Chapter 10

Friday, May 11, 2000

Filming on the new movie tentatively titled "The Premier's Daughter" was going well. The movie was getting a lot of early buzz, and my parents were being nice to me in expectation of the money I'd bring in. There were only two problems. First, shooting ran from 4:00 to 11:00 on weekdays and 9:00 to 9:00 on weekends, which meant that I barely had time to finish my homework, let alone maintain any sort of social life. Second, the producers had insisted that I date my costar, Tiffany Norman. While a nice girl, and very attractive to those who are into girls, she was not the most intelligent person in the world, and didn't realize that I wasn't actually attracted to her. I was worried that pointing this out would precipitate a public breakup, so I just played along.

We had been set up on a dinner date. I was paying, so I just ordered salad. Tiffany had couldn't decide between smoked monkfish and roasted duck breast. Finally, she decided on the fish, which was at least the cheaper of the two. We made awkward small talk for a while, until she finally brought up the subject I'd been hoping to avoid.

"So I was thinking maybe we could hang out at your house after this."

I figured the best strategy was to play dumb. "What do you mean?"

"You know, get to know each other more, intimately." She was being seductive. It was her main talent as far as acting was concerned, and I'm sure it will take her far in life.

"Oh, um, actually, I have a lot of homework. I've got a math test on Monday, and if I don't pass it I'll flunk the class." While I did have a math test, I had managed to study for it while they were filming my stunt double, and my GPA was the second highest in the freshman class. David was third, and probably would have been first if his English teacher hadn't been a huge bitch. I figured that the prospect of flunking out was something Tiffany could sympathize with.

"Why don't you just drop out, like I did?"

I didn't really think further schooling would do her much good, but I felt obligated to do the responsible thing, so I said: "You might want to reconsider that, actually. Work in this industry can be kind of fickle, and it's a good idea to have other career options open."

"So you don't have faith in my acting ability?"

"No, you're a great actor," I lied, "it's just that a lot of being successful in movies is more luck than talent, and a lot of really talented people end up broke because they can't get good roles."

We argued the point for a couple of minutes before I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and admitted that she was right.

The next day, we were shooting the final scene of the movie, in which I kill all of the terrorists in a shootout on the roof of the World Trade Center, and then kiss Tiffany. It turns out the roof of the World Trade Center is actually really windy, so it took them a while to get the microphones and cameras set up.