Fight Night(34)

Eventually the dogs became her friends but by that time she wasn’t getting enough to eat because she was giving her food to the dogs to keep them from attacking her … and there wasn’t much food in the first place … The director had hired a local woman to cook for them … but this woman left at some point … people were always coming and going … and there were so many fights with the director … yelling, screaming … all in Albanian or French, which your mom couldn’t understand … The food was running out … somebody was supposed to bring food … but the director had to get money sent from somewhere first … And everything was breaking down … the film equipment wasn’t working … So there was not enough food … and not enough blankets at night and it was so cold … and not enough clean drinking water … The director told them they could all drink from the taps but then every one of them got sick … very sick … your mom told me she had an accident in her sleep. She shit the bed! Okay, I apologize … Swiv … it’s sickness. It’s just the body … But it was that bad. And she had to drag all her sheets to the beach … and rinse the sheets out in the sea … it was the middle of the night … and she was so sick …

The director got a farmer to give them all pills of some kind … But your mom didn’t know what the pills were … there were many language barriers … so she just pretended to take the pills … And there she was with no passport, fending off crazy dogs and starving and freezing at night and getting burnt to a crisp during the day … standing outside day after day waiting for … waiting for what? Waiting for light, for rain … waiting for Godot! Most of the time she didn’t understand what was being said on the set … and the director was always mad, always yelling … he was lecturing everyone about preparing to die. They needed to be ready to die! he said. To die for his film, to die for art.

Your mom told me about this young guy from Lithuania … this young guy was a grip … he’d heard that this great director … the director was famous although I’d never heard of him … this young guy had heard that this famous director was making a movie in Albania and so he went there … He wanted to work for this director. He’d just finished film school … but the director didn’t want to hire him … And the young guy had no money to get back to Lithuania, so he was stuck … The director wanted him to sleep outside at first, but then he finally let this guy sleep on the floor in one of the lighthouses. He didn’t give him a blanket … he didn’t give him food. Your mom gave the young guy some food and one of her blankets. She told him to sleep on the couch, not the floor. The director ignored this guy and told him he was an idiot for coming there with no way of getting home. Finally someone driving to Tirana said the young guy could go with him. Your mom wanted to go too … she said she’d buy some food or whatnot … and come back … but the director said no, she was needed for a scene.

After that, your mom asked the director if she could fly with the reels to Paris … This would happen every week or two … there were so many delays … they were waiting for rain, then sun, then rain … and someone had to fly back to Paris with the reels every week or two … Your mom asked the director if she could do it … she thought she could go to Paris on the pretext of delivering the reels and then head directly to the airport … and come home … but the director said no, she couldn’t go because she was needed in the shots … And soon after that a bridge was washed out and the road out of town was damaged and impassable … or so they said.

And then they shot this one scene … yep … yep … oh boy … your mom was supposed to dangle off the side of a cliff … and then, well, basically … I don’t know … have some kind of vision … or hallucination … and then let herself drop into the sea … I guess it was an action movie! Enna-way … she was terrified to begin with, she was pretty high up … I mean your mom is a stage actress, not a stunt person … and then something happened with the rope … I don’t know exactly what … some dummheit … her body kept slamming against the rock … it was really windy … nobody could hear her yelling for help … everyone else was down on the beach setting up the shot … it really was a ways down … Your mom told me she started to pray! Please God, please God, please God … that sort of thing … and telling you how much she loved you, how sorry she was … those kinds of last words … I mean, she was petrified. And then the director shouted up to her: Fall ! So she did … expecting to drop into the water, as planned, but somehow … maybe because of the wind or the … who knows … she fell, splat! Right onto the beach, onto rocks, onto a pile of seaweed … she passed out for a minute or two … there was blood on her face, in her eyes … I mean, she was okay … everyone came running … hooooooooo … Anyway, she survived, but the director put his head in your mom’s lap on the way home from shooting that scene … Oh and he cried and cried, he said he was so sorry for almost killing her … he cried like a baby in her lap …

After that the director wanted her to take her clothes off for a scene but she didn’t want to … and he was angry … He said everyone would leave the set except him and the camera guy and … she should take her clothes off … it was just a body … it was art … didn’t she understand art? Didn’t she understand cinema? Was she such a philistine that she didn’t understand cinema? And he complained to the others about her … And then she would be left alone in this lighthouse in the middle of nowhere for long, long stretches of time … She asked one of the crew if he could get her some books, she needed books … but the guy just stared at her. He didn’t understand what she was saying …