Magic Hour, Susan Isaacs [life changing books txt] 📗

couple of his pictures, and he’d never looked like a leading man to me. He had no intriguing dark corners; despite his sleepy, heavy-lidded eyes, he was all sunshine and light.

But he did look like his part in Starry Night: a MAGIC HOUR / 103

playboy. His thick, almost shoulder-length hair was moussed back on the sides. He’d rolled up the cuffs of his pale-pink shirt just once, and miraculously, they stayed that way. But sitting in the Xerox/coffee room, Nick wasn’t playing it smooth. More: Forget I’m a world-famous star. I’m a regular guy. Come on, let’s be friends!

Temporary friendship was fine with me. He seemed genuinely good-natured, and what the hell, it’s nice to have a movie star trying to grin his way into your heart. But for all his pleasantness, Nick Monteleone didn’t seem to know anything worth knowing. Had he seen Sy angry? Hmmm.

No, didn’t think so. Had anyone been angry at Sy? Ummm, not that I know of. That type of thing for twenty minutes.

“Uhhh,” he finally said, “I know this is a serious business, and I’m probably acting like a self-centered asshole, but I’ve gotta ask. By any chance did you happen to catch me in Firing Range? I played one of you guys.”

“Yeah,” I told him. It wasn’t anything I’d go to the movies for; I’d caught it on cable, although I wasn’t about to tell him that. “You were very good.” In fact, he had gotten a lot of it right: the camaraderie of a homicide squad, the compulsive twenty-hour workdays and, especially, the fatigue. But he’d worn a shoulder holster—which hardly anyone I know wears—and he’d been physically slow, almost clumsy. By the time he’d have drawn his gun, he would have been dead about forty seconds; he hadn’t moved right. And now, watching him, I realized he couldn’t even sit right. He was doing the relaxed, manly, lean-back-on-the-two-rear-legs-of-the-chair, when suddenly he lost his balance and almost crashed over backward. He saved himself, barely, but couldn’t admit defeat by bringing the chair down on all four legs, so for a minute his feet did a hysterical 104 / SUSAN ISAACS

cha-cha until he regained his balance. Forget his expensive muscles; I saw that Nick had the coordination of a Franken-stein windup toy. When he was a kid, the guys probably muttered, “Not Monteleone!” when they were picking teams.

“Did you get what my character was about?” he asked. “I mean, did you buy him?”

“Sure.”

Actually, thinking about it, I remembered shaking my head, wondering how come this white Chicago homicide lieutenant (in movies, homicide-cop heroes are always lieutenants) had a combo black-New York-Rambo accent: Yo, mothafucka, put that .38 (which came out like “dirty-eight”) on the table and get those hands up high. Now, putz.

“I mean, you probably think I’m just another narcissistic actor—and you’re probably right—but I am just honestly curious: Could I have been someone you work with?”

What he wanted, I realized all of a sudden, was uncondi-tional acceptance. Not just as my friend. As my colleague. I had to love him totally—and prove my love—or he wouldn’t open up to me. So I gushed. “You know, it was the god-damnedest thing! You really were one of us,” I told him. “No shit, you could have had the desk next to mine at Headquarters.”

Nicholas’s entire body eased. He let up on his macho chair routine. He stretched out his legs, crossed his feet at his ankles. He was wearing some kind of step-in shoes made from lots of thin strips of leather; they probably had some foreign name my brother would know.

“Tell me about dailies,” I asked him, now that we were practically best friends, to say nothing of partners. “What are they exactly? The whole day’s worth of film?”

“The film has to be processed, so what you’re see-MAGIC HOUR / 105

ing is the footage shot the day before. All the takes. The director and the editor sit in the back and talk—whisper, actually—about which take is good, which isn’t, what coverage they’ll use, what kind of light and color corrections they’ll want to order.”

“Who else goes to see them?”

“Actors. Sometimes. Personally, I’m super analytical about my own work, and I like to see what everybody else is doing too. You know. Like how is my lighting? My costume? My makeup?”

“Did Lindsay go to dailies?”

Nicholas compressed his big lips. “No. She always rushed back to Sy’s house to work out. Swam laps in his pool. Had to keep those pecs toned.”

“How come she didn’t want to see her acting? She’s supposed to be smart. Isn’t she analytical about her work the way you are?”

“The real truth? Lindsay is an egomaniac.” This said by a guy who went every night to watch his makeup. “She’s totally convinced she can gauge her performance as she gives it, so why bother to see herself? Besides”—Nicholas shook his head wearily—“if she wants a reaction, all she has to do is look into Spanish Eyes after each take. You get what I’m saying? She can see her brilliance reflected.”

“She really got to Santana?”

“Got to him? She had him in a chain collar, on a leash.

‘Roll over, Victor. Good boy! Stay!’ A tragedy for the rest of the company. The first week, Victor was very strong, full of ideas, energy, really exciting to work with. And actually giving Lindsay a rough time because from day one—well, day three or four—he was under the gun. Sy was not happy with Miss Keefe’s work. Naturally, Lindsay being Lindsay, she immediately picked up that the balance of power had shifted—away from her. She needed a new ally.

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So she sniffed out Victor’s weakness. That’s her greatest gift, finding a guy’s most sensitive area.”

“What was Santana’s?”

“Oh…being allowed to live in Movieland. I mean, Victor Santana was a damn good cinematographer and then moved to directing. He’s directed two really well-received films, right? But beneath his ‘I’m so sophisticated’ façade he’s still wide-eyed