A heartbreaking yet comic family drama, A Better Heart by Chuck Augello examines the human-animal bond and the bonds between fathers and sons, challenging readers to explore their beliefs about the treatment of non-human species. Below is an excerpt from the novel:

PART ONE – AUGUST 1999

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Twenty-three candles, twenty-three incandescent wicks throwing shadows on the walls as Allison shuts her eyes and prepares to make a wish, the muscles around her lips afraid to let go and truly smile like her twenty-third birthday might deserve a good time. The candles are lit, her friends are gathered around the table eager to sing; the strawberry shortcake is fresh and perfectly frosted with the buttercream icing she craves, Happy Birthday, Allie written in red loops across the top, “Allie” spelled correctly this time, not like last year’s cake, her name spelled “Alley” as if they were celebrating some dark city pathway between two tenements. Twenty-three candles poised for a birthday wish, and Jesus God, does she really need a wish right now, with Momma in the hospital and Marty in the County Lock-Up while his baby grows inside her (or maybe it’s Kenny’s baby) and all Allison knows is that she really needs a birthday wish to come true this year, and do those twenty-three candles know how important this is, what a shitstorm her life has become? Twenty-three and her world is slipping from crappy to full-blown terrible, and as she leans over the table to make her Hail Mary hope-for-a-better-life birthday wish, please-please-please let this one come true, she opens her eyes and …oh shit, the candles have gone out again, her birthday cake is melting, and why didn’t Beth remember that strawberries give her a rash?

“Cut!” I put down the camera and check out the cake. “Is it really that hard to keep twenty-three candles lit?”

“Sorry about that, Kevin.”

“There’s one of those candle lighter things in the kitchen.”

“Are you sure this angle doesn’t make my nose look big?”

“Are we breaking for lunch now? Is the pizza here?”

“Dave, will you please shut up? How can I stay in character if you keep disturbing my preparation?”

“The icing is starting to drip. I read that if you douse it with hairspray…”

“You’re not using hairspray on that cake. I’m starving.”

“Kevin, can we shoot it from that angle, from the left? I hate my nose.”

“Kevin, where the hell is the pizza?”

Welcome to Exit 23. Perhaps one day this will be an amusing story on the commentary track for the Criterion Collection DVD, but right now it feels like another reason I should have gone to law school like my brother. No, I had to be a filmmaker instead, an auteur, and while somewhere in this giant boondoggle of a production is the seed of a quality low-budget film, that seed is shrinking by the hour, just like the available balance on the film’s bank account is shrinking, and when the two pizzas I ordered to feed the crew finally arrive, it’s likely I will pay for them with the nickels and pennies I’ve been saving since second grade, my cash on hand otherwise limited to a single dollar bill.

“Kevin, we need to talk,” Jill, our lead actress, says. “It’s about Allison. I’m not feeling her right now.”

Film School Rule #2 – Always be available for your actors.

“Okay, guys, let’s take a ten-minute break,” I say, clapping hands. “The pizza should be here any second now.”

On cue, the crew (or more accurately, the random group of friends I’ve cajoled into helping) loiters around the set (aka-my living room) as I kneel beside Jill and feign mastery and expertise. By now I shouldn’t have to fake it. We’ve been shooting for weeks. It’s my script, and the character of Allison Pinckney, the twenty-three-year-old small-town girl battling abandonment and a broken heart while clinging to her dreams is just a female, better-looking version of me. I know precisely what’s in Allison Pinckney’s heart, the passion and the energy and the yearning for beauty, the need to break free. Things may seem bleak, but my film will be finished on time for its premier at the Garden State Film Fest 1999, and it will land a distribution deal and win the $50K festival grand prize. Screw Y2K and all those end-of-the-century fears about the world falling apart; for me the year 1999 is far from over. Maybe the computers will crap out and planes will drop from the sky; maybe the world will fall apart, but for now, the bigger problem is how can I make the marginally talented Jill Willoughby transform into Allison Pinckney? And how can I find the missing element to elevate the script from melodrama to art? Does Exit 23 need social relevancy, a hero’s journey, or a rare disease? It’s out there, I know it, the elusive “it” that will bring everything together and make my film important to someone other than me. I just need to find it.

“I know the focus should be on her interior life, on being pregnant and everything, and Marty being in jail,” Jill whispers, leaning in so the others can’t hear her, “but I can’t stop thinking about my nose.”

“Your nose is beautiful,” I say, kissing its elongated tip. Film School Rule #7 – Lie when necessary. “It’s the perfect nose. It’s Gwyneth Paltrow’s nose. When people see this film, they’ll wonder how I got Gwyneth Paltrow’s nose to work for scale.”

“I hate Gwyneth Paltrow’s nose. It’s hideous. Is that really what you think?”

“Trust me, Jill: your nose is the perfect nose for this film. Remember, it’s not your nose that people will be watching. It’s Allison’s nose.”

She takes a second to process.

“Right, Allison’s nose,” she nods, and I sense her gears spinning, conjuring the ghosts of old acting teachers and their lessons on inhabiting a character. “Are you sure it won’t detract from the scene? Maybe we could try it from a different angle?”

The crew is growing restless, and if we’re going to catch the remaining natural light, we need to start shooting now.

“How about we try it again, only this time I want you to focus on Allison worrying about what Jake might think of her nose. Her anxiety is really about Marty and the baby—”

“—and Momma in the hospital.”

“—and Momma in the hospital, absolutely, but she’s distracting herself by thinking about her nose.”

“Okay, I can play that.” With a deep, measured breath, she folds her hands into prayer pose and touches her heart. “Fuck it. Let’s do this.”

“Okay, everyone, places. Scene 27B.”

I hear a few grumbles and a hushed “where’s the goddamn pizza” but it’s a solid crew and everyone is ready within minutes, and yes, it’s kind of a cliché but there’s an undeniable rush of pleasure at the sound of the word Action! All twenty-three candles are lit, Jill is once again Allison Pinckney, and as the other actors start singing “Happy Birthday,” I begin to relax. My cast and crew are so hard-working and supportive that I’m flat-out in love with each one of them, and as I watch the scene play out, I’m no longer in the dining room of my childhood home on 23 Davenport Drive. I’m inside Allison Pinckney’s childhood home with her best friend and brother and her secret love Jake as they celebrate her birthday. Maybe what’s missing is already here and I’m too distracted to see it. Everything is exactly as it should be and then—

The front door opens and a 70-year-old man in a yellow raincoat enters the scene carrying a capuchin monkey.

“Birthday? Today’s not my birthday,” my father says, “but let’s celebrate anyway.”

The monkey buries his face in the raincoat.

“Cut!”

Behind me, our sound guy whispers, “He forgot the goddamn pizza.”

.     .     .     .     .

An hour later the cast and crew are gone, except for Veronica, who handles make-up, costumes, hair, props, continuity, and nearly everything else, and who sometimes sleeps over; and my father, who technically owns the house, his name on the deed and all that, and who, since his arrival, hasn’t budged from the couch, where he snores and farts in deep slumber, the capuchin nestled beside him, the monkey clutching the banana we gave him but refusing to eat.

It’s been four years since I’ve seen him. (My father, not the monkey: I’ve never seen the monkey before.) My father: Edward Stacey, stage name Brian Edwards, Guinness World Record Holder for most appearances in a motion picture with over 623 credits to his name, excluding his multiple roles in Mexican horror flicks under the name “George Gringo.” Years back he carried his resume in a three-prong portfolio, each role carefully typed out, along with the film name, production date, and director. Among the highlights were his roles as Dead Body #7 in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and Man with Napkin in Some Like it Hot. Name a film and my father was probably in it, though only for a second, his face and body somewhere in the background, in the crowd, in the forgotten patches of the screen where the audience never looks. That’s him, the ubiquitous Extra, specializing in corpses, enemy soldiers destined for the bayonet, and working stiffs stuck standing at the bar while the main characters banter and shine.

Only once did he land a speaking role. In the 1964 gangster flick The Guns of Philadelphia, directed by Nigel Band, my father assumed the role of Concerned Neighbor, who, at the 7 minutes and 43 seconds mark, enters the scene and says, “Hurry! Call a doctor, now!” His voice is deep and mellifluous, his face a masterpiece of neighborly concern, the camera pausing on him for 2.5 seconds (60 frames in film math) before cutting to a reaction shot of the actor Guy Madison as Johnny Bones, the film’s protagonist, Concerned Neighbor’s narrative arc extinguished in a single cut. My father always described it as a time of great hope as he waited for casting directors throughout Hollywood to recall his bravura line reading (“Hurry! Call a doctor, now!”) and insist that Brian Edwards be cast in their next project. And while his next role, in Attack of the Swamp Bats (1964- directed by Herman Orange) did include dialogue, (“I knew that swamp was evil. Yes, Yes, evil!”) Dad’s scene was cut for length, and in short time he was back to portraying silent, usually dead characters like Stampede Victim #4 in All across the Prairie and Man on Bus in Paradise Fever.

My favorite moment of my father’s career: 1974’s Soylent Green. In the final scene, moments before Charlton Heston belts out his classic warning about the main ingredient in the film’s eponymous food, (spoiler alert: it’s not vegan), there’s my father as one of four men carrying Heston to his doom.

“Look, there’s Daddy’s shoulder!” Mom said the first time I saw it, late at night, on the USA Network. I was six years old, and that shoulder sealed my fate: I was going to be a filmmaker.

 

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