Page 79 of Playworld
“Are you going to do the play?” Amanda asked.
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“You know the movie they’re doing across the street from your school?”
“Yes.”
“I’m in it.”
“Really?” she said. “Like a part?”
“Do you want to see us film on Friday?”
“Absolutely,” she said.
“We’re shooting outside so just come by when you get out.”
Someone spoke to Amanda in the background. “My mom needs me to run an errand now, but I’ll see you at the end of the week.”
After she hung up, I replaced the receiver in its cradle. Then I pulled the chain to the bulb in the ceiling. In the dark, I slid down in my chair, resting my feet against the door. I laced my fingers behind my head and rocked onto the chair’s back legs. I could feel the entire outline of my body, toes to fingers, soles to shoulders. The exact width of my smile.
—
By now, everyone in my family had read the script ofTake Two.On its facing pages, in her perfect cursive, Mom had taken notes that readMotif of performance, Movie within the movie, Triangles,orMotif of adult injury. Oren had put hearts on the call sheet when Diane Lane was shooting. Two years ago, after seeingA Little Romance,he had taped her cover photo fromTimemagazine—its headline read “Hollywood’s Whiz Kids”—to the wall by his bed. Dad, who’d been rehearsing late, so that he often missed dinner, had highlighted the lines in all my scenes.
The plot ofTake Twowas hard for me to follow because it was out of sequence. It cut between Konig’s past and present, between the movie that he was making as well as what was happening in his life, which was a mess because the people he’d hurt or ignored while making movies—his ex-wife, his son, his sister, and his fiancée—were all making demands on him for different reasons. His older sister, Blair (played by Cloris Leachman), who was dying of cancer, had been estranged from Konig for years because she felt that the sisters in his movies were, she said, “gross misrepresentations” of her. She wanted Konig to admit to this and apologize before she died. “I never browbeat you like Claudia inHershkowitz,” she said from her hospital bed, “and I certainly didn’t tell your wife about your affair, like Mira inMishegoss!” At the same time, Konig’s ex-wife and my mom wanted to clear the air between them. Not only because she was sad and angry that their marriage had ended, but because she felt his impending marriage was a distraction from all the problems between him and me, which she believed he was running out of time to repair. “Just like you’re running out of time to patch things up with your sister,” she told Konig during a fight at the Russian Tea Room. Meanwhile, Shelley Duvall, playing Konig’s fiancée and the star of his new movie, was having terrible panic attacks on set because she was certain he was disappointed in her performance. Plus, she was paranoid that he was obsessed with my math tutor—which was true—whom I had a crush on as well. All these factors were interfering with the completion of Konig’s new film, “not least of which,” he complained to his psychologist, played by Elliott Gould, “is that I keep rewriting the final act.”
On set the following day, while we were mid-scene, Hornbeam called, “Cut.” I could tell he was slightly annoyed. Once again, he pulled me aside. “Griffin,” he said, “I need you to remember what’s going on here please. Earlier that morning, you had your Saturday session with Dr. Gould. So the talk you two had about your father is very much on your mind.” I recalled the scene to which he was referring but didn’t quite have it at hand, which Hornbeam must’ve sensed, because he added, “Take the pile of manure you dumped about your father in therapy and hand it off to me first chance you get.” We did at least ten takes. When Hornbeam finally said, “Print that,” he was not emphatic.
And when we wrapped for the day, Hornbeam called me over to joinhim by the window seat. There was a view from here of Nightingale’s blue doors, which I made every effort not to look at, girding myself, as I was, to be dressed down. To my surprise, Hornbeam held up a sheet of paper and from behind his ear produced a Sharpie. He laid the former between us. “You know what Freytag’s Pyramid is?” he asked. When I shook my head, he said, “It describes the shape of most stories. I find making one of these always helps me to know where I am when I’m acting in one of my pictures. Kind of like a map. Especially when we’re shooting scenes out of order.” On the blank page, he drew a flat line that rose to a summit, dipped, and then, halfway down, extended straight out from its midpoint:
“See this flat line here? That’s the exposition. The ‘once upon a time there was’ part. You take Latin? We beginin medias res,in the middle of a thing. Like in dreams. Next, we’ve got our inciting incident. Here. At the pyramid’s base. That’s the event that spins everything in a different direction. I like to call this the ‘interruption of quiescence’ but only because it makes me sound smart. ‘Quiescence’? It means ‘quiet.’ You seeThe Empire Strikes Back? Of course you did. Even the Ayatollah saw it. At a private screening with Brezhnev. According to my sources, they thought it was better than the first one. Anyway, you know when Luke escapes the snow monster and Obi-Wan Kenobi tells him he’s got to go to the Dagobah system and train under Yoda? Inciting incident. If we’re splitting hairs, it’s when they destroy the rebel base, but you get my drift. And everything intensifies from there, this rising action going up, up, up, the pyramid like a pot of water coming to a boil, there are all sorts of fights and chases, our heroes face all kinds of obstacles all way to here”—he pointed to the summit—“the climax. The point of maximum tension: the battle between Vader and Luke. No quarter asked and none given, the fight ending when Darth chops off Skywalker’s hand.‘Luke,’Vader says,‘I am your father.’After which there’s the denouement, which is French for basicallyphew,which is falling action, is aftermath and mop-up. Luke escapes, gets his robot hand. He’s permanently scarred, he is forever partly his father. The rebels live to fight another day.
“Now, me, beforeIstart a picture, I make notes on this pyramid, all along these lines, about the important things that happen in the story. Here”—he made a dot on the base of the pyramid—“is where Konig reads the terrible reviews of his latest picture.” Another dot. “Here: where Blair learns she’s got three months to live.” Another dot. “Here: the scene where Elliott and Bernie have their breakthrough therapy session and afterward Bernie confronts Konig about being a shitty father. And here: where Konig figures out the end of his movie. This sheet, I labelP,for ‘plot.’ ” He made aPin the upper left-hand corner, then laid another sheet of paper over it and traced the exact same lines. “This sheet, you labelB,for ‘Bernie.’ So…” And he made dots along the graph. “Here’s where Bernie’s dad meets Diane. Here’s where Bernie and his father have a catch in Central Park. Here’s where Bernie finally lets his father have it for being so out to lunch his whole life.” Then Hornbeam laid the B over the P. Then the P over the B. I could see the tracery beneath each. “This way,” he said, “you can chart your character’s movement, from alpha to omega. Because that’s what every story’s about, young Skywalker, it’s about moving off a starting point or resisting change with everything you got. Protagonist versus antagonist until death do they part. Use this method”—he held the sheets and Sharpie toward me—“and you always know where you are when we’re shooting.” He retracted them when I reached out. “But it doesn’t work,” he warned, “if you don’t make your own.Comprendo?”
I spent the entirety of Tuesday night doing this, to the exclusion of my school assignments. On Wednesday, after a particularly long day of shooting, and only three takes to nail my therapy scene with Elliott—we used the third-floor study as his office—Hornbeam placed both his hands on my shoulders and said, “Would that every adult I worked with took direction so well.” And this filled me with pride.
But that night, I found myself so far behind in my homework, I was miserable. I had school the next day, plus a big scene to prepare forFriday’s shoot, and especially with Amanda coming, I wanted to be at my best. It felt likeThe Nuclear Familyall over again, plus Dad was home early.
Before dinner, Mom knocked on my door and then opened it. “I’m making pork chops,” she said. “You and your dad’s favorite.” She surveyed the scene. “You want some tea or something?”
“I’m fine.”
She cupped her hand to her mouth and whispered, “It would mean a lot to your father if you rehearsed with him.”
My glare did not meanno,so she smiled like we’d made an agreement and went back to cooking.
If I’d had a stopwatch, I could’ve set it to the exact time it took Dad to knock.
“Mom said you wanted my help.”
I opened the door and glumly handed him the script. He visibly brightened, and I followed after him as he took a seat on the couch. I sat across from him, on the rocking chair, and rocked as if I were generating electricity.
“Maybe you want to stand,” he said.
“Why?”