Empire of Light
Authors: Gregory Earls
Empire of Light
Copyright ©Gregory Earls 2011
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or Simon & Fig except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Covert Art by Jason Clark www.jasonclarkfoto.com
EMPIRE OF LIGHT
ISBN-13: 978-0-615-54184-6
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Dedication
This book is dedicated to Cleveland’s bad reputation. Thanks for keeping New Yorkers out of my town.
Acknowledgements
There were many accomplices in the creation of this book. I will now drop dime on the lot of ‘em. Crystal Eaves woke up early for two weeks to read my Europe blog and then suggested I write a book. Done! Mike, thanks for the bitchin’ yellow jacket. Bill Winans once advised me to watch the payphone shot in
Taxi Driver,
and he changed my life. Aaron Downing, the
stay creative
mantra is law. To all my friends at 20th Century Fox, past and present,
church!
Cheers to the following miscreants for the consult skills: Areli Quirarte; Fred Chandler;Scott Downing; Greg and Michelle Shack. Thanks to my oldest friend, Scotty Ferg. I’m convinced that in a past life we were slaves, persistently escaping. Curtis Smith and his Sit-Rep Thursdays kept my eye on the prize. To my big brother Julian, thanks for the Bill Watterson-esq childhood. Thanks to my parents Zenobia and Dr. Julian Earls, who raised me in an environment where I was allowed to dream. To my publisher and good friend, Stacey Jane Holderbach, thanks for making one of those dreams come true. To my fiancée and partner in crime, Stefania Buggio, s
ei così piccolo che puoi abitare nella tasca della mia camicia, vicino al mio cuore. Ti amo, Vespina.
Go Browns.
Empire of
Light
By
Gregory Earls
1
The Gospel of Light
I CAN ONLY STARE
at Pan’s cigarette, inexplicably dangling from his thin bottom lip, as I wait for his arms to explode away from his body. I’m pretty convinced that at any second now a bolt of lightning is going to punch through his skinny chest and burn his organs to shit before making a mad escape into the ground.
I stand a safe distance away and watch and wait.
His tools are laid neatly on a cart, like surgical gear in a Swiss operating room. And for once, he doesn’t have an iPod plugged into his ears, pushing 160 gigs of noise into his vibrating skull. Today he is focused and serious. I’ve never seen him act so responsibly, and this is a very big reason why I’m beginning to freak the fuck out.
When Pan isn’t wrangling electricity for me, he’s a beach bum who gets off on surfing through the pier pylons at Venice Beach. He doesn’t believe in condoms, and he screws girls who look as if they gargle with tepid mugs of whorehouse Jacuzzi water. If you ever see someone as reckless as Pan acting this cautious, run, because something incredibly stupid is going down.
The energy flowing through this junction box is raw, a constant flow of lightning, harnessed to run this warehouse. I didn’t have the dough to rent a generator to light my set, so I hired Pan as my gaffer to crack open the box and siphon away a dollop of electricity. It’s free power, if you survive the tap. However, if Pan slips and allows his body to complete a circuit, he’ll be dead before his shaved head bounces off the concrete floor.
And it would be my fault.
Me. A first year Cinematography Fellow at the American Film Institute and, just maybe, future manslaughter defendant.
Pan moves cautiously as he attaches the final unstable lead. I catch myself squinting in anticipation of detonation.
Screw this.
This is way too dangerous. I need to be an adult and figure another way to power the set.
“Pan. I’m thinking we should just—”
PHOOM!
Pan spasms at an inhuman speed.
His wrench explodes from his hand and skips wildly across the floor. His fist flies towards me and punches me in the chest. Before I know it, we’re both on the ground and all is quiet again.
“Pan, are you okay?” I ask, hoping he’s alive to answer.
“Yep, bro. I’m good,” he says, lying as stiff as a board.
I look around, still trying to figure out just what the hell happened, when I notice the wrench impaled in the wall on the far side of the room.
“Whoa…”
Pan follows my gaze and spots the wrench.
“WOOOOH! Outstanding!” he screams as he leaps up from the ground in joy like he had just gone for a ride in an F-16.
“I did the dance, bro! Did you fucking see that?”
“Dance?” I ask in shock. “You were almost killed!”
“WHOOO!” is his only response.
Enough of this nonsense.
I put on my gloves.
I’m going to finish this job.
I’m in fight or flight mode, and I can already feel the adrenalin flowing into my body. I snatch the wrench out of the damn wall and march back to the power-box. However, to my surprise, I find myself stopping in front of Pan and holding the wrench out to him. I suddenly realize that my adrenalin wasn’t pumping so I could fight the power-box, but so I could run the hell away from it.
How ‘bout that?
Pan stares at me and lights up a new cigarette. He pops a drag of smoke as he looks down at my gloved hand. He reads the evidence and chuckles out loud. I put the gloves on to finish the job, but then I went coward before getting within five feet of the box. He blows the smoke into the air before gently taking the tool out of my shaking hand.
“S’okay,” he says as he turns his back on me and goes about finishing the tap. “It’s all good here.”
If I watch anymore of this, I’m going to vomit.
“If you’re good, I’m going to the set—”
“You go do what you must do, boss man,” he interrupts. “I’ll come find you when we’re hot.”
Boss man? Screw you, Pan
.
As I head down the hall, I hear him begin to whistle, happily. I stop and look back at him working away like one of the goddamn seven dwarfs. Now that the taps are in place, the rest of his job is cake. He survived and now he has a bitchin’ story to tell the rest of the crew. I’ll be nothing but a stupid punch line.
Of course I don’t even make it back to the set. After helping unload the grip truck and sorting out a last minute Certificate of Insurance for my dolly rental, half the day is already gone. Pan completed the tap without killing himself, and at first I didn’t want to see it, but curiosity is getting the best of me. I’ll just take a peek before making my way to the set.
“Oh, Christ.”
You don’t have to be an electrician to know that this just ain’t right. It’s a rape. The power-box mounted on the wall like a prisoner, hanging helplessly with massive black cables clamped to its studs. It’s an unstable hot mess. I had the crew link 100 foot stingers from the power-box and out to the production set so that the violation can stay hidden. In my mind, the stingers are nothing more than my mom’s holiday extension cords that lead back to an ordinary wall plug where a Glade PlugIn is on the top socket, churning out puffs of Apple Cinnamon scent.
I meander back onto the set and realize that I’ve been so worried about the power and stupid insurance that I’ve neglected my lighting. It looks like hell. And learning to light is why I’m here in the first place!
Two weeks ago I wasn’t even really sure just what the hell cinematographers did. I knew they were responsible for pumping enough light onto the set so that the camera could record a healthy image, but a monkey could do that. What I’m clueless about is how to tell a story with light, how to move people with it.
The director is nowhere to be seen. Cool! I have time to maybe tweak one light. Maybe I can do something…
artsy
? I put my gloves back on and head for the Key Light, jumping onto an apple box and reaching for the barn door.
“Where are we? Are we lit?” Like some demonic wood sprite, the director, Maal, appears out of nowhere just as I reach the light’s barn door.
Shit! I can’t catch a break!
“Hey, Maal,” I say.
He ignores me as he inspects my lighting.
He stands majestically in the middle of the set, like one of his Senegalese warrior ancestors, his head panning and taking in every inch of my lighting set up. He shows no emotion as he speaks down to me with his cool French-African accent.
“Are you happy with this lighting, Jason?” he asks calmly.
“Yeah, but I could tweak—”
“No,” he interrupts and marches toward the monitor. “Let’s get this over with. Where are my actors?”
The Assistant Director runs onto the set just as Maal asks the question. “Sorry, but we need fifteen more minutes for make-up.”
“What are you talking about? They’ve had
all morning!
”
The set comes to a halt. Nobody has ever heard this very Zen-like artist scream before. The A.D. gathers himself. “I had make-up come in later because I knew we’d be unloading for most of the morning and—”
“Stop,” he interrupts. “I’m going outside for a smoke. Get me when they’re ready.”
Now, I could use these fifteen minutes to have the crew fix my lighting, but I’m not. Why? Because I’m afraid of my own crew. How messed up is that? Here’s the deal, a lot of these people already had professional careers as Camera Assistants or Gaffers before coming to AFI. Me? I just graduated from Central State University, a small black college back in Ohio, three months ago. Ordering around a guy that just pulled focus on the last three Ridley Scott commercials is just not all that easy. So my flight mode kicks in again, and I escape beneath the loading dock where I pop open a can of Coke, sit back and guzzle.
“Fucking disaster!” Maal screams as he storms onto the dock above me with Pan in tow. “How the hell did I get stuck with this fool?”
“The guy’s just green. He’s only twenty-two,” Pan says in my defense.
“I’m all for giving somebody a shot. If AFI wants to save a spot for some kid from the sticks, fine by me. But I didn’t drop twenty-thousand large to babysit some idiot from Iowa.”