The Technicolor Time Machine

“That sounds like stupid idea. Better take a picture of me out here.”

“I appreciate the suggestion, Ottar, but I think we’ll do it my way. After all you are getting a bottle a day and a mark a month and you should do something to earn it.”

“That’s right—every day. Where’s today bottle?”

“When you’re through working, and we haven’t started yet. So stand right here and I’ll get around with the camera.” He threw a raincoat over his head and sloshed out to the shed.

After many shouted instructions and false starts, Ottar seemed to understand what was expected of him and the doors were closed once more and Barney called for the camera and action. The camera pointed into the dark bedspace and whirred as the doors were flung open with great force. One of the handles came off in Ottar’s hand and he threw it down.

“Hell-damn,” he snarled.

Barney took a deep breath. “That’s not exactly the way the scene should be played,” he said. “You have to put yourself into the part, Ottar. You’ve come home unexpectedly, you are tired. You open the doors to retire, then you look down and see Gudrid lying there asleep and you smile at her.”

“Nobody named Gudrid on this island.”

“Gudrid is Slithey’s name in this screenplay. You know who Slithey is?”

“Sure—but she’s not here now. This is pretty stupid I say, Barney.”

Barney had been directing indifferent and bad actors for years, so he took this objection in his stride. “Just wait-one minute and we’ll try it again,” he said.

There were a lot of rustling and grumbled complaints from the other side, but finally the doors swung open again, slower this time, and Ottar looked in. He was scowling fiercely into the camera, then he glanced down at the bed and Ms expression slowly changed. The wrinkled brow smoothed, the comers of his mouth rose into a happy smile and his eyes opened wide. He reached in.

“Cut. That was very good,” Barney said, moving faster than Ottar and grabbing up the bottle of Jack Daniels from the bed. “I’ll save this for you for later. Ow!”

The Viking had him by the wrist, which created a sensation not unlike being caught between the jaws of a hydraulic press, and the bottle fell from his limp fingers. Barney went back into the house rubbing his crashed wrist and wondering if, after all, he hadn’t made a mistake in casting.

Slithey had arrived, and, when the rubber boots, coats and yards of plastic had been removed, she stood and shivered in bare feet and a diaphanous pink nightgown. She wore a flesh-colored body stocking, the garment was low cut and transparent, and the entire effect was devastating.

“Very authentic costuming, very,” Jens Lyn said cuttingly, and left. Ottar sucked happily at the bottle and ignored everyone.

“I’m cold,” Slithey said.

“Rig an electric heater with those lights over the bed,” Barney ordered. “Take forty-three, Slithey, just climb into the sack and close the doors. It’s warm enough in there.”

“I don’t want to catch pea-newmonia.”

“With your insulation, honey, not a chance.”

It was a brief scene, just a few seconds on the screen, but everything takes time when making a film, and before they were finished Ottar had worked halfway down the bottle and was singing happily to himself in one comer.

“Here we go, take fifty-five, you’re on, Ottar, if you wouldn’t mind putting your salary down for a while,” Barney called out.

Much pacified by the whiskey, Ottar tramped over and looked at Slithey sprawled daintily in the oversized bed, covered by a Viking-Navajo blanket.

“She’s tired?” Ottar asked. “Too many lights to sleep.”

“Very keen of you to notice, but we’re still making the film. Here’s what I want you to do.” Barney stood by the side of the bed. “You have just opened the doors, you look down at the girl asleep. Then, slowly, you reach your hand down and touch her hair. She awakes and does a fright take, shrinking away. You laugh and sit on the edge of the bed, and pull her toward you and kiss her. At first she struggles, pushes you away, but then hate turns to love and her arms steal around you and she kisses you too. Your hand slowly goes to her shoulder strap, make sure it’s this one—the other one is glued on—and you slowly slide it over her shoulder. That’s all. We cut there and the rest is left to the public’s imagination and they have good imaginations. So let’s run through it once first.”

It was desperately hard work, since Ottar wasn’t interested in the least and kept looking toward the bottle to make sure no one was touching it, and Barney was sweating as he fought to put the Viking through his wooden paces. The bottle was finally placed in the comer of the bed out of camera range, which at least kept Ottar looking in the right direction most of the time.

Barney took a long drink of chemical-tasting water and one more time stood Ottar on the lines scratched into the dirt floor.

“Here we go,” he said. “We’ll shoot this without sound and I’ll guide you through it. And everyone else shut up, this set sounds like a mah-jongg party. Camera. Here you go, Ottar, you look down, that’s it—not at the damn bottle—you reach out and touch her hair. Slithey wakes up, great, you’re doing fine, sit down now—don’t break the bed! Okay, now you reach out and we have the kiss.”

Ottar’s fingers closed around the bare flesh of Slithey’s arm and his back straightened suddenly and he completely forgot about his bottle. Slithey’s hormone magic worked just as well in the eleventh century as it had in the twentieth. The odor of scented female flesh rose into his nostrils and he did not need Barney’s instructions to pull her close.

“Very good,” Barney called out. “A passionate embrace and a kiss, but you don’t like it, Slithey.”

Slithey was squirming in his grip and beating his massive chest with her clenched fists. She turned her head away and said, “Easy, caveman, take it easy,” then he was kissing her again.

“Great!” Barney shouted. “Writhe all over like that, Slithey, perfect. Force her down to the bed, Ottar. Now the shoulder strap.”

There was the sharp sound of torn fabric.

“Hey—watch what you’re doing!” Slithey called out.

“Forget it,” Barney said. “We can run up a new nighty. This is great. Now you change, Slithey. Hate turns to burning love. Very good…”

“Look what he’s doing!” Amory Blestead said.

“Cut. That’s good. We’ll print that. I said cut… Ottar, take your hand… Slithey—the scene is over!”

“Wow!” one of the grips said enthusiastically.

“Someone stop them!”

“Why—they seem to be enjoying it—and so am I.”

There was a great ripping sound of torn cloth, cut through by Slithey’s happy giggle.

“That’s enough,” Barney said sharply. “Just the shoulder strap, I’m afraid this has gone too far. Ottar— not that!”

“Yippee!” someone said, and after that there was just a long silence broken only by Ottar’s steam-engine breathing.

Barney finally broke the spell of fascinated attention by walking over and slamming shut the doors. From the other side came a high-pitched, happy shriek. He turned and saw Gino bent over the camera. “What are you doing?” be shouted. “Cut!”

“Cut, sure,” Gino said, straightening up slowly from behind the camera.

“Didn’t you hear me say cut last time!”

“Cut? No, I must have been distracted.”

“Do you mean… the camera was running all the time?”

“All the time,” Gino said with a very wide smile. “I think you’ve got something really new here in cinema verite, Mr. Hendrickson.”

Barney looked at the closed doors and fumbled out a cigarette. “You might say that. Though I don’t know if we’ll be able to show the uncut version anywhere out of Scandinavia.”

“Dr. Masters could use it.”

“I know a guy in Beverly Hills who rents out stag movies, he’d buy a print,” Amory said.