JWW: It’s good these ladies were doing it for love.
ALAN: Listen, I didn’t promise them anything, if that’s what you’re getting at.
JWW: That’s not what I was getting at.
ALAN: Then I’m not sure I follow you.
JWW: Nothing to follow. If I sound sarcastic it’s probably because I’m a little envious. You had a better time last night than I did.
ALAN: I’ve got their phone numbers, if you’re interested.
JWW: I don’t think so but I appreciate it.
ALAN: Well, is that enough for your fucking production diary?
JWW: I guess so.
ALAN: Just don’t use my name, remember. All of this happened to some backer who doesn’t exist. Don’t forget it.
JWW: Oh, for Christ’s sake, Alan. What kind of a guy do you think I am?
ALAN: I was just emphasizing.
JWW: Well, it’s not necessary. I mean, in a business like this, we have to trust each other. Right?
ALAN: Damn straight.
I think I mentioned earlier that I doubted the creation of pornographic films had a particularly bad effect upon the people who worked behind the scenes. After that conversation, though, I’m not so sure about it. My participation in this venture does not seem to have improved my character much.
Well, I never said I was a nice person.
— Tuesday
Today was fun.
Maybe I got things out of my system yesterday. I don’t know. But just now I reread yesterday’s entry and there’s the odd feeling that it was written by somebody else. I feel very lighthearted about pornography, and perhaps a little lightheaded in the bargain.
Today’s filming amounted to a lot of running around. First we assembled our caravan and drove up into Rockland County where Alan’s stockbroker lives. Alan’s stockbroker is around forty, much given to conservative business suits and radical politics. He makes a great point of letting you know casually that William Kunstler is a friend of his. I don’t know how radical politics mixes with commuting to Wall Street and lording it in Rockland County, but that’s his problem.
I’ll tell you, though, he’ll never be my stockbroker, assuming I’ll ever have need of one in the first place. This pillar of the community has invested two thousand dollars of his own money in Different Strokes. If he throws his own bread down rat holes with such joie de vivre, I can just imagine what stocks he touts his clients on.
The reason we were out there is the guy keeps horses. Three of them. One would have been enough, but what the hell.
What nobody bothered to determine in advance was if one of the horses was a stallion. Luck was in our corner today, boys and girls. Or in our stall, or something, because one of the rough beasts was indeed a male, and an unaltered male at that. I suppose we could have made do with a gelding, but there is no way on earth to film the Man o’ War scene with a mare. The close-up of the horse’s genitalia would not be all that effective with a mare.
We had our usual crew plus Vinnie and Alan and Sophie and Pluto. The scene will take way under a minute of film time but it took all morning with the commuting there and back. Well, that’s what we call production values, that’s why we’re spending three times what most porn producers spend. That’s what’s gonna bring ’em into the theaters, by God. “Harry, let’s go see Different Strokes. They got this dynamite close-up of a horse’s cock.” Sure thing, boys.
The scene went briskly enough. Everybody was in a good humor. Pluto had been telling road company stories on the way out, and all of this left Sophie with the happy feeling of really being in show business, so she did her bit better than anybody had hoped. It’s not much, just a facial reaction, but how she reacts determines whether the scene is a cheap sight gag or genuinely amusing.
Speaking of genuinely amusing, there was a moment that convulsed us. We had this enormous swaybacked stallion posed in his box stall, perhaps taking a little pride in the fact that we had fastened a nameplate overhead proclaiming him to be Man o’ War. (He wasn’t even the same color as Big Red, but what the hell. I wonder, incidentally, if we shouldn’t have changed the script to call the horse Secretariat, in the interest of being up-to-date and all. But it didn’t seem worth getting a new sign made.)
Anyway, here we had this horse standing there, and we filmed everything but the horse cock extreme close-up, or ECU as we say in the movie biz. Then somebody, I think one of the crew, asked how we were going to get the horse to have a hard-on. The theory seemed to be that an erect horse cock would be more dramatically effective than a limp horse cock.
Somebody asked Stanley the Stockbroker if he happened to have a mare in heat on the premises. He didn’t, nor did he know where he could find one.
“But he gets erections all the time,” Stanley said. “You just look at him and he’ll get it up.”
“We’ve been looking at him for twenty minutes,” Alan said, “and it hasn’t had any effect on him.”
“Well, maybe we could stimulate him,” somebody said.
Sophie said, “It’s bad enough when actors have this problem. I’m not giving no head to no horse.”
“If you do, I’ll film it,” Vinnie said.
“It wouldn’t fit in the picture,” Alan said.
“It’d fit in some picture,” Vinnie said.
“Some picture,” somebody said, with a slightly different inflection.
“Hey, Sophie,” somebody said, “show him your tits.”
“Be serious,” Sophie said.
“Then sing ‘Melancholy Baby.’”
“Sophie, why don’t you just jerk him off a little?”
“Why don’t you jerk yourself off, schmuck?”
“I’m serious.”
“What are you, crazy? I’m not getting in there with him. I’m terrified of horses.”
“He’s a very gentle horse,” Stanley the Stockbroker said.
“Go on, Sophie.”
“Listen, smartass, go in there and jerk him off yourself.”
“Are you kidding? I’m a male.”
“So?”
“Well, I happen to be straight.”
“Maybe the horse is a fag.”
Stanley defended the horse, saying he was a proven sire. Everybody was pretty sick of Stanley by now. People suggested showing dirty pictures to the horse or blowing in his ear. There was a lot of speculation as to what sort of picture might have an aphrodisiacal effect upon a horse. There was precious little agreement on the subject.
We might still be there, but evidently our conversation got to the horse and his penis emerged in a most miraculous way. It very nearly touched the floor of the stall. Somebody caught it with a camera.
“Hey, wait a minute,” somebody said as we were going. “We turned the mother on, it’s only right that we get him off.”
“I don’t fuck horses,” Sophie said majestically. “I’m a Star.”
We had some coffee. Stanley the Stockbroker kept coming on to Sophie, giving her tips on the market. He must have a wife but she didn’t put in an appearance. We told Stanley to be sure to show up tomorrow for the cabaret sequence. He said he didn’t know if he could make it but he would try. We told him to bring anybody he could find. He promised he would.
Then back to the city.
During the afternoon we shot the ice cream parlor sequence. I kept being reminded of that Alka-Seltzer commercial, the one with the spicy meatball. With various retakes and shooting from other angles and having to diminish the level of ice cream in the bowl, Pluto was starting to turn green from all the goddamned ice cream he was ingesting.