The First Assistant (15 page)

Fred stood up and walked toward me with the look of a drowning man. “Lizzie. You have to help us here. She’s gained fifteen pounds in ten days, and she keeps getting bigger. We’re shooting a war film here. She’s supposed to be a POW in Vietnam. Have you ever seen a
fat
POW? No. We’re supposed to buy that she’s been surviving on a bowl

of rice and a stray rodent for months, but instead it looks like she’s de-voured half the Vietcong army. I mean, we could rewrite the script and make it a horror film about cannibalism during wartime . . .” Fred stopped for a second, seriously considering his idea. He looked to Kathy, who shook her head vehemently. It was clear who the brains of the family were. As Fred mulled over his stroke of genius, Kathy took over. She walked toward me and gave me a motherly pat on the hand. She couldn’t have been more patronizing, and if I’d been braver I would have mentioned that I’d gone to Georgetown and I wasn’t the moron she obviously took me for. But then, she had caught me filtering Evian. “Listen, Lizzie. Fred and I are very conscious of female body image.

Especially in young women of Emerald’s age, and we would never want to encourage her to chase after a shape that wasn’t her natural state of being. But on the other hand, for the authenticity of the film, a little bulimia wouldn’t kill her, now would it? I mean it’s fast, effective, and once she’s back down to 112 pounds, she can stop,” she said matter-of- factly. Was she kidding? But they just stared at me, waiting for an an-swer. I blinked a few times, unable to fully comprehend.

“So you want me to tell her to stick her fingers down her throat?” “Yes,” Fred and Kathy replied simultaneously.

“Maybe if you just had the craft service guy remove the Snickers and Hershey’s Kisses from the table it would help. I mean, I’ve even gained a few pounds,” I said.

“Perfect,” Fred interrupted. “You can do it together.”

“Great idea,” Kathy said, and opened her mouth wide. “If you stick your finger all the way to the back of your throat and kind of press”— she was starting to retch—“the first time is really difficult, but once you get the hang of it you barely even gag. Just comes right up. Takes no time at all.” She obviously wasn’t as wholesome as she looked.

“Listen, I’m sure she’ll lose the weight really soon. I’ll tell her to try fruit instead of cookies,” I said. I really didn’t want to be responsible for encouraging Emerald to develop an eating disorder and wasn’t much interested in having one myself.

“Lizzie, we don’t have time,” Fred said, getting even more agitated. “If you care about your boss, you have to say something. Because if you don’t, I’m going to personally serve her some Evian that I’ve fetched out

of Pang Nga Bay.” I’d seen sewage being dumped in there when I’d taken a walk the other day, and I was almost certain a limb had floated by. I thought of Emerald hunched over, sick from every orifice. And then I thought about who would have to hold her hand and clean it all up.

“Fine. I’ll talk to her,” I conceded. They looked relieved. “But if I do, you guys have to do something for me.” I was getting the hang of this Hollywood thing.

“Fine! We’ll give you six thousand a week. But that’s the highest I can go,” Kathy said without flinching. I obviously wasn’t getting the hang of this at all because instead of saying thanks a million you rich idiots, I said something really stupid.

“I don’t want money.” Instead of seeing respect light up their eyes, I saw mistrust. But it was too late to turn back now. “I’ll get her to go on a diet but only if you go talk to Ken and tell him to go easy on Emerald.” Ken was the movie’s evil little Hitler of a director. And he treated Emerald like she’d just murdered Eva Braun. “I think the reason she’s piling on the pounds is because every time Ken yells at her, she retreats to this trailer and eats a jar of Nutella followed by a chaser of Snickers. Comfort eating. He is almost pathologically cruel to her, you know?” I said, hoping for some insight into Emerald/Ken. But these two gave nothing away.

“Deal. We’ll talk to Ken and you talk to Emerald. Today. Okay?” Kathy said quickly. I nodded my agreement, regretting already that I hadn’t taken the money. That extra thousand a week would have made a huge difference in the standard of apartment I would be able to rent when I moved out of Luke’s once I got back to LA. And I’d need extra cash to pay the security deposit, too. But there was something about Emerald that activated my dormant mothering instinct, and though I was certain she wouldn’t sacrifice a fingernail for me, I just couldn’t help myself.

“Let’s go then,” I said, happy to be abandoning my filtering duties.

I grabbed my notebook and we all walked out together. I shut the door and then nervously glanced at Fred. I’d seen him eyeing my Evian stash as we’d left. I dug in my pocket for the keys and then quickly turned back and locked the door. I was certain I’d seen a flash of disappointment cross his face, but I could have imagined it.

The production had spent three months recreating a Vietnamese village at the base of a lush Thai hillside. Whenever I walked onto the

set it felt like I’d stepped into a time machine and been transported to another world. They’d actually built rice paddies and authentic grass huts. The oddest thing was that the production had hired hundreds of Vietnamese extras that had been living in temporary settlements on the borders and brought them onto the set. And instead of staying at the lo-cal hotel, the extras had asked if they could move into the village as it felt so much like home. The picture had been delayed by three months due to weather, and the extras had literally moved in. There were chickens, water buffalo, and even a stray dog or two. It was incredibly surreal and absolutely magical. You could smell the cooking as you traveled down the dirt road.

As I bounced down the path in the back of Fred and Kathy’s golf cart, I tried to think up subtle ways of telling Emerald to go on a diet. I desperately wanted to make everyone happy, especially Fred and Kathy. My dream was still to produce and I was certain there was a lot I could learn from them. Maybe they could fly a nutritionist in? The girl did eat her broccoli fried. But though that might help her in the long run, only some sort of crash diet would help right now. I wasn’t going to suggest bulimia, but maybe a bit of subtle anorexia. I held a pile of Emerald’s mail in my lap and seized the new copy of
Glamour.
I started to flip through the pages and lo and behold there was an article about Julia’s diet after the twins were born. I skimmed the recipes and they looked healthy enough. After all, the diet was designed by a leading Los Angeles nutrition guru. It was a green diet. She could eat anything green. It was genius as nothing could be simpler to follow. There was only one hitch that would certainly take some convincing. The first two weeks were all about cleansing, and Brussels sprouts were the only thing on the menu. That and green tea. I wondered if they had Brussels sprouts in Thailand? I’d approach it gently and maybe suggest we do it together.

But I didn’t get the chance to try subtlety. We all arrived on the set at a very tense moment. Ken Holmes, the director, was in the middle of directing a torture scene. Emerald and the other female lead, Carmen Cash, were tied to a tree, muddied and bloodied, and there were twenty extras dressed as Vietcong ripping their fingernails off. They were fake fingernails, but it still looked like it hurt.

“Who is trying to rescue you? What are their names?” the Vietcong

general yelled. As Emerald went to say her lines, but one of the soldiers stuffed a rag in her mouth and Carmen spoke instead.

“We’re American nurses and we gave an oath to save lives. And nothing you can do to us will make us tell you where our soldiers are hiding. You can rip every fingernail from my hand, but I won’t give them up. I just won’t!”

I was flummoxed. That had been Emerald’s monologue. She and I had been practicing her lines every day in the car ride back and forth to the Amanpuri Resort and I knew her scenes backwards and forwards. This was actually one of the few enjoyable parts of my job, as I got to indulge my inner actress. And once again remind myself that a good actor makes it look easy. And I wasn’t a good actor, but, then, neither was Carmen. I grabbed a script off the chair with Em’s name on it and quickly read her highlighted scene. I wasn’t wrong. Carmen was supposed to be unconscious and the only line she was supposed to have in the entire scene was “Betsy, you’re so brave.”

I glanced at Emerald, who was desperately trying to get her hands untied in order to get the rag out of her mouth as the scene continued without her. A handsome, quite burly member of the crew appeared out of nowhere and walked right into the middle of Ken’s shot. No one said a word as he went to Emerald and pulled the rag from her mouth. I hadn’t noticed him before.

“Cut. Cut. Cut. Jesus Christ, what the fuck do you think you’re do-ing? Who the fuck do you think you are? Get the fuck off my set!” Ken screeched at the top of his lungs. Ken Holmes was maybe five-foot- seven on a good day and he had a textbook Napoleon complex. His shiny bald pate was turning a grotesque shade of purple as his flavor sa-vor bobbed up and down on his lower lip. Ken was one of those men who got lucky. A mediocre commercial director, he had once been brought in at the last minute to direct a brilliant script and the movie had made a fortune. His ego grew exponentially with every million the film grossed. But during his next film, the producers kicked him off the set halfway through the shoot because the actors were threatening to quit and the footage looked like it had been shot by the producer’s five-year-old. The rumor was that the studio executive had to direct the reshoots and edit the film. But once again, it had been a huge grosser

and thanks to an ironclad contract, he’d received “directed by” credit. So here he was directing
The War Fields
and torturing everybody, but most of all, Emerald.

Emerald gasped for breath as the handsome crew member untied her hands. Ken was still screaming that the guy was fired, so once Emerald was freed, he walked right over to Ken and just stood there, his six-foot-something frame silently dominating the smaller man. Ken spluttered a bit but became mute.

“You want to fire me? Fine. Then I and all this equipment here— which, by the way, I own—like the dolly your camera is on, will get on the next plane and go back to LA.”

Fred and Kathy immediately jumped into action, and not a second too soon. Kathy went directly to Emerald as Fred stepped in between the two men.

“Listen, Chris, he didn’t mean that. You’re not fired. Right Ken? But you shouldn’t have stepped into the middle of his shot. What were you thinking?” Fred said. So his name was Chris. And he was all man. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed him before.

“Fred, the girl obviously wasn’t expecting it and she clearly wasn’t happy.” Chris gave one last menacing look at Ken, who stepped behind Fred for protection, and then walked off. Ken made sure Chris was out of sight and then started yelling.

“Emerald, if you knew your fucking lines, we wouldn’t have a problem here!” Emerald turned around and slapped Carmen, who was still tied to the tree.

“I knew my fucking lines. That bitch stole them.” She turned to the Vietcong soldier and grabbed his hand in hers. Then she took his finger with the same pliers they had been using to pull her fingernails off.

“Who told you to put that rag in my mouth? If you don’t tell me, I’ll tear your fingernail off, and I know yours aren’t press-ons. Who?”

The soldier howled in terror and caved quickly under the pressure. “Carmen! She kissed me and told me she’d make me a star!” he

yelled. Carmen just shrugged her shoulders and smiled innocently.

“I knew it!” screamed Emerald. “She’s out to get me. And Ken, you let her!”

Ken looked slightly sheepish and then walked over and untied Carmen.

“You’re supposed to be a POW, Emerald, and it looks like you’re stor-ing nuts in your cheeks for winter. You’re fat and you’re ruining my film.”

The set went silent as poor Emerald looked stunned. She burst into tears and took off with the golf cart before anyone could stop her.

Emerald had fled to the safety of her trailer nearly two hours ago and no one had heard a peep from her since.

“Emerald. Please open the door,” I pleaded as I shifted uncomfortably on the metal steps, baking in the unbearable sunshine. I was dehy-drated, exhausted, and really had to go to the bathroom. But I couldn’t leave my post. I was responsible for delivering her to the set every day and I was terrified that if I left that step for one second she’d give me the slip. Then the entire production would grind to a halt and everyone would hold me responsible. I could just see it now, a million dollars a day being flushed down the toilet as the cast and crew played tennis because Lizzie Miller couldn’t keep track of one teenager. My hopes of being a producer would be dashed forever. I knocked harder.

“Come on, Emerald. Let me in. I have to pee.” I thought I’d appeal to her baser instincts. Though that hadn’t worked for Kathy and Fred, who had spent an hour on the step reasoning, explaining, begging, and eventually offering her a bribe if she came out. They’d even forced Ken to come and apologize through the mail slot. But Emerald was worryingly silent.

“Fine. Don’t come out. I’ve had enough. I’m going back to the hotel.” If honesty didn’t work I’d try a little manipulation. I’d noticed that the only time she fell into line was when I threatened departure. It was probably horrible to take advantage of the information, but she’d told me that her father had left when she was seven and she was terrified of being deserted. So I’d used a little bit of my Psych 101 and whenever she put me in an untenable situation, I threatened to leave. I knew my trump card could only be played so many times, but this situation seemed pretty dire.

I made loud rustling motions and stomped down the two metal stairs. I started walking really slowly and was about to turn around and tell her I was just kidding when the door opened a crack. I quickly turned my back and pretended to be marching away. A plaintive little voice called