Chapter 4
There’s a saying in the Industry—Don’t waste it in rehearsal—and I tend not to, but Kai gave so much that I felt like I had to meet him where he was, such that we were both really laughing and smiling when we talked inside Andy’s house.
“Keep it innocent,” Kathryn told me after one take where the camera operator was pretending to hold a camera as I grabbed Kai by the waist flirtatiously.
“She’s not innocent,” I said.
“Well, it’s rehearsal,” Kathryn demurred. “We’ll figure her out as we go.”
I nodded, trying not to reveal my annoyance that Kathryn thought she understood Carly better than I did.
I knew my reputation. Hard to direct. Challenging. Won’t let a scene go. Obsessive.
But aren’t those good qualities? Don’t you want a collaborator who gives everything to make the best possible movie?
_____
When we broke for lunch, I wandered off into a small stand of shrubs behind the warehouse. I sat down on an overturned five-gallon bucket to call my agent, Jamie. Hollywood is pure glamour.
“What’s new?” I asked her.
“Now that you’re in a movie with Matthew Malone, everyone’s calling me.
Studios are taking notice, Junie. I got a couple scripts to send you.
” Jamie was all business. If Jamie had hobbies, I was blissfully unaware of them.
“One is a show in the Star Wars universe. Limited series. Very upscale. Only thing is you’re blue. ”
“I’m blue?”
“Yeah, you’re blue. So lots of time in the makeup trailer,” she said.
“Is it one of those CGI things where the whole shoot happens in a warehouse in Atlanta?”
“To be fair,” Jamie answered, “I believe the warehouse is in Manitoba. Budget’s good, though.
And they’ve got a great showrunner. Angela Simpson.
Did that spy show for Netflix. Now she’s with Disney on this Star Wars thing.
Eight episodes. I like it for you. The other thing is an epic fantasy. New Brian Arawas project.”
“As long as I’m not playing a kid.” Part of the reason I’d fought so hard to book Andy Warhol Never Gets Old was because my character isn’t in high school.
The problem with being twenty-two is that you can still play seventeen, and when you’re a Former Nickelodeon Star, it’s hard to book anything but teen movies. I needed to prove I could be an adult.
“She’s not a kid. She’s a queen. Agrippah, Queen of the Realm.
Look, it’s a fantasy. You’re fighting orcs or whatever.
But Brian Arawas has a half-billion-dollar franchise under his belt.
I know you don’t love fantasy, but there’s real meat to this character, and you’d be the lead in a Brian Arawas movie. ”
“You don’t love the script,” I said.
“I don’t love the script,” Jamie agreed. “But I love Agrippah as a role. Actual nuance. Real feminine power. It’s shit you don’t see every day.”
“I’ll read them both,” I said. “Send them over.”
_____
After another four hours of rehearsals, Kai and I shared a ride back to our apartment building.
“You want to get dinner?” he asked me.
“I gotta read some stuff my agent sent over. And I’ve got a call with my publicist at eight. I’d love to—just busy.”
“I get it,” he said. “I got a couple self-tapes to make.”
“You want me to read with you?” I asked. “I should be free by nine.”
“Sure, as long as I can return the favor someday.”
_____
I ordered out a salad bowl from some Pittsburgh knockoff Sweetgreen and wrote in my notebook for twenty minutes (a daily ritual) before downloading the scripts onto my iPad.
The Star Wars thing was about a Twi’lek (I had to google it) diplomat working for the Empire in the Imperial Defense Department.
At the end of the pilot, the viewer learns that our mid-level diplomat is in fact a spy for the Rebel Alliance who meets up with her handler in a dive bar.
We can see what the diplomat can’t—that she’s been trailed to the bar by a suspicious colleague.
The writing was crisp but to my tastes anyway a little joyless. I read through the first half of the second episode before switching over to the Brian Arawas movie, Gods of Andromeda.
Before Gods of Andromeda was a script, it had been a book, apparently a massive bestseller, even though I’d never heard of it.
Both the screenplay and the book were written by a woman named Valentina Leavitt, who looked in the photos I found online very much like an author of fantasy novels—long salt-and-pepper hair, oversized glasses, and watery gray eyes.
In the Realm, a young noblewoman has just become Queen after the sudden and suspicious death of her mother.
I liked the matriarchal society stuff, and the world-building was good.
The dialogue struck me as a bit awkward—lots of “my lords” and “my ladys” and whatnot—but I could see the movie.
Occasionally when I read a script, I can see myself as the character I’m reading for; I can feel my body as her body, and my voice as her voice.
Even though Agrippah’s lines were a bit stilted and formal, I could imagine myself saying them.
Most of all, I liked the way Agrippah interacted with her husband by an arranged marriage, Gavinth, the second lead of the movie.
He was ambitious and somewhat conniving but in a charming way, and she recognized his machinations for what they were but still loved him.
Or maybe she didn’t quite love him but saw his usefulness.
There was a fascinating tension in their marriage.
Do these two people care for each other, or need each other, or both?
When love is politically expedient, is it love?
I called Jamie at seven forty-five, as soon as I’d finished the script. I could hear some hubbub in the background. “Is this a bad time?” I asked.
“Never,” she said. “Just at a kid’s birthday party.”
“Whose kid?”
“Mine. D’you get a chance to read?”
“Yeah, I like Gods of Andromeda. I like that character. It’s a bit cheesy, but…”
“So is the American moviegoing public,” Jamie said, finishing my thought. “I like it for you. And the studio is really behind it. Look, it’s a long shot, but we love a long shot. They’d probably fly you out for an audition. Otherwise you can self-tape.”
“I need to read the book first,” I said.
“Yeah, sure. I’ll send it to you.”
“Already ordered it,” I said.
“Of course you did. Good idea to read it. The author wants to be Very Involved. Insisted on writing the script. One of those. But it’s Arawas’s movie and that guy knows how to put butts in theater seats. Okay, I’ll call the studio now and artfully lead them on.”
“Perfect. I liked the Star Wars thing less.”
“It’s great if you want a TV show, but you don’t want a TV show. You’re a movie actor. You can do TV when—ALICE STOP HITTING YOUR brOTHER FOR GOD’S SAKE—you’re a thirty-eight-year-old mother looking for some life stability. Like your long-suffering agent.”
“I gotta go. I have a call with Katie.”
“Tell her hi.”
_____
Katie and I went over the press outlets coming to visit set over the course of the shoot.
All the press would be there for Matthew, of course, but Katie was trying to get me one-on-ones with the women’s magazines as well as some online stuff, because online outlets trended younger.
When I got off the phone with Katie, I had a few minutes, so I read a little of The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again), which I’d been using to prep.
Warhol doesn’t reveal much about his actual self in Philosophy; he’s trying to be quick-witted and wise while remaining radically superficial.
He doesn’t talk about his childhood or his art-making or his lovers or even really his interests, but skimming through it that evening, I found one moment that struck me as deeply revealing:
Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, “So what.” That’s one of my favorite things to say. “So what.”
“My mother didn’t love me.” So what.
“My husband won’t ball me.” So what.
“I’m a success but I’m still alone.” So what.
I’m a success but I’m still alone. So what.
That struck me as real in a way very little in the book did.
And I wondered whether loneliness is an inevitable by-product of success, because nobody else really knows what it’s like to be you, and anyway you can’t be sure whether people want to be near you because you’re you or because you’re a success, which is its own kind of aloneness.
This must’ve been a place where Matthew could see himself in Warhol—they were both larger than life, performed selves.
Of course, there are worse problems. Pity poor Matthew Malone, who can’t complain to his friends about all his fame and wealth. But that amplifies the loneliness. So what.
_____
By then it was nine o’clock, so I went upstairs to Kai’s apartment.
“How were the scripts?”
“I liked one. They’re interested in me for Agrippah, Queen of the Realm.”
“Well, I’m self-taping for Kevin the Intern, who has six lines in this workplace comedy about a video game company. So we’re both crushing it.”
Kai’s phone was already nestled in a tripod placed atop the little table that straddled the kitchen area and the living area in his studio apartment.
His place had the same floor plan as mine, and nearly identical furniture, but he had posters everywhere.
The posters were all of shows at the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Warhol Museum—including a bunch of Warhol’s flower paintings.
I grabbed one of the two wooden chairs nestled under the table and got behind the camera. “You have the sides?” I asked.
“Yeah, prepare yourself for some High Art,” he responded, and handed me a sheet of paper with the relevant dialogue on it.
“You’re my boss, Richter, the main guy in the movie.
” We read the script through once. It wasn’t very good, but the job of an actor is not to judge the material so much as to give in to it, and the worse the script the more interesting that job becomes, because you’ve got to find a way in.
That’s what I tell myself, anyway. Kai hit record, said, “I’m Kai Laramie.
Five eleven. Based in New York. Over eighteen. Okay.”
“Kevin, we need that report.” I tried to say it flatly so that Kai would look good by comparison.
“I’ve got it right here, sir,” Kai said, miming handing over a piece of paper. “The issue, sir, is that there are a number of bugs.”
“How many?”
“Over the summer I found one thousand three hundred, sir.” He paused, gulped. “And twelve.”
“You found one thousand three hundred bugs in the game.”
“And twelve.”
“Is it playable?”
“Um,” he said.
“Would you pay $2.99 for it?”
“Sir, honestly I found it challenging, and I’m getting paid to play it.”
“We pay our interns now? Christ, this company ain’t what it used to be.”
“I also get college credit,” Kai said nervously, “if you could just sign this form saying I showed up all summer?” He mimed handing over a second form, then hit the stop button on his phone camera.
“All right,” he said. “Thanks. I genuinely hope I don’t get this, although my agent says it’s a good gig for me.”
“You don’t want to try it again?” I asked.
He shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “Was my Kevin the Intern somehow lacking?” he asked, smiling.
“No, it was good. Just, I don’t know, I always do a few takes.”
“I bet you do. How many?”
“I don’t know. A lot,” I said. Dozens. I knew my process could exhaust my scene partners, but I also didn’t know any other way of doing it right.
“I think I’m good with one,” he said, and the truth is: He was. The kid was, as the saying goes, a natural.