The problem is that we have to do our shooting during the day, as the club has to function as a nightclub by night.
We didn’t get to do the auction scene yesterday, even though we had the crowd on hand. It just took too damned long to shoot the cabaret stuff.
I was talking with Pluto during a lull. He finds the whole experience of making this film more than a little disconcerting, and he had some interesting things to say.
“The money’s nice. There’s no question but that the money’s nice, and it’s especially pleasant to get paid in cash after each day’s work.
“It’s also a nice ego thing. Being the Old Pro in an essentially amateur production.
“But it’s hard to decide how I feel about the whole thing. I don’t know why it should be. I’ve never had any strong negative feelings about pornography. I don’t go to films often, but I’ve seen a few of them. My wife and I have gone a couple of times. Once I remember we were both just very turned off by the whole thing. Another time we had the opposite reaction. Left the theater, didn’t say a word, ran home and balled each other’s brains out. I suppose anything that makes a man and his wife want to fuck each other can’t be all bad.
“I feel sorry for the people who play the sexual roles, though. I don’t know why. They’re not slaves, for Christ’s sake. They obviously enjoy what they’re doing. Otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it.
“I find Sophie very difficult to figure out. She takes herself very seriously as an actress, you know. She hasn’t just done porn, either. She was telling me about a few things she did off-Broadway, and I think she said she had a walk-on in a TV soaper, and she’s had small parts in a couple of commercials. She was never a success but she did get some work legitimately before she ever got into porn.
“It’s a funny thing. I’m very glad I don’t have to do anything sexual in the film, and at the same time I sort of feel that I’m not getting the total experience of being in the movie because my part is wholly nonsexual. I don’t want to ball anybody in front of a camera. I don’t want to ball Sophie on or off-camera, as far as that goes. Nothing against her, but after watching her do it for the camera, it’s just impossible for me to take her seriously on a sexual level.
“Still in all, there’s this feeling of being left out. I can’t exactly explain it.”
He asked me how I felt about the prospect of doing my Dirty Old Man scene with Sophie.
“I liked the idea very much at the beginning,” I said. “I wrote the part for myself with that in mind. None of that flashback sequence existed in the original script. I’m not sure why I wanted to do it. Ego, I guess. And the desire for a new experience. I do a lot of idiotic things out of the desire for a new experience.”
“Don’t we all.”
“Uh-huh. Also, frankly, I thought of it as a potential kick. Partly the kick of acting, of being on a screen, sex or no sex. And partly a sexual kick. I suppose everybody has a slight streak of exhibitionism in his makeup. I can’t imagine myself as a flasher, showing my cock to little girls in public places, but I can see where it might be kicky to see yourself balling somebody in living color on a thirty-foot screen.”
“But you don’t like the idea as much now.”
“No,” I admitted. “I don’t. I’m still looking forward to it in a way, but less than before. I’m beginning to be a little apprehensive.”
“Worried about being impotent, I suppose.”
“Not worried, exactly. I more or less take it for granted that I’ll have a certain amount of difficulty. Frankly, that isn’t so appalling a prospect. I’m probably no more secure in my masculinity than the next neurotic, but I can’t honestly regard the ability to summon up an erection in absurd circumstances as that accurate an index of masculinity in the first place.”
“No argument there.”
“I have to tell you one thing. The more I see Sophie balling other people, the less alluring the prospect of going down on her becomes.”
“Oh, that’s right,” he said. “The script calls for you to muff her, and then she gives you head.”
“Yes, that’s the immortal plot line.”
“I can see where you might begin to have reservations.”
“Well, you need reservations,” I said. “That woman is one of the most popular eating places in town. You can hardly get a table without reservations.”
“Why didn’t you set things up so as to shoot your scene first? Or wouldn’t that have made any difference?”
“I don’t know if it would have or not. But we couldn’t do it that way. See, she’s going to shave her beaver for the sequence to coincide with the twelve-year-old image we’re trying to project.”
“Oh.”
“She’s really dedicated.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So we have to do that scene last, because it’ll take her weeks to grow back a full-fledged merkin.”
“Uh-huh. Jack? When we were in college, you know, trying to guess what turns our lives would take, did you ever happen to think?”
“No,” I told him. “No, it never entered my mind.”
To be honest, the prospect of paying oral homage to Sophie does not turn my stomach. I’m sure the girl bathes between engagements. It’s just that I can’t see the scene as something that is going to turn me on.
Perhaps the extraordinary thing is that I could originally. I should have been able to guess that this would not turn out to be exciting.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned my introduction to Sophie. It’s probably worth a few lines.
Alan knew her, and Vinnie had worked with her on a picture, and she was thus up for the lead. Both Alan and Vinnie thought I ought to have a look at her on the screen, so that I could offer an opinion on her suitability for the role and also so that I could more effectively create dialogue for her. I already had the feeling that Alan was determined to cast her for the part and that my opinion did not matter a whole hell of a lot, but if I came back and reported she was a completely untalented actress and a beast in the bargain, it might have had some effect. I didn’t honestly think watching her cop some actor’s joint would improve my ability to fashion dialogue for her to speak when her mouth was not otherwise employed, but what the hell, it was an excuse to go see a dirty picture, so I went.
I don’t remember the name of the first film I saw her in. I was not wildly impressed. She was attractive enough but not devastating, and as far as acting, it was impossible to tell whether she could act or not. When I got back from the movie, I called Vinnie and said about as much to him.
“But what did you think of her as an actress?” he wanted to know.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” I said. “If she hates to suck, then she’s a hell of an actress. That’s about as much as I can say on the subject.”
About a week later Alan called to report that they were screening Sophie’s latest release in a private screening room on Broadway in the Fifties. He wanted me to go see the film to get a further impression of her talents. She would be attending, he added, and I could meet her and discuss the script with her.
So I went. I introduced myself to her before we saw the movie, and we chatted about nothing terribly vital, and then we went into the projection room with about fifty other people and I sat next to her while we all watched the film. It was better photographed than her other epic and she came across as more attractive, even if she still didn’t set the screen on fire.
What was weird about it is that here I was sitting next to this girl I had just met, and we were both of us watching her up there on the screen while she had sex with everything but a camel. And she sat next to me and behaved like the perfect audience, laughing at the parts that were evidently supposed to be funny, nodding in recognition as various scenes unfolded.