Page 24 of Hollywood, Ending

“That’d be fun,” I said, “but probably not.”

“Probably not. Thanks for getting me through it. I never understood it before now, but acting isn’t really about you. It’s about the people you’re listening to. Your scene partners or whatever.”

“The magic isn’t in what I do or what you do, but what happens between us.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Exactly. I really love you, Juniper.”

“Back at ya, Kai,” I said at last, and I could feel his smile even though I was too shy to look over at him.

_____________

Making a movie is like going to summer camp. You feel certain the relationships are so real, so deep, that they will last a lifetime, but then the Cinematographer dumps you after the movie comes out, and your regular group chat with your costars drifts into occasional happy birthday messages, and the only reason you even know their birthday is because they post a cake on their Instagram. It turns out that the main reason you were friends is proximity, and having shared some strange intense experience together. In the rough seas of the real world, you can’t get the magic back of being on a rooftop in Pittsburgh with someone you’ve finally accepted you love. I figured that in the night sky of my life, Kai Laramie would be one of those shooting stars that streaks across the sky but then burns up almost before you can even get excited.

Part 2

The Test

Kai

1

The day before I was scheduled to fly to Los Angeles to see Andy Warhol Never Gets Old, my publicist, Ellen, asked to meet me at a cafe for lunch. Ellen, along with Juniper and Studio Todd, was in New York for a media lunch launching the movie. I wasn’t invited to the lunch because I hadn’t yet gotten my media training, and apparently Hollywood does not trust an unvetted actor.

The cafe, three stops on the C train from my apartment in Brooklyn, was mostly empty except for a few people wearing AirPods and hunched over laptops. As I ordered my coffee and a croissant, I noticed Ellen was already there, seated in the back corner beneath a painting of the night sky. I pulled up a chair. “You realize I’m not your publicist, right?” she said by way of introduction.

I did not realize this. “Okay?” I said.

“I am your publicist for this project, but I work for the studio. Like if I were a lawyer, I wouldn’t be your lawyer.”

“Got it,” I said.

“Right, so the studio is considering you for the junket,” she said. “This would be a big deal. If I were your publicist, I’d be very excited about it.”

“Which you are not.”

“Which I am not. You’d be paired in interviews with Juniper, and you’d talk to a variety of media outlets in a variety of settings. Televised interviews with local morning shows around the country. Maybe some national talk show hits if we’re lucky. And also some proper junketing, where every seven minutes for several hours, a reporter comes into a windowless hotel conference room and asks you questions on camera. It’s a tedious process. No one particularly enjoys it. But you must concentrate, because any mistake can be catastrophic. You’ll recall, for instance, when Charles Oldham said the R-word.”

“I feel like it’s pretty easy not to use slurs,” I said.

“Great, that actually makes you better than most movie stars. So, right, then you’ll also do roundtable interviews with reporters from print and online. Seven or eight people with tape recorders gathered at a table, and they’ll ask you questions and you’ll answer. And then we’ll do some photo shoots and hopefully one or two big profiles, if we can get them, where a reporter spends a day or two with you and writes about what a genius you are, unless you’re not careful and say something stupid or act like an asshole. So. Tell me about how you prepared for this role.”

“I met with Kathryn and we talked about—”

“No. Did you even read the talking points?” I nodded unconvincingly, and Ellen rolled her eyes as she continued. “I don’t know who Kathryn is. I’m not a film person. I’m a thirty-seven-year-old divorced father of two living in the suburbs of Chicago. What you did was dive headfirst into the life of Andy Warhol, beginning by reading his diaries.”

“Well, I listened to the audiobook.”

“That’s reading, Kai. So yes, you start there. With your immense research. What’s your acting process?”

“Well, someone said once that you read the script two hundred and fifty times and then give yourself over to the imagined circumstances, so that’s what I did.” This was something of a lie, but I did not feel like telling Ellen anything personal.

“That’s good but you need to attribute it.” She was on her iPad. “Anthony Hopkins said that. So attribute it.”

“Got it,” I said.

“How did you prepare for the role?”

“I began by reading Warhol’s diaries and then reading every book about Warhol I could find so that I could fathom the characters in this film.”