Chapter 13
My favorite part of the script, the part that really made me want to do it, wasn’t dialogue at all but the page describing a scene of Andy at the hospital, preparing for his gallbladder surgery.
A nurse enters the room, the music stops, and Andy hears, “It’s time to go, Mr. Warhol.” He is alone—his longtime partner Jon having died of AIDS a year earlier. Warhol holds a crystal in his hand—he became a Crystal Guy at the end—and goes off into surgery, a surgery he will never recover from.
We never see the corpse; we see us hearing the news, and the world hearing the news.
And then all his friends and colleagues gather at the Factory, because even though it no longer really exists it’s the only place to go.
Jude and I end up on the roof of his apartment and share our first kiss there, in what the script calls “a stubborn unwillingness to give in to despair.”
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The love scene was at the very end of the shoot, and before it we met with an intimacy coordinator who asked us each for our vision of the scene and what kind of coverage we wanted.
I was never out of a bra, but Kai was ostensibly naked, so he had to wear a little patch around his crotch.
That day we kissed and it felt like kissing, and I straddled him and it felt like straddling, and the camera raked across his naked torso and down past his hip, and it’s just acting but it is also making out.
It’s a both/and drug of the strangest variety, not least because even though it was a closed set, lots of people were watching, including the guy holding the boom mic, who had to hold it above his head while Kathryn got her minutes-long shot, and when Kathryn finally shouted cut, he’d lower the mic and groan like he was also having sex, something Kai and I kept laughing about between shots.
This time around, Kai didn’t struggle to go into the emotional depths.
I felt him trusting me. I kissed him, and I kissed his tears.
I stroked his hair as he heaved sobs into my shoulder.
In between set-ups, he sat on his cast chair with AirPods in, and then he’d go back to crying.
It was beautiful and quiet on set, like all of us were sharing in this terrible loss.
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I kept thinking about when my mom died, even though I didn’t want to.
I’d been on set that day, making the movie shot by the Cinematographer, and in the middle of a take the director called cut and said, “Junie, I need to talk to you in your trailer.” I hate being called Junie, but people always call me it anyway once they think they know me.
In my trailer, she said, “Your mom was found dead this morning. I’m so sorry, Junie.
” My first thought was It’s over. It’s over.
The stress of it was over. Not knowing whether to take her calls, not knowing whether to send her money…
over. But then, she had loved me. She had hurt me a lot, but she had loved me too, and holding that paradox only became more impossible after she died.
A hundred and thirty people were on set waiting for me to come back to work, so I went back to work. I finished the day. My mother, if nothing else, raised a professional.
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Back in my trailer after shooting the love scene, I could hear Kai pacing across the thin wall between us.
“Do you want to be alone?” I asked him through the wall.
“Not really,” he said, and so I went outside and walked up the steps to his trailer and I lay down on the couch with him and let his beautiful hair run through my fingers. It was not that different from the scene we’d just filmed, only without kissing.
“I can go there now,” he said. “You made it safe for me, to go to the deepest places, the places that don’t feel settled.”
“When you love someone, part of their pain becomes yours, I guess.”
“You basically just said you love me back,” Kai said, laughing a bit.
“Basically,” I admitted.
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When we wrapped a couple days later, everybody clapped for me and for Kai, and I cried a little, and Matthew Malone came to set even though he wasn’t working that day, and he hugged us and then Kai hugged me and told me he loved me for the thousandth time.
Back at my trailer, there was a card on my couch.
It read, To my favorite sister-in-law, Happy Birthday.
Dear Juniper,
Thanks for making this movie. Thanks for being so fun to act with. The air is different when you are in a room. You change the atmosphere. Thank you for being a good friend, and for not judging me. Thank you thank you thank you. I love you.
At six, I will be in the lobby of our building wearing my finest, because Matthew got a present that is for both of us.
Love,
Kai
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Tony drove me home one last time in his white van. “How was it, kid?” he asked.
“I just hope the movie’s good.”
“You gotta enjoy the process, kid. The hours suck, the pay is mediocre, but you’re making movies, you know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I do like making movies.”
“Well, it’s been a pleasure driving y’all around. What’s next for ya?”
“An epic fantasy,” I said. “You?”
“There’s a Batman movie coming to town. I’ll try to get on that, but so will everyone else.”
“I hope our paths cross again,” I said.
“Oh, they will,” Tony said. “Life is long if you’re lucky, and don’t neither of us have enough to retire.”