Marcus Howell plugs our camera into a new hard drive.
"You wanna hear a rape joke?"
"Sure, Lauren."
"How many gay men does it take to rape a girl?"
"How many."
"Two. One holds her down while the other does her hair."
"You are truly sick in the head, boss."
"That's what people keep telling me. Wanna hear another one."
"Um. Kinda trying to work here."
"That's good, Marcus. I'm just testing you."
(It's bad when the director is impeding the work of key personnel on her own set, so I went to hang with the grips while Marcus was lighting and it reminded me of restaurant culture where you have a kitchen manager—I did anyway—who would come to me and say, "You need a safety meeting," and take me to the walk-in and smoke me out when I was too stressed. On my set I had to call my own safety meetings (for myself) and it mostly looked like me drinking vodka Red Bulls with the grips.)
"Wanna know my favorite sex position?"
"What's that boss?"
"The JFK. I splatter all over her while she screams and tries to get out of the car. Guess what my name is."
"What, boss?"
"Rape. Remember that, you'll be screaming it later."
"Oh my god."
"I bought a rape whistle the other day you wanna know why?"
"Fucking why."
"It helps mask the screams. I stopped a woman from being raped last night. Wanna know how I did it? I stayed in. I was doing laundry and I held a sock over my daughter's mouth. Know what I said?"
"What."
"Does this smell like chloroform to you? Know what I said to this bitch at the bar the other day? Just say yes now and I won't have to spike your drink. You know what I say to a little girl who won't let me rape her?"
One of the grips almost chokes.
"Jesus what."
"Come on, I'm a friend of your dad."
Everyone laughs.
Then there's a long silence and someone says:
"Lauren you are fucked in the head."
I flick my cigarette.
"Got that right."
Then I'm back on set.
"Marcus, we ready?"
"How's it look, boss?"
"Looks good, let's shoot it."
"Quiet," Marcy calls. "And..sound."
"Speed."
"Camera."
"Rolling."
"Action," I say.
People think a director yells action. In reality, a set is a quiet place. On a professional set no one yells anything.
And there was action.
There was a crane moving.
Circling Tuesday Walker and Amanda Haines.
My crazy lesbian love scene.
Breaking the book, killing the script, doing something that had never been done before. It was like Tarsem meets Noé meets My Fair Lady. Meets a fragrance commercial. Meets Apocalypse Now. Fuck it. I was tearing pages from our plan, reordering them, burning them, chewing them up and shitting them out. Then I was shooting the shit. My crew had learned to trust me implicitly, and if I told them to act the shit, they would act the shit. If I told Marcus Howell to loosen the camera base and let it jog randomly like they used to do in those Pepsi commercials, he would do it..even though he thought it was the worst idea in the world. Because I had developed such a track record with these people of producing beautiful dailies with my odd instructions that they knew whatever I said was going to make them—and make us all—look good. I could tell Tuesday Walker to make mashed potatoes with her feet and eat them and she would do it because she knew it would produce a good picture.
That's what you have to do, as a leader: create trust. And you will find it is the rare person who lives up to this title of leader, whether political or artistic or in business. Mostly we know our leaders are full of shit, liars, and really they don't live up to the name.
A real leader can get her followers to risk their lives—or their artistic credibility.
Real leaders are always risk takers. They are never conservative.
They are on the outside of society, like Jesus or the prophets or something. Living in the desert. Eating locusts. Making films that at first everyone walks out on. Then they win Academy Awards. Then people give them a second look. And on that second look they love them.
"Cut."
The stage remains quiet.
I walk to my actors.
I face Tuesday.
"This time I want you to kiss her like you're a dog. Or a 12 year old, having her first kiss. No saliva control. You don't know where to plant your lips. You lick her cheek while you should be licking her lips. Amanda. Pretend you're a virgin and this is the first time you're being eaten out. Your mouth lips are your vagina lips. Make yourself blush like she's eating your puss."
I nod at them.
I put a hand on each one, on their shoulders.
I go back to my chair.
"Let's go again."
Marcy calls for quiet. For sound. For camera.
"Action."
And those girls play my scene so good I piss myself a little. My granny panties catch it and I remember when I first put them on, in my mid-thirties, and there was something sexual about the extra absorbing strip, snug against my cunt, and I felt that sex now, between my legs, as I urinated looking at two of the hottest women I had ever seen, doing exactly what I said, in this black box of a sound stage, and I didn't know what got me off more, seeing them so close to me, seeing their skin above and below and through their costumes, or seeing them play out roughly what was in my mind, human sculptures moving to every word I said.