Here is this weeks draft. Join the fun here
I wanted to add more but wont have more time to turn it around. As it stands there isn't enough of a central conceit to call this a story but I wont have time to do anymore this week.
Prompts:
Option 1: nervous
Option 2: Ade saves the day
Ade Saves the Day!
“Cut!” The director shouted, throwing his hands into the air. “What the hell was that? You call that acting? This isn’t Shakespeare, for Christ’s sake. It’s a fucking soda commercial.” Glenn Bagolini, a once-famous but now an obscurely washed-up Italian director flown in from LA, had lost his patience on the third take. They’d just ruined their fifth. He rubbed his balding head, sweating under the bright lighting he’d painstakingly setup.
“I’m just nervous, boss. Sorry.” Christy Breuning, the pretty little thing he’d brought on after she’d paid her way, stared down at the ground, gripping the edges of her short skirt.
“All you gotta do is say the words. Ade saves the day! That’s it.”
“Can we just replace her with someone else?” Martin Hedley, the other lead, spoke out, lifting his zombie mask, still holding the fake knife in his right hand. “This is getting ridiculous.” He turned to Christy. “You just scream and before I stab you in the throat, hold up the Speedade bottle and say the line. It’s not rocket science. No wonder you didn’t make it in LA.” He glanced around the warehouse, confirming his critique with all the others. The silence spoke the truth.
Christy, lower lip quivering, broke out into tears and ran off. Glenn Bagolini, rubbing his eyes, muttered under his breath. “Oh for Christ’s sake.” He paused, trying to breathe and slow down his heart, chugging and pounding away for 50 years of cigarettes and failure. “Everybody, take ten.” He exited the warehouse to the trailer, a single shared between the other five actors (all dressed as monsters for the horror commercial) and entered without knocking.
“Go away.”
“Christy. I swear to god. You did well enough to get this gig but I can’t act for you. You want to make it in Hollywood? You gotta get beyond this little girl shirt right away.”
“I don’t know. I just can’t speak. The moment that camera goes on…”
Glenn lit a cigarette. “Let me say this more clearly, darling, so you can understand. I’m going to fire you if you can’t, in the next and final take, say the line. I’m going to fire you and throw you out like dirt. I don’t care what you did to get here. I don’t care what your future is going to be like. I don’t care what you’re going to be in debt for. You’re gone. So do what you gotta do to say the line and say the fucking line, kid.”
He stomped out of the trailer, back into the warehouse. The smoke machine was still running and churning out fog and the lights blared down on him and his head was sweaty and he lit another cigarette and thought about how he got here. Making a third-rate commercial for a sports drink company in some abandoned warehouse in Boston, working with the worst actors he’d ever seen in his life.
Christy walked back on set, the damsel in distress. Surrounded by ghouls and killers from 80s and 90s grindhouse, she laid back on the table. Glenn called it.
Action.
She began screaming. He felt a tick in his chest.
The monsters, Frankenstein, Werewolf, zombies all surrounded her, ready to devour and murder her.
The tick grew to a burning flame in his chest. Glenn stared through the screen on the camera. It was time for her line.
They zoomed in. She knelt forward, holding up the drink.
Moment of glory?
“When life’s got you in a worry, Speed-Ade saves the duh-duh-duh-day!”
Glenn breathed out in fury and the breath grew into a growl then a roar then he was standing on both feet screaming into the air and waving his fists, fiery hot air bellowing out like furnace. He saw white, the white hot heat of anger and he tried to say “cut” but the words couldn’t come. His tongue wiggled but no words came. Then the crew was staring at him and he felt his chest tighten and he fell forward, knocking over the camera and hitting the cold ground of the warehouse as his heart gave out.
“Saves the day,” he repeated as the heart attack grew in severity. “Saves the fucking day. It’s not hard. Damn it, it’s not hard.”
The cast and crew stood, stunned and mouth open in shock as he died. Christy was the only one to perform CPR and save his life.
Wow. Lovely story. Finally it was Christy that saved the day