Fuck, what's the line?

He's young, he's handsome (in a scruffy hey dude kind of way), he's talented. The problem? Everybody in his immediate family--and I mean mom, dad, sibling, everybody--is a megastar, while he's a reasonably well-thought of actor who's been in a couple of movies and a series that was canceled in its first season. (The reason I have to be coy with his identity is that in the age of search engines if anybody is at all interested in him they'll find their way to this post and I may be eager to bare my own secrets but it's not my place to bare his.) Yesterday we shot a big romantic marriage proposal scene in a stunning location--fields of barley and wheat stretching away to forests and mountains in all directions--and he couldn't get through two sentences without breaking off--and this is on camera, mind you--and going "Fuck, what's the line." I tried to have the script supervisor throw him the line and keep the film rolling because every time you say "cut" thirty people run out and start primping hair and touching up makeup and fussing with costumes and refocussing lenses and there's seven minutes of our strangle-tight schedule down the drain. But ultimately he'd get so stuck and frustrated that he'd say "let's stop" and I'd have to cut. It all added up to about an hour and a half of accumulated delay, and having to shoot the scene in cloud instead of sun (which may actually be more interesting, I'm telling myself). Plus I'll be forced into lots of cuts when I'd rather have let the scene just flow. But beyond all that, what's the deal? Didn't his megastar clan teach him about the simplest, barest, most basic ABC's of being a professional actor?

The challenge for me goes back to third grade. He's, you know, the rich popular kid, and I'm the smart nerd from the south side of town who knows his place in the playground pecking order. It's all fine for me to go up to him and say "I think you'd hold back our feelings a little more there," because that's my assigned position in this game of handball, but to actually go up to him and say "We need to talk about the problem with the lines"--??? I can't muster it. Star to the rescue: my leading lady and I confabbed on this last night (back to third grade again: easy for me to talk to girls, terror of the wrath of boys) and she will run lines with him instead of chatting before they shoot.

To all of this I will add that I am paying this young man A QUARTER OF A MILLION DOLLARS for four weeks of work.

No word from the network yet on the dailies but my editor down in L.A. is thrilled with the first scene we shot yesterday, says it's intense, looks great and cuts like butter. So the early returns are good.