The Supporting Cast

I am not the main character in this movie; I am in the background of every shot, loitering blurrily, out of focus but always in the picture.

Everywhere I go, so too does the camera, filming Maxwell Dandy's every move in crystalline close-up; every hair, every pore is meticulously explored.

In the café, as I sip my cappucino quietly, I look up and into the lens. Maxwell Dandy is at the next table, delivering a devastatingly honest and crushingly moving monologue, soliloquising like a tragic hero with his unfeasibly well-defined jawline and his Roman nose and his sensational rhetoric. He improvises most of his lines, you know.

They are filming him now, and me, as I type. He's crying. He's lighting a cigarette. He's looking around. He's looking at me. The camera is rolling still. I'm going to have to stop now. He's walking over. He's calling my name. He's shouting. Maybe my part is bigger than I'd thought.