Saturday, December 7, 2013

My Time at Temple Studios, Part 3

Show #3 
Saturday, September 14: 5 pm

All through the day, I was replaying the first two shows in my head, and one thought kept popping up: “Hey, remember how you were going to follow Stanford way back during that first loop, and you didn't? Yeah. You should do something about that.” Not to mention his connection to Romola, which made him all the more fascinating. I had to see just what kind of monster he really was. Thus was born my plan: I would exit in the basement and latch on to Stanford at the first opportunity. I wasn't sure where he would be, but I knew it wouldn't be too long before the initiation, and I could grab him then.

We queued up early, around 4:25, and were the first ones through the red shutters, but somehow, still wound up behind a young couple in the lift queue. One member of said couple looked awfully familiar, and after several minutes, I concluded that she looked an awful lot like the Drugstore Girl from the end of the previous night (Miranda Mac Letten). Before I could ask her, though, we were sent into the maze. As I had done during the first show, I made sure I was the last one on the lift, but I stood too far to the side. The lift operator released just three people into the basement, and I was not one of them. Stymied! Once I was let outside the town, I made a beeline for the first stairwell I could find and booked it down to the basement. There, I found Stanford (Sam Booth, as usual) standing in the room with the checkerboard floor, staring motionless at the stage where I had first seen him. There were three other people in the room – the lucky few who got off first, including Miranda and her companion. Suddenly, Stanford grabbed the third person's hand and took her off to a 1:1. Ah, if only I had gotten there sooner. Still, my plan was not to get a 1:1, it was to see Stanford's loop - so I waited around for the initiation, hoping to follow him after that.

The next scene after the initiation was the scene with Romola, played by Sonya Cullingford - who I immediately rejected, mentally. All wrong for Romola. Too tall. Too pretty. But she played the part with such delicacy, and more importantly, such fragility, that by the end of the scene, I had completely reversed my opinion. Over the course of five minutes, she went from an also-ran to the ideal incarnation.

Then came the rolling desk dance, another of my favorite bits (I have many), where I saw that the purpose of Romola's package and the source of the magic goblet in the orgy were one and the same. Stanford took a sip from the goblet, set it back on the table, and collapsed on the floor. Seemingly in great pain, he motioned me over and I leaned down, slightly, to hear what he had to say – instead of talking, though, he grabbed the back of my head and pulled me sharply to the ground. Then he spoke.

“You are the camera. Record everything. I'm going to blow this whole thing sky high.” Each word was spat out as if it took every ounce of strength in him. I was already doing my best to comply. After he let me go, Alice and the PA came in and pulled him into his motorized wheelchair, and the second they let him go, the Pink Room music started up (love the timing of that moment). The two of us wound up leaving the orgy quite a bit early (no big deal, this was my fifth time), on account of Stanford needing to drive his wheelchair ever. . . . . . so. . . . . . . . slowly. . . . . . into the hall in order to catch Wendy and Andrea on their way out. Moments later, Lila stumbled past with her entourage of white masks, disappearing into another room. Then: heartbreak. Stanford motioned for me to follow Lila. I had no idea what to do. I didn't want to disobey him (this is not a man you want to let down), but I also didn't want to leave him. I shot him a quizzical look and he motioned again, more emphatically. Broken inside, I did as I was told. So much for my Stanford loop. It's you and me now, Lila.

Of course as any of you who have seen the “Lila's Discovery” scene can attest, Stanford and I were reunited almost immediately. I suppose he was trying to give me a better show, as the scene is much better when seen from her perspective. He also may have remembered our awkward hallway encounter the night before, and figured I didn't need to see it again (or didn't need to get in his way again). Either way, I'm very grateful that he directed me the way he did, because that scene is probably the creepiest in the whole show, and I'm thrilled to death that I got to see the whole thing.

I still wasn't entirely sure if he was trying to ditch me or not, but then he held the door for me as we left
and shut it right behind me. Woo-hoo, back on Team Stanford. He grabbed my arm and ran me down the hallway, into a small room at the end, where I experienced his second 1:1. Shortly after that came the reset, and his demeanor changed significantly. The fire that had been steadily growing in him ever since the initiation (growing so steadily that I didn't even recognize it until it was suddenly gone) was replaced by a calmer, more dignified poise. He was all business, and seemed less aware of the audience (including, thankfully, the woman who walked right up to him and asked him what his name was. Seriously?). If one were to experience his loop from the chronological start, ending with the 1:1, that sense of building momentum would surely be incredible. As it was, these early scenes were mostly a little less compelling than what I had already seen, although I would like to make special mention of the time I spent sitting with him in the movie theater, watching Wendy undress in the Doctor's office. It was skeezy enough that I could actually feel my skin crawl.

Finally, we came full circle, but this time, he took me in for that first 1:1 that I had missed an hour earlier. Then came the initiation. I stuck around to see it again, because I didn't want to bail on Stanford immediately after the 1:1 – but I stood at the back of the crowd, so newcomers could get a better view. Nonetheless, he managed to find me during the scene and fix me with an incredibly intense, evil sneer – a fitting final image for our time together.  I gave him a slow, tiny nod and took my leave.

I walked away from Stanford's loop feeling much more sympathetic toward him than I expected. Going in, I assumed he was the evil mastermind behind everything, but now, I don't think he has any more control than anyone else. Perhaps Romola was wrong about him, or perhaps he did hurt her, but now regrets it. Those of you in the spoiler group know where this train of thought eventually took me.

I figured I should try to find someone a little more low-key, and decided to see what the seamstress was all about. I found her (played by Kate Jackson) in Studio 5, just as Romola was entering. I made a point to shut out what was happening with Romola (harder than it sounds) and focus on the seamstress, and soon I was helping her carry costumes back to her office and watching her design Romola's car crash makeup. Romola rejoined us a moment later, and I was again struck by how spectacular Sonya is in the role. There was no way I was willing to follow the same character two shows in a row, though, and I had already committed to the seamstress. Despite these facts, I still had to fight the urge to follow her out.

Not long after that, the seamstress pulled me into the wig room for another creepy-yet-touching 1:1. Unfortunately, when we were finished, she didn't follow me back out of the room. I was alone, and Operation: Follow the Seamstress had failed. At least I got the great 1:1 out of it.

I headed into town and once again stumbled across Romola. She was in the car, dead. Alone. That was the final straw. She picked some guy to protect her, took him into the car with her, and he abandoned her? That bastard! My resolve was broken. I couldn't leave her like that, with no one around. I waited outside the car for her to wake up, and from there, I picked Romola's story back up from only a few moments before I had left it the last time. This was the first time that I really noticed how malleable the action in the show is – Romola's interactions (or lack thereof) with the townspeople played out differently from the previous show. In particular, I saw the brief encounter with Miguel occur both in the trailer park and in the woods. Soon we were at the trailer, where the first Romola had rejected me. Not this time, though – She looked right at me, reached out her hand, and said, “Mommy?”

I didn't get it. But I wasn't going to argue. Once the 1:1 got underway, I realized she was actually calling me “Bobby,” which made (slightly) more sense. I can't really say which of Romola's 1:1's hit me harder. The one in the motel office was more intense, and had the force of her entire story behind it. This one felt more standalone, but it was also so much more intimate – and the look on her face when she handed me the shot of whisky, an impossible combination of terror, hope, and relief, haunts me to this day.

After that, I watched the remainder of the scenes I had missed the first time around. To his credit, the guy who had abandoned her earlier came back when she was starting up a new page in her notebook and tried to hand her the old page, as if to help her remember. Misguided, but at least it was something. When she finally left to see the barman, bringing things back to the start of my first Romola loop during show #2, I silently said my goodbyes and stuck around to explore her trailer, which was a heartbreaking mess of gossip magazine cutouts and paranoid (or perhaps simply self-aware) scribbled notes.

After a bit of aimless wandering, I found myself in the grocer (Julian Stolzenberg)'s store. Nothing much seemed to be happening at first, but then Badlands Jack showed up to scuffle with him over a sheaf of papers. After he left, I scooped them up and started to read – and what I saw turned my opinion around completely. The papers were a script, and the script described all of the Grocer's interactions with the townspeople, including the one I had just witnessed. All of a sudden, this boring fellow became unbearably fascinating. He took the script from me and started rehearsing a scene, then went to the drugstore to borrow some napkins, delivering all of the lines he had prepared. We returned to the Grocery, where he exploded into a rage, slamming the script against the counter. So he's not happy about following the script? I like where this is going. After a brief return to the drugstore, however, he disappeared into a locked room behind the counter with another white mask. Disappointing, but hey – she was there first. Not being one to wait around an empty room, I left, vowing to return.

The next person I saw was Harry Greener (James Sobol Kelly), drunk, stumbling through town and carrying a sign. Harry was my favorite character from Day of the Locust, so I was pleased to have finally found him. I watched him pass out near the gates, and that was pretty much the last I saw of Harry as a character. The gatekeeper shined a light on him, and Harry woke up. . . sort of. He was like a zombie, blank-faced, slow moving, and obedient. The gatekeeper directed him to change into a white suit and descend into the bowels of Temple Studios. . . and poor Harry was gone. I followed him down until it was clear that he was heading to the bar in studio 3, at which point I was torn – I wanted to stick with Harry, but I wasn't ready to go back to the bar. With a heavy heart, I left him to his fate and returned to the town.

When I got back upstairs, the hoedown was well underway, and I knew I didn't have much time left; certainly not enough to really delve into a character. Rather than latch on to someone new for a few brief moments, I wandered the town, taking the opportunity to briefly examine some of the shops that I had largely ignored up to that point. In the end, I found myself back in the drugstore, watching a different Drugstore Girl (Margarita Zafrilla Olayo, my Dust Witch from the second show) go through the same events that I had ended the previous night on. It was an inauspicious conclusion to an otherwise spectacular show.

However, being left to my own devices at/after the finale, I noticed for the first time that Wendy, Marshall, William, and Mary remained in their pools on stage, collapsed and motionless, as we shuffled out past them.  It was a striking contrast to the mood of the room as whole, and hit me very hard.  Thus began a habit that I maintained for the rest of the shows: Before exiting to the bar, I would stop at each pool and silently pay my respects to those who suffered so that we might drink and be merry.   

After the finale, walking back into Studio 3, I found myself right behind Miranda and her companion again. I realized that I still wasn't 100% sure it was her, but with the noise and the chaos, I decided against bothering them. Later still, however, when I exited the building and prepared to re-queue for the late show, they were there again, standing against the wall. This time, I decided to talk to her. After she confirmed her identity, I explained that I recognized her because I had seen her as the Drugstore Girl the night before. She studied my face for half of a second, then exclaimed, “That's right!  I was going to do the walkout with you but David stole you from me! I was so mad!”


Hah.

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