yustyoking

                        “The Hunger Games isn’t as good as the original:

                          The Running Man with Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

                                                                      –         Steven Simon on Facebook

                                                       *

           Yahoo! News tells me the cruise ship MS Balmoral left Southampton, England on April 8, 2012 with relatives of some of the 1,500 passengers who perished 100 years ago on the RMS Titanic. Leaving port on the exact same day and retracing the original route, the souls on board hope to have better luck this time. Some even wear period costumes. The cruise line expects they will reach the site of the wreck on April 14 and hold a memorial service. Landfall in New York is scheduled for April 18. We’ll wait with baited breath to hear from them via wireless.

                                                        * 

             As a movie, Cleopatra (1963) nearly bankrupted 20^th Century Fox. The film Ishtar (1978), with Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty— a hilariously bad movie— almost broke Columbia Pictures. Both the director and Martin Sheen, the leading male actor, experienced nervous breakdowns during the production of Francis Ford Coppala’s Apocalypse Now (1979). These last two movies have something else in common, the same cinematographer. It’s enough to say that when the director was going bananas, Vittorio Storaro did not exactly function as a calming influence! Kevin Costner’s Waterworld (1995) almost drowned Universal Pictures. For a dream factory, Hollywood has been cranking out nightmarish productions almost from its inception. Erich von Stroheim’s The Wedding March (1928) included orgies on the set. (His real name was Erich Oswald Stroheim, born 1885 in Austria. He grew up poor as a church mouse in Vienna.) D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916) …

             Enough! There is no excuse for what we did.

             Hired by the Sidney Bamf Film Company to originate a screenplay for The Trollop Molly Brown, my partner at Montevideo Films [Marca Registrada] Bruce “Boopsie” Davis and I did our usual exemplary research: We looked up “Molly Brown” on the Web. “The unsinkable Molly Brown” was, of course, a great, charismatic historical figure, best known for insisting her lifeboat mates turn back to the stricken luxury liner Titanic and pluck up more survivors. The ship’s crew rowing the boat demurred, afraid the frantic passengers floundering in the icy water would overwhelm their small boat or that the suction from the sinking Titanic might pull them under.

             (I try not to dwell on my professional failures. I guess the little accident with the cruise ship Costa Concordia off the coast of Italy has been ringing my bell.)

             On-line, Boopsie and I found quite a list of previous productions: two TV documentaries— one from as late as 2005— a TV movie, a TV miniseries, a 1960’s Broadway musical starring Tammy Grimes, and no less than six motion pictures, going back to Thelma Ritter in Titanic from 1953. (Originally called Nearer, My God, to Thee, the studio changed the title. Go figure.) This was a wonderful gold mine, laying the groundwork for an easy $25,000 or a lawsuit for plagiarism.

             Also, Kathy Bates in James Cameron’s Titanic (1997) nailed the personality of Molly Brown for all eternity. Her dialogue (kudos to the screenwriters!!!), her delivery (kudos to Ms. Bates), her scenes (thank you, Mr. Cameron!) provide a textbook lesson in how to deliver a narrative through the development of a single character. And hers was but one of half a dozen sub-plots! The captain, the chief steward, even the heroine’s mother all experience character development.

              Cameron’s Titanic (now released in 3-D) deserves every Academy Award it garnered and then some!

             This set the bar unusually high, but British director Reginald “Reggie” Sweeterman assured Boopsie and me not to worry. “You come up with the proverbial sow’s ear,” he drawled in his Belgravia accent— his one true claim to fame— “and I’ll turn it into the old silk purse, eh, chaps?!”

            “Why does he keep calling us ‘chaps’ ?” asked Boopsie, a child of Montgomery County, Maryland. “ ’Chaps’ is a brand name of the Ralph Lauren Company.”

            “Boopsie, pul-lease,” I begged, “focus on the plot.” The last thing I needed in 2008 was for our one-year-old joint writing venture to founder through inattention. “This is our big break! Let’s not blow it.”

              Up until then, we had been script-doctoring, rewriting drafts of other people’s creations, jumping in and dreaming up individual scenes and dialog on demand. Whatever bones Boopsie’s erstwhile classmates from UCLA Film School chose to throw us. I often felt like a 1920’s gag writer, extemporizing visual puns and writing them in pencil on the celluloid arms of my shirts, the origin of the coinage “off the cuff.”

             “Get in here!” Sidney Bamf (né Barnofsky) barked from the door of his office on Sepulveda. He had the rep of “meanest man in Hollywood.” The very fact that we were so far from Maryland, that Sidney had beckoned us to rush across the Continental Divide to adhere to his side, so impressed us, we overlooked the fact that his location, location, location lay many miles south of Hollywood. His office was, in fact, suspiciously near ARF, the American Rights Federation, a choleric lobby organization representing the Republican side of the industry, but I failed to make the connection at the time.

             Gruff to the point of rudeness, portly Sidney never-the-less sported an immaculate three-piece suit and Italian shoes that made my mouth water. His bald pate and prominent eyebrows gave him the sought-after Yul Brynner look. The understated elegance, his Cal tan, high-end manicure and aviator sunglasses impressed the hell out of me. Anyone who could throw that much money at trifles, I thought, must be loaded.

             Vanity, thy name is foolishness.

            “Sit down!” he commanded. “I don’t know what kind of crap that poofter Reggie Sweeterman has been feeding you, but this company isn’t in the business of floating free-loading dreamers, cretins or schemers. So just forget everything Sweeterman said. Forget it! If you don’t know screenwriting, consider yourselves fired. If you can’t keep to a deadline, you’re dead meat. If you screw up, I’ll see you never get a day’s pay in the industry again. Ever. Those are the terms.

             “Don’t tell me your good intentions. Give me the facts on Molly Brown.”

             His furious expression should have sent us packing, but newbies, we tried to please.

            “Margaret Brown was born Margaret Tobin in 1867 in Hannibal, Missouri. A prairie town,” I explained. “During her lifetime, she was called ‘Maggie.’ The Molly Brown thing didn’t develop until after she died. At the time the Titanic went down, she was 44 years old. She married James Joseph Brown, nicknamed ‘J.J.’ A self-educated engineer, he made his fortune mining silver in Colorado. He opened up an ore seam at the Little Jonny Mine belonging to the Ibex Mining Company. For this achievement, he was awarded 12,500 shares of stock and got a seat on the board of directors.

             “Molly and J.J.’s children were born in 1887 and 1889. The family moved to Denver, Colorado in 1894. Engaging in society functions and the trappings of a lady, Maggie applied herself to philanthropy and higher education for women. She picked up French, German and Russian. She ran for the U.S. Senate in 1909.”

            “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” suggested Sidney Bamf.

            “I can’t find any indication that she ever got elected. Which is why she could be in Cherbourg, France and aboard the Titanic in 1912.”

            “Touché,” growled Sidney Bamf from behind his fine mahogany desk. He chewed on a cigar, but mercifully, he never lit it.

            “The ship hits an iceberg— “

            “No! Really?” Sidney grunts sarcastically.

            “And Maggie’s in a lifeboat and tries to get them to— “

            “I know! I know!”

           “Afterwards, she and J.J. separate. They remain friends. She also gets a settlement that keeps her comfortably within high society. She does charity work in France during World War I. In 1914, she again runs for the U. S. Senate, but her sister Helen marries a German baron and that puts the scotch on Maggie’s campaign— “

            “Does what?”

            “Puts the skids on Maggie’s campaign.”

            “Sinks the campaign?”

            “Yes.”

            “Go on.”

             “In 1922, J.J. dies and, without a will, Maggie and the kids fight a five-year court battle over what’s left of the fortune.”

             “Courtroom drama. That’s good!”

             “She died during the Great Depression.”

             “Find me a beginning, a middle and an ending,” says Sidney.

             “I think we can write and deliver a very adequate screenplay based on this,” I end dryly, purposely playing the self-deprecating card to avoid butting heads with my new boss.

             Wrong move.

             “You don’t sound very enthusiastic,” Bamf complains, looking more and more like a bulldog, crouched behind his desk. He rolls the soggy cigar between his stubby fingers, apparently a nervous tic.

            “Oh, we’re rip-roaring ready to go!” I yelp like a fresh-faced office boy in a 1940’s musical.

            “How many pages?”

            “As many as you need!” replies Boopsie who, after all, went to film school in sunny Cal.

            Wrong answer.

            “You gentlemen haven’t ever written a screenplay,” Bamf exclaims, his voice like sandpaper scratching stone.

            Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!

            Babbling, we name other producers who have used us, directors to whose work we have contributed, references. Even to my ears, we sound like rank amateurs.

            “Considering,” says Bamf, “I’ll pay you scale.”

            “That’s chump change! That’s lunch money!” Boopsie wails.

            Now’s the time we should have run from Bamf’s office like a five-alarm fire.

           “A $10,000 retainer and first rights on whatever we provide,” I suggest. “Otherwise, we’re outta here.”

          “It’s business,” Sidney counters. “Don’t get sore.”

           Behold, he scribbles a contract. He has his secretary transcribe it on her PC while he regales us with tales of other unmitigated disasters. He writes us a check for $5,000 and… we sign.

           “Where are you staying?” he growls.

           Ah, the hospitality of Hollywood producers! I think. They fly you across the country, put you up in their homes. They see you have every convenience. They lend you their ear, their input, their thoughts at the end of every day.

           “We came straight from the airport,” I tell him hopefully.

           “Sounds lame. Find a place,” he belches.

           “We usually work from our office,” Boopsie interjects.

           “Where’s your office?”

            “On Rockville Pike.”

             “Never heard of it.”

             “It’s in Maryland,” I reply sheepishly.

             Gales of laughter! His face going red, Sidney fights to catch his breath. “That’s priceless!” he marvels. “Where’s your office? It’s in Maryland. I’ll remember that one! Now get the hell out of here and write me a screenplay!”

            Checking the cost of motel rooms, we say “To hell with it” and fly home to Maryland. We’ll work out of our office. We write. We edit. We write some more. I email fresh drafts to Sidney every few days. It’s not like he doesn’t have other projects on his schedule.

            We divide Molly’s story into three distinct chapters: her life prior to the Titanic, the voyage, and her life afterwards. I love the fact that she was out West. We have a sod hut on the prairie, a silver mine in the hills, scenes in an old-fashion saloon, gunfights, people cracking whips, people cracking wise, pistol-whippings and lots of Old West dialog. Every three sentences, J.J. either says “Git along, little dogie” or “Ain’t that all get-out?”

            (“The more I read this script,” Reggie Sweeterman will comment, “the more I envision J.J. as the tall, silent type.”)

            The good news is, I am able to salvage a lot of odds and ends that never previously made it onto celluloid. Introducing J.J., for instance, I use this gem left over from a cowpoke picture:

            Wide shot, stock footage of some dude riding a horse across the prairie.

           NARRATOR: (Texas accent) “He was ridin’! Ridin’ across the West! His face was the color of money, honey!… A little green. He’d fried up some prairie chicken eggs and they didn’ agree with him… Next stop, Eldorado! The Colorado silver mines! Fortunes to be made in the mining of precious metals.”

            I don’t want to say we created a masterpiece, but… I’m satisfied.

            Not all of the info I pull from the Net is certifiably accurate.

            LIST OF PASSENGERS (of doubtful authenticity)

            Cedric von Kampf

            Thomas “Piggy” Bankes

            Margaret “Molly” Maguire

            Aston C. Martin

            When evaluating this data, it helps to know that Adolf Hitler wrote Mein Kampf, the Molly Maguires were a band of violent Irish-American coal miners who fought the big mining trusts in Pennsylvania in the 1800’s, and that an Aston Martin is a British-manufactured automobile.

           Wikipedia rates a B – . At least they subject their factoids to peer review.

           “What about her later years?!” Sidney demands over the phone. “High society dame forever scarred by the shock of that one night. Amnesia from trying to suppress the horrid truth. Write that.”

          “It’s not… really… historically accurate,” I counter.

          “We’re not making a doc for the History Channel. Write it!”

          As aware of dramatic hooks as the next hack, I stop arguing and complete the assignment.

          “Do either of you boys know anything about Blacksburg, Virginia?” Sidney asks from the West Coast. “I got a good deal on a tax break, but we have to film in Blacksburg.”

          “I don’t… think… there’s an… ocean anywhere near Blacksburg,” I point out.

          “Always the bellyacher!” Bamf bitches. “Find it on a map and scout the damned location!”

                                                        *

          There are many historical buildings in Blacksburg. I particularly like the Courthouse on South Main Street, dreaming up antebellum scenes of melodrama in its spooky corridors.

          “How’s it look?” asks Bamf when I call him on my cellphone.

          “It looks good! I still don’t see any water.”

           “You need a bath? We float a model of the Titanic in a tank. Forget the ocean.”

           “Blacksburg was an area of great Civil War activity,” I offer.

           “There you go again! What a titanic pain in the ass you are!” Bamf howls. “Do you want this job or don’cha?”

           “I like Blacksburg. It’s very convenient. Saves me coming out west.”

           “Yeah, yeah!”

           So, eventually, our trailers are set up in Blacksburg. This, naturally, attracts the law. The sheriff, his deputies, state law enforcement all come sniffing around. “We can provide private security,” they propose, “in addition to upholding the law. Also, we’ll enforce your permits: Hold up traffic. Direct traffic. Hold back the crowds. You need us!”

           They make their pitches to me. Since I scouted the location, I’m a familiar face. I, in turn, direct them to Sidney Bamf’s production assistant Marty Markham, point man on this shoot. Marty cuts some deals and doles out cash incentives.

           We’re in business!

           Cinematographer Vilgot Frölund and I bond over unloading his equipment. We both speak Swedish. “Six different tripods?” I ask.

           “One for every occasion,” he explains. “Ett för varje tillfälle.” Tall, dressed in jeans, brown leather boots and a flannel shirt, a fiery red beard, a full head of hair, squinty eyes, he’s your typical Viking.

            We spend all evening driving around town admiring the light. “I can film here!” Vilgot announces enthusiastically. “Find us a Chinese take-out and we are fit for fight,” he adds, reciting the last three words in English.

             Day Two, the cast drops out of the sky from the West Coast. A small crew, we all help out: I spend my time shuttling new arrivals from the Roanoke Regional Airport, “The gateway to the Blue Ridge” according to the travel brochure.

            “Who are you?” asks Janice Bulova, the blond, showgirlish ingenue, fastening me with her baby blues. Jesus! We’re standing by the baggage carousel and I’m already salivating. “You’re not local,” she surmises. “I don’t hear a Virginia accent.”

           Lugging her suitcases to the van on a cart, I say, “I’m the screenwriter.”

           “You… write?” she asks excitedly, clutching my arm in a vice-like grip. Method actress. I can feel the drama! She widens her eyes. Widens her eyes. WIDENS HER…

            “I-I-I wr-r-rite,” I stammer, leaning against the van to keep from falling over. It’s a perfect day, 80 degrees and sunny.

             “I always wanted to write,” she exclaims, sucking her pointer finger between ruby-red lips and running her wet hand down the side of my face. “You can teach me SO MUCH!” She presses against me, all but raping me with her long legs.

             “Uh, uh…” I gulp, unprepared for dry humping in the parking lot of the Roanoke Regional Airport.

             Her arms around my neck, she whispers in my ear, “You and I are going to be such good friends! “

            “Why don’t I… why don’t I… drive us, you know, to the film set,” I suggest, my pecker tearing a hole in my trousers.

            “Oh! Right!” she replies, jumping nimbly into the van, the view of her tight little derrière forever imprinted on my memory.

           While I drive, we talk shop. If you want to know what she looks like, that’s easy, she’s a dead ringer for Leelee Sobieski, very blond hair, extremely intense blue eyes, a narrow face and a cute nose like a bump on a log. Her beauty is a little too fragile for me, but she lists a long line of credits as a “featured player” in major productions: You get your name scrolled at the end of the film, but you’re nowhere to be found on the movie poster. More than an extra but less than a star.

            I don’t need to tell her that this is her big break, the breakout perf that’ll put her on the radar screen.

            “It’s make or break,” she laughs. “I live on diet cola and vitamin pills. At home, I eat all I want. When I’m in training for a film, I’m hungry all the time.”

             I take her to the trailer she’s sharing with Martha Lloyd, the middle-age character actress who plays Molly after the Titanic. Martha has yet to arrive. I pile the suitcases on Martha’s bed, shrug my shoulders, give Janice a crooked smile and say, “Be it ever so humble, there’s no place as sterile, smelly and empty as a location trailer.”

            “If it was a hotel, I would give the bellhop a tip,” Janice smirks, walking up to me and planting a magnificent French kiss squarely on my mouth. Her muscular tongue investigates my teeth, wrestles with my tongue. Her hands clasp my head, as she massages my scalp. She pulls away with a grin.

            “Very nice,” I murmur thickly. “I’m amazed at the softness of your skin.”

           “Oh,” she chuckles, “about 10,000 gallons of cold cream when I was growing up.”

           “Growing up? You look about 17.”

           “Well,” she smiles ruefully, “I’m 30, wrinkles and all.”

           “You don’t have any wrinkles,” I say, my hands around her waist. “You make me wish I’d gotten into the movie business sooner. You taste good!”

           “That’s a great slogan for my mouthwash,” she teases. “Use PureBreath, you’ll taste goo-o-ood!”

            I take her around and introduce her to the crew. She’s a cooler, more distant presence, quietly checking everyone out from behind designer sunglasses. “And this is what’s-his-face, the writer,” I hear her gamely telling Marty Markham. “He was nice enough to pick me up at the airport.” I find myself wondering if I misinterpreted our steamy embraces.

            “I sent him over there to do it,” Markham grins, taking most of the credit.

            I stomp back to my trailer, muttering darkly about Californians. Boopsie’s holding down the fort at Montevideo Films [Marca Registrada]. I’m on my own down here in the wilds of Virginia.

            Soon enough, I have to drive back to the airport and pick up the next gang of actors and actresses. Molly’s husband J.J. will be played by “Hugo Block,” an Italian male lead with a striking resemblance to Valentino. That’s the plus side. The oily skin and perpetual smell of garlic we can live with. Mercifully, we’re not filming in Smellovision. Every word out of his mouth, however, will have to be dubbed by an English-speaker in a studio recording booth.

          “Why are we using this person?” I ask Marty.

          He gives me a withering glance.

          I crawl meekly back into my trailer. 

                                                        *

          “Where’ll I get my extras?” Reggie asks me that evening over pizza at a local eatery.

           Ah! I’d forgotten. I’m considered the local authority! “Virginia Tech has 28,000 students,” I suggest.

            “Lovely! College birds. Must get into the Colonial spirit. Maybe Molly Brown has some nieces,” Reggie enthuses, drawing a dark stare from Janice Bulova.

            Day 3: We’re using the university swimming pool, at night, to float our plastic model of the Titanic.

            We almost electrocute our grip Eddie Johnson. “It looks very good,” Vilgot insists blithely. He has so many filters over the lens, I’m surprised he can see anything through the viewfinder. “It’s only an establishing shot. ‘See, we’re on a boat.’ We can film the interiors anywhere. As long as there’s gilt, of course. Lots of gilding.”

          I assure him I’ve found some rooms with turn-of-the-century furnishings.

          The Sidney Bamf Film Company has sprung for Airstream trailers. I’ve been assigned a trailer with Vilgot. We play musical trailers: Janice Bulova shares hers with Martha Lloyd, but since Martha is held up working on another picture, I move in with Janice. Vilgot cohabits with Monica Hart, our scriptgirl, affectionately dubbed “Money Heart” by the crew. When I ask Vilgot what he thinks he’s doing with an airhead like Monica, he replies, “She is what we in Sweden call a Pia Pudding. Soft and warm in all the right places but not a lot of cranial activity.”

            Which, I have to say, is the exact opposite of my situation: Not only do I have to coach Janice in her lines during bouts of adolescent sex, she wants to learn all there is to know about Judaism while standing on one foot.

           “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you,” I suggest, quoting Hillel.

           “What about tacos? Tacos can’t be kosher. You’ve got meat and cheese together in the same dish,” she complains. “What about pizza? Pepperoni pizza!”

           “I never said tacos were kosher!” I bleat like a wounded sheep.

          “Oh, am I too rough?” she asks, full of solicitous concern for my poor cock. “Did mommy pull too hard? We don’t want William to get a back ache and quit on us!”

          Endearments, she has taken to calling my schlong “William.”

           “He’s fine,” I gulp, filled with doubt.

            Janice really keeps me on my toes.

           Every morning, the windows are totally steamed up, from the inside. The cops, hired by Marty to include us on their rounds, feel that we’re setting a bad example. “We screw around, too,” a genial officer comments at 7 a.m. one morning as, bleary-eyed, I march to the showers. “But we’re discreet, y’ know? We don’t make a public spectacle of ourselves.”

           Well, duh.

           No one is having sexual relations with our costume designer cum wardrobe mistress, a butch dike named Patty Waggoner. I like her. She has unbridled enthusiasm and isn’t averse to sitting up all night at her sewing machine. There’s a reason why it’s called a “low budget production.” Everyone wears at least two hats.  

           “Marty tells me you haven’t accomplished a damn thing,” Sidney Bamf berates me over the phone. “Don’t make me come out there!”

          “I’m the screenwriter! How is the production schedule my problem?” I bitch, but Sid and I both understand that, in his absence, I am the adult at the party. No one else is 60 years old! “I’ll get right on it,” I promise.

                                                         *

             Our movie begins with an aphorism: “A shadow that starts in the darkest part of the roof often ends on the brightest side.”

            “What does that mean?” asks Vilgot, the Swede.

            “Look on the bright side?” I suggest.

            “It means our fucking screenwriter is trying to go high-brow,” Marty declares. No one contradicts this assessment. 

             We start filming at 8 a.m. every morning, as soon as the sun rises sufficiently to give Vilgot some semblance of color. He keeps his own scorecard: Prairie scenes— 8 to 11 a.m.— are monochromatic and gray. City scenes—12 noon to 3 p.m.— are bathed in stark yellow sunlight, from almost directly overhead. This produces inky black shadows that add visual tension to the screen. Vilgot uses late afternoon and evening light— 4 to 7 p.m.— for scenes “on board the Titanic,” everything cast in an orange glow.

           “I try to maintain color balance and the same overall lighting for each chapter,” he tells Marty and me. “It won’t do to have too great a shift from one scene to another, that only draws attention to how artificial the film process is.”

           At the beginning of every day, coffee in hand, Reggie is as keyed up, keen and on an even keel as the rest of us. Somewhere around 10 a.m., however, he invariably visits the Porta-Potty out back. When he returns to the set— whether at the university, a mountain cabin standing in for the great open prairie or the fancy interior of a downtown ballroom— Reggie snivels. His nose is running.

           “Do you have a cold?” each of us asks solicitously. He’s the boss, we worry about him.

           “NO, I DON’T HAVE A COLD!” he rants and from then until almost 4 p.m., we get very little work done. Storming around the set, interrupting takes, Reggie complains bitterly, at great length, about the costumes, the background, the smell of the furniture, my poorly written dialog and weak structure. Critique delivered motor-mouth fashion, a mile a minute. “Don’t have her say ‘I see the exploitation of women as unacceptable.’ Have her say, ‘Times are changing and revolutionary Marxism is the only conceivable answer.’”

           “I don’t think we can do that. She’s not Emma Goldman. England and America at this point in time remain wedded to the concept of Empire— “

            “DAMN YOU! STOP ARGUING AND REWRITE THE SCENE!”

            Starts and stops, changes upon changes, disruptions, nothing seems to appease our director.

            “He’s a crackhead,” Janice breathes into my ear over lunch on, like, Day 6.

            “Well, that’s not fair,” I counter. “He may be full of himself and indecisive, but I wouldn’t cast aspersions— “

            “I tripped over him snorting a noseful,” she answers. “That’s why he goes into these prolonged tirades.”

            I sit quietly eyeing my bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, digesting this unwelcome intelligence. “What should we do?” I ask. “You know Sidney Bamf better than I do.”

            “Well, don’t tell Sidney!” Janice counsels me, one hand inside my shirt, the other down my pants. By now, our coworkers expect us to display outrageous expressions of affection. It’s become standard behavior, everyone agrees that  Kevin and Janice can’t keep their hands off one another. “If you tell Sidney, he’ll shut us down!”

            Janice uses her tongue to carwash my earlobe.

            “So we— “

            “We eat lunch. Then we band together as a team. We make allowances, and work with Vilgot and Marty to get this production in the can.” Her breakout op, Janice isn’t about to let something as mundane as a cokehead get in her way.

            “Gulp and double gulp,” I say, but that’s what we do.

            It doesn’t take many days to discover that Marty is as addicted to coke as Reggie. We call them “the flyboys” and try to keep them distracted and off the set, so Vilgot and the rest of us can get our work done. It’s cumbersome and a slow, annoying process. I have better things to do than nurse two drug addicts.

            I also try varying degrees of counseling and intervention, but these dudes have been married to cocaine too long for a newbie, proselytizing novice screenwriter like me to have an impact.

            “I know EXACTLY what I’m DOING!” Reggie insists. “I’ve been making films a damn sight longer than you have! So shut yer pie-hole, chappy!”

            Ugh. I never do get any control over the pharmaceutical aspect of the situation. Eddie Johnson, head grip, and I beat the shit out of Reggie’s local pusher, but the only effect is someone new showing up to take his place. “Supply and demand, have you ever thought about having yourself committed?” I ask Reggie at one point. “If Robert Downey Jr. can go through rehab and stay clean, so can you!” (Yes, I sound like an Army recruiting poster.)

            “That’s under the assumption I got a problem,” he drawls. “I ain’t got no problem!” He then launches into a poor imitation of The Rolling Stones’ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.

            Marty isn’t much better. I like Marty, but he’s a cokehead with a voracious sexual appetite. The rest of the cast and I feel we can work around it. Still, there is something innately dishonest in his character. He comes on shamelessly to the coeds at Virginia Tech, proffering screen tests and movie roles that don’t even exist on paper. He cuts, in fact, such a wide swath among the female student body, the University Provost feels compelled to step in and have a serious talk.

            “We’ve been banned from the campus,” I guess sourly upon seeing Marty’s crestfallen demeanor.

            “Doesn’t matter,” he slurs unconvincingly. “There are plenty of other places around town where we can meet students.”

            I have Janice and Monica troll for likely extras. Successful, we get underway again. Most 20-year-olds are perfectly happy to sit on their duffs in period costume studying math, applied science or English Lit. for $10 an hour, between short, intense bouts of acting. We have more applicants than we can suit up.

            Still, I never know when there’s going to be a massive shouting match either on the set or in the trailer park. Angry voices and slamming aluminum doors no longer keep me up at night. The Romans had an appropriate curse: “May you live in exciting times.”

            “What a shame,” laments Boopsie long-distance from Maryland, always happy to cash the checks and commiserate verbally over the phone. “What a mess. Do we have to return the money???”

            “Not yet. Production continues, only not quite on schedule.”

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