Candy Everybody Wants. Josh Kilmer-Purcell
of the pizza rolls that had just come out of the oven and tossed it into the air. It arced perfectly and plummeted square into his open mouth. Jayson had been practicing that trick for years with an appalling success rate. Trey seemed to master everything he tried.
‘Holy fuck!’ Trey yelped, opening his mouth–half spitting and half dribbling the steaming saucy puff out of his mouth onto the floor. ‘These things are like a million degrees!’
‘I just took them out of the oven,’ Jayson apologized, suddenly worried that Trey might have burned his lips. Trey and he had four kissing scenes to film.
‘What’s in the bag? Bibles?’ Jayson joked, nodding at the heavy case Trey had slung over his shoulder.
‘Check this out.’ Trey swung the case down onto the floor. Unzipping it, he pulled out his father’s unwieldy new beta camcorder.
‘Ohmigod!’ Jayson squealed, instantly very conscious of the fact he was squealing. ‘How’d you get that out of the house?’
‘He snuck it,’ Tara explained. Jayson had originally wanted to tape the entire series on the Wernermeiers’ new beta camcorder since it could also record sound. But Tom Wernermeier felt that the tapes were too expensive to use for ‘playing around.’
‘I can’t believe it! This is so perfect. I’m going to go change into costume. Who has the script? What am I wearing?’
‘Worst things first, JayJay,’ Tara said randomly opening the cupboards next to the pantry. ‘Where’s Toni keep the booze?’
Jayson opened the cabinet behind him.
‘Bourbon or scotch?’ he asked.
‘Mix mine together,’ Tara said.
‘Me too.’ Trey answered.
Jayson poured each of them a full, tall McDonald’s glass with no ice. Jayson took every opportunity to display to the world that he’d ‘collected all six’ McDonaldland glasses.
‘To being famous!’ Jayson raised his Hamburglar glass. Tara’s and Trey’s Grimace and Mayor McCheese glasses clinked against his.
‘And rich!’ Trey confirmed.
‘And bombed!’ Tara chimed in.
Even at such an early age, it was easy to distinguish between their goals in life. Tara would forever be satisfied with simply having a good time, no matter where she was or whom she was with. Jayson pictured her future as one long keg party like the ones the highschoolers held out by Highway 16. Trey would always be happy as long as he had whatever the latest toy was–the latest Atari game. Or a windsurfer. Jayson predicted that as Trey aged, he would start collecting bigger toys like Corvettes and stereo systems.
Jayson’s only goal, of course, was to be on TV. His first brush with fame was in kindergarten, when a traveling Frisbee troupe made up of ex-hippies came to his elementary school. During their hour-long extravaganza Jayson sat Indian-style on the gymnasium floor, enthralled by watching them use their flying discs to illustrate the safest way to cross a street and how to avoid creepy old men. This troupe of itinerant and somewhat hygienically challenged minstrels seemed to lead a far more exciting life than anyone else Jayson had ever met. Traveling around the country. Performing in front of mobs of cheering kids. For the first time Jayson felt he was a part of a ‘live studio audience’ and it awoke in him an all-encompassing yearning to be clapped at himself. After the show, Jayson was the only kid to hang behind and ask for the groups’ autographs. He stuck around after school to wave goodbye as they drove on to the next school district in their battered VW van.
Jayson, Tara, and Trey each took a long swig of the bourbon/scotch mixture. It was vaguely sweet, and mostly bitter, like sucking on a butterscotch hard candy that had a lighter fluid center. The trio had drunk Toni’s booze before, but always in furtive little sips straight from the bottle while Toni was working in her studio. Tara and Trey’s parents didn’t drink, of course.
Now the trio had an endless open bar weekend in front of them.
‘That’s good stuff,’ Tara gasped, gravel-voiced after her first swallow.
‘You sound like Helen Lawson on Match Game 76,’ Jayson giggled.
‘Let’s start shooting before it gets dark,’ Trey said, hoisting the bulky camcorder with his free hand. He’d been trying since Christmas to get his father to let him play with the camera, and now that he had it he wasn’t going to waste a minute–even if it meant kissing Jayson again.
‘As you’ve read, the Martini Shot–that means “final shot” in Hollywood terms,’ Jayson explained, ‘is a catfight between Amethyst Carrington and Christina.’ Both roles were played by Jayson, so it would be a complicated effort. Without any editing facilities, the scene was a technical nightmare–requiring multiple costume changes, extreme close-ups, and body doubles played by Tara. ‘I’ll go get the costumes.’
Tara and Trey went out into the backyard to pick the location, and Jayson went through the upstairs walk-in closet pulling out his dead grandmother’s mink coat and a taupe ultrasuede wrap dress which Toni once wore to a singles mixer at the V.F.W. From the top shelf, Jayson pulled down Toni’s old platinum Lite n’ Airy Eva Gabor wig, and an even older Milady II brunette cropped wig.
Stopping in the bathroom on his way back downstairs, he scooped up a handful of eyeliner pencils, compacts, and lipsticks from the pickup stick-like tangle on the back of the toilet. Now that Toni was single again, the makeup supplies had reappeared.
‘You okay Willie boy?’ he shouted as he passed Willie’s locked bedroom door.
‘Yeah. I need a snack,’ came the voice from the other side, barely audible over the canned laughter of a Love Boat episode.
‘No snacks after six, buddy,’ Jayson replied. ‘I’m sorry. We’ll have a nice breakfast tomorrow. I promise, buddy.’
‘Okay,’ came the sullen reply from the other side of the door.
Tara and Trey were studying the buttons on the camera when Jayson appeared at the sliding glass door in the mink coat and Milady II wig.
‘I’m going to begin the scene over here,’ Jayson said, stepping into the puddle of remaining sunlight by the edge of the rusty swing set. ‘Shoot me from below.’
Trey knelt in the muddy patch at the bottom of the slide. ‘Okay. Ready when you are.’
‘And…action!’ Jayson called, instantly slipping into Amethyst Carrington’s cold character.
AMETHYST CARRINGTON: Miss Belle, there’s no way in HELL that you’re going to poison J.B. against me and our son! I’m not leaving NorthFork Farms until I’m CARRIED OUT IN A COFFIN!
Trey clicked the camera off after Jayson finished his line. Jayson had to quickly change into Miss Belle’s costume. Filming the dialogue between two different characters who were both played by Jayson would be a miracle of cinematography–if they could pull it off. Jayson rushed over to the swing set where he’d stashed Miss Belle’s costume and began switching into the platinum wig and taupe wrap dress. There was no time to change makeup in this scene. The viewing public would just have to accept that Miss Belle and Amethyst Carrington had similar tastes in cosmetics.
Jayson rushed back to his mark. The sun was slipping fast.
MISS BELLE: Well then, call up the funeral home. Amethyst Carrington, ’cause you need to get measured! Take this!
Jayson threw the tumbler of Tab he was holding ‘off screen’ at the invisible Amethyst Carrington. This was meant to instigate the catfight between the two characters Jayson was playing.
With all the complications, the entire scene took nearly an hour and a half to shoot as Jayson repeatedly changed back and forth between Amethyst Carrington and Miss Belle. Sometimes Tara–shot from the back–acted as a stunt double for the actual catfighting. It was exhausting,