Ed McBain - The Last Brief

And I admit that Solly was the one who found the girl. I’ll even admit he did the preliminary talking, he’s a very smooth talker, Solly, and a good dresser besides; I’ll tell that to anyone who’ll listen, you’ll never hear me bad-mouthing a friend. But it was me who convinced the girl we could make her a star. Even Solly will admit it was me who finally sewed up the deal that day in the R&M Cafeteria when she was sitting there at the table nibbling on a jelly doughnut and driving us all crazy just from the way she licked powdered sugar from her lips. She was no beauty, but she had something, all right; she had star quality. Solly recognized her star quality while she was giving him a massage in that place on Eighth Avenue. Solly’s got a good eye, no one can take that away from him.

It was raining the day she came in the R&M, and she was wearing this soaking wet black raincoat, and she apologized for being late, but she’d just come from dance class. She took off the coat, and what she was wearing underneath was this black leotard with a short leather skirt wrapped around it, and black boots, and right away I got an idea for a scene in the picture, but I didn’t tell her about it just then because what we were there to do was sell her on becoming a porn queen. I did most of the talking; I’m the one who sold her. Ben was the one who explained the project to her, but I’m the one who finally nailed down the deal. In fact, it wasn’t even Ben who told her what we planned to do. It was Solly. Yes, that’s absolutely correct, what’s right is right.

They had got to talking in the massage parlour, and she had apologized for not being so good at this line of work, but she was really an unemployed actress and had just taken the job to make ends meet. Solly had immediately told her we’d been looking for somebody exactly like her to play a role in a low-budget movie we were doing, and this had got her interested, and she’d agreed to talk it over with us the next day. And it was Solly who picked up the ball the minute she came to the table shaking rain out of her frizzy blonde hair and saying she was always starved after dance class, could she order something to eat, or would that be all right? She ate like a friggin horse, that girl. I hope Harry, wherever he is, is spending a fortune on food bills. Solly explained that we were three movie buffs who’d managed to save a little money, not a lot, and who were now ready to take a chance on a lifelong dream, which was to produce a quality motion picture which, if everything went okay, would make us all millionaires, God willing. He went on to say that he himself had written a pretty good screenplay...

‘It’s a great screenplay,’ Ben said. ‘Don’t knock it.’

... and Ben would be cameraman on the picture, and I would be directing. We had none of us had too much experience, but we were sure we could make a movie that was a lot better than some of the junk being shown around these days, though plenty of those pictures, too, were making tons of money.

‘Like I told you in the massage parlour,’ he said, ‘we’ve been searching for a girl about your age and build, who also has that nice quality of looking innocent and sophisticated at the same time together.’

‘Thanks,’ the girl said. She had listened to all this while first she demolished a big bowl of clam chowder, and then a plateful of pot roast, boiled potatoes, and stringbeans, with two buttered rolls. She thought it over now while she sipped at a glass of milk and nibbled at a sugar-covered jelly doughnut — Jesus, that doughnut. Then she said, ‘How big is the part, and how much arc you paying?’

Now that was when Ben came in, I remember it distinctly, I always give credit where credit is due. It was Ben who put her on the defensive by telling her we naturally wanted somebody with acting experience, and preferably acting experience before a camera because after all we were going to be shooting a movie here and not doing some crumby little play downtown in some grubby little theatre. And I remember she got very offended when he asked her what her acting credits were. She told him she’d been doing plays even when she was a high-school freshman, and since her graduation four years ago, she’d done a lot of summer stock and could even show us some of the really very good reviews she’d got if we cared to see them. She’d never been before a camera except in home movies, but she was only twenty-two, and she figured she had plenty of time yet. Of course, things weren’t going exactly her way just then, which is why she’d taken the job in the massage parlour, but a girl with her talent was sure she’d make it sooner or later, so what was the hurry? And besides, how big was the part, and how much were we ready to pay her?

Solly almost blew it right then and there; I think he was very premature in asking whether or not she had any objections to doing nude scenes. For a minute, I thought she was going to get up and walk right out, especially since by now she’d also finished the doughnut and the glass of milk. But she looked Solly straight in the eye, and she said in this very tiny sort of breathless voice she had, ‘What do you mean? Do you mean I’ll have to take off my clothes in front of a camera and everything?’ And that was where I stepped in, and saved the day. I figured there was no sense kidding this girl, she had to know sooner or later what the project was. If we lost her, we’d just have to look for someone else.

‘Miss,’ I said, ‘this is a pornographic movie we have in mind here.’

The girl blinked and said, ‘Could I have another doughnut and glass of milk, please?’

I sent Ben up to the counter, and while he was gone I patted her hand gently and told her I knew this must come as a terrific shock to her, but she shouldn’t think for one minute that we were going to make a dirty movie, so-called. The sex scenes would be explicit, yes, but Solly had written a beautiful screenplay with plenty of socially-redeeming value, and the film we planned to make would be something that no one would be ashamed to take his wife or his sweetheart to, or maybe even both together, something in fact that might be beneficial to poor unfortunates who had sexual hang-ups as well. I told her that the film would be shot on a closed set. No exteriors, we would never even consider asking her to take off her clothes in public. There’d be only her on the set, and a few actors, and Ben cranking the camera, and Solly there to make any necessary script changes, and me, of course, directing. I told her I was a man of sensitivity who would most certainly be aware of her innermost feelings, and the feeling of any actor working with her, and besides I’d be the first to take offence at any line or gesture that seemed merely dirty or obscene without being also artistic and socially-redeeming. This was going to be a story of quiet beauty and delicacy, I told her, and she said, ‘Gee, I don’t know, I’ve never fucked in front of a camera before.’

Ben came back with the milk and the doughnut, and he began talking about the kind of salary she could expect. He explained that some very fine dramatic actresses like Linda Lovelace and Tina Russell and Marilyn Chambers had got their start in pornographic movies of taste and distinction, but that their salaries were very low when they were just starting out — Georgina Spelvin, for example, had got only five hundred dollars for the extraordinarily sensitive work she did in The Devil In Miss Jones — but of course now that she was a star, now that they all were stars, they could call their own tunes and were even being sought after for work outside skin flicks. Considering the circumstances, and realizing that we were interested primarily in turning out a quality film, which would mean making sure that every inch of footage was in good taste and carefully shot, the most we could offer her was double what these other actresses had got. In short, we could offer what was a high salary for a beginning actress in a starring role in her very first big movie, and that was one thousand dollars from the start of principal photography to the day of completion.