Guillaume, Her French Husband

Chapter 2

Guillaume

There was a long silence when Guillaume Laurent walked into the set of what was supposed to be his last production of the summer. It had been a long twelve weeks and the only thing he really wanted was to get the hell out of that set. Everything about the production was the complete opposite of what he had asked for. And to make things worse, he was more of a romantic flick kind of person and this was the first time he was working on a war film. And for the very first time too. It was all a little too different for him. After all, having grown up hearing all the stories about the French Revolution and the country’s participation in the Vietnam and Second World Wars, he was more than done with the whole idea of his share of war films. The one thing he was really looking forward to was getting to his audition for his kind of film. A perfect story about how love conquers all.

“So, what exactly is going on here?” he asked as he looked around. The set was a little too relaxed and he could not help but feel like there was something that everyone else should have been doing. He most definitely did not get why people were just standing around.

“Guillaume, thank God,” one of the crew members said as he walked towards him. “We have a problem.”

“A problem?” he echoed. “What kind of problem?”

“It’s the final scene.”

The man followed Guillaume as he made his way towards the refreshments table.

“What about the final scene?” Guillaume asked looking at the spread wondering if he felt more like a butter toasted bagel or a breakfast burrito.

“That is where we last see the female lead and we are wondering how she is supposed to go.”

Guillaume turned around and shook his head.

“How she is supposed to go?” he asked and the man nodded. “Well, what does the script say?”

The man pulled his clip board from under his arm and looked at it.

“Well…according to this, the woman stands in front of the young boy who has just been revealed as her son and she gets shot.”

Guillaume shrugged.

“What’s so hard about that?” he asked. “She gets shot protecting the boy. She falls and bleeds out while the boy looks on…really, I am not understanding what is so hard about that.” He turned back to the table and settled for a bagel before he got a couple of sausages on his plate.

“It’s the actress,” the crew member, Mark finally said.

“What about her?” Guillaume asked.

“Well, to be honest, she has just pulled a Charlie Sheen on us.”

Guillaume turned back around and bit into one of his sausages.

“A Charlie Sheen?” He shrugged. “Isn’t that the guy from Two and a Half Men?” he asked and Mark nodded.

“Well, yeah. And after being let go from the show, he was offered a comeback scene…something to redeem himself and be back in the Hollywood market but he wouldn’t take it because he wanted…” his voice trailed off when Guillaume looked at him.

“Will you just get to the point already?” he said and Mark sighed.

“She says the only way she gives in to the idea of dying on screen is if we guarantee her a major comeback in the next series of the film,” he explained.

“The next series of the film?” Guillaume asked. “What the hell does she think this is? Fu*king Godfather?”

Mark shrugged.

“I mean, where did she even get the idea of doing another series in the film?” Guillaume asked. “I mean, she gets the fact that this is all based on the Second World War, right? The end of the film is the end of the fu*king film.”

“We tried telling her but the head producer wanted a star for ratings,” Mark said. “Bet he didn’t see the whole diva act coming because it is here and she is doing it big too.”

Guillaume took a long deep breath and took another bite of his sausage.

“Get me a coffee. I’ll talk to her.”

He began walking out of the set and out to the trailers outside.

“This,” he thought as he took another bite of his sausage. “This is exactly why I don’t work with other people. It is a sh*tty affair any time anyone else comes into the mix.”

He was dreading the look on that actress’s face when she opened the door. Who knows what she might have been doing in her trailer? For all he knew, she might have been snorting blow like there was no tomorrow. But at the back of his mind, he knew that there was nothing a cast or crew member could ever do that would surprise him. Because after working on almost ten high profile films and a number of low budget ones, he had seen the worst of the worst at their very worst.

“Guillaume, darling,” Zoe, the main actress said when she opened the door. “Finally, someone who is actually worth my time.”

He looked at her in the shorter than short flimsy dress she had on that showed off almost every part of her. It was actually kind of hard not to look at her.

“Zoe,” he said as he got into her trailer. “I understand there is some kind of problem.”

“A kind of problem?” she asked in a more dramatic voice than he would have hoped for. “They are giving me some kind of sh*t ending…death. Really?”

“Well, that is how the script is. I mean…you did read the script, didn’t you?” he asked and she turned to look at him. The look in her eyes told him everything he needed to know. She had most definitely not read the script. She probably just jumped on the bandwagon because her self-appointed agent told her to. Because he saw how much he could make if she did actually get the part.

“This is going to be one of the best war films ever made…I mean, nothing beats the love of a mother right? And the character you are playing is one of the greatest roles ever. Right up there with Julia Roberts and the likes of Meryl Streep.”

“Well, none of them ever got killed off a production.”

Guillaume took a long deep breath and sighed.

“Actually, this is a film. A one off thing…not like the X-men franchise or anything because really, we have nothing to base a franchise on. We only have the short story the film is based on…A mere six thousand words. That’s the whole film and the actress dies in the end.”

His voice had a certain seriousness that she didn’t think he could ever master. He looked at her as she sat down and crossed one leg over the other showing even more of her thigh than he cared to see.

“You like what you see, Guillaume?” she asked in a soft voice. And he wanted to answer her so much. Tell her exactly where she could get off. She pulled her dress even higher up and bit her lower lip as she ran her fingers through her thick hair.