Today — at last! — the film, the role that’s taken forever to find me, comes alive. It needs backstories and I’ve got one, or my character does. It’s based on fact as it crosses continents and spans generations, the thrust of history, its marquee moments and secret asides. All riddled with passion and smothered by love.
My character was born in 1974, the only child of a schoolteacher father and a file clerk mother. Her past is clouded in untelling, things she’d rather not discuss, a quick terse smile and that’s the end of it. It suggests whole stretches of family lore that are ugly or worse, and nevertheless out of reach.
So I think of my character’s dad, a genial man, soft-spoken, voted for only Republicans starting with Reagan. My character’s dad was a teacher, it seems to me, as a way to realize some dark impulse to control. At least a version of control that’s cloaked in benevolence, where in theory students come away helped. He liked to be in charge but lacked whatever was required to turn this into any great success. He and my character’s mom split when their only child was 11. The screaming and subterfuge, driveway drop-offs for the boy and tires shrieking away as parents enacted their hatred in predictable ways.
You have to go back earlier to learn more about my character. Sure, there’s the Big Bang and Earth forms and bacteria steams into being, planetary physics getting it on. Dinosaurs and asteroids, primates and people-ish creatures and us, pretty much, the gene pool and civilization. That’s important but I was thinking more recently, circa 1870.
Great-great grandpa came from Ireland to Georgia to sell sundries in rebuilding towns. At least that’s what he told a group of investors in the motherland. In reality he was chasing the daughter of a Catholic patriarch escaping the Land War. Was it love that lurched great-great grandpa across the ocean, led him on a quest to learn just what exactly sundries were? Armed with new knowledge, he started his business and Catherine married him. Was it the love she always wanted? But he was a gambler and debts were suddenly howling outside the front door at night. The marriage was similarly fraught, a blotch of unfulfilled expectations. The family moved a few towns south, grew onions and eventually settled in Atlanta after some angry types were paid off. In the end they stayed together and by 1894 had five children (Cliven Joe was an accident).
(Great-great grandpa’s views on the state of the day are unclear but my character — I, for that matter — would like to think he was a friend of the universe, someone who rejected racism as apocalyptically foolish and pointless. Sadly, I may be kidding myself.)
Two of their sons (they had one daughter) died from scarlet fever; the runt, Cliven Joe, was a daredevil with the mind of an engineer and force of want that pulled him into the Great War as a pilot over Europe with six air combat victories. Careening into the cumulus tornado void, his plane cresting and plunging, pounding the air with bullets until the veering faceless enemy before him leaks smoke and slips into a flaming arc, final percussive shatter into trailing debris.
Cliven Joe came home to Atlanta and married his high school sweetheart, Ann. But he was different, haunted. A gaze that slipped off, left conversations adrift. He got a job making shoes, crouched in a dark stationary space that was a universe away from the cockpit’s euphoric windstorm horror.
What I think happened is that about 1923, with two young sons at home, he had an affair, or several. My great grandmother checked out at that point, emotionally and perhaps in other ways, and the boys were essentially on their own.
Along with the deterioration of his parents’ marriage, something else happened to my character’s grandfather. In the supposed care of someone, he was abused. His younger brother was maybe abused too, but whatever he knew died with him in a freezing ditch in Korea in 1952 (the brothers began growing apart around the time I believe the assault(s) happened). Presumably this factors into why my character’s grandfather, manager of a new car wash franchise, would be arrested in 1956 for having sex with a 13-year-old girl at church. Other episodes were alleged.
My character’s dad was 10 at the time. An only child who in turn had an only child (my character). He knew enough, from neighborhood shame — isn’t fallout supposed to glow? — to run from it. His mother helped him, quietly directing his thoughts and impulses away from self-destruction. His high school cross-country team went to state all four years he was on it. He met his wife at the local community college.
My character’s mom came to Tampa to take care of her mother. My character’s dad followed; their jobs were easily recoverable in Florida. This is the Tampa of scuffed-but-still-humming casitas and major farmland east of 301 and people in certain parts of the city carrying on with a sort of hardscrabble bewilderment that whole streets and homes got sucked into the earth and replaced by a massive ridge of fenced-off pavement, the interstate. This tired, roaring, Godzilla octopus.
My character. Born around that time. Smart enough to be an outcast with a complete lack of athletic skill that sealed the deal. His parents’ divorce, the angst and anxiety that came with it. Meaningless degree from Florida State. Currently living in an apartment complex that’s all cul-de-sacs, working in a five-person, all-male office in a strip mall on Dale Mabry. It’s an environmental firm, owned by a married couple, that streamlines permitting for developers. He thinks he may be on the wrong side of the development issue but it’s a great company; they’re flexible with the schedule, pay well and go to Rays games together during the season. They stuck with him through his own marriage and divorce at age 25 (a time he barely remembers) and never stopped yearning for him to find love, knowing for sure that he would.
And then—
1.
My character is me. There. Now you know; that’s the Big Reveal. Real people surely inspire the best characters — everything implied right below the surface when you see them onscreen? That shared commitment to being human, with all its flaws, leads to something greater for me, the creator of my character.
In fact it somehow leads straight to love.
2.
And to acting! To my aforementioned character and his backstory, his very being. Acting is better than therapy (which my character has tried, along with antidepressants). With acting you can be your inner turmoil instead of just talking about it. Can’t that help purge it?
3.
And finally, yes: Daphne. She’s who this all revolves around.
My trajectory is different because of her. The whole sordid history leading up to this moment glimmers into something grand, finally, and good.
Dear Daphne, close to my age, with her wry smarts and off-kilter beauty. What to write Daphne in a letter? Spend pages devastated that someone so extraordinary would say they’re so ordinary? No, not with that gorgeous empathy, irony when your smirk matches the laser sharpness of your eyes. But that’s what I get to see, privately, along with how heartbreak registers in your cheeks at Pixar climaxes and Coke commercials and news someone’s pet died. Your own divorce, no kids like me, the exes you keep as friends. Your tiny round face and tumbling dark ponytail and eyebrows that are perfect, despite what you say. You love pizza and write letters by hand, you twist your hair when you argue and you’re amused by the hole in your sock. You collect exotic hot sauce. You love Mr. Show and Portlandia. You and the rest of the Accounting team go out for karaoke in Ybor and you nail “Crying” every time because it means things to you. Other things you do that I love but am too embarrassed to recount here.
I’m really sorry your dad killed himself when you were 6.
I close my eyes and kiss Daphne and set out across Tampa on this biting February morning. The shoot is at a warehouse complex not far from 50th Street, flagged orange cones and a bundled man in a safety vest waving me into an ancient parking lot. I check in with the kids in the first of three trailers and they direct me to the modular next door.
Get into character.
Up the steps, I open the door and it’s mingling clusters of people in street clothes under clinical light. On couches, chatting, several comprising an impromptu audience for a stocky guy who looked maybe Hawaiian with a Brooklyn accent.
“Get ridda lawns. Don’t need ’em. Plant stuff that grows short. The lawnmower’s a deadly threat. Get ridda football. Not exciting enough to justify three hours of kids at the peak of health slamming into each other repeatedly, not counting all the slamming during practice. Get ridda shampoo and conditioner as separate entities. If it’s possible to put ’em together, why in god’s name wouldn’t you?”
At some point after his rant loses steam and people’s attention shifts to cell phones and each other, he approaches me at the poker table with coffee and donuts half-depleted.
“Roy Berkwether,” he puts out his tough small hand for a too-tight shake. “New to this?”
I offer up a semi-defensive shrug. “It’s my career. What I love.”
“Hundred bucks — you do know that.”
“Hey, it’s a lot if you’re homeless.”
“You homeless?”
“No.”
“Rest my case! So’s this what you love, or the thing that gets you to what you love?” He winks. “There’s a difference. Besta luck, buddy.”
Wardrobe and makeup — a woman with glasses and a protégé who looked 15 — circulates through the trailer, appraising clothes and faces and making suggestions for follow-up attention.
At intervals the outside door opens and a tall, skinny guy in a turtleneck looks in and beckons a few people with him at a time. Suddenly it’s my turn to march into the chilly sun, me and others. On-set action is already underway, the nearby echo of voices and a sharp clatter.
“Cut!”
The guy in the turtleneck pauses to hand us earplugs. He says be sure to remove them before we start shooting. More stirrings from around the corner, terse eventual announcements and “Action!” Rounding the corner from the parking lot, the set is an outdoor mall carved out of industrial space, apparently modeled on Bay Street at International Plaza — pre-fab boutiques and upscale bars, a miracle of replication. Just like a place Daphne and I might go. It’s a minor circus of equipment out of frame and crewmembers angling into the shot, camera on a track moving in on a chocolate shop doorway as it explodes with a mighty pop and a bulge of smoke belches out a tumbling man in black armor.
“Cut!”
My character thinks of his dad as we carefully step over snaking cables on the ground. A man who back then was about as old as I am now, desperate with rage, slamming, slamming into the front door with his shoulder until it splintered and he tumbled to the floor, his wife waiting in a petrified stance with a kitchen knife, my character clutching the hem of her dress, wide-eyed.
Assistants and technicians, actors and people with walkie-talkies. I see one who could believably pass for Daphne.
Is love a threat to my sense of self?
“Would you die for me?” Daphne said this. I nodded thoughtfully, swallowed. It’s a question to just let hover because of course you say of course and if you start to parse it…just don’t. In all likelihood we’re talking complications from kidney removal surgery. But for some reason I’m thinking more dramatic, a last-second rescue, her hand in mine before her car scuffles off the side of the cliff, whistling with heavy air before a crush below and clanking tumble.
And her hand’s in mine.
“Gonna pull me up?” She’s dangling off the cliff in her jeans (more showy than practical and sexy as hell).
Would my dad have pulled up my mom in, say, 1976? Of course he would have. Of course he would have.
My spot on set is at the coffee bar, angled just so with a taupe mug before me. To my right is a young guy in a gray suit, he’s black and glancing down at a New York Times on the bar beside his mug. To my left is an Asian woman, somewhere in age between me and the other guy, peach skirt and blouse and black stockings, checking her phone. Latino guy, kid with a shaved head, works the counter. We’re multi-ethnic consumers, the gentrified evolution of the ’80s movie street gang, and the cue is coming. We practice our positions and a muscular bald man in his 60s or so with a hard glare, a retired French fighter pilot, demonstrates the most effective way to fall onto the foam mat at our feet, tan and segmented to look like cobblestone.
The director is a short youngish man with a tight face and close-cropped hair and round glasses. He wears a blue plaid scarf and speaks with soft enthusiasm, resisting the megaphone. I can picture him sitting across from me at a picnic table, fingers locked, gently explaining how he plans to dismember me. It’s the second unit director that I work with, however, an even younger and skinnier guy with a bushy goatee and sunglasses, pacing before us like a lifestyle coach with a drug habit.
“What history led you to this moment, here at this fine coffee establishment that plays who would it play? Luther Vandross. Think of the ones you love. Or who loves you. Normal thoughts — nothing weird. Everything’s great and you’re thinkin’ about what you wanna get done and suddenly this is the worst day of your life. Right? Feel that. Feel that. What goes through your head that last instant? You’re thinking of the one you love the most. Because this is it: total annihilation.”
It is, in fact, the end of the world. Earth will burst into a shockwave cloud and the remains of humanity will retreat to Mars, where the battle continues and a new generation of colonists makes movies about the war. (The basis of the upcoming next trilogy.)
Everyone in their places. My character in place, me by extension. Silent countdown that erupts into action as a heavy clap seizes the air and we look up from the bar toward the source of the sound, which could be a giant nail gun, and just as our faces flicker with terror we slump-fall, lifeless, to the foam mat. Lie there.
“Cut!”
That instant, stretching out to forever. Daphne doesn’t know. No idea yet that the entity of my character is dead, gone in a heartbeat. I died for you! She undoubtedly thought the aliens — the ones hiding in our asteroid belt all along, having in their hubris destroyed the fifth planet to create the asteroid belt to start with — were defeated, as we saw in the first movie. (They’re actually multi-dimensional beings, aided by power beyond all comprehension.)
Guess again, sweetheart. This is death, the bottomless black hole that sucks in everything except love. Futures mutated, new channels carved out of fate, children that can never be born, hands-up shrieking at their fourth birthday, the heartbreak smile on their wedding night.
Gone, ripped away by the multi-dimensional beings.
“Is that guy okay over there?”
Eventually I will learn my scene got deleted. Death rendered twice, or simply suspended in endless digital dots? Regardless, it’s a life’s worth of character — and eons of history — semi-erased. I’m trying to decide how I feel.
I don’t know the scene will be deleted when I leave the set and drive to see my dad in Oldsmar. It’s a wooded assisted living facility that could play an apartment complex on TV.
I walk inside the front door and dad’s on the couch, white-haired and withered, watching the Bucs play at low volume with his arms folded. Mom’s there beside him, a foot of space between them, clutching her newspaper.
“Win any Oscars yet?” dad asks.
“Get some water,” mom says, gray hair swept back, glasses still fixed on the paper. “Or juice — there’s juice. Perfect day out there, isn’t it?”
“Thank god they’re filming here’n not Georgia,” dad mutters. “Ridiculous.”
I go into the kitchen, so spotless and taupe, and fill a glass with filtered water from the sink.
“Seems like a movie set would be a great place to meet somebody,” mom crinkles the paper in her lap, still reading. “A lead actress or somebody?”
I sip my water at the counter, beholding them. Sometimes it’s easier to be together. Could this be called love? Love sinks into things, into convenience, couches and TVs. The mundane props. It all came back for them with a simple phone call, dad to mom six years ago, one year to the day after the death of her second husband.
And Daphne. Doesn’t her image, the one I see constantly, deserve a name? An amalgamation of fully realized qualities I’ve witnessed and experienced? She’s as real as you or me on some level. Is this allowed? She’d never permanently blink out if true love, that mythical country, ever landed on my doorstep. Could some wind-powered vessel take me to this nation? With Daphne and I continuing to explore each other’s sundries in secret, frolicking in the surf like lovers do?
Trumpets blare from the widescreen TV — commercial. It catches mom’s attention and she glances over at me from the couch.
“Come tell us about it,” she says. “I worry when you’re quiet, Mr. Movie Star.”
This article appears in Jan 26 – Feb 2, 2017.