High Risk 3.3

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[Continuing chapter three]

When Casey returned to the set a false wall had mysteriously appeared, surrounded by reflectors and lights. This time there were two microphones, suspended from overhanging poles, instead of the one that had served the last piece of filming.

The reason for the second microphone became clear when Desiree was joined by not just Conrad Hart but Eve Adams, Brett Kerry, and Richard Armstrong. The five actors jostled one another for a minute as they found their positions in front of the false wall. Then they stood for several minutes longer while a variety of technicians fiddled with microphone placement, flashed lights on and off, and made invisible adjustments to various articles of clothing. One man in particular seemed to hover around Desiree, occasionally shifting his interest to Miss Adams. At this man’s instruction the light bathing Desiree’s face shifted in subtle ways, amid confusing calls for more silks, a little more or less barn door on the inkies. After a final “Give me a gimmick right here”—accompanied by a finger-tip placed on one of Desiree’s cheekbones—the man said, “Okay. We’re ready here.”

“Excellent,” said Straebo, who’d been hovering on the periphery of the group. “Let’s do it. Sound?”

“All set, Mr. Straebo.”

Straebo shuffled back to one of the cameras, accompanied by the man who’d directed the lighting of the women’s faces. A second later a man’s voice called out, “Synchronize!”

Straebo shouted, “Quiet! Camera!” After a second’s pause, the tableau in front of the false wall suddenly came to life. Eve Adams trembled in something like fear—or possibly embarrassment—as Richard Armstrong berated Brett Kerry for his callous disregard of Conrad Hart’s safety. At Hart’s side, Desiree shifted a smoldering gaze between Hart and Kerry.

Casey found himself drawn to Desiree, though she alone of the actors said not a word during the scene. Simply by the way she tilted her head or shifted her body toward and away from Hart, she suggested to Casey a moral torment that words would never have been able adequately to express. As long as actors could convey this sort of thing without speaking, Casey decided, talkies were likely to remain a novelty, despite Desiree’s conclusion that they represented the future of the movies.
Straebo had called, “Cut!” before Casey was aware that the scene was over. It was a bit of a surprise that Straebo immediately hurried away from his cameras and actors, so Casey followed him to a small wooden booth a short distance beyond the ring of lights and reflectors. There was, Casey realized, a series of heavy cables flowing from the set to this booth.

He arrived in time to hear Straebo ask, “How does it sound?”

“Pretty good,” said a man sitting in front of what looked like a large Victrola. The man’s shirt-sleeves were rolled up just past his elbows; perched dangerously on his lower lip, a cigarette drizzled ash onto his rumpled trousers. Around his neck was a pair of ear-phones.

The man moved the Victrola’s arm and set its needle onto the outer edge of a large wax disc. A second later, the shouted conversation Casey had just heard the actors perform emerged, a bit scratchily, from a speaker beside the turntable. Casey was no novice when it came to records—every squadron in France had had at least one Victrola, and you were required almost by law to bring back new records when you went on leave—but hearing a recording was as nothing compared with seeing one made and then hearing the results moments later. Now he wished that Desiree had actually said something in the scene.

“That’s fine,” Straebo said. “Let’s do it again.”

The director turned so abruptly that he nearly bumped into Casey, who felt a jolt of pain from his ribs as he shifted to get out of Straebo’s way. “Good afternoon, Casey,” Straebo said. “I’m happy to see you on your feet. You’re welcome to watch, but I would ask you to please keep out of our way.”

“Of course,” Casey said. “Sorry.” He wondered if there was any Aspirin nearby.

Straebo chivied his people back into position, and Casey carefully walked back to behind the lights and other equipment. The second performance of the scene, however, ended almost as quickly as it began.

“Cut!” Straebo stepped forward, stopping just short of the actors. “You’re not projecting, Mr. Armstrong.”

“What?” Armstrong seemed flustered. Or perhaps he was annoyed that his concentration had been broken.

“You’re supposed to be angry, forceful,” Straebo said. “You want to project that anger. We have to believe that you’re capable of anything at this stage.”

“That’s an accurate assessment,” Armstrong muttered. “Sorry,” he said to the others. “Let’s go again.”

This time, Armstrong didn’t get ten words into his speech before Straebo interrupted him. “You’re still not doing it right,” the director said from behind the camera. “That man”—he pointed to a sour-faced Brett Kerry—”is trying to kill you, and you sound as if he’s just cut in front of you at the soda fountain.”

“Why don’t you let me get through a take before you make up your God-damned mind about how I sound?” Armstrong said. “I think I know what I’m doing here.”

“That remains to be proven,” Desiree said darkly. Before Armstrong could respond, though, Straebo chivvied the actors into place for another take.

Casey looked at Armstrong. He saw a brittleness in the younger man’s expression, the sort of barely contained anger-masking-fear he’d seen in a few faces in 1918, shortly before the bearers of those faces were washed out by the squadron Medical Officer as being unfit for further flying duties. Desiree sniffed and—unconsciously, it seemed to Casey—wrinkled her nose. Casey wondered if she smelled alcohol on Armstrong’s breath. That would fit the pattern.

The third take came to an abrupt end when Kerry stumbled over a word. Nobody said anything beyond the litany of cut-synchronize-camera-action needed to get another take under way. The fourth take was progressing smoothly when an airplane flew overhead and Straebo decided that the sound of its engine was inappropriate to the scene; and the fifth ended when the sound man emerged from his tiny booth shouting that they’d have to readjust the microphones and try again—he couldn’t hear the dialog.

The sixth take went perfectly. Or so it seemed to Casey. No sooner had Straebo stopped the filming, though, than he was stomping up to Armstrong, chins wobbling and shoulders hunched as though getting ready to react to a punch.

“You sound like a goddamned schoolgirl!” Straebo screamed. “Why am I being treated this way? Why is it that when I’m putting my career, my life on the line, I have to do it with a man who talks like a sissy?” The director thrust his face right up to Armstrong and his voice dropped to something serpent-like. “What do I have to do to get a manly sound out of you, Mister Armstrong? Threaten you with replacement? It’s not too late, you know. I might not be able to re-shoot your scenes, but I can certainly edit you out. Is that what you’re after?”

Armstrong said nothing. His eyes wide, his breathing rapid and shallow, he looked to Casey to be going into shock. “Steady on, Jerry,” Hart said. “Dick’s doing his best, we all are.”

“Since when did you become a sound expert, Mister Hart?” Straebo whirled on the star, at which Armstrong seemed to be released from some sort of spell; he took a ragged step back, than another, bumping into the false wall in the process. “I have lost track of the number of times I’ve had to talk Scott out of quitting,” Straebo said. “Do you know how much we’re paying him, Hart? Do you know how much in demand trained sound engineers are right now? We could lose Scott tomorrow, and all because Mr. Armstrong’s voice is an embarrassment and he won’t do anything to correct it. Do you really want your career hanging on Richard Armstrong’s refusal to attend his voice classes?”

“You can save the diatribe, Jerry,” Desiree said. “Dick’s gone.” Straebo and the other actors looked from one to another, in a way that suggested a Mack Sennett comedy, as though each was convinced that one of the others had smuggled Armstrong away.

“Right,” said Straebo after a second. “Fifteen minutes, everyone, while we try to find our actor.”

Casey had watched Armstrong go, curious at his response to Straebo’s attack. Yesterday he’d been belligerent—the more so for it being six-thirty in the morning—and now here he was, slinking away as though he’d been beaten. There was clearly something going on here that went deeper than a dispute over how masculine Armstrong’s voice sounded—and to Casey the voice sounded fine, even if every other aspect of Armstrong’s person and behaviour was offensive.

Now he watched Straebo. Rather than head in the direction of the dressing rooms, Straebo made straight for the sound engineer’s shack. Curious, Casey followed as fast as his ribs would let him, arriving just in time to hear the phrase “two good takes” emerge from the mouth of the engineer—presumably the “Scott” of Straebo’s earlier diatribe. Casey kept walking with what he hoped would look, to Straebo, like purpose. As he walked he listened carefully to Straebo’s response, and was gratified when Straebo said, “Good. I can get the scene from those two plus some inserts.” As the sound of the conversation faded, Casey thought he heard the director say something that sounded like, “keep it just between us.”

Casey stopped behind the first tent he reached, to assess what he’d just heard and let his ribs settle down. Did it matter to anyone else that something about Straebo’s attitude and Armstrong’s reaction to it seemed odd? You’re just the hired help, he reminded himself. If they want to hear your opinions they’ll give them to you.

In the event it took considerably longer than fifteen minutes to locate Armstrong, and by the time he was found, laying down in the back seat of his car, he was almost too drunk to stand. Straebo made threatening noises about suspending him for insubordination, but backed down when both Hart and Desiree reminded him that it would be impossible to replace Armstrong at this stage and have even a hope of getting the picture finished on schedule. Casey smiled to himself when he remembered Straebo being given just one more week to complete the job. It wasn’t that he liked Armstrong. But he was beginning to like Straebo even less.

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