Red Star at Morning
1st of March 2006 A.D.
Fucking suits, the thought passed through Philip's mind with a sort of tired malaise, a spite that had run its course almost to the quick, but which like the zombies and ghouls that his lanky build and pallid complexion had him play couldn't quite give up the ghost. He liked acting not so much for the pay, wasn't much, or the fame, even less of that, but for the chance to tell stories that stuck in people's heads. Seeing some fan zine gush about how they managed to make that big spider puppet in
Arachnophobia dance on wires or a messaging board argue good naturally on if the voodoo hex of the scarecrow had finally been broken at the end of Harvest or if it had passed back into the grass with the blood, even one guy who was arguing it had passed on to the lawnmower, that made his day. And what ruined his day one might ask? Suits. Ever since Darby had up and died in some poorly explained accident his estate had been taken over by his 'family' and his family were assholes. Jenny said they were also part of the mob, but Jenny had a real good imagination. Yeah that was the polite way to put it.
"Phil, for fuck's sake Phil open up! Have you been drinking again?" Speaking of Jenny it sounded like she wouldn't take 'no' for an answer her bashing on the trailer door like some kind of tin drum that echoed all the louder in his, yes, hungover skull. But what was he supposed to do with all this money and no work to keep the drink from his hand? Put it in a bank account?
Invest it? Hah, as soon expect a fox to go into building hen-houses.
"Phil!"
Somewhat despondently he shuffled to the front of the trailer and opened the door into a cascade of early morning light of the kind the hills of southern California saw way too much of in his opinion. "Yeah, where's the fuckn' fire?" he managed to get out before Jenny, a woman a foot shorter looking like she weighed about half as much as him from pink stripped-hair to sticker studded sneakers, grabbed him by the hand and dragged him across the lot.
"The papers got signed, we're getting new management at last!"
"Oh, are they done using us for a tax write off then?" he asked cynically. Once, in another life, Phill had been a law student and he knew enough about failing businesses to be aware of all the ways they could be kept in a state of limbo, a sort of corporate undeath where they might drain the life out of the state.
"Heya Phil, Jenny," Old Gordon waved at them from the back of the old moving van the others had named 'the Ark' for all the times it had to transport live animals in defiance law and common sense alike. "Off to see the new boss lady?"
"Not like I have a choice," he grumbled
"Phill you're the only reason half the crew stuck around," Jenny insisted with seeming sincerity.
The actor shook his head. "The fact the pay checks didn't bounce is the reason everyone stuck around, me included."
"Liar, liar pants on fire!" a gremlin of a girl popped up from behind some old tires to proclaim. Tina insisted she was nineteen when she joined the crew three years ago, the fact that Darby paid her in cash for the first two of those years indicated that she might not have been entirely honest, but child acting laws being what they were hiring practices were kind of like what Phill imagined the military was like in his dad's day: don't check out the volunteers too closely. "You're here 'cause you love it!"
I'm here because I'll drown at the bottom of a bottle if I don't, Philip thought despondently. And that is when he laid eyes on the new boss, a twenty something college kid with a history in ballet named Olivia.
Ballet was kind of like directing right?
Fuck his life
OOC: A glipse of Red Star Productions, you guys have been paying their salaries, but things have not been going well from the lack of work. 
