The main reason I am doing this production diary is that some very good friends at Dell read the screenplay, liked it, and agreed that a book consisting of the screenplay and a diary recounting production experiences might constitute a book which a lot of people might want to read. And the existence of such a book, on the other hand, would constitute a hell of a lot of free publicity for the film.
If the film does well, I will make some money. (If it does poorly, I will make zilch; they are paying me off in a percentage of profits.) So I have an incentive for writing this production diary, but now that I’m sitting down and starting to do it, I find another incentive.
Namely that I am involved in something obviously insane, patently insane, and I would like to try to keep a relatively sane record of it as it unfolds. I can’t count on my conversations with Alan the Producer or Vinnie the Director to keep my head straight. They are both out of their minds.
Hence this diary. I am starting it today, which is a Tuesday, and I will be writing it for about two weeks, and I will try to use that stretch of time and space to convey to you (and perhaps to myself as well) what the experience of making a pornographic movie is like.
I won’t be getting particularly technical. It might be possible to write a book that would enable the reader to make his own movie after reading it. But I’m afraid I couldn’t write such a book even if I were so inclined. I don’t know a hell of a lot about cameras and film. I’m hoping to learn a little about the subject that, after all, is one of my motives for going through all this.
I will also, in the course of this diary, discuss some of the preproduction experiences of the past couple of months, feeding them in as they seem appropriate. My present game plan, subject to change, without notice, is as follows: I will spend a couple of hours every night typing away furiously before going to bed, and I will write whatever comes to mind at the time. And, because I’m doing this for your benefit as well as my own, I’ll try to limit myself to material that will be informative or entertaining or, with luck, both.
Which brings us to the point that this is a sort of bastard diary. A pure diary is a monologue, or perhaps one could better call it a dialogue of the writer with himself. But this is a diary undertaken with the understanding that it is to be published, a diary written specifically to be published.
I suspect this is both good and bad. Diaries written for the writer alone can be more completely honest. No doubt I’ll have thoughts and observations over the next couple of weeks that I will be disinclined to share with you, and I will therefore fail to commit them to print. On the other hand, I’ve never had the temperament of a true diarist. So, if this diary were not going to be published, I would not be writing it at all.
Enough. Let us return to that grotty hotel room.
What we were doing today, from nine in the morning until almost six this afternoon, is called Casting. Alan had inserted notices in a couple of theatrical trade papers announcing an open casting call for Different Strokes which he described as an erotic film. He did not say it was hardcore. He implied this, however, by not saying it was soft-core. Of the people who turned up, I would estimate that nine out of ten took it for granted that it was to be hardcore, and most of the rest figured this was a strong probability.
I would never have believed so many people would show up. I can’t say how many did appear, because we didn’t see all of them. The front room, where they were supposed to wait, filled up early on. They were spilling over into the hallway, and I’m sure a hell of a lot of hopeful thespians took a look at the waiting line and went away. I do know that we saw well over two hundred people in the course of the day.
In many instances all we did was see them; one look and we knew we didn’t need them for anything. I understand some of the homeliest girls in the world try to enter beauty contests. I don’t know why this happens, but I do know some of the world’s ugliest people showed up today (mostly in the morning, true early birds who caught no worms this time around). These were people we wouldn’t even use as extras in the crowd scenes. Alan just gave them a very professional, “Sorry, nothing for you today,” and pointed them back out again. None of them seemed surprised. I guess they get used to it, or else they are awed in the presence of a genuine movie producer. I wouldn’t quite call Alan that yet, but he knows the moves well enough to fake out people who don’t know him.
I guess the casting process went pretty well. We have most of the roles nailed down, and tomorrow’s casting session should wrap it all up. One good thing is that we had most of the hard parts cast in advance. Our lead signed for the thing three weeks ago. The two nonsexual male roles, Irving and Pluto, were nailed down almost as long ago.
(A word of explanation. A nonsexual role, in this context, doesn’t mean a eunuch. It means no fucking. There’s also a nonsexual female role, Madge, and we signed that the day before yesterday after Alan shadowboxed with this woman he’s known for weeks. Her name is Gertrude and she’s been in a lot of Russ Meyer type tit-and-ass movies over the years. She’s physically perfect for the part, and in a sense it was written for her; Alan wanted to use her and I thought up the character of Madge based on his description of Gertrude. For weeks she sat around trying to decide whether she would be compromising her professional reputation by appearing in an out-and-out fuck-suck movie, even if she were not doing any of the fucking and/or sucking. Her decision was favorable. I think a guarantee of four days shooting at a hundred and a half per diem had something to do with this.)
We also had cast those parts that are to be played by friends, backers of the film, and assorted agreeable hangers on. These are mostly nonsexuaclass="underline" the auctioneer’s a backer, the piano player’s a writer friend of mine, and a variety of friends and backers have already agreed to drop around for the crowd scenes. But there have also been two sexual volunteers: me for the Dirty Old Man, and a girl Alan knows who wants to be in the orgy scene because she always wanted to be in a porno film.
We also precast Rasputin, which is generally acknowledged to be the most physically demanding role. I haven’t met the guy who’s playing the part, but I’ve seen him in a couple of films. He seems to be capable of rising to the occasion with ease, and that in turn seems to be the major criterion for evaluating male performers in fuck films, that and the possession of a large penis.
Because the property of Instant Erection is the name of the game, the same male performers tend to appear over and over in these films. I don’t know whether this is good or not. There was an argument over looking for a New Face (or new something else) but we decided to stick with the tried and true. Our Rasputin is called Joe, and I can hardly wait to meet him and start feeling inferior.
Who did we cast today? Anna and Karenina, first of all, and I’ll be damned if they don’t look like sisters, both of them slim and blonde and rather toothsome. I’m not sure they can read lines, but neither am I sure that it matters. I don’t know their names, so I think I’ll just call them Anna and Karenina henceforth. As a matter of fact, I think I’ll do that with all the actors and actresses. It will save us all a lot of aggravation.
Both Anna and Karenina auditioned nude, incidentally. And no, not everyone was asked to strip. Most were not, including a few whom we hired. Except for a major role, it doesn’t matter too much what a body looks like, as long as it’s within certain limits. You can tell enough about a girl’s figure with her clothes on to know if she can stand around and look tolerable in something like the chessboard scene, for instance.