And went straight to Cloud Nine.
That’s the name of the game.
So she balled the devil and beat the devil. (Beat.) Well, I blew that assignment. The Boss did, too, in a manner of speaking, but you know who they’ll tie the can to. (Beat.) I should feel rotten about it, but somehow I don’t.
(Very gently.) Of course you don’t. You were half in love with her yourself, weren’t you, baby?
(After a beat.) Love? (Two beats, then brusquely.) That’s not my department.
ROLL CREDITS OVER SOPHIE AND MUSIC. FADE OUT AND END.
A Diary
— Tuesday
Picture this: We’re in the back room of a two-room suite on the eighth and last floor of a hotel on 46th Street between 8th and 9th. You wouldn’t dream this hotel owned a two-room suite. You’d say, charitably, that it had seen better days, only I’m not sure it had. I think it was always a fleabag. But here we are, because Alan is tight with the owner, or the manager, or the owner-manager, or something, and we’re getting a special rate. It can’t be too special; the regular rate shouldn’t be more than a couple of dollars a day.
We’re in this room, the three of us and this girl. The three of us consist of Alan the Producer, Vinnie the Director, and Me the Screenwriter. Alan the Producer is about forty-two. It would not hurt him to take off ten or fifteen pounds, and the facial expression he usually wears suggests that he knows this, but that he has too many other things to worry about. Things of cosmic significance. One of these things is the possibility of growing a beard. Alan the Producer is always clean shaven, always immaculately clean shaven, but in the two months I’ve known him he has mentioned to me perhaps two dozen times that he is thinking of growing a beard.
Vinnie the Director is twenty-seven. He is a Boy Genius who wears blue jeans and flowered shirts. The jeans are always the same pair. The shirts never seem to repeat. He always leaves the top three shirt buttons open. God knows why. Vinnie the Director doesn’t say much. He’s basically visual rather than verbal, which probably makes him sensational behind the camera. He has directed and edited six pornographic movies in his young life. Which puts him six up on Alan the Producer, who has not, to my knowledge, produced anything.
Let me amend that. Two nights ago the three of us went out to dinner, and Alan produced a credit card.
Me the Screenwriter you’ll learn more of than you care to in the pages to follow. Anyway, I don’t have a speaking part in the scene which you are about to eavesdrop on. I’m just sort of there, a silent presence, an eminence bleu.
That leaves The Girl. I don’t remember her name. I don’t, to be honest, precisely remember what she looks like. She was around twenty and moderately attractive. Light brown hair, I think. No interesting scars or anything like that.
The girl is standing there. Alan is on the couch with his feet up and Vinnie is sitting backward on a straight chair, straddling it. I’m sitting on a similar chair, but in a more orthodox fashion.
ALAN: Uh, let’s see. First I want to be sure you understand what sort of movie, the kind of project, we’re involved in here.
GIRL: I was told a porno film.
ALAN: That’s right.
GIRL: Well, that’s cool.
VINNIE: It’s hardcore.
GIRL: Hardcore, right, I was told that.
ALAN: Actually there’s hardcore and there’s hard core, I think we all understand that. We’re trying to make a particular statement in this film, and we feel the demographics of the market are such that a film can be hardcore and can still be a genuine aesthetic experience filmically.
GIRL: Well, yeah, sure.
VINNIE: Maybe a bit.
ALAN: Right, I was thinking along those lines. Now looking at you, getting the impression you would project on film, I can see, I can more or less sense, that we could use you in a particular scene. You have a special quality, a sort of fusion of innocence and experience that would come across beautifully. I want to emphasize, though, that it’s not a large part.
GIRL: How many days?
VINNIE: A day’s shooting. Maybe an hour’s work but you’d be paid for the day.
GIRL: What do you pay?
VINNIE: Hundred a day.
GIRL: Well, that’s cool.
ALAN: There’s one thing, though. Now I gather you’ve done similar films before.
GIRL: Yeah, a couple. No speaking parts yet but I was in a few things. You know, what you’d call an extra in fucking and sucking scenes.
ALAN: I see.
GIRL: You maybe saw me in Water Bed Lovers. I had a couple good scenes in that one.
ALAN: I see. Well, the thing is, being no stranger to the industry, you probably know that there are often certain things one person will do and another one won’t. It’s a question of personal feelings, of personal sensibilities.
GIRL: I don’t do anal.
ALAN: In this case that’s not a—
GIRL: Not from inhibitions but because I can’t handle it. Like it’s painful.
ALAN: Well, that wouldn’t be a factor here. Well, to put it in perspective, there’s a Roman Orgy scene I would want to use you in. Your role—
GIRL: Yeah, they do a lot of the Roman Orgy scenes. I was in one of them as a matter of fact, I forget the name of the film.
ALAN: Your role, uh, the question is whether you would have any objection to a scene with a dog.
GIRL: A dog?
ALAN: An Old English sheepdog. What the script calls for, the dog would go down on you.
GIRL: Would I eat the dog or anything?
ALAN: No, it would just be the dog eating you. You wouldn’t have to worry about being bitten or anything. The dog is well trained.
VINNIE: The dog’s a trouper.
GIRL: Well, uh. Would the dog also fuck me or is this just an eating scene?
ALAN: Strictly an eating scene. The dog—
GIRL: Because, well, I would probably do it, I don’t know, but I never did and—
ALAN: No, that definitely wouldn’t enter into it. As a matter of fact, the dog’s a female.
GIRL: It’s a female dog?
ALAN: That’s right.
GIRL: You know, that’s really far out. But sure, I could handle it Why not?
What am I doing here?
I mean, is this why I went to college? Is this why I set out to master the techniques of the writing profession? Is it even why I learned to type? So that I can sit in a hotel for cockroaches while some brainless twit decides whether or not she cares to play a scene in which a female Old English sheepdog performs cunnilingus upon her? A scene that I, God forgive me, actually sat down a couple of weeks ago and wrote?
What am I doing here?
Okay. I’ll tell you what I’m doing here.
I am functioning as a sort of ex officio assistant director on a film tentatively entitled Different Strokes. I am going to play one of the secondary roles in the film, that of the Dirty Old Man. I have done what is officially known as a rewrite on the film, in that there was an original script which I for the most part tore up and threw out. And I am at the same time writing a production diary of the two or three weeks which will be spent producing this epic.