already two days behind schedule, and every day costs me about twenty-one thousand dollars.” She got up and went to the chalkboard at the front of the room, which was actually a three-walled set built to impersonate a high school classroom for reasons I preferred not to speculate about. Tatiana and I were crammed into desks in the front row while Rodd Hull sat on the edge of the teacher’s desk in front of the chalkboard. Trey, wearing a golden dog-collar today, along with a pale yellow silk business suit that would have turned heads at a Braille convention, had been leaning against a wall until the squabbling prompted her into motion. Three of her hard guys, one of whom was Eduardo, bristled at the world in the corners. All of them bulged in the obvious places. Eduardo was obviously thrilled at being taken for a walk. He was wearing black leather gloves as though to conceal the tiny biceps in his fingers.
Trey picked up a piece of chalk and said, “Here are your basics.” She drew three horizontal lines on the board, each about two feet long, stacking one above the other, but staggering them so that the second line began below the one-quarter point in the top line, and the third line began a quarter of a way into the second. Next to the top line, Trey wrote, “First Wish.” She wrote “Second Wish” next to the second line and, apparentlygetting impatient with the process, put the number “3” next to the bottom line. “This is our time line,” she said.
It looked like this:
“Each of these lines is one of the movies,” she said. “The staggered lines represent start dates. You can get plot details and arches—”
“Arcs,” Rodd Hull said.
“I’m paying for them,” Trey said, “and I’ll call them whatever I want.” She waited to see whether Rodd would respond, but he found something that needed to be viewed through his viewfinder, and he viewed it.
Trey drew a dot roughly in the middle of the top line. “This is about where we’ll be tomorrow morning, roughly nine weeks into the process. We’ve used all the time until now getting the scripts right, doing the schedules and the budgets, developing the graphics for the titles and the ads, because we’re going to start advertising this movie long before we finish shooting it. We’ve hired Todd—sorry, Rodd—and Tatiana, and all the other talented people who will actually make the films. We’ve cast all the secondary parts, even the crowd scenes. And we’ve shot a bunch of second-unit stuff—cars in motion, the outsides of buildings, some scenes that don’t have our star in them. And finally, we’ve done some doubles work, by which I mean using a double for Thistle, wearing Thistle’s wardrobe—mostly shot from the back, walking on sidewalks, going through doors, getting onto elevators, and so forth.” She lowered the hand with the chalk in it and looked over at Rodd. “What have I forgotten?”
“Nothing whatsoever,” Rodd said. “Absolutely nothing. Brilliant, just brilliant.”
“We also designed and built the sets,” Tatiana said withouta glance at Rodd. “We identified and locked the locations. We leased the equipment we’re shooting with. We hired the publicist and the still man.”
“Thank you, Tatiana,” Trey said. Then, to me, she said, “And all of that hasn’t given us one second of what we’re all here to do, which is to get a single frame of film on Thistle Downing. And here’s where it gets hairy.”
She put the chalk on the dot in the top line and drew a vertical straight down so it intersected the other two horizontals. Then she measured off about another eight inches, made another dot on the top line, and drew another vertical line straight down.
Now it looked like this:
“This is it,” she said. “This little bit of space between those two vertical lines. This is the twelve-day period when we live or die. This period, which begins
tomorrow morning
, everybody, is the window of time during
Trey picked up a piece of chalk and said, “Here are your basics.” She drew three horizontal lines on the board, each about two feet long, stacking one above the other, but staggering them so that the second line began below the one-quarter point in the top line, and the third line began a quarter of a way into the second. Next to the top line, Trey wrote, “First Wish.” She wrote “Second Wish” next to the second line and, apparentlygetting impatient with the process, put the number “3” next to the bottom line. “This is our time line,” she said.
It looked like this:
“Each of these lines is one of the movies,” she said. “The staggered lines represent start dates. You can get plot details and arches—”
“Arcs,” Rodd Hull said.
“I’m paying for them,” Trey said, “and I’ll call them whatever I want.” She waited to see whether Rodd would respond, but he found something that needed to be viewed through his viewfinder, and he viewed it.
Trey drew a dot roughly in the middle of the top line. “This is about where we’ll be tomorrow morning, roughly nine weeks into the process. We’ve used all the time until now getting the scripts right, doing the schedules and the budgets, developing the graphics for the titles and the ads, because we’re going to start advertising this movie long before we finish shooting it. We’ve hired Todd—sorry, Rodd—and Tatiana, and all the other talented people who will actually make the films. We’ve cast all the secondary parts, even the crowd scenes. And we’ve shot a bunch of second-unit stuff—cars in motion, the outsides of buildings, some scenes that don’t have our star in them. And finally, we’ve done some doubles work, by which I mean using a double for Thistle, wearing Thistle’s wardrobe—mostly shot from the back, walking on sidewalks, going through doors, getting onto elevators, and so forth.” She lowered the hand with the chalk in it and looked over at Rodd. “What have I forgotten?”
“Nothing whatsoever,” Rodd said. “Absolutely nothing. Brilliant, just brilliant.”
“We also designed and built the sets,” Tatiana said withouta glance at Rodd. “We identified and locked the locations. We leased the equipment we’re shooting with. We hired the publicist and the still man.”
“Thank you, Tatiana,” Trey said. Then, to me, she said, “And all of that hasn’t given us one second of what we’re all here to do, which is to get a single frame of film on Thistle Downing. And here’s where it gets hairy.”
She put the chalk on the dot in the top line and drew a vertical straight down so it intersected the other two horizontals. Then she measured off about another eight inches, made another dot on the top line, and drew another vertical line straight down.
Now it looked like this:
“This is it,” she said. “This little bit of space between those two vertical lines. This is the twelve-day period when we live or die. This period, which begins
tomorrow morning
, everybody, is the window of time during
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