I'm Glad About You(88)

Several weeks later they did spend half a day reshooting scenes that really were fine, and then a week after that there were more reshoots. Lars had won the battle and lost the war.

It was the third time Lars reshot one of Alison’s scenes that her nerves began to fray. Protected by the early buzz, she had managed to stay out of all the wrangling by simply being agreeable, doing a good job, and never showing up late for anything. Actresses who showed up late were regularly dismissed as the lowest form of life by everyone on the set. But when Lars came to the set one day and explained that they were going to have to reshoot for a third time the scene where she was talking to her mother on the telephone, and looking at herself in the mirror, she made a mistake. She asked him why.

“We just need some more colors,” Lars told her, abrupt.

“What kind of ‘colors’?”

“It would be great if you could be putting lipstick on. Looking at yourself and putting lipstick on.”

“While I’m talking on the telephone?”

“Yeah, while you’re talking on the telephone.”

“Do you still want me to start in the kitchen, and then walk over to the mirror?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, but this isn’t—”

“Isn’t what?” Lars was testy. Which was entirely unfair; the boys talked back to him all the time, and he never got testy with them. She should be allowed to ask a question.

She had the phone in her hand. She held it up for him. “You can’t actually—okay. Look.” She marched over to the kitchenette part of the ratty apartment set and held the phone to her ear. “Okay, I’m on the phone,” she announced. “I’m talking talking talking to my mother in the States. I walk over to the mirror to look at myself, I’m not sure why, but I do it, and now I reach for a lipstick which you need two hands to open, so in spite of the fact that I’m on the phone I reach for the lipstick and do what, hold it on my shoulder, while I open the lipstick? It’s a cell phone. You can’t hold a cell phone with your shoulder, to your ear.”

“Set the phone on the dresser.”

“Like, while she’s talking?”

“I would really like you to put lipstick on.”

“But—”

“Just do it, Alison.”

“This is the third time we’ve shot this stupid phone call,” she said, and there was no question, she was tired and edgy. “What is the f*cking deal?”

Lars turned and stormed off the set.

The f*cking deal, as it turned out, was that Gordon had decided that he wanted to see Alison putting on lipstick while she chatted on the phone. The first time this request had come down the chain of command to Lars, all the intermediaries had interpreted Gordon’s request with too much complexity: He wanted to see a more sexualized version of the character. Alison was playing her too soft. She should be more cunning. These instructions had been delivered with so much determination that Lars had shrugged and agreed finally to the first request for a reshoot. But the first reshoot was unsatisfactory. She was playing it more cunning, yes, but where was the lipstick? Why wasn’t she putting on lipstick? When this question made its way down the chain of command to Lars, it was a bad day. He couldn’t believe that the head of a studio would be thinking about an actress putting on lipstick. He also was in no mood to cooperate. Gordon had recently fired the fifth writer the studio had hired to do petty rewrites and they were now scrambling for some other WGA hack who would cost an arm and a leg while delivering nothing but shit dialogue. And then the bean counters would call and scream at him about going over budget. The studio was out of control; his producer Norbert was a useless, incompetent toady; and the budget was soaring, not because he couldn’t control it but rather because Norbert couldn’t control Gordon and Gordon couldn’t control himself, and kept insisting on more of everything: more costumes, more extras, more writers, more sets. Doing a second reshoot of Alison in front of a mirror was insane. He would do it, but it was insane. He put a different costume on her, hoping that Norbert and Gordon would feel like the studio had been placated, and left it at that. When Gordon came back a third time with the demand that he see her putting on the lipstick, Lars hit the roof. But, as one underling pointed out, that was always what Gordon had been asking for. Gordon had a right to be angry. It was the simplest of requests, to see Alison putting on lipstick while she talked on the phone! He was the head of the studio. What was the big deal?

Alison, of course, had no way of knowing that this shit was the backdrop to her reasonable but impertinent questions about why they might be reshooting such an idiotic little scene for the third time.

So when Lars stormed off the set, she was left exhausted and appalled. Of course everyone knew that they were sleeping together, so there was no way to interpret Lars’s explosive reaction as anything other than a fed-up lover whose fuse had finally been lit. And while everyone liked Alison, Lars was the director. She was doing a great job but everyone also knew that she wouldn’t even have this part if Lars hadn’t handed it to her. Within seconds the delicate balance of collegial affection which had kept the set afloat evaporated. Ronnie, the first AD, called out, efficiently, “Everyone take five!” and scurried after Lars. The sound guy scurried forward, to carefully disconnect her mic and her wire. Everyone else scurried away.