Only in Your Dreams (Gossip Girl #9)(38)

Just like the shoe department during the end-of-season sale.

“Okay, let’s do a take!” the assistant yelled. Everyone scurried away and Ken Mogul waved at Vanessa, who was stationed to his right, peering through the viewfinder of her camera.“Go ahead and roll,Vanessa.”

“We’re rolling!” Vanessa shouted proudly. She’d always dreamed of saying that, although she’d imagined saying it inside a morgue or some other grim place where her first inde-pendent feature would be set. Certainly not in Barneys with Thaddeus Smith playing the lead. Still, she’d come a long way since directing an adaptation of War and Peace for school.

Today was the second day of shooting and they were scheduled to wrap a pivotal dinner scene between Thaddeus, playing Jeremy, and indie starlet Miranda Grace, who was playing Helena, the villain. Breakfast at Fred’s was the first film she’d made without her twin sister, Coco. Officially, Miranda was striking out on her own, but really, Coco was in rehab. She’d been replaced by a girl named Courtney Pinard Ken had discovered skateboarding in Washington Square Park, who could actually do the skating stunts Coco had been too wasted to learn.

On set, Miranda picked up her ice-filled cocktail tumbler, gave it a swirl, then drained it in one sip. She cleared her throat noisily and reached across the table to grab Thaddeus’s hand. “Darling, do you believe in fate?” she asked.

Her words echoed around the set, which was quiet enough that Vanessa could make out the tinkling of ice in Miranda’s glass.

“I’m not sure what I believe in anymore,” Thaddeus responded quietly. “I do know one thing, though.” He paused.

This was the moment that Vanessa—that everyone on set— had been dreading. Serena was supposed to burst into the restaurant, trailing a tattered mink stole, and join the couple at their table.

A moment passed. Then another.

No Serena. No Holly. No one.

“Fucking cut!” barked Ken Mogul.

“Cut, everyone,” echoed the first assistant director calmly, and suddenly the set came alive: a swarm of makeup people and hair stylists emerged from the shadows, teasing Thaddeus’s hair, reapplying gloss to Miranda’s lips. A prop assistant refilled the glass Miranda had been swirling, wiping her lipstick from the rim.

“Will someone,” Ken whispered, “please tell Miss Fucking van der Fucking Whatever-the-f*ck-her-name-is to get on her damn mark and make this f*cking picture, please?”

“Sorry, sorry!” called Serena, stumbling onto the set, bran-dishing a menacing Bailey Winter stiletto. “I was still in wardrobe. I’m sorry, these shoes, they’re just—”

“Serena on the set!” cried the second assistant director.

Thanks for the update.

“Holly, Holly, Holly.” Ken Mogul shook his head. “To your mark, okay? Let’s do this again.”

The army of assistants retreated to the shadows and they ran the scene once more. This time, as Thaddeus was on the verge of responding to Miranda’s question, Serena burst into the restaurant, right on cue, adjusting the stole that had slipped from her bare shoulder.

“I’m here, I’m here,” she chirped, striding past the other tables, swishing her tiered chiffon Bailey Winter dress. She dragged over a chair from an unoccupied table and sat.

“Can I help you?” snapped Miranda.

“Cut, please, cut, right now,” Ken Mogul muttered.

“Cut!” cried his loyal loudmouthed assistant.

“Miranda and Serena, please, you’re Helena and Holly now. Make us believe it,” he said. “Miranda, make me believe that you’re a woman who could run the world.”

Miranda nodded blankly, batting her fake eyelashes. She was from the Lower East Side. She’d gone to a slutty Catholic school. Her favorite food was Kraft mac & cheese. She clearly had no idea what he was talking about.

Did anyone?

During the third take, everything seemed to come together. Thaddeus and Miranda sparkled, nailing their lines perfectly, even throwing in some adlibbed business about that day’s specials. The lighting looked beautiful and natural, with no accidental glares or twinkles, the sound quality was perfect. And Serena arrived on time, didn’t fumble a line or any of her blocking, and when Ken yelled, “Cut!” it was because the scene was in the bag.

“Maybe this won’t be so bad after all,” the director stage whispered to Vanessa. “That’s it for now, people,” he yelled. “Let’s take fifteen.”

He turned back to Vanessa and said, in a normal tone of voice: “You’re up, kid. Let’s see what you got.”

No problem,Vanessa thought. Things might be all f*cked up with everything else—like whatever the hell was going on with Dan—but she knew what to do with a camera.

Ken Mogul dragged his canvas director’s chair over to the playback monitor, where he’d be able to screen the footage Vanessa had just shot. Vanessa’s assistant camera guy rolled the footage and Vanessa joined the director, watching over his shoulder.

The first time they’d run the scene, Vanessa had used a straightforward angle, moving the camera in and then out to capture the nuances in the performances, but all in all keeping a fairly traditional distance from the actors. It looked wooden and stiff to her; it was clean and tidy but unimaginative. The second time they’d rolled, she’d tried something radically different, zooming in to focus first on Thaddeus’s lips and then panning up to examine his eyelashes. She’d used this strategy with his costar, too, to get a rapid-fire, music video effect that was really impressionistic. It was more challenging than what you usually saw in a movie, but it was also better. On the third take she’d gone even further, letting the camera’s gaze linger on the ice dancing in the glass of water on the table. She thought it was a fitting way to symbolize the characters’ complex relationships with each other. It was some of her best work.