Seeing Stars (6 page)

“All right, go,” Ruth said, releasing them. “I’ll catch up.”

Bethany looked at her doubtfully. “You, too,” Ruth said, giving her permission to be part of that most delectable thing, a girl group. Bethany raised her eyebrows:
Are you sure? I can stay with you.
“Go,” said Ruth. “
Go!
”

T
HE
R
IALTO WAS AN UNPROMISING OLD PILE, WITH NONE
of the showstopping, gilded art deco splendor of the nearby Pantages. It reminded Ruth more of a cross between an old movie theater and a civic auditorium. Once they were checked in and had run the gauntlet of Bagel Alley, a cheap buffet that craft services had set up to cater to the doughnut-eating, carb-addicted, caffeine-dependent extras, the parents and chaperones were directed to one location, the actors to another. Ruth could see that Bethany was vibrating, actually
vibrating
, with excitement. Her first movie set! Her first step toward becoming a professional actor! Even Ruth fell under the spell as they moved inside, intimidated by the sheer mass of cables, light arrays, cameras, mikes, flats, PAs, makeup artists, wardrobe fitters, and grown-up extras dressed as teachers, parents, and school administrators.

The actual parents and other set-sitters were relegated to their own area and a production assistant barked through a portable sound system that they had to stay put; those found wandering would be invited to leave the set permanently, along with their wards and children. Thus chastened, the grown-ups—easily twelve women to every man—busied themselves establishing camps in the gulag of the mezzanine, which Ruth felt could have been worse because at least you could see all the action from up there, even if you couldn’t hear much. Like a flurry of birds, children kept appearing, alighting, and flying away with retrieved notebooks, pens, iPods, water bottles, and light snacks. They had been divided into three groups and assigned to makeshift classrooms in the costume shop and two rehearsal rooms. To Ruth’s relief, Bethany had been separated from the Orphans. Reba and Hillary had been assigned to one room, Allison to another, and Bethy to the third.

Once the girls had made what Ruth hoped was their final exit, she pulled out the copy of
Seabiscuit
she’d been meaning to read for forever, but she was too nervous to settle down; she read the first page nine times and gave up. All around her were little islands of adults surrounded by laptop computers, picnic coolers,
DV
D players, knitting, crocheting, even a pillow and blanket or two for the toddlers and preschoolers who’d been dragged along. (Now
that
would be a nightmare, Ruth thought; how did you keep a tiny child busy, happy,
and
quiet while sitting in theater seats all day?) The women and handful of men weren’t nearly as well-heeled as the mothers at Bethy’s
That’s So Raven
callback. There were a lot of elastic-waisted pants here, and plus-size shirts from Target.

“Well,
that’s
a load of crap,” Ruth heard a raspy voice announce from several rows down. Ruth thought it sounded familiar, and by moving just one seat over she confirmed that it was Vee Velman from Bethy’s callback the other day. Her hair, which was refreshingly shot with gray, was pulled back and piled up and pinned indifferently, and Ruth thought she looked wonderfully tough and capable. “Do you need me to come down there?” she was saying into her cell phone. “No? Look, just tell her it’s your epilepsy medication—don’t say medicine, say
medication
—and that you’ll have a grand-mal seizure any minute if you don’t take it. Honey, I don’t—” A pause, a loud sigh, and then, “Hi. Yup, this is Clara’s mom. Look, my daughter has epilepsy, though she was probably too ashamed to tell you,
severe
epilepsy, and if she doesn’t take those meds
right on schedule
, which means five minutes ago, she’s going to start seizing. I know she should have a note. She
did
have a note when we left home, but God only—” A beat. “Have you ever
seen
a grand-mal seizure? Because I can tell you, it’s not pretty. A lot of times it involves vomit, and sometimes feces, and then there’s the tongue-swallow—All right.
Thank
you.” She snicked her cell phone shut.

Ruth made her way down and touched Vee on the shoulder in what she hoped was a supportive way. “Ruth Rabinowitz. We met at the—”

Vee turned around. “Hey—sure, how are you?”

“Fine! Well, a little overwhelmed.” She gestured at the chaos around them, then asked as delicately as she could, “Is everything all right?”

“What? Oh, that was Clara. She’s got hay fever, and the Nazi set teacher wouldn’t let her take a Sudafed. It’s ridiculous, because you know they’re not going to want her on set if she’s sneezing every two minutes, which is pretty much the way it’s been going this morning.”

Ruth was nonplussed. “She’s not epileptic?”

Vee looked amused. “You heard that?”

“I didn’t mean to, but—”

“Pretty good, huh?”

“So she’s not?”

“Nah.”

“Are the teachers always obstinate like that?”

“Not all of them. Sit!” Vee said, patting the seat beside her.

Ruth sat, taking in Vee’s minimal camp: a laptop, two paperback books with broken spines, and a water bottle filled with what looked like beer.

“Actually it depends,” Vee was saying. “Sometimes they’re fascists and sometimes they’re okay, and you never know which one it’s going to be until you get there. They’re supposed to be the kids’ on-set advocates, making sure they get enough breaks and have water and stuff. Technically, they’re social workers. Some of them are totally worthless, though. Those who can’t do teach, and those who can’t teach teach on sets. And on big sets like this, with tons of kids, you’re lucky if they just keep the room quiet. One time, Clara said there was a kid who spent the whole three hours rolling doobies inside a lunch box.”

“You’re kidding.”

“You’ll see. How’s your girl, did she book
Raven
?”

Ruth sighed. “No. Frankly, it was a disaster. The woman didn’t even recognize her, and then she yelled at her for bringing glasses that she’d specifically
told
her to bring the day before.”

“Well, like I said, Evelyn Flynn’s a piece of work.”

“Poor Bethy was so upset.”

Vee looked at her shrewdly. “I bet you took it harder than she did.”

“Probably,” Ruth admitted. By her estimation, she’d gotten four and a half hours’ sleep that night.

“Yeah, well, the parents usually do.”

“Really? You go through that?”

Vee shrugged. “Not so much anymore, but when the kids were little it was hard. Now they kind of don’t give a shit. If they book something, fine; if they don’t book something, fine.”

“So is Clara one of the extras, too?”

“God, no,” Vee said. “She’s Girl Number Three. She has seven lines, not one of which has more than four words in it.”

“Still,” said Ruth. “That’s wonderful.”

Vee smiled at her fondly. “You’re
so
new.”

“Does it really show that much?”

“Honey, like neon paint on a stripper. Not that that’s always a bad thing. A lot of casting directors like the kids right out of Kansas or wherever.”

“Seattle,” said Ruth.

“Like I said. Sometimes those are the kids who give the freshest reads. They have that clean, unspoiled,
real
quality directors love.”

“Speaking of strippers,” and here Ruth lowered her voice, “is it true that the porn industry is headquartered here? Because I think we’ve seen some places where they film. On Magnolia in North Hollywood there are these big buildings that don’t have windows or signs, and all the parking’s around back. I mean, we’ve seen some
people
, too. Well, women.”

“You bet,” Vee said cheerfully. “Porn’s big business, baby. If you ever want a real hoot, watch the Adult Movie Awards on TV. It’ll blow your mind.”

“I don’t think I’m that strong,” said Ruth.

“Just wait. Once you’ve been here a few years you’ll not only watch, you’ll see that some of your neighbors are nominees. We had a porn queen once who used to walk her dogs all the time—pugs, Peachy and Butch, neither of them could breathe worth a damn, dumber than clams—and whenever she walked, men up and down the whole damned street suddenly remembered they had to go out and check the mail. My husband, Herb, kept a pair of binoculars in the front window. Her name was Honey von Buns or something. I am not making this up. Buster used to call her the Implant Lady, and that was when he was only ten. We used to marvel that she didn’t just topple over from the weight. When she put her house on the market, every single person within a quarter-mile radius went to the open house. You would not
believe
what you can do with a little feng shui and faux painting. I’m not kidding, the whole place was like a Roman grotto where someone had killed a couple of tigers. There were olive branches, stone columns, togas in the coat closet, tiger-striped towels, drapes, toilet seats, the whole deal. You could smell the strawberry massage oil from the front lawn.” Vee sighed, a faraway look in her eye. “Now an entertainment lawyer lives there, and he’s
such
a bastard. If we’d known, we’d have tried harder to get her to stay. She probably lives in the West Hills now, in some house that Spartacus built. You think I’m kidding?”

Ruth was laughing so hard her eyes were tearing. Vee subsided, taking a swig from her water bottle.

“I’ve got to ask,” Ruth said.

“I know—you think it’s beer. Everybody does. It’s this special apple juice Clara makes me buy at Trader Joe’s. Organic, which I keep trying to tell her just means there’s probably a couple of ground-up worms in it. She loves Trader Joe’s. I figured out once that we pay their monthly electrical bill.”

“We were so glad when we found one near our apartment,” Ruth said. “We love that place.”

“You and everybody else.”

Downstairs, kids were suddenly filing in from three different doorways and being directed to seats in the center section of the orchestra until every single one was taken.

“Oh!” Ruth said, leaning forward in excitement.

“They’re packing them in, so they must be shooting tight,” Vee said. “No cardboard cutouts for this guy.”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t know about that? You know how in a sports movie the superdome or wherever looks completely filled? They use cardboard cutouts of people up in the high seats.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Think about it. They’re not going to pay ten thousand extras. Cardboard’s a lot cheaper, and from a distance you can’t tell the difference.
You
never noticed it, right?”

“So there’s a company somewhere that makes a million cardboard cutouts of people?” Ruth said incredulously.

“Yup.”

Ruth shook her head. In another minute she saw Bethany come in, look up for her, and wave. Ruth waved back. A production assistant was giving each row of kids a number. Ruth was thrilled to see that Bethy’s row was number four. Based on where the cameras were placed, she might get a close-up. By Ruth’s calculation, the kids in row twenty didn’t stand a chance.

Once everyone was seated, a young man in a ratty sweatshirt, high-tops, and a baseball cap turned around backward hopped up on the stage. “He can’t possibly be the director,” Ruth said. “He’s twelve years old.”

“That’s him, all right. Dick Fiori. He’s pretty new, but his last movie,
Winning Proposition
, made a ton of money, so now he’s one of Hollywood’s golden boys.”

“I remember that movie,” Ruth said. “Wasn’t it about a soccer team or something in Proposition, Ohio?”

“Yep.”

On the stage, a PA offered Dick Fiori a portable mike, but he waved it away and shouted, “Can you all hear me?”

The kids hollered, “
Yeah!
”

“Cool.” He made a settle-down motion with his hands and said, “Okay, hey, thanks for being here today, first of all. How many of you have done this before?”

About half the kids put up their hands.

“How many of you want to be in the movies?”

Almost everyone raised a hand.

“Groovy.” In a mock-confidential tone he said, “How many of you are only here because your parents made you?”

About eighteen of the kids raised their hands. The director turned to the mezzanine with a boyish grin that Ruth suspected he’d been perfecting for years and said, “Thanks, all you stage moms and dads!”

A feeble ripple of laughter went through the gulag.

The director turned back to the kids. “No, but seriously, guys, you’re going to be part of one of the movie’s most important scenes. LaTisha and Brian have been working with the squad on this popping-krumping kind of cheer for a couple of months. No one’s ever seen anything like it before, and they’re getting a ton of static, including from Mr. Wong, the principal. So they’re worried about that. Plus—and don’t tell anyone this—they’re falling in love.”

In a united chorus, the kids all said, “
Awwwwww
.” Dick Fiori gave them a minute before saying, “Seriously, though, if they don’t at least place in this competition they’re going to have to go home and the squad’s going to be disbanded because even the school board doesn’t like them and they’re just looking for any excuse, so how they do is super important. Okay? So here’s what we’re going to do. We need you guys to react—that’s what you’re going to be doing for me today—and I’m going to
tell
you what you’re reacting to, which means you’re going to have to use your imaginations, because nothing’s actually going to be happening up here on the stage, even though in the movie we’ll be cutting back and forth to the squad performing. Okay? So the first thing is, we’re going to boo”—and here he made a booing noise like a moose call—“because you’re thinking these kids are just freaks and spoilers and they should step aside and let the regular squads win. Okay? Let me hear it.”

The kids all booed with gusto. “Great! Now I want you to do exactly that same thing, only this time you all need to be looking at me, because the camera has to see
you
seeing these kids that you hate. Are we ready, Harvey? Yeah? Okay, we’re going to roll this time. You ready? Here’s your chance to get famous.”