Blue Movie (12 page)

“Wow,”
he murmured.

Arabella looked up at him, her huge eyes shimmering, happy knowing she had pleased. “Hmm,” her pink tongue moved around her glistening lips, “it’s strange, I always thought there would be more of it.”

“Well . . . it’s very
rich.”

“Oh, it’s fantastic, it tastes so . . . I don’t know, so
alive.”

Boris, eyes closed, reached out and found her hand.

“Yeah, I guess it would at that.”

Arabella laughed softly, closing her eyes too, and snuggling up to him, and together like that, they fell into a deeply peaceful sleep—there on the cool grassy bank of the silver mountain lake.

L
AZLO
B
ENVENUTI,
B
ORIS’S
great cameraman—or more correctly, his director of photography—arrived from Los Angeles that afternoon, and with him two camera operators, a three-man lighting crew, one soundman, and a couple of tons of equipment, including a gigantic BMI studio camera.

“Why the hell didn’t you get that from Paris or Rome?” demanded Boris.

But Sid deprecated the idea with a Mussolini-type gesture and a hasty glance at Morty for support. “Quicker,” he said, “
and
safer to get it from the Coast, believe me, I know, I done business with the frogs and eyeties before. Besides, Hymie Weiss gave us a good deal on this Mitchell. Right, Morty?”

“Right, Sid.”

“You mean a good kickback,” said Boris, examining the camera. “Did Lazlo check it?”

Sid made a circle with his thumb and forefinger, and winked. “A-Okay, B.”

“What about the Arries?” asked Boris.

“We got two Arriflexes due in from Paris this afternoon. For Arries, I trust the frogs—not for my big Mitchell. Right, Morty?”

“You can say
that
again, Sid!”

Boris looked from one to the other with a weary smile. “You guys are too much—you ought to have an act.”

Sid guffawed, nudging Morty, and rolling his eyes. “Maybe we
have
—right, Morty?”

Morty grinned insanely, “Right, Sid!”

B
ECAUSE OF THE DELAY
in completing the Casbah set, and the immediate availability of Arabella, the shooting schedule was revised so the lesbian sequence would be the first episode to be filmed. And that evening at dinner, after she had gone up to bed, Boris retold the story of Arabella, Denise, and the uncle to Tony, while Sid and Morty also listened.

Tony was delighted.
“Fan-fucking-tastic!”
And he immediately plopped his yellow-page pad on the table and began scribbling dialogue.

“Can she go that young?” Sid wanted to know.

“She can go that young,” said Boris, “—with Du Couvier she can go back to the cradle. It’ll be beautiful.”

Du Couvier was the French makeup wizard—his specialty, of course, being the conversion of elderly actresses into the Maid of Orleans.

Sid snapped his fingers at Morty. “Oblige the man.”

“It’s okay,” said Boris, “she already called him—he’ll be here in the morning.”

“Relax, Morty” said Sid.

“Who’s going to play the other chick?” asked Tony, looking up from his yellow pad.

Boris smiled. “Would you believe . . . Pamela Dickensen?”

This set them all agape.

“Pamela Dickensen!?!”

“You gotta be kidding!”

“Why that’s too
fan-fucking-tastic!”

Pamela Dickensen was a lovely young British actress, Suzannah York style, of about twenty-two, whose role was consistently that of the nineteenth-century ingénue, all petticoats and lace—virginal, prim, even prudish.

Tony couldn’t get over it. “Wow, whose idea was that?”

“Arabella’s—that’s who she decided she’d rather make it with . . . after Angela Sterling and Princess Anne.”

Sid was flabbergasted. “Princess
Anne?!?
You mean Princess
Margaret,
don’t you? Huh?”

Boris, slowly turning a glass of cognac around and around in his hand, studied Sid’s face carefully.

“Huh?” Sid repeated, shocked at the irreverence.

“Yeah, sure,” said Boris, “. . . listen, Sid, how’d you like to play the
uncle?”

“You gotta be kidding,” said Sid, then looked at Tony, “he’s kidding, right, Tone?”

“You better fucking believe it, he’s kidding,” said Tony, looking somewhat disturbed as he mashed out the cigarette he’d just lit.

Boris shrugged: “She said Sid reminded her of her uncle.”

Tony dropped his pencil and went into his Lyndon Johnson accent: “Ah ain’t writin’
no
dialogue fer no Sid
Krass-man!
He cudn’t talk it nohow! Hot dang, Viet Nang!”

“We’ll
loop
it,” said Boris, “we’ll stay on
her
face, and we’ll loop it. The thing is, she thinks he
looks
right. Man, it could bring a fantastic performance out of her—a real
psychodrama!
What do you think, Sid?”

Sid was ambivalent—flattered at the attention, but somewhat hurt that she should think of him as so much older. “She said that, huh—that I reminded her of her uncle?”

“Not
now,
schmuck,” Boris reassured him, “When she was
fifteen
years old.”

“Now it’s her
granny,”
said Tone.

“No, no,” said Boris, “now she’s very attracted to you, probably . . . I mean, you know how those things are, the narrow line between hatred and love . . . between repulsion and lust . . . what’s the matter with you? I thought you had such big eyes for her.”

“Yeah, but you said you’re going to use doubles for that—I mean, for the actual thing.”

“Well, let me put it this way, Sid
—before
we cut away, for the penetration shots, we’re going to shoot a
lot of film,
right? A lot of film of him—that is, of
you
—on top of her, moving in a manner that suggests, even
convinces,
the audience that he
is,
in fact, making it with her. Now that’s the situation—you’re both naked, you’re on top, between her legs . . . nothing between her wonderful, perfect cooze and your coarse animal member, right? Well, if you can stick it in,
stick it in—
and we’ll see what happens. Just don’t make her come too much, okay?”

Sid guffawed so nervously that he went into one of his coughing fits. “Holy Christ,” he kept saying, “holy Christ!”

“Sid’s got a thing about dykes,” Boris explained to Tony, “can’t resist making them come.”

“Holy Christ, holy Christ . . .”

“Well, Sidney, even if she doesn’t
come,”
said Tony, “it should at least put you on a
first-name
basis—I mean, pressing against her like that, your coarse animal member and her wonderful cooze . . .”

“And
knocker,”
Boris reminded him, “all the bare knocker you want . . . sucking those perfect pink nipples . . .”

“Sounds like the chance of a lifetime,” Tony agreed.

Sid laid his face down in the crook of his arm, moaning. “Oh, you guys . . . you guys are crazy . . . Morty, what are they doing to me?”

Morty gleefully threw up both hands. “That’s some break, Sidney—great actress, great director—you gonna do it for
scale
awready?”

“Aw come on,” said Tony, “he may even get a piece of the action—get it, Mort? ‘Piece’? ‘Action’? Haw-haw.”

“Oh you guys,” Sid half sobbed, “don’t you guys care about anything? I don’t know what to believe.”

T
HE STILLNESS OF
the summer morning was broken as the clapboard marked
“The Faces of Love,
Scene 1-1, Take 1,” banged shut.

“Running,” said the operator.

“Speed,” said the soundman.

“Action,” said Boris—and on the blue-grass bank of the silver lake, the famous Arabella and the beautiful Pamela Dickensen began leisurely unbuttoning their blouses, and stepping out of their skirts—while the director, two camera operators, the first and second assistant directors, the director of photography, the writer, the sound man, the prop main, the makeup man, the script supervisor, the hairdresser, the producer, the producer’s assistant, the wardrobe lady, three electricians, and a man holding a microphone on a boom, carefully assumed deadpan expressions of professional interest.

The shot called for the girls to undress, and to dance joyfully hand in hand toward the water—one camera shooting from behind, the other from the side—and this movement would then be shot from two other angles before they actually went into the water, thus conserving their makeup for as long as possible.

Neither girl was wearing a bra, so the garments were discarded in the order of blouse, skirt, sandals, and panties. And as each stepped out of her pants, with just the right show of maidenly coyness, clasped hands, and started toward the water, Tony leaned forward and whispered something to Boris, who nodded and stood up.

“Cut,” he said to the cameraman; and to the actors: “Hold it a minute, girls.”

Helen Vrobel, the wardrobe lady, immediately went out to the girls, carrying two terrycloth robes, which they put on, Arabella quite casually, Miss Dickensen rather hurriedly.

“That was beautiful,” said Boris as he approached them, “but I think Tony’s right—it’ll be more effective if you leave your pants on, so that when the seduction occurs, it’ll be that much more erotic, Pam, with Arabella very slowly, sensually, pulling your pants down. Do you follow?”

“Hmm,” Pam agreed, somewhat vaguely, as though she might simply be glad for the moment to get her pants back on. Hers was a curious beauty—or more of a
cuteness
perhaps, but of the turned-up-English-nose variety so highly prized in certain circles, the eyes twinkling with self-satisfaction and a trace of mischievousness, the lips full but curved with conceit, almost with disdain.

“I would like to
change
that look,” Arabella had said, “. . . that
haughty
look, first into
ecstasy,
then into
abject adoration.”

And Miss Dickensen’s body, needless to say, was super—a thought which occurred to Boris now as she half turned away from him to put on the panties which Helen Vrobel had retrieved and handed to her.

“Let’s see how it looks, Pam.”

She obediently turned around and opened the robe, with only the suggestion of a sigh which seemed to say: “I suppose you’re enjoying this.” At this range Boris saw the pants clearly for the first time—black with delicate interfacings of red—and he wheeled around frowning at Helen Vrobel. “Who the hell put her in those
hooker
pants?” he demanded. “Helen, the girl is a
virgin,
living in the provinces—and you’ve got chorus-girl underwear on her!”

Helen Vrobel grimaced to warn him, but not in time.

“They
happen
to be my own,” Pamela said icily, closing her robe.

“Oh . . .” Boris turned away for a moment, thinking that’s great, not even one shot and already alienating the actors. “Sorry, Pam,” he said, “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded . . . they’re really very, uh, attractive . . . it’s just that I think we better have something not quite so, uh,
sophisticated.”
He turned to Helen Vrobel, and spoke with exaggerated patience: “Get her some white ones, okay? Just nice, plain, white pants, like a nice, plain, uh, or rather in this case very very
beautiful,
fifteen-year-old girl would wear . . .”

“I
do
have some white ones, of course,” said Pamela, “and I
would
prefer to wear my own.”

Arabella, having joined them in time to overhear this last remark, was quick to agree. “Oh yes, please,” she said, “I too would prefer that they be her own . . .
things
—that way it is more real . . . for me as well, yes?” She flashed a radiant smile at each of them, and squeezed Pamela’s arm, before turning away. “Excuse me, I get us some coffee.”

They watched her for a moment, then Boris returned his attention to the problem at hand. “Well, we’ll have to send someone to the hotel to get them,” and he immediately thought of gross Sid rooting about among Pamela Dickensen’s precious underthings, maybe even doing something weird or obscene with them.

“I hope that won’t be necessary,” she said coolly. “Unless I’m quite mistaken, I have some in my bag, in the dressing room.”

“Great,” said Boris, and they started walking slowly across to the caravan of trucks and trailers, two of which served as dressing rooms for the actors. As the crowd of technicians parted to let them pass, some of them nodded and smiled at the director and the movie star. After acknowledging one or two of their greetings, Pamela looked at Boris for a moment, then spoke in her crispest tones: “Mr. Adrian, I was wondering if it is absolutely essential that
all
of these people be on the set.”

“Oh no, they won’t be on the set.”

“But they
are
on the set.”

Boris looked perplexed. “You mean
now?
Because of the nudity?”

“Yes.”

“I see. Well . . . I had planned to clear the set when we started doing the love scenes . . . but if it bothers you—just being nude, I mean . . .”

“But isn’t it customary, when nudity is required of an actor, the set be cleared of all nonessential personnel? In fact, unless I am very much mistaken, it is a guild regulation.”

They reached the door of the trailer and stood there.

“Hmm,” Boris murmured. “Well, I was just thinking it might . . . loosen things up a bit.” This was almost true; the psychological strategy, which he had contrived with Arabella, had been simple: the more they could get Pamela Dickensen to do in front of a crowd, the more they could then get her to do when alone. But there was another reason as well.

“You see,” she continued, “this is all quite new to me . . . I mean, I consider it a very great privilege, an
honor
really, to work with you—
and
with Arabella, whom I’ve always admired tremendously—and I understand what is required of me in the love scenes, and I’m prepared to do that—I admit I’m not entirely certain about what you . . . well, what you hope to achieve by being so
explicit,
but I have confidence in you . . . in your integrity, and in your artistic ability,
and
in Arabella’s. What I do
not
understand is why you allow all of those idle people to stand there, ogling the undressed actors. I simply can’t believe that
Arabella
hasn’t complained.”