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to thumb a nose at convention. Though “Film Consultant—Marta Spëk” might ultimately appear in the smallest of fonts as the credits rolled, Marta felt averse to collude with a production company that would sully Lady Stanhope, the forgotten accomplishments, or the old time derring-do. Stanhope had been an odd bird who grew increasingly eccentric each year, and her pipe-dream reign in the ruins of an abandoned monastery would be easy to misconstrue.
    Granting the film’s exploitative designs, Marta supposed her professionalism might fortify scenes, smooth rough edges, and cull vulgarity as well as anachronisms. Contributing praiseworthy lines—or an entire scene—stood out as another possibility. Pop cultural immortality , she thought, unclear about her actual perspective about that temporary apotheosis.

ON THIS SHORT DAY OF FROST AND SUN
    1.
    A t moments of ordinary respite during the weeks preceding the interview lunch—in line for sushi at the Student Union Building, gathering wool along transit lines, and once in the midst of a notably arid departmental meeting—Marta placed herself on the bustling set of The Prophet of Djoun . That title wouldn’t last, she gathered: overt religious politics limited market penetration. At first she’d pictured Hester! , but decided the tone would never suffice: it summoned an old Mel Brooks production, or one of those Technicolor biblical epics with the ballooning cast of extras. And, besides, irony-free exclamation marks had long passed out of fashion.
    The scenes she formed wavered and collapsed like mirages, a habitual desire for accuracy warring with farfetched guesswork. She’d never visited a set before, but knew that since her notions about film production originated with features about movie-making they were both outdated and malformed, likely veering far from fact. The image of a barking bald German director wearing a monocle and jodhpurs, imperious and intent in an elevated embroidered canvas chair, a cliché of course, recurred frequently, an antique tableau situated nearly a century in the past. Perhaps physical sets—wood, paint, spray foam, props—had also been rendered quaint, supplanted by cavernous warehouses of green screens and unfathomable computer processes outsourced to crowded facilities in equatorial hubs.
    What role might they request? Marta had no clue. Did the production company even anticipate a bodily presence? Assumedly, an on-set lackey could call or send email queries that long distance expertise would clarify: “Professor Spëk, the director wants ‘Get a life, assclown.’ What’s the 1820 s’ version of that expression?” Then again, fate might orchestrate call centre tribulations: answering prompts while holed up at a desk in a rented office cubicle (or a tent—considering that Lady Stanhope had settled and eventually died in a remote dusty corner of Lebanon, the production required some semblance of sand). The absence of data troubled her.
    Though city dwellers were aware their home had been crowned Hollywood North, with vast facilities constructed somewhere in outlying areas (Marta’s Internet perusal added specifics: “Vancouver’s the home to literally hundreds of film & video companies, talent agencies —people & animals—F/X & post-production facilities, shooting stages & water tank facilities”), the bulk of Marta’s images sprang ready-made from American screwball comedies, hyperbolic and yet based on a thin tissue of truth. Colossally oversized egos, tragic deluded has-beens, difficult capital A artists, diva actors bursting into tantrum and shutting themselves up in luxury trailers stocked with idiosyncratic and required-by-contract necessities—an oxygen tank, Algerian bottled water, a Thai masseuse—clashing visions, sniveling, hangdog, or back-stabbing assistants, devastating insults and public humiliations, rabid oily