Tom Hanks - Uncommon Type - Some Stories

With little else going on but car payments and gym workouts, Rory grew bored with Southern California, and took his yogurt- Kojak money to Utah for the ski season. When New Kojak finally aired, one of the several other producers on Cassandra happened to be watching and texted Willa Sax: Think I saw CR’s next bit o’ honey. A few days later, Rory got a call from his agency to get back to town because something huge was on deck, in the brew, cooking in the hopper.

The first time Rory met Willa Sax—who was crazy beautiful, beyond-real-life beautiful—was over cups of green tea in her offices in the Capitol Records Building on Vine Street in Hollywood. The home she shared with her venture capitalist husband was somewhere in the hills nearby. She could not have been a nicer person, chatting with Rory about art and raising horses. Rory knew very little about either. Willa changed the subject to Fiji. She had been to the islands to do research for the movie. She told Rory about the beauty of the night sky and the clarity of the water and the happy faces of the locals, especially during the traditional kava ceremonies that were held to welcome visitors. She had learned to surf there. The movie would shoot in Fiji for at least two weeks.

The meeting lasted a little over an hour, but before Rory was in his car and at a standstill in the afternoon traffic of the Hollywood freeway, his phone exploded with texts: WSaX Loved you!$$$$. Two weeks later he was officially cast as Caleb with a crazy payday of nearly half a million dollars, to be spread over three films, which could or could not be part of the Cassandra Rampart universe. The next time he saw Willa was at the studio for camera tests. A production assistant took Rory to her trailer. When he climbed up the steps wearing his torso-clinging Caleb Jackson surfing outfit, she sized up her no-name yet gorgeous costar and said, “Well, ain’t you hot shit!”

The start date of the movie was delayed for a few months as the script was rewritten, then pushed to after the new year so Willa could enjoy the holidays with her husband; they spent Christmas in a castle in Scotland. Rory’s first day playing Caleb Jackson was in late March on a soundstage in Budapest. Willa had been shooting for three weeks and had her own makeup trailer, so the two did not see each other until they were on the set. The scene called for them to make out in a shower, but the water was not hot enough to hiss out any real steam, so the Hungarian SPFX crew rigged the stall with a smoke machine. When Willa came to the stage in her bathrobe, her three security guards circled her chair. She asked Rory if the hotel was working out for him, then told him that now that she was married she never kissed on screen with an open mouth.

Over seven months, Rory shot only a few days a week—in Budapest, Mallorca, back in Budapest, in a stretch of desert in Morocco, then in Rio de Janeiro for a scene that called for Willa and Rory to run through the crowded streets of Carnival, a scene that took four days to prep and sixteen minutes to shoot. Rory himself shot a week in Shreveport, Louisiana, while Willa took time off with her husband in the Seychelles. They met up again for a day of additional running-through-Carnival scenes, but this time in New Orleans. Because some of the film financing came out of Germany, tax laws forced them to shoot one scene in Düsseldorf. They ran out of a building and jumped into a taxi—the extent of the Düsseldorf filming. After ten days of reshoots in Budapest, they had only the surfing scenes yet to do. They never did go to Fiji. Instead, Rory and Willa grabbed shots against a green screen at the exterior water tank in Malta, pretending to surf on SPFX gimbals as stagehands doused them with very cold water from dump tanks.

DAY 3

7:30—Grooming in room

8:00–9:00—Hotel Restaurant. Breakfast with contest winners. (Note: Eleanor Flintstone will join for coffee at 8:50.)

9:05–12:55—Principal TV interviews (12 minutes each)

13:00–13:20—Lunch in room. Room service menu to be provided.

13:20—Touch-Ups

13:25–16:25—Principal TV Interviews continue

BREAK

16:30–16:55—TV Interview “Le Showcase” (hosted by Rene Ladoux, a French icon of film criticism)

17:00–17:30—TV Interview with Petit Shoopi (Petit Shoopi is a puppet who will ask you to sing along with her. Song TBD.)

17:35–18:25—Join Eleanor Flintstone in Ballroom for TV Interview with Claire Brule for FTV 1 (this is France’s most widely watched Women’s Show)

18:30–19:00—Photo Shoot with Eleanor Flintstone for Le Figaro

19:05–19:55—Photo Shoot for Orphaned Pets Organization. (Note: There will be cats, dogs, birds, and reptiles.)

20:00—Transfer to Motorcade

20:30—Arrival at Jardins des Tuileries

20:30–21:00—Work Red Carpet Press Line, Interviews, Photo Call

21:05–22:00—Concert by popular French rapper (TBD)

22:05–22:30—Live Remarks to crowd (Note: you will introduce Eleanor Flintstone. See Irene for suggested remarks.)

22:35–22:45—Fireworks

22:50–23:00—French Paratroopers re-create Cassandra-Caleb drop into volcano caldera

23:05—French Air Force Flyby

23:10–23:30—Unveiling of CR3: DAH Holographic Billboard (Note: Crowd will be provided with holographic glasses upon arrival.)

23:35–24:15—Performance by popular French Pop Star (TBD). Eleanor Flintstone to proceed to Airport. Stage is cleared.

24:20 (Approx)—Screening begins.

You are free to stay for screening or return to hotel.

NOTE: TOMORROW WILL BE TRAVEL DAY TO SINGAPORE

French telephones do not ring. They go bleat-bleat, bleat-bleat, bleat-bleat . At 6:22 a.m., the sound is like having a barn animal in your hotel room. Rory had to stop that sound.

“Yeah?” The receiver felt like a toy up to his ear.

“Change of plans, punkin’.” Irene was on the phone. “You get to stay in bed.”

“Say what?” Rory was still a bit woozy, having taken advantage of the Hotel Meurice’s bar until just four hours ago.

“The schedule for today is in flux,” Irene said. “Go back to sleep.”

“Watch this.” Rory put the phone back in its cradle, rolled over, and was out like a glass-jawed boxer.

He woke up three hours later and stumbled into the sitting area of his hotel suite—good enough for Nazi officers in the day and just fine and dandy for Mrs. Thorpe’s only boy. The schedule for his Day 3 in Paris was on the desk beside the room service menu and a media packet on CASSANDRA RAMPART 3: DESTINY AT HAND. At 9:46, Rory was supposed to be giving TV interviews of twelve minutes each, but neither Irene nor anyone else had come to fetch him. Tomorrow he’d be flying business class on IndoAirWays to Singapore, so he ordered up a few café au laits and a bakery basket from room service.

He had spent very little time in any of the hotel rooms save for exhausted sleep and grooming, always by two women, one for makeup and one for hair, both ushered into the suite by Irene while Rory showered. Alone, in his underwear and sipping coffee and hot milk, Rory checked out the place.

The hotel had been recently renovated in Hipster-Millennial, which would have been a blow to those Nazi occupiers of long ago. A black screen was the TV. The remote for it was long, thin, heavy, and incomprehensible to any American. The lamps were all touch-controlled, but only if you knew where to touch them. Four bottles of Orangina drink were arranged neatly on the square coffee table, ironically next to four porcelain replicas of oranges. The sound system was a retro turntable with a collection of LPs by the Elvis of France, Johnny Hallyday, one record going all the way back to the 1950s. There were no books on the shelves, but there were three old typewriters—one keyboard was Russian, one French, and one English.