Эд Макбейн: Running From Legs and Other Stories

A resolution to accommodate the drowning?

To explain the absence of the girl in the remainder of the film. I’m reluctant to discuss this, because it has a ghoulish quality I frankly find distasteful. The girl did, after all, drown; she did die. But that was a simple fact, and we must not lose sight of another simple fact. However coldblooded this may sound, and I am well aware that it may be an unpopular observation, there had already been an expenditure of three million dollars on that film. Now I’m sure you know that leading players have taken ill, have suffered heart attacks, have died during the filming of other pictures. To my knowledge, such events have never caused a picture to halt production, and neither do I know of a single instance in which a film was entirely scrapped, solely because of the death of one of the leading players. Yet this was the very pressure being brought to bear on me immediately following the drowning, and indeed up to the time of the film’s release.

Then the studio did try to suppress the film?

Well... at first, they only wanted to stop production. I refused. Later, when they saw the rough cut — this was when all the publicity had reached its peak — they sent in a team of strong-armed Executive Producers, and Production Chiefs, and what-have-you, all know-nothings with windy titles, who asked me to suppress the film. I told them exactly where to go. And then later on, when the film had been edited and scored, the same thing happened. I finally threatened suit. My contract called for a large percentage of the gross of that film, and I had no intention of allowing it to crumble unseen in the can.

You did not feel it was a breach of good taste to exhibit the film?

Certainly not. The girl met with an accident. The accident was no one’s fault. She drowned. If a stunt man had died riding a horse over a cliff, would there have been all that brouhaha about releasing the film? I should say not.

But you must agree the circumstances surrounding the drowning...

The drowning was entirely accidental. We were shooting in shallow water.

The reports on the depth of the water vary from ten feet to forty feet. Neither of which might be considered shallow.

The water was no higher than her waist. And she was a tall girl. Five feet seven, I believe. Or eight. I’m not sure which.

Then how did she drown, sir?

I have no idea.

You were there, were you not?

I was on the camera barge, yes.

Then what happened?

I suppose we must set this to rest once and for all, mustn’t we? I would much rather discuss the present and/or the future, but apparently we cannot do that until we’ve dealt ad nauseum with the past.

As you wish, sir.

I wish the accident had never happened, sir, that is what I wish. I also wish I would not be pestered interminably about it. The Italian inquest determined that the drowning was entirely accidental. What was good enough for the Italian courts is damn well good enough for me. But there is no satisfying the American appetite for scandal, is there? Behind each accident or incident, however innocuous, however innocent, the American public must insist upon a plot, a conspiracy, a cabal. Nothing is permitted to be exactly what it appears to be. Mystery, intrigue must surround everything. Nonsense. Do you think any of us wanted that girl to drown? I’ve already told you how much money we’d spent on the picture before the accident. I would estimate now that the delay in completion, the cost of revisions, the necessity for bringing in a second girl to resolve the love story added at least a million dollars to the proposed budget. No one wanted the drowning. If for business reasons alone, no one wanted it.

Yet it happened.

It happened.

How?

The exact sequence of events is still unclear to me.

Your assistant director...

Yes.

Testified at the inquest...

Yes, yes.

That the girl pleaded not to go into the water.

The water was unusually cold that morning. There was nothing we could do about that. It was a simple fact. The light was perfect, we had our set-up, and we were prepared to shoot. Actors are like children, you know. If I had allowed her to balk at entering the water, the next thing I knew she’d have balked at walking across a lawn.

The writer of the original screenplay claims that the scene you were shooting that morning...

Where the girl swims in to the dock? What about it?

He claims he did not write that scene. He claims it was not in the original script.

Well, let him take that up with the Writers Guild.

Was it in the original script?

I have no idea. If there were no innovations during the shooting of a film... really, does anyone expect me to follow a script precisely? What then is my function as director? To shout ‘Louder’ or ‘Softer’ to an actor? Let the writers direct their own scripts, in that case. I assure you they would not get very far.

Was the scene an innovation? The scene in the water?

It might have been. I can’t recall. If it was not in the original shooting script, as our Hollywood hack claims, then I suppose it was an innovation. By definition, yes, it would have been an innovation, isn’t that so?

When was it added to the script?

I don’t recall. I will sometimes get ideas for scenes the night before I shoot them. In which case, I will call in the technicians involved, and describe the set-up I will need the next day, and I will have it in the morning. If there is additional dialogue involved, I’ll see to it that the actors and the script girl have the necessary pages, and I’ll ask the actors to study them overnight. If there is no additional dialogue...

Was there any dialogue in this scene?

No. The girl was merely required to swim in to the dock from a speedboat.

What do you do in such a case? In an added scene where there’s no dialogue?

Oh, I’ll usually take the actor aside and sketch in the scene for him. The gist of it. This was a particularly simple scene. She had only to dive over the side of the boat and swim in to the dock.

In shallow water?

Well, not so shallow that she was in any danger of hitting the bottom, if that’s what you mean.

Then perhaps the estimates of the water’s depth...

The water’s depth was no problem for anyone who knew how to swim.

Did the girl know how to swim?

Of course she did. You certainly don’t think I’d have allowed her to play a scene in water...

I merely wondered if she was a good swimmer or...

Adequate. She was neither Eleanor Holm nor Esther Williams, but the part didn’t call for an Olympic champion, you know. She was an adequate swimmer.

When did you explain the gist of the scene to her?

That morning, I believe. If memory served me... yes, I believe the idea came to me the night before, and I called in the people involved and told them what I would need the following morning. Which is when I explained the scene to her. At least, that’s usually the way it works; I assume it worked the same way concerning this particular scene.

You explained that she would have to dive over the side of the boat and swim in to the dock?

Which is all she had to do.

Did she agree to do this?

Why, of course. She was an inexperienced little thing, this was her first film. Of course, she agreed. There was never any question of her not agreeing. She’d been modelling miniskirts or what-have-you for a teenage fashion magazine when I discovered her. This was an enormous opportunity for her, this film. Look at the people I surrounded her with!! Do you know what we had to pay her leading man? Never mind. It still irritates me.