Hollywood Be Thy Name

Oy.

And again, oy.

You will recall that the Astonishing Actress who took the role of the older woman in the movie had memory problems on the set and took long pauses as she tried to grope for the next word and that I had to feed her many of her lines from off camera a few words at a time, creating quite the editing challenge once it was all over. Well it all worked out, it's all been neatly sewn together with invisible stitches, and you would absolutely never know. The performance flows. The performance glows. The performance makes people cry.

That's what my wife was telling a Fellow Crew Member on the movie she's working on right now in Louisiana. That her husband had just made a movie with this Astonishing Three Time Oscar Nominated Actress and the performance was awesome, that it made her cry, but how challenging it had been, with the memory problems, to get there. "Oh!", said Fellow Crew Member, warmly. "Astonishing Actress is one of my closest friends!"

Well guess what Fellow Crew Member did. She called her "closest friend", Astonishing Actress, and told her that the wife of the director on her latest film was complaining that she had come to set without knowing her lines and was a big problem.

We should all have close friends like that, huh?

Controlling Husband of Astonishing Actress calls Producer and says Astonishing Actress is terribly hurt and upset and it's all lies, lies, lies. Of course Producer knows it's not lies, he was there with me every day commiserating about the problem and reassuring me that I was doing great with her and that in the end I would have everything I needed on film.

Producer calls me and says "we have a problem."

Why a problem, apart from the fact that a lovely and loving and loveable 76 year old actress's feelings have been hurt?

Because at 8 A.M. the following morning said actress is scheduled to come into a sound studio and spend a few hours with me doing looping--that is, re-recording some of her dialogue for reasons of sound problems or performance adjustments.

So I had to call. Not Astonishing Actress herself, of course. No, I would be calling Mr. Astonishing Actress, who will not let anybody hand Astonishing Actress a cup of tea. You have to hand it to Hubby, and then Hubby hands the tea to his meal ticket, excuse me, I mean wife.

I went into a sound-proof room at the studio and took deep breaths and said a very quiet prayer or two and called.

It was pretty grim at first. I said I was ripped up that this had happened (the truth: I love this woman) and he said, as tersely as terse can be, "So am I." My through-line was this: That the Closest Friend had left out the part where my wife said that the performance was magnificent and had made her cry. That in the madness and tension of making the movie I would call my wife after shooting and talk to her about the day and part of what went on during those days was the Astonishing Actress's problems with the lines, and she shared that with a co-worker, who passed it on, and I was terribly terribly sorry, as was my wife, that that had happened. Of course Hubby, who was there every second, even in private rehearsals, couldn't see that there had been a problem and blamed me for being "one of those directors who wants the lines said exactly they way they are written." As that insult would also apply to Mike Nichols, Martin Scorcese and Francis Ford Coppola, I'll take it. Apart from the fact that it's not strictly true. I just want the lines said SO THAT THEY MAKE THE LEAST BIT OF SENSE AND AREN'T FULL OF AWKWARD GROPING PAUSES. In the end he really heard me telling him that the performance is awesome and that that's all I ever tell anybody. He ended the call reasonably warmly, saying "Thank you for calling, I really appreciate that, and let's just leave it behind us and move on."

Of course the next day for the first time in my entire career I went to the wrong sound facility and was 15 minutes late to the looping. Arrghgghggh. But the good news there is, I called ahead and told them to start running the movie for Hubby and Actress and that changed everything. She saw how good she is, and how good the movie is, and then we had a couple of hours of working smoothly together, and it was hugs and kisses in the end. Feigned, or real? Well who knows. It's Hollywood, man.

Leaving me, being a creature of Hollywood, with one remaining bit of uneasiness: this whole business rides on what people say about you. What will Hubby and Actress be saying about me?

And then there's the question of which circle of hell has been reserved for the "friend" who relayed the gossip to her in the first place.

Three Quarters Of A Loaf

They approved three out of the four cues in contention. You'd think I would have danced for joy when I got the call. No. I didn't. I STUPIDLY began arguing for the 4th cue, then mercifully caught myself, apologized, thanked the head of music at the network and said I would figure out what to do about that final cue. Well I found a song that works unbelievably well--Eva Cassidy's cover of Sting's Fields of Gold. Anybody know it? Wow. Problem is, it's--well--I mean, it's Sting, for Gawd's sake, and that means (well-deserved) $$$$$. I guess I have expensive taste--for two other spots in the movie I have found that a couple of Damien Rice songs work perfectly. Now, on one side, I have the studio telling me the songs are too expensive, and on the other side I have the network saying nothing at all: they got the DVD's of song-and-picture on Friday morning and as of close of business on Monday there has been deafening silence emanating from their direction. Hate the songs? Love the songs? Haven't gotten to them yet? Couldn't care less that the final sound mix is theoretically a week from Wednesday?

I'm going quietly out of my mind.

Up Against It

The network is torturing me about the music. They didn't like my approach (after approving the picture aspect of my cut almost without any changes at all) so I cheerfully dumped all but about four cues. Those four cues really work. They make people cry. I've seen it. But the network wants them "younger", whatever that means. They want to "go against the drama", whatever that means. As in "This works. Hm. Let's change it."

Today we had the big music conference call. I will admit: I played the emotion card. I got emotional. Not a tantrum, nothing loud or obnoxious: I'm too smart for that. I just got...sad. which made, I think, though I could be wrong, a slight chink in the armor of their self-convinced-ness. At one point I said I was sorry for taking such a strong position and after the call I got an email from the head of movies at the network: "You need never apologize for passion... that's what makes you so amazing creatively..." Which sounds nice, but it wasn't yet: "Yes, you're right, the final cues can stay as you have them." My poor executive producer was literally in tears after the call because she felt so bad that she couldn't fix this for me, that she had no power to set it right. The head of the studio may come in and argue my case, if it comes to that, though in the studio/network showdown the network always walks away blowing the smoke off the muzzle of its gun. For the moment what we seem--I stress seem--to have gotten is that they'll wait to hear the other cues the composer is working on before they make a decision.

This one I want to win.