Chapter 707: So Damn Cool

Duke Rosenberg's new film had begun shooting in New Mexico.

The news grew wings and spread across every major entertainment outlet. Wave after wave of entertainment reporters were dispatched to the wilderness and deserts of New Mexico to keep company with the dust, but with the crew maintaining a media blackout for the time being, the press couldn't get their hands on anything of real value.

The Los Angeles Times was a different story. Sarah, deputy editor of the entertainment desk, had hurried to New Mexico in person. Having worked with Duke for more than a decade, she was the only reporter allowed onto the set to observe.

Looking with her own eyes was fine, though—cameras and video recorders were strictly prohibited.

Sarah knew full well that the crew had only let her inside the filming area out of respect for her dozen years of working with Duke.

New Mexico in December was slightly cooler than in the summer. Just as the morning sun climbed over the horizon, Sarah drove out from her hotel in Santa Fe toward Devil's Ranch. Held up by some articles she had to handle, she arrived a little late; by the time she entered the designated filming zone, shooting was already underway.

Without a word, Sarah slung her canteen and backpack over her shoulder and found Tina Fey in the safety zone, though Tina was busy and couldn't spare the time to play host.

After greeting Tina Fey, Sarah sensibly found a chair and sat down, pulling a pair of binoculars from her backpack to watch the dust-choked filming area in the distance.

A rust-streaked tanker truck rumbled along in the lead, trailed by more than a dozen bizarrely modified vehicles. Dozens of bald men slathered in white sunscreen were shouting at the top of their lungs, though from this distance she couldn't quite make out what they were saying.

Shifting her binoculars slightly, Sarah spotted Duke on a moving camera truck. He held a megaphone, calling out instructions every now and then, and the convoy would readjust before starting the take again.

To Sarah's eyes, the whole shoot looked chaotic. Aside from the roaring engines and billowing dust, there didn't seem to be anything special about it.

Still, this wasn't her first visit to one of Duke's sets. She knew very well that his shoots always looked ordinary on the ground, only to deliver something extraordinary once they hit the big screen.

For the entire morning, the crew seemed to shoot nothing but car chases. During a break between takes, Sarah caught her first glimpse of the female lead in costume.

When Charlize Theron came into view through the binoculars—striding along on those long legs with her hair cropped to stubble, her forehead smeared with motor oil, and her eyes blazing—Sarah's first reaction was: 'Holy crap. So damn cool!'

Her thoughts then turned to Charlize Theron's established image. In Hollywood, Charlize Theron's most widely recognized success wasn't Monster, but rather the first installment of The Matrix, which she had made with Duke. She might have been eye candy in that movie, but she was agile, impossibly cool eye candy—and it was that very film that let her take the crucial step toward becoming an A-list superstar.

That movie had left such a deep impression that over the years, Charlize Theron's image had gradually become fixed in the public mind—so much so that even winning Oscar Best Actress hadn't been enough to break the mold.

Now, Charlize Theron had returned to where her Hollywood journey began, working once again with Duke Rosenberg, the man who had single-handedly made her famous—and with a look like this, no less. Clearly, she was out to shatter that rigid image and reverse the steady decline her career had suffered over the past few years.

With anyone else, Sarah would have thought she was taking far too big a risk. Since her collaborator was Duke Rosenberg, however, there was a very real chance she would pull it off.

Shooting for the intense car chases wrapped up for the moment. The next scene on the schedule was also an action sequence, but it was being filmed on stationary vehicles, and Sarah was allowed to move in closer to watch.

An actor painted entirely white, with an arrow sticking out of his head, fished a spray nozzle from his costume, sprayed his lips and teeth a gleaming silver, and stood up brandishing two spears.

"Witness me!" he shouted at the top of his lungs, like some fanatical believer. "Witness me!"

On the surrounding vehicles, more than a dozen similarly dressed actors turned their eyes on him and roared back with equal fanaticism, "I witness! I witness..."

Then the actor brandishing the two spears leaped off the tanker truck, landing squarely on a thick crash pad below.

Sarah could make sense of the character's suicidal attack, but she had no idea what spraying his mouth and teeth silver-white was supposed to mean.

Just as she was puzzling over it, the megaphone crackled again, carrying Duke's voice to her ears: "That's it for this morning's work! We're shooting explosion scenes this afternoon!"

Still puzzling over it, Sarah walked alongside Tina Fey toward the catering trucks. Fully several dozen of them were parked across a flat, wind-sheltered stretch of ground; with several hundred cast and crew members on site, this was undeniably a massive production.

After picking up a lunch box, Sarah stayed right beside Tina Fey. She knew very well that Tina ate with Duke most of the time, which would give her a chance to chat with him for a bit.

Sure enough, Tina Fey walked straight over to a sun umbrella, where Duke was talking with Charlize Theron, who had already taken off her makeup.

"Mind if I sit here?" Sarah asked.

Duke glanced up at her and pointed to the seat next to Charlize. "Sit anywhere you like, don't be a stranger."

He picked up his conversation with Charlize where they had left off. "The crew has already found a suitable stunt double for you. For some of the dangerous stunts, you can leave them entirely to the double. I don't want to see you get hurt."

Their past relationship had ended long ago, but it would have been a lie to say Duke didn't care at all about Charlize, who had given him the best years of her life.

Of course, that concern only went so far—Duke only ever remembered it when Charlize Theron was right in front of him.

"I think I can handle that War Machine."

Charlize picked up her cup, took a sip of water, and said seriously, "I don't want to use a stunt double."

Roughly guessing what Charlize had in mind, Duke thought it over and gave a slight nod. Still, winning an acting award from the school faction with a role in a sci-fi action movie was genuinely tough.

Duke turned his gaze to the female reporter. "When are you planning to head back, Sarah?"

"I only got here a few days ago." Sarah deliberately furrowed her brow. "Are you trying to chase me off already?"

"Just asking casually."

Duke's reply reminded Sarah of the final scene from that morning, and she said, "Can I ask you a question?"

"I won't necessarily answer it," Duke said with a smile. "Go ahead."

Sarah motioned with her chin toward where the War Boys were sitting and asked, "In that last scene this morning, why did he spray his teeth silver-white?"

Tina Fey fielded the question for him. "In the film, the War Boys fanatically worship Immortan Joe. They believe they'll enter Valhalla after dying in battle, and they take immense pride in that."

"What does that have to do with his teeth?" Sarah missed Tina Fey's hint completely.

Duke said directly, "In Norse mythology, those who can enter Valhalla all have silver teeth."

"So that's why." It finally clicked for Sarah.

Charlize Theron ate very little. She still had scenes to shoot in the afternoon and needed to make the most of the break to rest, so she was the first to leave the table.

Duke didn't linger long after she left, heading back to his trailer to rest for a while. Shooting had only been underway for a little over a week, and he still had two full months of fieldwork ahead of him.

The geographical environment required for the shoot meant the crew's camp was bound to be rough around the edges. Although Duke didn't have to manage the day-to-day logistics for these hundreds of people himself, he still had to keep a constant eye on things. Keeping a crew of this scale under control was no easy feat.

Fortunately, he had never been one to hoard every bit of authority for himself, and with capable assistants like Charles Roven, Tina Fey, and Anna Printz on hand, the whole team stayed largely united and pulled together to get the job done during filming.

The movie featured a massive number of explosion scenes, and the entire afternoon shoot was spent in a near-constant barrage of blasts as one painstakingly modified vehicle after another was blown to pieces by Joss William's pyrotechnics team.

Actors needed true professionalism. A great actor might make all sorts of demands of the crew off camera, but the moment the cameras rolled, they threw themselves completely into the work. That was true of Charlize Theron, and it was just as true of Tom Cruise.

During filming, one sequence required the male lead played by Tom Cruise to be tied to a moving vehicle. Tom Cruise likewise refused a stunt double and did the shoot himself. That Handsome Tom had risen to fame and held fast to his spot among Hollywood's top A-list leading men for so many years wasn't just a matter of good luck—his own work ethic had plenty to do with it.

Without someone to give him a nudge, Tom Cruise might do some foolish things, but when it came to acting, he was fully committed. Even when Duke called cut on one of his takes, it was never because of a problem with Tom Cruise's attitude.

Still, even Duke had to admit that Tom Cruise's natural talent for acting was genuinely mediocre; his performance during shooting didn't even measure up to Charlize Theron's.

That also had to do with how Charlize Theron's role was written. Furiosa was naturally a show-stealing character; by comparison, the male lead Tom, played by Tom Cruise, had a more passive personality to begin with, and only became part of the War Machine combat crew after being swept into the conflict against his will.

Charlize Theron didn't much care for Tom Cruise—anyone on the crew with a working pair of eyes could see that.

Likewise, Tom Cruise wasn't terribly fond of Charlize Theron either, which was just as obvious.

In Hollywood, stars of similar stature rarely got along as true friends anyway. For a male and female lead on the same set not to see eye to eye was about as normal as it got.

Still, neither of them was a green, hotheaded young actor like Andrew Garfield or Amber Heard. Neither let those feelings show on the surface or bleed into the shoot. Both understood that this was simply a job—and once the job was done, they would have nothing more to do with each other.

A film set, as an engine of fame and fortune, was never a place of warm, fuzzy harmony. Duke had understood that long ago. So long as it didn't interfere with the shoot, he couldn't care less what the actors thought of each other—or even of him.

No director worth his salt would fuss over petty details like that anyway.

Besides, both Charlize Theron and Tom Cruise were thorough professionals; even when filming their one-on-one fight scenes, no unpredictable drama ever cropped up.