XXVIII Jack
XXVIII
Jack
“Cut!” the director—Cecily Close herself—calls out.
We’re two hours into today’s shoot at a legendary London rock club, restored through movie magic to its dingy roots, an instance where scores of people and loads of budget were deployed to make something look worse. This scene is the emotional linchpin of the film and kicks off our busiest day of shooting so far, now three weeks in.
I am tucked into a booth surrounded by the actors playing Richard’s bandmates, some of whom would go on to become bold names themselves and others who Richard left behind in Hackney. The plan for the day is ambitious: to film Richard and his friends shooting the shit like it’s a regular night out, while Richard takes in a concert in the background and becomes so enraptured by the music that he gets up to walk through the crowd and climbs onto the stage. The beginning of his musical ascent. From there, we’ll jump forward in time to film the scene wherein Richard actually does realize his dream of playing the Electric Ballroom, quickly changing out costumes for the extras so it’s not obvious to viewers that they’re seeing the same audience from the previous scenes.
Since filming kicked off, I’ve felt confident, competent. Able to focus, despite everything—or maybe because refusing to acknowledge my life beyond the set feels like a survival instinct right now. But something is off today. Cecily has called cut an as-yet-unprecedented fifteen times, and we haven’t even broken for lunch.
“Back to one, everybody!” the assistant director instructs.
“No, no, no. What would be the point of going back to one if we haven’t fixed the problem at hand?” Cecily digs into the pocket of her chore coat and pulls out not a pack but a single loose cigarette. It is thin and limp, and it occurs to me it might be older than I am.
“You can’t smoke in here,” the assistant director whispers to her.
“I know you can’t smoke in here. I’m old, not dead . I’ve been to pubs and restaurants in the last thirty years.”
“Then, why...”
“I want to hold a cigarette. They haven’t outlawed that as well, have they? Am I allowed to hold a cigarette while I think?”
The assistant director appears to actually ponder this for a moment. “I guess you are.”
Cecily spots a young crew member nearby pulling on his vape as discreetly as possible.
“Can I just say, it’s absurd that smoking indoors is illegal and that is perfectly tolerated.”
The crew member attempts to somehow swallow back the mist he’s already puffed into the air.
“No, by all means. At least one of us should get to enjoy the satisfaction only nicotine can provide.” Everyone laughs. “If we get any further behind schedule, I might ask you to stand closer to me and blow some my way.”
This is a nothing exchange—there are dozens like it every day. Each one exactly this charming. Which is to say: Cecily Close is everything I always hoped she would be.
“Jack, could I speak with you for a moment?” Cecily points her fag at me.
Fuck.
“The rest of you: Take five,” Cecily announces from her seat.
“Should we make it a cool twenty?” the assistant director chimes in. “So that we can count it toward the union mandate?”
Cecily looks almost disturbed by the inanity of the question. She throws her hands up. “Sure, why not?”
Cecily walks past me and says over her shoulder, “Why don’t you and I step outside?”
It’s a blustery London winter day, a shade of gray I’ve only ever seen in this city. Waiting by the door for me, Cecily is wiry and birdlike but somehow larger than life. This is a woman who’s directed Oscar-winning performances, who helped define the filmmaking sensibilities of the ’70s and ’80s, who’s made James Cameron cry. And she walked away from all of it to have a private life and raise her daughter.
“Dreadful, isn’t it?” she asks, gesturing abstractly ahead of us.
“Well, is there such a thing as good London weather?” I respond generically. I’m nervous.
“No, I mean, what’s happening to this neighborhood. I think I saw a group of women drinking martinis made with coffee—disgusting.” She pulls out a matchbook from her pocket, now actually lighting her cigarette and taking a drag.
“I hope I’m allowed to smoke out here .” She looks around, then sighs. “When you’re young, you never expect the world to change so much. This club was like another home to me for so many years.”
“Really?” I ask, surprised.
“Oh, yes.” Cecily laughs, then pauses, as if caught in the reverie. “I came and took pictures of all the bands, anyone who would let me.”
I’d known Cecily had gotten her start as a photographer before she transitioned to filmmaking. But I wouldn’t have guessed a club like this one would have been her stomping ground.
“Jack,” she starts again. “I want to tell you something. For some time now, I’d been wanting to make this film about Richard, but I needed every single piece to fall into place correctly, and it seemed like it might never happen. I wasn’t sure if there would be anyone who could capture Richard’s essence so clearly. I saw you in Mother Courage and Her Children all those years ago...”
Cecily Close saw me in that play?
“I knew you had a lot of promise then, and I’ve followed your career ever since. When I saw the early Gatsby cut, it confirmed what I already knew: that you are the actor to play Richard.”
I register the way she refers to him only by his first name, a certain familiarity and weight to it—the sort of one-sided intimacy with a character that develops when a director has been poring over a dream project for this long.
“But here we are, and something’s missing. I need you to be honest with me: Do you think you can do this?” My stomach lurches as I process what she’s saying.
“I know I can,” I say. Quickly, decisively. Doing this role justice is, frankly, all I have right now.
“Then, what in the name of God is going on here?”
“Well, what... can I ask... what do you mean?” After snapping myself out of my holiday doldrums, I’d taken my prep seriously. I watched interviews. I screened the iconic Richard Thomson concert documentary directed by Jonathan Demme. I feverishly ordered a guitar so I could familiarize myself with the weight of it in my hands. I felt ready.
“I mean that... you’re doing a competent job, but it’s like you’re painting by numbers. There’s something missing or something on your mind. You’re elsewhere instead of here.”
A wave of shame washes over me. Before I can respond, Cecily continues.
“Forgive me if this is presumptuous, but does it have to do with the production designer? The one who you said wanted the job, then as it turns out, didn’t want the job? I have to say, that was quite the back-and-forth.”
I consider whether it’s worth being honest with this director—who I respect more than almost anyone—about my love life. Fuck it , I think. What on earth do I have to lose?
As I take her through the ups and downs of my and CJ’s story, from our initial chance meeting, to our reconnection on the Gatsby set, to our subsequent split, Cecily is silent and unreactive. Midway through my story, she stamps out one cigarette and lights another.
I can’t help but gush. “She’s someone I know I can trust to be honest with me. She’s headstrong and bold but somehow still kind... I just...” I’m rambling.
Cecily’s eyes narrow underneath her long gray-silver bangs.
“Jack, have you ever walked onto set and been made to feel like you don’t belong there?”
I consider her question. I’ve been anxious on set, felt pressure to prove myself, but no one has made me feel like I don’t belong. “No, I guess not.”
“Speaking, you know, as a ‘woman in Hollywood’”—she uses her fingers to gesture scare quotes, her cigarette ashes scattering as she does—“and one well over forty at that, let me tell you something: There is always going to be someone in this industry looking to undermine you. If you give them the slightest bit of thread, they’ll grab hold of it with their grubby little hands and pull with all their might. I would’ve been delighted to hire CJ based on her experience, but I can understand why she didn’t want the job.”
“Right, well, I fucked up.”
“Well, did you try to fix it? Did you make a grand gesture? Did you fight for her?”
I think back to our argument in her kitchen. I left for London a few days later without exchanging another word.
“No,” I admit sheepishly. “I didn’t.”
Cecily rolls her eyes, and I fear I’ve been deemed as despicable as the dreaded espresso martinis.
“Now, Jack Felgate, you listen. You have to understand that she has a different way of doing things than you. And that you’re going to bump up against each other, but you can’t quit because of”—she waves the hand not holding what is now her third cigarette—“logistics.”
She pauses and exhales. “I’m going to tell you something else. And it’s something not many people in this world know. Or at least not many living ones.”
She reaches into the pocket where she stores her cigarettes and pulls out a 4 × 6 photograph, folded in half, and hands it to me. This is definitely older than I am.
“I suppose your generation probably doesn’t even know what these are anymore,” Cecily remarks with icy mirth. “It’s called a photograph, and they used to be actual, physical things.”
I let out a laugh, a real one, for what feels like the first time in ages. The black-and-white portrait of Richard Thomson is the most famous one of him ever taken. He’s looking directly into the camera, like he’s refusing to blink. His hand is propped underneath his chin, and he’s wearing a shirt with the first few buttons undone and a loose-fitting denim jacket over that. This picture is the cover of his self-titled album—his most well-known—and what an entire generation of young men showed their barbers for reference for several years in the ’80s. It is also the picture that every website ran above his obituary when he passed away a number of years ago.
“I took that photo,” Cecily says.
I consider myself something of a Cecily Close scholar, and still this is news to me.
“I gave Richard permission to use it however he saw fit on the condition that I wasn’t credited. We were in love for many years,” she says, her voice lower now. “And we kept it a secret from everyone. I didn’t want anyone to know that I took that picture, because I didn’t want to be known as Richard Thomson’s bird—like so many of those other women were, plenty of whom had their own real talent, by the way.” She wags a finger at me for emphasis. “I wanted to be Cecily Close. And so we always put our relationship second, and eventually, that tore us apart. We thought when we got older, we’d have all the time in the world. Then, he was gone.” She says this plainly, staring down at the pavement underfoot.
“When I found out I was pregnant and left everything behind, I knew exactly what everyone would say once I was out of earshot.” She rolls her eyes again. “That I was too temperamental, that they didn’t think I could handle the rigors of filmmaking. But the truth is, I was behaving that way because I was deeply unfulfilled. I was living for work instead of myself. I had to find my way back to real life before I could step back on a set, and I suggest you do the same for yourself before it’s too late. At the end of the day, your life should be your passion, every part of it, not just what we do here, making silly little films.”
Cecily flicks her final cigarette on the ground and stamps it out. She walks to the back door of the club, then turns to me.
“And by the way, half of Richard’s songs are about me.” She cocks her head toward me to join her. “I trust you have what you need now.”