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CHAPTER Six
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The Final Cut CHAPTER Seven
CHAPTER SEVENJimmy leaned on the balcony railing and gazed down into the canal as the final rays of sunlight fled the sky. He took one last drag of his cigarette and flicked the butt towards the towpath, admiring the sudden cascade of sparks as it hit the ground.He needed Sam on board with this project. He couldn’t let it go, not now. He had too much invested in it emotionally. He wasn’t sure why it meant so much to him, but it gripped him like no other project before.It wasn’t just that it was going to be edgy and daring, walking that line between fantasy and reality, using footage of an actual murder. Making the viewer wonder how much of the torture is real. Few of them would realise.He also felt there was an important statement to be made about the genre as a whole. This film was going to either damn or redeem him, both as an artist and a human being. This opportunity for salvation or damnation had a specific gravity, and Jimmy’s soul was caught in its pull. Like the glowing
The Final Cut CHAPTER Eight
CHAPTER EIGHTJimmy hated auditions. They were an exercise in mutual humiliation. You sat behind a rickety table, in a musty rehearsal room, and pretended to be interested in the resumes of a dismal procession of drama school drop outs, who pretended to be interested in your film.Because it was an Indie horror film, none of the agents they contacted sent their brightest or best. The guy they’d just seen had nothing but extras work on his resume. The highlight of which was a Swedish advert for haemorrhoid cream in which he’d been: “at the front of the queue of people who pushed their way out of the lift at the end.” This gave him a “full second close up in the lengthier cut.” The saddest thing was that, although abysmal, he wasn’t the worst person they’d seem that day.The next two actors pulled a no-show.“Maybe that’s a blessing,” said Jimmy. “Let’s just knock it on the head and go down to the pub.”“No,” said Sam, ever practical. “We’ll give them ten more minutes then we’ll go
The Final Cut CHAPTER Nine
CHAPTER NINE“Here he is,” said Alfie, as Jimmy walked into the tiny front room of Alfie’s council flat. “George Jung, famous coke smuggler.”The comment was a reference to the real life character Johnny Depp played in the film Blow, one of Alfie’s favourites. It was also a dig at Jimmy over the coke deal, that had gone spectacularly wrong.“More like cock smuggler,” said Tim, a tall fat bloke with a huge beard, who took up more than half the sofa he was sprawling on. He was usually round Alfie’s when Jimmy called.“Or cock juggler,” said Alfie. He was a short guy, no more than five foot five, with dark hair, shaved at the sides. He had a Cypriot look on account of his Greek dad and spoke in a broad east end accent. He was also an inveterate gossip and sold the best blow in North London. Nothing went down north of the river that he didn’t know about within hours, even though he hardly left his high rise flat.Jimmy had a ton of things he’d promised to do that day. He also had five
The Final Cut CHAPTER Ten
CHAPTER TENThe studio they were renting was on the top floor of a converted warehouse by the river. Sam was with Melissa, filming the scenes where she, as Nadine, was alone in bed, dreaming of torture in a dingy cellar. Jimmy wondered what Melissa would think if she could see the footage they were going to splice in as the dreams she was having? He guessed she would see some of it eventually, just not in its current form.Sam and Jimmy hadn’t finished the script yet, but they’d worked the bedroom scenes into shape. Those seemed the best things to shoot first. They both agreed it was the easiest way of breaking Melissa into the project.Neither of them was sure she was going to show as they waited for her that morning. They’d had no contact with her since the audition, nearly three weeks ago. She did turn up though, and only twenty minutes late. She’d been firm about keeping to her condition of having only one person on set with her at a time.She’d chosen to work with Sam that day
The Final Cut CHAPTER Eleven
CHAPTER ELEVENSam had taped signs saying: ‘QUIET PLEASE—FILMING IN PROGRESS’ all along the corridor and also at the entrance of the studio. Gone were the days of a red or green light over the door. Even though he knew they weren’t filming, Jimmy still entered tentatively.Down the opposite end of the studio was the bedroom set Jimmy had helped Sam build and dress over the past couple of days. Furnishing it as cheaply as possible, from charity shops and market stalls. He had to admit Sam had done a great job of lighting it.Sam was in a different part of the space, standing over the makeshift desk they’d set up. It was covered with recording equipment and several laptops. Sam was staring at one of these laptops, frowning over the footage he’d just shot.“So how’d it go?” Jimmy said. “Melissa any good?”“She’s okay,” said Sam, after a long pause. “Nothing special in the way of talent.”“Really? That’s a surprise. Her looks though, she’s perfect for the part. So long as she’s not e
The Final Cut CHAPTER Twelve
CHAPTER TWELVE“Right,” said Jimmy, bounding back into Sam’s living room. “Let’s get this script treatment sorted.”There were coke crumbs around his left nostril. Sam knew he thought the stuff made him more creative, but it also make him a bit of an arsehole. Especially if they were under pressure to finish something. It was already late, and they had to be up early tomorrow to prepare for another day of shooting.“What we really need to work out is how the whole story wraps up. Did find out how that myth ends?”“Not yet, I’ll get around to it later.”“I thought you said you were going to read up on how it ended before we started the script.”“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been a little busy of late.”“It’s just that it might help us come up with a conclusive ending,” said Sam. “Something that will tie up the whole plot.”Jimmy frowned. “Does it have to be totally conclusive?”“Yes, we don’t want to cheat the audience.”“We’re not cheating them if we leave the end
The Final Cut CHAPTER Thirteen
CHAPTER THIRTEENThe next morning they waited for Melissa. They got in early, as planned, and re-dressed the set so it would now work as a living room. Jimmy had stayed up all night writing dialogue and Sam had edited it that morning.By midday there was still no sign of her. “She’s not coming,” said Sam, obsessively retying his man bun. “I fucking knew it!”“Relax,” said Jimmy. “She’ll turn up.”But she didn’t, not that day, nor the next.“We’re fucked,” said Sam, on the third day. His eyes were red and his chin unshaven. Sleep had evaded them both the past few nights. Sam had even dipped into Jimmy’s coke stash, something he rarely did these days. “We haven’t got an ending, we haven’t got a cast and we haven’t got our leading lady anymore.”“We can fix this,” said Jimmy. “It’s alright, I’ll find her.”“It’s not her you should be worried about, it’s our whole fucking film.”“But I am worried about her,” said Jimmy. “I am.”
The Final Cut CHAPTER Fourteen
CHAPTER FOURTEENJimmy’s phone buzzed as he turned off Oxford Circus into Berwick Street. It was Sam.“Any sign of her?” said Jimmy, hopefully.“Nope, this is the fourth day she hasn’t shown up. I told you she’s not coming back. We’re pissing away money here, money we don’t have. We need to regroup, come up with a new plan and hold some more auditions. And we need to do it now. No more wild goose chases.”“Just let me chase down this one last lead.”“Listen to you, when did you become Sam Spade?”“Fuck off, I think I’m finally on to something.”“We can’t find her, just admit it. We’ve been through every single headshot on spotlight.com, contacted all the agents we can think of, looked at every actor’s directory there is. There aren’t any other leads. We need to start focusing on the project otherwise it’s gonna go tits up.”“Look I know you’re right, but let me do this one last thing. I got out some old copies of Spotlight from the local reference library this morning, from bef
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