Last Days Page 3

  ‘Er, I used a parallel editing strategy on the last two films. Worked just fine. I rough cut the best footage on Final Cut Pro. Prior to a final edit with my editor, Finger Mouse—’

  ‘Good. Good.’

  ‘All the master files go to hard-disc space I rent from him. Compression means it’ll take longer than real time to put across at the end of each day, but I can get rushes in a day or two.’

  ‘Let’s try for a day. And your production crew?’

  ‘My partner, Dan. Can’t work without him. And he does the cameras.’

  ‘So there will be three of you in total. Dan and this Mouse?’

  ‘That’s how I did the last two films.’

  As Max came around the desk, hand outstretched, Kyle couldn’t tell if the executive producer was impressed by their minimalism or pleased at the low cost implications. ‘And they will agree to a confidentiality clause. I’m afraid this project must remain undercover until completion. The story remains contentious.’

  ‘Can’t see why not. Festivals? Theatrical release? It would be nice to at least try.’

  ‘Of course, of course. DVD, internet and TV is our target though. But we shall leave no opportunity unexplored.’

  Kyle stood up, but wobbled. He was light in the head, had helium in his feet. ‘You’re ceding creative control to me?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘I’d need to see a contract.’

  ‘I have it here. You look unconvinced.’

  ‘I have been ill-used, Mr Solomon. Ill-used. Investors have one thing on their minds: profit at any cost.’

  ‘Indeed, I hope our collaboration will be profitable. The advance, I think, is generous.’

  ‘Advance?’ The shadow of his debt seemed to waver, even retract. Debt changed gravity and had made the world around him heavier for so long, he felt like he was on another planet in the solar system. Just being within reach of a solution to his burden gave him a moment of unbearable bliss.

  ‘Yes. One third now, one on the shoot’s completion, one on final delivery of your masterpiece. How you split it with your comrades is entirely up to you. I believe it commensurate with your reputation. I am thinking one hundred thousand pounds, not including expenses, deductible from net receipts.’

  One hundred grand. Kyle swallowed, felt faint.

  ‘Take this away and look at it. Show it to your agent, if you have one. And as you have your own equipment and people, Revelation will merely be the publisher–contractor for the finished article.’

  ‘I want to see your cash-flow projection.’

  ‘Of course. Anything else?’

  Kyle paused for one beat more than he wished to. He couldn’t decide whether Solomon was the devil or his saviour.

  Max beamed; his teeth were perfect. ‘Excellent! Then we have an agreement?’

  Kyle cleared his throat of its constriction, its aridity. He picked up the contract. ‘I’ll read this first.’

  ‘I need to know today.’ Max looked at his Patek Philippe watch. ‘Let’s say by five p.m.’

  TWO

  WEST HAMPSTEAD, LONDON. 30 MAY 2011

  ‘Dan, do you believe in miracles?’ Phone clamped to his ear, Kyle quick-marched from the Tube station on the Finchley Road to his studio flat. He was breathless, dizzy with excitement, and slightly drunk.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Didn’t think so. But let me convince you they do exist. I’ve just been to a meeting with Revelation Productions.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mind, body and spirit types who did The Message.’ Silence. ‘That book.’

  ‘Right.’ Dan hadn’t a clue.

  ‘They also make videos and stuff. But are starting a new series. Called Mysteris. They’ve asked me to make the first film.’

  ‘Cool. I think.’

  ‘Which means that we are back in business.’

  ‘What film?’

  ‘Get over here. I’ll explain it all.’

  ‘Kinda busy right now.’

  ‘Unless you’re getting a blow job, shift it. You’ll want to hear this.’

  ‘Mind, body and spirit. That tofu and crystals shit. This sounds kind of desperate, Kyle. I know things are getting tight, but—’

  ‘One hundred grand advance.’

  Total silence, then, ‘No way.’

  ‘Mate, get over here. You have to see the budget. All Talent Release Forms are signed. Liability insurance is done. He’s even forking out for Errors and Omissions cover. Broadcast compatible, mate. He’s giving net points too. This is un-fucking-believable. You in?’

  ‘Whoa. Slow down—’

  ‘Mate, we don’t have to tout round distributors, send it to festivals. Acquisition is taken care of. We are already acquired! He’s going for pay wall, embedded content, the whole shmoo. Everything we wanted for the next film and more. For once we don’t have to do the legwork!’

  ‘So this guy just calls you and offers the gig. Is this a setup? Where’s the catch, mate?’

  ‘Doesn’t seem to be one. I’ve been looking at the contract in the pub. From all angles. I’ll get a second pair of eyes for sure, but someone pulled out. Last minute. Not sure why. But I get the feeling this Max is in a real bind here. That shit happens all the time. But he needs an answer today if we’re in. I can’t do it without you, mate. Nor would I want to.’

  At the other end of the line, he heard the sound of Dan getting to his feet. A toilet flushed.

  ‘Now wipe your ass and wash your hands.’

  ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘I’ve gone through the schedule quickly. There’s an old mine. In Arizona, mate. Arizona! You believe this shit? Another couple of houses in the US. One in Seattle. Always wanted to go there. A farm in France. None of them are going to present ball ache. All daylight shoots. Stationary interviews or long shots, medium shots of remote, disused places. No streets, no crowds. Undisturbed by the infernal rubbernecker! USB lead to a laptop as a monitor. Two cameras. All pretty straightforward. Only downside is the schedule is so tight there’s no pickups or reshoots at all. We cannot fuck it up.’

  Haste and unpreparedness were counterproductive, always. Here he was already compromised, totally. He often spent days looking at each location before unlocking a camera case. And that was not going to be a possibility. Was Max suggesting he had four days to look at the photographs of the first location, before working out camera angles and a shot list? Before travelling through three countries in . . . how many days . . . he couldn’t remember, but not many. Was it possible?

  ‘Hang on. What’s it about? The film?’

  ‘The story, it’s radical.’ He’d added to his feeble knowledge by quickly leafing through the true-crime book, Last Days, in the pub. And the first thing he did with Last Days was exactly what everyone with a true-crime book in their hand does: he went to the plate section. And he saw seventies American faces in black and white, long hair and perfect teeth and freckles and centre partings. He saw aerial shots of desert, ramshackle wooden buildings, maps, and crime-scene photos that made him turn the book upside down and around to work out what was a hand and what was a foot. But above all else, he felt a frisson of genuine, authentic excitement. A long unfamiliar sensation that made him feel faint. ‘The Temple of the Last Days,’ he told Dan. ‘Hippy killers. I’ll read the files when I get in. Go to Amazon now and get a copy of Irvine Levine’s Last Days. The third edition. It’s a true-crime book. Max has set up exclusive interviews with the surviving main players. All the pre-production is done. All of it. You believe that?’

  ‘It’s been done before. I’ve seen one of the movies.’

  ‘It’s been done seven times before. But they’re all about the cult murders and police procedure. No one has done the paranormal angle. That’s where we come in. Just like on Blood Frenzy. Three countries. Six locations. Eleven days. We go, we shoot.’

  ‘Eleven days! That’s tight, Kyle.’

  ‘It is, but not impossible. His schedule is pretty impressive. Very professional. If this was our next film, we’d be doing it on a grand in half that time. We’ll still need a month to sleep it off, but we’ll be able to afford to. Did I mention the one hundred grand yet?’

  Refusing to film weddings, christenings, or any more corporate training films with Dan, he was making enough for food with tape library work in Soho, the odd freelance PA gig at live shoots, and periodic agency work. Most recently the packing of mobile phones into boxes in a warehouse in Wembley, peopled with genial Baptists from Ghana, illegal immigrants, and young Asian guys with expensive phones, on which they talked relentlessly about their DJ and record-producing ‘projects’. Everyone these days had a fucking project. One week of nights in the warehouse of broken dreams had filled him with a despair as tangible as the mumps. But this was a total revival of his fortunes as a guerrilla documentary film-maker.

  There was a long silence between Kyle and Dan; nothing but the sound of one man who breathed heavily, and another who held his breath. ‘You’re messing with me, Kyle. Don’t, please.’

  ‘I’m not that cruel. God I need this. Guardian angels, thank you.’ As well as debt from his films, he was three months in arrears on rent, and had paid the previous five months on a credit card; he was also due in magistrates court for unpaid council tax; and a third party agency was threatening the end of his gas and electricity supply after eighteen months of his bills going unpaid. These days, he was just amazed every morning when the lights came on. But one hundred grand! He’d never spent more than ten on a film. The last one cost him and Dan six to make, and they’d lived in a tent near the shoots. If they were able to make another film together, they’d need to bring it in for under two grand. But not now. One hundred Gs split three ways. He’d be even. Back in black.

&
nbsp; Dan was infected too because his voice trembled. ‘Same deal as Coven and Blood Frenzy on crew?’

  ‘Absolutely. I’m the driver, production manager, PA, director, writer, associate producer, second camera when needed, and catering. You’re first assistant director, director of photography, lighting, make-up, and first choice of bed. We share the sound and the running. Mouse is the technical editor. I gotta call him now.’

  Kyle had never seen Finger Mouse out of his chair, the computer mouse permanently under one hand, constantly being clicked as he spoke, if he spoke. It was said that Finger Mouse hadn’t left his Streatham basement flat in a decade, or owned more than two shirts; his great beard, reminiscent of a Confederate general from the American civil war and his milky-green complexion, attested to the rumour. Sunlight could take him out of the game. He never even went to premiers of the films he’d edited. And for most of each day and night of every month spent on a final edit, Kyle only ever talked to the side of Finger Mouse’s head. Collectively, he’d spent an entire year of his life in the Mouse’s edit suite, but he struggled to visualize the editor’s face beyond his profile. Finger Mouse would die in his chair. But not before this film is done, eh.

  The three of them rarely remarked on each other’s personality disorders because it was too uncomfortable to do so, but Dan anxiety ate and was technically anal about cameras and lights; Kyle planned and counted pennies to neurosis; Finger Mouse cut images in an existence measured entirely in twenty-four frames per second. It was why they were all still single in their early thirties without having produced a single child between them. This life: it had weeded them out. Finger Mouse had never been in a relationship; Dan had one at film school, but still refused to talk about it; Kyle had racked up five, but they had gone down in flames before any of them reached six calendar months. Even more debilitating than his romantic shortcomings and debts, the recent probability of not making films any more had left Kyle’s sense of the future unequivocally cold, empty and terrifying. But that unbreathable space, the anti-matter of fidgeting anxiety, vanished the moment Max made the offer, because without a film on the go, he had nothing. ‘Dan, you in or what?’

  ‘Wait. Wait. I’m thinking . . . how we shoot it.’

  ‘Lot of real time here.’

  ‘That’s what I was afraid of.’

  ‘We have total creative control though. And you know how I feel about fast cutting. Fuck that shit. Why does everything have to be so fast? Sound bites that you forget in two seconds because the scene has already changed nine times. We can slow things down. Get the decent content. Not one or two sentences. It’s no action film. We’re freed of all that, like it’s our own project that someone else is paying for. We can shoot the interviews from two cameras and then cut between two viewpoints in the edit. Throw in some reversals and close-ups for Finger Mouse so he doesn’t get bored.’

  ‘So, no pitching, no scouting, no schedule to write, no meetings, no bullshit and no hassle. It’s just all there on a plate, like some gift? An inheritance? A lottery win? I won’t be happy with you at all if this is a joke, mate.’

  ‘It’s straight up.’

  ‘Too good to be true?’

  ‘I can smell a turd, mate. This smells legit.’

  There was a long silence from Dan. ‘When do we start?’

  ‘Saturday.’

  ‘Saturday?’

  ‘This Saturday.’

  ‘This Saturday!’

  THREE

  From Maximillian Solomon’s production notes:

  The original headquarters of The Last Gathering has become available for rental and is between tenants. I’ve secured permission to film inside. Exterior and interior footage is, I would say, essential to our project. One of the original members of The Last Gathering will meet you at the address below, and provide an interview about life in the very heart of where it all began in 1967. Her name is Susan White, aka Sister Isis [see biography section]. We have the 11th and 12th of June to record this segment.

  CLARENDON ROAD, HOLLAND PARK, LONDON. 11 JUNE 2011. NOON.

  ‘This was ours with the red door. It wasn’t red back then. They’ve painted it.’ Speaking as the first of her small feet touched the pavement, Susan White jabbed a thin hand at the three storeys of elegant Georgian stone. Her Hackney cab shuddered away from the kerb, its black carapace gleamed in the dull aluminium light of the overcast sky.

  Kyle returned his attention to the spectacle of mad white hair atop a hunched body that was Susan White. She hurled an immediate impression of absurdity at the onlooker. Clown. The word popped into Kyle’s head. His smile was determined to become laughter. He avoided Dan’s eyes, whose surprise also boiled towards laughter. Dan turned his broad back away and began a pretence of adjusting the camera. If they exchanged just one glance, they would lose it.

  Green eyeshadow had been applied in an operatic fashion and an absence of lips enforced a painting-on of a red mouth. Under the wild snowy hair, a pale scalp was too visible. She’d clearly made an effort for her confession, with an outfit that hit that curious middle ground between high fashion and rag-market bad taste that only a trained eye could determine the difference between. Sunlight through the vast canopy of the trees made shadows dapple and piebald her amethyst dress. A turquoise shawl rustled about meagre shoulders to complete the ensemble.

  But for a period of time that went beyond being awkward, Susan White never once removed her rheumy eyes from the tall flat facade of the house.

  Kyle spoke to repress his urge to grin. ‘Hi Susan. Or do you prefer Sister Isis?’

  Her small brittle body turned and lurched at him, the head extended in rebuke. Crystals on thongs drooped from her scrawny neck and chimed together, their sound accompanied by wooden bracelets rattling on her thin wrists. ‘Never call me that!’

  Kyle flinched. The elderly woman cast a wary glance back at the house, as if this sufficed to explain her reaction to the name the cult had given her. ‘Not here. Please. Susan is fine.’

  ‘Susan it is.’ Kyle took her cold hand. The skin papering it was transparent; black veins networked under livered flesh, but the skin was as smooth as lambskin against his fingers. He looked into her intense blue eyes. ‘This is Dan. My partner in crime.’ He nodded at Dan, who turned towards them at the mention of his name. His face was red and his eyes filled with water from suppressing laughter.

  ‘Can you feel it?’ she said, her attention again reclaimed by the house.

  Here we go. Trying too hard. He hoped she wouldn’t see his abject disappointment. It was a dull day on a West London street that recognized nothing but its own tranquil elegance in any season; a setting too incongruous for what Susan White already suggested. Her attempt to conjure an atmosphere of lingering presences and special psychic boundaries immediately wearied him. His estimation of Max’s ability to find suitable interviews also plummeted. Having a creature like Susan White in the film would undermine any credence of the surviving adepts’ mystical claims; the very sight of the woman encapsulated all that was ridiculous about the sixties.

  Kyle nodded at Dan; a cue to switch from the exterior shots they’d been shooting of the street and building to set up for the first close-ups of Sister Isis. ‘Feel what?’ His question was more abrupt than he’d intended.

  Silver earrings jingled against her pantomime cheeks when she shook her head. ‘I . . . I’ve not felt that way since 1969. Extraordinary.’ She closed her eyes and turned her head on an angle, as if listening to distant music. Her face seemed more haggard in the skein of sunlight that found it, if that were possible. The harsh lines scoring her chin deepened as her mouth sagged. ‘This is the first time I’ve been back.’

  Kyle rolled his eyes. Dan smiled, and occupied himself with the light meter closer to the house, where Kyle wanted an establishing shot of Susan beside the front door. ‘And you live in Brighton.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Never fancied revisiting old times then?’

  ‘Could not bear to.’ Susan White now kept her eyes closed against the sight of the house. But tottered forward like a woman upon black ice. Quickly but carefully, Kyle put the boom and sound mixer down, and moved to her side. Susan clasped his forearm. ‘I’m not sure I can.’