Cass Nellis, acting coach? It sounded a lot sexier than Cass Nellis, accountant.
Nick looked so hopeful, she couldn’t say no.
It couldn’t hurt to try. Famous last words.
She borrowed a couple of cameras—vintage handheld jobs—from Nathan and followed Nick around with them for a day. She didn’t actually film anything—just held the camera like she was. He worked out in the morning, spent a couple hours over lunch reading scripts on his handheld, did an interview, dealt with calls from his agent. Most of it was dead boring. But she kept the camera on him and yelled whenever he looked at it.
“Ah-ah-ah. Stop looking at the camera. Ignore it.”
He scowled. “How am I supposed to concentrate with that damn lens staring at me?”
“That’s the whole point. You just have to do what you’d normally do, even with the lens staring at you. I’m desensitizing you.”
He got back to work, smirking. Eventually, he forgot the camera was there.
The minute he had to work from a script, though, he was back to his self-conscious hyper-awareness.
“Do you have some psychological fear of cameras?” she said to him finally.
“It’s just that this is important. I don’t want to mess up.”
She set the camera down. “This is like miniature golf. You have to ignore the distractions.”
“You’ve seen how well I do with that.”
“I think you’re thinking about it too hard.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Read the lines and pretend I’m not here.”
He started in on another scowl, then turned it into a smirk, matched by a lascivious wink. “Couldn’t possibly do that, babe.”
He reached for her, she pretended to resist, and they ended up on the floor together, which finished any more coaching she had planned for the day.
That weekend, they were sprawled on Cass’s living room floor, eating popcorn and watching Casablanca on the old-fashioned flat screen.
“What makes this great,” she said, blathering on again, “better than bluebox stuff, is that this is all about setting, and characters interacting with the setting. I mean, the title’s the name of the city. The story couldn’t have happened any other time or place, and these characters grow out of the time and place. The film manages to capture all this in a tiny little frame. It forces you to watch and you can’t escape.”
“The problems of two people don’t amount to a hill of beans . . .”
“Wasn’t this filmed at a studio? Not really Casablanca.”
“But it was still a set. Setting. The actors were still there.”
“You really love this movie, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” She didn’t need an interactive link to imagine she was right there with Rick and Ilsa and the rest, singing “La Marseillaise.” That it was black and white didn’t even matter.
“You think we’ll ever be able to make a movie like that? Something so compelling it carries the audience right along and they don’t care if they can’t change the view?”
“If anyone can, it’s Nathan.”
“What about me?”
“You know I’d follow those brown eyes anywhere. We just have to get them onto film.”
“So what’s next?” He scrolled through the file list on her handheld for the next film. It took a while. She had hundreds of movies stored digitally.