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Movie diaries 10
The Basement of the Hall Of Waters, 2
We left the boilerroom and returned to main area. Personally, I was mentally and emotionally escaping from the place; buried memories from a past life maybe, or just a simple empathy reaction of the plight of drowned persons everywhere, had wound me tight and I was ready for a fight, any fight.
Any fight but the one I got.
The group consisted of all the principal actors, PD, PublicityLady, a few others who are still around and whose involvement I'm still not sure about. The boilerroom is separated from the main area by a long hallway, like the exit ramp from a parking garage. PD was pointing along the walls, talking about the special effects that would put one of our bad guys (well, in this case, girl) walking along the wall in a gravity defying display of Evil Power. "And here," he says, "is where the staff fight starts."
So, Murphy and I start looking over the space. We've both spent some time with the combatants, Kate and Hench Wench Two, choreographing for flash and safety and the wow-factor, but never here. The space we'd worked in before was interesting, but not as fun. The basement has columns, an uneven floor, stuff hanging from the ceiling.
I take several steps back down the tunnel, start air-fighting my way back, miming the fight...spin around a column here...duck a sweep here...back into a column against its corner, a slow-motion injury in the making (the line "Holy fuck, that hurt..." earned me a remonstrative look from PRLady, whose fourteen year old daughter was present)...mentally playing the part of Kate, visuallizing how we can use the space to best advantage with only two cameras catching the action documentary style.
Murph, less theatrical than me, had walked over to a raised bit of concrete in roughly the middle of the room. "What about this...the fight could come over here."
Leaving my private narrative, I looked at the thing. A large concrete box, about eighteen inches high, four feet by three feet. Sticking out of the top are stubs of bolts, hazards. Hanging from the ceiling was a galvanized pipe, dangling from a 90° elbow, the hanging end with half a universal connector on it. Looking up, I saw where the pipe had at one time been connected, another pipe leading to a water spigot on a column nearby. "The studs we can work around," I said, "but this pipe's got to go."
I noticed PD talking to someone over by the elevator: a roundish, fiftyish woman with a bad perm, polyester slacks, and the kind of floral blouse of the species you find most often at Wal*Mart, watching the proceedings with, not precisely interest, but with some concern on her face. The way PD talked to her, with a kind of care that suggested she had some say over our presence in the place, lead me to believe, correctly as it turned out, that this woman was in charge. I waited for PD to take a breath.
"Excuse me, ma'am?" I said. She looked at me. "We're going to have actors walking around in this area, and this pipe presents a possible hazard. Would it be possible to disconnect it at this joint there," I pointed, "while we shoot? It's not used - we could even reconnect it, there." I pointed again.
A simple question, politely stated. What this lady heard, however, must've been something like "Ma'am, in front of your board of directors we're going to strangle you with your own bra, then take a jackhammer to those pillars there until the whole place caves in and your historial landmark becomes another Ground Zero."
She drew herself up, which didn't take long, and said, aiming the words at me like a gun, "You know, you people can't just walk in and start tearing things apart and rearranging things like you owned the place."
The cast and crew were stunned into silence. Remembering the adage, "A soft answer turneth away wrath", and the fact that I could, if I wasn't careful, get us all thrown out on our collective ass, I said, "Yes ma'am, I know. That's why I asked."
Following the tennis ball of our conversation, all heads turned to Wal*mart lady. She sighed, the benevolent monarch granting a boon. "I guess it'd be alright."
PD clapped his hands. "People, it's time to go. It's getting close to closing time upstairs. C'mon now."
As we left, I bitched to Kate and Gunslinger, who commiserated. Later, my wife, less inclined to be sympathetic and understanding better than anyone else that one can do this, said "She'd been waiting to drop that one on somebody. Why on earth did you step into the bullseye?"
Ultimately, we may not get to use the space anyway. They've upped the stakes and are demanding that the movie company get liability insurance. While we can do that, certainly, there may not be time. We want to have the movie released to either movie theatres or DVD rental places by October of this year. We'll see, won't we?
Tune in next time, kids, when Gunslinger and Murphy pull out the BIG GUNS...up next: The Basement At The Royal.
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