A wall panel swings silently open. Through the portal, a man dressed in '30s upper crust informality slips into a radio transmitter room. He sits down at a transmitter, consults a codebook and, with grim determination lining his face, sets the dial and speaks into the microphone.
"This is number seven," growls the mystery man. "I regret to inform you that the package has been delayed. Over."
The transmitter squawks to life and click-clacks out a reply on the decoding machine's paper spool. The stranger tears it off and reads, "Rendezvous cannot be changed."
"But I need more time!" "Cut!" yells director Joe Johnston as he brings this small but pivotal bit of intrigue to a halt. Johnston moves quickly through a mob of crew members and deep into an already crowded corner of a Disney Studio soundstage. "If we can go slow, slow, slow and push in on him and the radio, I think that will work," Johnston tells an agreeable cameraman. "And since we're going to creep in on this, let's try and start when he reaches for the mike."
Johnston next turns his attention to the actor, who cracks a small joke while his makeup is being touched up, and confirms with the director that he is to punch up six digits on the transmitter. Johnston, to solidify the count, retreats behind a flat where the sound man supplying the transmitter effects is informed that the magic number is truly six.
"OK," says Johnston. "Let's try it again."
Launch Pads
The Rocketeer, Disney's big budget action-adventure, has moved onto the sound-stages and into the home stretch. And it shows. Bill Campbell, who portrays the title '30s flyboy, has come out of the "uneasy and insecure" shell he felt he was in during the first weeks of the four-month-plus shooting schedule and into a friendly, self-assured posture on the set. Jennifer Connelly, who plays Cliff Secord's girlfriend Jenny, has stopped by the set on her day off, to monitor the film's progress, munch craft service chow and to hang out with the cast and crew. Even Johnston, ever vigilant and tight-lipped on his directorial follow-up to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, has a smile on his face as he goes through the logistics of the transmitter room sequence.
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