Mise en scène

or, an isolated scene

Wilson Burke’s back is to the door. It’s bad practice, he knows—the kind of thing his father told him off for as a child—but it's not like it matters down here. There's only the three of them. Four, he corrects himself. There's only the four of them. Probably no-one else on the whole floor. That’s not true, of course. There are others, but he shuts that thought down.

He's looking at the man in the lab coat, one Lloyd Samson, hands in his pockets and fingers fumbling with something. He's a fidgeter, Burke’s come to realise. Hands always busy. Burke's got little time for Samson, has far more time for Marie. Marie with her navy suit and pressed white shirt. Marie with her small and perfectly round peaks hidden under her shirt that taunt him when she stands up straight. Marie with her goddamned beautiful hair.

Samson’s hands have emerged from his pockets and are now playing with the cuffs of his labcoat, popping and unpopping the metal studs that do up the sleeves. He looks to Burke, stops what he's doing.

“It's not in the correct condition for dissection,” he says.

Lloyd’s lips are wet and thick and Burke thinks of a story he read as a teenager, some weird tale about fish people who inhabited a coastal town. He can't remember the name of the story, can't even remember the author, but he sure as shit remembers those fish people with their thick, wet lips. Lloyd Samson would fit right in, yessir he would.

Burke suppresses a wince, knows he's gotten distracted.

“What do you mean?” Burke says, finding his words.

“What I mean,” says Samson, fiddling still with the pop-studs on his cuffs, “is exactly that. The body,” and here he points toward the corpse, as though Burke has no knowledge of what they’re actually talking about, “is not in the correct condition for dissection.”

Burke rolls his eyes, turns to Marie. “Translate for this idiot, please.”

Marie steps around the table and tugs on Burke’s coat, pulling him to one side. She speaks in a whisper, as though afraid Samson might hear. Burke wishes she'd pull him a little closer. Just a little. If he were closer he could smell her hair. Maybe touch it.

“What Lloyd means is that the body can't be cut.” She glances back briefly to the corpse atop the autopsy table, covered in a white sheet. “The skin seems too tough.”

“Then get a sharper blade,” Burke hisses.

Marie sighs, the kind of noise Burke imagines she makes each night when waking up alone. “The scalpels are sharp,” she says. “They'd cut through leather.”

Burke ignores her words and moves to the table, picking up the scalpel from the little kidney-shaped tray. He holds the scalpel in one hand and with the other lifts the sheet, exposing the corpse’s feet. They are a dull grey, like food that has decomposed and become covered in mould. He pushes the blade into the skin. Or he tries to, at least. The scalpel does nothing, the skin resisting his attempts. He may as well be using a sock as a screwdriver. Annoyed, he places the scalpel next to the foot, that slab of meat with its weird grey tinge. The blade makes a metallic clank on the autopsy table.

“Satisfied?”

It’s Marie who speaks. Burke turns around and sees her with her arms across her chest, hiding her pert little breasts. Her eyes are wide, expectant, waiting for him to speak.

He ignores her question, asks his own: “Well?”

Marie drops her arms. “Well what?”

“Well what does it fucking mean? A body that can't be cut open!” He can feel the temper rising inside and does nothing to suppress it. Let it come, he thinks. Let it come.

Samson, who all this time has been leaning against the wall and wearing an expression Burke labels as indifferent, starts to open his mouth, but Burke cuts him off.

“No, not you. I don’t want your words. I want hers.” He stabs a finger in the air at Marie.

Marie fumbles. Her mouth moves as if she's about to say something. Nothing comes out. It’s as though she can’t remember what she's meant to—

“CUT!” the director shouts.

Burke—real name James McColl—sighs, closes his eyes for a brief moment, then spins on his heels to glare at Devin who’s sitting with his head in his hands behind the monitor. You’re not Fincher, he wants to say. We don’t need to do this so many times, you two-bit wannabe. But he holds his tongue. Burke wouldn’t, he knows, but for a few moments he releases himself from that character.

“Was it too close? Did I pull you too close?”

“What?” James asks. It’s Sarah, timid in a way that’s so different from her character of Marie that it's jarring. His brain catches up with what she meant. “No. No, it’s fine,” he says. “The distance is fine.”

Suddenly there’s a powder brush in his face, the makeup artist standing between him and Sarah. As he waits for whatever shine and sweat to be removed from his forehead, he looks over at the corpse. He doesn’t even know the guy’s name, he’s just some extra they’ve rolled in—literally, he notes, amusing himself—for what feels now like a hundred takes. Poor guy. He’s stirring under his sheet, repositioning himself. James can see the hump of his chest rise and fall and wonders at how much the guy has to hold his breath during each take.

“So are we going again?” James shouts, the powder brush now gone, and with it the makeup artist. Devin ignores him. He’s discussing something with someone from the production team. There’s too many of them, James thinks. Far too many. They’re like flies, crowding over a pile of shit.

“Whatever,” he mouths in silence, then looks around. Sarah’s back at her mark, dispelling her timidity and reassuming the confident skin of Marie. He chews his lip then puts his hands in his coat pockets, wishing there was a cigarette to be found. Christ he’d love a cigarette. He glances to the clock. 11 a.m. Not even close to lunch.

“Are we going again?” he tries once more. “Anyone? No?”

They all ignore him, continue their buzzing activity from behind the camera. He walks back over to his own mark, if only for something to do.

Eventually—an amount of time James cannot measure under the bright lights, the sort of non-time that he thinks is like in a casino, except here there's nothing to win—the first AD tells them to be in position. There's a flurry of activity and soon enough silence descends on the room, punctuated only by the clapper and the sound of Devin's voice:

“And ACTION!”

*

The camera focuses on Wilson Burke. His back is to the door. The focus shifts to Lloyd Samson, standing there with his hands in his white labcoat pocket. He’s fiddling with something, but the camera can’t see what.

“It's not in the correct condition for dissection.”

The focus pulls to Burke.

“What do you mean?”

Now back to Samson.

“What I mean is exactly that. The body,” and the camera sees Samson point to the corpse next to him, “is not in the correct conditions for dissection.”

Back to Burke, who turns his head slightly.

“Translate for this idiot, please.”

The camera pans, focuses on Marie’s face and her navy blue suit. She takes a step toward Burke, the camera maintaining its precise focus. She grabs the sleeve of Burke’s coat and pulls him toward her. Their heads come close together.

“The body,” she says, glancing at the corpse that remains out of focus, “can't be cut. The skin seems too tough.”

“Then get a sharper blade,” Burke hisses and breaks free from her grasp, the camera following him as he moves to grab the prop scalpel.

“LINE! Wait for the fucking line, James! Jesus.”

The camera sees James McColl whirl on his heels. The cheeks of his face are flushed red, his brow furrowed, and he—

—the camera stops recording.

---

Photo by Agence Olloweb on Unsplash

Something different (and late!) this week, inspired by the lengths actors go to to embody their characters and think about their backstory and emotions that run silent to their lines. I see Josephine do this with scripts all the times, scribbling character notes and feelings in the margins. There's a lot of creativity and skill in that.