“What I try to do is give you, the actor, whatever it is you need from me. Direction to me is about listening, responding, and realizing how much you need to know so you can figure out how to convey the message on screen.
“That goes for everyone,” she said, waving her hand around to include the crew. “Filmmaking is about appreciating the talents of the people you surround yourself with. Give them direction and then let them do their job. The best lesson I ever learned was that you can never make any film by yourself. I think good directing is to set the tone and direction and get out of the way. If need be, I can always step in and guide us back on track.
“I assume you’re all professionals and know your jobs. I want to work with all of you to make sure we create the best possible result,” she said, now talking to everyone.
That little speech was the turning point. Laurent may have been a better director technically, but everyone would do whatever it took to help Kitty. She’d won us over.
We saw that she was open to suggestions. Laurent had a vision, and he would never have strayed from that, but Kitty was more willing to listen. She wasn’t a pushover, though. Kitty seemed to know which ideas to try and which ones not to. I think part of it was she’d been an assistant director for several years. This was Kitty’s chance to be the lead. Her prior experience allowed her to do what was right for the movie and not second-guess herself.
The cast and crew did give me a hard time about my sex scene in
◊◊◊
They let me go shortly after lunch since I wasn’t in any of the afternoon’s scenes. I’d been slacking off on lifting, so I went to the hotel’s gym and used what equipment they had. I talked Paul into spotting for me. Day in, day out, training hard, doing my cardio. Six days on/one off, five days on/two off … Consistency was the key to my exercise program.
I’d learned that your body needed to take a break every now and again. If I planned to work out the rest of my life, I couldn’t let it take over my life. It was the same way with my diet. I knew what I was supposed to eat. If I didn’t give myself a break every now and again, I would be fixated on each meal. That was how you failed.
You also needed to give your body a break every so often to heal completely. Anything that caused pain … well, the pain was your body’s way of saying that you should stop. I realized that running and lifting did damage, but in a good way. The pain led to gaining muscle, stamina, flexibility, and many other benefits.
The physical side wasn’t the only part of it; there was also the mental aspect. Even though I took regular days off from the gym, the week after week pounding that my body took required more time off sometimes.
Baseball was coming up, and I knew easing myself back into lifting was necessary.
After I was done, I had Cassidy go out and run me through my drills. In my mind, I’d started the transition from acting to sports.
This was the last week I would be in Cuba. To be honest, Laurent’s accident had taken the fun out of it. I was ready to go home, see my boys, and focus on football and baseball.
◊◊◊
Bianca showed up after her show. I’d done some thinking and decided that what she and I were doing had to stop. I realize I’m a ‘stupid boy,’ but while I liked her, it just didn’t feel right. My experiences with Sarita and Kimberly had made me examine what had happened since my arrival in Cuba.
Kimberly had traded her body to get a role. It sounded like she’d done it before, but I still couldn’t get past the fact that a fifty-year-old man would go there. Like an onion, I peeled it back and thought about a teenage almost-man. Was I any better? My only defense was that I’d no idea Kimberly was that young. I somehow felt partly responsible for allowing Laurent to send her to my bed.
Logically, I understood that I’d done everything right once I found out, but that didn’t mean I felt good about what had happened before then. I kept wondering who else Kimberly had been sent to spend the night with. But to be honest, I really didn’t want to know the answer. I liked the other actors and crew on this movie, and I didn’t want to think about any of them spending time with an underage girl.
Sarita had turned into a straight ‘pay for play’ deal. I felt silly for falling for it. I’d been warned multiple times to be careful of Cuban women. Not that they were bad people; I understood the realities of living here. When you were paid nothing, and only given rations for half a month, you had to be creative in how you made up the difference. I still thought if she’d been honest with me, I wouldn’t have felt so put out. Then again, how do you tell someone that you’re with them to make money?
