Page 75 of The Boss I Can't Stand
“What the hell happened here?” I finally snapped.
“I think it’s obvious,” X started. “The audio didn’t pick up the dialogue for the scene.”
“Yes, I can hear how goddamn obvious it is!” I seethed. “I can’t believe you’d be so unprofessional!”
X’s jaw clenched.
“Is this our only take?” I demanded of the editors who all jumped.
“It was the best take,” Anthony said, wheeling around to skip through the other options. “We could try splicing some of the other ones together, but it’s going to look choppy regardless of how we do it. And I don’t know if that’s how you want your climactic scene to look.”
“So you’re telling me reshoots are our only option?” I said, looking from X to Anthony.
“Yes,” they both said.
“If we want the sequence to be as effective as possible, that’s what I would suggest,” X continued. “We could attempt doing a voiceover, but it might not sync well. Plus, I think we’d fail to capture the same emotional impact of the performance.”
I’d seen what can happen with voiceovers. What was fine for high throttle movie simply would not work for this. The audience would know.Iwould know.
I huffed out a breath between my teeth. This was supposed to be our award-winning moment. And I wanted the authenticity of a real performance, not something captured in a sound booth. If we didn’t pull it off right, I might as well kiss the Oscar goodbye now.
“This is absolutely ridiculous.” I glared at my mother. “I knew having you here would end up being a disaster.”
“Finn,” she began. “I didn’t mean for this?—”
“Just stop,” I said, cutting her off. This was always how things with Mom ended. It’s how they’d been since I was a kid, with me and my brothers left on our own to figure out how to deal with all the stuff Mom hadn’t been able to handle—which had beeneverything.I’dneverbeen able to rely on her back then. And I clearly couldn’t rely on her now.
“There were two people at fault here,” X said, but I threw my hand up. I didn’t want to hear it from him, either.
“I didn’t want you here in the first place,” I told my mother. “And this was exactly why. Because here you are, once again, screwing me over.”
“Finn,” Sierra said, her voice cutting through the throbbing anger in my mind. But it wasn’t enough to stop me. I bit my tongue around my mother all the time, worried about pushing her over the edge, but this was too much.
This was my movie,mycompany…The entire rebrand was at stake, and my mother had ruined it all by putting herself first, fooling around with my goddamn director on the sidelines.
“I’m sorry,” my mother said, blinking hard, her eyes turning glassy. I didn’t want her apology. For once, I just didn’t want to have to clean up after her.
I shook my head, overflowing with frustration and defeat and so much annoyance I didn’t even know what to say next. She made that easy for me, though, and fled the room in tears. I stuffed down the wave of regret that rolled through my chest as I watched her go.
Sierra knocked my shoulder as she surged after her.
X started after her too, but I stepped in front of him. “We have reshoots to plan,” I growled. “And that comes first.”
26
SIERRA
Phew…We were done.
I reclined in my chair, stretching my back and groaning as I tried to work past the discomfort of being hunched over the industrial sewing machine for hours, whipping out costumes for the reshoots.
“I never want to see another button again,” Paisley complained, looking down at her hands. Her usual space buns had been abandoned for a messy knot at the top of her head. “I’ve given myself early onset arthritis and I don’t even want to think about the eyestrain.”
I chuckled, though I didn’t disagree. I’d loved working on this film and creating all these gorgeous twenties costumes, but I couldn’t help being glad that I was finally, truly done. Unrealistic deadlines for last-minute emergencies really took it out of a girl.
Finn had ordered the full costume department back to set, and we were given exactly forty-eight hours to replace or repair all the blood-splattered clothing from the original scene. I’d hardly gone home since he’d given the order.
There just wasn’t time!
