The Shooting Script

THE SHOOTING SCRIPT

First published in
Metropolitan

ELIZABETH BAINES



Sometimes I think I see Bob Deal, glimpse him in a bar or just before
he turns a corner, but it can't be, can it? He'll have a whole new life
by now, a new name I bet, in a different city where no one's on to him
yet.
Everyone wants to make a film, don't they? So it wasn't such a daft
thing to do, answer that ad in the listings mag: a chance for nobodies
(as long as they were women or black or disabled or homosexual) to get
into film making, with a leg-up and a stamp of approval from
professional bodies and a guarantee of a TV slot if you were
chosen.
I was a woman. I was preparing lessons for my part-time low-paid
teaching job, after putting the kids to bed and hanging up Sam's PE kit
to dry for next day, when the phone call came with the news that I was
one of the chosen. Bob Deal congratulated me in that light, reasonable
and respectful man's voice I'd got used to from the commune in the
house next door, though with an additional warmth and, I don't know,
something glamorous ? urbanity ? and explained that the scheme had been
carefully and specifically constructed to counteract cultural
disadvantage by taking full account of participants' life obstacles,
with timetables drawn up accordingly and in full consultation. Then he
said I was required to attend the first scheduled meeting a week today,
when he would like me to have a full treatment ready for
presentation.
I almost explained that in those six days I would have several life
obstacles to writing a treatment - among them three full days at work
and Sam's school concert which as a single parent it was my sole
bounden duty to attend; but I didn't. Bear with me: it was always
possible that there were crossed lines somewhere, and any man who could
be hooked (as he said he was) by my idea for a film about a women who
wreaks revenge on men could only be given the benefit of the doubt.
Besides, I was flattered; the man clearly thought me capable of it, and
it had the smack of Hollywood, didn't it, sitting up all night at the
computer and blow the routines, and having a good excuse to tell the
kids to get their own tea.
Bob Deal had an office in a building let out entirely to
community-based and grant-aided projects; there were grilles across the
windows and once you'd got past the intercom blackish nylon carpets and
a smell of damp earth coming off the cream walls. But Bob Deal came
sweeping in (rather late, half an hour actually) and transcended the
surroundings: short and round but impressive in an ankle-length
greatcoat and a trilby raked dramatically, pale-blue eyes beaming
contact and meaning from a face fringed with a long moustache and
shoulder-length hair. He gripped my hand. 'I'm so sorry! I can't tell
you how bad I feel? I've had a problem ? my partner actually? But
there's no excuse, how can I expect you to make allowance for
me!'
Well of course I could make allowance - if anyone knew the pressures
of relationships on creative endeavour it was me! I clutched my
treatment, mercifully finished, but over which one of my relationships
had caused me quite some problem, Janey having woken when I was writing
in the night.
I was surprised to find no other participants present at this
inaugural meeting, but in his office Bob Deal swiftly explained that,
obviously, the prime purpose - the prime concern - of any first meeting
would be to draw up individual timetables according to specific life
needs.
'But first.' He leaned intently across the desk towards me and tugged
me with those meaningful pale-blue eyes. 'There's something I have to
ask you.'
He paused, with an air of sympathy tempered by reassuring
shrewdness.
I nodded and waited.
'I have to know. As a woman, telling a woman's story, are you prepared
to work on this film with a man?'
I opened my mouth to answer.
'Because I understand the problems completely. Let me put my cards on
the table. I'm gay. Which of course gives me first-hand knowledge of
minority discrimination. But however aware a man is, he has to have his
blind spots. Though let me assure you, I'm willing to be guided by you,
keen to be guided by you. When it comes to the script, or the
technicalities of a camera in this project, I'll be the tutor; but as
for the issues, as for your meanings, well, you must be mine.
I was entranced. I opened my mouth again but he put up his hand.
'Don't answer. I must give you the means to make your judgement. I
must tell you exactly who I am, and where I'm coming from, so that you
can make an informed decision.'
And then he told me about his background in film and gay activism -
Derek Jarman had been a friend - and that ('And this is important in
where I'm coming from') he had learned all about the tyranny of
minority groups. 'I mean, this was the most painful period of my life!'
(He flicked his hair with the back of his hand in a quick gesture of
despair) 'I can tell you, from personal, bitter, experience that a gay
man need write only one honest appraisal of a crap film by another
gay-activist group member and, hey presto, he's the Enemy Within! Me!
Me who had poured my guts, all my creativity, into the cause; working
for nothing, plodding my way round the TV stations, building up
contacts, dressing up the cause in a way the establishment could
swallow - though that was my greatest sin, of course. The contacts I
could have got them! I mean, I'm known in those TV channels, I'm the
godfather of the daughter of a Head of Drama, for goodness'
sake.'
He paused, shaking his head slowly, and then sharply to rid himself of
bad memories and the past and address the present. 'Which is why I've
ended up in these parts. I've had it with the metropolis, and I've had
it with splinter groups, and I'm offering my talents to a wider
constituency.'
My heart was thudding, with gratitude, and sympathy, and above all
with panic-stricken memory: I told him how I too had suffered such
persecution, been expelled once from a women's group for having a
relationship with a man. I could see we were fellow souls. Of course I
wanted to work with him, and how!, and it seemed quite beside the point
that since (as it now turned out) Bob Deal was the scheme's sole tutor
and assessor as well as its originator, that if I didn't feel I could
work with a man then I may as well leave the scheme right now.
He then told me with charmingly cheeky confidentiality of several
scandals involving adultery and rival Executive TV Producers, and his
sense of irony and mastery of pace and timing won my artistic
confidence entirely and made me laugh.
He suddenly looked at his watch. Our hour was up. 'Hasn't it rushed by
- even though we did lose some time at the start!' (Here he flashed me
a look of friendly and ironically rueful apology) 'And aren't we
getting on famously! I can see this is going to be a fruitful artistic
collaboration!' He said his partner would be waiting, and the way
things were at the moment between them? well, he wouldn't bore me. He
grimaced, and gave a sigh of long-suffering though affectionate
exasperation.
I said that of course I understood.
I said, but what about my schedule, and come to that my contract
(which he'd promised to bring for discussion today).
He said, 'Sure!' and sat up as though confronted by a gun. He said, as
for the contract, contrary to his expectations it wasn't quite
completed, and this was only because he was so anxious to get it right
from the participants' - the artists' - point of view. He'd send it out
to me tomorrow, and I could bring up any points about it next time we
met.
I said, but we hadn't got a schedule, we hadn't decided when we'd next
meet.
He said, no we hadn't, but he was sure I would agree that this meeting
had been best spent getting these really important issues thrashed out
between us. We'd plan a schedule next week - same time, same place,
when we'd also work together on a character breakdown.
I felt confused. I clutched my treatment (about which up until then
I'd forgotten) and which I'd read in a how-to book should already
include a character breakdown. I handed it over, laying it on his
desk.
He looked down as if I'd stuck a dead cat there.
He said (with a shaming hint of pity), 'Let's crawl, shall we, before
we have a go at running?' He said I must have misheard. He reminded me
that the scheme was constructed to take us through all of the
stages.
He took it anyway, though, my treatment for a film about male abuse of
female bodies, and handed me a tape of Caravaggio, a film about a man
obsessed with other men's bodies, and said that once I'd seen it I'd
know exactly how to make my film.

I watched the
film, I tried (unsuccessfully) to see its connections with my own, and
the following week took it back through the wind and rain (on three
buses, into town and out the other side again).
Bob Deal didn't turn up. When I inquired at the desk, the desk clerk's
face lit up at the sound of Bob Deal's name as at that of a long-lost
buddy, and I knew myself included in the general bonhomie. A girl in a
very short skirt and clonky big shoes passed through. 'Seen anything of
Bob Deal this morning?' the desk clerk asked her, and she lost her
snooty bored arts-worker expression and twinkled at me like I was one
of the club. 'No, I haven't yet,' she smiled apologetically, and with
affection. They made me feel lucky to be the one kept waiting by him.
They seemed so touched, so even excited, that Bob Deal could almost
have been there in person after all.
In the end the desk clerk suggested I ring him at home.
His voice sounded lighter than ever, and very far away. I had a vision
of him surfacing, from water. Or bed. He sounded ? well, I was
reluctant to think offended. He said, 'I'm ill!'
I asked what was wrong, though with a strangely guilty feeling that I
should have known already.
He said, 'I've got flu!' He said in a pained voice: 'I've been trying
to ring you at home - though really I ought to be asleep - but you must
have left already.' He sounded peeved at my having done so. Then, with
a sudden note of accusation: 'Have you done your character
breakdown?'
I said, 'But I thought we were doing it together!' (crawling before I
ran).
I heard him sigh. I felt him take a deep breath and modulate his voice
before explaining patiently and kindly (though not without a frosty
hint of reprimand) that we would need something to work on together,
when we did. He said, more frostily still, that I would need to get it
done by the following week, same time.
I hardly liked to bring up the subject of the contract, which had
never arrived as promised, but I did.
Now he got animated, and at the same time confidential. He said that
it still wasn't ready; he said some of the artists who had seen it
already had insisted on having a couple of points changed; it was
nit-picking only, but he was naturally anxious to observe the rights of
artists - this was an artist-centred scheme. 'Though you can go too
far! Some of these artists, they're so precious, you've no idea!
So I didn't have the nerve to say that for me the same time next week
would mean changing a clinic appointment of Sam's.
I changed the clinic appointment, I worked on my character
breakdown.
Next week Bob Deal was there.
He kept me waiting.
He didn't come through to the foyer, when the desk clerk buzzed him he
asked him to send me through.
Bob Deal was seated at his desk in a manner that could almost be said
to be grave. He greeted me formally.
I handed him my character breakdown. He scanned it in silence.
These were my main characters: a damaged heroine and her two dastardly
lovers, one a plain selfish brute and the other a dangerous emotional
manipulator on whom she takes revenge in the end.
Bob Deal looked up gravely. He said, 'I don't think you've made the
best choice of characters.'
I said, 'Sorry?'
He said, 'You need to drop one of the lovers, the one called Bill.
It's uneconomical, it's a repetition.' His eyes softened, powder-blue,
to the expression of a kindly doctor with a painful but miracle cure.
'I suggest you make Bill gay.'
I was icy, but I didn't get as far as reminding him of his reassurance
regarding meanings. He was one step ahead of me. He didn't miss a beat,
he jumped up from his seat, he rushed to a cupboard from which he
pulled out his trilby and put it on his head. He said, 'The form
changes the meaning. Visual representation changes the meaning.' He
said, 'Watch this.' And he cocked his hat back and swaggered towards me
like a cowboy; halfway there he turned away and then swirled back
again, transformed, the hat pulled low over his brow, shoulders hunched
and, as far as it was visible, a brooding expression. He whipped the
hat off and his brown fringed face was blithe as a clown's. 'See? A
different visual twist, a different meaning!' I had to admit he looked
like a different man every time.
My mouth was open, and I guess he missed the meaning, that I was on to
him. He seemed not to notice the icy temperature of my response. He
told me happily that since I was a novice with the visuals, then that
was the area on which we'd concentrate (the scheme being constructed to
cater for individual gaps in experience) and since lipstick was a main
motif in my film I should pin a picture of a lipstick on my corkboard
to remind me, and stick another on my fridge, and put one in the
bathroom - I had to learn to live and breathe this film! Could I draw?
I said I could. He said, Well, it didn't matter if I couldn't, we would
meet that bridge (ie the storyboard) when we came to it, that was to
say in a fortnight, but in the meantime could I write a first draft
script by then?
He didn't seem to notice the unfriendly tone of my goodbye, or my
steely resolve.

I rang one the alleged funders of
the scheme. Yes, of course they were funding him! The young female arts
officer spoke with warmth, and even a ripple of excitement (they were
so lucky to be funding him!) followed by a tone of amazement that I
should question it - question him! Her tone grew swiftly censorious.
She could assure me categorically of the professional nature of this
scheme, and all of them, Bob Deal (here she flipped into coyness),
herself and the representatives of the several professional bodies
including the TV channel (here she grew briefly unctuous) were working
in close co-operation to ensure its success. No, (tightening up again)
she hadn't seen the contract, but she did know all about the hitch with
it, and it was a mark of Bob Deal's professionalism that he should make
such accommodation in respecting the wishes of participants who'd asked
for changes, and yes she could confirm (hostile: why should she; how
could I doubt it?) that as long as the participants fulfilled their
part of the bargain, and in the allotted time-span, then a TV broadcast
was guaranteed.
I felt like the nobody that I was. Who would ever be surprised if a
nobody set impossible tasks failed?

I decided to
beat Bob Deal at his own game.
I sent the kids to stay with their father and sat up twenty hours a
day (it was half-term, luckily) and hammered away and called Bob Deal's
bluff and within a week completed a draft for a two-hour film. Then I
mailed it to his home address, making clear that I required him to read
it before we next met.
Next meeting Bob Deal swept into the foyer in a long flowing shot-silk
purple shirt (it was a hot March day), flicking his hair as he came
through the door against the light, and pumped quickly on his little
legs up the four nylon steps, calling 'Darling!' and planted a smacking
kiss on my cheek.
There were a few other people in the foyer, and though my back was
turned I could sense them noticing and thrilling, and Bob turned to
them and preened, showing off his shirt, and they grinned and plucked
and stroked it, a goofy girl in leggings, a tall New Age-type guy
involved in one of the free papers, and of course the desk clerk.
Then Bob swept back and grabbed me and pulled me to him and among
them, and said to them, 'Do you like my escort, isn't she a darling?'
and they grinned at me goofily. 'She's a genius, I'm telling
you!'
He dropped them suddenly, turned his back on them and ignored them,
and swept me up in his arms. 'Darling, I'm taking you out to
lunch!'
I began to protest: the (so far unspecified) allotted time, my life
obstacles as a single parent, which meant we had to take every moment
we could get. He brushed it aside, he brushed my hair from my face
(with a familiarity no heterosexist brute would have dared). He said,
'We've bags of time! We're miles ahead! You're a genius! You've cut
through all the crap!' He said, 'We're made! This film will make us,
you and me both, Darling!' He said (cuffing me over-familiarly), 'Hey
anyway, lighten up, you've got to stop hanging onto those life
obstacles quite so grimly.' He said with a grin, 'Don't be a pain.' And
then he put his hand on various bits of me, my arm, my shoulder, my
back, my head, while instructing the desk clerk to call us a
taxi.
He held my arm as we went through the door which, in breach of
security regulations, he'd left wide open; he ushered me fussily and
studiously into the taxi, so elaborately camp that I took the angry
revving away of a nearby bronze Escort as an expression of homophobic
disgust.
We went to an expensive Italian restaurant. He ordered the most
expensive wine. He saw my face: He said, 'Don't worry, the scheme will
pay. It'll come off expenses.' I guess my face only changed for the
worse. He took my hand. He said, 'Look. This is business. But it's also
our reward. We can afford it. We could have spent weeks - weeks of time
in the office which would have had to be paid for, and weeks of my
time, my skilled tuition - getting to where you've got in just days at
home on your own! And I'm telling you now, confidentially, that not
much money will be being spent where some of the other artists are
concerned. They've no idea! They can't complete the simplest task,
understand the simplest instruction! Some of them haven't turned in a
thing! There are those I've hardly seen!' He said it was all very well
making provision for the disadvantaged, but the trouble with the
disadvantaged was that they just didn't know how to avail themselves of
that provision - let's face it, some of them were trained to expect
things on a plate. He was a facilitator, for god's sake, not a fucking
spoonfeeder, and it was downright patronizing to deny that there were
wankers in the ranks of the disadvantaged as well as everywhere else.
To be honest, he doubted he'd get a single film out of any of the
others. I was his only hope. I was head and shoulders. (He poured me
another glass of expensive wine.) I could see, couldn't I, why he'd
been unable to set up the communal workshops he'd planned on, and which
I'd asked him about once or twice. There was just no common ground. And
it would be like trying to organize a swarm of bluebottles onto one
turd in a midden.
I asked who they were.
He said, 'You don't want to know.'
I said I did.
He said, OK then, with a look as if to say I'd been warned. For a
start, there was a lesbian who hadn't yet turned in a basic outline;
there was a black guy who insisted on making a rap film although that
wasn't what had been agreed, and they simply couldn't get past that
sticking point. There was a disabled woman who claimed that the
disabled access in the offices (though pride of place with the
disabled-access planners) was inadequate, and insisted on holding the
meetings in her house, and when he got there on showing off her cooking
prowess, so they never got any work done. These people just weren't
serious?
Believe me, I saw through it.
But (don't laugh) I thought I was the better Machiavelli.
By the time he'd talked about all the other (awful) artists, and we'd
drunk another bottle of expensive wine, it was getting on for five. He
said, 'Don't go, the night's young,' and we went on a tour of the gay
bars.
At first we were sociable, swapping compliments with the bar folks,
and comparing hairstyles, but then in what he said was his favourite
bar we settled down. He told me about his tough childhood: his brutal
father and his self-destructive mother (you see, he could really
understand where my film was coming from) and the damaging
relationships he seemed to be doomed to since. His lip trembled as he
lit a fag.
Well, I was a Machiavelli, but I also had a heart, and I sympathized
and told him my tale in turn: the cold husband (he slid an arm round my
shoulder) and the poisonous possessive lover (he pulled me nearer). I
snuggled up and felt protected. I was pretty drunk by now, and through
my fug I also had a vague impression of the whole pub watching - a
gaunt shaven-headed man at the bar glaring evilly, and a huge
transvestite nearby in button earrings, white stilettos and a wide grey
knife-pleat nylon skirt (the exact outfit of one of my old teachers)
skewed as if to get a better view of me and watching with anticipation
or amusement as if for a denouement. I snuggled up to Bob Deal and told
him about the hardship, after all the tugs-of-love and passion, of
ending up passionless and alone with two kids.
He said, 'You know, you're such a fucking drama queen.'
His voice was malicious. I tried to sit up to see his face; he held me
tighter so I couldn't.
He said into my hair, but perfectly audibly and publicly: 'You're so
fucking Marianne Faithfull.'
He kissed me full on the lips.
Someone snorted, and someone else banged a glass down sharply.
Next thing I knew, he was putting me in a taxi and paying in advance.
'Take care of her,' he told the taximan with what sounded like feeling.
He clipped the seatbelt around me solicitously.
He jumped back out. He held the door. He said, 'By the way, I meant to
say. Your script needs work. The mother ought to commit suicide at the
start.'
I was suddenly wide-awake sober. I said: 'But that would change
everything!'
He nodded. He grinned gaily. 'Name of the game, Darling!' And he
slammed the taxi door shut.

If he thought I was
going to crawl away defeated he was going to be disappointed. When I
turned up next meeting and the desk clerk buzzed him I heard the long
silence before he collected himself. When I entered the room I saw the
blue-white look of panic before he had a flash of inspiration and
rummaged beneath the desk and brought up a plastic bag, and, camp and
giggling, showed me his recent purchases of boxed underwear: tight
black knitted boxer-shorts, a fish-net jock-strap and some kind of
bondage thing with buckles. Which did I like best?
I said in a steely voice that I could honestly never choose, and
proceeded to reiterate the need to respect the meanings, and to state
clearly - as he had so enjoined me - what those meanings for me, as a
woman were. I announced that in consequence we would work on my draft
as it stood. I added (if he could lie, then so could I) that I had now
joined a professional artists' organization and had been advised to
insist on a contract right away, and instructed to hand it to them for
their perusal before I signed.
He gulped.
He nodded vigorously. He clasped his hands on the desk. His cheeks
were flushed. he said, Absolutely: I was quite right of course, he was
on my side in this completely, and there was no excuse. It was simply a
matter of his computer having crashed - had he really not explained
that? - halfway through making the changes which had been asked for, so
that (just for the moment) there was no complete version, neither the
original nor the new. Then he suddenly plunged into the desk drawer and
brought out a bottle of perfume which he squirted liberally on his
neck, flicking his head and his hair from side to side as he did. He
stopped, sniffed, looked ecstatic, said: 'Don't you love this perfume?'
and held it up, mutely offering me a squirt. I shook my head stonily,
but my heart was sinking, and he must have seen it, because he gathered
steam, he said: 'This perfume is so calming! I mean, I have to tell you
that I'm upset. I know you're angry about the contract, and you have
every right to be, but I am upset by your lack of trust! I'm asking you
- I mean, we discussed this - to understand my blind spots.'
He paused. He shut his eyes. And (yes, I know?!) I thought for a
moment he'd given in.
He opened his eyes. 'My personal problems. You can't imagine?' He
flicked me a look of animated revelation. 'I've been up all night, you
know! I think you know what it's like to be on the other end of
possessiveness? I mean, really, this morning I'm in no fit
state.'
I said evenly, 'Shall we begin?'
We began.
We worked through the first short scene where the heroine as a little
girl watches her mother pandering to her cheating scheming father. We
got to the end of it.
Bob Deal looked suddenly distracted, even agitated. He said, 'Do you
mind if -?' and picked up the phone and dialled. He seemed embarrassed
and tense as he waited for an answer. He twitched round the receiver
suddenly and said with what I witnessed as nervous gaiety: 'Trev!' Then
he was all tentative and soothing appeasement: 'Listen, Trev, I'll be
back about two.'
There was a question at the other end which he clearly decided not to
answer, then he told Trev brightly: 'I'm working on a marvellous
script, with a fantastically gifted filmmaker?' Pause, then (with quite
genuine surprised delight at Trev's making the connection) 'Yes, that's
right! The one you know about?' And for some reason he rolled his eyes
at me, cocked his head sideways at the receiver and pointed to it: Get
him.
I was still trying to work it out, and we were going through the
second short scene where the little girl sees her father with a vampish
lipsticked Other Woman, when the door burst open behind me, hitting the
cupboard with a crack like a gun going off.
There was a shaven-headed man in the doorway, poised and tense as a
cowboy with his hands curled, but also stalled in furious despair. High
spots of emotion flared on his cheekbones, gaunt cheekbones I'd seen
before, through my drunken fug in the gay bar?
Bob Deal cried, 'Trev!'
Trev threw a look like molten metal in my direction, and then for a
long scary moment he and Bob Deal held each others' gaze. Bob Deal
(honestly) was flushed and trembling.
Trev growled: 'I thought you were coming home.'
Visibly, Bob Deal made himself calm, controlled the tenor of his
voice. 'Trev, I told you. We're working.'
He went on kindly, but firmly and unmistakably ticking him off: 'We're
on a tight schedule here, and I think you know that. We're going
through a script.'
He waved his hand over the desk to demonstrate, inadvertently drawing
attention to the boxes of underwear still sitting there, with their
pictures of fit jocks with bulging packets. The reek of sultry perfume,
I realized, still filled the room.
Trev wheeled round and slammed. Bob Deal's hat dived off the
cupboard.
Bob Deal collapsed. He put his head in his hands, then wiped them
slowly down his face as he raised it. He said, 'Look,' and held out his
hands, and yes, they were trembling.
He took a shuddering breath. He said, 'Do you mind if we break for
coffee? I need to recover.'
And so we went to the canteen, where some worn-looking housewives from
the Women's Aid group lit up like footlights when he entered and called
him over with lascivious offers to come and sample their cherry tarts
and big cream puffs, hooting delightedly when he said he was sorely
tempted but more partial to rock buns or something with nuts.
They did him a world of good. He was quite cheered up, and regaled
them with the story of how he'd recently shocked everyone by turning up
to his sister's wedding in a shift dress and high heels, on the arm of
Trev in full nineteenth-century colonel's regalia.
A call was put through to the canteen for him. He took the receiver
with a flourish. He froze. He said stiffly: 'I told you three weeks ago
that I need a shooting script by tomorrow.' His tone was so cold that
the housewives went quiet at the stature of the misdemeanour he was
clearly dealing with. 'Look, I'm sorry if it's a problem, but you have
a side to keep in this bargain. We have funders waiting for results, we
have a deadline with a TV station. You can't mess about with these
things-' he stalled an interruption '-and by next week I want a camera
crew booked and actors signed, and if you can't do that we'll have to
call it a day.' He put the phone down. He said to me with feeling,
'These other artists!'
I said, 'What deadline? I'm nowhere near a shooting script!'
He didn't seem to hear me. He looked at his watch. He said, 'Is that
the time?' He said, 'God, I'd better go. You saw how Trev was?' And I
honestly can say he looked seriously worried.
Our two hours was up, and we hadn't covered more than four pages of a
one-hundred page first draft, leave alone a shooting script.


Well, if he'd got himself in too deep through
trying to scupper me with a jealous lover, tough.
I went to a bookshop and stood at the Film shelf.
I put my hand up for the only copy of How to Write a Shooting Script.
Another hand, a big pale loose one, went up towards it at the same
time. I turned to a lanky guy in dark glasses and a bandanna with his
head cocked at the floor in resignation. I said, 'I'm sorry, my case is
desperate, I'm on an impossible deadline.'
He said lugubriously, 'So am I.'
I said, 'You're not?.?'
He looked up slowly, the light of dawning blinking off his
shades.
Yes, he was. He was the gay man who just wouldn't pull his finger
out.
I, I discovered, was the headstrong wilful woman who kept wasting time
all round by going off and doing things by herself, all wrong.
We went for a coffee.
I said we should all join forces, enough of this Divide and
Rule.
He said, 'Yeah, man,' but he looked exhausted already, just too damn
tired to lift his coffee, leave alone write a shooting script in one
evening or embark on an up-the-workers campaign.
Still, he said he thought he could find out who the others were. He
hadn't seen the contract either, but he thought he could get hold of
someone who had.
A few days later he rang me. He said he'd tracked some of them down.
They'd all got grievances. There was a disabled woman up in arms: Bob
Deal had insisted (he claimed because of the lack of disabled access)
that they met at her house, and she'd had to cook for him! See, he was
paying rental on the office hourly, so any saving he could make?
Trouble was, though, most of them had lost interest, they'd found it so
impossible they'd left the scheme long ago. Oh, and the contract; he
seen the original draft: no wonder people had refused to sign it, there
was a clause requiring us pay back money to Bob Deal if we failed to
complete the scheme.
I said, 'What money?'
He gave a lugubrious cynical gurgle.
I said, 'Christ!'
He said, 'Drop it, man. You'll get nowhere.' He said that Bob Deal had
gone to ground. It seemed he'd given up his office, and the answerphone
was constantly on at his house. He said, 'Face it, man. He's just
another wanker. And we're nobodies, and no worse off than we were at
the start.'

I wasn't having that.
I rang the woman I'd spoken to before. I demanded to know how I could
be expected to pay back money I had never received.
There was quite a long silence. Then she said cautiously (I could feel
her trying to think it through): 'Well, of course you would be expected
to pay back money that has been spent on you.' There was another
silence, a shocked one, as though she couldn't actually believe she'd
just said that. She went on, a bit uncertainly, 'There's your
tuition?'
I said sarcastically, 'What tuition? The scheme's a shambles.' I said,
'And it isn't me that's getting paid?'
She was so silent for so long that I put the phone down.


Then I had one of my life obstacles; Sam and Janey
got mumps, and for four weeks I thought of nothing but arrangements for
sick kids.
One day, out of the blue, Bob Deal rang me.
He said he'd organized a Shoot.
I said, But we hadn't got a shooting script, I said we didn't have
actors. He said, 'No, no, it's not like that,' He sounded? well,
understanding, he seemed sincerely keen to reassure. He said with an
air of respecting my feelings and perceptible self-deprecation: 'This
is a teaching scheme, remember? Look, I know it's short notice, but
could we meet for the shoot at the Tanners Arms, midday Thursday? ? No?
? Sure!? Well, how about Friday? Are you sure that's convenient?'
He was so reasonable, so straightforward, I began to wonder if it was
the gay artist with the bandanna who was the wanker.
Bob Deal was sitting waiting for me, alone, in a corner of the Tanners
Arms, patiently alert with his arm across him on the table in front of
his drink. He got up quickly and discreetly and kissed me chastely on
the cheek. He bought me a drink without any fuss.
He seemed like a really modest, straightforward guy.
He sat down. He said, without melodrama, 'I've had a lot of trouble
since I last saw you.' And then he told me gravely that the funders had
reneged. My heart dropped like a bucket in a deep shaft of guilt.
He said, with an air of relief at having someone to confide in, 'Well,
they've caused problems all along. These bodies, they promise the
funding, you start on the scheme, and then the money doesn't come. They
were supposed to be paying me a salary - well, that's a joke word for
it, actually. But I've been having to live off my savings, and finance
everything - the equipment, the office rental. That's why I had to give
up the office - I couldn't go on.'
I said, hot with shame: 'So they didn't pay you!'
He said quickly, somewhat glibly, 'Well they did in the end, but I'd
lost a lot of interest in the meantime' - (and here it came, the note
of self-righteousness) - 'which it was only right I should pay back to
myself.'
He said, 'Really, between these funders and these artists? well, I had
no option but to report to the funders that not one of these other
artists has turned in a thing! So they've stopped the funding -
withdrawn all further support for the scheme!'
He leaned across the table towards me gravely 'Which is so unfair. Why
should you suffer? I'm not going to let them. It's lucky I still have a
friend or two in high TV places. I'm going to make sure your film gets
made.'
He leaned back. He closed his eyes. 'And that's not all. On top of
this there's my personal life. I mean it's not just the violence' - I
swear there was sweat on his brow - 'its the psychological pressure?'
He leaned forward. He said intently: 'You see why this film of yours
means so much to me.'
Then he said: 'Do you know, I might just jack it all in. I mean,
really. Do something simple and practical and primal. Drive a lorry?
Take one of those juggernauts right across Europe? I've had it up to
here with arts bodies and the media crowd?'
A shaft of light swiped our corner as the pub door opened. He said
with joy, 'Here's the camera and the film crew!'
It was Trev, impassive in the pub doorway, his eyes like cyborg metal
studs.
'Whoopee!' cried Bob, and danced towards him, beckoning me to
follow.
It was no surprise to me that the car in which we screamed away was a
bronze Escort, and I was in no doubt that Trev wanted to kill me (and
himself and Bob if need be). 'Darling, steady on!' said Bob from the
front passenger seat, patting him like a tantruming child. I was in the
back with the video camera. We turned a corner, and I left the seat and
caught the camera in mid-air as I fell back down.
We squealed to a stop at a place where a viaduct went over a canal. I
could see Bob Deal had the murder scene of my film in mind.
Bob said, 'Water.' He said: 'Now I want to show you the multiple
possibilities for ways of shooting water. And I want you to find the
way that is right for you, for your film. For your meanings.'
We filmed the water from above, we got on our bellies and filmed it
from there; we filmed the rushing outflow at the lock.
All the while Trev lounged, detached and grinning, if that's what you
could call the way he had his teeth bared.
Bob pranced on to the lock gates, and I filmed him prancing. He leaned
broodily away with his bum sticking out, and I filmed him brooding. He
said I'd be amazed at the difference in effects.
Then he took the camera. He said, 'Now you.' He said I should know, as
a filmmaker, the precise nature of the experience at the other side of
the lens.
He made me step onto the lock gates.
He said, 'Come on, lounge!'
I was nervous and selfconscious. Behind me, the water hurtled down a
ten-foot drop. I leaned my elbows on the gates and, afraid of losing my
balance, made a stab at satirically bending a knee.
Through the corner of my eye I saw Trev coming round from behind me to
look. He leaned against the wall, appraising me and baring his teeth.
On the opposite canal bank Bob Deal took his eye away from the camera,
though he kept it running. He called to Trev: 'I'm right, aren't
I?'
Trev looked me up and down, grinning. 'Yup.'
They were flanking me. They were on opposite banks but they were
totally together in this. Black water swelled in front of me; the
waterfall slammed down behind.
Trev said, sweeping me with his eyes that had switched on like lasers:
'That tragic fuck-me-don't-fuck-me expression.'
Bob said maliciously, 'That fag-hag droop.'
Trev pronounced with spiteful relish: 'Marianne Faithfull to a
T.'
And then I tumbled to it, to what had been going on all along.
I gave in gracefully.
I even admired them, for teaching me my first lesson in knowing when I
was beaten.
We went drinking then, all three together, and Trev stopped being
nasty.
We knew where we stood.
I understood perfectly that after that night I would never see Bob
Deal again.

Next time I tried his number, as I
expected I got the unobtainable tone. Some weeks later I did ring the
TV station - though only because I'm so hooked on closure - to be told
by a polite but slightly panic-stricken PA that the scheme had failed,
having lost everyone a lot of money, since not one of the participants
given the opportunity had been able to come anywhere near to making a
film.
Sometimes, though, I think I see Bob Deal. The hair will be shorter,
the moustache will have gone, but there'll be that jaunty short-legged
way of walking, and that way of holding out the chest, as if ready to
resist a big wind at any time?