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.

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!’

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