Something good happened today. During a lull, I went over to Advantage and got a rough tape of what we did yesterday. After we finished up for the day I got Alan to listen to it. I knew I was going to have hassles with him, but I figured he might as well hear it as soon as possible.
Incredibly, he liked it very much. He thought it was very nicely done and that it will fit into the Rasputin sequence with no trouble, that it will in fact take some of the ordinariness out of Rasputin’s scene with Anna and Karenina. Which was the point I had been making all along, but evidently it has now become Alan’s point, and that’s fine with me.
I wonder if he was faking his enthusiasm. That’s not entirely beyond the realm of possibility. Everybody does a certain amount of that. We all placate one another by pretending to like one another’s work.
Well, I’m not particularly certain I care. My song’s gonna be in the fucking movie and that’s all that really matters to me at this point.
I didn’t tell him what the recording costs were going to be. He asked, and I hedged by saying they didn’t have final figures, but I gather he knows enough to know that a complicated package like that isn’t going to be all his for a dollar and ninety-eight cents.
He didn’t seem upset.
I have no idea, on the basis of what we shot today, just how much time the orgy scene is going to occupy in the final film. Of course it can be as long or as short as Vinnie wants it to be. He shot a ton of film, and in point of fact he probably shot more film than was necessary. Well, one of the things we made a point of doing in the budget was allowing for plenty of that sort of wastage.
I think it’s going to be necessary in the pornographic films of the future to make well produced films with good scripts, imaginative and competent direction, and perhaps most important, good acting. I think there’s a reverse Gresham’s Law operating here and that the good porno flicks will drive the bad ones off the market. I keep harking back to those b-and-w soundless films I saw at that stag in Rhinebeck. Nobody would sit through a showing of that garbage nowadays unless he was hooked on porno-stalgia, to coin a phrase.
Alan has this great vision of the coming of age of the pornographic film, a vision which is no doubt predicated on the largely unwarranted assumption that our contribution is a part of this coming of age. He sees in the distance all manner of porn films: porn westerns, porn science fiction movies, porn documentaries, ad infinitum and, let me just say, ad nauseam in the bargain.
Shine, perishing republic.
You know, it was my plan to tell you just what bits of sexual excess were committed to film today, and now that I’ve had a chance to think about it, I’ve decided not to bother. You’ll just have to see the film.
I recognize that you might enjoy reading a catalog of how we fought our way through Krafft-Ebing today with gun and camera, but you in turn must recognize that. I haven’t got the endurance to type it all out.
Pay the five bucks and see the movie. Cast of thousands. Living color. Glorious sound.
Sheepdogs and everything.
I was thinking today about the backers, perhaps because there were so many of them around the place. Now as far as I can determine, most of these guys are not rich in any sense of the word. From what Alan tells me, which may or may not bear any sort of working relationship with reality, no individual has a larger investment than four thousand dollars. The great majority have thousand dollar shares. This is both good and bad from Alan’s point of view. On the one hand, there’s no individual investor who can command much clout. On the other hand, there’s an awful lot of people to report to.
But what amazes me is that there are so many people willing to pony up a grand with no guarantee of anything. I mean, Alan did act in good faith in that he actually made a movie. He could have taken the sixty grand and gone south with it, and if he had done so the investors would have been up a tree. I suppose any wildcat investment implies a certain amount of trust as well as a certain amount of risk, but it would seem to me that both the trust and the risk here are rather disproportionate to the possible reward.
I don’t know what this enterprise can hope to yield in the way of profits. The people with money in Throat obviously are not sitting up nights weeping openly, but we all realize that Throat is a phenomenon which will probably never be repeated in the porn field. I would guess, though, that the backers will be thrilled beyond belief if they get most of their own money back.
Which would tend to suggest that they went into this because it looked like a fun thing to do. Which perhaps it was, and is. Savings banks and mutual funds aren’t very exciting, after all, and pornography, especially if you have had no prior experience of it, is.
Hah!
I say “Hah!” because it suddenly occurs to me that who in hell am I to talk? True, none of my money is riding on this, but a couple months of my time are, and the only way I’m going to make Dime One out of the whole deal is if the picture makes profits, and even then I am not going to get rich out of it.
What it comes down to, I guess, is that we’re all crazy.
— Sunday
We did a little additional orgy footage this morning, most of which we could probably have lived without. Then we went down to the auction gallery and filmed the auction sequence, Sophie once again in her old-lady makeup. Probably for the final time.
I left early and went to Times Square, where I bought some props for my big scene. I have donated my apartment for the filming thereof, it being readily adaptable into the sort of place where a Dirty Old Man would live. All I have to do is paste a lot of revolting pictures on the wall.
Which is what I have been lately doing, and I’ll tell you, it’s beginning to get to me. The main source of pictures has been a batch of magazines with titles like Young Nudist and Youthful Nudes, and while these magazines may not be an argument for censorship, they damned well constitute a powerful argument for murder. They consist of photographs of prepubescent children, naked and unashamed. True, the kids are not doing anything deliberately sexual, but just as I believe adults should have the option of hiring out their photographic images to inspire the masturbatory fantasies of others, so do I believe that children should not. What kind of nauseating parent would pick this particular way to make money off his kid?
Having said that, I am cutting pictures out of these magazines and pasting them on my walls.
I feel kind of strange about this. I felt strange enough buying the magazines, and paying out five bucks a copy in the bargain. The clerks in the Times Square porn shops are models of discretion, and utterly unflappable, and I’m really past the stage of worrying whether they are going to regard me as a rank pervert or not, but still, it was less than a pleasure to approach the counter with half a dozen copies of Young Nudist in tow.
I simply cannot let anyone into this apartment until the scene is filmed and the pictures are gone. Christ, imagine bringing a girl here now. And imagine trying to explain. There’s just no way.
This is even worse.
I just finished cutting off a perfectly innocent pair of trousers at the knee so that I can tie them to my legs in the manner of a sexual exhibitionist. I have another identical pair which I am not cutting and which I will wear when Sophie and I take our little walk through the park. Because I am not prepared to go out on the street wearing a raincoat over a pair of pant legs.
I may be crazy but I’m not stupid.
The big scene, as you have by now doubtless guessed, is to be filmed tomorrow. I have tried to avoid conveying my anxiety over it to anyone. I have also been sitting around reading my lines aloud and committing them to memory, and if you’ve glanced at the scene in question you can probably guess how foolish I feel. I felt fairly ridiculous typing those lines, to tell you the truth, and I feel no less ridiculous reading them aloud in this grotty little room with its walls papered with naked Lolitas. See ya tomorrow.