“Hey, wait a minute!” said Angela, bolting upright in the bed, “nobody said anything about dirty pictures!”
C.D. raised himself on elbow, sighed, reached for a cigar, laughed softly, and reassured her: “Don’t worry, kid, it’s just for my private collection,” then shrugged, tapping the cigar, “. . . besides, who’s ever gonna know it’s you?”
It was true that neither of their faces showed clearly—just enough of Angela’s top-quarter profile to give someone momentary pause when sworn to that it was, in fact, the famous star—after which it would be immediately dismissed as another cheap lie . . . like the one told by the drunken Grover Morse.
In other respects, it was quite an arresting shot—portraying, as it did, the torn, lace-edged bodice, pulled down to just beneath the lower half of two superb breasts, and, due to its binding effect, causing them to jut out dramatically, followed by white-ruffled pantalooned-legs wrapped around a bare buttocks raised in thrust, the leverage for which was being achieved by the toehold of a pair of muddy cavalry boots, spurs still intact.
Although the photograph was almost invariably discredited as not being of Angela Sterling, it did, for a while, enjoy a certain vogue among the smart fetishist set, the so-called “Boots and Period” crowd.
“You can be honest with me,” said Angela, reaching across the table for Boris’s hand now and giving him her most serious look, “you do know that, don’t you?”
He smiled. In order not to smile quite too much, he raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Yes, I know,” he murmured.
“Then tell me . . . do you think I have talent?”
Boris frowned and looked away for a moment. Talking to actors about their narcissism was a drain; it put one in the superior position of the psychiatrist—pointless, except on the set.
“Everyone has talent,” he said, “it’s just a question of using them”—he caught himself in time—“of their using it in the right way, at the right time, and to the right degree. Do you know what I mean?” It seemed she might not have heard.
Angela nodded silently, lowering her eyes, then raised them. “Please tell me something,” she said, making it sound brave. “Which one of my movies did you like best . . . no, I don’t mean that, I mean which one did you think . . . well, showed that I could . . . or that I might . . .” She broke off, beseeching him with her eyes, “You know what I mean?”
“Uh, yes, well you see, it really isn’t important what I think was best—it’s what you think was best, the thing you felt most involved in . . .”
“Oh please, Boris,” she begged, squeezing his hand, “please tell me one . . . one part, one scene . . .”
“Uh, well, let’s see . . .” He raised his eyes as though trying to recall, and it slowly came to her that he couldn’t think of anything of hers he liked.
“Oh God,” she said hopelessly, “wasn’t there anything? Surely there must have been one scene . . . one line . . .”
“Well, uh, the thing is, you see—”
Then she knew, and she put her face in her hands.
“Oh no,” she said, “you’ve never even seen . . . oh no . . .”
“Don’t be silly, of course I’ve seen you!”
“In what?” she demanded.
“I’ve seen you in trailers on TV.”
“Trailers for what?”
“Well, let’s see . . .”
She was shattered. “You haven’t! You haven’t seen anything I’ve ever done!” And then it turned to wrath. “Would you please tell me why I’m here? Because I’m supposed to be such a good piece of ass? Is that the reason?” She began to weep bitterly.
Boris grasped her shoulder; it was time to be firm. “Now stop it, Angela, you’re acting like a child! I don’t have to see you on screen, I know you’re exactly right for this film! I don’t want to discuss what I’ve seen you do, because I know that your potential has never been realized, or even approached. Now you’ll just have to have confidence in me. Okay?” He handed her his handkerchief.
She dabbed her eyes and smiled at him through the tears. “I’m sorry, that was silly.” She squeezed his hand again. “Forgive me?”
“Here,” he said, filling her glass, “have some brandy.”
She joined him as he raised his glass. “To . . . The Faces of Love,” he said.
She nodded. “To The Faces of Love . . .”
They drank, and said nothing for a moment, Boris looking at her, but his mind somewhere else.
“Do you know why the studio wasn’t able to change my image?” she asked then. “I mean, even though I stopped doing the bikini-beach pictures and started doing nice sort of Doris Day things? And I still stayed a sex-symbol? And not only that, but it even got worse? Do you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because,” she went on, not without a certain bitterness, staring down at her drink, “every man in America likes to think that he’s the Big Bad Wolf fucking Goldilocks, that’s why.”
After holding a pouting expression for a second, she looked up at him. “But you’re not like that, are you . . .”
Boris shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I am sometimes.”
“Well, you shouldn’t be,” she admonished.
He laughed. “You’re too much.”
She gave him a searching look. “You mean good or bad?”
He shrugged and smiled, pretending to hesitate. “Good,” he said then, “yeah, I’m going to have to say good on this one.”
“I’m glad,” she said softly, then lowered her eyes again, fingering the glass. “Boris . . . I don’t exactly know how to say this . . .”
“You mean I’m that hard to talk to?”
“Oh no, no, no, it isn’t you . . . I mean you’re so straight and everything . . . I mean, I don’t want you to think I’m, well, you know, out of line, or freaky or something, it’s just that, well, I know how some directors have to feel close to the actors before they can really work good together and . . . well, I mean, you’re so cool and everything that I might not even know it if you wanted to . . . you know, be close or something . . . I mean, well gosh, I don’t think you’d come on, you know, even if you felt like it . . .”
Boris saw it as a “Monologue in Close-Up”—clocking the face . . . twitches, textures, angles, shadings, highlights . . . matching the word, its substance, with the substance of the image—or counterpointing them. How, he wondered, could it have been done better? He was thinking only of this for the moment, then he was suddenly aware—not abruptly, but with the warm, swift smoothness that accompanies a severed artery—of her hand in his, and more, that he could not imagine her “Mono.C.U” as having been different. Good performance.
“What I wanted to say,” she went on, almost shyly, “was that you don’t have to, you know, come on with me . . . I mean, I wouldn’t put you through that—so if you, well, do have eyes . . . like the girl in the movie said, all you gotta do is, you know, whistle.”
Boris smiled and pressed her hand. He was not surprised that his previous strategy had been effective in preparing her for work—she would now be like a clean slate, with no hangups from the past—but here was an unexpected bonus, her offering the fabled golden fleece. He had, of course, seen many of her films, some of them more than once. God certainly looks after the man, he mused, who takes care of business first.
5
THE CASBAH SEQUENCE WAS scheduled for six days’ shooting, with Angela in practically every scene—the exceptions being a montage segment of incidents and impressions from her childhood on the Virginia plantation. To play the father, they had prevailed upon the venerable and award-winning Andrew Stonington, a grand old patriarch from the Deep South of yesteryear; and, for the mother, none other, of course, than the great Louise Larkin herself. To play Angela as a young girl—in a series of scenes representing her life between eight and twelve—they had secured the services of the versatile and very pretty Jennifer Jeans, better known to close friends as “Jenny” Jeans
, and to even closer friends as “Creamy” Jeans. Although she could do a passable eight, and a perfect twelve, she was actually eighteen years old. This had to be ascertained beyond any doubt before Sid would sign her.
“Morty, that fucking chick is jail bait if I ever seen it! I mean, she’s a fucking child, for Christ fucking sake! Are you one-hunnert percent sure that broad is eighteen?!? I mean, I don’t want to get hit with no fucking Mann Act and not even get laid! Jeez!”
“Swear to God, Sid,” said Mort, raising his hand. “Like I tole you, I seen the birth certificate awready—and as if that ain’t enough, I gotta affidavit from her folks saying she’s eighteen, and how they unnerstand we’re making an adult-type picture here.”
Sid put his head in his hands, keening, “‘Adult-type picture’ he calls it—I think we’re all going to jail, Morty, that’s what I think.”
It was Tony Sanders, however, who was to have the most dramatic encounter with Miss Jeans.
“Holy fucking Christ,” he said, stumbling over to where Boris was sitting, just off the set, making notes, “man, you really oughtta cop a taste of what’s jumping off in that second trailer—there’s an eight-year-old kid in there twisting up hash-bombers big as cigars.” He collapsed in a chair, shaking his head. “And it’s dyna-fucking-mite, too, daddy, I shit you not!”
Boris laughed to see him so hopelessly stoned. “Boy or girl?”
“Huh? The kid? Oh wow, a chick, man, a fantastic little eight-year-old chick—you know, she’s playing Angela as a kid—well, we’re supposed to work on the script, right, so I walk into the dressing room . . . pow, rock blasting full-out—Jackie K. and the Plastic Hearts—and she’s sitting there alone, staring in the mirror and blowing this monstro joint of hash. ‘Want a toke?’ she says, then giggles—schoolgirlville, but evil, dig—and says ‘I mean, if you’re not from the FBI.’ So I sit there and get stoned . . . wow.”
“But did you get laid?” asked Boris.
“No, man, but dig . . . at one point I asked if there was anything to drink, and she said ‘No, baby, I don’t drink,’ and I said, ‘Well, I know you don’t drink, but I thought maybe your manager, or your mother, or something—’ and she smiles and says, ‘How about if I cop your joint instead?’ Eight years old, right? So I give her a big dumb ‘Huh? What’d you say?’ And she runs it down for me: ‘Well, you know, give you some head, blow you, suck your cock, that sort of thing.’ Well, I’ll tell you, B., it tore me up—I mean, I doubt if I’ve ever turned down a blow-job in my life, but eight years old, wow . . . I don’t know, maybe I’m old-fashioned . . . thirteen, twelve, terrific . . . maybe even eleven . . . or ten, for Chrissake, if she’s got any knockers—I mean, any breast at all . . . but the idea of making it with a pre-knocker . . . I mean, wow, who wants to fuck a chick with no tits? It must be a fag-trip, right? I mean, it’s got to be like fucking a young boy, right?”
“But she just wanted to give you some head,” Boris reminded him, “the no-knocker thing wouldn’t have mattered there, would it?”
Tony clucked and sighed and covered his face with his hand, wagging his head in despair. “I know, I know, I’ve been thinking about that—it was the fucking hash, B., I swear to God—it fucked me up . . . I didn’t know what I was doing, for Chrissake . . .”
Boris, ultimate funster that he was, did a big-eyed soap-opera elevation of eyebrow, combo of surprise and indignation: “Oh?”
But it was completely wasted, natch, on Tone the stone—who grimaced as one in pain misunderstood, shutting eyes tight, gritting teeth, shaking head, tolerance at an end: “Man . . . don’t you dig—that fucking dope fucked up my whole motherfucking sense of values!”
6
THE STORY-LINE of the casbah-sequence was simplicity itself—Angela, or “Miss Maude” as she was called in the script, was a fabulously wealthy and freaked-out blond American beauty who maintained a luxurious house in Morocco, and allowed herself to be ravished by a seemingly endless procession of husky Africans. This footage would later be intercut with images from her childhood—illustrating, presumably, how she developed this insatiable taste, or perhaps more correctly, why she had determined on this particular method of getting a rise out of Dad.
The script called for four separate lovemaking scenes, each complete and highly detailed. In addition—by way of indicating the sheer scope and volume of the lady’s activity—there was to be a montage featuring approximately two dozen more of her black lovers, in various aspects and postures of intercourse with her. Several of these occasions called for her to “frolic tumultuously” with two or three at the same time. The dénouement—or finale, as it were—was a sort of ronde extraordinaire, which Tony had designated “Around the Clock,” and claimed to have actually witnessed in Hamburg. It was to feature Angela and four participants . . . one kissing each of her breasts, another kissing her mouth, and the fourth in full penetration of her perfect vage. As soon as the full-pen man reached climax, they would all shift, musical-chairs style, clockwise, to their new positions. By the time the first arrived at vage again, his member was once more erect at the ready—so that, theoretically at least, the ronde could continue indefinitely—and the use of a fast-dissolving montage would produce that effect to good advantage.
“I was wondering,” said Tony, while they were working on the script in Boris’s room, “if you’d fucked Angie yet?”
Boris, sketching a setup composition, held it at arm’s length, squinting at it. “No, man, I’ve had too much on my mind.” He crumpled the sketch and started another one. “Besides,” he added, “I’m not sure I’ve got eyes.”
“Hmm.” Tony absently unfolded the crumpled paper and looked at it. “I don’t know whether I ever mentioned it or not,” he said casually, “but I made it with her a couple of times.”
“Oh?” said Boris, expressing polite interest but continuing to work on the composition.
“Yeah, on Marie Antoinette, in her dressing room—once in full rig—you know, big hoop skirt, eight petticoats, high-button shoes, monstro hairpiece, the whole schmear, pretty weird.”
“How was it?”
“Yeah, well . . .” he seemed curiously undecided, “well, it was good, man,” he said, but almost begrudgingly. “I mean, just the idea of fucking Angela Sterling . . . well, that’s a score going in, right? I mean, even if it’s bad, it’s good.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Well, at least then it’s out of the way—you’ve fucked her, and you can forget it. Know what I mean?”
“Hmm.” Boris held up his sketch, squinting at it.
“She’s got a great body,” Tony went on, half defensively, “and she’s, well . . . you know, quite active . . . I mean she gets that cooze pointed at the ceiling, and she really throws it up there! I mean, like hard, man . . . and the old scissor-lock working . . . writhing . . . moaning . . . biting . . . scratching . . . nails digging into your back . . . muttering weird endearments . . . you know, the whole passion-bit.”
Boris shrugged. “Sounds ideal.”
“Yeah . . .” Tony muttered, lapsing then, trying to get it together. “Well, the first time, the time she was in her full ‘Marie A.’ costume, she did a rape scene—like, you know, pretending I was raping her—and that was pretty good . . . I mean, I was just whacked out enough to get with it . . . I’d always had those fantasies . . . innocent blond beauty rudely pinioned to the mast, hands tied behind her, knockers thrusting out . . . you know, the whole corny ‘Big Bad Wolf Fucking Goldilocks’ syndrome . . . Christ, I tore that costume to pieces. Les Harrison flipped out completely—we had to make up a story . . . about some extra stealing the costume, and then getting hit by a Santa Monica bus . . . or something.”
Boris chuckled. “Beautiful. Maybe we can use it.”
“No, don’t mention it to her, B., for Chrissake. I mean, I don’t want to get in one of those kiss-and-tell bags.”
“That’s very funny—I was wondering where she got that ‘Goldilocks a
nd the Bad Wolf’ bit. She’s still using that, you know.”
Tony was shocked. “What? You mean she actually told you about making it in the dressing room?”
“No, no, she just used the Bad Wolf thing—describing all men . . . except maybe me.”
“Ha-ha.”
“Well, what was the next time like?”
Tony frowned. “It was almost a little scary—I mean, it was like she wasn’t really all there, you dig. Fantasy-bag-ville-time, right? I mean, I got the feeling I could have slit her throat and she wouldn’t have noticed . . . except maybe later, when she got too weak to manipulate her ass.”
“That’s bullshit,” said Boris, head to one side, studying his comp, “I don’t think she’s that . . . pure.”
Tony shrugged, “Could be. Maybe she was faking the whole thing. Faking the fuck. Hmm. An age-old story, as immemorial as Woman herself. And I was just too boxed to notice. But the time in the ‘Marie A.’ rig, that was wild. I mean, you can’t fault that one. I wouldn’t mind trying something like that again sometime.”
“Raping Marie Antoinette?”
“No, no, something different this time.”
“Like getting sucked by a cute eight-year-old in pigtails?”
“Yes, you rat fuck! What heinous deception! How could you do that to your grand guy friend Tone? Now I’ll probably never know the thrill of pre-teen head!”
“Listen,” said Boris, “I don’t like to bring you down, Tone, but we’ve got to make some decisions about the film.”
“Decisions? Oh wow.”
“Well, let’s call it choices then.”
“Choices, right—that’s much better.”
“Okay, do you think we ought to include a gay sequence?”
Tony grimaced. “Aghh.”
“Nicky thinks it’s a swell idea.”
“I’m hip he does.”
Boris smiled. “What, anti-fag, Tone?”
Tony shrugged. “Well . . . aside from that—if true, which I doubt—I just don’t think it makes it erotically.”
Blue Movie Page 14