"What about Tony—I mean, Rick? Shouldn't I start to chase him a few steps or pick up the gun like I'm thinking of going after him?"
Normally they'd have covered all this in a rehearsal, and Zack realized he'd been foolish to think they could use the rehearsal for a take, particularly when he'd been toying with a notion since yesterday that Rachel probably shouldn't fire the first shot, even though the script called for that. After a brief hesitation, he shook his head at Emily. "Let's play it the way it's written the first time through. After that, we'll improvise if we need to." He glanced around at the cast and crew, his tone turning brisk. "Questions?"
He gave them a split second to answer before he nodded at Tommy and said, "Let's do it."
"Kill the air-conditioning," Tommy called out, and an instant later the air conditioners went silent. The sound man put on his earphones, both cameramen leaned forward, and Zack took a position between the camera and the monitors where he could both see the monitors and watch the live action in front of him.
"Red light, please," he called, instructing that the red light outside the stable be turned on to warn that filming was underway. "Roll cameras." He waited for verbal confirmation that the cameras and sound equipment were rolling at proper speed.
"Rolling!" the cameraman on the crane called out after a moment.
"Rolling!" Sam Hudgins echoed.
"Speed!" the sound man called.
"Mark it," Zack ordered, and the production assistant quickly stepped in front of Sam's camera holding the black and white clappers that listed the scene number they were shooting and the number of takes they'd had. "This is scene 126," he announced, repeating what was written on the clappers, "take 1." He slapped the clappers together for the benefit of the editors who'd use that later to synchronize the sound with the action, then he quickly stepped out of the way.
"Action!" Zack called.
On cue, Rachel entered the stable from the side, moving nervously, looking around, her face a perfect mirror of terror, excitement, and apprehension. "Rick?" she called in a shaky voice, exactly as the script required, and when her lover's hand shot out from his hiding place in the empty stall, her choked scream was perfect.
Standing beside the camera, his arms crossed against his chest, Zack watched it all through narrowed, impersonal eyes, but when Austin started to kiss and fondle Rachel and drag her down onto the hay bales, everything went wrong. Austin was awkward and clearly embarrassed. "CUT!" Zack shouted, infuriated by the realization that he was probably going to have to watch Austin fondle and kiss his wife repeatedly at this rate. Stalking forward into the pool of light, he raked the actor with a look of glacial scorn. "You weren't kissing her like an inept choirboy in my hotel room, Austin. Let's see a little reenactment of that scene instead of this amateur performance you're giving us now."
Austin's face, which had been likened to Robert Redford's for its boyish charisma, turned a bright red. "Jesus, Zack, why can't you be adult about all this—"
Ignoring him, Zack rounded on Rachel, who was glaring at him, and with unprecedented crudity, he said, "And you—you're supposed to be in heat, not dreaming of giving yourself a manicure while he mauls you!"
The next two takes were very good, and the entire crew knew it, but both times, Zack stopped them before Rachel could even reach for the gun, and he made them do it over. He did it partly because he'd suddenly developed a perverse satisfaction in forcing them to publicly perform the same adulterous groping and fondling that had made a public fool out of him but mostly because he felt something was still wrong with the scene. "CUT!" he called, interrupting the fourth take and walking forward.
Austin came up from the hay bale furious and spoiling for a fight, his arm around Rachel, who'd finally developed enough sensitivity to be embarrassed and equally furious. "Now look, you sadistic son of a bitch, there was nothing wrong with the last two takes! They were perfect," Austin ranted, but Zack ignored him and decided to try the scene the way he'd considered doing it yesterday.
"Shut up and listen," he snapped, "we're going to try this a different way. Despite what the author thought when he wrote this scene, the fact is that when Johanna shoots her lover, even accidentally, she loses all our empathy. The man's been obsessed with her, sexually and emotionally, and she's been using him to fill her own needs, but she never had any intention of leaving her husband for him. She has to be wounded with that gun before he is, or he becomes the only victim in this film, and the entire point of this picture is that they were all victims."
Zack heard a murmur of surprise and approval from people behind the camera, near the doorway of the stable, but he didn't need it to reinforce his judgment. He knew now he was right. He knew it with the same gut instincts that had enabled him to win an Academy Award nomination for a film that had seemed routine and ordinary until he directed it. Turning to Rachel and Tony, who looked reluctantly impressed with the change, he said curtly. "One last time, and I think we'll have it. All you have to do is reverse the outcome of the original struggle over the gun so that Johanna is wounded first."
"Then what?" Tony demanded. "What do I do after I realize I've shot her?"
Zack paused, thinking, then he said decisively, "Let her get control of the gun. You didn't mean to hurt her, but she doesn't realize it. You step back, but she's got the gun and she's pointing it at you now, crying—for herself and for you. You start backing away. Rachel," he said turning to her, completely absorbed, "I want to see sobs from you, then you close your eyes and pull the trigger."
Zack moved back into position. "Mark it—"
The camera assistant stepped in front of the camera with the clappers. "Scene 126, take 5!"
"Action!"
This was going to be the last take, a perfect take—Zack sensed it as he watched Austin grab Rachel and force her down onto the hay bales, his hands and mouth devouring her. There was no dialogue now, but a background score would be dubbed in later, so when Rachel groped for the gun and got it between the two of them, Zack urged her on, goading her to fight harder. "Struggle!" he barked, and on a stroke of irony, he snapped, "Pretend he's me!" The ploy worked, she squirmed and hammered at Tony's shoulders in furious earnest, she got her hand on the gun.
Later, an actual gunshot would be dubbed in, in place of the soft pop of the blank shell in Rachel's gun, and Zack watched Tony wrest the gun from her, waiting for the perfect moment in their struggles before he called, "Gunshot!" so that Tony would pull the trigger, fire the blank, and Rachel would fall back and grab the packet of fake blood concealed near her shoulder. It was now! "Gunshot!" he shouted and Rachel's whole body gave a violent jerk as a gunshot exploded like a firecracker in the cavernous barn, echoing off the metal roof.