Blue Movie (5 page)

Sid was becoming frantic. “Oh Christ, Christ, Christ, you gotta believe me! You gotta believe me!”

Boris gently replaced the phone, then took it off the hook and laid it on the night table—but all the while he could hear Sid shouting—and in a tone he had never heard Sid use before:
“You got final cut, baby! You got final fuckin’ cut!”

T
HEY MET AT
six that evening at the Polo Lounge, at a table on the side which, through an arrangement with the maître d’, was permanently reserved for Sid at this hour. The arrangement, incidentally, was that Sid would lay starlet cooze on the maître d’ by letting him come to the studio on his day off and introducing him to the girl at hand as an Italian film director “who will probably use you if he gets to know you better,” lascivious wink, “know what I mean? One hand washes the other. Hee-hee-hee.” By the same token he had run up a bar bill of about five hundred dollars.

Sid was already there, drinking a Ramos gin fizz (“keeps my weight up”), when Boris arrived. They were both wearing shades, which made B. look even more weary and brooding than usual, and big Sid, in his white linen suit and green silk shirt, just plain sinister.

“Two questions,” he said tersely, “one: What do you know about Liechtenstein?”

“Roy Lichtenstein?” asked B. absently, nodding to acknowledge a greeting from across the room.

Sid grimaced in pain. “No,
mishugenah,
the
country
for Chrissake!
Liechtenstein!”

Boris shrugged. “I drove through it once, if that’s what you mean—I don’t recall stopping for anything.”

“So you didn’t
stop”
said Sid, “big deal—it’s still a
country,
right?”

“It’s a country,” Boris agreed. “Actually it’s a principality. It’s run by a prince. I met him once, as a matter of fact—at the Cannes Film Festival.”

“Right, right, right,” said Sid, “it’s a
sovereign principality.
Now let me give you a little run-down on the
sovereign principality
of Liechtenstein: situated in the colorful Alps Mountains, between Switzerland and Austria, occupying an area of sixty-four square miles, population of seventeen thou—one half-hour by twin jet from Paris, Rome, Berlin, Vienna, you name it—”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Boris interrupted.

“Will you please just this once listen to your own Sid Krassman,” he pleaded, but was momentarily distracted by a passing miniskirt. “Hey, I forgot to ask, did you get into that little chickie’s pants last night?”

Boris sighed. “Yes, yes, yes,” as though it were all too futile.

“How was it?”

“What do you mean ‘how was it’? Haven’t you ever been laid, for Chrissake?”

“She give good head?”

“Not especially.”

Sid nodded agreement. “Young kids like that never seem to give good head. What was she, about eighteen?”

“Seventeen.”

“Seventeen, huh? She had a great ass.”

Boris nodded. “Yeah, a great ass.”

“You suck her pussy?”

“Ha. That would be kiss-and-tell, wouldn’t it?”

“Aw come on, fer Chrissake, did you suck her pussy or didn’t you?”

“No. Well, not much anyway, just sort of at the beginning.”

“How many times did you fuck her?”

“Uh, let’s see . . . four.”

“Four?!?
Jeez, she must’ve been great ass! You fucked her
four times,
for Chrissake?”

“Yeah, well, you know, twice when we went to bed, and twice when we woke up.”

Sid seemed greatly relieved. “Oh, when you
woke up.
I thought you meant
four times in a row,
for Chrissake! Did she come?”

Boris shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so. She said she did.”

“Couldn’t you
tell,
for Chrissake?”

“Yeah, she came.”

“What, every time?”

“Christ, I don’t know if she came every time.” He regarded Sid curiously. “Have you gone nuts or something? What was all that goofy talk about Liechtenstein?”

“I said I’d ask two questions, right? Okay, second question: You know Al Weintraub? He’s Joey Schwartzman’s cousin, right? Strictly legit. Now, are you ready for this? Al Weintraub is a
very close friend of the Minister of Finance in Liechtenstein.”

“Uh-huh,” said B. He looked like he was about to fall asleep.

“Al knows
everything
about that country. We were up all night, we got a call in right now to his friend, the minister . . .”

“Listen, Sid,” Boris began, glancing at his watch, but Sid implored him, “please, B., just this once listen to Sid Krassman.”

“Well, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Listen, B., before I go any further, can you let me take a thou until Thursday?”

“What?”

“A thousand bucks—just until Thursday.”

“Sure, I guess so.”

“You’ll never regret it, B., believe you me!”

L
IECHTENSTEIN, AS IT
turned out, had the lowest per capita income of any country in Western Europe. Although of Alpine splendor scenic-wise, its relatively inaccessible location had simply not put it on the map, so to speak. The tourists—who, for generations, the country had tried desperately to attract—never came. And yet it had the requisites: inns (picturesque), saline baths (piping hot), ski slopes (mediocre), casino and opera house (closed). It seemed there was something missing—something perhaps even intangible, but a trifle more conveniently at hand . . . in St. Moritz, Klosters, Kitzbühel, Innsbruck, etc.

The plan devised by Sid and Al Weintraub (friend of the Liechtenstein Minister of Finance) was simplicity itself—the movie would be financed by the government of Liechtenstein, in return for which it would be
filmed
in Liechtenstein, and
exhibited there exclusively.
People from London, Paris, Rome, Vienna, Geneva, Zurich, anywhere, would jet in on special charter flights—to the only place where they could see the latest film by the world’s greatest director. They would stay overnight, perhaps longer, at the picturesque inns, with eiderdown
pouffe
and the cozy hearth; they would go to the opera, the casino, the ski slopes, the health baths, and the shops, both quaint and smart; they would revel in the scenic Alpine beauty of the place. Perhaps they would fall in love with Liechtenstein—its simple charm, its majestic grandeur—it might even become a
habit.

“T
HEY WANT A
ten-year exclusive on the picture,” Sid was saying, about a week later.

Boris nodded. He didn’t care where the picture was shown, he just wanted to make it.

“And let me tell you something else,” Sid added slyly. “Know who I was talking to today?—Abe Becker. Bet you don’t know who Abe Becker is, right?”

“That film cutter at Metro?” suggested B.

“Abe Becker,”
said Sid, almost tersely, “is the brother-in-law of Nicky Hilton. Know what he said? He said if this goes through, Connie will put up a
Liechten-Hilton
like that!” Sharp snap of fingers. “Shops too, the whole arcade bit. They’ll clean up—and Abe
knows
it, believe you me!” Adding this last with a note of resentment, as if he felt they should cut him in for a piece of the action.

The waitress arrived, and Sid was momentarily distracted by the fact that she was topless. They were having a late lunch—about four
P.M.
—at a restaurant on the Strip called the Shangri-la Tropicana, whose specialty was spareribs and barbequed chicken, and waitresses with names like Honey Pot, Fancy Box, Charity Ball, etc. Sid went there often, and it was no news to him that they were topless, but it was a sometime source of distraction nonetheless.

“Hey,” he said to the girl—a rather heavy Scandinavian type, who maintained a steady frown of suspicious consternation—“you met my friend, the internationally famous film director, Mr. Boris Adrian? I been telling him about you.”

“Boris Adrian?” She was impressed, but then her brow clouded a bit more. “Oh yeah? Listen, I know
you’re
in show business, Mr. Kratzman, I checked that out already, but some of these guys you bring in, what do I know, maybe they’re creeps or something. I mean, that’s some sense of humor you got there, Mr. Kratzman.”

“Yeah, well, the thing is,” said Sid, “we’re doing these commercials, and I been telling Mr. Adrian here you might be just the girl for the job. What we’ve got to be sure of though is
nipple distention.”

“Huh?”

“There’s going to be a very tight close-shot, you see, and we’ve got to make sure that the line is just right. It’s a public-service spot for CBS, it’s for, uh, let’s see, yeah,
it’s for breast feeding of infants,
you know, to encourage breast feeding among young mothers. Some very harmful additives have recently been discovered in the, uh, you know, formula mixtures. It’s a thirty-second spot—wouldn’t show your face, of course, just the line of the, uh, bosom. Pays seven-fifty.”

“Seven-fifty? Seven hundred and fifty?”

“Give or take a few bucks—union dues, that kind of thing.”

The girl looked from one to the other. “Thirty seconds, seven hundred and fifty dollars? Wow.”

“Uh, yes, well, the thing is,” said Sid gravely, “we have to be sure about the
line.
Just step over here, will you, dear.”

“Huh?” said the girl, obeying immediately,
“what
line?”

“The nipple,” he said, “is a very important part of the breast line. Now just relax.” He put one hand on her right hip, placed his other over her bare (left) breast and fingered it gingerly. “Now, let’s just see . . .”

“Hey, wait a minute,” said the girl, glancing about anxiously.

“No, it’s all right,” Sid reassured her, releasing the nipple but still holding her hip. “Here, this is better,” and he took a half-melted ice cube from his drink and began massaging the nipple with it.

The girl tried to draw away, discreetly but somewhat wildly, looking right and left. “Listen, the manager will flip if he sees this!”

Sid ignored her remark, turned to Boris. “Yes, you see, Mr. Adrian, there’s quite a satisfactory distention there, don’t you agree?” And even the girl then looked down in curiosity at the nipple, which was perking out like a tiny top hat. And a number of nearby guests, ordinarily blasé, were shooting uneasy looks at the odd spectacle.

“Okay,” said Sid, “let’s try the other one.”

“Hey, listen,” she said, really quite apprehensive now, “can’t we do this later?”

“Okay,” said Sid abruptly, and returned his attention to the menu at once. “How’s your deep-dish Beaver Pie today?”

“Huh?” She stared at him dumbly for a moment, mouth half-open. “Say, that’s some sense of humor you got there, Mr. Kratzman, you know that?”

Boris sighed and smiled sadly. “Oh, he knows that all right. Yes indeed.”

In a town and an industry where the tasteless quip is rife and men of
mauvaise foi
are legion—even here was Sid Krassman notorious for his obsessively aggressive wit and chicanery, always with a slight compulsion toward the grotesquely banal. Getting into a cab, for example, he would sometimes wait for the driver to ask “Where to?” and he would reply, “What the hell, let’s go to
your
place!” And guffaw raucously. Or, stepping into a crowded elevator, he might intone with tremendous authority: “I suppose you’re all wondering why I’ve called you together.”

“Okay, King, are you ready for this?” he asked now, still at the Shangri-la Tropicana, opening an attaché case which he had taken from beneath his chair. He extracted a large white folio, untied its ribbon, and began passing eleven by fourteen color prints across the table to Boris. Most of the photographs were of places, rather than persons, and featured town squares, cobblestone streets, country lanes, meadows, forest glades, streams, lakes, cottages, churches, castles—all of obvious European motif, and most against an overwhelming backdrop of snow-covered mountains. Boris went through them in silence, with a slightly bemused smile.

“Well, there’s our locations, baby!” exclaimed Sid, with a glee he prayed would be contagious.

“Where’d you get these?” asked Boris, turning one over to look at the back. On it was stamped: “Property of Krassman Enterprises, Ltd.—Unauthorized Reproduction Strictly Prohibited.”

Sid flicked his cigar, caught the waitress’s eye and signaled for another cognac.

“Flew Morty Kanowitz over to scout it,” he said easily.

Boris returned his attention to the photographs. “Didn’t you tell me the other night you were
broke?”

Sid coughed and glanced about the room uneasily, tried a diversionary tactic: “Say, I think I just saw Dick Zanuck, going into the other room—”

Boris smiled wearily and continued to look at the pictures. “My thou?”

Sid was greatly relieved that the deception was finally out in the open, and that Boris did not seem too bugged by it. He leaned back in his chair, rolled the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. “Well, B.,” he said with a grin, “it
takes
money to
make
money—am I right?”

“Nice pictures,” said Boris, handing them back.

“Perfect
locations, am I right?”

“Locations for what? I don’t even have a story yet.”

“But that’ll
come
to you, B. baby,” Sid reassured in his most imploring tones, “that’ll
come
to you—from the Blue Fairy of Inspiration!”

It was common knowledge that his last two winners had been shot from “scripts” about as substantial as a couple of matchcovers.

“And the money?” asked B. dryly. “Blue Fairy too?”

Sid reached into his breast pocket, and produced with a flourish what appeared to be a folded cablegram. “Three big ones, baby!
And
final cut!”

“Three million? You’re kidding.”

“Nope,” he shook his head solemnly, “talked to Al last night—he’s done one helluva promo-job on this, you know—told him to get me a cable confirmation of the deal. Here it is.” He held the cable up in front of his face, gesturing with it as he spoke.