Page 60 of The Spirit of Love
“I’m wondering,” Jude says, “that is, if you even remember…how did you originally write Aurora’s lines?”
I close my eyes and call it up. I never forget my first drafts. “It was ‘I’m wearing an amygdala on my head, and my heart on my sleeve.’ ”
“That’s the line,” Jude says, amazed. “Aurora!” he calls as the actor steps out of her trailer, looking glamorously dust-battered and disheveled. “Come get your new line.” Now Jude turns back to me. “Will you hang out in the tent with me?”
“I…yes.”
For the next ninety minutes, I watch as Aurora drives the Chrysler to the cliff’s edge eighteen times before Jonah and the sound guys are satisfied they’ve got all the angles they need for the take. Then it’s time to reset the cameras so Aurora can actually get out of the car and say her lines.
I sit in the second director’s chair that Jude had Ivy bring under the tent. He calls “Action!” and both of us watch. Aurora’s committed, serving the right balance of camp and emotion. It’s an excellent first take. Now she’ll likely have to do it again at least a dozen more times so Jude will have choices in the editing room.
“Cut!” Jude calls. He bounds out of his chair, out of the tent, and up to Aurora. They’re out of earshot, and I wonder what I would say to Aurora if it were me? Before I can decide, Jude comes back.
He sits beside me, puts on his headset, and says quietly, “Moment of truth.”
Aurora takes a second pass. And it’s brilliant. An actual tearslides down her cheek as she hands Miguel the frozen piece of brain. Then falls in for an unscripted kiss.
I glance at Jude and find him studying me.
“What do you think?” he asks, a rare glint of vulnerability in his eyes.
“Wow,” I hear crew members murmur. Then I realize I’m among them. A “Wow” came out of my mouth, too. And I think it made Jude blush. Or is that just the furnace-like desert sun?
When Jude calls cut, we all applaud Aurora. This is usually a stoic set, but not today. Sometimes, even seven years in, we are collectively moved by our show.
“That’s it. We got it.” Jude says. “Nailed it, Aurora. And you.” He turns to me. “Thank you, Fenny.”
“That’s it?” I say. “You’ve only done two takes. What if—”
“That was the take,” Jude says with certainty. “I’ll build the rest of the scene around it.”
His confidence feels exciting—and a little reckless. I’d have shot ten more takes and still gone with this one in the end, but is it really as easy as Jude’s making it sound? To know when you’ve got it and to stop there?
After lunch, thegrips are finishing setting up the second set for today. The post-lunch lull is real, so sometimes actors overcompensate with caffeine. It looks as if Jude made this mistake himself. He’s pacing nervously, and I think I hear him bickering with some members of the crew. As I get closer to thescene, I can feel it. His energy is so different from his cool, calm confidence this morning.
In the scene they’re prepping for, Buster is supposed to be living his best zombie life, tearing up the desert for his first taste of flesh. He has not yet chosen to come back as a human boy.
“Buster, I need you to take four steps toward me,” Jude says.
“If we do that,” a grip calls out, “I can’t get the mountains in the shot.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Jude says dismissively. “I can cheat that in editing.”
The grip looks incredulous. “Then why did we all travel two hours to the burning desert so you could CGI the background?”
“Fine,” Jude says. “But if Buster’s standing there, I want to install the net.”
The crew groans. The net is like the one you see at a circus, under a trapeze artist, stationed at the edge of anything an actor might fall off.
“Buster’s got to feel free to devolve into darkness here,” Jude explains. “He can’t do that if he’s about to fall off a cliff.”
“The net will take us sixty minutes to build out,” Jonah says, “at which point the sun will be completely different, so we’ll have to redo all the lighting.” He clocks Jude’s expression. “Not that we can’t do it—”
“I don’t care if it takes us all night,” Jonah says sharply. “I’d rather avoid a dead kid. Who is nervous enough as it is.” He points at Buster, and everyone turns to look.
“I’m going to fall off the cliff?” Buster whines.
“No one’s falling off a cliff,” I interject, telling Buster, “We’vepracticed this, remember? You and me, back in LA, a couple weeks ago?”
