a director's debut

Cue the laugh track—

(she says.)

I grit my teeth and hold out my hand for the clipboard. She passes it to me with sudden deference; when she apologizes I shake my head, flip through the nine sheets of paper. They are covered with edits I have never seen, changes I have never made, and they turn the scene from a masterpiece of composition to the revised equivalent of day-old take-out. There is laughter where there should be smiles, tears where there should be passion, and I want to take her aside and explain this travesty of dilution. Page two, for example. Charlie cannot simply go from fucking a girl to making love—his character is not strong enough to take it, not good enough a man. There is a roadmap of development he has to follow, a busted face to repair and a dog to adopt, before he can reach an ending that does not truncate abruptly in a car-meets-cliff dissolution. If these changes stand, my motivation dies.

I tell her this.

(That, someone mutters, would be a goddamn blessing.)

She pats my arm, offers me words so empty they vanish before they reach my ears. Her nails are powder-blue and egg-shaped, more trophy wife than director’s assistant. The executives assigned her to me as insurance. A new director with his new inspirations—dangerous things, both, and so I was saddled. She strides when she thinks I’m not looking and tiptoes when I am. If she is supposed to be helpful she is doing a piss-poor job. If she is supposed to take over my show, she is five stars and counting. Every creative decision we’ve made is a parody of the process, hard-won battles whose distinct winners can be tallied on whiteboard and bet upon. Today, I decide, Charlie is the sticking point. The actor is lying half-naked on the powder-blue bedspread—

(Oh, I get it now, well-played)

—ready for a scene whose 90s bed-and-breakfast background has bled off the soundstage and into the souls of the crew. Cameramen trail toast crumbs and bad coffee, make-up artists blue eyeshadow and rouge. Plastic faux wood grain is in abandon. In front of me, my assistant director’s mouth finally closes and I think, probably, that she has also powdered her face. I don’t tell her this in favor of paraphrasing Frank Sinatra, and then, when that bounces spectacularly off, going with the crasser American idiom instead.

She grabs the clipboard out of my hand and throws it on the ground. Paper goes everywhere. My pencil flies into the red shag rug. The actor-playing-Charlie jumps, nearly falls off the bed.

(That’s it—she says—I can’t do this anymore—you’re a nightmare, a goddamn nightmare—)

Actor-playing-Charlie sits up as she leaves. Silence tries to fall over the soundstage; the moment seeks to pause.

“Don’t cue the laugh track unless I say,” I say, and on we go.