Now Daxon
Now DAXON
W il arrives back on set in South Carolina and right away requests the attention of cast and crew.
“I’m sorry,” she tells them. “Truly, truly sorry. For holding this production up. I’d love to finish this with you as strong as we started it.”
I get to watch, then, as she’s embraced. Kissed on the cheek by the actress playing her sister. Given a noogie by our wig mistress from hair and makeup.
I catch Greg’s eye and we know everything will be okay.
Once we wrap on South Carolina, we head back to Los Angeles to finish up, filming pick-ups. Little moments of scenes that need to be reshot or require additional camera angles. Wil and I get to race through Nick and Lila’s lives as we revisit scenes we haven’t dipped our feet into in over a month, this time on a soundstage.
My favorite to go back to is the first-date scene. Not the initial meeting on the pier where they ride the Ferris wheel, but something a little different. The first time they feel like more than polar opposites, more like magnets destined to come together.
TO THE STARS – OFFICIAL SCRIPT
EXT. THE PIER – NIGHT
NICK and LILA walk along the pier with AMY and her FRAT BOY ahead of them, busy at a game booth. Off the moonlit surf...
NICK
I’m still not sure you aren’t out here husband-hunting. That’s what girls like you do, isn’t it?
LILA
Girls like me?
NICK
(leading them to the rail of the boardwalk)
Girls who get all gussied up and go searching for rich, eligible bachelors. Girls who spend all summer wishing after boys who could care less, ’cause they’ve got all the power. And that’s not the girls’ fault, that’s just how it is. How it’s been for years and how it’ll be for a long time, I’ll bet.
LILA is extremely amused by this and drops her guard long enough to throw a full-bodied laugh into the sea air. The wind is whipping. The ocean below them is choppy and windswept. She gazes into the depths and shakes her head, smiling slightly.
LILA
You think you’re pretty smart, don’tcha?
NICK
(lifting a brow)
Not particularly.
LILA
But you’ve figured me out. You’ve got my number. I’m a silly woman and the small space in my head only has enough room for planning weddings and tea parties. Looking for a husband. Shopping. Getting... what did you call it? Gussied.
NICK
Well, come on. Look at you. That’s gussied.
LILA
This isn’t gussied. I didn’t gussy for you.
NICK smiles uncomfortably through a blush and looks up at the stars so that she might not see the break in his resolve. LILA is so quick, so smart and funny. Girls like LILA, well-bred, proper girls, aren’t supposed to be funny. He doesn’t know much, but he does know that.
NICK
That so?
LILA
Mmhmm.
NICK
You wanna get your feet wet with me?
LILA
(aghast)
Do I... excuse me, what?
NICK
(off her bewildered expression)
Do you wanna walk with me? Down on the sand. By the water.
LILA
Okay.
(a beat)
But I might push you in.
EXT. THE SHORELINE – NIGHT
NICK and LILA pull the shoes from their feet and walk, barefoot, down the winding coastline. We come into the shot from above and slowly zoom until we’re level with them.
NICK
So, you don’t have any fun, is what you’re telling me?
LILA
What I’m telling you is that I don’t have time. I’m busy.
NICK
Busy with school?
LILA
Busy preparing for college. My entire life is schoolwork. Tutors. And when I have a break from that, it’s paying calls and dinners. Tea.
NICK
You made it to the pier.
LILA
Summer’s a little different.
NICK
You know what I like about summer?
LILA
What’s that?
NICK
Something about it feels infinite to me. There’s about a hundred different directions it could go.
LILA
Maybe your summers.
NICK
My summers. Yeah. But yours, too, if you wanted.
LILA
What do you mean?
NICK
I just mean that summer’s like... the night sky. Like the stars.
We pan up slowly to the night sky, alive with stars. Over LILA’s next line, we stay there, catching far-off twinkles of light, like the stars themselves are talking to each other.
LILA
How is summer like the night sky?
NICK
Just that it goes on and on and on. You could stand here and look up there and never see the same thing twice. It’s full of possibility.
LILA
And your summer is full of possibility, that it?
We’re back on LILA and NICK. There’s something electric crackling between them. LILA’s beginning to realize she hasn’t really seen him all night until right now. This moment. NICK’s sure more than ever that she’s something he dreamed up that was made real.
NICK
Could be. Is yours?
They lean in close to each other, water rushing around their ankles. NICK’s hand folds around her elbow. LILA’s tucks its way around his jaw, hesitating at first before settling comfortably.
LILA
(whispered)
I think mine is full of stars.
NICK closes the gap between them, his forehead touching down on LILA’s. Her nose brushes his, her eyes closing. He takes it all in, the planes of her face, the curve of her eyelashes. The softness of her skin.
NICK
To the stars, then.
They kiss.
Since she came back to the project, things with Wil have been different. Not bad, just different. She has walls—always has—and they’ve been up and down all the years we’ve been friends, but they’re higher than I’ve ever seen them. Rapunzel in the tower.
I would climb them in a second if she wanted me to.
The press picked up on Wil’s temporary departure from the film and there’s this bizarre haze around us in the media right now, like the skies in LA during fire season. Air that was cool and light before is heavy, smoky, toxic with rumors.
Between takes, Wil is glued to her phone, frowning as she scrolls endlessly.
“They don’t think it’s gonna be good,” she says. “What if they don’t think I can do this?”
“They don’t think that.”
Wil hands me her phone where a creator is giving a TikTok presentation on all the reasons why a film adaptation of To the Stars is a terrible idea, and why Wil and I are disastrously miscast.
“Okay, you gotta put this away. How is this helping?”
“I need the validation.”
I laugh and my eyebrows crease together, pulling low. “This isn’t validation. This is masochism.”
She glares. “I need it. My precioussss ,” says Wil in her best Gollum impression, which is truly terrible, and if I wasn’t twenty billion percent sure that I would love her endlessly before, this seals the deal.
Except that since we got back to filming, it hasn’t been like that. And that’s fine, that’s cool, I can sit back and wait and give her all the space she needs to figure out her next steps.
But also, I have that heartsick feeling in my chest that reminds me of my fourteenth birthday when Wil wore a halter top to the (mostly boring adults) party my dads threw me, smiling at me over the rim of a Coke with her bare shoulders. My heart shot clean out of my chest and bounced around the room.
Core memory.
I haven’t moved on, clearly.
I hand the phone back and, finally, she sets it aside.
“I don’t wanna toot my own horn, Wilhelmina, but I would wager that you and I are better than any performers in the history of entertainment in this picture here, and, ultimately, we’ll drown under the crushing weight of the solid gold award statues they’ll be flinging at us.”
“At least we’ll be together,” says Wil, off-handedly.
Together.
“Let TikTok and whoever else be mad,” I tell her. “And when this movie comes out and you take over the world, watch them change their minds.”
Maybe it’s delusion talking, but I have a real feeling that no one is going to watch this movie and come away pissed. Greg’s made our soundstage look incredible and real and it feels so lived-in when we’re in the scene.
Hair and makeup are killing it, too. For the later scenes where time has passed, they’ve taken Wil from a long, late-thirties styled wig to something shorter and curled into forties victory rolls. Which she looks like she was born to wear. Where I’d grown my hair out a bit longer for younger-years Nick, now it’s cut soldier-short.
I look at us on the dailies, and we feel like time has passed.
You see the history in our faces. Nick and Lila’s, sure, but also ours, Daxon and Wilhelmina’s. All the golden years, the brutal ones, too. I hope people watch this movie and feel the chemistry, the heartache, the loss and the gains, like they’re their own lived experiences.
The lighting is locked. The set is ready. It’s time to roll. Hair and makeup descend for a few touch-ups, then Greg calls for quiet and Wil and I shift into our places for the top of the scene.
I take this feeling coursing through me, this burning, wildfire feeling, and I set it loose when Greg calls action. Knowing us, Wil and I, where we’ve been and all the collision courses we’ve been on towards each other for most of our lives, it’s only a matter of time before we collide.
TO THE STARS – OFFICIAL SCRIPT
INT. MEDICAL TENT – LATE NIGHT
It was a clean shot, the bullet in NICK’s shoulder. Went right through. But the skin is flaming red with infection and it’s spreading. If they can’t get the infection to clear, NICK will die.
LILA
(to another nurse)
You’re sure it didn’t come in?
NURSE
I’m sure.
LILA
Check the bag again. Maybe we missed it.
NICK lies half-asleep with exhaustion, pain and sickness on a cot, a hand stained with dirt and blood tucked firmly into LILA’s where she perches at his feet. We’ve seen him golden and vibrant. This is that boy’s ghost.
NURSE
Nothing.
LILA
Damn it. When I get my hands on whoever packed these supplies, I swear.
Nick, can you hear me?
NICK
(mumbled, almost delirious)
Yes ma’am.
LILA
Good. Don’t go anywhere.
(to the NURSE)
Grab me a clean towel and hand me that dish.
LILA dunks the towel into the water, wrings it out, then presses it gingerly to NICK’s wound. His body convulses with pain and we see it all over his face. It’s not what he needs in order to cure the infection, but it’s all she has.
LILA
Shhh. You’re alright. I’m here.
NICK
I’m sorry.
LILA
Quiet now. Rest.
NICK closes his eyes but his expression is troubled, painted with all the terrible ways they left things, and the horrors he’s laid eyes on these past years. They could have had it all. A marriage that no one but the two of them would’ve celebrated, but a life that was theirs.
Through NICK’s eyes, we see a film reel of memories. Waves crashing. LILA’s laughter, head thrown back, letting herself be carefree for the first time in her life. The lights of the boardwalk. The Ferris wheel. That first kiss, that fumbled first time. The fights. The make ups. All of this is light, airy, softened by time. Then, with the distant sound of bombs falling, men’s desperate voices crying out in warning of incoming fire, of fear of death, the film fades.
NICK
Lila...
LILA will never love anyone like this again. Her hand is tight on his, willing him to pull through, to live, to breathe, to suddenly sit up and smile and ask her for a ride on that rickety old Ferris wheel. But time is slipping away. If she had better supplies, a real doctor, a clean place and something to ebb that damn infection, she could save him. But around the wound the veins are dark and prominent. And if the temperature of his hand is any indicator, the fever has set in.
LILA
Listen to me, don’t you go anywhere. You hear me? Stay here with me. Stay here through the night, at least.
NICK
I can do that.
LILA
Shhh.
It’s not proper, it’s not allowed at all, but LILA shifts to lay herself down next to NICK on the cot, tucking her head into his good shoulder.
NURSE
Nurse Patterson.
LILA
Leave us. Please.
They’re alone now. Serenading them is a chorus of the sleeping breaths of broken men. Rasping, wheezing, snoring gently. Farther off, someone is crying.
NICK
I like to imagine that we made it. You and me.
LILA
Me, too. Farther than anyone wanted or thought we could.
NICK
That you married me. I asked and you jumped into my arms.
LILA
Mmhmm. Let’s say we did. You asked, I jumped. We had a life together.
NICK
Kids?
LILA
Course. Three. Two boys, stubborn as you. Strong.
NICK
And one little girl. Even stronger, just like her mama.
They whisper off and on like this into the early-morning hours, the sun bleeding a new day in through the torn places on the medical tent. LILA stays awake the whole night, counting his breaths. His heartbeats. Trying to remember them, the sound of them, the feel of them against her skin. She doesn’t want to admit that they’re getting fainter, farther away each minute that passes.
LILA
You awake?
NICK
(faintly, his eyes closed)
Mmhmm.
LILA
I decided something.
NICK
What’s that?
LILA
We don’t need a church or a gown to be married.
NICK
How do you figure?
LILA
I figure we just need us. Us, right now. Our memories will be our witnesses. I, Eliza Patterson, take you, Nicholas Greene, to be my husband.
NICK blinks open his tired eyes, shifting them to LILA, whose head rests beside his. When she catches his eye and sees how little time is left, her face falls into emotion, a sob racking her body. NICK presses a kiss to the tear on her cheek.
NICK
I, Nicholas Greene, take you, Eliza Patterson, angel on earth, to be my wife. In this life, and the next.
LILA
(pressing a kiss to his lips)
Always.