Every House Is Haunted (31 page)

“What?”

“That you’re acting in scenes no one will ever see.”

“Not really. Deleted scenes are an important part of the filmmaking process.”

“How do you figure?”

“Well . . .” Sarah quirked her mouth and thought about it for a long moment. “You see that piece of lighting over there?” Joe nodded. “Well, you won’t actually see it in the final film, but you’ll see the set that it’s lighting. You’ll see its effect. That’s how it is for me. You may not see me in the movie when it’s finally up on the screen, but you’ll see my effect. Even if you don’t know you’re seeing it.”

Joe felt the beginning of a migraine. “But we’re
actors
,” he said in a harsh, frustrated tone. “It’s our job to be noticed, even if we’re only extras hanging out in the background. We’re part of the picture. That’s our role.”

“Sometimes it’s about what you don’t see,” Sarah said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I really have to go over my lines.”

Joe watched as she wandered away. “Right,” he said under his breath. “You wouldn’t want to disappoint your ignoring public.”

Joe eventually managed to get his hands on a copy of the script. It didn’t make any sense. It was nothing more than a collection of the deleted scenes they were shooting that day. Short vignettes with seemingly no relation to one another that gave absolutely no clue as to the overall plot of the film. It might have been a romantic comedy or a gory slasher flick.

Joe tried to resign himself to the fact that his agent had screwed him again. He ignored the fact that he might be partly to blame; if he had bothered asking what the job was before he took it, he might not be in this mess. Regardless, he figured it was best to just roll with it. This was work after all, he was getting paid, and on the plus side, he didn’t have to bang some girl with silicone breast implants and a name like Misty Mountains.

The director, once she finally showed up on set, was as unfamiliar to Joe as the rest of the actors he had met that day. He had never worked with her before, and didn’t even recognize her name. Maybe they got special obscure directors to shoot these deleted scenes, he thought. A secret society version of the Directors Guild. It added the final lunatic touch to an already surreal day. He felt like he had wandered into an urban myth.

They were getting ready to shoot the third deleted scene of the day. In this one, Joe entered a car-rental agency and threw a set of keys at the young girl behind the counter. Then he was supposed to start ranting about their charge-by-mile rates, the ever-rising gas prices, and then segue into a philippic on OPEC and the conflict in the Middle East. It was going to be a good scene: the kind that would really show off his acting chops. Too bad no one was going to see it.

While Joe was waiting for Sharon to finish arranging the lighting, he spoke with the director.

“Why don’t we get you to talk through this entire scene?” he suggested wryly. “Discuss the cinematography, the lighting. We could record the audio commentary track for the DVD at the same time we shoot the movie.”

“You’re a pretty funny guy,” the director said in a tone devoid of amusement. “Now shut up and get on your mark.”

Suddenly the lights went out. Everything was silent except for a particularly loud burst of profanity from Sharon Biggs.

“Vic, did you plug in that switch I told you not to?”

“I didn’t touch it!” whined another voice in the darkness.

The red emergency lights came on with a loud snapping sound, making the entire soundstage look like the inside of a volcano. Joe heard the sound of raised voices coming from one of the other sets. Sarah came running over. Her eyes were wild with terror.

“It’s the geeks,” she said in a breathless voice. “The geeks are here!”

“What?” Joe said, confused. “What’s going on?”

“The film geeks. They broke into the soundstage. They found us!”

“The film geeks?” Joe looked around wildly. “This is supposed to be a closed set. Isn’t it?”

Sarah staggered away from him. “Run for it, Joe,” she called back over her shoulder. “Run for your life!”

Joe was used to hearing melodrama like that, but not until the director called “Action!” He didn’t know what to make of it. People were starting to run. Joe looked around for the director or Sharon Biggs, but they had both taken off.

In front of a nearby set, two men tackled one of the other actors Joe had been working with that day and dragged him off.

Joe turned to run and clipped the table with the large plastic coffee urn on it. He reached out instinctively to keep his balance and ended up grabbing the urn in a desperate bear hug. He tumbled backwards with the additional weight, and hot coffee splashed across his arms and chest. Joe let out a high-pitched scream that undoubtedly told everyone in the darkened soundstage exactly where he was.

After pushing the urn off and climbing painfully to his feet, Joe dashed toward one of the glowing red exit signs. Ten feet from the door, a dark shape interposed itself between Joe and his escape route.

He was just a kid. No more than eighteen years old. He was holding something in his hands. Something round that looked absurdly like a manhole cover.

“I’ve got one!” the kid yelled in a high, wavering voice.

He came at Joe with the round object raised over his head. Joe realized what it was a split second before it smashed into his face.

A film canister.

Consciousness returned in what Joe thought was a very cinematic fade-in of details. First everything was blurry and wavering, like the dissolve before a flashback. Then they gradually became clearer, details filling in, shapes taking on sharper, more definite forms, until he got a complete picture of his surroundings.

He was in a movie theatre.

Of a sort.

It was a dark, cavernous room with aisles and seats and a big screen, but that’s where the similarities ended. The walls were covered in what Joe first took to be photographs—Polaroids, he thought, isn’t that what psychos always put on their walls?—but when he squinted at them he realized they were a combination of screen shots and storyboard stills. The high walls of the theatre were covered with them.

“Where the hell am I?” Joe asked, rubbing his head. He was lying on the stage in front of the screen. Below him, on the floor between the stage and the first row of seats was a group of young people, one of whom he recognized as the kid who brained him with the film canister.

“You’re in our sanctuary,” the kid said in a squeaky voice that robbed it of any reverence.

“Your what?”

“The place where we come to pay worship.”

Joe felt a cool tingle of fear. “Are you Scientologists?” he asked.

“No,” the kid said. “We’re Cultists.”

“Oh Christ,” Joe muttered. He looked wildly around the theatre. On the back wall, above the square hole where the camera peeked out of the projectionist’s booth, was a red neon sign that said
THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR
.

“We are the Director’s Cult.” The kid saw Joe’s face and held up a calming hand. “It’s just a play on words. We’re not really a cult. We don’t worship Satan or kill people or anything.”

“Good to know,” Joe said feebly.

“Our mission is to show the world the cinema that has been hidden for too long. To part the red velvet curtains of ignorance and deception. To reveal the truth about deleted scenes and alternate endings. The Unseen Hollywood.”

“The Unseen Hollywood,” the other Cultists said in low, reverent voices.

“What does that have to do with me?” Joe’s voice trembled as he struggled to remain calm. “Why did you kidnap me?”

“We didn’t kidnap you,” said the Cultist. “We liberated you from those who would take your work—your
art
—and lock it in a vault, never to be seen.”

“What are you talking about?” Joe said. “Most DVDs feature bonus features, including deleted scenes.”

The Cultist shook his head regretfully. “Nothing more than a useless gesture. People don’t really
see
. They don’t
know
. We’re going to show them. We’re going to make them see. Make them realize a movie is more than just the sum of its parts. It’s also the pieces that don’t make the final cut.”

Joe swallowed dryly. Sarah’s words echoed in his mind:
Sometimes it’s about what you don’t see.

The lead Cultist signalled to the others and they came forward.

One of them grabbed Joe’s arms, the other his legs, and together they lifted him up and onto a low platform he hadn’t noticed behind him. There was a mechanical whirring sound and the screen began to rise up into a slot in the ceiling. Behind it was an enormous machine that looked a bit like the Play-Doh Fun Factory Joe had played with as a kid. He struggled harder.

The Cultists bound him to the platform with some sort of crinkly, shiny material that Joe’s frantic mind realized was film stock. These guys were crazy. Didn’t they know everything was done digitally these days?

The platform to which Joe was bound was positioned underneath the towering machine. From his vantage point Joe was looking up at what appeared to be an enormous lever. The kind a giant might use to squeeze juice from an orange. Or in this case, Joe.

“Christ!” he shrieked. “You said you didn’t kill people!”

“We’re not killing you,” said the lead Cultist. “We’re
deleting
you.”

“How is the public supposed to learn the truth if I’m dead?”

“You won’t be dead. You will live forever in the eternal heaven of the silver screen.”

“The silver screen,” intoned the other Cultists.

“You will be a symbol for deleted actors everywhere. A symbol that the studios will be unable to ignore. They may take your lives, but they will never take your freedom!”

Joe frowned. “That’s from
Braveheart
.”

The lead Cultist shrugged and signalled to one of his brethren. The other Cultist picked up a control box dangling from the ceiling by a thick insulated electrical cord. He pressed a red button and the sound of heavy machinery powering up filled the theatre.

Joe didn’t know much about the production side of filmmaking, but he knew what he was looking at . . . what he was lying directly beneath. It was a larger version of a device that some might say was the real thing that made movies.

A film splicer.

Joe closed his eyes. He told himself this was only a movie. This wasn’t real. Soon someone would yell “Cut!” and he’d be having coffee with Sarah and the other actors. Every action was followed by a cut. This is what he told himself while the sound of the machine grew louder.

All he had to do was be cool. Stay in character.

And wait for the cut.

Six months later, Barton Collins received a package in the mail.

He was in his office making phone calls. He had met a couple of actors at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival who hinted that they might be interested in new representation. It was good for them, but especially good for Bart. He needed clients. He was losing clients like fleas off a dead dog. He sent them out on jobs, but they didn’t always come back. Most of them he figured left the business out of frustration, or decided to move to New York or L.A. to be closer to the action. Actors could be so flakey. Sometimes Bart wished he had listened to his mother and become a chiropractor.