Day 113 - Bollywood in Budgee Springs - Chapter 10 (1649 words)

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Bollywood in Budgee Springs

Chapter 10

Dawn arrives and with it a truck trundles into town, it's big and heavily weighted by the tension on it you can see with every bump and divot in the road. Inside is an Indian Elephant, the one that they will be using for the wedding scene, which they will shoot soon as the cast will also be arriving this day, and the numbers have been made up from the townspeople to stock the wedding with plenty of attendees for the shoot. Only the exterior scenes will be shot in Budgee Springs, the set pieces will be picked up later in a sound studio, but in the mean time a lot of outdoor and 'town' footage needs to be sandwiched in around the hero and heroines wedding scenes.

The Elephant Wrangler took an overnight drive to Budgee Springs, the darkness and cool of the night making it easier to regulate the temperature in the pen where she was being tethered. The Wrangler was very familiar with the elephant, she had trained as a veterinarian before taking a job with a animal talent agency out of Sydney. The Elephants name was Kipling and had been working in film, commercials an television in Australia for around ten years now, most of which she had been with her current handler and carer Victoria.

They had a routine going and Victoria travelled with her to many locations for shoots and appearances, though this was the first time they had been this far out without a larger pen and entourage attached. The Indian company was paying them well and they seemed like good people to Vicky when she met with them, so she took a little bit on faith and a fifty percent deposit.

The truck was going to be Kipling’s home for the week or so that she would be here and performing, they only had two days of shooting scheduled but in Victoria's experience it was always good to layer a little fat in your project plan when dealing with Elephants and Kipling was no exception to this rule.

The staging area for the Elephant was just outside of town on some vacant land some local man had provided for the truck to park up on and connect to water and power to keep Kipling comfortable. The truck had circled through the town, stopped for directions at the local pub, the Whistle and it drew all kinds of attention to the cargo in the back. Vicky didn't say anything but she could tell that the locals didn't know that she was bringing a real live Elephant into the sleepy little town. It was not like it was massively dangerous, Kipling was agreeable most of the time, and not as dangerous or as deadly as a tiger or a lion for example, unless of course you treated them wrong, in which case they could be lethal.

Turned out that the local man who's place they were looking for was the Mayor, he was putting them up on his own plot of land, a vacant and unused half-acre at the back of his house, but he had not given out all the details of exactly what was going to be happening with this movie in his town. Vicky knew when to keep the details to herself, and so she never told anyone about Kipling, never asked for anything but directions to take her cargo to it's destination. This was a town of retired Farmers and stock-men and they could see from the truck that something was being transferred, live, into the town. She ignored their curious looks and nosey examination of the outside of the truck, but there were no clues to be had there, she thanked them kindly and they drove on to the Mayor's property.

A few hours after Kipling has been securely settled behind the Mayor's house, out of sight of all people going past his place, a bus rolls into town and a chattering group of twenty-five people all exit the bus to be greeted by Kiran and Ash as they descend like tourists, staring at their place of work for the next few weeks.

The Indian cast are herded into the Whistle as they unload the bus and carry all their props and costumes in suitcases and bags themselves into the Pub. Ash has a clipboard and a list of names, working his way through them and introducing them to the Publican and his wife. Paul starts to carry some of the bags for the guests, but they insist on taking them all themselves. Ash had drilled them carefully before he came to the Springs of exactly how they were to act to show the honour and care for the town filled with elders deserving their respectful treatment.

Paul was thrilled to see so many people in the hotel and the front bar, which was also the hotel reception, was the fullest he had seen it in it's history. Every room had been taken and was filled, some of them having to share. The actors and actresses were doubled up as were the crew, and a couple of them, the 'name' stars had private suites, the biggest rooms and the private bathrooms attached. The crew and the rest of the cast had shared bathrooms between every four rooms, a scheduling nightmare waiting to happen.

The cast are almost all settled in when the last arrivals come into town, in two separate cars. The name stars, Aamir and Manisha are in each a Mercedes, both driven on their own by a private driver and taking no one else on the journey with them. When they drive up, though Aamir has arrived ahead of Manisha, he politely steps aside and guides her ahead with exaggerated civility so she can take her room assignment and get the pick of the two suites set aside for them.

Assistants have been selected from the crew, and they are on the spot with bags and soliciting their needs for water and food after the obviously tiring drive to Budgee Springs. The cast move aside as the two stars are settled into their rooms, once the doors are closed the rest of the cast get back to the business of settling their own rooms and baggage.

Anil is with them waiting for the 'stars' to be catered to and to be lead away like privileged children, yet he is the third 'name' star to be attached to the film. He is the villain of the movie, and he prefers to be in amongst the actors, the real backbone cast who will provide most of the colour and exposition of the film. Anil has been doing this a while and is the most senior member of the acting cast, though possibly past his prime he carries a weight and gravitas in everything he says, so he says so very little, preferring to be treated like a real person.

Bad enough to portray the villain in film after film that he gets booed in the streets and occasionally pelted with produce, he didn't need that same treatment from the cast, he needed a rapport and good feeder lines in his scenes, which he would not get if they did not like him, but feared or hated him instead. He had a solo room, but he was not precious about it's size or the sharing of the bathroom facilities. This was his home, on the road filming and getting to know a large group of people, changing their perception of him, letting them see past the awful characters he acted out and getting to know him as a person. Sometimes he lost them when he was in the zone, but mostly he found that the crew and the lower order cast members were much better people to be hanging out with rather than the stars.

Anil was last to be processed and he even helped a few of the actresses with their bags, silently of course as his voice was recognisably a villainous one, but he ingratiated himself with his actions before he opened his mouth and hence spoke only when the rest of the cast and crew had gone to their rooms and he could talk in a quiet way with the Publican Paul, and sign himself in.

He had watched his colleagues settle themselves with interest, and watched the locals interacting with them as if they were friendly aliens from another planet. He wondered how much they knew about the film, what they would do and what kind of things they had gotten themselves in for. Ash was a nice young man, but a novice director and that would lead to an interesting film, he could feel it. They had spoken at length about the script, what they would try to do in honour of the man who once carried this entire studio on the weight of his name. He knew Hardeep, had worked with him plenty of times and accepted that he would be a consummate professional when it came to the production. He had worked with Kiran on a movie or two before, though this was the most responsibility she had to date that he knew of. She had been given the workman like tasks for the second unit, a lot of exposition and establishing shots, he wondered how she would handle real drama and actors like Aamir and Manisha.

It would be an interesting few weeks, the chaos and the uncertainty made it all the more exciting for him. He rubbed his hands together and laughed wickedly to himself, thinking then that perhaps his type casting as the maniacally evil villain was understandable. He looked around but no one was there to see him, his best vaudeville villainous performance and no audience to see it. He smiled to himself and went to his room.