Post by Alexandra Bishop on Apr 16, 2016 3:42:10 GMT
I ran out of time on this one, so again, the ending is rushed. v.v;; Someday I'll write something where the ending isn't thrown together haphazardly...but HEY! Coleridge rarely finished anything and HE's still in a Norton Anthology. So pppbbbbbtttttt.
The doctor put his hand on her arm adn said gently, “you or the baby will survive. Not both. I’m sorry.”
Cecilia Winters waited. She stared expectantly at the doctor, her hands folded patiently over her bulging stomach with a placid look on her face, waiting for the surprise, the prank, her opportunity to fly off the handle and rant and rave and smack her laughing husband. Waiting for the flood of relief that would flow through her, making her dizzy. It never came. Instead, the Doctor looked down at his clipboard, fingers gripping the edges delicately as a deep frown carved black wrinkles into his face. He cleared his throat and looked towards her husband, Bruce, with an apologetic smile.
“I’ll leave the two of you alone,” he said quietly before bowing his head slightly at the trembling man and retreating from the room.
There was a moment’s pause, the only sound being the rapid breathing of her husband. The next instant he was at her side, hands groping blindly for her as tears fell down his cheeks. He kissed her knuckles and stared up at her through dark lashes.
“We’ll,” he choked, his voice lost in his grief. He took a deep breath to steady himself and forged ahead, “We’ll find another doctor. We’ll get a second opinion…”
“CUT! Reset the scene!”
The studio erupted into noise the second the megaphone buzzed to life. Make up artists swarmed onto the set, armed with brushes and powders as they danced around the actors and touched-up the makeup that had been sweated away by the harsh lights. Cameramen reset to their starting positions, lugging their hefty equipment with them as the director, a young upstart named John Pearle, took a passing glance at the monitors before stalking towards his lead.
“What was that?” he was shouting before he even reached them, and with a snort Rebecca King swung her legs out of the bed and went to meet the angry director halfway. They stood, glaring at each other, a feat that was funny to the casual observer since King was not only a foot taller than Pearle but was also sporting a fake padded pregnant belly harness that gave her a ridiculous baby bump. Pearle crossed his arms, let them fall to his side, recrossed them, then decided to let them rest on his hips like an upset school marm preparing to scold a student for eating glue.
“What the hell was that?” he repeated his question and King sniffed indignently.
“Acting?” she said.
“Acting?” Spit flew from his lips. “You call that acting!?” Pearle’s hands were given a task, and they flew violently to the script that was stashed in the inside pocket of his blazer. The script was pristine, the binding looked as if it had never been opened. He cracked it open now, his fingers flipping through the pages with alarming speed until they reached the selected scene. He glared at King for good measure and began, “Cecilia Winters is consumed with grief.” It was a stage direction, a footnote the writers had added in to give the director an idea of what the producers wanted the final shot to look like. He snapped the script shut as if that proved his point and waved at the set once more. “You call THAT being consumed by grief?”
“She’s in shock!” King insisted. “It’s not real to her yet! She needs time to let it sink in. That,” she motioned towards the hospital bed and her coworker who was flirting with the makeup girls, “was real!”
“And we don’t want real!” Pearle snapped. “If we wanted real, then we wouldn’t be watching TV! Every sick fuck that wants real would be sitting in an E.R! This is TV, this is drama! I want big crocodile tears. I want hissy fits and tantrums and ugly crying.”
King had had enough, and as her director continue to berate her, she undid the velcro straps of her belly and let it fall to the floor with a comical fwump. “I’m taking a break,” she announced midway through the rant and, turning on her heel, power walked out of the studio.
Pearle was after her in an instant.
He had to chase her through the parking lot, her long legs giving him one hell of an advantage as he dogged after her, howling. She was nearly at the steps to her trailer when Pearle, with a burst of energy, sprinted to catch her. He grabbed her arm, his fingers tightening painfully around her wrist, and she snapped. She pulled her hand away so violently that she smashed it against her trailer door, skinning her knuckles and causing a sharp pain to hiss out in between her teeth. It stung like a bitch, and her eyes teared up as she cradled her hand in between them as if to say, “look what you made me do!”
“You can still be recast,” he snapped, feeling slightly bad about her hand, and worse about the studio’s dwindling budget. “Do not get it into your fucking diva skull that you aren’t replacable!”
King stared at him for a moment as a frog lodged itself in her throat and her pretty face contorted into a deep scowl. She swayed on the step for a moment, glaring down at the smug face of her director.
“It didn’t hit me until I was in the parking lot,” she said. Her voice was low, but steady. It was an old pain, a deep pain, but it had scabbed over now and only stung on occasion. “I was fishing my keys out of my purse when it hit me. Me or the baby. I was eighteen, I was alone, and I had to make the hardest decision of my life. So don’t,” her voice cracked at last, the scabbed picked away from the wound, and she took a stuttered breath, “Don’t you dare think that you know what grief is. Don’t you fucing even BEGIN to think you understand what it’s like…”
Pearle didn’t say anything, nearly stared at her. What could he say? He couldn’t empathize. She was right, he had no idea what it was like to lose a child.
“What...what did you end up doing?” he asked softly.
King smiled wearily. “I...gods...I...went to Taco Bell.”
Pearle recoiled. “Taco Bell? But...there was a KFC in the same building…”
“CUT.”
“Yes,” the tears finally fell.
“I said cut!”
“Please tell me you didn’t get the burrito! C’mon, King, please tell me…”
King hung her head.
“That is your fifth strike!” Edward Baker called into his megaphone as the crew around him began to dissolve into giggles. It was infectious. Soon Jimmy Collachio and Sheila Wright were inconsolable, their improvised scene dissolving into fast food madness as their overworked brains latched onto the laughter and ran with it. The cameramen reset, mimicking the extras in the scene flawlessly, or had it been the other way around? The makeupartsts tried to approach Jimmy and Sheila, but decided that they would need to wait until the laughing fit subsided some before trying to touch up their makeups.
Edward Baker, a grizzled director and true Hollywood veteran, wondered just when the whole plot of his drama had turned into a surreal stoner flick. With a sigh, he turned towards the monitors and replayed the scene, wondering if there was anything from the shot that could be salvaged. The camera angles and lighting were phenomenal. The shapes and colors blurred and melded together in his signature style seamlessly, and he was certain that it was going to be the most dramatic and aesthetically pleasing fast food preference reveal in the history of cinematography. He shook his head, rubbing a gnarled hand over his bushy white eyebrows and wondering if he could try and calm his actors down enough to try for take 87.
He stood. It was a process in and of itself, and as he strained against the chair and his own creaking joints, he wondered just when he’d gotten so old. Finally on his feet, he hobbled towards his actors, picking his way slowly through wires and water bottles until he stood before the trailer. The more he moved, the more his joints loosened, and the easier he was able to move. By the time he made it out of the shade of the director’s tent and into the blistering sunshine of the parking lot, he moved at his usual mozy.
When he arrived, Jimmy and Sheila were sitting on the steps of the trailer and discussing nonsense, their scripts in hand. They were tired. The makeup department had done wonders to hide the bags under their eyes, and on camera they looked as if they’d gotten a full night’s sleep, but up close was a different story. Their skin was dry and flaky, their eyes glazed with fatigue. It was a testament to just how hard they were pushing themselves, and a deep pride settled within Baker as he fished his own script out of the inside pocket of his tweed jacket. He had never worked with Sheila and Jimmy before, but when they discovered that they would be working with THE Edward Baker, they were suddenly willing to push themselves to the limit. His career was so notorious that his movies were rarely ever referred to by their names, but rather as “An Edward Baker film.” The script for his first big blockbuster had recently sold for 12 million at auction, and as he thumbed through the dog-earred, note covered script in his hands, he wondered if this one would sell for nearly as much.
He doubted it would. Silly action-packed movies where things exploded always did better than personal dramas. This was Oscar bait, definitely, but he doubt it would be anything more than that. Which was a shame, since he was hoping the last movie of his career would be fantastic.
Sheila and Jimmy looked up from their scripts, and Baker put his hands on his hips, obviously displeased. The two snorted, and Baker felt his lips twitch into a small smile.
“I got that one from him earlier,” Jimmy said, launching himself onto his feet and putting his hands on his hips. “You damned kids!” he scowled, a remarkably good impersonation of Baker. Baker scowled, and Sheila began giggling again.
“What am I gonna do with the two of you? That’s fine strikes each, now. All that extra film is coming out of your paychecks.”
“Oh no!” Sheila sighed. “Whatever am I going to do? I’ll have to refinance the house!’
“Sell the farm!” Jimmy shouted. “Oh, Pa’s gonna be beside himself!”
“And what about Ma?” Sheila cried. “Oh, and Cindy and Mary-Lou…”
“I get it, I get it,” Baker sighed as the actors dissolved into insanity once more. He felt the hysteria poke at the back of his mind, but he waved it off. It wouldn’t do anyone any good if their leader succumbed to exhaustion induced hilarity.
“Do you two think you can run the scene seriously this time, or should we call it a day?”
Jimmy sighed. “I’m sorry, Eddie. I just...I’m so fucking tired.”
Sheila nodded. “That’s fine,” Baker said with a sagely nod. “You two have been working like dogs. Go take a break. We’ll pick back up in a few hours.”
He waved at his assistant director, and the man told the rest of the cast and crew to take five. The set dispersed, most of the employees heading towards the cafeteria, some to the smoke areas, and others to their private trailers. Baker himself returned to the abandoned tent, sitting by the monitors in his director’s chair, and flipping easily through the footage. Perched atop the monitors were a collection of pictures, his only “eccentricity,” since all geniuses were supposed to have one. The first was of a young couple, happy and smiling. It was old and grainy, but despite that the woman’s beauty was evident, and her smile was radiant. She was held by a younger director, a handsome man with bright eyes. The frame housed a soft photo of the couple, a bit older, but still just as happy. The woman’s stomach bulged, and the husband kissed it tenderly. The third was of the man alone, cradling a baby, holding the bottle to it’s mouth. The next was the girl’s first day of school, the father’s finger partially covering the lenses as the girl boarded the school bus. The next was graduation from high school, then college, then the girl appeared with her husband, equally happy, equally in love. The mother never appeared after those first few pictures, and Baker cast a sad, but fond, smile on the first of the series.
The doctor put his hand on her arm adn said gently, “you or the baby will survive. Not both. I’m sorry.”
Cecilia Winters waited. She stared expectantly at the doctor, her hands folded patiently over her bulging stomach with a placid look on her face, waiting for the surprise, the prank, her opportunity to fly off the handle and rant and rave and smack her laughing husband. Waiting for the flood of relief that would flow through her, making her dizzy. It never came. Instead, the Doctor looked down at his clipboard, fingers gripping the edges delicately as a deep frown carved black wrinkles into his face. He cleared his throat and looked towards her husband, Bruce, with an apologetic smile.
“I’ll leave the two of you alone,” he said quietly before bowing his head slightly at the trembling man and retreating from the room.
There was a moment’s pause, the only sound being the rapid breathing of her husband. The next instant he was at her side, hands groping blindly for her as tears fell down his cheeks. He kissed her knuckles and stared up at her through dark lashes.
“We’ll,” he choked, his voice lost in his grief. He took a deep breath to steady himself and forged ahead, “We’ll find another doctor. We’ll get a second opinion…”
“CUT! Reset the scene!”
The studio erupted into noise the second the megaphone buzzed to life. Make up artists swarmed onto the set, armed with brushes and powders as they danced around the actors and touched-up the makeup that had been sweated away by the harsh lights. Cameramen reset to their starting positions, lugging their hefty equipment with them as the director, a young upstart named John Pearle, took a passing glance at the monitors before stalking towards his lead.
“What was that?” he was shouting before he even reached them, and with a snort Rebecca King swung her legs out of the bed and went to meet the angry director halfway. They stood, glaring at each other, a feat that was funny to the casual observer since King was not only a foot taller than Pearle but was also sporting a fake padded pregnant belly harness that gave her a ridiculous baby bump. Pearle crossed his arms, let them fall to his side, recrossed them, then decided to let them rest on his hips like an upset school marm preparing to scold a student for eating glue.
“What the hell was that?” he repeated his question and King sniffed indignently.
“Acting?” she said.
“Acting?” Spit flew from his lips. “You call that acting!?” Pearle’s hands were given a task, and they flew violently to the script that was stashed in the inside pocket of his blazer. The script was pristine, the binding looked as if it had never been opened. He cracked it open now, his fingers flipping through the pages with alarming speed until they reached the selected scene. He glared at King for good measure and began, “Cecilia Winters is consumed with grief.” It was a stage direction, a footnote the writers had added in to give the director an idea of what the producers wanted the final shot to look like. He snapped the script shut as if that proved his point and waved at the set once more. “You call THAT being consumed by grief?”
“She’s in shock!” King insisted. “It’s not real to her yet! She needs time to let it sink in. That,” she motioned towards the hospital bed and her coworker who was flirting with the makeup girls, “was real!”
“And we don’t want real!” Pearle snapped. “If we wanted real, then we wouldn’t be watching TV! Every sick fuck that wants real would be sitting in an E.R! This is TV, this is drama! I want big crocodile tears. I want hissy fits and tantrums and ugly crying.”
King had had enough, and as her director continue to berate her, she undid the velcro straps of her belly and let it fall to the floor with a comical fwump. “I’m taking a break,” she announced midway through the rant and, turning on her heel, power walked out of the studio.
Pearle was after her in an instant.
He had to chase her through the parking lot, her long legs giving him one hell of an advantage as he dogged after her, howling. She was nearly at the steps to her trailer when Pearle, with a burst of energy, sprinted to catch her. He grabbed her arm, his fingers tightening painfully around her wrist, and she snapped. She pulled her hand away so violently that she smashed it against her trailer door, skinning her knuckles and causing a sharp pain to hiss out in between her teeth. It stung like a bitch, and her eyes teared up as she cradled her hand in between them as if to say, “look what you made me do!”
“You can still be recast,” he snapped, feeling slightly bad about her hand, and worse about the studio’s dwindling budget. “Do not get it into your fucking diva skull that you aren’t replacable!”
King stared at him for a moment as a frog lodged itself in her throat and her pretty face contorted into a deep scowl. She swayed on the step for a moment, glaring down at the smug face of her director.
“It didn’t hit me until I was in the parking lot,” she said. Her voice was low, but steady. It was an old pain, a deep pain, but it had scabbed over now and only stung on occasion. “I was fishing my keys out of my purse when it hit me. Me or the baby. I was eighteen, I was alone, and I had to make the hardest decision of my life. So don’t,” her voice cracked at last, the scabbed picked away from the wound, and she took a stuttered breath, “Don’t you dare think that you know what grief is. Don’t you fucing even BEGIN to think you understand what it’s like…”
Pearle didn’t say anything, nearly stared at her. What could he say? He couldn’t empathize. She was right, he had no idea what it was like to lose a child.
“What...what did you end up doing?” he asked softly.
King smiled wearily. “I...gods...I...went to Taco Bell.”
Pearle recoiled. “Taco Bell? But...there was a KFC in the same building…”
“CUT.”
“Yes,” the tears finally fell.
“I said cut!”
“Please tell me you didn’t get the burrito! C’mon, King, please tell me…”
King hung her head.
“That is your fifth strike!” Edward Baker called into his megaphone as the crew around him began to dissolve into giggles. It was infectious. Soon Jimmy Collachio and Sheila Wright were inconsolable, their improvised scene dissolving into fast food madness as their overworked brains latched onto the laughter and ran with it. The cameramen reset, mimicking the extras in the scene flawlessly, or had it been the other way around? The makeupartsts tried to approach Jimmy and Sheila, but decided that they would need to wait until the laughing fit subsided some before trying to touch up their makeups.
Edward Baker, a grizzled director and true Hollywood veteran, wondered just when the whole plot of his drama had turned into a surreal stoner flick. With a sigh, he turned towards the monitors and replayed the scene, wondering if there was anything from the shot that could be salvaged. The camera angles and lighting were phenomenal. The shapes and colors blurred and melded together in his signature style seamlessly, and he was certain that it was going to be the most dramatic and aesthetically pleasing fast food preference reveal in the history of cinematography. He shook his head, rubbing a gnarled hand over his bushy white eyebrows and wondering if he could try and calm his actors down enough to try for take 87.
He stood. It was a process in and of itself, and as he strained against the chair and his own creaking joints, he wondered just when he’d gotten so old. Finally on his feet, he hobbled towards his actors, picking his way slowly through wires and water bottles until he stood before the trailer. The more he moved, the more his joints loosened, and the easier he was able to move. By the time he made it out of the shade of the director’s tent and into the blistering sunshine of the parking lot, he moved at his usual mozy.
When he arrived, Jimmy and Sheila were sitting on the steps of the trailer and discussing nonsense, their scripts in hand. They were tired. The makeup department had done wonders to hide the bags under their eyes, and on camera they looked as if they’d gotten a full night’s sleep, but up close was a different story. Their skin was dry and flaky, their eyes glazed with fatigue. It was a testament to just how hard they were pushing themselves, and a deep pride settled within Baker as he fished his own script out of the inside pocket of his tweed jacket. He had never worked with Sheila and Jimmy before, but when they discovered that they would be working with THE Edward Baker, they were suddenly willing to push themselves to the limit. His career was so notorious that his movies were rarely ever referred to by their names, but rather as “An Edward Baker film.” The script for his first big blockbuster had recently sold for 12 million at auction, and as he thumbed through the dog-earred, note covered script in his hands, he wondered if this one would sell for nearly as much.
He doubted it would. Silly action-packed movies where things exploded always did better than personal dramas. This was Oscar bait, definitely, but he doubt it would be anything more than that. Which was a shame, since he was hoping the last movie of his career would be fantastic.
Sheila and Jimmy looked up from their scripts, and Baker put his hands on his hips, obviously displeased. The two snorted, and Baker felt his lips twitch into a small smile.
“I got that one from him earlier,” Jimmy said, launching himself onto his feet and putting his hands on his hips. “You damned kids!” he scowled, a remarkably good impersonation of Baker. Baker scowled, and Sheila began giggling again.
“What am I gonna do with the two of you? That’s fine strikes each, now. All that extra film is coming out of your paychecks.”
“Oh no!” Sheila sighed. “Whatever am I going to do? I’ll have to refinance the house!’
“Sell the farm!” Jimmy shouted. “Oh, Pa’s gonna be beside himself!”
“And what about Ma?” Sheila cried. “Oh, and Cindy and Mary-Lou…”
“I get it, I get it,” Baker sighed as the actors dissolved into insanity once more. He felt the hysteria poke at the back of his mind, but he waved it off. It wouldn’t do anyone any good if their leader succumbed to exhaustion induced hilarity.
“Do you two think you can run the scene seriously this time, or should we call it a day?”
Jimmy sighed. “I’m sorry, Eddie. I just...I’m so fucking tired.”
Sheila nodded. “That’s fine,” Baker said with a sagely nod. “You two have been working like dogs. Go take a break. We’ll pick back up in a few hours.”
He waved at his assistant director, and the man told the rest of the cast and crew to take five. The set dispersed, most of the employees heading towards the cafeteria, some to the smoke areas, and others to their private trailers. Baker himself returned to the abandoned tent, sitting by the monitors in his director’s chair, and flipping easily through the footage. Perched atop the monitors were a collection of pictures, his only “eccentricity,” since all geniuses were supposed to have one. The first was of a young couple, happy and smiling. It was old and grainy, but despite that the woman’s beauty was evident, and her smile was radiant. She was held by a younger director, a handsome man with bright eyes. The frame housed a soft photo of the couple, a bit older, but still just as happy. The woman’s stomach bulged, and the husband kissed it tenderly. The third was of the man alone, cradling a baby, holding the bottle to it’s mouth. The next was the girl’s first day of school, the father’s finger partially covering the lenses as the girl boarded the school bus. The next was graduation from high school, then college, then the girl appeared with her husband, equally happy, equally in love. The mother never appeared after those first few pictures, and Baker cast a sad, but fond, smile on the first of the series.
