There was a sort of logic to that that was somehow irrefutable.
Across the way, in another booth, Richie and the fat cameraman, Harry, were sitting, talking. Or anyway Richie was talking: Harry just sat and scowled. Richie seemed a little frayed around the edges; he was waving his hands a lot and maybe was thinking about crying. I couldn’t hear anything they were saying: the one-sided conversation was intense but the volume was low.
“Lover’s quarrel,” she said, noticing me watching the two men.
“That so?”
“Yeah. I think Richie was in the sack with Frankie last night, and Harry found out, and brother. “
“Oh. Is everybody around here queer?”
“Not me. But I’m a married lady. If you’re horny, you’ll have to take a shot at Janet.” And she smiled. “That’s a laugh. If you can get that cold little bitch in the sack, you can have me for dessert, married lady or not.”
I was tempted to take her up on that. She was, after all, one of the best looking women I’d ever seen. And I liked her. For an actress, she was remarkably honest.
But that had been her exit line; she rose and swayed off, and just as she did, fat Harry rose and left his friend Richie alone in the booth.
So I joined him.
19
“Mind if I join you?” I said.
The kid looked up, smoothed the front of his demim jumpsuit absent-mindedly. He pursed his lips, which made his scraggly blond mustache quiver like a caterpillar thinking about starting its cocoon. Then he looked down again, and muttered, “Go ahead.”
He sat with his elbows on the booth’s transparent plastic tabletop, heels of his hands pressed to his forehead.
I sat across from him and waited him out. I think he wanted me to start, wanted somebody to ask him what was wrong, to make sympathetic sounds. I’m not particularly good at sympathy, so I waited him out.
“Ever had one of those days?” he finally asked, peeking out at me with those slightly bloodshot eyes, between the heels of his hands.
“Get out of the wrong side of the bed?” I asked. Innocently.
“You can say that again.”
I decided not to.
“I’m a screw-up,” he said, lowering his hands. “It’s that simple.”
I couldn’t see arguing with him. He’d been a real asshole when he’d met me at the door; I was still holding that against him.
Which happened to be the subject he started in on, to illustrate that he was a screw-up.
“Like when you came to the door,” he said. “I misjudged you. I thought you looked… I’m sorry… but I thought you looked suspicious. I know that’s silly. You’re a very normal looking guy. I mean, nice looking, even. But I misjudged you. Screwed up.”
“It’s okay,” I said. Not meaning it.
“No, really. I mean, if I’d known you were from Oui magazine.. ”
“You might not’ve called me ‘smart-ass’ so many times?”
“I had that coming. Go ahead. Lay me out.”
“No thanks.”
“Look, I… I’m glad you sat down. I’d like to start over.”
“I only sat down because for my article’s sake I need to get to know everybody involved with the filming… including you. But according to what your friend Harry said, I guess you might not be too willing to talk to me. He doesn’t seem to be.”
“Harry just doesn’t want it getting out he’s done a porno. He.. he just doesn’t understand.”
“What doesn’t he understand?”
“A lot of things. Jerry Castile, for one. Harry doesn’t understand who Jerry Castile is. All Harry can see here is a porno film being shot. He doesn’t see this for what it is.”
“What is it?”
“Film.” He said it almost religiously.
“I see.”
“Castile is… he’s a director. What more can I say?”
“Not much.”
“That’s right. After you’ve said it… after you’ve seen him for what he is… a director… it makes all the difference. Subject matter, what’s that? It’s not substance that counts. It’s style. Look at Howard Hawks.”
“What?”
“Look at Howard Hawks. He did westerns, he did comedies, war pictures, a private eye picture, crime pictures. but in them all, through them all, he was Howard Hawks.”
“I can’t argue with that,” I admitted.
“Look at Hitchcock,” he went on. “Suspense films. That’s what the public thinks of when they think of Hitchcock. But is it the subject matter of those films that’s important? No. It’s the style. It’s Hitchcock.”
“That’s a real good point.”
“I could make the same point about Alan Dwan, Fritz Lang, Samuel Fuller, a dozen others.”
“I’m sure you could.”
“They’ll be doing books on Castile someday. This period… the sex films… will be just one small, if interesting, part of his oeuvre. He’ll go on to do other films, initially simple genre pieces, I’m sure, but whatever he does, he’ll remain one thing, essentially.. Castile.”
“And a director.”
“Yes! A director. Might I say… an auteur?”
“You might.”
“I’m glad you understand what I’m getting at. It’s so frustrating to talk to someone like… like Harry, who just can’t see the forest for the trees.”
“It’s hard, in a snowstorm.”
“Yes,” he said, smiling solemnly, nodding, finding several layers of meaning below the surface of my flip remark. If I’d said it before, when I was some guy knocking at the door, he’d have called me “smart-ass” and let it go at that; now that I was with Oui, I was suddenly deep.
He leaned in close to me, across the plastic tabletop; he was wearing cologne that smelled like fruit, and I resisted the temptation to look for any layers of meaning in that. “Harry doesn’t understand,” he said, “what a rare privilege it is to work with a director of Castile’s standing. And this particular film is particularly important.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s Castile’s last sex film, and as such is, well, historic.”
“Then I take it you don’t have the reluctance to have your name seen in print, regarding this film, that your friend Harry has.”
“Not at all. The name is Richard Hudson. H-u-d-s-o-n.”
“Is that your real name?”
“Legal name. I had it changed.”
“From what?”
“From,” he said, coyly, “something I didn’t like.”
I let that pass, asked, “If Castile is such a meticulous filmmaker, why is he working with such a small crew?”
“Well, we did have some other actors here, but they finished their scenes and left yesterday. And actors, on a film like this, assuming they aren’t superstars like a Frankie Waddsworth, will often help with the technical side of things, when they aren’t in a scene. But this is a small crew… normally, a picture like this would probably require,
