Cannonball!

A short story, focused on the film industry.

Frances found it difficult to assert herself. As a girl, her tendency had always been to back down; to give way. During the shoot of her debut feature, a decade – more – in the making, her husband Joel often left cute Post-its around the house urging her toward self-actualisation. ‘Manifest!’ they said, and: ‘Demand your vision!’ They were ironical but also sincere. Joel – working-­class, son of a nurse – had climbed the ladder at his corporate law firm, and credited pure bravado with getting him to the top. Often, a prophet-like intensity shone from his pale green eyes.

Frances longed for Joel’s self-assurance, but also knew it wouldn’t work if she met the world in the same way. The men on set all wanted different things from her: Cosmo, her DOP, wanted 100% devotion; Max, her lead, wanted to push her around; then there was the line-producer, the gaffer and the editor, already sending her exasperated emails before the shoot had even wrapped.

This was why Frances took such comfort in Jacquetta, her assistant, who made almost hourly checks to see if Frances was eating, hydrating and getting enough sleep. Jacquetta even re-stuck Joel’s Post-its on her laptop when the strip of adhesive had worn away. Yes, Jacquetta cared. It was touching how much Jacquetta cared.

Just today Frances had ended up in a disagreement with Cosmo. He had insisted on dimmers, when the lighting for this scene should be harsh.

‘Was he psyching me out?’ she asked Joel that evening. ‘I was only reminding him of his own lighting scheme. The one he came up with.’

Joel was macerating greens in the blender. ‘Men are programmed for resistance,’ he said. ‘We’re terrible.’ The loud pneumatics of the Magimix temporarily stopped them from speaking. Frances watched the kale and spinach pulverising into what looked like the fluorescent lunar gloop infesting the Lunar Republic set. Frances had always found Joel’s assertiveness such a turn-on. ‘Of course he was psyching you out.’

‘But why?’

‘We smell it in the air. The vulnerability. The opportunity to misbehave.’

The only person Frances was truly vulnerable with was her therapist, Helen. ‘I haven’t shown him an iota of vulnerability.’

‘I know. I’m saying it’s more like a scent?’

‘A scent?’ The Magimix was now on burst mode and its percussiveness was putting Frances on edge. ‘Can you turn that off?’

Joel flicked the button and decanted. ‘Like a pheromone? Some men just can’t work with women. That’s probably Cosmo.’

‘Please don’t tell me to take charge of the narrative.’

‘I just mean it’s not your fault, Frankie. It’s his.’ Joel took a drink of the emerald shake. ‘Boom! Boom! Cioccolato!’ he said, which annoyed her, because that was Cosmo’s catchphrase, from an Italian ad he’d lit in his 20s, which she had once found endearing, and now found intensely irritating.

 

Cosmo was ancient: pre-Soviet maybe, but he was a god with light, often quoted Fellini and had known Antonioni, Bergman, et cetera. All through R&D Frances had felt insanely lucky to work with him, but when they’d started filming he’d proved capricious and touchy, and she had to tread carefully, as if he were the one in charge.

‘I’m sorry about yesterday,’ Cosmo said, the following morning, and completely unexpectedly. ‘I was an ass.’

‘Thank you, Cosmo,’ said Frances, adjusting her expectations of how this was going to go, since she and Joel had role-played their likely argument before work. ‘I just want you to follow your plan.’

‘T’inquièt pas, cherie. Today, the scene will fluoresce! It will be like Tel Aviv in here!’

Frances must have looked at him blankly.

‘The White City? Doesn’t matter. Quelle jeunesse!’ Cosmo looked enamoured with her for a second, and there was a flare of attraction in his eyes, which made her quick-step into the nearest available shadow.

Whereas most horrors went from light to dark, they had decided that Lunar Republic would actually brighten as the movie progressed. Day by day Cosmo had to calibrate the lighting according to the asynchronous order of the shoot script, striving for the cold temperatures that the film would plunge into, and the honeydew-warmth with which it would start.

Frances loved horrors. She loved the way they sucked up something bad inside you, and then let it all out. It was like being leeched, being trepanned, having her humours cleansed – one of the medieval theories, at least. She actually had the feelings about horrors that film textbooks described: recreational fear; affective catharsis. In the writing of Lunar Republic, she really felt she’d captured the tender balance between physical death and metaphysical damnation. (Cinema verité, Cosmo joked, meets cinema vomatif.)

As Frances discussed outfits with Costume, she watched Cosmo touch Luci’s blond hair: he always made sure she was the brightest thing in the scene. This was why, Cosmo had said in casting, they had to have Luci: because Luci reflected more light than the other actresses. Luci was totemic, Cosmo said: in a movie about the moon, Luci was the moon! Cosmo was old-school, which meant he talked like this in front of the other actors auditioning – including Vivi Owayale, who had, after he’d said that, walked out of the room backward.

At this point Max wriggled out from inside the closet.

‘What are you doing?’ Frances asked.

‘I can’t stand in there all day.’

Frances felt the leftover energy that hadn’t been spent on Cosmo. ‘I didn’t tell you to move.’

Instead of backing down, Max lay on the bed. It was amazing to her that a young, inexperienced actor would challenge her authority like this. But Frances was adrenalised from her easy win with Cosmo. ‘You’re not allowed on the bed. Location specifically said this.’

Max didn’t move.

‘Get. Off,’ she said, in the lowest octane she could muster.

Max, who was already quite famous on TikTok, and as beautiful and soulful as R-Patz or even Chalamet, stood and leant against the four-poster.

Luci, slipping into Costume’s new silk shirt, rolled her eyes at Frances.

‘Thank you, Max. Luci, get out of the light, please, you’re beginning to melt. Sara, could you fix her up? Where is Jacquetta?’

‘No idea,’ said Sara, sweeping a brush across Luci’s face, which, Frances noticed, looked sad, perhaps even wounded, from Frances’s lack of acknowledgement over the eye-roll. But Frances had to resist friendship with women, otherwise the men would resent her more. Even her relationship with Jacquetta carried some degree of risk.

Frances asked the Second Unit to get close-ups around the house for the lunar bloom. (Infestation, really, was the key with horror; the lunar bloom would infect everything.) As she watched Sara add the mineral shine to Luci’s cheeks, Frances thought what a good job she was doing: in the rushes, Luci’s face was indeed lunar, just as Cosmo had wished.

‘Places, please!’

Max, at the slowest possible slouch, walked back to the closet. The hinges of the doors squeaked as everyone waited. Frances again wondered about Jacquetta, and whether she could ask someone else to get her a coffee.

‘Cosmo?’

‘Ja, ja,’ he said, then adjusted the final arc. ‘Yes, yes, I can see it now. Boom! Boom! Cioccolato!’

Harefield Hall was Arcadian or maybe Palladian. Made from sandstone, it looked very bright, very warm – it had been designed to look like an Italian villa: ‘like the Borgheses’, the location scout had said. Princes from the continent had come on holiday here in the 19th century; a few playwrights, musicians; Alexander Pope, at one time.

Frances finally found Jacquetta loitering outside the Hall after lunch. She couldn’t believe she’d been absent for a whole morning. It was a long time; like (she’d calculated this over her meal) a sixtieth of the 30-day shoot? For a moment Frances watched Jacquetta’s thin white fingers, darkly lacquered, move over her phone screen at extraordinary speed.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ Jacquetta said, looking up. ‘Can I speak with you? In private? It’s a bit sensitive.’

‘Sure,’ said Frances, as they entered the Hall. Frances flipped through the lever-arch of what Jacquetta might tell her. Pregnancy? New job? If Cosmo had tried something on – then what would she do? Who would she sacrifice? Cosmo was essential. The financiers had only agreed to the project if Cosmo was on board. She steered Jacquetta toward the Dunbarton Bedroom, where they wouldn’t be disturbed. It was a timbered ante-room, almost pure mahogany. ‘What’s up?’

‘I heard something distressing was said in casting, Frances.’

Jacquetta held out her phone. Did she want Frances to take it? Jacquetta herself looked as if she were about to cry.

‘Tell me,’ said Frances softly, feeling like an actress, or like Helen, her therapist. ‘It’s okay.’

‘Cosmo said the actress had to be the moon?’

Frances tried to see the bigger silhouette of what Jacquetta was trying to say. ‘For the light scheme. Yes.’

‘I.e.,’ Jacquetta said, ‘the actress had to be white. Is that true?’

‘I mean.’ Frances paused. ‘Cosmo was talking about aesthetics? It was a turn of phrase.’

Jacquetta looked as if Frances’ reaction was intolerable. Finally, she slipped her phone back in her pocket. ‘So it would have been impossible for Vivi Owayale to get the role if that’s what everyone wanted. Because, if the moon is white, ergo the actress has to be white.’

Ergo? Ergo? Why was Jacquetta speaking to her in Latin?

‘Talking about the moon isn’t racist,’ said Frances. ‘It’s a movie about the moon. Ergo, we’ll talk about the moon.’

‘In casting?’ Jacquetta’s gaze was summative. ‘And no-one said anything to Cosmo? Not you? Or Meredith?’

Meredith was the casting director, and actually older than Cosmo, which gave her a pass to say anything she wanted. ‘The comment was about the lenses; about the degree of reflection from the actress. Not about Vivi. Not about Vivi per se.’

‘Lenses?’ said Jacquetta. ‘Reflection?’

Why was Jacquetta simply repeating words back to her?

‘Cosmo’s aesthetic here is incandescence, okay? Fluorescence. His inspiration,’ she said, remembering the conversation this morning, ‘is the White City in Tel Aviv. That doesn’t make it a Jewish film either,’ Frances said, hoping Jacquetta would laugh, but she didn’t. ‘Or antisemitic.’

‘Who said anything about being antisemitic?’

‘Look, Jacquetta, I don’t have time to discuss the moon with you. I’m on this set 24/7, a female director shooting my debut, okay? Dealing with, like, 100 men who just want to shit all over me.’ Frances leaned into the emotion, and it felt good to be in the zone of her own pain. Really, Jacquetta was meant to sort things out: not drag her into this swamp of moral failing. ‘Just shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. Shit, you know?’

Jacquetta was looking at her. Maybe Jacquetta wasn’t even a feminist. She didn’t know where this generation was vis-à-vis feminism.

‘I wasn’t the one who said it!’

‘That’s not the point,’ said Jacquetta. ‘It’s your movie. And he said it to Vivi’s face.’

Frances remembered from her reading that the thing to do was back down. To listen. Really listen. Fine. Fine! Anyway, it was just another thing to deal with in the near-constant anxiety dream of début film-making. ‘It was a stupid comment. I’m sorry: I am. I’ll talk to Cosmo, but, to be fair, Vivi corpsed that audition. Luci was better. Without a doubt.’ Abruptly, though, she had another thought – why had Meredith even told Jacquetta in the first place? ‘Who told you this?’

‘I had dinner with Vivi last night.’

Frances hadn’t thought of Vivi as the leak. ‘It’s not why Vivi didn’t get the part,’ she said, more forcefully. ‘You can tell her that.’

‘Why don’t you?’ said Jacquetta, looking pleased. ‘It made her feel awful.’

‘Wait,’ said Frances, ‘Has Vivi told anyone else?’

‘Look, Vivi said she gets this all the time. If people want a black actress, they want caramel. They say this stuff to her face.’

‘I’ll call her,’ Frances said. ‘I’ll explain.’

After Jacquetta left, Frances took a moment. She sat in the bay window, watching the wind blow the ancient trees, trying to calm herself. Instead she remembered the audition room that day, and how she’d thought, during that exact moment: I should say something to Cosmo. Right now. The moon! The moon was code! The moon was white supremacist code! A theme she had actively worked into the film! But Frances did not want to – could not bear to – jeopardise Cosmo’s commitment, because the insurers and the distributors were relying on his involvement, though Meredith was looking at her, possibly for an intervention, but by the time Frances had roused herself Vivi was already getting the hell out of there – backward, no less – and Frances thought she should go after her, but then Frances, at the last moment, had chosen not to. But the real problem was, when Meredith, Cosmo and Frances were reviewing the auditions the next day, Cosmo had said something far, far worse than this throwaway thing about the moon.

Frances didn’t call Vivi that day. She didn’t know why. Or maybe she did. Filming was intense, and her anger at Jacquetta’s betrayal energised her, and the more assertive she became the more efficiently the set worked. Even Cosmo was pleased with her dynamism, and Max was positively puppyish, though Jacquetta was slow, and lethargic. Actually, Jacquetta had the transported, elsewhere gaze of someone having a breakdown…

Frances knew that she was meant to apologise to Vivi unconditionally and accept the critique. When everyone had discovered they were racist two summers ago, she’d done her reading while writing the script, and had managed to weave in themes of white-settler colonialism, which had helped with some of the seed funding, because blackness and ergo whiteness was now definitely zeitgeist.

All the literature said not to question. Just apologise. But Frances felt impelled – like, physically – in the other direction, even while she knew her cover about aesthetics did not hold.

She told Cosmo what had happened. She gave him Vivi’s phone number and email and asked – told – him to apologise. But he’d laughed at the whole affair. The moon? The moon?! Is this movie not set on the moon? Frances knew that he wouldn’t apologise, and that because Cosmo wouldn’t, she should, but she also couldn’t find it in herself to pick up the tab for Cosmo. Ultimately, she knew it was because she couldn’t be bothered to feel bad; that there was a certain relinquishment of her own victimhood that she didn’t want, and couldn’t tolerate. She told Helen in her therapy session, and Helen nodded compassionately, and said that change didn’t come from shame, which Frances took: gratefully released.

Anyway, for a while – like a week or so – nothing happened. The Props department were having fun: the lunar gloop was everywhere. Frances found it in her hair, up her nose, under her fingernails. Jacquetta was off with her, but this Frances could handle, since everything else was going so fabulously. And, to be honest, Cosmo’s satiny new-wave shine made the aesthetics of Luci’s bleached-out face just make more and more sense.

The energy was almost exhilarating. She felt as if she wanted to say to Vivi – Bring it on! – because she had been down and out for long enough to know when to make hay.

When Frances was a child, she had watched her elder sister jump off the high-dive, shouting ‘Cannonball!’ and bombing into the pool. She had envied her sister’s fearlessness and wondered why it had never been inside her. Frances had always been too afraid. Too afraid; never assertive enough; the family scaredy-cat.

But that’s how it felt now: that she had made the jump – that she was a heavy object travelling at speed though air – and that she had suddenly developed the confidence to tell people exactly what she wanted.

Cannonball!

CANNONBALL!!!!!

Casually, at an industry event one night for women-in-film, she mentioned to a friend that Vivi Owayale had narrowly missed out to Luci as the lead for Lunar Republic. Her friend was casting for a prime-time pilot, and wrote Vivi’s name in her iPhone notes.

Though Frances had successfully managed to push the thought of Vivi away from the upper-deck of her consciousness over the past ten days, Vivi kept rounding the corner, a zombie in a video-game, coming ceaselessly toward her.

So Frances had not called Vivi to apologise (as even Joel said she should) but she had instead done Vivi a good turn, and ergo had karmically restored her own moral equilibrium. Things would be fine.

Of course, Frances had a Google Alert for her own name, and so the notifications on her phone came in immediately as the train trundled through suburbia the next day. At first it was confusing, but she put this down to her hangover; then wondered if the prime-time pilot had already been cast, and the friend had acknowledged her help in finding Vivi. On Twitter Frances had been @-ed so many times she couldn’t find the original source, until finally she traced the notifications back to @ViviO.

Vivi’s thread detailed the casting process for Frances’s film. She had included Cosmo’s verbatim comments about the moon, and the implications of what this meant to a black actress. If you want a white actress, she’d written, why make the audition an open call? Why not spare me the pain of hearing that?

Vivi said she had given the director #FrancesWedgewood a ten-day grace period so that Cosmo or Frances could just apologise, but neither #FrancesWedgewood nor #CosmoLandauer had called or even emailed to say sorry. What was worse was that the thread ended (8/8) with Cosmo’s terrible comment the next day when the three of them had rewatched Vivi’s audition tape: ‘The camera cannot see into shadow’.

(Meredith? Meredith! It was Meredith who was the leak!)

Vivi said she would be off Twitter for the rest of the day, so that she could avoid the inevitable racist pile-on coming her way.

She signed off #Vivi.

A radial nausea came from Frances’ stomach. She tried to recall the anger that had adrenalized her, but couldn’t conjure it. She was crazy at herself for not making this go away when she could have. What had she been thinking? How could she have been so stupid? Now she felt mostly fear. She remembered the sensation of speed, like the cannonball, but now it was just freefall. She hadn’t imagined a world where Vivi could go public.

And yet here it was: alive, electric, manifest.

Frances left the carriage to call Vivi, and though she knew Vivi did not want to hear her tears, she felt like she might cry.

Of course, Vivi did not pick up.

Neither did Jacquetta.

Neither did Joel.

Frances told herself that it would die down. It wasn’t trending, but as the suburbs receded there were more people sharing hashtags, and other, non-industry people weighing in rather than just retweeting Vivi’s thread. #LightSoWhite and #LightFragility were the most popular. The main people talking about it looked, from their thumbnails, like out-of-work actors; people with gripes. But by the time Frances reached the stop for Harefield Hall, a famous – very famous – black American actor had retweeted the entire eight parts of Vivi’s thread, demanding (yet again, he said, and with great fatigue) industry change.

Twitter was, as Frances understood it, blowing the fuck up.

Some years later, Frances was at an awards ceremony in an expansive and chilly auditorium. She was nervous. Her second film, The Bones, was up for Editing, VFX, Make-Up and finally – ultimately – Best Director. She wanted to win, but oh! Being nominated risked the pain of losing, which was even worse, she thought, than not being nominated at all.

Many of the actresses were shivering as the ceremony began. There was a lot of pink in the dresses, and Frances was pleased she’d chosen yellow. Frances’ dress, which was huge, like a full-on lemon-yellow ball-gown, felt almost liquid, but maybe that was the benzo talking. Because of her nerves, she’d taken a half a Xanax, and everything looked tremendously well-lit. Now, as her neighbour’s tux buzzed against her arm, she wondered if he also felt the turbulence in the ball-gown; that there might be something alive in the silks.

Frances was nervous. Vivi’s film had been nominated for a bunch of awards, and she suspected Vivi would be in the crowd tonight. Frances might bump into her, and then get tongue-tied, and maybe a photographer might catch them: Frances frozen, Vivi pained; the whole sorry story, totally reactivated in the media once more.

Frances had not seen Vivi since the Lunar Republic debacle, and though she knew Vivi would probably do nothing more than ignore her, Frances still felt anxious. She didn’t want to talk to Vivi. She didn’t want to give the multi-year-delayed apology, which Frances knew she owed, and yet never given.

The Bones was up next for editing. The excerpt showed a mixed-race woman running along a river, pursued by white women dressed in furs. This was Frances’s fare, now: to showcase all the ways she had learned, or unlearned, or whatever. It had almost been a boon, to come through this fire, if only the private angst hadn’t stuck around. The Bones didn’t win, but it was okay, because none of her closest rivals did either.

The awards were run as live, and above the audience cameras swooped on cantilevered arms and dolly rails. It made Frances think of how, as a young woman, she’d watched endless B-roll for the audio secrets of the film-set: the crew coughing, unoiled tracks, a cameraman laughing, and the ever-present white noise of the set.

By the intermission they’d missed out on both Editing and FX, but she was still hopeful for Make-Up and Director.

Her reputation had been rehabilitated: funding for The Bones had been hard, but not impossible, and the nominations meant she had been forgiven. Frances went to the bathroom, which stank of other women’s shit, which probably meant other people were nervous too. In the cubicle she took quick puffs of her vape, and the cherry scent neutralised the smell.

Despite the emotional pillowing of the Xanax, she froze when she saw Vivi filing through the auditorium for the second half. She had her hair scraped back and a medical boot under a vermillion dress. Vivi hadn’t seen her, so Frances stepped behind the nearest column until Vivi was seated.

Vivi had done well since Lunar Republic. She’d landed a police procedural for Sky, and Agnes Drowning had been a breakout hit, though she’d missed out on an acting nomination herself. Next year she’d be in a play off-­Broadway. Frances knew all this because she kept track of Vivi’s career via a Google Alert, which she had not told Helen about, fearing her therapist wouldn’t agree with this unhealthy obsession. Often – though of course she wouldn’t admit it – Helen seemed a little tired of Frances.

Frances took her seat once more, surrounded by her crew. The ceremony re-started and Frances tuned out, only keeping a vague eye on Vivi, who was wearing something chic and classy – de la Renta, perhaps.

An excerpt of Agnes Drowning played on the big screen. It was a period piece: a witchy historical drama with colour-blind casting. Vivi was in a cell with another woman, looking up at a window. She looked good: soulful, expressive – reflective. Reflective enough. It was easy enough to light a black actress: anyone knew it was just a case of Tungsten gels on the dimmers; gold instead of silver reflectors.

Looking back, Frances had simply done what she could to save her career. When the Vivi thing had cannonballed into something huge, Frances had taken control of the narrative, just as Joel had advised on the Post-it on the bathroom mirror. She had publicly ‘divorced’ Cosmo and declared she wouldn’t work with him anymore. In TV and magazine interviews she apologised for his screw-up then gently led the conversation toward what it meant that it had been Cosmo’s comment that had caused the trouble; why it was interesting, wasn’t it – and she was conscious not to deflect, but – it was she who was absorbing the blame for the man’s transgression. Frances knew it was trashy, eclipsing the racism with her feminism, but she also knew her own desire precisely: to save herself, to save herself completely.

And soon people – industry people – began to regard her with some sympathy. In many of those articles Frances was described as brave. Now her films showcased her learning, which meant she could be forgiven – except by Vivi, who was, she supposed, still just waiting for an apology.

Joel said she had to stop talking about it. Stop, or give the apology. One, or the other. Even Helen said Frances should – in a surprising move for someone so essentially non-directive – probably think about offering it sometime soon, so they might move on from all of this – at least, psycho-therapeutically.

When Frances tuned back in, it seemed they’d won on Make-Up. Sara, certainly, was rising from her seat. Make-Up. Who cared about fucking Make-Up? It could hardly go on a poster, or attract money. Sara was up on the stage talking, but hardly anyone seemed to be listening. She thanked everyone, including Frances, who smiled, just in case a camera was on her. But, as if by a magnet, Frances’s eyes were drawn back to Vivi’s spot. This time, she couldn’t find her. Now there was just an empty chair. Where had she gone?

The ceremony moved on. Some VT played about a care home and a junky theatre crew who clowned around with thin, hollow-eyed teenagers.

Meanwhile, Vivi was nowhere to be seen.

Then it was Best Director: the moment Frances had been waiting for. They showed a different except of The Bones, then the other contenders: a rural English drama, a Japanese thriller, an American satire, a sci-fi on a rocket. She tried to cast Vivi from her mind. This was her moment. There were three male directors and two women. Maybe the odds weren’t bad.

The previous winner, a director Frances liked, and whose name she’d temporarily blanked, strode onto the stage with the gold envelope. His tux was velvet and had a shimmer. The waiting was unbearable. She wanted to win so badly she felt insane. Her mouth had almost completely dried of saliva. Really, if she could stop life right now she would: she’d prefer never to know than ever find out if she’d lost.

But where was Vivi? With her sore foot and barbed grudge against her?

The Director said all the contenders were worthy winners, et cetera, et cetera, then opened the envelope. The Xanax helped Frances focus on the weft of his suit.

‘Frances Wedgewood!’

People in the auditorium gasped. Her crew kissed and hugged her and she felt the swoop of a camera near her face. She herself could not believe it. But as she rose, almost unsteadily, she saw Vivi standing just beside her.

Vivi placed her hand on her arm. ‘Congratulations,’ she said, warm, and ostensibly genuine.

It was then that Frances finally felt it – as she ascended the stage to collect the biggest award of her life: acute shame – rushing toward her like a pool of hard water – and which had been so deferred, and for so many years. She looked to find Vivi in the crowd, and thought she might thank her in her speech: but knew she would not, because Vivi was already gone.