The Family Fang: A Novel Read Free

she said. “I have some advice,” he said. “What I would do is think of the situation in such a way that you weren’t an actress being asked to take off her top, but rather an actress playing an actress being asked to take off her top.”
    “Okay,” she said, resisting the urge to punch him into unconsciousness.
    “See,” he continued, “it adds that extra layer of unreality that I think will actually make for a more complicated and interesting performance.”
    Before she could respond, the first assistant director, shooting schedule in hand, walked over to them. “How are we doing vis-à-vis you doing this next shot without a shirt on?” he asked her.
    “Not happening,” Annie said.
    “Well, that’s disappointing,” he responded.
    “I’ll be in my trailer,” she said.
    “Waiting on talent,” the AD shouted as Annie walked off the set.
    T he worst movie she’d ever been a part of, one of her first roles, was called Pie in the Sky When You Die, about a private detective who investigates a murder at a pie-eating contest during the county fair. When she read the script, she had assumed it was a comedy, and was shocked to learn that, with lines like “I guess I’ll be the one eating humble pie” and “You’ll find that I’m not as easy as pie” it was actually a serious crime drama. “It’s like Murder on the Orient Express, ” the screenwriter told Annie during a read-through, “but instead of a train, it’s got pie.”
    On the first day of shooting, one of the lead actors got food poisoning during the pie-eating contest and dropped out of the movie. A pig from the petting zoo broke out of its pen and destroyed a good deal of the recording equipment. Fifteen takes of a particularly difficult scene were shot with a camera that had no film in it. For Annie, it was a bizarre, unreal experience, watching something fall apart as you touched it. Halfway through the movie, the director told Annie that she would need to wear contacts that changed her blue eyes to green. “This movie needs flashes of green, something to catch the viewer’s eye,” he told her. “But we’re halfway into the movie,” Annie said. “Right,” the director replied. “We’re only halfway into the movie.”
    One of Annie’s costars was Raven Kelly, who had been a femme fatale in several classic noir movies. On the set, Raven, seventy years old, never seemed to consult the script, did crossword puzzles during rehearsals, and stole every single scene. While they were side by side getting their makeup done, Annie asked her how she could stand working on this movie. “It’s a job,” Raven had said. “I do what will pay, whatever it is. You do your best, but sometimes the movie just isn’t very good. No big loss. Still pays. I never understood artists, and I couldn’t care less about craft and method and all that stuff. You stand where they tell you to stand, say your lines, and go home. It’s just acting.” The makeup artists continued to apply makeup so that Annie appeared younger and Raven appeared older. “But do you enjoy it?” Annie asked. Raven stared at Annie’s reflection in the mirror. “I don’t hate it,” Raven said. “You spend enough time with anything, that’s all you can really ask for.”
    B ack in her trailer, the blinds closed, the sound of white noise hissing from a stress box, Annie sat on the sofa and closed her eyes. With each deep, measured breath, she imagined that various parts of her body were slowly going numb, from her fingers to her hand to her wrist to her elbow to her shoulder, until she was as close to dead as she could be. It was an old Fang family technique employed before doing something disastrous. You pretended to be dead and when you came out of it, nothing, no matter how dire, seemed important. She remembered the four of them sitting silently in the van as they each died and came back to life, those brief minutes before they threw open the doors and pressed themselves