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 judgement 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 colour?’ she said.
‘Yes, of course,’ Ben said.
‘Because I look very good in colour,’ she said.
‘Oh, yes, everything will be in colour,’ 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.’