The cameras were rolling and everyone was
silent on the set. No one dared to speak or even breathe loudly. They all knew
how difficult and expensive that scene was, so they wanted to make sure that
everything went perfect on the first and, hopefully, only take. Heavy rain was
falling, as predicted, and everyone seemed ready to go. The scream of “Action”
had to be repeated into walkie-talkie because no one could really hear
anything. The first ones to move were the cars, then the extras running from
one place to the other. And then, the leading man appeared.
He walked into the center of the square and
waited there, in silence, with a red rose in his hand. Everyone was counting,
without making any noise, until ten. Ten seconds was the magic number fro the
leading actress to appear on the far end of the square. She would then run into
the arms of her lover and they would kiss. That was how the scene should have
gone but not how it actually went. They waited ten, fifteen seconds and then a
whole minute but no one appeared on the far side of the square. Soddenly
someone did appear but it wasn’t her.
The person was her assistant. She was escorted
by the nurse they had on set, as she was bleeding a little from the head. She
had a very nasty purple circle and a cut. Production was halted. The woman got
nearer and they heard her scream “She’s out, she’s out!”. What she actually
meant was that the star of the movie had run away from her trailer by knocking
her assistant unconscious. Apparently she had caught her off guard and struck
her with some sort of glass bottle she had around. The director couldn’t
believe what he was hearing.
Of course, production was halted for the day.
The “money shot” would have to wait as the actress was essential to the success
of that scene and of the whole movie. Every single person that worked in the
movie had to look for her: around the set and in every single cornet of the
city they could think of. What made things harder was the fact that they didn’t
really talk the local language so it was very difficult to speak to anyone or
make themselves be understood. So they had to cut her face from magazine or
other places to make sure they knew who they were looking for.
But no matter how many people got involved,
finding the woman they were looking for proved exceedingly difficult. They had
to halt the production for another day and the company that was financing the
film was not happy at all. Each day they did not work was a day thrown to the
garbage, along with thousands or even millions of dollars. The permit to film
on that square had been very hard to get and now they would have to get another
one, if they found the actress and if that government allowed to close the
square off a second time.
For the producers the money aspect was a
disaster. But it got worse when the magazines and the entertainment industry
learned of the disappearance of their leading actress, Valerie Ríos. She had
been the face of so many amazing movies, she had even been nominated for
several awards as, one of her first ever performances, had captured the hearts
and minds of every single person in he world. She was one of those girls whom
everyone knew was going somewhere. She had a lot of potential and a charisma
that few other girls had.
In every single magazine article, they
wondered about why and how exactly she had escaped. That was a major thing
because the production insisted that she hadn’t fled or anything but rather
“stepped out” of the set. The media however preferred to say she had run way
and they had a very nice way of explaining that by running interviews with her
assistant once and again and again. Of course, the woman was fired because she
wasn’t supposed to be telling gossip about people on the film, but once she had
talked it was much too late.
After the third day, the production company
decided that it was for the best to shut down production and put the movie away
for an indeterminate amount of time. As the movie was almost finished, they
couldn’t just replace her. And the scenes had to be shot in such a way that
people would noticed right away if they used some kind of visual effects aid.
They had to shut it down, which was a very hard decision because of all the
problems that brought, especially relating to payments and so on.
Valerie went from being one the promises of
the industry to be universally hated all over the globe. Every single person
thought it was at least disrespectful to have done what she did, leaving her
job out of the blue and hurting someone in the process. There were even some
that advocated for her to be sent to jail once she was captured. Yes, they were
already considering her a felon, a criminal and there were many voices putting
pressure on the police for them to actually look for her as someone who had
done something wrong.
But the thing was that, once the assistant was
checked by professional in the police department, they determined that the way
she had been struck in the face didn’t really coincide with someone with the
strength of Valerie striking her with a glass bottle. Many experts considered
all the options but it was the assistant that, after considerable pressure from
all sides, decided to confess Valerie hadn’t done any of that. It was her who
had done that to herself to make the scene more violent and to ride onto
Valerie’s fame and mistakes.
People’s love for Valerie returned briefly
after the assistant’s confession but it didn’t lasted long because there was no
one to actually receive all that love. Many people wanted her back. Not only
the companies she had something to do with but also many of her peers in the
industry. None of them could understand why she had disappeared like that and
it was even more of a mystery to imagine where she could be hiding. No one
seemed to know anything at all.
Her family was also harassed for many weeks.
Many were sure they knew everything about their daughter’s plan and thought
they knew where she had gone. But the truth was her family was devastated.
Every time cameras arrived to their home, the mother would start crying because
of how hard it was for her to confront her daughter’s disappearance. As far as
she knew, her daughter could be dead. They really had no idea and it was a
great thing for them when the media stopped dropping by and the hype around the
news went down.
A year passed and the executives in the studio
decided they sue Valerie, even if she wasn’t there to pay. It was the only real
way they had to try to make up for the huge losses they had because of her
disappearance. It wasn’t and exaggeration to say that because of her, the
company was having some serious financial problems. Many saw them as too permissive
and as the real reason why she had left filming. Some even thought they had
mistreated her somehow and that’s why she had decided to leave in such a
strange way.
Suing her, of course, didn’t amount to
nothing. The production company decided to actively pursue other projects and
the year following Valerie’s mysterious disappearance, they released a movie
that was universally loved by the audience and the critics. The movie was so
good that it won every major award that season and the studio soon forgot everything
that had to do with their past production. They were able to make huge amounts
of money, enough to pay the many debts they had acquired with insurance
companies and so on.
Valerie never resurfaced. From time to time,
people would say she was alive. Some said they had seen her in a remote beach
in Thailand and others claimed she was working as a waitress in a café in
Florence. Some men even confessed to have been her lovers but they were soon
uncovered as liars. Nobody was ever found and no real account of where or how
she managed to escape without being noticed was ever found to be 100% accurate
and possible. She became one of those movie legends but for all the wrong reasons.
