The Audrey Hepburn Story

For two weeks in college I worked on the set of a movie that nobody saw. The picture was called Go Down to the River, but apparently that was a working title, because the title of the film on my callsheet kept changing. One day it said Bloodthirsty Beauties. Another time it was Espionage Joe. But mostly it was called Go Down to the River.

I got the job completely by accident. I was walking by a Starbucks in downtown Atlanta with my girlfriend Jodie when a guy came running out of the coffee store with a square tray with four coffee cups in it. The crash was spectacular, and when I got my bearing again, I saw that I was kneeling on the guy's chest and there was coffee everywhere. I got up quickly and helped the guy to his feet and he started to yell, then stopped. He flexed his jaw for a second, then squinted at me. He grabbed my chin and turned my face from side to side. "Holy hell," he said.

Jodie was starting to flip out. "Look, it was an accident," she started to shriek, but the guy raised a single finger and she stopped abruptly.

The guy was in a trenchcoat and wore a thinly-knotted solid-colored tie, the sort that was popular in 1993. He let go of my chin and said, "I need a stunt double. You up for it?"

I started to tell him that I looked nothing like him, but he wouldn't listen, and before I knew it, I was standing in an alley a few blocks away amid a jungle of film equipment.

A woman in a gold jacket with puffy, rolled-up sleeves said, "Wow, this is great. You look just like her." She opened a makeup case and pulled out some hair extensions, and I raised my hands and said, "Whoa. Wait a s--"

"Relax," the woman told me. "Nobody's gonna know it's you." And that was the end of the story, because someone put a contract in my hand and a pen in my other hand and told me to sign. I did.

"What'd I sign?" I asked, since I couldn't look down while Gold Lady was painting my face.

"Welcome to the Stunt Actors' Union," someone said. "Here, sign this, too."

I did, and asked again what it was. "Standard waiver," they called, running away.

"What's the name of the movie?" I asked Gold Lady. She said it was called The Audrey Hepburn Story. "I'm playing Audrey Hepburn?" I asked, stunned. She said no, I was playing the stunt double part of Etheline Hepburn, Audrey's lesser-known and less-gorgeous sister.

I said, "I never heard of--"

And then I was on the roof of the building overlooking the alley, and the guy in the trenchcoat was waving his hands erratically. I'd lost track of Jodie at some point. I was wearing a sleek white gown with elbow-length white gloves, and earrings were clipped to my ear lobes. A bug landed on my cheek, and I reached up to slap it away.

"Hey!" I shouted to Gold Lady in the alley below. "I still have my sideburns!" She yelled back up that it wouldn't matter, it was all distance photography for this scene anyway, so just act feminine.

"Excuse me!" Trenchcoat screamed across the rooftop. "We are rolling here, you know!" Then he sighed. "Cut."

"Look," he said to me. "This is the scene where Etheline Hepburn throws herself off of the rooftop of the Grand Hotel after Lon Chaney mistakes her for Gilda Radner, and you're going to--"

"Wait," I said, and he frowned. "I don't get it. What year is this movie supposed to take place in?"

"It's an alternate universe movie, okay?" he answered exasperatedly. "Doesn't matter. You're just the stuntwoman."

"Stuntman."

"Doesn't matter. You're just window dressing. Now, this is the scene where Etheline -- I've already said this! Just be ready when I say action and point to you."

Someone guided me to the rooftop and said, "Watch the earrings when you jump. They can hurt when you land."

Then Trench screamed, "Action!" and I felt those hands behind me give me a firm push.

Dailies are what they call the segments of film shot during any given filming day. At the end of the day, the director or other crew and sometimes cast members will gather around to watch the day's dailies. Somebody rolled my wheelchair to the screen and said, "Here, it's almost your scene."

Trench said, "Okay, here's our star's closeup," and a shot of a woman dressed just like I had been dressed appeared. The woman was rather awkward-looking. She was standing against a blue sky, and the camera moved in for a closeup. She stared directly at the camera, then opened her mouth and yelled, "Oh, God!" And her head dropped straight down out of the frame. The camera lingered on the blue sky for a moment...

...then cut to a camera on the ground recording my plummet from the rooftop. The sky behind me was dusky, and I started to say something about continuity, but with my jaw wired shut I could barely breathe, much less talk. I was a good fifty stories above the camera, dropping like a stone, but I could still make out the sideburns.

Somebody nudged me and whispered, "Good thing you remembered to take out the earrings." And indeed, onscreen I watched as Etheline Hepburn, sideburns and all, removed her earrings during her suicide jump. After the resulting wet crunching sound, somebody else said, "Great blood effects, Mina."

The last shot of the day was a closeup on the mottled, dirty face of a man in a werewolf mask. The werewolf raised his hairless white hands to his cheeks and, without moving any muscles in the wolf mask, shouted, "Oh, dear God!" and fainted. Someone said, "Wow, great Lon Chaney, Bob." Somewhere, Bob said, "Thanks. It wasn't easy."

Gold Lady caught up with me as Jodie, who had suddenly materialized, wheeled me toward the city bus stop. "Here," Gold Lady said, handing me a sheet of paper. "It's a callsheet. You're in six more stunt scenes tomorrow, so you'll need to show up at Location A at the time on the first line. Alright, see you tomorrow." She started to run back the way she came, then stopped and touched Jodie on the shoulder. "Oh, hon. You don't suppose you can provide him with some proper lingerie for tomorrow, do you? Good. Thanks."