This was unquestionably the trickier of the services I offered to select clients like the director of Hard Wheels 2.
Which had been shooting since this morning at the Four Jacks casino. I parked the Nova in the back lot (nine mil in the glove compartment, sport coat left behind as well) and went in the rear doors. If I’d thought the place was bustling before, Saturday afternoon more than topped it, the vast casino floor crowded and clamorous and if the cigarette smoke had been any thicker, the sprinklers would have come on.
The blue-hair bunch had been infiltrated by younger couples and I didn’t see any who looked like they could afford to heedlessly slam coins into one-armed bandits much less chase dice or a little white spinning ball or try to hit 21 at a blackjack table. These were the good solid salt-of-the-earth Americans I had gone off to war to protect, who had presumably benefitted from all those little yellow people I killed, making the world safe for idiocy. I hoped they fucking appreciated it.
Today I spotted two Carter For President buttons. If I’d got a buck for every Reagan, I could have retired myself.
Aggravating this chaos was the presence of a movie company. Even amid all the colorful flashing lights of machines, they were easy to spot-the little invading army of technicians and actors had taken over a roulette table in the far left corner, up toward the front of the building. Around it were slots and poker machines in clanging, dinging action; some of the people playing them I recognized from the film set.
Actually, this whole corner was cordoned off by the half-dozen Hell’s Angels types on the production’s security force, plus another half-dozen real security guys in cop-like light blue who worked for the casino. In the great scheme of this vast room, perhaps only 5 % of the available gaming floor was blocked off. Another roulette table, nearest the one where a scene was being shot, was out of use; but otherwise the remaining 95 % of the casino was business as usual.
As crowded as the place was, freckle-faced Ginger-working her clipboard on my side of the blockade, wearing a tiny-titty-perked red Hard Wheels 2 t-shirt and frayed blue jeans-found me, and took me by the arm and walked me past security. She wasn’t speaking because they were rolling. The down-turned sailor hat was absent and revealed short red shag-cut hair. Maybe she would like to be the next Mrs. Quarry.
Despite a casino being one of the most brightly lit chambers on earth, a towering array of lights on stands, some of them with colored gels, half-ringed the roulette table where the scene was playing out. I couldn’t hear what was being said.
Eric Conrad, shirtless in his denim vest and jeans, was winning at roulette (a tech, out of frame on the floor, was running a gizmo that apparently controlled the white ball). At the star’s side, cheering him on, was Tiffany Goodwin in a white dress reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch. You know, where the subway blew her skirt up.
Joni, not in her diner uniform but in a sexy, smutty plaid blouse and denim short shorts, was also next to Eric, but not cheering him on. Next to her was an older guy, a fifty-ish actor I hadn’t seen on set before, in a light-green leisure suit and televangelist hair; he seemed to be losing and also giving Eric verbal shit. I figured he was the villain (I think he may have been that actor who played the dean in Animal House).
Anyway, that’s all I could get out of it, since I couldn’t really hear what anybody was saying. I had a feeling the makings of the movie’s entire plot were gathered around that roulette table. I’d wait for the video rental.
Finally Stockwell, standing beside the big camera-not on wheels today, hard or otherwise-yelled, “ Cut! ”
And Ginger, still at my side, finally said, “Hi, Mr. Reynolds. Welcome to the Four Jacks.”
I said hi, even though we’d been standing together for ten minutes already, and said, “This strikes me as a tricky place to shoot in.”
“Fuck yes!” she said.
I was of a generation that had never quite got used to clean-cut girls like Ginger saying “fuck” so casually. Somewhere deep in my Midwestern heritage, I felt offended; the rest of me thought, Fuck yes!
“Controlling a set within a noisy, crowded space like this is a logistical nightmare,” she said cheerfully, as if all this trouble were a good thing. “And we had a surprise thrown at us today that I admit threw us all for a loop.”
“What surprise is that?”
We were talking fairly loud because of the ding-ding-ding of the slots.
“Mr. Licata flew in from the Coast for a visit,” she said, “without any warning. He’s our money man, you know. And he’s…he’s kind of a public figure himself. I’m surprised nobody called you about it-you being our unit publicist and all.”
“I was at the hotel on the phone all morning with People and Variety,” I said, mentioning the only two appropriate publications a non-showbiz guy like me could summon on short notice. “If Art found a free moment to try to call me, he probably couldn’t get through.”
“I assume you know who Mr. Licata is.”
“Yes. And what he is. Why, Ginger, has he been a problem for you?”
She chose her words. “He just needs to be handled with care. Mr. Licata and Mr. Kaufmann are in the bar right now, I think. You might want to go introduce yourself.”
“I’ll do that. But I do need to talk to Art.”
“They’ll be moving the camera around for a new angle probably in about half an hour.”
“Okay.”
Another take began, same scene, same camera position, and I stayed put, right there next to Ginger. When Stockwell again yelled, “Cut!” and moved in to talk to the actors, I said to Ginger, “Where’s that guy I saw yesterday with the big fuzzy microphone on that fishing-pole type thing? Don’t they need him for sound?”
This particular technician had been at the diner yesterday covering the action by the gas pumps, recording grunts and groans and such memorable bad guy dialogue as, “Eat shit and die, motherfucker!” and “I’m gonna feed ya your nuts, asswipe!” The good guy dialogue was limited to: “Come and get me,” and “Try it.” More fun to play a bad guy.
“Mr. Stockwell isn’t going with a boom operator here in the casino,” Ginger was saying. “All of the actors are wirelessly miked.” She pointed toward some slot machines in back of the roulette table. “Our sound man is set up back behind there, off-camera.”
“What about all this racket going on?”
“Oh, he’ll be able to mix that in and out. First thing he did today was record room tone-you know, ambient noise? And everybody at those slot machines, in view of the camera, is either a crew member or an extra we hired out of Las Vegas. We have to maintain continuity.”
“Can’t have different people in the background, you mean? Disappearing and appearing.”
“Right. You catch on fast, Mr. Reynolds.”
“I always liked movies, but never imagined this was how they were made.”
“Well, we’re pretty down-and-dirty. Guerilla Filmmaking 101. But it’s not terribly different than what you’d see on a big Hollywood film.”
Before they started another take, I smiled and nodded at Ginger, then moved through the masses to the bar, where not so long ago I had sat in a booth with Jerry and caught up on old times. As irony would have it-or just because it was the most secluded of the booths-that was where producer James Kaufmann and Louis Licata were seated.
Halfway over to them, I hesitated, because they were deep in conversation, and a bunch of paperwork was on the booth’s tabletop. But Kaufmann spotted me and called, “Reynolds! Come over here.”
I did so, standing there like a waiter about to take an order.
Kaufmann, in his pink polo and puka shells again, said, “Lou, this is Jack Reynolds-the guy I told you about, who Art hired for publicity. Jack, Mr. Licata.”
“Mr. Licata,” I said, with a nod, extending my hand.
Louis Licata was small, about the size of Eric Conrad, maybe forty, with a head full of black curly hair and a California tan, real not bottle. Even before the sun had got hold of him, he’d been darkly handsome, too handsome to play a mobster in a movie, though his heavy black eyebrows and matching mustache were a bit much-if he hadn’t started out looking like Valentino, the effect would have been Groucho Marx.