Everybody was well dressed (everybody was a mess).
Masterpost
Oh man, can't you see I'm nervous, so please, pretend to be nice, so I can be mean.
The Strokes - Hard To Explain.
“I had to touch you with my hands, I had to taste you with my tongue; one can't love and do nothing.”
Graham Greene, The End of the Affair.
For the record Ryan isn’t okay with Spencer dropping out of school and he doesn’t become okay with it. But when the time comes for Spencer to head off to wherever the hell his shitty label has decided to send his band, Ryan gets Alex to drive Spencer to the airport. Dallon and Ian find out though, and demand lifts too.
“Why should we pay for taxis when Spencer gets a lift?” Ian complains. “What’s so special about him?”
“Yeah,” Dallon adds. “We deserve to be driven around by America’s twenty third and fortieth sexiest men just as much as Spence does.”
Spencer laughs at them. “Fuck off.”
But Alex ends up driving them anyway.
Ian is gloriously happy when they pick up him, Dallon and Dallon’s girl Breezy from Cash’s.
“First leg of the tour,” he announces and Cash snaps a picture for posterity.
The flash dazes Ryan. “We’re just going to the airport.”
“Yeah. The first leg of the tour, and also the most important one,” Spencer agrees from the back seat.
Dallon throws his duffle into trunk. “Can’t tour Europe from LA.”
Ian laughs.
Ryan wrinkles his nose.
At LAX, Spencer makes Ryan and Alex help with all their equipment. It’s a pain, especially when they seem to end up carrying the heaviest pieces. Ryan knows better than to complain, so he doesn’t, not even when he feels people’s eyes flick over him and Alex.
The long check in queue kills. But Ryan stays as long as he can, right up to the gates.
Amidst the bustle of people, Dallon turns to Alex with a serious expression on his face. “Look after Breezy, okay.”
Breezy snorts. “I can look after myself you douche.”
Dallon turns and grins at her. “Okay. Could you keep an eye on Alex then?”
Alex makes a face.
Breezy nods. “Can do.”
“Awesome,” Dallon nods. “I knew there was a reason I married you.”
She bites her lip to stop from laughing.
Without looking at Alex, Dallon shoves his carry on case in Alex’s general direction so he can gather Breezy up in his arms one last time. Standing next to Ryan, Spencer smiles at the scene and deep inside Ryan’s chest he feels something inside him twist out of shape and into something else and he doesn’t know what to do, not even when Spencer turns and wraps his arms around Ryan.
“This is going to be great,” Spencer says when Ryan doesn’t say anything.
Ryan doesn’t offer a reply. Just because he’s here doesn’t mean he approves of what Spencer’s doing.
Spencer sighs. “I’ll be back before you know it. You won’t even start to miss me. Promise.”
(It takes less than an hour for Spencer to be made into a liar. But that was always going to happen).
On the drive back, Alex decides that they should all go out for dinner.
“I refuse to let you stay at home and mope Breez,” he tells Breezy. “It wouldn’t be right.”
From the passenger’s seat, Breezy eyes him. “That’s so thoughtful of you Greenwald. You’re a saint.”
“We’ve all got to be something,” he grins back at her and just like they all end out going to Mr Chow’s even though last time Ryan went a paparazzi accidentally hit him on the side of the head with a camera.
When they arrive the crowd isn’t any better this time around. Outside or inside. Because Jason Schwartzman is there, and because Jason is there with Kristen Dunst, they end up inviting themselves to sit with them. The table is too small though and Ryan keeps knocking knees with Jason.
“In some circles that right there would be considered an invitation,” Jason laughs.
Kirsten laughs too. Ryan doesn’t.
As much as Ryan thinks he should like Jason, and as much as Ryan attempts to convince himself that he does, for some reason whenever they are around each other Ryan doesn’t. He doesn’t know why, he just knows that he doesn’t.
Jason’s pant cuffs are too short. Ryan can’t help but notice. Wes Anderson must be about to do another film.
Ryan bites the inside of his check and smiles blandly.
Wes Anderson doesn’t have a casting agent. He has friends. Not that Ryan cares. He has friends too. Normally, Alex is one of them. But sitting across from Kristen, he is loud and stupid. Using his hands to punctuate everything he says and eating off her plate, he flirts and brags and it’s the same routine as always. It’s so old it isn’t even all much of a distraction, but Ryan allows it to be one.
Their food, when it is served, is reasonable. The bill, Ryan assumes, isn’t so much but Alex pays for it before anyone else can. As he slips his credit card to the waiter, Ryan catches sight of Charlotte Froom entering the restaurant with her new boyfriend.
It as good a cue as any to leave.
As a general rule, no one talks to Charlotte anymore. Not even Spencer who usually doesn’t give a shit about what he should do.
Thanks to the proverbial grape vine Ryan’s heard all about Charlotte’s new boyfriend. A hockey player of all things. Canadian too. What a cliché. It’s almost as bad as Brendon and Ellen being set up by Drew Barrymore.
“They’re so photogenic,” Alex muses on the drive back to his place.
Everyone’s photogenic though. Given the right lighting.
Breezy can’t help herself. “Are you jealous, Alexis?”
Changing lanes without looking, Alex grins. “Of you? Always.”
In the passenger seat, Ryan opens the window and switches on the radio. An old Sonic Youth song comes on and he begins to sing along. Half way through he messes up the lyrics. His voice doesn’t falter though. It wouldn’t though. The show must go on. His mother taught him that. Resting his head against the window, Ryan hums along with the guitar solo before singing the next verse.
It isn’t late. It isn’t early either. Not for LA.
Charlotte was Z’s friend first.
They grew up together; both Hollywood kids with parents who owned the town. Together they did and saw and had almost everything the town had to offer before Ryan even managed to get his toe into the shallow end of the pool.
It’s ironic now, but Ryan and Z meet through Brendon and Charlotte. Funny how things go.
Halfway to Alex’s place, Ione Skye calls asking where Alex is and if he can possibly drop by with some ice.
“Ice? What the fuck am I, a busboy?” Alex exclaims, switching the call onto speaker phone.
“I don’t know,” Ione tells him. “You tell me.”
“On principle, I refuse,” Alex says. “That is what I have an assistant for.”
Ione sighs. It’s long and drawn out and makes Breezy roll her eyes.
Alex throws up his hands. “Fine. Fine. You win. I’ll bring you ice.”
“And some lemon gelato,” she adds.
Alex groans. “Come on, Io, don’t do this to me.”
“Please,” she begs. “I’ll make it up to you.”
Ione won’t of course. Everyone knows that. But that doesn’t really matter because Ione and Alex don’t work like that. They never have. They met years ago, another lifetime almost. Neither of them remembers how or when. But that isn’t really the point. Not when they’re still friends. Or friendly. Or have whatever sort of affection for each other that allows her to feel comfortable calling him demanding grocery items in the middle of the night and for him to be trusted enough to look after her kids when she and Ben Lee go out dancing.
It’s strange for someone to be friends with a 80s teen idol. At least, it is to Ryan. He forgets sometimes that Alex grew up in Hollywood. Spencer once said that Ryan forgets that other people aren’t them. They were on the set when Spencer said it. Ryan was paying Spencer twenty dollars an hour to run errands and most of the time Spencer hung out in the catering tent sharing Sean Penn stories with Emile Hirsh.
It’s been a while since Spencer was Ryan’s assistant. The thought is depressing. He tells Breezy and Alex.
“You know what’s really depressing Ross?” Breezy throws back. “This conversation.”
Alex gasps. “Breezy! His feelings!”
“No Greenwald,” Breezy chides. “Ross is all grown up now. He has to realise there comes a time in every mans life where he can not longer pay his best friend to hang out with him.”
“But does it have to be now? There was a chance we could have convinced him to pay us to hang out with him. Now you’ve ruin it.”
“Like you ruined junior prom for me and Dallon?”
Alex smirks. “I think you did that all on your own.”
Ryan makes a face. He should have known better than to talk to them.
At the second supermarket they pass, Alex buys too much ice and green tea ice cream when they cannot find any lemon gelato.
“Same thing,” Alex says as he hands the check out girl his credit card.
“Not really,” Breezy tells him, picking at her chipped nail polish.
Alex rolls his eyes. “I didn’t ask you.”
Breezy rolls her eyes at him.
It’s very childish and Ryan has to turn and look away from them.
When they’re back in Alex’s car and on the road again, Ryan thinks about calling Z.
She’s on a night shoot though, doing a film with Katie Holmes. Apparently it’s meant to be Katie’s come back vehicle. Edgy, post modern, indie, [insert buzzword of choice]. Ryan is pretty sure it’s going to be a flop, but whatever. It was Z’s choice to sign on to it. According to Leane, last week Z did press in a Holmes & Yang jumpsuit so Ryan doesn’t put much weight into Z’s “artistic integrity.”
Absently, he thinks about texting her instead, but can’t really think of anything to say other than the obvious. Besides, she’ll be back soon. Or she and Ryan will be heading off soon to do their project together.
Ryan’s looking forward to it. From everything he’s heard about Gus, it’ll be a challenge.
(When Ryan told Spencer about the role, Spencer said Ryan was being autobiographical again).
When they reach Ione and Ben’s place, it’s easy to gather that they’re throwing a soirée of some kind by the amount of cars parked haphazardly outside.
“She never invites me unless she needs something,” Alex grumbles half heartedly.
Breezy snorts. “I don’t invite you anywhere unless I can’t help it.”
Ryan reaches between them and rings the door bell. They can thank him later.
Being Ione, she comes to the door barefoot, with her face bare of make up and hair loose. Ryan’s known her for a while now, but he still isn’t used to seeing her like that or how she sits next to him and starts to talk to him while Alex and Ben go into the kitchen and try to make organic smoothies for everyone. Not that it matters, but Ryan doesn’t like Ben either. Then again, he isn’t sure he’s supposed to. He does like Ione. There is something uncomplicated about her, something wise and something familiar. He likes being the focus of her attention.
“Alex told me about Spence departing to the great unknown,” she says without preamble.
“Did he?”
Alex says a lot of things.
Ione smiles, her eyes soft. “He did. But don’t blame him. I’ve been told that I’m very easy to talk too.”
Ryan shrugs. He can’t argue with that. “I’m looking forward to receiving postcards.”
“That’s the spirit,” Ione nods.
Breezy smiles, sly and knowing. “I’m looking forward to phone sex.”
Ione turns to her. “Language B. There are young ears about.”
“Surely Ry knows all about the birds and bees now.”
“I was talking about the sproglets,” Ione corrects. “But you know how delicate Ryan is.”
Breezy smirks. Ryan wrinkles his nose.
Nearby someone starts messing around on Ben’s piano. Ryan closes his eyes and leans back into the couch. Breezy says something about her kid and Ione says something about her two and the conversation shifts enough that Ryan’s input is no longer needed. A girl - Michelle Williams, Ryan thinks - starts to sing something sweet and old, an old show tune from a musical Ryan can’t quite remember the name of.
It’s amazing that Ben keeps the sort of company he does. It completely baffles Ryan.
Ryan is half a sleep when Breezy shakes him awake.
“We’ve leaving,” she tells him. “I’ve got to get home and relieve the babysitter before she starts getting any ideas.”
“Your babysitter is your mother in law.”
“I know,” Breezy says. “If I’m not careful she’ll try and take my kid home with her. She’s done it before.”
“It’s your own fault for not having an ugly kid,” Ryan tells her.
From out of nowhere Ryan hears Alex laugh. “Damn those Weekes genetics. They ruin everything. First Breezy’s virtue, and now our night on the town.”
Breezy turns and shouts at him for a while, Ryan goes to the bathroom.
The light is bright and everything is marble and expensive. Ryan could be anywhere. Only the tubes of Ione’s lipstick, and her kids’ cartoon toothbrushes remind him he isn’t in a hotel halfway across the world. With his fingers, he washes his face. There is still lipstick on his cheek from when Ione kissed him hello. It’s bright pink. He rubs at it until it’s gone.
When Z gets back from wherever the fuck she was filming, she invites Ryan to come with her when she gets her hair cut.
“Where’s the mystery then?” Ryan asks.
“What’s with you and mystery?” Z retorts.
Z is cutting her hair for the role in the film she and Ryan are doing together. Apparently playing a girl with terminal illness is the stylist code for a Mia Farrow circa Rosemary’s Baby pixie cut. Who knew? It took her agent over a month to get permission from three different producers and directors before Z could finally book an appointment.
“I don’t see why you couldn’t have worn a wig,” Ryan says the next time he sees her when she turns up to lunch missing her usual six inches of hair extensions.
“That right there is why the girls love you,” Z crones. “You say such wonderful things. It’s like honey into my ears.”
“Who says that?”
“My mom,” she tells him, flipping open her menu. “No mom jokes. Please. Don’t be that sort of guy.”
“You’re really limiting me,” he tells her.
“I don’t see how. I thought method acting freed you from such petty restraints.”
Ryan ignores her and waves down a waiter.
Spencer doesn’t believe in method acting. When they were teenagers on Sean Penn’s set, he and Brendon would drink warm cans of coke and make stupid jokes and act out scenes from Shanghai Surprise while they were meant to be doing schoolwork. Ryan remembers being so embarrassed. Even now he remembers wincing as Brendon played Gloria Tatlock to Spencer’s very awful pastiche of Glendon Wasey right in front of Sean.
“Don’t be lame,” Spencer told him when Ryan complained.
“Don’t you be lame,” Ryan retorted.
The following Monday morning Z and Ryan go to the first table read together. Although she said picking him up wasn’t a problem, she forgets the way to the Chateau Marmont. By the time she remembers, they’re late and her car needs gas. At the petrol station, Ryan fills the tank while she spends around ten minutes inside the service station deciding on what brand of cigarettes to buy. Leaning against the bonnet, Ryan checks his iPhone while he waits. There isn’t anything to check though. It’s not that late in Europe. Nothing has had enough time to happen.
He texts Alex.
Alex doesn’t reply.
But he wouldn’t.
According to Z, the night before last he attended some sort of charity dinner thing that Sofia was involved in. Of course Kristen was there.
Seeing her always fucks him up in one way or another.
“She’s his kryptonite,” Z says after she pays, using her nails to break the plastic wrapping around the packet of Marlboros.
Kristen’s always been far more than that. But it doesn’t really matter. It’s not anything new. Besides, they’re already running late.
Originally when Ryan first signed on to the new Gus Van Sant film they were shooting on location in New York. Due to a combinations of filming restrictions and funding issues (which somehow led to a script re-rewrite) they’re now shooting the bulk of the production in a small town half an hour outside Portland. Z isn’t exactly happy, but she isn’t too put out. Secretly, Ryan thinks she likes being the big fish in the small town. Jesse Eisenberg definitely does not.
“How would you know?” Spencer asks, on one of the rare occasions when he manages to answer his phone. “It’s not like he talks to you.”
Ryan makes a face. It wasn’t like he expected to find a kindred spirit in Jesse, but it wouldn’t hurt for him to exchange more than three or four words with Ryan that weren’t written somewhere in the pages of the script. Z says Jesse is shy. (They’ve been shooting for about a month and Jesse still can’t look her in the eye. It’s hilarious). But Ryan’s seen the long conversation Gus draws Jesse into and the way they debate the subtle ways inflection and emphasis can change the meaning of dialogue. Jesse isn’t shy. He just doesn’t like Ryan.
He tells Spencer this.
Spencer sighs. “Z’s there, why don’t you go talk to her instead?”
Z is there. But it’s not quite the same.
Spencer laughs when Ryan sighs.
“I know, I know, I know,” Spencer tells him, not at all sympathetically. “But buck up. At least you don’t have teeth marks on your left thigh.”
Ryan blinks - “What?”
Spencer laughs and hangs up on Ryan.
Ryan hates when he does that.
Shooting goes late into the night.
In a nameless park in a nondescript neighbourhood, they film scenes of the three of them in an empty playground. Between breaks Z bundles up and stands with the crew. Normally Ryan joins her but after sixteen hours it’s difficult to turn it on and off and it’s easier not to even bother trying. Jesse doesn’t either. Like relics, together they lose hours of themselves in their characters. By the time Gus is satisfied, Ryan’s arms and shoulders are aching from pushing Jesse and Z on the faded roundabout and his heart feels far too exposed. He knew what he was getting into with Gus, but coming up to breath hurts and when Gus slaps him on the back, Ryan feels terribly vulnerable.
With the production shutting down for the night, the crew break into a comfortable sort of comradely made up of jokes and weary laughter. Gus joins them without second thought. Ryan doesn’t know how he can. The cameras might all be turned off, but Ryan’s head is still filled with the murmurings and ill thought out actions of adolescent. It fills him, almost to the brim.
Z shakes it off easily. She always has.
He sees her with Gus, watching the dailies with a heavy coat thrown over her costume. The monitors wash her face with pale blue light. He could go over. He knows he could. Jesse has. Ryan hasn’t moved, but Jesse has. His mouth is pinched, but he’s there.
Ryan doesn’t understand Jesse.
When Ryan had heard Jesse had signed onto Restless, Ryan had been so excited. Everyone had said how similar they were and even Ryan expected to get on well with him. But from the very first day Jesse had been aloof and diffident - at least to Ryan.
On the drive back to their hotel Ryan pretends to be asleep with the driver tries to start a conversation.
“Well, that was rude,” Z says when they are ushered into the lobby.
Ryan shrugs. “Like you wanted to talk to him either.”
“I had to, since you decided to play sleeping beauty.”
Ryan only just manages not to snort. Z’s never had to do anything in her entire life.
Z had been the big fish in the small pond since she was a kid. It wasn’t her looks or her talent or even the shit she said in interviews, but her last name. A name shared by one of the biggest production companies in the entertainment business and the family to match. Where Jason was related to half the town, Z’s father - her whole family - owned it.
Thus for better or for worse Z was Tori Spelling 2.0.
In the morning Ryan wakes to find photographs of Emile Hirsch and Spencer muddy and grinning at some European festival. With arms slung over each others shoulders they look punch drunk happy. There are deep dark circles under Spencer’s eyes and dirt matted into his hair. But he’s smiling so bright and so unguarded. They both are.
(In another one of the images Emile is in the middle of saying something. His mouth is close to Spencer’s ear, from the angle of the shot Emile’s lips are a hairsbreadth away from touching Spencer. In the following images Spencer’s tiling his head back and laughing. (Ryan looks at the last image for longer than he probably should.))
When Spencer calls later that day, he’s excited.
After there performance at Glastonbury, he and the guys found out that they were picked up on the summer festival circuit.
“Fuck, I can’t believe it,” he laughs.
Ryan can.
“So that makes what? An extra month?”
“Maybe two,” Spencer says. “If we’re lucky.”
In his head Ryan adds three months onto the countdown he has going. Just to be safe.
In the background Ryan hears the distant roar of the crowd. Someone shouts Spencer’s name.
“Sorry,” Spencer apologises. “I have to go.”
“No, me too,” Ryan tells him. “Talk to you later.”
“Totally,” Spencer promises, and then he’s gone.
From the other side of the world Ryan keeps track of them, watching google alerts, tracking them on tumblr and trying not to be personally offended when he finds another one of Cash’s diary entries uploaded on Camisado’s myspace page. He doesn’t really get why Cash is there, but it’s safer not to ask why - safer to lie in the overgrown grass with Jesse and Z and play out a love story, play act being a kid.
“You miss me more now than you will when I’m actually gone,” Z whispers, but she’s not Z, she’s Annabel and Ryan is Enoch and Enoch is in love with her and with Jesse’s Alfred too, or at least that’s how Ryan’s playing it. “I promise.”
“That’s a horrible thing to promise.”
“It won’t be, later.”
Gus calls cut.
Stepping out from behind the monitors, he tells them that that was good. “But try it slower. More nuanced.”
Z sits up to listen.
Ryan turns and looks at her. With her hair cut, Z’s cheek bones look so much sharper. She could be her mother, almost. She was an actress too. She only did two films before she got married, but they were good ones. Sometimes they’re on TV. This film with Gus, is Z’s third film. She acts like more of a season professional than Jesse, and he’s been acting since he was a kid. Ryan doesn’t know how she does it.
His third film was a historical piece about the Falkland war. It was a piece of shit.
Ryan is in the middle of filming a couple intense days of night shoots when that latest Harry Potter film opens.
Clémence takes Spencer and the guys to the London premiere.
Of course they don’t go together or anything like that. Even when they were dating there were never any red carpet pictures or anything overt - not that Clémence was well known enough for that then - and there aren’t any now. But clicking through some of the after party paparazzi shoots during the brief breaks in filming, Ryan catches Spencer in the background of a few frames and then again when they are leaving the official after screening party. With one of his hand protectively pressed to the small of her back, Spencer is carrying her coat and she is tucked against his side as he ushers her to the waiting car.
The flashes of the cameras drown Clémence, making her skin look translucent and her eyes look like they are such a pale blue. Against Spencer, the vibrant red of her chiffon dress is almost vulgar.
There are other people in most of the shoots - Dallon opening the car door, Cash looking completely blitzed in his finest suit, a few of Ashley clutching Ian’s hand - but Ryan knows better.
The next day Ryan is late to set.
Three days later, Clémence is named best dressed on Fashion Police.
(They only use the red carpet shots).
Before Spencer left, he came along to Ryan’s final doctor’s appointment and held Ryan’s hand when the doctor cut the cast off.
“Good timing,” Spencer had said at the time.
It was only a week or so before the tour started and Spencer had spent the last few days in Cash’s pool house rehearsing. Ryan had come to most of them. Once he’d brought Z, and she invited Juno Temple and Olivia Thirlby because apparently he three of them were best friends. Or they’d sat next to each other at Rag & Bone’s NYC fashion week show. Either way, once they’d arrived, the rehearsal had dissolved quickly into a midday pool party. At least it did for everyone else who stripped out of their clothes and jumped in.
Sitting but the side of the pool, Ryan tried not to grimace while Spencer duct taped a plastic bag around Ryan’s arm. “I don’t see the point of this.”
“Water would fuck up my masterpiece.”
“I feel stupid.”
Spencer grinned and added another stripe of tape. “Funny. You look pretty stupid too.”
“Hey!” Ryan exclaimed but not really because Spencer’s eyes were dancing and that’s all it really took when it came to him.
In the background he could hear Juno screaming and Ian yelling something about girl cooties. Spencer leant over and used his teeth to tear the tape. His breath was so hot against Ryan’s skin and Ryan - in only his cotton boxers - slipped into the pool as if it was an after though. Floating on his back, he watched Spencer rolled up the cuffs of his jeans and dangled his feet over the edge.
“You’re not coming in?”
“Swimming is so 90s,”
“You’re making fun of me.”
Spencer nodded. “Yeah. Totally.”
Principle filming reaches a point where everyone can tell the bulk of the shooting is almost complete. They’re probably are going to be a few re-shoots, but there usually are with all of Gus’ projects. The atmosphere on set feels a little like the last week of school term. The pace of the work doesn’t abate, but the weight of the work is felt more than it was on the first day of shooting. As the lead, Ryan carries most of it. For better or worse, that’s the way it is. He knows it’s starting to show, but there isn’t much he can do about that either.
When Brendon calls, Ryan is halfway between the hotel and the latest location and on the way to fast asleep.
“Did I wake you?” Brendon asks.
Sitting up, Ryan lies. “No.”
Brendon sees right though him. “I did, didn’t I?”
“No, I’m awake,” Ryan says for no reason in particular.
“Now you are, but you weren’t when I rang.”
Ryan doesn’t know why Brendon’s pushing the point. But then again he doesn’t know why he’s pushing either. That’s the thing about Brendon. Or the thing about the two of them. When they were kids Ryan couldn’t take his eyes of Brendon - Brendon who was only fifteen but was already a consummate professional full of charm and overflowing with talent. In comparison to Ryan, everything Brendon did seem so effortless. Back then Ryan spent hours hanging out in Brendon’s trailer running lines and trying to emulate him. Now they can’t talk for five minutes without picking stupid fights that aren’t really fights but are really stupid.
This time isn’t any different.
A week or so ago, Ryan’s agent received an offer for him to star in the latest instalment of some Marvel/DC reboot/remake whatever over indulgent ‘verse the Way Brothers were signed on to write, direct, and product. Ryan couldn’t even make himself get through the treatment Tara sent him to read through. Over the phone, Brendon sounds excited. Apparently he was offered a part as well.
“Just like old times,” Brendon says.
“I haven’t accepted it,” Ryan tells him, because he hasn’t and thus technically it isn’t. It comes out wrong.
“Oh,” Brendon replies stiffly.
He doesn’t say anything for a beat. Ryan wonders if he should.
Brendon coughs awkwardly though. “I did. I mean. I accepted the role. I thought it’d be fun.”
Ryan thinks it’ll be months upon months of being asked if he read the comics. Graphic novels. Whatever. Months of it. Literally, months. He isn’t Andrew Garfield or Chris Evens. Ryan doesn’t need the work. He can’t smile non-stop without flinching either.
If Spencer was in LA rather than the backwaters of Europe, he’d probably call B.S on Ryan. But whatever.
Outside the car he hears someone call his name as they pull into the underground parking lot. A PA, Ryan notes, probably hoping Z is in the car with him since she’s always running late no matter what anyone does.
“I’ve got to go,” Ryan says.
It’s the truth, but it’s close enough to a lie to make it feel like one. Fuck Brendon.
Thirty seven days in, Jesse Eisenberg still isn’t speaking to Ryan.
It isn’t news, but what does that matter?
Sixteen hours into the day and with no end in sight, Ryan doesn’t care in the slightest. Jesse can do what he likes. If that’s ignoring Ryan, Ryan can deal with that. He can deal with a lot of things. Only he doesn’t.
“What’s you’re problem?” he finds himself asking when they’re in-between scenes, waiting for the lighting to be adjusted.
Jesse’s eyes are unfocused. He looks tired. The heavily starched collar of his WW2 uniform cuts into his jugular, leaving angry red marks on his skin. “I hate this place.”
Ryan feels indifferent. Indifferent enough to be blunt. “So?”
Everyone hates being on location. It’s like camp. Just like school camp. Ryan really hated camp.
Jesse mouth pinches. “When I signed on, we were filming New York.”
“Things change,” Ryan tells him, because they do. He would have thought Jesse would be used to that. Ryan is. When he signed on Jesse’s character was a Japanese Kamikaze pilot, not an American GI.
“Things change,” Jesse repeats, the words sounding odd when he says then.
“Yeah,” Ryan says. “Scripts, locations, schedules.”
“Funding,” Jesse adds.
There is something pointed in his tone. Something Ryan might have missed if didn’t have an ear for it.
“Funding too,” he nods.
“They changed after your DUI.”
Ryan -
Jesse turns away. “Not that it fucking matters that I could have stayed in my own apartment and rode my bike to set. No. Things change.”
But the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Ryan’s DUI is a joke, but not a very funny one. At least it isn’t to him. TMZ finds it hilarious. So does Perez Hilton. (And Alex).
Technically, Ryan wasn’t actually driving when he got his DUI. He was in his car and the ignition was turned on, but the car was parked. The hand break was on. He wasn’t going anywhere. He was outside a friend of a friends place. The party was still going strong. Someone was mixing James Murphy bootlegs and Ryan had the windows wound down so he could listen to the bridge. It was so late it was early and for some reason a cop happened to be in the area and for some reason he decided to go check why Ryan had his high beam headlights on.
Ryan doesn’t remember everything, but he remembers the cop leaning over to speak to him.
He can’t remember all of the questions, only that he’d gotten most of the answers wrong and then there was a breath test. According to it, one of them had been drinking too much malt whiskey. (It wasn’t the cop). Ryan was asked to step out of the vehicle, sir.
He had laughed. No one called Ryan sir, not ever.
He wasn’t paying attention. He just wanted a cigarette. He lost his lighter at Juno’s place. Or Eric’s. Or someone’s place. The one in his car only worked when the ignition was on.
And then there were handcuffs and bail and Tara issuing a statement and then, because bad luck comes in threes, Ryan accidentally slammed a taxi door shut on his arm when the taxi picked him up at after he’d been issued bail.
If that wasn’t enough, when he got to the hospital, someone had already called Ginger.
She’d been his emergency contact for years - more. It had been years since he was a kid skipping school to write crappy lyrics, but she still checked up on him sometimes when she finds out all his friends who haven't known him his entire life forget he sometimes doesn't eat. Or pay his bills, or call the cleaning service to make his place inhabitable before he returns from shooting on location. But when she turns up at the hospital, he wished more than anything he had someone else’s name listed just to avoid the acute feeling of shame and guilt that he feels when she looks at him.
Funny, right. Hilarious.
Shooting ends a week early. It’s first for everyone. At the cast party Ryan drinks too much and ends up being sick outside the restaurant while Z sits on the steps and smokes her way through what’s left of his cigarettes.
By the time Ryan feels well enough to go back inside all he wants to do is go home.
“That’s so lame,” Z comments.
She’s right. She always is.
In the morning Ryan flies business class back to LA.
Not a moment too soon, he thinks. Not a moment too soon.
Ryan has been in LA for just over a week when his agent calls again about the superhero thing. Apparently people are talking and things are happening. When the script was first doing the rounds people were talking about Twilight. He’s name wasn’t a topic of conversation then. According to Tara it is now.
“Darren Aronofsky wants you.”
For a moment Ryan is confused. “I thought the Way Brothers were directing it.”
“Thanks to The Hunger Games making post-apocalyptic tween romance sci-fic’s cool, their epic post-apocalyptic sci-fic genre piece set in the dessert to a soundtrack of remixed Bowie songs finally got the green light and is out of developmental hell.”
“Good for them.”
“Good for you,” Tara corrects, which actually translates to good for them. Maybe just her. Sometimes there isn’t a difference. “With Frank Iero out of the picture, you’re in. Aronofsky loved you in Shame.”
“I was on screen for maybe ten minutes.”
Less than ten minutes, if Ryan’s accurate. Little more than a walk on role as Michael’s college and Carey’s one night stand.
“He said you were the best part of the film.”
Ryan thinks Tara is a better liar than that. “I don’t want to spend the better part of a year in spandex.”
“It’s Russian,” Tara tells him over the phone. “You like Russian films.”
“It’s a remake of a Russian trilogy that hasn’t even been finished made.”
“Other than Urie, you’re the only person Darren has personally reached out too,” she tells him, as if that’s the most important thing. “They really want you.”
Ryan really wants a pony, but that isn’t happening either.
Tara sighs. “At least think about it. Can you do that for me?”
“You know how I don’t like to make promises I can’t keep.”
When Ryan was twenty two, he bought a house that Ava Gardiner and James Dean had lived in. At least according to the vendor. For the last two and a half years he’s been renovating it. On a free day, he and Ione go to check on its progress. It’s been about four months since he last visited and in that time not too much has changed. There have been delays, according to the site manager. But there always seems to be some excuse.
“We’ll throw you a party when it’s finished,” Ione comments, running her finger over the marble counter top that has yet to be installed.
It was meant to be a party house. That was what Ryan wanted at twenty four. Just off his fourth picture, and just about to sign onto Lars von Treir’s remake of Jean Luc Goddard’s Breathless, Ryan spent half of his time following Alex around and the other half high as a fucking kite on a combination of coke and black coffee. Now the expanse of exposed floorboards and wall of windows feels a little bit like a cliché; 1940s minimalism with wifi. Better than new.
When he bought the place, Jon and Cassie were living four houses down. Now they’re in Chicago. Ryan still doesn’t understand why anyone would move back to Chicago. Jon was just making it. He’s doing okay now, Ryan knows that. He and Cass just wrote and directed their first short film. But it is one thing to go to a premiere, it’s another standing in his half-finished house; the reality now so different to what Ryan pictured when he first bought it.
Ione seems to pick up on that.
“Hey, buck up Ross,” she tells him. “Your barbie dream home is almost finished. Your days of ordering room service and running into Charlotte Gainsbourg in lifts are almost over.”
He knows what she’s doing, but, “That only happened once.”
“And you still talk about it.”
“We had a moment.”
“You were probably recovering from a three day bender.”
He probably was.
Ione grins and links their arms together.
Outside her daughter is picking flowers from the overgrown garden. She’s a lovely kid; sweet as anything.
It’s ironic really, he’s building his dream home he envisioned as a twenty four year old.
He had shitty taste as a twenty four year old.
Fuck. When Ryan was twenty four, Ione wouldn’t have let him anywhere near her kids. Probably smart.
Despite everything, Charlotte hasn’t gone anywhere. They still see her sound. Can’t help it. Not really. Sure, no one talks to her. Or about her (Well, they don’t. Everyone else does). But she’s still there. Ryan supposes they all forget that. Z says it’s to be expected given everything.
At the opening of the new - Ryan can’t remember what - he runs into her. A full week back from shooting, Ryan is surprised that he feels surprised to see her. With her hair pulled back with jeweled combs and dressed in a long 40s evening gown, Ryan finds himself thinking her stylist deserves a raise when she smiles at him.
The thing about LA is it’s a small town and every year it gets smaller. Or it is for people like them. And for people like her too. Not that there’s really much of a distinction.
“Do you remember when you were young and wanted to set the world on fire?” she asks, because although they all forget, for just a little while at the very beginning, she did know him when he was young.
“No,” Ryan tells her.
He doesn’t.
He remembers making Sean give Spencer a part in his film so Ryan wouldn’t have to do it alone.
Charlotte makes a face. “You need to stop lying.”
Funny, Ryan thinks. Out of the two of them, Charlotte was always the dishonest one.
Brendon first met Charlotte Froom at a party her father was holding after the Golden Globes. At the time, she was seventeen and he was just shy of eighteen. That year he was there as a nominee (he didn’t win that year or the following time he was nominated - but no one expected he would after taking home an Academy Award at sixteen). By the time they were introduced to each other she perhaps had drunk a little too much champagne but his stupid jokes made her smile and the combination of her easy smile and flushed cheeks made him feel bold enough to ask for her number.
Shortly afterwards, they not so quietly started dating.
By the end of the following month they were engaged and on New Years Eve they eloped in a small provincial town in France. She wore a vintage satin cocktail dress that was mint coloured and he pinned a dandelion to his jacket. In the photographs Shane took, they looked like they were going out to dinner.
For the eighteen months they managed to stay married, they featured in every magazine. All dark eyes and good hair; holding hands and in love. It was beautiful (the pictures) while it lasted.
It didn’t last too long though.
The last film Ryan did, the one before the Von Sant one, is about to be released. It was filmed over a year ago. He hasn’t thought about it in months.
His PR rep, Gloria, calls him in the morning to talk about interviews and impressions and how the studio has decided to promote the project. The emphasis Gloria puts on how important his role in it is somewhat unexpected given he was the third lead to Michael Fassbender. Even if it was someone in the lead, no one cares about St. John Rivers in Jane Eyre. Nevertheless a contract is a contract and Ryan is nothing if not a professional so Ryan agrees to meets up for lunch later in the week to go over the details in person.
“This is good,” she says. “It means they believe in you.”
Ryan thinks that’s the most polite way anyone could ever refer to Michael’s current legal issues.
Afterward she calls him up twice. Once to arrange a time for him to see a stylist, the second time to tell him he’d been booked to do Leno and The Daily Show.
“Talk about the film,” she reminded him but when he arrives at the press junket, people only seem to want to talk about the Night Watch trilogy.
“I don’t know anything,” he offers, when asked.
It’s funny how the truth is often a lie in LA. And vice versa.
According to Tara, Night Watch isn’t really a superhero movie. But it’s being marketed as both; a superhero film for the numbers, a character driving piece all about “human” nature for the critics.
The basic plot really isn’t so basic, but it goes like this. Brendon is Anton. Anton is the protagonist. When his girlfriend dumps him for another guy, he goes to a witch to try and get her back. The witch says it will cost him. In the book and the original Russian films, the price is spelled out. In Darren’s film, it’s implied. Apparently there were many arguments and rewrites regarding this plot point. Abortion isn’t really mainstream.
Either way the scene is presented, the point of it is that Anton changes the future. He fucks it up. The rest of the film is about him trying to fix his mistake. Or, to be more specific, the rest of the trilogy is about that - and the burden of guilt.
The girlfriend - yet to be cast - is Anna. Svetlana actually, but Anna is easier for American audiences. She isn’t the ex girlfriend but she is Anton’s chance for redemption. She has powers and is cursed.
Ryan’s character is Zavulon, name still subject to change (currently they’re workshopping alternatives). In the books and Russian films, there are other characters that are more important - ones that mentor Anton, work along side him and are his friends. But Darren doesn’t really care about Light or Dark Others (the titles of the respective good and bad characters). He has rewritten most of them, combining two into one, editing out others. Some, if they’re lucky, do survive but only as cameo’s with one or two lines. But Ryan’s character, Darren likes him. Zavolon is ancient and uses violence like a card trick. From the outside, he looks harmless. But from the outside Anton looked harmless too, and he went and changed the world because a girl broke his heart.
Brendon and Ryan are the centre of the trilogy. Two sides of the same coin. Ryan’s character sees that, Brendon’s doesn’t.
They’re the ones who will carry the franchise, if Ryan chooses to sign on the dotted line.
They’re the ones who will have to breathe new life into the story Darren wants to tell.
According to Tara people are already talking - a reunion some are calling it. Her cut, if Ryan chooses to do the film, is not insubstantial. Ryan reminds himself of this when she tells him people are saying Night Watch is Ryan and Brendon’s chance to come full circle; two of the brightest young things in Hollywood together on the silver screen again.
Ryan - Ryan has been in the business for a long time. A very long time.
People talk. That’s what they do. It doesn’t mean anything. It never means anything. He knows better than to listen, especially when people are saying what he wants to hear.
Then Darren Aronofsky takes Ryan out to lunch.
Ryan is a little late, but Darren doesn’t seem to care. He already ordered for both of them, he says. He leans across the table when he says it. Ryan nods. He doesn’t typically order steak, but it’s not like he’s paying for it. Hell, it’s not like Darren’s paying for it either.
Ryan has been around for a while now. He recognises a play date when he is set up on one. But Darren, who has been around even longer, doesn’t seem too.
“It’s not about superheros,” he says right off the bat, his eye contact far too intense for a one o’clock lunch. “It’s about human nature.”
That’s a tag line Sam Raimi used. But no one cares about his Spiderman films anymore. Not that Ryan would say that. He has done this before. Not often, but enough to nod and to let Darren talk. A few months ago he went out to dinner with Mia Hansen-Løve. He acted the same with her, even when she had reached across the table and taken his hand in hers.
Now, here, Darren talks and maybe it’s more of the same. But against Ryan’s will, he starts to listen.
“You and Brendon play off each other. Brendon’s the hero, sure, except he’s not. He’s this selfish fuck of a guy who wants his ex more than anything and is willing to screw the world over to get her back. It’s your presence in the film that stops the audience from being complacent. You speak to Brendon like a confidant, and treat him like an equal because that’s what he is to you.”
“In the books Anton and Zabulon-”
“Don’t read the books. Don’t watch the other films either,” Darren interrupts. “This isn’t going to be a faithful fucking translation of either.”
Ryan looks away. Right, then that’s another thing he’ll be asked to talk about a hundred times.
Darren makes an exasperated sound as if Ryan completely missed his point. “Do what you want. Read the books in untranslated Russian if you want authenticity. Fuck if I care. If you want to make something of value, you can’t be afraid of stepping on some toes.”
“Rewriting source material is different,” Ryan says.
At this, at Ryan finally engaging in the conversation, Darren finishes his beer and waves at the bar staff to bring him a fresh one. There is something electric about his manner now that Ryan’s spoken.
“Source material is a suggestion.”
“Don’t let J.K Rowling hear you.”
“She can’t hear anything over the sound of royalties rolling into her bank account. I’d be more worried about Alan Moore.”
Like he’d lower himself to speak to Darren, Ryan thinks.
Darren grins, and it’s clear that he’s still that punk from Brookline begging and borrowing and doing what he needs in order to get to do what he wants. Ryan can see it. He doesn’t know how Darren managed to fool all those studio suits. There is something electric about him; he truly is passionate about the project. This isn’t something a random producer sent his direction after the Way brothers bailed on it. But it still doesn’t quite make sense. Ryan can’t understand why the hell someone like Darren, someone fresh off winning every award on offer with The Wrestler and then again with Black Swan, is using all his hard won credibility and power to make a superhero tent pole project for Paramount. Not just a film, but a franchise. Because that’s what this will probably turn out to be. One film is one year, plus another for post production and promotion. A trilogy or more could mean seven or more years.
“That’s called job security,” Tara tells Ryan, when she sees him next the next day. “Talk to one of your friends who isn’t Alex or Z. They’ll explain why it’s a good thing.”
Hustling him out of his room and into her car, she gives him a stick of gum, buttons up the top button of his shirt and makes him take off his sunglasses when they pull into the Paramount studio lot. There is a look in her eyes that tells him she thinks he was out drinking the night before. He wasn’t. He fell asleep in the previous afternoon while listening to Juno’s old Cat Power records and didn’t wake until the morning curtesy call.
“This is a waste of time,” he tells her feeling belligerent.
She ignores him. “When you get inside, be polite. I don’t ask for much, but try to be polite.”
Ryan is over this and the meeting hasn’t even started.
The meeting is held in a modern conference room. It’s clean, light filled and feels expensive. He is met by the vice-president for production, and two producers. Darren isn’t present. In his head, Ryan translates. Darren did the pitch, now it’s their turn to do the sell. He prepares himself to listen to a conversation about numbers and figures and incentives and -
“We hear good things about you from Walter Salles,” the vice-president says. “Everyone here at Paramount is talking about the audition you did for him.”
Ryan blinks. Walter Salles? It takes Ryan a moment to connect the dots. Ryan read for Salles’ casting agent before he left to do Restless. He hadn’t heard anything. Even at the time he went for the audition he knew better than to get his hopes too high. Everyone under male and thirty five has auditioned for On the Road. Everyone and their dog. Even Alex made the effort to memorise a page of dialogue and turn up on time to give it his best shot.
Turning, he looks at Tara. If people were talking, she’d know. She always knows. But she is looking at them, and they are looking at him.
One of the produces nods. “Apparently you really channelled that disparate feel Walter is trying to capture.”
The other producer agrees, noting how well Ryan had picked up on the inherent rhythm of the script.
Ryan knows what they’re doing okay. He does. He knows this is about the Night Watch trilogy. This - whatever this is - is just a veil. But just as suddenly as the subject is brought up, it forgotten when they bring up his film with Gus.
“I heard it will be in competition at Cannes,”
Ryan didn’t know that. Why didn’t he know that? He turns to Tara, but she’s nodding and adding something about how she’s heard it might even close the competition. Ryan didn’t know that either. He blinks, but the conversation has moved on.
“The reviews for Shame have been amazing,”
“I was only in it for ten minutes,” he repeats on autopilot. That’s really the only thing he remembers saying.
Upon exiting the office, Tara grips his wrist tightly and leads him outside. It isn’t until they’re in his car and smiles.
“Now, was that so hard?” she asks.
Ryan isn’t quite sure what happened.
Tara gives him a look. “They just offered you On the Road, you fuckwit.”
And, oh. Ryan takes in a sharp breath and exhales it just as quickly. It whistles through his teeth and he can’t stop himself from doing it again.
“You’ll probably have to test for it again, but it’s pretty much yours,” she tells him, tapping away on her blackberry. “Act happy. You’re going to be a bona fide movie star.”
The contracts for both films are in Tara’s office within the hour.
Darren calls just after Ryan gets out of the meeting with the studio heads and invites himself over to Ryan’s suite.
“Fuck, kid,” he swears when arrives an hour or so later. “Why the fuck are you making me work for this?”
Ryan exhales slowly. He - “I think they offered me On the Road.”
Darren laughs. It’s comes out of nowhere and Ryan winces at the volume.
“Oh, man,” he says. “Urie’s people got an extra sixteen mil per picture out of Fox, and all they offer you is your hipster wet dream on a silver platter.”
Ryan bristles. “It’s not about money.”
“Kid,” Darren says, sounding like he knows what he’s talking about. “Take it from someone who knows first hand. It’s always about money. Art is just a by-product.”
Ryan doesn’t believe that. Maybe Darren does, however Ryan doesn’t.
But the thing is, they nearly have him. Darren clearly know its, it must be obvious but how quickly he got himself over to the Chateau Marmont in peek hour. Except the next thing out of his mouth isn’t something clever about redefining genres or examining the duality of human nature or even hollow praise, it’s Darren telling Ryan he’s played the same role in his last five films.
“No offence,” he says, then he backtracks. “Fuck, I take that back. Take offence, whatever. But apart from Shame, you’ve been playing the same intellectual non-threatening hipster character for years. You’re good at it. But that doesn’t mean any of your work is memorable.”
Ryan opens his mouth, but Darren hasn’t stops speaking.
“I know what you’re thinking. I know that you think this is just another superhero franchise piece of crap. Don’t think that I don’t know that,” Darren levels, brutally honest way that takes Ryan aback after afternoon of buzzwords and sweet talk. “But you’re wrong. Okay, it’s probably not going to get you a fucking Oscar nomination, but it’s going to be memorable. It’s a risk, but if you trust me and do what I say, this film is going to transform your career.
Ryan hasn’t said yes. He hasn’t said anything. But - he finds himself nodding and it is only then Darren sit back in his seat.
Things do change. Jesse is right about that.
After Darren disappears, Dan Schrecker calls. From what Ryan knows, he vaguely recognises Dan as the person who has done graphics, effects, title design, or post-production work on all of Darren's films to date. According to what Z says, where Scorsese has Leo, Darren has Dan. On the phone he sounds weary, like he’d rather be doing something more interesting than acting as a middle man.
“Darren watched that scene from your first film, the one where you watch Urie button his shirt up just after your family had moved. He had it on a loop for a month while we were throwing ideas around.”
Ryan doesn’t know what that supposed to mean. He pulls out the script Darren sent him ages ago and rereads it.
It could be worse, he thinks and then he thinks of Jack Kerouac.
Ryan knows want. He can play it. Now, with the pages of Darren’s script in his hand, Ryan feels something inside him twist violently with it. He wants to play Dean Moriarty. He wants the part more than he thinks he’s wanted anything and now with the opportunity there -
A super villain. Ryan thinks about it. It could be far worse.
(A week after signing on, he finds out Vanessa Hudgens as been cast as the female lead.
Spencer laughs when he finds out. So does Z and Ione. Eric sends Ryan a (girls) lycra leotard. Breezy sends him a High School Musical box set. It isn’t funny).
Part two.