The McBain Brief Page 4

  The leading man we found was Harry.

  Knowing what I now know, I wish we had never laid eyes on him. In fact, knowing what I now know, I wish Harry had got hit by a bus on the first day of shooting. Or even the second day. Or a falling safe from a high building. Or a catastrophe in the subway. Harry was a dope. He wasn’t even good-looking, but that was okay because we didn’t want her leading man to be too good-looking as that would run contrary to the intent of Solly’s script when it got to the play-within-a-play sections which were actually the major sections of the movie. Harry was working daytimes as an insurance adjuster, and he was reluctant to accept our offer at first because he was very conscientious about his job, and he didn’t want to get to work tired in the morning. I should tell you at this point, though I hold no hard feelings, that it was Ben who brought that dope Harry around. They had gone to high school together, and Ben remembered him from the locker room as somebody who was not too spectacularly built, which was also in keeping with the tone and the intent of Solly’s beautiful screenplay.

  Anyway, we told Harry that our shooting schedule, as far as it concerned him, would be from eight p.m. to midnight, and then he could go home and get a good night’s rest before he went to his job at the insurance company. We told him that twenty-five dollars a week was really just a token payment, but the work was not exactly disagreeable, and besides we were willing to pay him five percent of the profits once the picture broke even and we were all on the way to becoming millionaires. We did this because we felt certain he would begin talking to the girl later on when they became acquainted, and we didn’t want any jealousy on the set about who was getting a percentage and who wasn’t. It was offering him the percentage that did the trick. Up to then, he was only mildly interested; we had shown him pictures of the girl—fully clothed, of course—which Ben had taken the minute we signed her, and though she was very nicely shaped, in fact very marvelously shaped, she wasn’t too beautiful in the face, though she did have a nice innocent and sophisticated look about her. Harry wasn’t too sure he wanted to make love to her in front of a camera. He said he had gone out with much prettier girls in his lifetime, which frankly I found hard to believe when you consider this was Harry the dope talking. But when we offered the five percent, he all at once decided that maybe it would be all right for him to lower his standards just this once, provided it really wouldn’t take more of his time than from eight to midnight. We told him that as the shooting went on, he would be required to perform even less and less, and he agreed to work for us. So there we were. We had our script, we had our leading players, we had this big old loft to shoot the movie in, and we had our dream.

  So we began.

  It was very difficult to explain Solly’s script, especially to a pair of dopes like Harry and the girl. The first thing she wanted to know was what the CAST OF CHARACTERS page meant. That particular page was at the very beginning of the script, and it looked like this:

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  (In Order of Appearance)

  THE GIRL

  THE LEADING MAN

  THE WRITER

  THE CAMERAMAN

  THE DIRECTOR

  Solly explained to her that the movie utilized a play-within-a-play technique, which these days was very popular and chic, not to mention tasteful. He also explained that the movie was about a movie. That is to say, we were really making two movies here, one of them the movie we were making and the other one a movie about the movie we were making. The girl immediately complained that we hired her to make only one movie, and now we were telling her she had to act in two movies. It took us an hour and a half of valuable time to explain that it was really only one movie, and if she just trusted our taste and our judgment she would see that it worked as art and also as a delicate probing of the sexual impulses, dreams, and realizations of all human beings. She listened carefully to everything we said, and then she thought it over, and then she said, “Still, if it’s two movies, I want a bigger percentage.”

  So we upped her percentage to fifteen points, and since Harry was standing there listening to all this, we were forced to raise his percentage to ten, which meant that together they were into the movie for twenty-five points. This didn’t bother us. We just wanted to get the thing going. But now that the girl had fifteen percent of the picture, she began immediately behaving like a star. First she wanted to know what kind of camera Ben had there on the tripod.

  “That is an eight-millimeter camera,” Ben told her. “We will have the film blown up later. It’s cheaper to do it this way than to shoot in thirty-five from the beginning. It’s the stock that costs a lot of money, you see.”

  “What do you mean ‘stock’?” she said.

  “The raw stock. The film.”

  “Is this picture in color?” she said.

  “Yes, of course,” Ben said.

  “Because I look very good in color,” she said.

  “Oh, yes, everything will be in color,” he said. He turned to me, and said, “I’m ready to roll whenever you are.”

  “What about the lights?” the girl asked. “Are we just going to shoot with just the lights that are here?”

  “I’m using very fast film,” Ben said. “We don’t need any special lighting. Also, it will make the picture look more natural this way.”

  “And where’s my makeup man?” she said.

  “We want you to look very natural,” I said. “That was one of the things that first attracted us to you. The natural look you have.”

  “Well,” she said, and thought this over.

  Solly, who is normally a very patient man, said, “I don’t want to butt in here on technical matters, but time is what costs money on a movie set. Time costs more money than film. And we have been here since eight o’clock tonight, and it is now almost ten, and we haven’t shot a foot of film. If we’re going to complete this thing in the time we have laid out for it, then if everybody is ready, I think we ought to start shooting the first scene.”

  “I was only worried about makeup,” the girl said, “because I have a tiny little beauty spot on the underside of my left breast, and I wondered if you wanted to touch it up or anything.”

  “We’ll see about that when we come to it,” I said.

  “Actually, the beauty spot will make you look even more natural,” Solly said.

  “We’ll see when you take off your clothes,” Ben said.

  “Will I be taking off my clothes tonight?”

  “Yes, in the first scene you take off your clothes,” Solly said.

  “Because I feel a little funny about taking off my clothes in a room full of men, in front of a camera.”

  “Well, there’s only us,” I said.

  “Still.”

  “And remember that millions and millions of people will be seeing you naked when this picture is released. And we’ll all make millions and millions of dollars,” I added.

  “Yes,” she said, “but still.”

  “I wish we could begin,” Solly said.

  “Are you ready?” I asked her.

  “I guess so,” she said, “but if I seem a little embarrassed at first, I hope that’ll be all right.”

  “That’s perfect for the part,” Solly said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Am I supposed to wear just my own clothes?” the girl said.

  “Yes, that’s part of it too,” I said. “We want this to be as natural as we can make it, without a lot of fancy costumes and such.”

  “I thought I’d have maybe a special wardrobe.”

  “Well,” I said, “we’ve picked out some very beautiful and tasteful lingerie for you to wear later on in the picture, and also some attractive costumes with leather and buckles and such, that will set you off to fine advantage, but that’s later. In the beginning scenes, in these opening scenes where you apply for a job in the film, we want you to look as natural as possible.”

  “If I’d known you wanted me to look so natural, I wouldn’t have worn a bra,
” she said.

  “No, the bra is good,” I said. “For some strange reason, men enjoy seeing a girl in her underwear, the bra will be fine.”

  “Well, okay,” she said. “But it isn’t even my best bra.”

  “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I said.

  “Well, okay,” she said.

  “Are we ready to begin,” I said. “Harry? Are you ready?”

  “I’m ready,” Harry said, “though if there’s any sex stuff in these opening scenes, I don’t know if I’m ready for that.”

  “Let me explain the scene to you, okay?” I said.

  “I mean, a person can’t just perform on cue, you know what I mean?” Harry said.

  “Yes, I know just what you mean,” the girl said, and smiled at him. “I’ll tell you the truth, I’m very excited about this being the first day of shooting and all—the first night of shooting, I should say—but I’m not excited that way, I mean I’m not too terribly physically or sexually excited at this given moment. Are you?”

  “No,” he said, “I’m not excited at all. In fact, I’m not even excited about it being the first night of shooting. I had a terrible day today, this man came in with his car almost totalled, and he insisted . . .”

  “Could we please begin?” Solly said. “Please?”

  “People?” I said. “Are we ready?”

  “Ready,” Ben said.

  “Ready,” the girl said.

  “Sure,” Harry said, and shrugged.

  I explained the first scene to them. In this scene, the girl is supposed to come up to the loft and audition for the three producers of the film, who are also serving respectively as script writer, cameraman, and director. They have arranged for the girl to meet her leading man, and in a tasteful and artistic setting, they ask that she take off her clothes so that they can judge whether or not she will be physically suited to the role.

  “Well, I’m certainly physically suited,” the girl said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have hired me, would you?”

  “Yes,” I explained. “Of course you are, but that’s in real life, and this is in the movie. In the movie, the producers aren’t sure yet, which is why they ask you to take off your clothes.”

  “Well, are these producers blind or something? I mean, anybody can see I’m physically suited, even with my clothes on.”

  “There’s a reason for this,” I said, “because for some strange reason, men like to see a girl taking off her clothes.”

  “You mean this is like a sort of strip tease, is that it?” she asked.

  “Yes, sort of. But tasteful. We don’t want to get into any sex scenes right off, you see.”

  “Thank God,” she said. “I really don’t think I’m up to anything like that tonight. Are you, Harry?”

  “No,” he said, “I’m definitely not.”

  “Okay then,” I said, “what you do is come into the loft, and ask if this is where we’re casting this movie, and we’ll answer you but nobody will see us, the camera will just be on you. And we’ll introduce you to Harry and then ask if you would mind taking off your clothes, and you should take them off slowly and shyly, and that’ll be the scene. Later on, we may ask you to kiss Harry or something mild like that, neither of you will have to do anything you don’t really feel like doing tonight. We’ll just play it slow and easy, we want to do a sensitive job here, and your personal feelings are very much in our minds.”

  “Well, okay,” the girl said.

  “Is something wrong?” I said.

  “Well, before I take off my clothes, I want you to know the contract is binding, no matter what. I’m getting fifty dollars a week, and fifteen percent of the profits, and that’s that.”

  “Of course,” I said. “That’s our agreement.”

  “Okay,” she said. “In which case, I want you to know I’m not a natural blonde.”

  “That’s all right,” I said. “Quiet on the set, please.”

  I won’t bore you with all the details of that first night’s shooting, or even of the progress we made during the next two weeks. I will say that Solly had been absolutely right about the girl. She had looked spectacular when she was wearing clothes, but she looked positively fantastically unbelievable when she took them off. Also, when she got over her shyness and embarrassment, she really did a good job with the sex scenes she performed on camera with Harry. I guess this was because Solly had written such a good script, spare and neat and what I guess you could call lean. He very much had in mind the feelings of the actors, and wanted each of the sex scenes to appear spontaneous, instead of like some of these scenes you see in cheap porn flicks, where you just know the actors are being told what to do each and every minute. Solly’s script made it all seem very natural and very beautiful and also, I might say in compliment, very artistic; I always give credit where credit is due. For example, in the scenes we shot that first week, where the girl gets the part and then starts to become acquainted with the leading man—who was Harry the dope—Solly didn’t do what a lot of script writers do, he didn’t clutter up the page with a lot of unnecessary directions. A sample of his writing from one of the early scenes will explain to you what I mean.

  34 THE LOFT—INT—NIGHT

  The Girl is becoming acquainted with the Leading Man.

  They do sexual intercourse together.

  During all of these scenes, Ben, Solly, and I were sort of what you might call off-stage actors, or, since this was a movie we were making, I guess you would have called us off-camera actors. That is to say, we were in the script even during those first two weeks of shooting, but all you did was hear our voices. And though you never actually saw any of us, you knew there was a director there, and a cameraman, and a writer, which was the beauty part of the script, the play-within-a-play aspect. It wasn’t until after those two weeks of shooting that any of us would appear on camera as real live actors, which was what the script called for because, you see, there was supposed to be intensely personal human relationships developed between the girl and the people making the movie—the movie itself was supposed to become an artistic microcosm of life itself, if you know what I mean. In other words, the girl was supposed to perform with her leading man only during the early parts of the movie, and then become gradually involved with the people working with her, and do on camera with them what she had earlier been doing with him, but more. I know that sounds complicated, but it was in Solly’s script, and when we explained it to the girl, she said, “I don’t understand. Does this mean I have to do this with Solly in front of the camera?”

  “Not Solly himself,” I said. “The writer of the movie.”

  “Solly is the writer of the movie,” she said.

  “In real life, he’s the writer of the movie,” I said. “But in the movie, he’s only pretending to be the writer of the movie.”

  “And we’re supposed to do it here? In the loft?”

  “Yes. The loft is where we’re shooting the movie, and what happens is that during the coffee break, The Girl gets involved with The Writer, and this leads to a beautiful sex experience for both of them.”

  “But Solly is bald,” she said.

  “My dear,” I said, “you’d be surprised how many bald men go to see pornographic movies. There are at least millions and millions of them.”

  “If we could afford an actor to play the part,” Solly said, “we’d hire him in a minute. But that would only cut into our profits.”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, Solly,” the girl said. “It’s just I have never balled a bald man in my life.”

  “There is always a first time,” Solly said.

  This was at one a.m. in the morning at the start of the third week’s shooting. Ben had told the girl he needed to reload the camera, and he was in the bathroom now, with the light out. We had sent Harry home at midnight. He had gone reluctantly, it seemed to me, but I didn’t yet suspect anything was developing between him and the girl. All I knew was that he had done his job very realistically d
uring those first two weeks, and we were ready to phase him out since his services were not too strenuously required during the remaining eighteen weeks of shooting. In fact, as I explained to the girl, she was supposed to become more and more involved with the people making the film, and less and less involved with her leading man, until the very end of the picture when she got married.

  “Married?” she said. “To who?”

  “To Harry. We have a nice little scene where you get married at the end. But that’s after you have sort of experienced all different kinds of sexual experience and gratification with the various men working on this film, which experience provides the bedrock of a good marital relationship later on.”

  “You mean, sort of, I learn different things from them, and this prepares me for being like a good wife to Harry later on, is that it?”

  “That’s it exactly,” I said.

  “That’s beautiful,” she said, and she began to weep.

  Ben came out of the bathroom, camera in hand. “All loaded,” he said, “and ready to shoot.” He looked at the girl. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  “Everything’s fine,” I said. “Solly, are you ready?”

  “Ready,” Solly said, and began taking off his clothes.

  We worked very hard during those next few weeks, both on camera and off. Now that we were really into the movie, so to speak, the hours got longer; we would start work at eight and sometimes not finish till three or four in the morning. You have to remember that we were all holding daytime jobs, and I mention this only to explain our dedication to the project. And besides, this was still costing each of us close to forty-two dollars a week because, since we were gentlemen, we agreed to continue paying Harry his twenty-five a week even though his services would not be required on the picture again till we came to the very end of it. We explained to the girl that the end might be some time away, since whereas she was doing an excellent job and we were all very pleased with her (including Ben, who had preferred a redhead for the part), we were nonetheless not getting exactly the kind of professional footage we wanted, and this might require shooting a great many scenes over again, maybe even three and four times. So this would probably take us past the twenty weeks we were hoping for.