Scrappy Little Nobody(46)

I said that to my boss. And the crazy thing was, I don’t think I was joking. Luckily for me, Jake laughed really hard anyway. Zac went for it, because he’s a better person than me, and did a couple of really funny, really gross takes. He was so close to me, I could smell it from inside his mouth.

My god. How is he not throwing up right now?

And then he threw up. I was barefoot.

Sidebar: working with Zac Efron gave me a real-life understanding of how Charlie Manson got all those people to move to a ranch and do his bidding. Hear me out!

Last year I read this biography of Charlie Manson that managed to viscerally capture the atmosphere of the time and the mania of his followers. BUT I’ve still never been able to reconcile the whole “Yeah, but why did anyone follow this guy in the first place?” question. One week of knowing Zac and I got it.

Yes, Zac is unconscionably handsome, but I’m telling you that’s not why people love him. (And I’m the first to discredit the achievements of the attractive and attribute their successes only to their physical appearance. Charming, aren’t I?) People are just drawn to this guy. They behave like monkeys around him. Women behave like monkeys around most famous men, but it has more of a Magic Mike, aren’t-I-being-naughty vibe. Women fawn over George Clooney and think they’re being cute. Men fawn over famous guys in a bro-love way and usually want to show off by buying the guy a drink. But you know those movies where some remote culture sees a dude in armor for the first time and mistakes him for a god? It’s like that with Zac.

People are drawn to Zac because he has the confidence of The Alpha. In Hawaii, I once watched a pack of local teenagers shadow him around a series of waterfalls like they were baby birds on the Discovery Channel. It was as if they had no choice in the matter. We’d gone to do some cliff diving, and every jump that Zac was willing to try was soon mounted by the rest of the onlookers. Even the muscle-bound tourists and the aloof locals couldn’t help but steal a glance after they’d hit the water to see if Dad had been watching.

Based on his thrill-seeking recreational activities, I suspect some small part of Zac genuinely believes he’s immortal. And honestly . . . he might be. That’s probably what the magnetism is at its core. If there’d been an electrical surge, cutting off contact with the outside world, trapping us on the island forever, Zac Efron would have been the king of Oahu within forty-eight hours.



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I. Debatable.





twilight


For those of you thinking, Wait, she was in Twilight?, I sure was! I was the sassy, awkward friend who broke up the relentless succession of intense stare-downs with musings on boys, tanning, and various school gossip. It was a sweet gig. The rest of the actors had to bring heart and honesty to fantasy situations involving life, death, eternal love, and the preservation of one’s immortal soul. All I had to do was make jokes about how everyone was acting weird all the time.

The best part was that I got all the fun with none of the consequences! I got to show up to this mega-franchise for one to three weeks per movie, bear witness to the madness, and act like an idiot. I was once allowed to go on a rant about the zombie apocalypse genre (which was mostly a shout-out to Edgar Wright) and it actually ended up in the film. And I wasn’t saddled with the creepy super-fame. Most of the cast couldn’t walk out the door without being mobbed, but, weirdly, the vapid friend from school didn’t inspire the same zeal in fans. None of the other filmmakers I worked with during those years had ever seen Twilight, but the series kept me in room and board while I did their movies for no money. It was like the world’s most ridiculous day job.

I have a vivid memory of my first day on the first movie. The cast and crew had been shooting for several weeks already and I was brought to the set to say hello to the director before my first scene the next day. Usually, a cast is happy to see additional characters; it’s nice to get some new blood. Walking into the lunch tent felt like a scene from Band of Brothers. These were Toccoa men and I was the idiot greenhorn showing up like, “Hey, bros! Who’s amped to get in there and rip it up?!”

Kellan Lutz is the sweetest guy, but that day I think he might have strangled me if he’d had the energy. Kristen Stewart—one of the most committed actors I’ve ever worked with—made a valiant effort to be friendly, but I could tell she was putting her back into it. Underneath every word, I heard You don’t know, man, you don’t know what it’s like out there.

Wet and cold is not an environment conducive to making friends. Imagine if the first four weeks of a new job were spent outdoors in the freezing rain. Even when you all got to go inside, you’d just want to sleep and defrost your toes. You can’t create many inside jokes when you’re mostly numb. We were shooting in Oregon and Canada, in some of the most breathtaking locations I’ve ever seen. I would have enjoyed them more if I’d been in galoshes and a winter jacket. As it happened, we were pretending it was late spring, and after my first thirty minutes on set, ice-cold water had seeped through my Converse and saturated my cotton socks. Only fourteen hours to go!

On a small set, I might have had the luxury of a fluffy coat to run to before and after a scene. On Twilight, I was referred to most often as “Number 44.” A coat wasn’t in the cards.

I’d also like to mention the real MVPs of the Twilight movies: the background actors. Sometimes referred to as “extras,” background actors have the most thankless job on set. By the fourth movie, old “Number 44” had at least earned herself itself a coat. But movie four was brutally cold. Especially the wedding scenes. Between shots the background actors stood around those space heaters that do almost nothing, but they didn’t have winter coats. And they would come back the next day!