Shaky Cam

Pumpkin-flavored coffee: an abomination against all things holy. And yet, lord help me, I love the stuff. I know, I know, I’m part of the problem. I thumbed open one of my two flasks and poured in some pumpkin-spiced bourbon. It was Thanksgiving morning, but it’s Mardi Gras somewhere.

“This is a great setpiece, DJ. You outdid yourself.” Niles Rupert, director. He too was swilling down pumpkin joe. “We’re gonna have a wrap on this baby by Christmas, no problem.”

“Niles, I just need one more month to teach these guys their moves. It’s the slow season anyway, what’s the difference?”

“Sorry, buddy, no can do. They’ve already slashed a zero out of our budget, and they’re threatening to go after another one. We’ve gotta get this thing done.”

I exhaled through my nose and shook my head. No one understands that good art actually makes money in the long run. The guys with the pockets always want the quick, safe buck.

“Jake!” I yelled. “Quit dropping your shoulder, you’re telegraphing.” I spun toward Niles, who was opening his mouth. “I swear to God, Rupert, you say the words ‘fix it in post’ one more time and I will break your kneecaps with your own forehead.”

“Okay, okay.”

I’m Domingo Jack, proprietor of the Fight Corps: Hollywood’s top fight choreographers. When I heard they were making a movie out of Earl Staggs’ novel Justified Action, I fought to get on board; but one of the producers apparently dropped dead of a Mob-related illness shortly after the safer kind of shooting began, and our bankroll had been sand in a sieve ever since. Hence Niles’ reliance on the execrable innovation known as Shaky Cam.

Once Taken turned Liam Neeson into a martial arts messiah, every hack in town began clambering onto the five-cuts-per-punch bandwagon, making it impossible to see what the hunky protagonist was actually doing with his hands during a fight scene. It saved a bundle on training your actors. We can’t all be Keanu, I suppose.

“Drop the weapon!”

Jake Longstreet, middle-tier action star. He did his own stunts—which I respect—but, apart from cardio Krav Maga or whatever the cool kids are doing this week, he had no actual training in close-quarters combat. Right this second we were shooting a scene in which Lt. Tall Chambers, hero of Justified Action, gets disarmed by an enemy agent and has to take on three muscly gym-rats with his bare hands.

“Don’t even think about it,” Jake snarled at the two men facing him. But wait—behind him, in the shadows—oh nooo, a third evildoer. Look out, Chambers!

Baddie #3 sprang out and field-goaled the .45 out of Jake’s hands, and then the “fight” broke out. Five cameramen, all with handhelds, filming four actors slap-fighting like 3rd graders who just marathoned two seasons of Power Rangers. Each camera was bouncing and rattling, ostensibly to convey the gritty impact and chaos of real-life combat—in actuality, to cloak the mediocrity of the performers. I’d blocked out a great battle, but the artist’s vision rarely achieves incarnation. I turned away.

“And cut!” Niles called. “Great shot, guys. Let’s take an early lunch, we’ll be doing the car chase all afternoon.”

My car-stunt choreographer, Tom Waits (no relation to the singer), had mapped out a pretty intense chase sequence. I hoped they’d be able to do it a modicum of justice, but that wasn’t really my purview. I planned to stay in the studio and work on a few tweaks for the climactic Wild-West shootout. Patting my jacket pocket, I fished out the flask and splashed more bourbon in my coffee.

The caterers had been surreptitiously bringing in lunch-laden carts, and a fine mist of aromatic steam hung low beneath the stage mics. “We’ve all gotta work on Turkey Day,” Niles said magnanimously, “but we can at least have a great spread and pretend it’s Grandma’s cooking. Dig in, everybody!”

Scattered cheers. Mostly from the key grips.

’Twas a goodly spread withal: an avian Goliath dripping with juices, gravy-capped Everests of mashed potatoes, a vast Martian cranberryscape, and long dun moors of breadrolls, all overshadowed by the gleaming emerald spires of a half-dozen bottles of pretty decent Chardonnay. And of course, off to one side, a glass of sparkling grotesquerie that we all knew to avoid as we crowded around the feast.

“Nobody touch my pumpkin champagne!” Niles yelled over the clatter of plates.

“Dude, nobody wants your pumpkin champagne,” Jake replied, to a general chuckle.

As we mingled and masticated, I gave Longstreet a friendly elbow-jostle. “Good hustle out there today.”

“Thanks, man. I know I ain’t quite up to your usual standards.”

“Ah, you’re doing great. I just wish I had time to show you more tricks of the trade.”

“I know! Everybody’s getting the training these days, ever since John Wick. Hell, Charlize Theron’s kicking more ass than me right now. I need those skills or I’ll end up B-listed forever.”

A sweet, melodic voice from our lead actress, fetchingly adorned with the trademark marigold in her hair: “Oh, Jacob. A natural-born D-lister should feel grateful to make the B-list. It is Thanksgiving, after all.”

He bristled. “Get stuffed, Sara.”

She laughed and drained her second (third?) glass of wine.

Hollywood’s sweetheart, Sara Bowes, was playing the non-existent part of Holly Grimwether. Our producers had felt, in their productive way, that the script needed a more prominent love interest; hence, the old Army buddy Stephen Winslow was replaced with the character of Tall Chambers’ ex-lover Holly and her seductive miasma of on-again-off-again, will-they-or-won’t-they romantic tension. Sara was a beautiful woman, on the outside.

“It’s not your fault, Jacob. You’re quite right, you can’t be left on your own two feet. You need someone who can nurture what little talent you have. I told the studio before we even started filming, darling Niles is not the man for this picture. We need a director with—oh, how do I put this—chutzpah. Cojones. Je ne sais quoi.”

“I’m standing right here,” Niles growled.

“Why, so you are. I hadn’t noticed. You see what I mean, dear, you just don’t command a room.”

He took a big slug of champagne. “You know what? I’m done tiptoeing around you just because you’re on the ‘wife out of town’ speed-dial for half the money bags in town. You want to talk about talent? You couldn’t—” He paused and shook his head. “You—you couldn’t act your way—” He stopped. Shook his head again, harder. Then took two steps backwards and flopped to the floor. The glass tumbled from his hand and shattered.

Some level-headed person screamed, “Oh my God!” Naturally, that calmed everyone right down.

Luckily for Niles, I always insist on a medic being present when I’m shooting a fight. Dr. Chupac pushed his way through the panicking cast and crew, shouting, “Get back! Give him space!” He knelt by the twitching director and started probing him with the tools of the sawbones’ trade.

Chupac and I go back a ways. I gave him a minute, then asked quietly, “What’s the story here, Doc?”

He glanced up and murmured, “Looks like he OD’d. Some kind of narcoleptic, hard-hitting. He’ll recover, but he’s going to be out of commission for awhile.”

“Funny, I thought he was a straight-edged guy.”

Busily dialing 911, Chupac spoke more loudly than he meant to. “He is. I think it was in his drink.”

“You mean someone drugged him?” Sara gasped. “Poisoned him?”

“You seem awful upset, Miz Bowes,” Jake snarled. “You’re a better actress than I thought—not that that’s sayin’ much.”

“What?” she practically shrieked. “You think I did it?”

“Well gee, lemme think. Who was just saying something about cojones?”

She turned white, then purple. “You’re the one saying you need more training time. And—and you!” She jabbed a quivering talon in my direction. “You two are in it together!”

I held up both hands. “Okay, let’s all take a breath. The cops’ll be here soon.”

“You’re joking. I can’t be seen getting questioned by the police.”

“Fine, then, flee the scene. It’s not like we can’t prove you were here.” I frowned. “Wait a minute—that’s it! We all knew which glass was for Niles. Someone must’ve spiked his drink after it came on set.”

Jake nodded furiously. “Which means they might be on camera!”

We scrambled for the handhelds. “Wait!” Sara’s voice went up an octave. “What if it’s a Mob hit? I don’t want to know! I didn’t see anything!”

One by one, we turned on the cameras and started skimming footage. Three of them were oriented away from the food carts, but two of them had clear lines of sight on it. (The cameramen showed up in each other’s shots, of course, but could easily be digitally removed. Fix it in post.) Of those, one was shaking so violently that nothing intelligible could be seen. And the last one—

“There!” Jake shouted. “Someone’s going over to the cart with the champagne glass. It’s not a caterer—it looks like—damn it, the camera keeps bouncing around too much—is it a—crap! Can we rewind?”

We watched the crucial moments of video over and over until the police arrived, but there was never a clear image of the perpetrator. In the end, we were forced to accept that the shaky cam was just too damned shaky.

The cops took statements and addresses. Told us all not to leave town. We’re moviemakers in Hollywood, where the hell else would we go? By the time they released us, Dr. Chupac had gotten a call from a friend at Sinai Medical, telling him Niles was stable and could go back to work in three or four weeks. We all gave a perfunctory cheer and headed for the parking lot.

I caught up with Jake as he was climbing into his car. “Yo, Longstreet. Why don’t we meet back here tomorrow and I can start getting you up to speed? By the time Niles gets back, we won’t need to cut and paste our fight scenes.”

“Yeah, that sounds great! I guess, in a crazy way, whoever doped Niles kinda did us a favor, huh?”

“Um, yeah. I guess they did.”

He smiled happily for another two seconds. Then, slowly, a look of ultimate, Lovecraftian horror spread over his face. “W—wait. It wasn’t—you didn’t—”

“Relax, I use this stuff all the time. There’s no long-term effects.”

“I. . . I thought he was your friend!”

“Jake, I love Niles. You know that. But this is show business.”

Shock became anger. “You sick bastard!” he cried, lunging at me with a massive right cross. My hair fluttered in the wind of his fist as I casually ducked his swing and drove my knuckles deep into his solar plexus.

“Lesson number one, compadre: Quit dropping your shoulder.”

Curled up in a ball on the asphalt, he managed to wheeze out, “’Kay.”

“I’ll see you back here tomorrow. We’re gonna make you a star.”

I headed for my car with a deep sigh of contentment. God, I love this town.