The day starts promisingly enough. Into hair and make-up by 10:30 am (the call was pushed back because of the late finish the night before). I have my own makeup chair, and my own makeup and hair person, Eva, who is the Canadian English girl in the makeup crew.
Andreas stops in to greet all the ladies. Anne bats her pretty lashes and asks the slightly grumpy craft services guy to bring us coffee (since the coffee wasn't ready before we had to be in our chairs). He looks surprised, "What, me? You want me to BRING you coffee?" He seems a little offended. Anne's smile hardens a little like ceramic around the edges and she re-affirms, "Yes. Thank-you. That will be great." She turns back to the mirror. Ooh. She's good. Sugar AND spice.
The first shot of the day involves Henry (Andreas) riding up in a wagon while I am watering the fake flowers planted outside to make the house look "lush." He says (in German), "Have you seen my wife?" She runs past me, over the long grasses in her flouffy skirt, dark hair fluttering behind her, and portfolio of piano music under her arm. She hauls herself into the wagon. She and Henry tease each other, then get sad for a moment, then ride off again...
As you can see, I am vital to this scene.
They rehearse a few times, and then someone notices that it's the wrong wagon. They stop and take half an hour to switch wagons. They rehearse again, and someone notices it's the wrong pony hitched to the wagon. They have to save that pony for Grace later. Another half hour later and we have a new pony. The scene is rehearsed again. Now someone notices that it's difficult for Margaret (Anne) to haul herself up there, so they have to get her a crate. They practice a few times and great, we're set.
We shoot Andreas riding up in the wagon and Anne hopping into the wagon several times until they get it perfectly. "Great! Cut! Print! Check the gate!"
The crew gets ready to turn the cameras around to catch the opposing shot - of me watering fake plants, listening to Andreas, and of Margaret (Anne) running towards the camera, towards her husband in the wagon. But just as they're setting up, the skies open and the rain starts.
It rains the rest of the day.
We stay on set the rest of the day, just in case we can get a clear moment. They have to rearrange some scenes to try and shoot them inside instead of out. But it's not a bad day. Mostly Anne and I stay on the verandah. She huddles under a thick blanket on the verandah's chaise lounge. The clouds lower. The rain drizzles. It's kind of comforting - they skies blanketed in such a bright soft gray. I sit in a wicker rocking chair and read a copy of Plutarch's Lives which is being used as set dressing. It's a beautiful old book - last century, limited edition copy of a series of 1000 printed. No one's read it before me - many of the pages are still uncut, folded over in quarto fashion. Although there is someone's initials at the end of one page in the chapter on Marc Antony. Mysterious.
I read the whole chapter on Marc Antony. It's fascinating. Plutarch really is a fantastic writer. Totally compelling story. Setting up Antony as this fantastic, flawed, brave, human leader, and then setting him up against Cleopatra, who will bring him lower than anyone else could have, through nothing but good intentions - their soul-consuming passions and mutual dependency are awesome, beautiful and terrible to watch - like a forest fire.
She is incredible. After he leaves her and marries the beautiful, smart, and well liked Octavia they are separated for years, but war brings him back to her eventually and he returns with a compelling resignation. He knows this is trouble, but why fight fate? He returns to her and they live this temporary life of outlandish extremes. They hunt, play cards, drink, go fishing, throw big parties and laugh together - but she is also desperate to keep him with her. She turns away from him and squeezes out a tear so that he will see, but will think that she is trying to hide it from him... She breaks his heart. She tells him that Octavia has the glory - the noble title of being his wife, but that she, Cleopatra, is the Queen of All Fucking Egypt and a force to be reckoned with, and yet she is wholly content to be Antony's whore. All she asks is that he doesn't take that beloved humiliation from her...
He meanwhile, is completely helpless and dependent. In a final sea battle between himself and his former buddies in Rome - a battle that she begged him to fight on the water despite the fact that he was the greatest commander of armies on land that Rome had ever had, and his armies knew nothing of being on the water - his side is WINNING. But he sees Cleopatra's ship sail past and away - God knows why she decided the fight was over and it was better to run - and he gives up the battle. He sits in the prow of the ship and watches her sail away. When his men try to get his attention, he just sits there resigned, and tells them to turn the boat around. He will follow her. Plutarch goes on to paraphrase a playwright, saying that "a lover's soul lives in the body of another." It was as if Antony's spirit had left his body and he was powerless to do anything but follow where it went - to Cleopatra.
Oh there's more, there's more, but you'll have to read it yourself! But what an amazing story... And what a writer. Long live Plutarch.
Back to the set. It's also around this time that I notice that I am now really a part of the cast. I have been given my own chair. Yes, ladies and gentleman, my own folding wooden set chair with cloth seat - and my name right there on the back. There they are all in a row: Sonsee, Anne, Andreas, and Nicole. Now I'm in the German Harlequin movie business big time.
At lunch I learn even more about Andreas:
1. The others are teasing him a little in German as he ladles out my asparagus for me. I think he would cut my meat for me if I let him. Mid-conversation he turns to me and looks intently with his hazel soap star eyes into my blue Canadian milk-maid ones and continues his conversation in English, "...I think people know, yah? When you speak one thing and mean another? You know when you speak to someone and there is... sexual chemistry. Yes?" Honestly, Andreas. I have no idea. I blush and turn away and say, "Sure, sure," and steer the conversation towards other humourous examples of linguistical misunderstandings.
2. Over lunch I learn that Andreas' days consist mostly of: getting up and going to the gym, then going to his favourite coffee shop and reading the paper for a few hours, taking the dog - Willy - for a walk, running errands, going home, making dinner, going to the gym again, sitting down by the fire and reading with the dog. Well, the dog doesn't read. Andreas doesn't drink, but he usually has a "stick" after dinner (completely legal in Germany of course), and then another walk with the dog, and so to bed. A nice life, actually. Although he worries about his Willy. His dog, that is. Willy is sick and needs daily injections. He hopes he will still be alive when he gets back to Homborg on Saturday - although he has instructed his friend the vet not to tell him if anything happens while he is away. He knows he will be devastated and unable to concentrate on the rest of the film. It's kind of endearing.
3. He is over the Party Scene. When I mention that I hear Rekjavik is the party capital of Europe, he disagrees with me. "Don't believe everything in those glossy magazines," he tells me. I don't have the heart (or the word in edgewise) to tell him I read it in the Globe and Mail. He tells me of the parties he went to in Cologne and Dubai. "If you fly several hours just to go to a party and the party is no good, you've ruined your night. A party is about the people, not the country it's held in." Well, can't argue with that.
4. He grew up in Homburg, which, like all port cities, has a large population of hookers. Also legal. As he talks about the local girls, I joke that it sounds like he's spent a lot of time there. I don't know if it loses something in translation, but every time I tease Andreas or make a joke I have to explain it after. "I'm teasing," I'll say, or, "It's a joke. I'm kidding." He will look at me seriously and pause for a moment, then continue, "yeah sure, I understand, but still, the thing is that..." and he will continue to explain why he knows so many hookers. Turns out his dad owned a gas station in Homburg and Andreas grew up around the girls. Although he insists he has never had to pay for sex. But sometimes the girls - they are very good looking, very clean - will come to a premiere or something, and then they don't charge... This is all much more than I know about any other living being. If I had to build another Andreas out of raw materials and character traits, I could.
5. Once when he bought his girlfriend a vibrator... This is actually the beginning of a story and a long conversation he winds up having with my makeup gal, Eva. Eva is a good natured earthy gal, plushly roundly built, married to her high school sweetheart, two kids, and surprisingly is quite animated in this discussion of personal intimate preferences with Andreas. I wander in at this point, and it seems odd to walk away, but seems even odder to leave. So now I am awkwardly part of the conversation. Andreas glances at me once in a while, then glances away, preferring to burn his hazel soap star eyes into Eva's giggling ones as they discuss kinks and likes and dislikes. Andreas is back to, "So when I bought my girlfriend this vibrator - " He makes it clear, "that was my girlfriend at the time, I don't have a girlfriend now. In fact, I only had sex 6 times last year. When you think of a man my age that is not a lot. Well 6 times with a girl. I have sex with myself much more than that." Even more than I ever thought I would learn about Andreas. Eva teases him, "Oh you're a WOLF! I can see, you're a heartbreaker, Andreas!" But the Germans are not shy about sex. Andreas makes that clear too. "There is a difference of course, between love and sex," he clarifies. Oh, good to know. He starts detailing the last overtly sexual relationship with a German model...
In the bar, over a pint of beer, maybe this wouldn't seem so strange, but here, in a large wooden husk of a house out on the prairies, at 3 pm in the afternoon, with the rain still drizzling softly outside and the chill and damp slowly warping the wooden planks, it just seems odd. I already know way too much about Andreas. I decide to preserve at least a little of the mystery and find the least awkward moment to slip away.
We never make it back to my scene. I'm asked to come back in two days when they will film the reverse of the shot they took this morning. Oh, how far we've come from Andreas' innocence in the wagon...
- Falcon
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