Whenever I see a C Stand, I get depressed because it means that I am on a set which means I am going to be somewhere where I don’t want to be for twelve hours. The C Stand sits by the crap service where I am having a donut with my coffee. I am talking to one of the producers.
“I think it’s a cute title.”
“George, you know we can’t call it that.”
“Kiss My Crack works.”
“It’s too explicit. The Legion of Decency will never approve it.”
“It is not the Fifties anymore. Women are taking the pill, experiencing a new sexual freedom and fucking like rabbits.” I sip my coffee. “In a decade the title Kiss My Crack will be considered quaint.”
“We write jokes with double entendre giving the twelve-year-old girls something to giggle about. Kiss My Crack is a sexual assault on our audience.”
“Make Mine Mink makes no sense.”
“Exactly.”
“So why use it?”
“It sounds dirty without being dirty.”
At times like these I wonder why I majored in English at Harvard. Why do I do any of this Then again reading Chaucer in Cambridge is better than swatting gnats in Laos.
I glare at Sid.
“We’re working on a great vehicle with two of the biggest bankable stars in the business. Count your blessings.”
I do. I have same drug dealer as Lenny Bruce.
***
Beneath that golly gee veneer she is actually quite brazen. She has to be; how else would she be so successful She sings sweetly. Her face is round and supple like cherry pie. She has a good natured laugh that trips up the scale like an angel’s sighing “Mercy me.” Her glowing eyes shimmer turquoise. Her hair is permanently blond with frosted tips. She garners enough charisma to hold her own amid a forty-piece band which is where she got her start as a singer with Benny Goodman.
She was seventeen when she gave birth the day the Nazis invaded Poland. Her mother took care of her son as she toured with Benny Goodman. Weekly she sent money home to Akron for her mom to take care of her son. Now her twenty-year-two-old son lives in LA and hustles the Top 40.
She has the organizational skills of a CEO and the stamina of an infantry. She is painfully direct when she wants something from you.
“George I need you to take me to the Dodgers tonight.”
I say nothing.
“I need you as a beard. We’ll have great seats by the dugout.”
“Great!”
“You know I have thing going on with Daryl Marcus.”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“Well now you do. We have been carrying on for a month. And I want you to cover for me. I mean, my husband has no idea and I don’t want him to know.”
She smiles with a secret glee because Daryl is black. And to think her real surname is something like Kloppendinger.
“I want no one to know about this!” she repeats. “Especially my husband.”
“Of course.”
Like Sid, her husband is a producer on the movie.
This is nitro glycerin in a martini shaker.
***
He is as tortured as he is good looking. Six feet tall with an Aryan edged jaw. Luxurious tussle of black hair. A winning smile. Like his costar: it is all armor.
While she is fucking a black Dodger short stop, he has his own wife (in name only) and three secret boy friends. All of this is creates a pernicious aura of dissonance. And all he wants is to be accepted as any heterosexual who repeatedly cheats on his wife.
Both stars of Make Mine Mink are seeking a salvation in the most nefarious of ways.
But aren’t we all?
It is only ten thirty in the morning and I want to call my drug dealer.
“George, can we change this line?b” he asks.
“Why”
“It is ridiculous. No one would say that!”
“So”
“It is not even funny or anything. It’s stupid.”
“Well frankly, this whole thing is stupid. Think about it – you and your costar share a party line in 1961 New York City where she lives in a well appointed elevator building. That just doesn’t happen.”
He bristles.
“So you saying something stupid in a stupid situation fits,” I bark.
“But it is not even funny,” he moans.
“You know what’s funny”
“What”
“I am trying to change the title of this vehicle from Make Mine Mink to Kiss My Crack.”
He rolls his eyes. “They’ll never let you do that.”
“But admit, it is funny!”
“Kind of.” He exhales sadly. “Now change this line.”
“To what”
“Okay, I’m pretending to be a Texan and I would never say ‘Ma'am, I’d sooner cosy up to a barber shop’s floor than to brand a steer.”
“So”
“Cosy up to a barber shop’s floor”
“Well, Jesus, don’t you get it”
“Get what”
“A barber shop’s floor has hair on it so that means that you want to fuck it.”
“Well, golly,” he says in his flat Indiana way. “Now that’s funny.” He smiles cinemascope wide. When he smiles like that women swoon.
My lips pinch shut.
“Well, then put what you said to me in that line so people will get it.”
He is absolutely right. We are in the business of communicating.
He peers at me.
“You have a filthy mind,” he says.
“No, I’m just ahead of my time.”
“So change the line now.”
“Well OK” I look at the script I take out my pen. “Let’s see.” I clear my throat so I can ready my prosody for my phony Texan drawl. “No, Mam, I’d sooner cosy up to the muff on the barber shop’s floor than to brand my initials on a steer’s ass.”
He smiles.
That might work.
***
Fortunately my drug dealer is in Toluca Lake which is close to where we are filming on the Universal lot.
“Why are you panting” asks Marcie my drug dealer.
“I’m on my lunch break and I have to get back there. And he and she are constantly making me change the lines in the script and it’s really a nightmare in daylight.”
“Remember we are the creative people so that all the other non creative types are parasites on our backside,” she says settling in bovine heavy on her sofa. She is wearing a mu mu and snacking on Fritos today.
“And then I’m escorting her to the Dodgers tonight.”
“Why”
“As a cover.”
“Why”
“So her husband doesn’t suspect that she’s fucking Daryl Marcus and I’m driving her Caddie so she can use it as her boudoir.”
“Sounds convoluted.”
“Everything is that.” I shudder. “How are you”
“I’m expecting some product to come in tonight. And they’re raising their prices and that I understand. We all raise our prices, but the mortgage is due in the beginning of the month and we may not have the bread to cover it so we’re trying to take a temporary loan out on the house but we have to figure out a workable lie to tell the bank.” Her eyes squint confused and sad. “I love this house.”
“It is a nice house.”
“Built in the twenties.”
“You see it in the arched doorways. The bay windows.”
“It leaks when it rains. But that’s the charm. I would do and say anything to stay in this house. You wrestle with so many falsehoods and you don’t know which is which especially when you’re high and chaos is the norm, so maybe you think, I shouldn’t get so high and then what kind of dealer does that I have to be true to my product.”
“Oh!” I gasp.
“So what do you want”
“Anything that’s strong and sane and snortable.”
**
“He is truly a wonderful man,” she says as if she is singing the first line to one of her songs. “And to think he comes from a family of share croppers! Believe it or not his grandmother when she was a little girl was a house slave.” She shudders. “If you think about it one hundred years ago is not that long ago.” Ever since she has been a movie star she has given generously to the NAACP. Her lips stretch into a tight self-righteous zipper. “I can’t help but fall in love with him.”
Commandeering her Caddie is like navigating a luxury tugboat that is complete with tinted windows. The pristine white vehicle haltingly moves along the traffic clogged 5 Freeway. We left the studio at seven and we might be at Dodger Stadium by the third inning.
“What are you telling Sid”
“We are going to the game to really discuss the script,” she laughs. “You know I’m not really thrilled with the ending.”
“How’s that”
“For the first ninety pages of the script he’s constantly lying to me. Making all kinds of promises and innuendos that she, me, falls for and then when the hilarity comes to a climax and I find out that he is truly a grifter and liar, he tells me he is truly sorry and like a dumb bitch I forgive him because he’s a charming movie star.”
“So”
“It doesn’t wash with me.”
“Why”
“It just isn’t real.”
“That’s the fantasy. And more importantly that’s the formula.”
“Please. This is nowhere near Kauffman and Hart.”
“I think asking to be forgiven is real enough. How many husbands across America will be apologizing to their wives tonight”
“All of them.”
I turn on to 101.
“But still, that’s not enough. It has to be more.”
“Okay, lets say Marvin finds out that you’re seeing Daryl tonight, would you then apologize to your husband”
“Any woman would.”
“Would you mean it”
“At the time.”
“At the time And then what”
“I would go right back to seeing Daryl.”
“Because”
“He is so charismatic. I can’t help myself because he’s so wonderful.”
“And how about Marvin”
“He is very loyal and he’s a genius at reading the small print in contracts.”
“Do you love him”
“Of course I love him.”
“But”
“I love fucking Daryl more.”
I let that sit as I turn right on Stadium Way. The sun is sinking yellow and pink highlights over the arroyo.
“So how would you like the movie to end” I ask.
“He proves to me that he is truly sorry.”
“How”
“He flagellates himself with a horse whip,” she snickers as she says that.
“Well, actually he could play that really well.”
“So he told you about his last proctologist.”
“Regretfully he did.”
“Does Jeanie know” Jeanie is the wife the studio installed in his house.
“They have separate bedrooms so that they can both bleed in private.”
“Oh, you are terrible.”
We laugh.
“But seriously, he is so conflicted,” she sighs. “I truly feel for him. He really is such a nice person while we live in a culture…” She stops to start again. “That is so puritanical. Dogmatically straight! And really not very loving. And supremely biased. My heart aches for him and for Daryl.” She blows her nose. “It is all the same.” She inhales to exhale. “You would think Jackie Kennedy who surrounds herself with a coterie of fruits, would make a stand so that the world could accept faggots as fellow human beings. Just leave them the fuck alone. Let people fuck in peace!” She shakes her head. “Who really cares And it all is such a bore!”
We turn into the expansive stadium parking lot. She then directs me to the part where the players and Vin Scully park.
