Page 20 of Lights, Camera, Love

‘We already got it, Buzz,’ Austin complains. ‘That last one was it.’ He glowers at the director, who’s hunched over one of the monitors, replaying the latest take of Constance and Jamie’s first kiss.

‘We’re almost there,’ Buzz says, and the crew members scattered around the soundstage groan under their breaths. ‘Listen, I know what I’m doing,’ Buzz argues. ‘My name isn’t Winter for nothing.’

A weighty sigh leaves my lungs. It’s Saturday morning, and none of us is meant to be on set, but Moving is now dangerously behind schedule thanks to Buzz’s need to shoot everything over and over until we, and probably generations of our descendants, grow old and die.

I’ve had to watch Austin kiss Evie not once but twenty-four times so far on this weekend morning.

Why doesn’t Buzz just stab me in the eyes with a blunt stick?

In fact, this passage of dialogue jumping off the script in my hand is making me want to do it to myself.

JAMIE

Why would I want to gaze at the stars when I can look at you? Why would I wake up early to see a sunrise when I can wake up next to you? Why would I go outside and inhale the flowers when I can stay inside and smell you?

I’m too horrified to even speak.

‘I still think we need to change the line before the kiss,’ Jakob pipes up from the shadows. ‘Instead of saying “Your lips are made to be kissed”, I think Jamie should say “Your lips are asking to be kissed”.’

Stab me in the eyes and the ears.

‘Shush, I’m fine with the dialogue,’ Buzz says, waving a hand at Jakob. ‘But I’d like to do one more take.’

Austin hangs his head while I consider how I might pull off a self-induced coma. The upside is that next week is meant to be our last week of filming, although I’m not holding my breath.

‘Final checks, please!’ calls out Cassie, the first AD.

Evie holds still as the makeup artist dashes in to paint a fresh stripe of red over her lips—a colour requested by Buzz, of course, because it makes so much fucking sense to wear cherry-red lipstick in the kitchen at night.

Evie passes the makeup artist an apologetic smile, like it’s her fault we’re all trapped in here.

Her gaze then shifts left and rubs against my own.

My face heats up.

Hi, our eyes seem to say to each other.

Seeing you is the only thing keeping me sane right now, I think.

‘Quiet, please. Roll sound!’ calls Cassie, breaking the moment.

Austin resets his expression, bringing back Jamie’s flushed, about-to-be-kissed look, while Evie lines up in front of him.

‘Sound speed,’ says James from the sound cart. Louis clutches his boom pole and hovers the microphone just above the actors’ heads.

A clapper is held in front of Austin’s face, and Cassie says, ‘Roll camera.’

Buzz yells, ‘Wait—cut!’

‘Wasn’t rolling yet, man,’ mutters Cesar, the camera operator, who steps back from the viewfinder with a huff.

‘I’ve just figured out what’s not working for me with this scene,’ announces Buzz.

He bounds towards Austin and Evie, his frizzy hair bobbing.

‘It doesn’t make sense that Constance is wearing these clothes in the kitchen late at night,’ he gripes, like Evie’s skin-tight jeans and yellow singlet top are an offence of the highest order.

‘She should be in some sort of negligee.’

‘Negligee?’ Evie repeats, blanching. ‘But … this scene happens right after the dinner with Angel. And this is what Constance was wearing at that dinner.’

‘She’s right,’ Austin says.

Buzz throws up a hand. ‘Fuck the dinner. I’m sorry, but I can’t get aroused by this kiss when Constance is dressed like an ageing housewife. This is a pivotal moment.’

I can feel knives sharpening inside me as I glare at Buzz.

‘I just don’t see why Constance would—’ Evie starts, but Buzz cuts her off.

‘Wardrobe! Get her in some sort of nightdress that doesn’t look like something my grandmother would wear. Everyone else, take a few minutes’ break.’

Buzz paces back to the monitor with his arms folded over his lime-green jumper, a garment that should be hung, drawn and quartered. Preferably with him in it. The crew members down their equipment, some checking their watches, others exchanging fed-up looks.

Evie hurries out of the studio with Romy from the wardrobe department, and Austin wanders over to me.

After that article came out, the one suggesting he and I are secret lovers, he’s been acting like a moody teenager, seesawing between bouts of manic elation and states of lethargic depression.

When he started hiding in his room and wouldn’t come out and talk to me, I feared he was back on the opiates.

But after I threatened to walk out and quit my job if he didn’t straighten out—total posturing on my part—he sank to his knees, assured me he was still clean and tried to sort out his moods.

He nudges my high-top Converse with his Blundstone boot. ‘How’s the kiss looking?’

I expected this morning’s scene to inspire an acidic spell of jealousy, but truthfully, it’s mostly boredom that’s left me feeling as if I’m trapped in a nightmare. Austin’s kisses with Evie have had about as much chemistry as a concrete block.

‘Not good,’ I say honestly. ‘I think I’d be more interested if two llamas were making out.’

‘Shit, really?’ He taps his heel against the vinyl floor. ‘I thought for sure we had some fire going—especially with how into me Evie is. She never stops fuckin’ smiling at me.’

She never stops smiling at everyone, jackass. If you paid attention to her for more than five minutes, you’d know that.

Two crew members push past us, wheeling the camera towards the staircase that’s, mystifyingly, been built into the kitchen set.

‘What’s going on? You’re resetting?’ Austin asks, striding over to where Buzz is directing the grips to rig the camera to the staircase so that the lens peers between the gaps in the railing.

‘I didn’t like the shot we had,’ Buzz tells him. ‘It was too blatant and literal. If we film through the staircase, we can get a sense that we are imposing upon a genuinely private moment between Jamie and Constance.’

For the love of …

I stride over to them. ‘But looking down at the characters will remove their power,’ I can’t help but say.

Buzz shoots me a stern look. ‘I know that. If you were a man of vision, like me, you would understand that this angle will make it appear as if someone is secretly observing these two characters kiss.’

‘Exactly,’ I snap, my patience hitting rock bottom.

‘Shooting through a staircase will result in a point-of-view shot. And guess whose point of view it’ll be?

Who is the only character upstairs at this time?

The twelve-year-old daughter. So, if you shoot the scene that way, through the daughter’s eyes, trying to prove that you’re some artistic genius like “Uncle Harold”—whom you never miss a chance to mention—it’s going to come off as some weird fucking “perving on daddy” shit.

Either that or it’ll shift the focus of the romance to how the daughter feels about it, which has never been a key part of the script.

So, everything would have to be rethought and reshot, and we’ll be stuck here for all eternity doing fifty-seven takes of god-knows-how-many-more scenes . ’

Austin stifles a snicker as Buzz lurches towards me. ‘Excuse me?’ the director barks. ‘Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?’

‘It’s okay, bro. Chill,’ Austin murmurs against my ear, carefully guiding me away from Buzz before I can lose my shit any further. The fact that Austin is holding his temper better than me says something about my current mental state.

‘Now, that’s more like it,’ I hear Buzz say behind us.

I twist around to see Evie inching back onto the set in a silky black chemise, and my breath snags in my throat. It takes everything I have not to let my eyes roam all over her, going where they want to, but I keep my attention fixed on her reddened face.

Buzz steps right up to Evie, his gaze welded to her chest, and begins yammering about the new camera angle.

With a subtle pinch in her brow, she crosses her arms over herself and nods. Across the shadowy studio, her gaze coasts left and lands on me.

I quickly look away, then back at her.

Evie’s eyes soften as her gaze burrows a little deeper into mine. A rush of heat streaks up the back of my neck.

Firefly.

Stop looking at me.

Stop looking at me, or I’m going to start looking back.

Austin shifts in front of me, obstructing my view, and the scorching blaze that’s flaring in my chest quickly dies out.

Austin and Evie trail me down the concrete stairwell leading to the studio carpark, our steps echoing through the hollow silence.

The vibe between them has taken a nosedive since this morning’s shoot, and I’m not sure if that’s because of Buzz’s antics or the fact that their screen kiss didn’t exactly sizzle—probably a bit of both.

Now, I have the pleasure of driving them to a small, secluded beach nestled among the mansions of the city’s eastern suburbs so they can make out a forty-eighth time, in this case for the paparazzi.

‘I’ll drop you guys off, but obviously, I have to stay far away from the cameras this time,’ I say while turning onto the road that leads to the coast.

‘Mmm-hmm,’ Austin grunts, his strained face reflecting in the window.

I reach across the console to give his thigh a light tap. ‘What’s up?’

His gaze plunges to my hand, and I return it to the steering wheel. ‘Nothing,’ he says, shifting in his seat to face me. ‘It’s just the movie. I think it’s going to be a fuckin’ disaster, and I had such high hopes for it.’

You’re just catching on to that, are you?

I keep that thought to myself, though. If this film flops, it could put the nail in the coffin of Austin’s career, and I worry about how he’ll cope mentally. Especially when his dad hears the news.