The Maker: Hollywood

The projection booth of the AMC multiplex in downtown Chicago smelled like hot dust, machine oil, and melting celluloid.

Luis was fifty-two years old, and he had been threading 35mm film projectors since he was a teenager. He didn’t care about movie stars, he didn’t read the Hollywood trades, and he certainly didn’t care about studio stock prices. He cared about the physical weight of the film, the tension of the gears, and the perfect alignment of the xenon bulb.

It was Thanksgiving Thursday. Downstairs, the lobby was a complete madhouse. Four hundred kids wearing cheap, itchy black wizard robes, poorly drawn lightning bolts on their foreheads, and round plastic glasses were screaming, eating popcorn, and vibrating with sugar-induced energy. The concession stand looked like a war zone.

Luis stood next to the massive platter system of Projector 4. He had spent the last two hours carefully splicing together the heavy reels of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The sheer amount of physical film was staggering. It took up the entire horizontal platter, a massive, shiny pancake of cinematic gold.

He pulled the lead strip through the labyrinth of tension rollers, wrapped it around the intermittent sprocket, and locked the lens gate shut with a satisfying metallic click. He checked his watch. It was time.

He flipped the heavy toggle switch on the wall.

The projector roared to life. The bulb ignited with a sharp, blinding crack, throwing a massive beam of light through the square glass window and onto the sixty-foot screen in the packed auditorium below.

Luis didn’t go downstairs to watch the movie. He never did. He just stood by the small viewing port in the booth, sipping a lukewarm cup of deli coffee, and watched the audience react through the thick glass.

He watched the flying blue Ford Anglia get brutally smashed by the Whomping Willow. He watched Kenneth Branagh completely chew the scenery as Gilderoy Lockhart, wearing ridiculous velvet robes and flashing a blindingly white, painfully arrogant smile that made the parents in the audience laugh out loud.

But it was the climax that made Luis actually set his coffee down on the metal workbench.

When Colin Morgan, playing Harry Potter, dropped into the flooded, cavernous Chamber of Secrets, the entire auditorium of screaming kids went dead silent. You could hear a pin drop in the theater. The tension was suffocating. Colin looked so small, his robes drenched in dirty water, his wand raised with a mixture of desperate courage and absolute terror.

Then, the Basilisk emerged.

Luis had seen a lot of bad CGI in his career. He was used to seeing blurry, rubbery monsters that didn’t look like they actually belonged in the scene, floating slightly above the floor or completely lacking proper lighting. But this was different. Steven Spielberg hadn’t just relied on the rendering farms. He had ordered a massive, sixty-foot practical animatronic puppet to be built.

When the giant snake reared its head, water pouring off its physical, textured scales, the jaw snapping shut with a terrifying, mechanical weight, a collective, genuine gasp echoed through the theater. A few of the younger kids in the front rows actually pulled their knees up to their chests.

It looked real because it was real. It was physical machinery interacting with real water and real studio lighting. Colin Morgan wasn’t acting against a tennis ball on a green stick; he was staring down a massive, terrifying machine that looked like it could actually bite him in half. It grounded the magic in something tactile and dangerous.

When the credits finally rolled and the lights came up, the theater erupted into applause. It wasn’t the polite, smattering applause of a decent movie. It was loud, sustained, and genuine. Luis watched the parents ushering their kids out of the aisles. The kids were wide-eyed, exhausted, and captivated.

Luis reached over, stopped the platter, and smiled. Whatever Daniel Miller and his studio were doing out there in California, they were doing it right.

---

Two thousand miles away in Burbank, the Friday morning sun was warming the quiet, beautifully landscaped campus of Miller Studios.

Marcus was sitting at his desk, his iPad propped up next to a plate of scrambled eggs and a piece of dry toast. The early box office numbers were coming in from the East Coast, and they were catastrophic for everyone else in the industry. The Chamber of Secrets was on track to completely shatter the Thanksgiving weekend record. It was pulling in demographics across the board. Teenagers, parents, college kids who just wanted to see a massive spectacle—they were all buying tickets.

But Marcus wasn’t looking at the revenue sheets. He knew the money was going to be there. He was scrolling through the internet, reading the raw, unfiltered reactions from the midnight screenings.

Over the years, somehow this had become his favourite part after a movie was released.

The internet wasn’t talking about the box office or the studio politics. They were obsessed with the bizarre, hyper-specific details of the movie.

MuggleBorn99: Can we talk about the sound design when the Basilisk is moving through the pipes? That heavy, scraping, metallic sound made my skin crawl. It sounded like a freight train dragging along the walls inside the school.

SlytherinKing: The practical effects were insane. When the snake blinded itself, that looked so visceral. Spielberg didn’t hold back at all. Also, Kenneth Branagh deserves an Oscar just for the scene where he tries to run away and Harry and Ron throw him against the wall. He is the most pathetic villain ever and I love it.

BookNerd4Life: TDM publishing just announced they are printing another four million copies of book two to keep up with demand this weekend. Daniel’s story and Spielberg’s directing is literally a cheat code.

Over on Twitter, a short, three-second clip of Rupert Grint making a face of pure, unadulterated terror when the giant spiders dropped from the ceiling in the Forbidden Forest was already circulating as a viral meme.

`@FilmBro_22`: rupert grint isn’t acting here bro. that is the face of a child who believes he is actually going to die. spielberg definitely dropped real spiders on him to get the shot.

`@WandMaker`: colin morgan really stepped up in this one. you can see him getting older, the innocence wearing off a bit. staring down that snake with the sword was legendary.

Marcus took a bite of his eggs, completely satisfied. The movie was a cultural event. Disney’s holiday animated film, which had opened the same weekend, was currently getting suffocated, performing at a fraction of its projected attendance. Miller Studios had officially conquered the winter market without Daniel even being in the state.

---

Meanwhile, back in Mansfield, Ohio, the atmosphere was decidedly less magical.

It was a blistering, miserable Tuesday morning. The sky over the Ohio State Reformatory was a flat, unforgiving sheet of gray. The wind howled through the rusted iron fences, carrying a damp chill that seeped straight into the bones of the production crew.

Inside the drafty, echoing halls of the prison, the crew was setting up for a small, intimate scene in the prison library.

Donald Sutherland was sitting in a wooden chair, wearing the oversized, faded uniform of Brooks Hatlen. He looked incredibly frail, completely embodying the institutionalized old man. Perched on a small wooden stand next to him was a live, fully grown crow named Jake.

Daniel was standing behind the camera monitor, wearing a thick down jacket, a beanie pulled low over his ears, and holding a cup of hot tea that was rapidly turning lukewarm. He was running over the blocking with Tom and Bob Elswit.

The scene was simple. Brooks finds a maggot in his lunch tray, hides it in his pocket, and later feeds it to his pet crow in the library. It was a tiny, quiet character moment designed to show how Brooks finds humanity in the bleakest corners of the prison, nurturing a bird when the world outside has forgotten he exists.

”Alright,” Daniel called out, his voice echoing off the peeling paint of the library walls. ”Donald, whenever you’re ready, just pull it out of your pocket, say the line, and offer it to the bird. Nice and easy. Jake looks pretty calm today.”

Donald Sutherland nodded slowly, reaching a weathered hand into the breast pocket of his uniform. He pulled out a small, white, wriggling maggot that the props department had sourced from a local bait shop that morning.

Before Donald could even open his mouth to speak the line, a woman in a bright yellow safety vest stepped out from behind the camera crew, holding up a clipboard like a shield.

”Hold on, please! Stop!” she called out loudly.

The entire crew froze. Bob pulled his eye away from the camera viewfinder. The boom mic operator lowered his pole. Daniel sighed, lowering his cup of tea.

The woman was Karen, the on-set representative for the American Humane Association. By union rules, any time an animal was used on a film set, an observer had to be present to ensure the animal was treated ethically and wasn’t put under undue stress. Up until now, she had mostly just watched Jake the crow eat seeds and occasionally asked the handler to give the bird a break from the hot lights.

Daniel walked out from behind the monitors, zipping his jacket up a little higher. ”Is there a problem with the crow, Karen? He looks fine. He’s not stressed.”

”The crow is perfectly fine, Mr. Miller,” Karen said, tapping her pen against her clipboard. She walked forward and pointed directly at Donald Sutherland’s hand. ”The problem is the maggot.”

Tom, who had been reviewing the daily call sheet, looked up, completely bewildered. ”I’m sorry, what?”

”You cannot feed a live maggot to the bird,” Karen stated firmly, her expression completely serious. ”It violates the ethical treatment guidelines.”

A heavy, utterly confused silence descended over the library set.

Donald Sutherland looked down at the tiny, squirming grub in his hand. He looked back up at the AHA representative, his thick white eyebrows raised in genuine, profound amusement.

Daniel took a slow breath. He rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying to process what had just been said.

”You’re protecting the maggot?” Daniel clarified, making absolutely sure he hadn’t misheard her over the hum of the portable heaters.

”Yes,” Karen nodded, completely unfazed. ”It is a live creature. Feeding it to a predator for the explicit purpose of entertainment is considered cruel. If you want to shoot the scene, you need to use a maggot that has died of natural causes.”

Tom dropped his call sheet. He walked over, standing next to Daniel, looking at Karen like she had just sprouted a second head.

”Karen,” Tom said, trying to keep his voice level. ”It’s a maggot. It’s fish bait. People buy them by the pound in styrofoam cups and stick metal hooks right through their faces to catch bass.”

”I don’t make the rules for fishermen,” Karen replied calmly, adjusting her clipboard. ”I make them for film sets. According to the guidelines, no animal can be harmed or killed for a shot. That includes insects and larvae. You need a dead maggot.”

Across the room, sitting in two canvas folding chairs near the craft services table, Morgan Freeman and Cillian Murphy were watching the exchange unfold.

Morgan had a thick wool blanket draped over his lap and was holding a cup of hot water. He slowly turned his head to look at Cillian, his face a picture of pure, majestic disbelief.

”Did that woman just demand a coroner’s report for a grub?” Morgan asked, his deep voice carrying a tone of absolute incredulity.

Cillian took a sip of his coffee, a rare, massive grin breaking across his face. He leaned back in his chair, thoroughly enjoying the sheer absurdity of Hollywood bureaucracy.

”She did, Morgan,” Cillian whispered back, his Irish lilt thick with amusement. ”They have to wait for it to pass away peacefully. A natural death. Old age, presumably.”

Morgan let out a long, rumbling laugh that echoed off the stone walls. ”I have been making movies for decades. I have seen leading men throw temper tantrums over the size of their trailers. I have seen directors fight over the color of the sky. But I have never, in my entire life, seen production halted to protect the civil rights of a maggot.”

Daniel stood in the center of the set, looking at Tom. They were currently sitting on a studio that had just made a hundred and fifty million dollars domestically over the Thanksgiving weekend. They were the most powerful studio executives in California. And they were currently paralyzed by a worm.

Tom looked like he was about to argue, but Daniel just held up a hand. There was no point in arguing. If they argued, Karen would file a grievance, the union would get involved, and they would lose a full day of shooting.

”Okay,” Daniel said quietly, accepting the completely absurd reality of the situation. He turned to the props master, a burly, bearded guy named Dave who looked completely baffled. ”Dave.”

”Yeah, boss?” Dave said, stepping forward.

”Go get the bait bucket,” Daniel ordered. ”Bring it over here to the folding table. We need to sift through it and find one that died of old age.”

For the next ten minutes, the entire production crew of a major Hollywood motion picture stood around in silence while the props department dumped a bucket of maggots onto a folding table and started poking them with metal tweezers, looking for one that didn’t move.

It was one of the most surreal things Daniel had ever witnessed.

Bob Elswit, a legendary cinematographer who had won awards for his lighting, was leaning over the table, squinting at the pile of grubs. ”That one looks pretty still, Dave.”

”Nah, he just twitched,” Dave said, poking it with the tweezers. ”He’s just lazy. We need a confirmed casualty.”

Donald Sutherland sat patiently in his chair, quietly stroking the crow’s black feathers.

”This is the glamour of the silver screen, Jake,” Donald muttered to the bird, a distinct twinkle in his eye. ”Don’t let anyone tell you different. They’re out there performing triage for your lunch.”

”Found one!” Dave yelled triumphantly from the back of the room, holding up a completely motionless, slightly dried-out maggot with the tweezers. ”This guy is definitely deceased. No signs of trauma. Natural causes.”

Karen walked over, leaned in, and inspected the dead maggot closely. She watched it for five solid seconds to ensure it wasn’t faking it. Satisfied, she nodded her approval, making a sharp checkmark on her clipboard.

”Thank you, Mr. Miller,” Karen said. ”You may proceed.”

Tom walked back over to Daniel, shaking his head in total disbelief. ”If I call Marcus and tell him we lost twenty minutes of expensive daylight because of maggot ethics, he’s going to think I’m having a stroke.”

”Just roll the camera, Tom,” Daniel smiled, walking back to the monitor. He honestly loved moments like this. The industry took itself so incredibly seriously. Executives wore thousand-dollar suits and talked about market shares and brand synergy and corporate takeovers. But at the end of the day, making a movie was just a hundred exhausted people standing in a freezing room, trying to find a dead bug to feed to a bird.

”Alright, let’s go,” Daniel called out, settling back into his chair. ”Quiet on set. Roll sound.”

”Sound speed,” the mixer called out.

Bob Elswit adjusted the focus ring on the heavy Panavision camera. ”Camera rolling.”

”Action,” Daniel said.

Donald Sutherland sat in the wooden chair, the officially approved, deceased maggot sitting in the palm of his weathered hand. He looked down at it, his face instantly softening into the gentle, heartbreaking persona of Brooks Hatlen. He looked up at the crow.

”Are you hungry, Jake?” Donald asked, his voice cracking slightly with age and affection. He slowly raised his hand. ”Is Jake hungry? Here you go.”

The crow hopped forward, its sharp beak snapping down, taking the dead maggot from Donald’s hand in a flash of black feathers.

”Good boy,” Donald murmured, smiling gently at the bird.

It was a tiny moment. A fraction of a second on screen. But as Daniel watched the monitor, he knew it was the exact kind of texture the movie needed. It was bizarre, it was tedious to shoot, and it was absolutely perfect.

”Cut!” Daniel called out. ”That’s a print. Moving on.”

---

Two weeks later, the Ohio leg of the shoot officially wrapped. The crew packed up the massive trucks and shipped the camera gear back to the warm, controlled environment of Stage 4 in Burbank to finish the interior cellblock scenes.

Daniel was exhausted. The cold had seeped into his bones, and his sleep schedule was completely wrecked. He didn’t even stop by the studio offices when his flight landed at LAX. He had a driver take him straight up to the Bel Air estate.

It was a Friday evening. The house was warm, smelling of roasted garlic, rosemary, and expensive candles.

Daniel dropped his heavy duffel bag in the foyer, kicked off his boots, and walked into the massive, open-plan kitchen.

Margot was standing by the island, pouring a glass of white wine. She was wearing a simple, elegant silk slip dress, her blonde hair falling over her shoulders. Florence was sitting on the plush sofa in the adjoining living room area, her feet tucked under her, reading a script with a pen tucked behind her ear.

”Look who survived the tundra,” Margot smiled, setting the wine bottle down and walking over to wrap her arms around his neck. She kissed him softly. ”You look incredibly tired.”

”I feel like I’ve aged ten years,” Daniel sighed, wrapping his arms around her waist and burying his face in her neck for a second just to ground himself. ”Ohio in November is not a place for human beings.”

Florence tossed her script onto the coffee table and walked over, joining the hug, resting her chin on Daniel’s shoulder. ”Welcome home. Did you finish all the depressing courtyard scenes?”

”We got everything we needed,” Daniel said, pulling back and walking over to the island to pour himself a glass of water. ”The footage looks incredible. Morgan and Cillian are giving the performances of their lives. It’s going to be a masterpiece.”

”Good,” Florence said, hopping up onto one of the barstools. ”I saw the box office numbers for Harry Potter. It’s insane, Daniel. You’re dominating the theaters and you weren’t even in the state.”

”Steven did a great job,” Daniel nodded, drinking the water. ”But honestly? The box office feels like it happened on another planet. My brain is still stuck in Mansfield.”

”Was it that bad?” Margot asked, leaning against the counter next to him.

”The cold was bad,” Daniel admitted. ”But the bureaucracy was worse. Let me tell you what happened on Tuesday.”

Daniel set his glass down, a smile slowly creeping onto his face as he remembered the sheer absurdity of the library scene.

”We’re shooting a scene with Donald Sutherland and a live crow,” Daniel started. ”Donald has to feed a maggot to the bird. Tiny scene. Five seconds on screen. I call action, and the animal rights rep completely halts production.”

”Was the bird stressed?” Florence asked, frowning.

”No,” Daniel laughed. ”She stopped production because feeding a live maggot to the bird was considered cruel to the maggot.”

Margot blinked, staring at him. ”Wait. Cruel to the maggot?”

”Yes,” Daniel said, laughing harder now. ”She looked me dead in the eye and said we had to use a maggot that died of natural causes.”

Florence let out a loud, sudden burst of laughter, slapping the marble counter. ”You have to be joking! A worm? They stopped a multi-million-dollar movie for a worm?”

”It’s fish bait!” Daniel said, holding his hands up in defeat. ”Tom tried to argue with her, but she wasn’t having it. So we had to dump a giant bucket of live maggots onto a folding table, and the entire production crew—including Bob—spent ten minutes poking them with tweezers looking for one that had passed away peacefully in its sleep.”

Margot was laughing so hard she had to put her wine glass down to avoid spilling it. ”Daniel, please tell me you’re making this up.”

”I swear to God,” Daniel said, wiping a tear from his eye. ”Morgan Freeman was sitting in a chair watching the whole thing. He later told me he had never seen a movie stopped for the civil rights of a grub. The AHA rep actually had to inspect the dead maggot to confirm there was no foul play before we could roll the camera.”

Florence threw her head back, laughing hysterically. ”Oh my god. The glamour of Hollywood. You’re out there breaking box office records, Disney is having a corporate meltdown because of you, and you’re standing in a freezing prison looking for a dead worm.”

”For real,” Daniel smiled, walking around the island and pulling both of them into a hug. The warmth of the kitchen, the smell of the food, and the sound of his wives laughing completely washed away the exhaustion of the last three weeks. ”That’s the reality of the business. You can have all the money in the world, but eventually, you’re just a guy digging through a bucket of bait.”

Margot kissed his cheek, still giggling. ”Well, I’m glad you’re home. You smell like old stone and airplane coffee. Go take a shower, and I’ll order us some actual food that doesn’t involve insects.”

”Deal,” Daniel said. He walked toward the stairs, feeling completely at peace.And for the first time in a whole month, he was warm.

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A/N: Read ahead on Patreon: /AmaanS