As promised the outline. It is certainly not error-free and not nearly as polished as the above story (hopefully) is, but I do not want to keep you waiting for another day or two.
The Reality of Acting (Outline)
This story plays in the fictional dictatorship of Soretania, a country that is pretty far backwards in terms of technology. In particular, the magic of CGI, digital postprocessing, show blood and similar concepts have never been invented there. Still, twenty years ago the dictator wanted to increase the popularity of his country internationally and decided that they would start producing movies. However, with their still analog filming equipment and no postprocessing it was virtually impossible to ever stand up to the likes of Hollywood. Unless everything captured by the camera was really happening.
This includes severe injuries, death and even torture of protagonists and other characters. Of course, being an actor or actress under these circumstances is quite unpopular and thus, most actors are not more than slaves, but at least their families are compensated. For several stand-ins and the likes, real world criminals and political enemies are used, but many roles require trained actors. Those are typically chosen semi-randomly among the poor but good-looking residents of the country. And, if they are lucky, play their roles really well and get popular enough, they might even be immune to scenes requiring their deaths or mutilation or get stand-doubles for those.
Amongst the rest of the world, the movies from Soretania started to become quite popular, at least until some reporters unveiled, how they were created. Ever since then, these movies are under an embargo and only some small studios dare to digitize the analog source material and upload it to the internet.
Having established the background, the story follows the young actress Janice who plays Mary Magdalene in a Jesus movie. It starts with a scene of her being chosen to be an actress, showing her shock and disgust. Several short impressions of her live as an actress follow, showing how she slowly finds friends and gets used to the job, but is also terrified whenever having to witness filming some of the more brutal scenes.
Then, she finally gets her first big role as Mary Magdalene, an important opportunity on the road to becoming immune. We follow her through some scenes within the movie, which is shot slightly out of order, since the resurrection part needs to be done before the crucifixion. Since the country is not Cristian and the director wants to do something outrageous, we witness a sex-scene between the Jesus-actor Marc and Janice, which of course requires real sex. During filming, Janice forges a strong bond to the Marc, which shall prove fatal for her.
But, knowing how the story goes, now the whipping, crowning of thorns, crossroad, nailing and eventually the crucifixion of Jesus has to commence. Mary Magdalene has to witness and play her role in several of those. And not only Marc is suffering there, two real-world political “criminals” are basically executed in the roles Dismas and Gestas and forced to correctly say their lines if the want their families to live. There is also a lovely key-scene planned between the dying Jesus with a lance having penetrated his Heart and Mary Magdalene. Here it is where disaster strikes. Janice freezes in place, forgets her lines, then stumbles and has a breakdown. By the time she has recovered and is ready to continue acting, the Jesus-actor has already died.
It is a disaster as we see in a meeting with the director. With this essential scene missing, the movie cannot air. Later scenes already filmed base on exactly this last interaction. Now, they could not just refilm the final scene since Marc was on full display in good lighting and any change in actors would surely be noticed. Which means that they will have to reshoot the entire movie. Furthermore, they will need a new Jesus-actor, another one to be subjected to a terrible death. And isn’t there an actress that is responsible for all of this and could need a bit of punishment.
The director is enthralled by the idea, an opportunity to cause even more outrage amongst the Cristian world with his movie. Of course, Janice cannot believe that her fate shall turn this quickly. Just a little tiny mistake, and now she shall already pay the ultimate price and more, shall suffer one of the most terrible executions imaginable. But she has no choice, should she even try to resist, her friends and family would suffer in addition to her.
So, we follow Janice through filming a few scenes of the movie, maybe some remakes of ones originally shown with Marc, maybe some new ones including possibly the one where they inflict wounds on Janice for her to have scars in the post-resurrection scenes.
Finally, the part everyone waited for commences, beginning with the Last Supper, which will really be Janice last one as she notices terrified. From here on there is no stop in filming during the capture scene, some waiting in prison, the well-known conviction scene with Pontius Pilates where Janice feels as betrayed as Jesus himself must have felt.
When she is stripped, she somehow feels a lot more humiliated then even when filming sex-scenes. Then the pain starts with a brutal whipping. 39 Hits with a real Roman Flagellum weaken Janice to the point where she thinks that nothing can get her out of her indifference. Neither the crown nor the carrying really matter. For some reason the director decides to have her walk through the Jerusalem-replica with a roman robe instead of fully naked like the new Gestas and Dismas criminals do or as Marc did. He prefers the contrast of blood soaking the white robe from her Back and the crown. This also means that she can be stripped a second time when arriving at the hill which shall be her Golgotha.
Since this is a Christ movie, her cross is assembled lying on the ground and she is bound onto it before the executioner actor approaches with the nails. It is one of her good friends, but he still plays his role and treats her indifferent. She thinks about Marc, how he also head to go through all of this and now, thanks to her, everything would be for nothing. He would not be immortalized on the screen, neither would his family get compensated since his play didn’t make it into the final movie. With this consideration, she is almost ready to accept her punishment. That is, until the first nail penetrates her wrist. Directly driver through her nerves, she is unable to do anything but scream while the actors surrounding her commence the nailing of her four limbs. Her feet are fixed with just one nail driven sideways through them, both to the same side of the upright in a way that her knees and sex are still facing forward.
When it is done, she foolishly believes that the worst is over, but the raising and subsequent hanging quickly shows her wrong. For the first few minutes she cannot stop herself from screaming, crying, and squirming. Only slowly she learns the rhythm the cross requires from her and her convulsions develop into a periodic dance, always trying to find a less unbearable position.
Her executioners mercilessly require her, and the two male nude political enemies crucified alongside her as thieves to play their lines. Several tries are required until it finally works as imagined by the director, but they have quite a bit of time since they are not going anywhere.
Finally, after hours of suffering all captured by the greedy eyes of several cameras, the final scene commences, a spear is thrust through Janice heart and dying she watches as one of her best friends has to do what she could not, has to watch her die and act her best at the same time, to make no mistakes or otherwise she would end just like Janice.
Do we get an epilog telling us if it was Janice, that Nina saw in A Few Screws Loose or is it just left open?
