Amy Brashear - The Incredible True Story of the Making of the Eve of Destruction

“Are you Han in this situation?” Terrence asked with a smirk.

“Oh, goodness, no,” Max said. “I’m more like Chewbacca.”

I shook my head. “You’re C3PO and you know it.”

Max gave me a death glare.

Terrence shrugged. “At least nobody here said I was Lando Calrissian.” [55] The smooth-talking friend of Han Solo played by Billy Dee Williams, the one black character in all three films.

We shouldn’t have been so excited to see Astrid Ogilvie die. But we were. Beyond excited, I’d say. It made the hassle of coming to the fairgrounds and sitting through take after take so much more bearable. It had only been a couple of days, and still I knew I never wanted to be an actress—even if it meant being a world-famous millionaire.

I found her sitting on a cloth chair with her name on it. It was facing away from the action. She was reading a copy of Vogue. It was as thick as a telephone book. I tapped her on the shoulder.

“Astrid, I hear you’re dying today,” I said.

“Why, yes, I am,” she said, smacking her lips and not looking up.

“That’s nice,” I said.

“It is, isn’t it?” she chirped.

“Have a nice death.”

“Thanks, love. You too. Now, piss off.”

The fire department was there in case it got out of hand.

It got so real so fast. Astrid’s stunt double got injured in a trial run, which meant that the scene had to be cut, but that wouldn’t do for Mr. Edman. He had his heart set on killing Astrid Ogilvie—I mean Martha Wells. He wanted everything as realistic as possible.

“I’m not afraid,” Astrid said over and over to the director.

The producers were not going to be happy. All the ways it could go wrong. Her suit failing and her dying was another. But it was decided. Astrid Ogilvie would be set on fire.

“You’re insane,” Freddy said as we watched her get fitted into her fire-resistant suit.

“I know, but I’m kind of being bamboozled into it,” she said.

“You can say no,” I told her.

“Unlikely.”

Dylan was going to do two shots. One with her in her regular clothes and then in the fire-resistant suit, which was, as the suit was ironically named, set on fire. In production they’d mesh them together—or so they said.

Astrid was going to die, all right.

She was looking at herself in one of those handheld mirrors, practicing her lines. She must have been a reincarnated silent movie actress because all her facial expressions and gestures with her hands were so overexaggerated.

“Stare much?” she asked, catching me looking at her.

I looked away.

“Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha,” Astrid said, holding her abdomen.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

She buzzed her lips and then scrunched her face up tight.

“If you make a face like that, it’ll stay that way,” I said.

“Unlikely,” she said.

“I warned you.”

“As I was in Arkansas I saw a saw that could saw any saw I ever saw saw. If you happen to be in Arkansas and see a saw that can out-saw the saw I saw saw I’d like to see the saw you saw saw,” she repeated, looking into her handheld mirror.

“We all do this,” Owen said as he walked up to me. “It helps us say the words in the script better.”

“It’s a little disturbing,” I told him.

He just smiled.

Astrid walked away, still looking in her handheld mirror. “You know New York, you need New York, you know you need unique New York.”

It was downright cold. We were pretending that it was June even though in reality it was November turning into December. That was the thing with Arkansas weather; it had two settings: hellfire and hypothermia. The saying “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes” —well, it was true. We had been known to go through all four seasons in one day.

“All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up,” Mayor Hershott said, walking up beside me. “Laura, how are you?”

“I’m good,” I said.

He was dressed in a tweed jacket, tweed vest, tweed pants, tweed bow tie, and glasses, and his hair was combed to the side. I guessed tweed was popular in 1954.

“Betty bought a bit of butter, but she found the butter bitter, so Betty bought a bit of better butter to make the bitter butter better,” said Mayor Hershott.

“Astrid was talking weird too—”

“Vocal exercises,” he said. “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where’s the peck of pickled peppers that Peter Piper picked?”

The director was standing next to the cinematographer, and they were arguing. The director would yell, and then the cinematographer would yell, and then the director would stomp his foot, and then the cinematographer would stomp his foot. The cinematographer walked away cursing and raising his arms in frustration, leaving the director biting his fingernails.

“Is everything okay?” I asked. “Everyone seems tense.”

“Well, they are—the explosives aren’t here yet, and the big blast is next Thursday,” Tyson said, walking up beside me.

“There’s actually going to be a bomb going off?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said. “A big one.”

“Is that smart?” I asked.

“What could go wrong?”

“Are you asking? Because a lot,” I said.

He walked away, pulling his sunglasses down from the top of his head.

“The light is great. We need to get going,” yelled the guy with a clipboard.

The director threw his arms in the air and decided it would do.

That was encouragement.

The set safety people were talking to Astrid. I was hoping they were talking some sense into her, but sadly no. She wanted to do this. Even though her stunt double was being treated with likely third-degree burns.

“Okay, quiet on the set. Quiet on the set,” the director said.

“Action!” The guy who held the clapperboard closed it with a clap.

“NO! STOP,” the director yelled. Everyone froze. “She’s got red lipstick on her teeth. FIX!”

Kitty came running with a tissue, and rubbed and rubbed Astrid’s two front teeth. Kitty reapplied the lipstick and made her smile.

“Okay, Quiet on the set. Quiet on the set,” the director yelled again.

“This is going to be the best thing since sliced bread,” Kitty whispered.

“Astrid’s going to kick the bucket right before our eyes,” Raymond said in a whisper.

I looked over to Freddy and Owen. They too were excited to watch fire engulf Astrid. It was Christmas morning for these people.

“And action!”

It’s a calm and sunny Monday morning. The Wells family goes to the festivities for Operation Alert. Martha stands toward the back with her mother, father, and brother Willie. Mayor Forte informs the crowd of the public service announcement set forth by Civil Defense.

“The Reds will not let Pikesville live,” says Mayor Forte. “You are instructed to go to your local shelters until the formidable threat has concluded.”

Martha grabs Willie’s hand as the sirens sound an air raid alert. The citizens of Pikesville talk and laugh as they slowly move to their designated fallout locations… paying no attention to the sleek missiles rising over the town of Pikesville.

At first, people think: airplanes dropping leaflets—This Is A Bomb!—a good old-fashioned propaganda technique to scare them.

Flash, Heat, and a Deafening Boom, and a Blast Wave that knocks people off their feet.

The sudden and overwhelming force sweeps down Main Street. People run. But there’s no time to hide.