Unsympathetic Magic - Laura Resnick [4]
“Christ, I look so red,” he said. “What the fuck did you put on me?”
“Actually, I’ve been trying to tone down the red ever since you got on set,” she said patiently. “Your color is really heightened tonight.”
She was right. It was. I realized I had unconsciously assumed they’d rouged him heavily for this scene—maybe to emphasize Conway’s emotional conflict.
“Of course, it’s heightened,” Nolan snapped. “It’s so goddamn hot out here tonight.” He said absently to me, “Aren’t you hot?”
“Uh-huh.” It was early August, so it had been hot every night of the shoot. These were the dog days of summer.
Nolan dragged his forearm across his forehead, smudging his makeup. I saw that they had indeed powdered him quite a bit tonight in an attempt to tone down his heightened color.
“Jesus, I’m really sweating,” he said. “It’s like a steam bath out here. There’s no damn air.”
Actually, here in East Harlem, we were close enough to the river that a slight breeze was coming down the street to us from the water. And since we weren’t surrounded by the stench of urine tonight, I thought this was a distinct improvement over our previous night’s location.
But Nolan said, “I feel like I’m going to throw up. Have you got something for that?”
The makeup artist signaled to a production assistant, who in turn spoke into her walkie-talkie, asking someone to bring something to “Mr. Nolan” for his nausea. The makeup artist went back to trying to tone down the color of Nolan’s face, but he brushed aside her hand again, irritably insisting that she wait until he felt better.
I sighed and went to find a chair, since standing around in Jilly’s high heels for any length of time made my feet hurt.
As I expected, Nolan’s queasy stomach led to delays while he rejected various remedies offered to him, then threw a tantrum about the crew’s failure to have on hand the exact product he wanted. A production assistant was sent to 125th Street, a few blocks away, in search of an open shop where the correct item could be purchased for poor Mr. Nolan’s aching tummy. I resented the delay—especially after having been through numerous delays this week, always because of Nolan—but I also didn’t particularly want him vomiting while I was kneeling right in front of him. Besides, I was just a guest performer, and an unknown one, at that. So I sat quietly, the perfect picture of patience, and endured the lengthy wait that ensued before Nolan finally felt ready to work.
By then, I was pretty sweaty. The breeze from the Harlem River notwithstanding, it was a hot night, and Jilly wasn’t dressed for this weather. (Based on a line in the script about her needing to find someplace to stay before the weather turned cold, I assumed the episode was set in autumn.) I was wearing a low-cut leopard-patterned Lycra top with sleeves that came down to my elbows; an uncomfortably short, tight, red vinyl skirt with a studded belt; purple fishnet stockings; and black high-heeled boots. Completing Jilly’s ensemble was a curly lamb vest. Wearing that vest in this weather was unbearable, so it always stayed on the garment rack until just before I stepped in front of the cameras.
Now that Nolan was pacing around in front of the cameras and revving up for the scene, I let the wardrobe mistress slip the pale, furry vest over my arms and onto my shoulders. A few minutes later, Jilly’s immense purse, containing all her worldly goods, was slung over my shoulder. A production assistant stood nearby with some knee pads, which I’d be using later; I would only have to kneel directly on bare cement in the master shots where my legs would be visible.
In the opening portion of the scene, Conway and Jilly would exchange a page of dialogue face- to-face before he’d rough her up and force her to her knees. We had already worked on the blocking for this, and now I joined Nolan in front of the cameras so the crew could verify all our marks. Television and film work tends to involve a lot of technical considerations, such as making sure you’re in focus, in the frame, audible, and correctly