She smiles and leans forward to squeeze my hand. “You are worried about him.”
“This is something new, right? The acting?”
“He’s really good at this, Bee.”
I nod, heart filling. I really want him to be good at this if that’s what he wants. “And this is what he wants now? To be a movie star?”
Nix tilts her head just slightly then smiles. “You should ask him what he wants.”
I nod, because she’s right, of course. But, I’ve been content to be in my bubble, taking what I can get from Cas while it’s on offer and not worrying about when he’s going back to Cali, or about how even more of a superstar he’s going to be if this movie takes off like I know it will.
“Let’s go see him in action,” she suggests.
“We can do that?”
“Yeah.” She chuckles. “You are on the approved list; come on.”
We make our way through the maze of trailers and over to the warehouse buildings where the sets are. No golf cart, although several pass us on the way.
“You know, River Phoenix always wanted to be a musician. As much as he wanted to be a movie star.”
I nod at her. “I read a few biographies when we took this project. He had a band and tried to make it while still being an actor. Some say his celebrity helped, others say it hurt.”
“They are filming theMy Own Private Idahotime today,” Nix explains as we make our way through a warehouse. “It was the role that made him a gay icon, and the role people felt he never could shake.”
I nod along, not wanting to ask about Cas’s own experiences with drugs and celebrity. I know he had some, he mentioned that with fame and money come access and that if someone wanted something, there would be little stopping it. But, if he ever went down that path, it was short lived. Having him in my house for this long has solidified that.
“To answer the question you were fishing about, Cas’s celebrity can only hurt if he bombs, and if he does, he can always go back to music.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then he has more options than he did before he played River Phoenix.”
We chat along, until we finally see Caleb’s wide shoulders in the back of a group of people.
Silently, we slide in next to him and since the set has its own security he leans over and gives Nix a quick kiss, breaking his line of vision to Cas for a moment.
I look through the crowd and find Cas easily.
My breath catches. We just watchedMy Own Private Idahoa few nights ago, and I swear that isn’t Cas standing there, but River come back to life.
The stubble that River had in the role is on Cas’s face, and I remember him saying how he would grow out his facial hair as part of not being recognized. So far, the paparazzi have never caught a picture of him with it, adding to its usefulness as a disguise. To be River, Cas is giving that up.
Cas’s mannerisms too, have changed. The way he holds himself, the sexy way he holds his hands is changed. His smile, too, although the smile is slight in this scene.
“Damn,” I breathe. “He’s transformed.”
I watch a take and then another. Cas is brilliant in each one, nodding at the notes people give him and coming back to the scene with a different approach.
The scene shifts, same set, but another actor joins in and the director is talking rapidly, too far away for me to hear.
Clearly, the scene is one where drugs are involved. Cas told me about prepping for this, researching what it would look like for someone to be high on the drugs River was known to use. How people described River, when they thought he was using. Cas worked for hours with his acting coach on hitting the right notes and had read endless first-hand accounts from River’s friends.
In the scene, someone hands Cas some pills, and he knocks it back without looking, chasing it with whatever the set designer had in place of alcohol. Cas, as River, is supposed to be at a party at the beginning of his drug use, foreshadowing the tragic end of this story.
He makes it look so effortless, and with just his body language conveys how this is part of River’s life. They run the scene again, then again.
Cas knocks back the pills one more time, changing the lines just slightly, changing the blocking as directed. A camera comes in to catch the face of a friend at the party, a worried look in the background of the causal drug use.
