The Continuity Girl (7 page)

Fumbling around in the dim chaos of her mother’s flat, she managed to open her binder-size laptop and dial up a modem connection.
Cross-legged on the floor, Meredith logged on to the server and opened her account. There were eighty-six new messages, the
bulk of them regarding penis enlargement, mail-order college degrees, discount Viagra and urgent salutations from African
despots in need of a temporary overseas loan. Meredith scrolled through her in-box, deleting whole screens at a time, until
suddenly she came upon a message that froze her thumb in mid-click.

To: Meredith Moore

From: Dr. Joe Veil

Subject: Your disappearance

Dear Meredith,

I hope you don’t mind that I have taken the liberty to contact you via the e-mail address provided in your file, but after
your exit yesterday I found myself at a loss for what to think. I hope my advice was not overly blunt. If that was what made
you leave my office so abruptly, I apologize. As your doctor I felt it important to take the time to check in and make sure
you are not in any kind of distress.

I hope you are well and taking good care.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Joe Veil

Meredith read the note twice before even attempting to compose a reply. What to make of it? Professional obligation? Fatherly
concern? Flirtation? No, Meredith did not detect a hint of that in his tone. Though, how strange that a busy gynecologist
should go so far out of his way to contact a skittish patient. For all he knew she was simply a nut. What to make of this
sudden interest in her behavior? She clicked on
REPLY
and began to type.

To: Dr. Joe Veil

From: Meredith Moore

Subject: Re: Your disappearance

Dear Doctor,

Thank you for the kind note, but I can’t accept your apology. I did not leave your examination room because of any offensiveness
on your part—quite the opposite. You were professional and direct, and I thank you for your concern. I am currently away on
business but will make an appointment with one of your colleagues upon my return.

Sorry if I alarmed you by leaving so abruptly. It wasn’t like me to run away. I guess I haven’t been myself lately. Perhaps
it’s the biological twitch twitching. You’d probably know better than me. You’re the doctor.

Sorry again,

Meredith

Meredith didn’t mind being called the continuity girl. Over the past year or so, however, she had begun to wonder whether
she ought to be slightly embarrassed by the title. Like so many otherwise driven women, her greatest fear was not having a
lack of authority but having a surplus of it. Too much power (she had to admit it) made her feel less...
feminine.
She waited
anxiously for the terrible day some third-assistant-director film school grad would turn around and unthinkingly call her
“the script lady.” That would be the day she’d quit.

In recent years, the industry had been called to task for its use of outdated terminology, particularly when describing jobs
traditionally occupied by women or gay men (this being show business, there were lots of both). Since Meredith had started
working on set, producers had been forced, in official contexts at least, to hire makeup artists instead of “pretties,” actors
instead of “talent,” and background artists instead of “extras.” It wasn’t that anyone on set actually talked any differently
than they used to, just that everybody now had two job titles instead of one. Meredith’s twin title was script supervisor,
but thankfully no one called her that. She was still performing what the trade considered a young woman’s job, and she wanted
to keep it that way.

Of course, in a way, she
had
quit. Walked off Felsted’s set with the bleary intention of getting out of show business altogether.
(There had been the occasional intention of enrolling in cooking school, until she remembered nearly fainting the time she
had to “dress” the turkey giblets at Elle’s house one Christmas, and the thought passed.)

But here she was in London, back on set and in the thick of it all. Toughing it out with a bunch of men who in all likelihood
resented her presence more than they appreciated it.

But that was where the similarities to any previous job ended. Richard Glass was an altogether different sort of director
from those she had worked with in Toronto. For one thing, he was slender and almost girlish looking. And he wore suits—unhemmed
pants and monogrammed shirts so worn you could see his flat penny-size nipples through the fabric.

While most directors tended to be brusque and proud of their macho to-the-pointness, Richard seemed to have all the time in
the world for silly small talk and pranks. Like others in his position, he spent a lot of time flirting with the actresses
(whispering in their ears, placing a supportive hand on the small of their backs), but unlike most, he flirted with everyone
else on set as well. He slipped and slithered about the set all day, offering every individual the unexpected treat of his
undivided, if momentary, attention. In this way he managed to charm every member of the crew into carrying out his orders
without ever raising his voice.

Meredith had been on the set for eight days of the forty-day shoot and was coping well enough so far. The film was a Victorian
period murder mystery/romantic comedy starring Kathleen Swain, an American starlet coming to the end of her bankable period.
In it, she played a spinster pathologist who falls in love with a brooding detective while performing autopsies on the bodies
of the prostitute victims of a Jack-the-Ripper-like murderer. The film was financed on the slope of Swain’s cheekbones.

The project’s backer was the mysterious and never-present Osmond Crouch, who, it was widely rumoured, was a former lover of
Swain’s. In his place, Mr. Crouch (as everyone called him on set) had sent a line producer to oversee the shoot. Dan Button,
an overgrown Scottish goth boy, minced about in a black trench coat and skull boots, looking terrified to talk to anyone.
He couldn’t be more than thirty, Meredith thought, and yet Crouch had for some reason sent him here to oversee the production
of a twenty-million-dollar movie. Twenty million! That’s what this pimply monkey of a boy, this wannabe vampire, was in charge
of. It boggled the mind. While most of the hands-on crew generally ignored Button, the director would occasionally slip off
with him for a little chat. Button would invariably emerge from Richard’s trailer flushed with pleasure, and for the rest
of the day would skulk more happily around the set, occasionally tap-tap-tapping his walking staff to the tune of some dark,
internal symphony.

The crew was setting up in a large empty warehouse space on the third floor of a nearly condemned East End building when Meredith
arrived for her call time of seven thirty a.m. She grabbed a juice from the “tea cart” (funny Brits) and unfolded her tiny
portable camp stool in a quiet corner, then began her day’s logging. Hauling a binder out of her bag and wiping the crumbs
from its surface (a packet of airplane pretzels had somehow escaped its packaging), she examined the day’s pages for the third
time that morning. The script had been changed so many times by Glass and the writer that it was now an unruly rainbow of
candy-colored revision pages. Every revised page in the script was dated and printed on a different-colored page from the
one before. The rotation, according to protocol, began with white and was followed by blue, pink, yellow, green and goldenrod
(Meredith had never understood why they didn’t just call it orange). The scene they were shooting today (which involved a
fight, a kiss and a bad guy being set on fire and thrown out of a fifth-story window) was printed out on white paper—double
white—which meant it had been rewritten exactly six times so far. Meredith would not be the least bit surprised if handwritten
blue revisions—double blues—appeared and had to be stapled into her binder. Usually, by the time shooting began, Meredith
knew the script so well, had read it and made so many detailed notes on it, divided it into eighths (for scheduling purposes,
all scripts were organized this way—Meredith’s job was to keep track of the shooting times of each eighth of a page) and numbered
all the scenes and shots, that she felt she could recite the thing by heart. Nevertheless, she now studied the scene once
more.

Act 1, Scene 6

Int. Empty Victorian garment factory—the scene of the crime.

The voices of Celia and David can be heard off camera as they make their way up the stairs.

CELIA (OFFSCREEN)

Once again, Inspector, I’m not sure what you think you’re going to find here that the police already haven’t.

Int. stairwell.

David is helping Celia up the rickety steps.

She struggles a bit and tears her petticoat on a nail.

CELIA

Good heavens.

DAVID

Are you all right, miss?

CELIA (IRRITATED)

Yes, yes, fine. To be perfectly honest, Inspector, I’d be a great deal better if I was back at the morgue doing some useful
work.

DAVID

My dear Miss Hornby, thank you again for your skepticism, but surely as a doctor you must agree that no hair can be left unturned,
particularly when lives are at stake.

Just this snippet, Meredith knew, would take most of the morning to get on film. First a camera setup for the interior of
the factory, then another for the stairwell. They would shoot the interior scenes of the factory first, and likely get to
the stairwell segment later. Meredith made a mental note to ensure the wardrobe people had provided a visibly ripped petticoat
for Celia in the interior garment factory scenes.

The truth was, for all her copious work and attention to detail, few directors or editors even looked at the continuity notes
anymore. Schedules could be generated by computer. The log was kept more out of tradition and protocol than genuine need.
The bulk of Meredith’s job was to record the difference between what was on the page and what was shot. If dialogue was added
or cut, Meredith made note. If an actor strayed into an unscripted moment of genius or folly, she noted that too. If anything
changed from the original plan, she was on it. Her first loyalty, as continuity girl, was to the script.

She removed a ruler from her case and darkened the dividing lines of eighths using her sharpest pencil. Then she flipped forward
in her binder to the Daily Continuity Log sheet, on which she would take careful note of the setup, scene and slate (the clappy
board) number, as well as shot time, pages shot and, most important, which take of which shots the director wanted the lab
to print and send out to the editor. With her Polaroid camera, digital stopwatch, binder and sharpened pencil, Meredith would
record and keep track of even the most seemingly unimportant detail on the set, from the exact time (down to a quarter of
a second) the crew broke for lunch, to the precise measurement of the rip on the hem of the actress’s petticoat. She would
keep notes for the assistant editor in a daily log, recording the scene, slate, time and print numbers for him to note when
he looked over the rushes in the following days.

Meredith was the editor’s eye on set. They were in it together, she and he (in this case, a grumpy little Glaswegian named
Rowan, who lived and worked in a dark suite deep in the Hammersmith riverbed). As the rest of the crew busily manufactured
random narrative fragments out of time and out of context, Meredith kept the order in her daily logbooks so that the editor
could put the story back together again.

The grips were setting up a camera across the room, wheeling around dollies, taping down wires and trading lame jokes. No
sign of Richard. Meredith took the moment of calm to take stock of her kit—opened her black nylon pack and accounted for its
contents by touch.

Script in script binder—
check.
Book light for night scenes—
check.
Wite-Out—
check.
Victorian slang dictionary—
check.
Polaroid
camera and extra film—
check.
Pencils and sharpener—
check.
Hat, mitts, scarf for outdoor shooting—
check.
Envelopes: legal size—
check.
Eraser—
check.
Organic yogurt and Fuji apple for lunch—
check.
Waterproof felt pens—
check.
Reinforced three-hole paper—
check.
One-hole punch—
check.
Paper clips—
check.
Ruler—
check.
Self-stick three-hole-paper reinforcements...self-stick three-hole-paper
reinforcements...no!
Where
were the freaking self-stick three-hole-paper reinforcements?

Meredith took in air and closed her eyes. Yes, she was sure she had noted them the first time she completed the checklist
that day, just before leaving the flat at dawn. The self-stick three-hole-paper reinforcements were a small but essential
tool for her job. Without them, she would have to punch holes in her blank paper, clip them into the binder and simply trust
that they would stay secure. If a careless technician bumped against her while she was working, or if her binder slid off
her knees onto the floor (as it often did if she was absorbed in watching the monitor or talking to the director and forgot
to steady it with her elbow), then carefully compiled pages of log sheets would be in danger of detaching at their weakest,
unprotected spots. Columns of painstakingly listed shot details could be damaged or, worse yet, lost completely. What if she
wasn’t looking when a page ripped off and got stuck on the second AD’s boot as he walked by, barking call times into his walkie-talkie?
By the time Meredith noticed the missing log sheet it could be six hours and two setups later. The page could have been swept
up by the cleaners, dumped into the dustbin, bagged and ready for the afternoon pickup. It would be too late to get the page
back, impossible to remember all the relevant details, a disservice to the editor and the director—and she would be fired.
For the second time in her life. And all because her brand-new packet of self-stick paper reinforcements had probably slipped
beneath her dusty little bed.