Terry said, ‘Beale Films won’t use him now because of the time he shot two thousand feet one day at Ascot without an 85 filter, and there wasn’t another race meeting due there until a month after they ran into compensation time...’
Terry was fat, bald, forty, and had given up earlier aspirations to climb to Director of Photography with his name writ large in credits. He had settled instead for being a steady, reliable, experienced, and continually in-work craftsman, and Conrad always liked to have him on his team.
Simon joined us and Conrad gave him, too, a glass of sangria. Simon, the clapper/loader of Terry’s crew, had less assurance than he ought to have had at twenty-three, and was sometimes naïve to the point where one speculated about arrested development. His job entailed operating the clapper board before every shot, keeping careful records of the type and footage of film used, and loading the raw film into the magazines which were used in the cameras.
Terry himself had taught him how to load the magazines, a job which meant winding unexposed film on to reels, in total darkness and by feel only. Everyone, to begin with, learned how to do it with unwanted exposed film in a well-lit room, and practised it over and over until they could do it with their eyes shut. When Simon could do this faultlessly, Terry sent him to load some magazines in earnest, and it was not until after a long day’s shooting that the laboratory discovered all the film to be completely black.
Simon, it appeared, had done exactly what he had been taught: gone into the loading room and threaded the film on to the magazine with his eyes shut. And left the electric light on while he did it.
He took a sip of his pink restorer, looked at the others in bewilderment, and said, ‘Evan told me to write “print” against every one of those shots we took today.’ He searched their faces for astonishment and found none. ‘But, I say,’ he protested, ‘if all the first takes were good enough to print, why on earth did he go on doing so many?’
No one answered except Conrad, who looked at him with pity and said, ‘Work it out, dear boy. Work it out.’ But Simon hadn’t the equipment.
The bar room was large and cool, with thick white-painted walls and a brown tiled floor: pleasant in the daytime, when we were seldom there, but too stark at night because of the glaring striplighting some insensitive soul had installed on the ceiling. The four girls, sitting languidly round a table with half empty glasses of lime juice and Bacardi and soda, took on a greenish tinge as the sunlight faded outside, and aged ten years. The pouches beneath Conrad’s eyes developed shadows, and Simon’s chin receded too far for flattery.
Another long evening stretched ahead, exactly like the nine that had gone before: several hours of shop and gossip punctuated by occasional brandies, cigars and a Spanish-type dinner. I hadn’t even any lines to learn for the next day, as my entire vocal contribution to Scenes 624 and 625 was to be a variety of grunts and mumbles. I would be glad, I thought, by God I would be glad, to get back home.
We went in to eat in a private dining-room as uninviting as the bar. I found myself between Simon and the handcuffs’ girl, two-thirds of the way along one side of the long table at which we all sat together haphazardly. About twenty-five of us, there were: all technicians of some sort except me and the actor due to amble to the rescue as a Mexican peasant. The group had been cut to a minimum, and our stay scheduled for as short a time as possible: the management had wanted even the desert scenes shot at Pinewood like the rest of the film, or at least on some dried up bit of England, but the original director had stuck out for the authentic shimmer of real heat, damn and bless his departed spirit.
There was an empty space around the far side of the table.
No Evan.
‘He’s telephoning,’ the handcuffs’ girl said. ‘I think he’s been telephoning ever since we came back.’
I nodded. Evan telephoned the management most evenings, though not normally at great length. He was probably having difficulty getting through.
‘I’ll be glad to go home,’ the girl said, sighing. Her first location job, which she had looked forward to, was proving disappointing; boring, too hot and no fun. Jill — her real name was Jill, though Evan had started calling her Handcuffs, and most of the unit had copied him — slid a speculative look sideways at my face, and added, ‘Won’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said neutrally.
Conrad, sitting opposite, snorted loudly. ‘Handcuffs, dear girl, that’s cheating. Anyone who prods him has her bet cancelled.’
‘It wasn’t a prod,’ she said defensively.
‘Next best thing.’
‘Just how many of you are in this pool?’ I asked sarcastically.
‘Everyone except Evan,’ Conrad admitted cheerfully. ‘Quite a healthy little jackpot it is.’
‘And has anyone lost their money yet?’
Conrad chuckled. ‘Most of them, dear boy. This afternoon.’
‘And you,’ I said, ‘have you?’
He narrowed his eyes at me and put his head on one side. ‘You’ve a temper that blows the roof off, but usually on behalf of someone else.’
‘He can’t answer your question, you see,’ Jill explained to me. ‘That’s against the rules too.’
But I had worked with Conrad on three previous films, and he had indeed told me where he had placed his bet.
Evan came back from telephoning, walked purposefully to his empty chair, and splashed busily into his turtle soup. Intent, concentrated, he stared at the table and either didn’t hear or didn’t wish to hear, Terry’s tentative generalities.
I looked at Evan thoughtfully. At forty he was wiry, of medium height and packed with aggressive energy. He had undisciplined black curling hair, a face in which even the bones looked determined, and fierce hot brown eyes. That evening the eyes were looking inwards, seeing visions in his head; and the tumultuous activity going on in there showed unmistakably in the tension in his muscles. His spoon was held in rigid fingers, and his neck and back were as stiff as stakes.
I didn’t like his intensity, not at any time or in any circumstances. It always set up in me the unreasonable reaction of wanting to avoid doing what he was pressing for, even when his ideas made good sense. That evening he was building up a good head of steam, and my own antipathy rose to match.
He shovelled his way briskly through the anglicised paella which followed, and pushed his empty plate away decisively.
‘Now...’ he said: and everybody listened. His voice sounded loud and high, strung up with his inner urgency. It would have been impossible to sit in that room and ignore him.
‘As you know, this film we are making is called Man in a Car.’
We knew.
‘And as you know, the car has figured in at least half the scenes that have been shot.’
We knew that too, better than he did, as we had been with it all through.
‘Well...’ he paused, looking round the table, collecting eyes. ‘I have been talking to the producer, and he agrees... I want to change the emphasis... change the whole shape of the film. There are going to be a number of flashbacks now, and not just one. The story will jump back every time from the desert scene and each desert shot will give an impression of the days passing, and show the man growing weaker. There is to be no rescue, as such. This means, I’m afraid, Stephen...’ He looked directly at the other actor, ‘...that your part is out entirely, but you will of course be paid what was agreed.’ He turned back to the unit in general. ‘We are going to scrap those cool witty scenes of reunion with the girl that you did at Pine-wood. Instead, we will end the film with the reverse of the opening. That is to say, a helicopter shot that starts with the car in close-up and gradually recedes from it until it is merely a dot on the plain. The view will widen just at the end to indicate a peasant walking along a ridge of hill, leading a donkey, and everyone who sees the film can decide for himself whether the peasant rescues the man, or passes by without seeing him.’