Page 18 of Hollywood, Ending

In real life, sometimes the Obstacle is that someone’s touch makes you bristle for reasons you do not understand. The Obstacle is that they are annoying, or immature, or radiate bad vibes, or whatever. I thought about Kai, and our Obstacle. Partly I didn’t have time for romance, at least not for the kind of all-consuming romance that tended to overtake me. Partly he just seemed closed off to a romantic connection. But I liked that Kai liked me. I wanted him to like me more. I liked that he said “I love you” so much, the casualness of it, and I wanted him to love me more. I couldn’t even tell if I wanted him because I was so busy wanting him to want me. I liked the way my breath caught in my throat every time we touched, the way he couldn’t help but walk close to me, the way our knees grazed when we sat next to each other watching Pro Patria Mori.

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When I arrived at LAX that afternoon, a car was waiting for me. I’d finished the Gods of Andromeda book on the plane. There’s always so much in a book that can’t fit into the movie, the wanderings and asides that make a story feel real. But although I’m obviously biased, I tend to find good movies better than the books they’re adapted from, precisely because the movie has no room for air and every scene has to accomplish multiple goals.

Anyway, I’d enjoyed Gods of Andromeda, and as I rode in a black Mercedes directly from the airport to the audition, I kept going back to this one page I’d dog-eared, where Agrippah has a short monologue that isn’t in the screenplay. Even though I’d never perform it in real life, I thought that if I learned that one monologue, I might really understand Agrippah from within.

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I knew the casting director, Nina, a little, and she greeted me at the blacked-out door of her space in West Hollywood. She walked me back to a room where everyone was seated behind a table—Brian Arawas, two producers, Todd from the studio, and the author, Valentina Leavitt. Todd was, of course, telling a joke as I walked in. “So this parrot just won’t stop cursing in the foulest ways imaginable, right? Finally the owner loses his temper and throws the parrot in the freezer. The parrot squawks for a minute, and then gets totally quiet. The owner’s worried he’s killed it, so he opens the freezer and the parrot hops out and squawks, ‘Sir, I am deeply sorry for my bad language. It won’t happen again.’ And then after a moment, the parrot adds, ‘By the way, what did the chicken do?’ ”

I laughed along with everyone else then said my hellos, careful to shake hands with the author first, who almost bowed when I said how much I loved the book. Arawas was last in line, a forty-something guy wearing jeans and a tie-dye Grateful Dead T-shirt. His small, round glasses magnified his already large eyes. After the hellos, I got set up in front of the camera.

“We’ll do the scene at the start of the orc war first,” Nina said, and I nodded.

As they set up the cameras, I couldn’t help but think of my mom again. She took me to so many auditions. I was probably eight or nine when I realized that, being drunk day and night, she was also driving drunk when she took me around town, and I remember the discordance of knowing that drunk driving was bad while also knowing that my mom was good.

Mom didn’t want to want what she wanted, but she wanted it anyway. She could not have labored under the delusion that smacking me was an effective strategy for making me a good actor.

Except, then again, I am a rather good actor.

I took a second, exorcised her from my consciousness, and said my name: Juniper Castillo. Five four. Over eighteen. “The orcs are at the door, my lady,” Nina said, and I fell into Agrippah. For the next thirty minutes, we ran two scenes five or six times each, with Brian and occasionally Todd giving me notes between. I needed to prove not just that I could act, but that I was directable.

After we ran the scenes, as Nina started to walk toward the cameras to turn them off, I said, “Can I— There’s a scene in the book, an Agrippah monologue, that I really love. Can I try that even though it’s not in the script?”

I watched Valentina perk up. “Of course,” Brian said, and I launched into it.

“If we abandon our traditions in this war, the orcs have already won. For seven lifetimes, and seven before that, this staff has been held by the women who rule the Realm. This staff matters more than who holds it. But right now, my lords and ladies, I hold it, and I shall not relinquish it, not for man or orc.”

It went on like that for a couple minutes, and I could feel myself saying it from my stomach, like the air was pressed through my belly rather than my lungs.

“That was beautiful,” Valentina said when I finished.

“My God, you are prepared,” Brian added.

“Thanks,” I said. “You want me to take it again, or—”

“No, Juniper,” Brian said. “I think we have everything we need. What a joy to see your Agrippah. What a gift. We’ll be in touch.”

11

“Is that your character notebook?” Kathryn asked me one morning between set-ups. We were shooting outside—an interview scene with Jude and Carly.

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess halfway between a character notebook and a journal.”

“I used to keep a diary,” she said. I hated the word diary. It sounded like kids’ stuff.

“No more?”

“I thought it would be very important, that scholars of directing would compare my diary to my films and understand the art that way. Then I directed a Verizon commercial and realized: No one is coming for my diary.”

“Just helps me stay in it,” I said, feeling defensive.

“Yes, well, we all have our own process.”

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We spent almost an hour rehearsing the walk-and-talk where I’m interviewing Jude about Andy. I had my reporter’s notebook out, so I needed to write notes while walking and listening as Kai talked to me about Andy. I only had one line of dialogue—“When Andy models, do you think he’s in on the joke?”—but I had to decide how Carly would listen to his epic response. It was one of the best and punchiest sections of the script.