I just called Alan to tell him essentially what I wrote above, much abbreviated, and reassure him that we have nothing to worry about. I suggested we simply avoid emphasizing any of the Devil aspects in the film’s title. We still aren’t set on a title, incidentally. My suggestion is Different Strokes, perhaps because I’ve wanted to use that on a book for so long, and with so little success. Dell seems to like the title; at least they can live with it. Vinnie doesn’t care what we call it. Alan doesn’t hate it, but neither does he love it, and he keeps coming up with ideas of his own. Fortunately they are all so terrible that it’s easy to talk him out of them.
I have to report my conversation with Alan after that. I didn’t tape it obviously, but it went very much like this:
JWW: Say, whatever happened with Anna and Karenina?
ALAN: What do you mean?
JWW: Well, the other night you wandered away with one of them on each of your arms, ostensibly to drop them at their doors, which I somehow don’t believe for a moment.
ALAN: Is that right.
JWW: I thought perhaps you might like to tell me what happened afterward. I’m like this at movies, the final curtain comes down and I can’t help wondering whether or not they live happily ever after.
ALAN: I’m not sure it’s any of your business.
JWW: Well, it is, in a way. You know the production diary I’m writing.
ALAN: Jesus Christ, fella. You’re not putting me in any fucking book.
JWW: Oh, of course not.
ALAN: Then what are you talking about?
JWW: Let me put it this way. You know, I’ve got to have interesting things happen in the diary. To keep the reader awake. It can’t just be we-shot-this-today-and-it-took-seven-takes and like that. It has to be sexy and interesting and all the rest of that shit.
ALAN: I’m hip. So?
JWW: So when you walked away with Frick and Frack, it occurred to me that we could include a cutesy bit of one of the backers walking away with the two of them and trying to get something going.
ALAN: Which backer? Those guys...
JWW: Oh, come on. No real backer, some figment of my endless imagination.
ALAN: I see.
JWW: So?
ALAN: So what?
JWW: So what happened?
ALAN: Can’t you get that out of your imagination, too?
JWW: Probably, but I’d rather it be consistent with reality if it’s just as easy. It’ll give some insight into the girls, see, and I think it might work better than if I just wing the whole thing. Of course if you’re embarrassed...
ALAN: Why in the fuck should I be embarrassed?
JWW: Well, some people are uptight about sex.
ALAN: Are you kidding? Me uptight about sex? Be sensible, man.
JWW: Well.
ALAN: Oh, fuck it. All right I offered the two of them a ride home, and not because I’m running a taxi service. I got very horny watching them do their thing. Didn’t you?
JWW: Yeah.
ALAN: They’re both so young and cunty. And it wasn’t hard to think of things I wanted to do with them. Not after spending the whole day watching them do things. Plus I always wanted two girls at once.
JWW: You never did that before?
ALAN: Only with hookers. Hookers are the worst thing in the fucking world, man. You can work out your fantasies with them, and ultimately all you accomplish is you lose the fantasy, because it’s all basically unreal.
JWW: I know what you mean.
ALAN: So we got in the car and I told them I had some really good grass at my place and did they want to come up and smoke? Do you smoke?
JWW: Once in a great while.
ALAN: I think you told me that once before. I only smoke with chicks around. I don’t get anything out of it. Do you know what I mean? I always pretend to be high but I never feel a goddamned thing.
JWW: There’s lot of people like that.
ALAN: You, for instance?
JWW: No, I invariably get stoned. That’s what I don’t like about it.
ALAN: I’m not sure I follow that.
JWW: It’s not important. You invited them to smoke.
ALAN: Right, and they said fine. You have to have grass around for the chicks, you know. It makes you socially acceptable. If you ask them to come up and fuck, you’re a dirty old man. If you ask them to smoke they know it means to fuck but you become acceptable as a member of the younger generation. They knew what I wanted, for Christ’s sake. But we all went up to my place and got stoned, or rather they did and I faked it.
JWW: Uh-huh.
ALAN: I showed them all the props for Sophie’s apartment, which they thought were interesting. All that movie-biz glamour, you know. Then we started fooling around, you know. I’d make out a little with one of them and a little with the other, and then I said how about getting it together and doing that scene, and I’d pretend to be Rasputin.
JWW: Uh-huh.
ALAN: It seemed as good an approach as any.
JWW: Very original, I’d call it.
ALAN: Fuck off. One of them, I can’t remember which one, damn it I mean I can but I can’t remember which is Anna and which is Karenina. You and your names.
JWW: Nobody can remember which is which.
ALAN: The one I’m talking about is the one who vomited. After the blowjob sequence.
JWW: I know which one you mean.
ALAN: She said she never made it with girls except in front of the camera. They got into this long stoned discussion and she decided she would like to try it not in front of a camera to find out where her head was really at on the subject.
JWW: I’ll bet she used those very words.
ALAN: Huh?
JWW: Nothing.
ALAN: So that’s about it. We made it for a couple of hours. They’re very good.
JWW: I got that impression.
ALAN: It turned out the other one liked it with chicks even without a camera. She said now she’s going to have to have some time to figure out the meaning of it.
JWW: The best of British luck to her.
ALAN: So what else can I tell you? Positions? Forget it, man.
JWW: Okay.
ALAN: I came three times, if that’s something you want to put in your book.
JWW: That’s not bad at your age.
ALAN: You prick, I’m not all that much older than you are.
JWW: Hell, it’s pretty good at my age, too.
ALAN: They got me so fucking hot I thought I was going to die from it.
JWW: Better than with hookers?
ALAN: Of course. The attitude is different, you know? Not their attitude necessarily, but your own feelings, the way you feel about it. Paying for it ruins it.