fiction by Phoebe Maxwell
INT. MY BEDROOM – E. GREENWICH – 1 MONTH LATER
“Just hope you don’t get a promotion.”
It’s the strangest advice I’ve ever given, especially to someone trying to break into the mysterious and dense film industry. Yet my statement stands when it comes to the most precarious department on the film set— the dreaded COVID Department, a.k.a. the Health and Safety Department.
INT. MY BEDROOM – E. GREENWICH – T-2 WEEKS TO FIRST DAY
Would you like to be one of our PA Drivers? Would you be comfortable driving a 10-passenger van and/or a 16’ box truck? Could you come into our office or participate in a Zoom call with our Line Producer? Woah. Information overload. I need to break this down. Ok, 1. I just got a job offer off Facebook?! 2. I’ve never driven either of those kinds of vehicles before and I really don’t want to be trying to figure it out in downtown Boston, especially in the high-pressure job environment of the film industry. 3. I was really trying to get in as a COVID PA…
INT. MY BEDROOM – E. GREENWICH – T-1 WEEK TO FIRST DAY
“Do you want a job?” Emails to three people and two phone calls later, I almost can’t believe those are the first words I hear on the other end of the line.
“Yes, I would like a job!” With those six words, I seal my fate.
EXT. PRODUCTION OFFICE PARKING LOT – BRAINTREE – DAY 4
“Hey guys, let’s talk.” Steve leads us to the picnic table hidden behind the dumpsters and often obscured by big tractor-trailer trucks. “So, I’m sure you’ve heard the rumblings. The unions are meeting to revise the Return to Work Agreement so this will probably be the last show with a COVID Department. There are also mutterings about the new union contracts being negotiated and people aren’t happy so who knows, there might be a strike too. I’ve been assured we have job security, meaning that even if the decision comes back in the middle of our shoot that vaccines are enough to make our department unnecessary, we’ll still have jobs until the end of the shoot. So don’t worry.”
“Will we still be wearing masks and doing testing?” Alan asks.
“Yeah, we’re sticking to all our protocols since it’s such a short shoot regardless of any changes to the RTW,” Steve replies.
Damn, people aren’t going to be happy about that but it’s only six weeks. It probably won’t be that bad.
EXT. PARKING GARAGE – WATERTOWN – DAY 7
“Seriously, go sit in your cars and cool off. And drink water!” Steve says before disappearing towards set. It’s barely 10 AM and I’m dripping sweat. All I or any of my team has been doing for the past two hours is checking people in and helping the nurse label specimen vials for COVID swabs, so sitting in a parking garage in the suffocating New England summer humidity. Still, it’s not that bad compared to everyone else literally running around in it. No wonder they might strike— no one is getting paid enough for this.
Just 10 more hours to go. Plus a half hour for lunch. Once you rotate onto set replacing Tony, you’ll be in the air conditioning. At least, that’s what I have to tell myself. Heaving my backpack stuffed with masks, goggles, face shields, my water bottle, and computer onto my shoulder, I nod to Jason.
“God, I’ll never understand how this shit is so heavy!” I complain.
He laughs ruefully. “Right?! They’re just masks!”
I shake my head. “Well, I guess I’ll go relieve Tony from sign duty. I wonder what corner I’ll be shoved into this time.”
“Have fun!”
“Oh, you know it!”
Thank all things holy for Jess and her brilliant advice to put not one but two layers of inserts into my shoes. I’m straddling a camera box, my left foot wedged in between another camera box and the one I’m standing over, my right foot next to my bag. Could they have found a narrower hallway to stick the stuff, at least two set production assistants, the cast when they’re not filming, the hair and makeup cohort, and me holding not one but two plastic signs that are probably a third of my size? Not to mention we’ve been filming the same scene for at least eight hours now. Everyone is starting to lose their patience, even the people who never seemed to get upset about anything.
“How much were we supposed to get through today?” asks the B camera 1st AC.
“Like five scenes. We’re fucked if we’re this behind this early in the shoot,” the B camera operator replies despondently. Grunts and groans of agreement echo down the hallway and I sigh along with them.
EXT. PARKING GARAGE – WATERTOWN – DAY 11
“I swear to God, if Davey doesn’t pull his fucking mask up—” Jason looks threatening.
“Dude, don’t get me started! We’re literally impossible to ignore,” I say gesturing to the way too large safety vest I’m wearing, “so the least he could do is pull it up when one of us is around.” We glare at his oblivious form from across the parking garage’s lower entrance where the producers had a monitor set up to watch the takes streamed from inside the apartment. He was chatting with one of the producers, who was wearing her mask properly, with his mask in its habitual position barely covering his top lip. I shake my head in disgust and look away, noticing a tag on the pavement from the costume department. I pick it up, noticing the date and notes were for the next day’s shoot. A slow, maniacal grin spreads across my face mostly obscured by my mask. “Jason, I’m gonna drop a mask in his lap.”
“Do it! He’ll be so pissed!”
“Maybe he’ll be inspired to actually wear his properly.” I shrug. “We can hope anyway. But now I have the perfect excuse to walk past him!” I say, triumphantly brandishing the costume tag.
As I breeze past Davey, I drop a mask in his lap before disappearing into the building to find Riley or Jill from the costume department. When I reappear after delivering the tag, Jason is beaming.
“He was so pissed!” he crows.
Julian, one of the assistants to the director, grins and nods in agreement. “He couldn’t figure out where it came from and looked at me so I said it was magic,” Julian says.
I burst out laughing. “This is my proudest moment yet!”
“When he finally figured out it was you, he was even angrier you hadn’t interrupted to tell him to put his mask on!” Julian laughs. I make a face.
“Because that makes sense.” I shake my head. “Well, before Ellen sees me and threatens to fire me for not ‘working,’ I’m going to resume my wander/hunt for people who aren’t wearing their masks.” I hitch my bag higher on my back, feeling my spine twinge in protest, before waving to Jason and Julian and heading towards crafty to grab a snack.
INT. OFFICE BUILDING – MEDFORD – DAY 13
“Can you do it?”
Part of me bristles when Ellen asks me essentially if I can handle making spreadsheets. Just because I’m the youngest person on set doesn’t mean I’m automatically incapable of being responsible or don’t know how to use technology. I taught Liz how to use Google Sheets. Her incompetence comes from her severe lack of organization. I’m too neurotic to ever get that scattered. And I’ve already been pretty much doing her job for the past few days. “Yes. Absolutely,” I reply, looking Ellen dead in the eye. She nods and turns back to Steve.
“We should go to the production office and talk to Liz,” she says. Sensing my part in the conversation about my promotion is done, I gather my stuff together and when both Ellen and Steve make moves to get up, I rise from the table and edge towards the door.
“I’ll meet you out there,” Steve says, releasing me from my purgatory of remaining in the same room as Ellen. I slip out the door towards an unused corner of this floor in the office building. I got promoted, I text my mom. She answers almost immediately; I’m sorry sweets. I’m sure you’ll still get time on set. I sigh and put my phone away. I’m doomed to a desk job now, aren’t I?
EXT. PUBLIC PARKING LOT – NORWOOD – NIGHT 14
“Alan, what the fuck?!” I mutter to myself, nearly pulling my hair out in frustration. His numbers are all wrong, which means the email outlining today’s testing costs that he sent from my email, because of course his computer was dead so he couldn’t send it himself, is wrong, making me look like the screw-up, not him. He’s supposed to be helping me, not making my job worse.
As I struggle not to hunt Alan down and throttle him, one of the producers, Serge, walks past my table. It’s still set up in the same place as the testing event earlier in the evening and is now only lit by a small floodlight my camping-savvy supervisor Steve always has in his car. He stops and glances around. “Did they leave you here?” he asks, meaning the rest of my so-called team.
“Yeah, it’s just me and my paperwork,” I say, smiling weakly. He nods knowingly.
“Ah, well enjoy this beautiful night!”
“Oh I will,” I reply, hoping I sound at least somewhat genuine. I was supposed to get set time tonight. Now I have to figure out where missing tests are on my list and send an updated testing event breakdown so I can finally finish this stupid carbon copy purchase order. Who still uses carbon copies?
My phone rings and I look up from the blurring names to see Steve’s name on the screen. “Hi, Steve.”
“What’s your twenty?”
“Trying to figure out how our numbers got so messed up so I can finish this P.O.,” I say with more heat than I intended.
“You need help?”
“Yeah.” Five minutes later, Steve and I are cross-checking every single name between Alan’s list and mine, finding and fixing errors that should never have happened. Seven hours into my workday, I still haven’t managed to move past today’s testing event to be able to plan tomorrow’s. And I was promised time on set that is rapidly slipping away.
Mistakes finally found and fixed, the next day’s testing event lists finalized and sent to the nurses, and thirteen hours after I first arrived in this parking lot, I’m finally able to glimpse set. Naturally, it’s all the glamour Hollywood has to offer with the town square literally glowing with Christmas lights and decorations, as if I wasn’t melting in the June heat and humidity half a day earlier. When I find Steve, he tells me exactly what my sinking heart expected but didn’t want to hear:
“You’re already pushing fourteen hours… you really should go home.” I sighed. “But I did promise you time on set. Get to fourteen and get outta here, ok?” For the first time that day, I smile.
INT. MIDDLE SCHOOL GYM – CANTON – NIGHT 17
“Why am I getting calls at nine PM about testing when you said my day players who got tested Monday would be okay to work on Thursday?”
Hmm, I don’t know, Cara. Maybe the fact that today is a night shoot that started at 5:00 PM with a four-hour testing window is why you’re getting called at nine. But of course, I could never say that out loud.
“I didn’t say that someone who got tested on Monday would be cleared for Thursday.” Part of me is baffled Cara would ever think someone would be cleared to work with that kind of time frame. For people who test three times a week, like her day players and herself, if someone wants to work on Thursday, they need to get tested the earliest on Tuesday. That’s been the policy for the whole shoot.
“Then why is my second, Janet, telling me you had a conversation with her on Monday saying this was okay?”
“I remember having a conversation about getting people tested today to work tomorrow. Not getting tested Monday to work tomorrow,” I say as calmly as I can. Cue Janet. I guess I’m on speakerphone in the hair and makeup trailer.
“No, no. We sat down and had a conversation and you told me this would be okay. We get our people tested like we’re supposed to and you said this was okay.”
“Okay, maybe at the time we had rapid testing capabilities, but given that there’s a national shortage, that’s simply no longer an option. Also—”
“No, you never said anything about rapid tests. You said they would be okay to work,” Janet cuts me off.
“Also,” I say, trying to fight down the waves of panic and anger threatening to choke me, “I have your day players on my testing list, so to me, the fact that I have them noted and on today’s testing list means our conversation was about getting them tested today so they could work tomorrow.”
“Then why did you have someone call us? Why didn’t you call them?” Cara again, clearly getting pissier, if that was even possible.
“I don’t have your day players’ contact information—” I start to say when Cara cuts me off.
“No, no, no. You should have their information. We gave it to Liz and she should have given it to you.” Oh good god, here we go.
“She never gave me anyone’s contact information—”
“Then you should have gotten it from her! She hasn’t been around for weeks!” I glance helplessly at Steve, who is deep in a meeting with Ellen. “Let’s just call it like it is. You didn’t do your job,” Cara lands the second half of her one-two sucker punch. You have got to be kidding me. I’ve only officially been the health and safety manager on this show for five days. Liz is so scattered, she couldn’t give me her own contact information if she wanted to, so no. She was never going to be able to track down and give me the information I needed. I was set up to fail because I’m currently two weeks, the entire time we’ve been filming, behind. Not that Cara and Janet care.
“Okay,” I say after a pause. There’s just no way I can defend myself. They aren’t listening to me. I stop listening to what they’re saying, just tonelessly acknowledging whatever it is and waiting for the call to end. Finally, they hang up.
I promptly stand up and almost run out of the school gym that was doubling as our cafeteria and my “office.” As soon as the cool night air hits my face, I can’t stop the sobs that shake my whole body. I stumble around the corner, curl into a ball in the wet grass, and fully break down.
“You okay?” I look up to see Steve standing at the corner of the building.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” I say, clearly not fine, my voice shaking almost as badly as my body. I tell him what happened.
“I already talked to Hair and Makeup about this. I’m going to have a talk with Cara.” I nod, unable to do much more. He strides back inside and I sink further into the grass.
“Hey.” Carolina, one of the set PAs, crouches next to me and pulls me into a hug. “Everyone’s pissed at hair and makeup and we already hated them but after this?” She shakes her head. “Just know we have your back.”
I give her a watery but genuine smile. Maybe I will make some friends after all.
EXT. BACK MALL PARKING LOT – CANTON – DAY 19
“I need to cool off, this is too much for me,” Tracy, our most often-recurring nurse, tells me as she gets up from the table. I’m focusing on not sliding off my chair because I’m so sweaty.
“Yeah, it’s awful out here,” I say. Today’s parking lot has been baking in the sun all day, so naturally, when we arrived to set up during the hottest part of the day and put up a tent, my workspace became a sauna.
“We’re just waiting on the last few people, come join me. Don’t mind the mess,” she says, opening the back door for me. It could have been stuffed with spikes and I still would have jumped into that air-conditioned back seat. We both sigh when she closes the passenger door and sit for a moment just letting the air blow on our faces. Neither of us gets paid enough for this.
INT. HOTEL LOBBY – BOSTON – DAY 21
“Since they’re filming upstairs now, they kicked us out of our room. Now testing will be in background holding, the church that’s a block away.” Steve is struggling to stay calm.
“Because that makes sense,” I bite out. Great. I trudge out of the hotel and half hope some idiot will blow the red light and hit me as I cross the busy Boston street.
As the room starts to fill up with background actors getting ready to break for lunch five hours later, Steve appears and pulls me to the side.
“So, I just heard that a show maybe a mile away from us just shut down because of COVID and we’ve been sharing background with them…” he trails off.
“Oh,” I say. “Good. Well, I’m not going to hang out in here when they’re eating lunch then.”
“Yeah, good call.” Once again, I gather my stuff and head out the door.
I bypass the hotel entrance and head towards the craft services station and their big box truck.
“Hey, Niko?” I call into the truck where he’s grabbing a case of water. He turns around and smiles.
“What’s up?”
“So I’ve been evicted from the hotel and since we share background with the show that just shut down because of COVID there’s no way I’m working in holding while they eat lunch…” I trail off and he asks the question I’m avoiding asking.
“You wanna work in the truck?”
“Yes please!”
“Yeah, let me get you set up.” He opens a folding table and chair for me, gives me his iPad for a wifi hotspot, and points out the power strip next to the table. “Let me know if you need anything else!” he calls over his shoulder as he hops down from the liftgate.
“Considering I was working on the floor of a closet, in a potentially contaminated room, or melting in a parking lot, this is the best ‘office’ I’ve had on this show!”
EXT. CITY STREETS – BOSTON – NIGHT 26
“So,” Steve says hesitantly, “Patrick has some more POs he’d like you to fix.” I roll my eyes and groan.
“He mansplains my job to me every single time I see him and he has my number and my email, why can’t he talk to me himself?”
“I think he’s scared of you.”
“Ha!” I scoff. “Good and as long as I can strike fear into the hearts of middle-aged white men, great, but seriously these are our jobs. And I’m already doing a lot of his for him.”
I grumble my way to the production office the next morning, dreading the added paperwork Patrick is bound to give me.
“I need you to fix these POs,” he says, handing me a stack of five and an invoice from early June. Early June?! It’s now July! Why the hell are you just asking me to fix these?! It’s the last goddamned week of the shoot and I’m done when the shoot ends! “I also need you to look at the invoice from the past two weeks and fix these POs,” he’s saying handing me two more. I clamp my mouth shut to keep myself from screaming or growling or anything else that might snap the fraying leash I have on my rage. I nod. “Oh and always make sure you have backups of the testing lists. You don’t want to be like Liz.” Strike three. You’re out.
“Hey, Steve,” I say as soon as he picks up his phone. “Patrick once again insinuated I can’t do my job and compared me to Liz even though he’s having me fix her mistakes from June.” Steve sighs and anger tightens his voice as he responds.
“Ok, I’ll talk to him.”
“Thank you.” I hang up and take a deep breath, resisting my own urge to scream and punch a wall. I have paperwork to do.
EXT. RESTAURANT PARKING LOT – TAUNTON – NIGHT 33
“I’m done!” I crow jubilantly to Niko from the table I claimed in the back of his truck. I slap the last PO on the table and close the folder. “That’s the last one, I’m free!” I punch my fists in the air as he laughs at me from the liftgate. Smoke curls around his face from his cigarette and he takes another drag.
“And to celebrate, the food truck should be here in an hour or so.”
“Yes!! Now I get to distract everyone else from their jobs since mine is finally done! And I get free food!” I grin mischievously at him and he keeps laughing. “You’re going to regret giving me free food!”
“It’s just my job,” he grins back. “Speaking of which,” he looks over his shoulder to where his second in command is about to be overwhelmed at the crafty stand by the last wave of background actors who are still needed on set, “I should go help Ed.” I nod and pick up my loathsome folder of paperwork. “But hey,” he calls over his shoulder, “if the contract negotiations keep going the way they are now, people will be glad for a distraction from strike talk.”
“Well, I’m happy to be of service,” I reply with a mock bow. “I need to go make sure this gets sent back to the production office but I’ll be back!” We part ways for now and I look up at the sinking moon, knowing by the time we finally wrap and I can go home, the sun will have replaced it in the sky.
