Adventures in Austenland #3
First of all, they didn’t know of my desperation. After my housebound year, the mere prospect of being in close proximity to other adults was intoxicating. Secondly, they underestimated my apparent delight in my own words.
I did indeed sit in a chair, put on headphones, and listen to characters I invented speak lines I wrote over and over again.
And I never got tired of it. I felt secretly embarrassed by how much I loved hearing the dialogue.
By how I never grew bored of what I perceived to be my own cleverness.
I’m still surprised by this. I heard the same lines repeated thirty to fifty times in a day. Why didn’t that get old for me?
I did mention: housebound with four small children for a year.
And now . . . I was outside! In England!
Talking to PEOPLE! If I were a dog, I would have been wagging so hard I’d get a tail sprain and might accidentally pee a little bit every time somebody said, “Good girl!” And I’d be some kind of bouncy, tongue-drooly, eager-to-please ears-up mongrel.
But it was more than that. Writing a book takes so much alone time typing and thinking, thinking and typing, everything internal and, as I mentioned, no immediate reaction at all and sometimes no reaction whatsoever beyond the occasional wilted celery email.
I can literally spend hours fine-tuning a single sentence, and even if the book is well received (i.e.
, sells copies, has nice reviews, maybe even wins an award) I will still never know if anyone noticed that particular sentence.
I never know if all the work is worth it.
But on the movie set, there was an audience for every line: me!
Now my job wasn’t to comb over every word looking for what was wrong and trying to make it better—it was simply to be the spectator.
I got to hear those lines played out for me, and I was able to let myself appreciate them. What a gift.
And yet even more of a gift for me were the improvised lines.
For some reason, many audiences assume (and perhaps hope?) the funniest parts of comedies are improvised.
According to a Saturday Night Live documentary, maybe one line in an entire season—or more likely in five seasons—isn’t scripted.
Likewise, the majority of Austenland dialogue and action were straight from what Jerusha and I wrote in the screenplay.
But after getting takes of the scripted lines, Jerusha was the kind of director who encouraged the actors to play around a bit.
As an audience member for the filming who was intimately familiar with the script, I lived for the ad-libs.
I adored hearing what clever and new thing the actors or Jerusha would add on the fly.
Jennifer Coolidge and James Callis were our queen and king of ad-libs.
Of the improvised lines that made it into the final edit, my favorite is Jennifer on horseback yelling, “The British are coming! The British are coming!” It is so perfect in context, I marveled that in the year-plus of careful rewrites, Jerusha and I had never thought of it.
There were so many things I never thought of, details only experienced moviemakers could create.
When JJ Feild came on set in a costume that included a button-down shirt, I was sitting nearby as he and his costumer discussed a dilemma: buttoning the second-from-top button looked quite stiff, but leaving that one unbuttoned looked too come-hither.
I know it sounds like a small issue, but even costume-ignorant yours truly could see that neither option was working.
So the costumer took out his needle and thread and added one invisible stitch to the shirt between the two buttons.
I’m sure no one watching the movie has ever noticed, but if the costumer hadn’t added the stitch, the viewer might have squirmed at a not-right-ness, even if they weren’t conscious of what caused it.
While shooting a different scene, in the employee “break room” pool area, I was sitting near one of the set dressers.
Before they started to film the first take, she jumped up and added a chair in the background.
I asked her about it, and she said it was to subtly balance the shot.
Again, viewers are unlikely to consciously notice that chair, but without it, that shot might have felt “off,” even if they didn’t realize why.
I considered the hours I’d spent revising the manuscript without changing the story—just playing with word choice, the rhythms of sentences, the flow of a scene.
I’ll get consumed with getting the little details just right, things readers are unlikely to actively notice.
But if I didn’t do it, the story might not impact them in the same way.
Sometimes I felt like one of the “Hot Servant” extras who agreed to do push-ups in the background of that poolside scene.
He was a young, strong guy, but there were a lot of takes.
By the end, he was completely spent. You and me both, buddy.
Did those push-ups add enough to that scene to make his effort worthwhile?
Who can say? But devotion to telling the best story possible often means we’ll keep working through sweat and tears, just in case.
A movie set brings together a hundred people, all experts in their own fields, to combine talents in insane yet somehow productive group storytelling.
I’ve never experienced an equivalent to the synergy of a movie set.
Orson Welles is reported to have said that a writer needs a pen and an artist needs a brush, but a filmmaker needs an army.
Maybe moviemaking is most similar to a military operation with well-trained personnel who all have difficult individual tasks that move toward one unified goal.
It’s like that, but with more pudding and sausage rolls.
I’m almost embarrassed to admit how excited I got at teatime when craft services would bring around trays of sausage rolls, not to mention what a treat lunchtime was for me.
At home, I ate peanut butter sandwich crusts and bites of mac and cheese off my kids’ plates, so I practically skipped to the catered meal truck each day.
After all, Orson Welles also reportedly said, “Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch. ”
At the first lunch, the cook handed me my plate and in his resonant accent said, “There you go, darling.” My knees went weak, and I told him, “You can call me darling every single day.” The next person in line was a man, and the cook handed him his plate, saying, “There you go, gov’ner. ” I sighed in pure British bliss.
THE SURREAL LIFE
The first day of shooting was Jane Hayes’s American apartment.
As I watched from a nearby room, Keri Russell gave such a wonderfully funny line delivery, I laughed out loud—and ten heads swiveled to look at me in disbelief.
Oh no. Right off the bat, I’d broken the cardinal rule of set dwellers—making a noise during a take!
I switched into high alert. I felt both like an honored guest and a troublesome nuisance, and I walked gingerly, afraid to misstep and be sent away.
For the first couple of weeks, I rarely spoke to anyone and definitely not the actors.
But I kept finding myself standing in a group of crew and actors, everyone conversing while I stood there like a statue.
It became so ridiculous, I finally broke down and started acting like a human again.
A ginger human, in both caution and coloring.
Later, Jennifer Coolidge told me, “I thought at first you were super shy! You never spoke!”
I said, “I thought I wasn’t supposed to. I was so scared.”
Also, one time she said, “You’re really funny, Shannon.” I don’t remember why. I just want it on record: Jennifer Coolidge once said that I was funny. Talk about surreal.
There were so many uncanny moments, I could string them all together and make a waist-long necklace.
In week one, we filmed in an airport. A section was roped off for our shoot, but the rest bustled with real travelers.
As our crew reset a scene, I walked to a gift shop to buy presents for my sweet children at home.
As I shopped, an official-sounding British voice came on the airport’s actual PA system:
This is a passenger announcement. Can Jane Erstwhile please report to the information desk? That’s Jane Erstwhile to the information desk.
My entire body prickled with goose bumps and I felt transported into my book. It took moments longer than it should have to realize Jane Erstwhile wasn’t real and in this airport, but that they must be recording live audio for the scene.
The majority of our shoot took place at the eighteenth-century manor house and grounds of West Wycombe Park.
On our first day at the estate, I was sitting in my camp chair on the rolling green lawn as the crew set up.
Our male lead—the actor JJ Feild—walked by.
He was wearing a top hat, coat, breeches, and riding boots, and I was astonished at how much he looked like the character of my book—a being who, up till now, had only existed in my imagination.
Then he turned, saw me, and smiled.
Suddenly I felt as if there were no ground beneath me. My stomach dropped; my body felt floaty; I was falling into existential nothingness. My character had noticed me. There was no fourth wall.
Later he showed me a label still stitched on the inside of his hat and coat—Firth. In England, period costumes are frequently shared between productions. Our Mr. Nobley was literally dressed in the same clothing as Mr. Darcy.
JOIN ME FOR ONE MOMENT IN PRESENT TENSE