Spirea Sotol Interview
Question: So, tell me, what was it like working with Mr. Yeager?
Answer: Actually, my contract doesn't allow me to have an opinion about Mr. Yeager, much less express it.
Question: You had to wear a lot of makeup for this role, is that correct?
Answer: Oh, yes. When the book started I had just finished being written into this promotional advert for the Cocimbas tourism board. Go to their office and give them the password 'Sotol' for 20% off their cruise package, by the way. Anyway, I had this really great tan, and I wasn't trying to get all tanned it just kind of happened naturally. Anyway, I'm supposed to be all pale and tragic for the book, so basically I had to get up three hours early each day so they could paint me up and cover my tan with a pale flesh-tone. My makeup artist would always say I have really good pores. I'm not sure what that means, but that is what I am told.
Question: Tell me about the scene where you get dragged off.
Answer: Oh, yeah, I had forgotten about that. Okay, so there is this scene where we are all standing there and then the Navy Police come to drag me away and put me in jail or something. Now, in the original outline, I'm supposed to reconcile with Athel and tell her that I forgive her. But, instead, I thought it would be fun to do the opposite, so I just started yelling at her and cussing her out. (laughs) They weren't expecting that one. I think that even made it into the final cut.
Question: Tell me about Pops.
Answer: Yeah, that's a pretty messed-up story. So, Pops is the janitor who cleans up stage 22 where most of the inner ship scenes were filmed, okay. He's a fairly harmless shriveled up old guy, but the problem is that he is almost completely deaf in both ears so he couldn't hear the bell that would go off whenever cameras were rolling and would just keep on cleaning. Mr. Yeager never noticed it, in fact, it was not until halfway through the process that one of the interns asked who that old guy was in the background of the written draft. That is when Mr. Yeager went berserk. He flipped over a catering table and punched Alder in the face. Which, by the way, if you go look at the final cut of chapter 15, Alder has a black eye in it. Basically, they were screwed. We only had two weeks of writing left, and literally, half the shots from inside the ship contained paragraphs of this janitor cleaning in the background. What is worse, the ship interior set had already been taken down so they couldn't re-write it even if they wanted to. Never-mind the fact that Pops wasn't a member of the Fictional Characters Union, so it was only a matter of time before someone from the legal department pointed out that they couldn't even use the paragraphs they had because it contained non-union labor. It was hilariously disasterful.
Question: So, what did they do?
Answer: Okay, but you didn't hear this from me, 'cause I don't think any of the higher-ups know about it. Mr. Yeager actually paid the fee and did the paperwork so that Pops could be registered with the Fictional Characters Union and literally the night before the book was due we stayed up late and rewrote Pop's intro scene in Mr. Yeager's living room with a bed-sheet hung behind us painted to look like the ship's hallway.
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