Screen Savers

Chapter 25

Maybe I should have been, but I wasn’t too bothered about the London episode being repeated. If Stephen Donn had sent me a message, effectively it had been received, since Prim and I were no longer involved in the search for him, and wouldn’t be visiting either his uncle or his mother again. If Richard Barowitz had been behind it — well, I’d already decided that I wouldn’t be doing any more voice-overs for Roxy Matrix and their alternative bloody humanoids.

Happily, my schedule for the rest of the week was so busy that I was able to forget all about the London experience. The Edinburgh voice-over was a piece of cake — literally; it was an ad for a Scots bakery chain — but my two days on Deeside introduced me to some new aspects of movie-making.

Miles had said that my scenes would be simple, and he was good as his word. The most difficult thing I had to do was to walk in on an argument between him and Dawn, and deliver the deathless line, ‘Hey, leave me out of this!’ — with style, mind you. All the same, it was fascinating to watch, in another setting, the care and precision with which the operation was run. There were close-ups, two-shots, three-shots, and the positioning and backgrounds had to be right for every one of them.

The mansion was even bigger than I had expected, with a long, south-facing drawing room which was big enough to accommodate actors, production crew and equipment; a major cost saver as opposed to replicating it on a set, Miles assured me.

My first three-way scene took up a whole day; Miles and Dawn had always struck me as a happy relaxed couple, but there, in the office as it were, sparks flew all day as he fought for perfection in the scene. They were meant to be arguing on screen, but there were moments off-camera when I wondered if they were keeping it up simply to preserve the mood, or were really going at it.

I had a room in the house for the three nights I was up there. At the end of that difficult, but ultimately rewarding, day’s shooting, Dawn went off for a bath while Miles and I sloped off to the study for a soothing gin and tonic. ‘I didn’t realise you could be such a bastard on set,’ I told him, settling back into a big, over-stuffed armchair. ‘If I talked to Prim like that I’d have the imprint of her engagement ring in the middle of my forehead.’

‘I’m a perfectionist, mate,’ he said, his accent becoming noticeably more Aussie, as it always did in private. ‘I direct most of my own movies because I’m lousy at taking direction myself. I could name half-a-dozen people in Hollywood — and you’d know them all — who won’t work with me. If I see something that I know would make a movie better, then I tell them; most LA egos can’t take that.

‘Dawn’s made the same way. She has her own ideas and won’t keep them to herself; that’s why I fell for her in the first place. When she was cast in Kidnapped, she had only a tiny little part, no more than a week’s work. Yet on her second day on set when I was laying down the way I wanted the scene played she said in her little Scots voice, “Excuse me, but don’t you think it would be better if. .”

‘If she wasn’t so fucking gorgeous I might have fired her there and then — my ego’s as well-developed as any of those guys I mentioned. Instead, I thought about what she had said, and took part of it on board. We never looked back from that moment on; now when we work together I know that she’s going to say what she thinks. I might not always agree with it, and when I don’t we go at it hammer and tongs, yet at the end of the day she makes me a better director and I make her a better actor.’

He grinned as he got up to mix us two more G and Ts. ‘If it didn’t work that way we’d have gone the way of most movie couples long ago. As it is, we’ll last for ever. She doesn’t know this — don’t you tell her, either — but when this project is wrapped up, the director credits will be Miles Grayson and Dawn Phillips.’

‘Hey, that’s great,’ I told him. ‘Can I tell Prim?’

‘If you think she’ll keep it to herself, sure you can. Don’t mention it to Elanore, though. She’d burst her girdle.’

I studied him as he gazed out of the window. Somehow I knew that he was contemplating an evening shot, making use of the spectacular effect of the sinking sun as it washed the trees which bounded the mansion. ‘You really love your work, Miles, don’t you,’ I said.

‘Sure,’ he replied. ‘I can’t imagine it any other way. Don’t you?’

‘I would if I knew what my work was. I know I’m past my sell-by date in the job I started on, acting as a lawyer’s leg-man. Prim’s keeping that business going, but I’ve reached the stage when I don’t enjoy it any more. The truth is it was never any more than okay; it paid the bills and gave me a lifestyle, but there was never any fulfilment. The only time it gave me a buzz was when I found myself involved with real detective work, and that only ever happened by accident.

‘My GWA work is different, though. Bizarre as it may be, I’m doing something creative there. In my voice-overs too, and now here, even though it’s a one-off. But always I have the feeling that I’m just stumbling along.’

‘Then take control, Oz. You’re privileged; thanks to the lottery you can decide what it is you want to do and go for it, shit or bust. You say this movie is a one-off, but there’s no reason why it should be. You ain’t going to win an Oscar, but you’re competent in what you’re doing. I’d cast you again, and so will others.’

I had to laugh. ‘You saying I should become an actor?’

‘No,’ he shot back. ‘I’m saying you could. I’d recommend a little formal drama training, but it’s open to you as a career option.’

‘If I want a career.’

‘Of course you do. You’re a young guy and you’re full of energy. You can’t sit still.’

He was right; I tried that once, and it was a near-disaster.

‘I don’t know what I’d be doing now if I hadn’t found this business. I’d have played cricket for a while, I guess. I can’t bat worth a light, but I was a pretty quick bowler. I might have managed a few one-day games for Australia. But after that, I’d probably have wound up selling cars, or maybe insurance.

‘Every day I say a little prayer of thanks that twenty-odd years ago, I answered a newspaper ad looking for young guys to work as extras or minor players in a movie. I’ve been hooked on this business ever since. It’s the breath of life to me, and I’d die as a person without it.’

‘Do you have any ambitions left, then?’ I asked. This had turned into the deepest conversation I’d ever had with Miles. I’d known him for going on three years, but I hadn’t learned much about him that I couldn’t have found out in a newspaper.

‘Sure I have,’ he replied ‘and it’ll go on for as long as I do. I want to make my next movie better than my last, and so on. It’s nothing to do with money; that just happens, and it doesn’t have a hell of a lot to do with art. I’m not Bergman, or Bresson; I’m trying to be the movie equivalent of Robert Louis Stevenson; a great story-teller and entertainer.

‘My motivation is constant improvement; that and trying to reach as many people with my work as possible. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do if it was in the interests of one of my movies.’

‘Including his own stunts.’ Dawn’s voice came from the door of the study. We stood — gentlemen to a fault, both of us — as she came into the room; she was dressed in a simple blouse and skirt, and the ends of her hair were still wet from the shower. ‘I warn you now, Oz. If you ever work with us again, and there’s action involved, make damn sure there’s a clause in your contract that says he has to use a standin.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I assured her. ‘After last weekend, I don’t need to be told that.’