Wit and Wisdom
by Beth Broderick
I am not one hundred percent sure, but I believe it was 2006 when I got on a plane and headed overseas to shoot a horror movie (my one and only horror movie). I was the villain in a quite well-written and demanding role in what I thought was most likely a good script. I couldn’t read it. Not the whole thing anyway. Every time I got to a really harrowing moment I would have to put the script in a drawer in the kitchen. I could not sleep with it nearby. I couldn’t get through some of the more graphic scenes. My PTSD would not allow it, so I just focused on my part.
I had my hairdresser do a temporary brown rinse to hide my obviously well-tended highlights and asked her to trim my hair with her eyes closed. I wanted to make it look like I did my own hair with ordinary shears. My character lived off the grid; she was definitely not a glamour gal.
Before leaving for Romania, I had to meet with the special effects team to have a rubber replica of my head taken so they could make a believable version of it that could be cut off. Yes, the script called for it, and that was the plan. To cut off my head.
It’s a living.
This was achieved by running a breathing tube from my nose to the side of my neck, which was my only source of oxygen when they encased my noggin in goo that would take what felt like an eternity to harden up. Not for the claustrophobic, that procedure. I had to summon up some long-forgotten meditations to get through it. I made a vow to myself that I would get back to yoga class. They were a nice enough crew of folks and that made me hopeful that we would have a calm, happy set.
The movie was supposed to take place in Appalachia, and the Romanian countryside is a pretty good match for that. Labor is cheap, or it was then, and there were no pesky safety measures needed or union rules to follow, so a few brave souls had ventured over there to film. It was becoming a hot(ish) spot for Americans looking to shoot movies on the cheap. There was a studio of sorts just outside of Bucharest, but to describe it as rudimentary would be generous. I have heard the whole place has spiffed up quite a bit in the ensuing years.
When we arrived, the country was still reeling from the chaotic and ruthless rule of dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his equally brutal and ignorant wife, Elena. The pair systematically broke the economy, ransacked the country’s resources to build a useless palace, and crushed any and all opposition. Their foreign policy chafed even their Russian comrades, and Romania found itself growing increasingly poor and isolated. When the people took to the streets, Nicolae ordered the military to mow them down. The military obliged at first, but ultimately joined the people and arrested the Czar and his wife. A speedy trial was held, which was a mere formality because everyone wanted blood—their blood. It was not long before the two were marched out to face a firing squad.
This event was broadcast repeatedly in the wee hours of the night. At first, I found that appalling—the re-killing of the two of them. Two weeks in, after learning how horrific the tenure of the Ceaușescuses was, how much suffering they caused, and seeing the long, treacherous road the country was on to recovery, I sought it out. Like the people that lived there, I needed to reassure myself that those monsters were indeed dead.
BAD ACTORS. really bad.
The country welcomed us with wary arms. They needed money. They needed jobs. They did not particularly cotton to Americans but were in no position to argue with our presence. Originally a monarchy, Romania has historically had a rough go of things pretty much from its inception. Much like parts of Africa, which were pillaged by the Romans and Greeks as early as 200 B.C., its agricultural wealth has made it a target of invasion time and time again. When the last of the kingdom fell to Russian overlords, it became, for a time, a territory: The People’s Republic of Romania. This is where Nicolae and Elena came into the picture.
The newly Communist authorities tore down many of the individual homes and beautiful buildings that had once given Bucharest the moniker of “The Paris of the East” The place was subsequently gray and studded with worn and charmless cinderblock housing, which is where folks had been directed to live. This meant that many had to leave their pets outside as they were no longer allowed to have animals in their homes.
Strays were everywhere. Cats, dogs, many of which were clearly descendants of purebred house pets at one time, now roamed the streets desperate to survive.
We were housed in a hotel that was surrounded by construction on three sides. The work went on day and night. No rules about that either, I guess. The remaining view faced the headquarters of the Romanian version of the CIA, the grounds of which were guarded by heavily armed men in uniforms. It was a grim locale. The hotel was decent, but the noise from the builders was off the charts and seemed never to cease.
The first night that the actors were all assembled in the city, the producers invited us out to dinner. The restaurant was dimly lit and the menu limited, but the wine and cocktails flowed, as did the animated conversation. The two lead actors were very excited to be, well, the lead actors, and the rest of us were curious about what the experience would be like. When the producers left that night without paying the bill, we got a pretty good inkling of how things were going to go. The four top-of-the-call-sheet actors, which included me, picked up the tab and exchanged concerned glances.
The day that the special effects team arrived and loaded the tools of their trade into the hotel room, one of them fielded a call from his girlfriend.
“Go outside and take some pictures.” she instructed him. “I want to see where you are.”
Their room was facing the “CIA” headquarters, and he dutifully stepped out onto the balcony and snapped away. In mere moments, there was a pounding on their door. He opened it to find men carrying automatic rifles. The armed men burst into his room, which, of course, sported an array of severed limbs, bloodied fake heads, and such. The team was whisked away to headquarters for questioning. The production company had to go and explain what we were doing and why they possessed all of these gruesome artifacts.
It was a rough go. I lost a significant amount of weight because, firstly, the food was not very good, and secondly, there were so many starving creatures on the streets that I wrapped up anything they gave me to take to the poor animals. The restaurant at the hotel had a decent breakfast buffet, but the waiters refused to serve me as I was a female peer and not worthy of such deference. I got my own coffee every day and ate a few bites while surreptitiously stowing away a few sausages for the critters.
There were lots of children around, not just the clever Roma kids who were expert beggars and of whom one had to be wary. There were others. I kept single dollar bills on my person so that I could give them out to the kids. I stowed them in pockets and both sides of my bra. If a woman opened her purse, she ran the risk of being jumped by a dozen nine-year-olds who wanted her cash. The Roma kids were tough and treacherous, but they had family. There were other children with none. They were living on their own in gangs, some of them as young as four or five. They huddled under stairwells and cadged whatever sustenance they could find. I gave as much as I could … to as many as I could.
My heart broke every day in that place. None of this was helped by the fact that it was beginning to be clear that something was deeply wrong in my marriage. I was supporting us while he pursued a law degree. I thought we were working toward the future as a team, but it did not bring us closer together. When he started school, our very long relationship began to unravel.
“I hate your husband,” The fellow playing my movie husband declared one day after overhearing one of our conversations.
“He did not ask about you once. You are having a helluva hard time over here, and all he did was complain. I hate that guy.”
I, of course, didn’t hate him, but I knew something was wrong and that he was keeping secrets. The marriage-killing kind.
The movie wore on. A trip to Transylvania to shoot the mountain sequences was poorly planned and arduous. The young man assigned to drive us was exhausted, having put in 16 hours the day before and slept only three. His driving was so erratic that the lead actor finally insisted he pull over, and we put the kid in the back seat while he took the wheel. After the first day of shooting for about 14 hours, we returned to the hotel to find that they did not serve food past 8 PM. We were in the middle of nowhere, and no one in production had thought it through, so everyone went to bed hungry that night. The place was beautiful, but the circumstances were not.
Back in Bucharest, I met a young puppy who lived in the construction site next door. I saw him on the street one day playing with an old boot one of the workers had given him as a toy. He tossed it in the air and ran after it with joy. His buoyant spirit lifted my sagging one. He was about four months old, filthy, and one side of his coat was mottled with green paint. He had clearly lain on the side of a freshly coated fence. He waited for me to come down in the morning and was outside the hotel when I arrived each night back from set. He was a sweetheart, would bury himself in my chest, and look lovingly into my eyes. I fell head over heels for him.
The pup was a source of joy and also deep anxiety, as hotel rules forced me to leave him on the streets each night. This led to endless worrying on my part and the imagining of all sorts of terrible things befalling him. My PTSD was in full swing. I was getting through filming in spite of it, but the hyper-sensitivity and negative ideation was wearing me down. I did not sleep well and was so sad that when I had a day off, I spent the bulk of it sobbing on the hotel sofa surrounded by the cacophony of the endless ongoing construction.
“Where are you? Are you outside?” Michael asked when he called to check on me. I have known him since I was eighteen, which was an eternity ago. He joined our core group from high school not long after we graduated and became a part of that tight-knit family of friends.
“I‘m inside my hotel room. It’s this loud all the time.” I replied, barely audible.
“Honey, you don’t sound good. Are you okay?”
“No,” I said, then burst into tears. “I don’t think I am okay anymore.”
“What’s going on?”
I told him about the kids and the animals and the CIA and the endless construction and the puppy, how hard it was for me to cope. My mind whirred with brutal memories and terrible predictions. He listened patiently and said everything he could think of to soothe me, made a gazillion suggestions of how I could cheer myself. It helped, but after we hung up, I grew despondent again.
The next day, Michael called back.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“I am on set.”
“Yes, I figured that. Where is the set? What is it called?
I told him where we were and asked why he wanted to know.
“Because I am here, honey. I just landed and I am on the way.”
To be continued …
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"Rescue Me" The series. Chapter Five: "Headless in Romania"