, many times, were left stuck and needed hauling out.
‘We’re so far behind,’ the crew told the director.
He was under an umbrella, watching the crew and designers carry out his wishes under consistent rainfall.
‘It’s a night shoot,’ the director said. ‘We’ll be fine.’
The trek and dragging of equipment out into the woods, where it was deep and quiet, ate more time than they’d allotted, and the crew lost the grim gray of day for work under a cold dark.
Setup and preparation occurred under work lights.
Crew coming and going and dragging and building were shadows, moving and twisting.
Trees were tall and black and reached high, peering down, catching the rain and sprinkling it over production and keeping in the cold.
Early in the night, preparation finished, and crew broke for a meal. The director sat in his chair alone, near the trailers with a warm coffee in his hands. He was watching the trees, the dark between them, and listening to the rain.
The EP came and sat with him.
They did not speak for some time.
‘Is it worth all this?’ the EP finally said.
The director looked from the trees to the EP, then back.
‘What you’re doing, I mean.’
The EP ignored an incoming call on his phone. A second call came. He ignored this one too.
‘I’m not just saying the money you’re blowing through. I know you say it’s fine, don’t worry, and you distract me from the labor you’re using and the endless pressing of your actors, and constant lighting changes, location changes, which is time, at the end of the day, that’s what it is, whatever trauma you’re stirring and filming, whatever you’re exploring and creating—it’s time, and it only goes one direction and, not that we’re talking money, we can if you want, but let’s say you make some beautiful, horrific nightmare, and you think it’s absolutely perfect as it exists, there is not one thing you would change, this piece of art says everything you were hoping it would say, and you created it, and you revel in that relationship with it, you the creator and this thing your creation. What do you say to the people who don’t get it? Too bad? Why make something that no one can get into? Because I’ve seen the footage. You think I’m dumb and I’m just off writing checks and making bad suggestions, but I’m not. I’ve seen.’
The director, once more, pulled his attention from the dark and the trees, then gave it back.
‘I’m just saying. Is all the argument, the friction, the complaints, the work, the endless work of it, I mean, you look awful. Is all of this worth any of that?’
The director did not respond.
The EP stood.
Before he left, he said, ‘The A-lister was found. He’s in a psychiatric hospital a few counties over. They’re saying he had a breakdown.’
He let that settle with the director.
Then he said, ‘I wonder why.’
He left the director to stare into the trees, in the rainfall.
Soon after, filming of the script’s climactic scene began.
Cast and crew found positions and marks and, after a moment in the quiet night and the rainfall, the director called for quiet on set.
He confirmed with each department they were ready for this. He reminded them of its importance, then called for action!
Five minutes into filming, a courier emerged and asked for the lead actress. He needed a signature on some documents. He realized the camera was rolling, then apologized and stepped out of frame and said he’d wait. He just needed a signature, then he’d go, but, he said, what a trek getting out here, haha!
The director called out to the lead actress to start again.
She was staring at the courier, at the papers.
‘Can we go again please?’ the director asked.
She took her mark and the director called action!
The lead actress descended through rain as her character and said, ‘Strange is the night where black stars rise, and strange moons circle through the skies, but stranger still is Lost Carcosa.’
The lead actress continued with her monologue and took her performance to awful places and wept before cast and crew, wept as her character, and she aimed her focus at the poor courier off set, and she continued the scene and said, ‘Songs that the Hyades shall sing, where flap the tatters of the King, must die unheard in Dim Carcosa. Song of my soul, my voice is dead; die thou, unsung, as tears unshed shall dry and die in Lost Carcosa.’
She threw herself onto a green pad foam, which would be made a deep, black abyss in post-production, then she stood, wiping tears and rain from her face, and chased the courier into the dark, into the night, screaming she’ll fucking sign, she’ll sign every-fucking-thing, everything that can be signed, she screamed and laughed, she would fucking sign it all, and, she shouted, why doesn’t she just sew her mouth shut, wouldn’t that be better, wouldn’t that keep her fucking mouth shut?
Eventually she returned and was kept in the medical trailer for several hours while filming continued, which went late into the night. Fatigue set upon cast and crew, but the director resisted the yawns and the leaning and the stretching and the sloth; he pushed filming onward.
It was then, during a plague of bored impatience between shots and exhaustion among cast and crew that the noises came from the dark forest, voices and movement in volume and number, and the huge fan found his way onto set once more, and there were others with him, many others, so many, and they became frantic when they glimpsed the director, screaming and shouting oh my God oh my God oh my God that’s him oh my God! Crew attempted to herd their numbers, but they were few against many, and they were moving many directions but committing to none, making herding wholly ineffective.
They called to the director, who came out from behind the camera to see them, to hear them call his name.
Other crewmembers left their posts to aid their fellow crew, who’d been swallowed by the rolling crowd.
Areas of the set and various safety equipment were now unattended.
The fans spread under the rain and knocked over work lights and stole props and memorabilia and pieces of the set, and they knocked into one another and knocked each other over, and then shoved one another, and then argued and shoved into set pieces and shoved others to muddy earth, and their noise rose up into the night, into the rainstorm above. Some swarmed the director for his autograph and to share how they’d connected with his work, and his attention was then divided between the fans surrounding him and the unrest developing, and then there was a loud CRASH from above. Safety rigging failed with snaps of metal and sharp squeals of metal bending and popping, and the old light rig filling the set with brilliance came down on fleeing fans, catching a handful, and bringing the whole night to immediate darkness with a pop and flash that blinded and deafened.
Then the screams began, in the black and the rain, and did not stop for some time.
Hours later, after some trial and error, the crew got the lights back on, but police and a trio of ambulances were already on site by then, filling the dark with red then blue then red then blue.
A rig was brought in around dawn, when the rain had let up and the clouds had peeled away, and debris was cleared.
The director did not watch the injured removed, nor did he watch the three bodies pulled out and covered and removed.
Two had been fans, but one had been crew.
Instead, the director was watching the set, the ruination of it, rain battered and bent and pilfered and burnt from burst bulbs and the whole of it filling with dawn. For a long while, he stood. Lenny came at some point in the morning and stood with him while, around him, sense was searched for in all this senselessness.
Nearby, the EP paced and spoke with studio heads on the phone, on and off, pacing when he was talking to them and pacing when he wasn’t, and stopping his pacing only to answer the studio head’s phone call and then to pace again.
Police collected information, which went all morning, then one by one pulled off and went, and then it was just cast and crew on site, left to pick up and pack up and carry home, in their minds, the sounds of the screaming in the dark and in the rain.
The director did not speak.
Except to ask Lenny if he thought they got the take.
‘What?’
‘I wanted more takes.’
Lenny stopped standing by him and left the set shortly after.
The director said no more.
He flew home in silence.
Production paused for a week, for the studio to sort through the events that unfolded deep in the woods, and the director was made to sit through meetings with lawyers and studio heads, made to listen to their lecturing and advising, and their discipline. He took all of this in silence with no retort and no friction.
At home, slowly, rooms were emptying. Dennis was packing and, bit by bit, moving his things out.
Many nights the director lay awake, listening to Dennis pack somewhere in the house, the sounds of boxes and packing paper, and now and again the director would hear weeping, and then music to hide the weeping.
But the director could still hear.
The weeping followed into the director’s dreams and made his sleep restless and stricken with nightmares.
Mornings he woke tired.
He carried fatigue and the stains of his horrible dreams into the day.
The film moved into editing, when the sentiment for tragedy faded then vanished. Too much had already been spent to cancel the project, it was decided. For a period of three weeks, the director spent each day in a dark room with Lenny and the editor, watching everything he’d collected to exhaustion, piecing it together when it felt right, when it felt aligned with the sights and feelings the director held in his head, and removing and cutting when there was misalignment.
He did not heed Lenny’s or the editor’s feedback, though he did listen and entertain their suggestions, but he had no intention of honoring them.
They did not see it how he saw it, the message underneath the film.
He believed he understood hopelessness.
He believed he knew how to make others see it too, how uncaring it is, the force that moves life and time forward.
How a sad, unfair life can end in a sad and unfair manner and is made meaningless by the manner in which it ends, fans acting like animals from obsession caught under a collapsing light rig.
What larger point did this make?
For what greater mysterious purpose were their skulls and bodies crushed, if any?
Some days, the director locked the editor and Lenny from the editing room and worked in the dark.
Alone, staring into the monitor’s glow, frame by frame.
He came upon footage of the accident on set, the collapse of the rig onto the fans.
Cameras had been rolling.
He did not use the footage, but the sound he kept as useful, the full and real screams, the crash, and the rain pattering. He edited these into the film’s nightmare sequence, under layers of audio.
He gave them meaning now, he thought to himself.
On the final day of editing, after the final hour of work, the director had, before him, a complete piece with no misalignment between his inner compass, to which the director was a slave, and the content of the film.
He wept in the editing room, into his hands.
And then he wiped tears away and laughed with relief.
He believed he had a masterpiece.
It was his vision made physical.
He believed it was perfect, exactly as it was, and would change not one more thing.
He screened it for the studio heads the following afternoon in a small black theater deep in the studio building.
While the suits sat and watched, he stood in the rear of the room, out of the light, watching them watch his perfection.
More than once, he noticed one suit turn and look at another and could not read their expression, but he did not care for their looks to one another.
Then it was over and credits rolled and lights were brought up and the suits did not immediately move from their seats, nor did they speak, not even between them.
They were unmoving and without noise.
They waved the EP in, to speak in confidence, then filed out of the theater and left the EP to deliver the director a message.
‘They’ll be in touch,’ he said.
‘But what did they think?’ the director said.
‘It was … thought-provoking,’ the EP said. He forced a smile.
Then he followed the suits out, as a cleaner wrasse follows a shark, to pick their teeth clean and live off their leftovers, the bits the shark doesn’t swallow.
No other feedback was given the director.
He was left to wonder.
Later, he took the film home.
That night, the director was sitting in the living room with the film on the TV. It was paused at the beginning. Windows behind the TV were black, and the night was starless.
The director was listening to Dennis pack elsewhere in the home. He waited in the dark, for some time, until Dennis was within earshot.
He said, ‘Do you want to see?’
Dennis said from in the kitchen, ‘What?’
Quiet passed between them.
‘Did you say something?’ Dennis said.
The TV remote was in the director’s hand, and his finger was over the play button. His other hand fidgeted while in his head played reasons not to show Dennis this film and then reasons to show Dennis the film, and the reasons went back and forth in the quiet while Dennis waited for an answer.
The director said, after Dennis had moved to other things, ‘Do you want to see?’
Dennis came in the living room and said, ‘I keep hearing you say something. Are you talking to me?’
‘I want—’
The director saw the moving box in Dennis’s hands.
‘I want to show you the film.’
The director’s voice was uncertain and timid.
Dennis stood with the question for many moments, looking at the director, then the paused TV screen, then the director.
‘Will you watch? And sit with me?’
The director had left space on the couch, right near him.
Just for Dennis.
‘Please?’ the director said.
After contemplation, Dennis said, ‘Let me—let me finish in here then, yeah, okay.’
The director then waited in silence, listening to Dennis in the kitchen remove his things from cabinets they shared, listening to Dennis slowly remove himself from the director’s life one belonging at a time.
Dennis made tea then joined the director on the couch, some distance between them.
‘Are you ready?’
Dennis agreed then got comfy, away from the director, without the director.
Not long into the film, the director noticed Dennis on his phone, not watching. Then he was off the phone and watching, then back on the phone.
‘You’re not watching,’ the director said.
‘I’m watching.’
Dennis put the phone away.
It came out again later.
Scenes that were crucial to the overall message and plot, Dennis only half-saw, his attention was divided between his phone then divided between re-finding comfort then getting up for more tea, and some scenes Dennis missed entirely, but he did not ask the director to pause for him; he allowed himself to miss whole chunks of the film.
Then the film was done, and Dennis’s reaction was minimal, not to the grand level the director expected.
‘It was fine,’ Dennis said. He prepared to resume packing.
‘You barely watched.’
‘I watched, I saw.’
‘You saw the disintegration of identity? Of sanity?’
‘I did,’ Dennis said.
‘You saw how seeing the world as it really exists was self-destructive for the characters? How it ruined them? How realizing that there is no meaning to any of this, no meaning to anything that we do as humans and the world we live in, how truly realizing that destroyed their capacity to function as people.’
‘Oh. yes. I did. I saw that.’
‘But you barely watched.’
‘Yes, I did, I was sitting right here,’ Dennis said.
‘You pretended to watch! If you actually watched, you wouldn’t say that!’
‘I watched! Fuck’s sake, I watched!’
The director made a visible decision toward violence, and he shoved Dennis up and out of the living room.
‘Just pack. Just leave. You’re sitting there, and I ask you to come and sit and watch this film, which is probably the best thing I’ve ever done, which-which perfectly says what I want it to say and executes what I want it to execute and-and-and is art, that’s what this film is, it’s art! You’re sitting there saying you watched, but you didn’t, you pretended to watch, and-and-and just pack. Just leave.’
Dennis threw his tea into the wall to shut the director up.
He shouted, ‘I fucking watched!’
The director went stone silent.
‘It’s bleak, it’s the bleakest thing I’ve ever seen, and when it wasn’t bleak it was depressing, and when it wasn’t depressing it was pessimistic! And when it wasn’t pessimistic it was aimless! It was all these things, and it was constant! You’re so fucking horny for everyone to see the world the way you do, so fucking desperate to share your opinion and your viewpoint and how everyone should live in despair and meaninglessness, but they don’t fucking care! You take so much time and energy and you make this film and think everyone has time and energy to stop thinking how shitty their own lives are so they can spend money and time on thinking how shitty your life is? Because that’s all your art is, it’s just you spilling your blood and begging everyone to look, fucking begging for people to watch you bleed! That’s all you are as an artist, a beggar!’
Tears came to the director’s eyes.
Dennis stood and left the director.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To just pack. To just leave,’ Dennis said, mimicking the director’s demands.
‘Good, then. Good!’ the director shouted. ‘Don’t forget your awful fucking patio furniture!’
Dennis then took his remaining boxes and left the home.
Nightmares enveloped the director as he slept that night, tormenting him, gifting him a restless, unproductive sleep.
Several weeks on, the director was invited to the film’s premiere, and he attended and walked the red carpet and was photographed apart from cast. He excluded himself, and pictures showed a man thinned by lack of sleep and a slow disconnect from habits of self-care.
He found his seat in the grand theater. Around him was chatter and it reached up into the galleries above the seating and it came back down as unintelligible noise, hums.
Lenny arrived and sat beside the director.
He gave a quick greeting and nothing more.
When the theater was nearly full, Lenny said, ‘I didn’t expect you’d be here.’
The director gave no response.
‘You sure you want to be here?’ Lenny said.
‘I’m sure.’
Now and again, before the film began, the director noticed Lenny looking at him for long, uninterrupted periods.
Then the lights came down and quiet settled over the audience and the film played.
Almost at once, the director detected the opening music was different; it was not the score he’d chosen in the edit he delivered. It wasn’t thin music, it wasn’t starved, it was bloated. It played over black, this music he did not know, and when the film properly started with the opening scene, it was not his opening scene. He adjusted how he was sitting and was horribly confused. This scene was chopped and stripped down, and as the film continued, the scenes the director and the theater watched were not at all special or memorable and followed formulaic beats which, it was clear, had been shoehorned together to tell a story that was devoid of substance and was quite shallow.
‘This is not my edit,’ the director said to Lenny. Then he said it to the person sitting on the other side of him, then he said it to the person sitting in front of him, then he said it around where he was sitting, this is not my cut, then he stood and said it, then shouted it into the theater, shouted it over the theater, shouted it and interrupted the theater’s viewing experience until Lenny forced him down in his seat and said, while the film played before them, the studio made their own cut and, unfortunately, they can do that.
‘They cannot!’
‘They can!’
‘No, no, no, no, no! No! No! No!’
The director stood, then sat, then stood and, with nowhere to go, he sat again.
‘Who did this?’
Lenny held his words, looking at the director, then admitted it was him; he’d been paid to edit the film in this manner.
‘You kept stifling my feedback,’ Lenny said in defense. ‘When they asked, and when they paid, they wanted to know my thoughts and how I would do things, and they listened. They didn’t hear my suggestions and then decide what they thought was better all the time, like you, like you do all the time, like you’ve always done for years and years, so they asked and I did. So. It’s nothing against you.’
The director’s face turned cold, and he tried to leave his seat and tried to leave the row, but Lenny stopped him.
‘It’s honestly nothing against you; you’re just so particular and—’
‘Who do I talk to?’ the director said.
‘What?’
‘Who do I talk to, who can fix this? Who can put back my edit?’
‘Stop!’ Lenny said.
The director leaned in Lenny’s face, close. He said, ‘It’s fucking mediocre!’
Around them, the audience seemed to enjoy the film.
‘It’s already distributed, it’s across the country.’
A jump scare occurred in the film.
It was easily predicted.
The audience responded with fear and laughter.
‘A jump scare!’
Lenny was watching reactions; he seemed pleased by them.
‘A fucking jump scare!?’ the director said.
He exited the theater and slammed the auditorium door behind him, then he opened and slammed it again, then one final time.
Slam!
Back home, still in his premiere clothes, the director made calls to the studio and the EP that went unanswered, and he listened to voicemail greetings apologize for missing his call.
Between calls, he turned his film on, reappraising how perfect it was, how superior this edit was, and how important it was that people see this edit.
He paced while the TV played his film to a dark living room that was missing all of Dennis’s belongings, like holes, and these holes were everywhere through the home, pieces of Dennis ripped out.
This empty home.
The director was on the balcony, phoning his agent to leave another angry voicemail, another long-winded outburst that would begin as complaint and end as pleading, begging, then would begin again as outrage.
Behind him, light from the TV filled the living room and bled onto the balcony and into the night.
In his ear, the phone was ringing, and he paced and thought and, in the dark, bumped into Dennis’s patio furniture.
It had been left.
He looked it over, the phone in his ear, and he kicked the pieces across the balcony as it rang, and when the pieces settled, he kicked at these and followed them across the balcony, kicking and listening to the phone ring and, for a moment, shouting at the furniture.
When he tired, he paced again.
Below, the black canyon was a void.
An abyss.
The madness, the mediocrity of the world below him.
His agent’s voicemail answered, and the director set in with shouting and victimhood, unleashing all volumes of screaming while he walked the balcony back and forth, and so he didn’t see the headlights come up the driveway, and he didn’t hear the front door open and shut; his shouts of victimhood were much too loud.
Then, there was a person standing in the balcony slide door, coming out of the slide door. Film light from the living room made the person a hideous silhouette, black as hopelessness.
Talking at the director.
Coming at him.
The director flinched from surprise, from fright, and tripped over Dennis’s overturned patio furniture, a series of trips, really, that guided the awkward weight of the director crashing through the old balcony railing, his arms and legs and body flailing wildly.
Down into the dark.
Into the canyon.
The void.
No scream, just a startled yipe.
Dennis ran into the home, past the director’s film still playing, the film turning him to shadow and then light, and ran to the neighbors, banging on their door shouting he fell!
Help!
He fell!
Oh my God he fell! Help me! I didn’t mean to scare him!
I moved, I was just asking about patio furniture I left and he went over.
That was all!
A jump scare.
He fell!
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