Joan Says ‘Fuck,’ Pauline Says ‘Sorry,’ Franco Shows His Dick

I have a weakness for both Joan Collins and Franco Nero, so as soon as I discovered they were in a movie together I knew I had to see it.

Unfortunately, that movie was THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES, a 2017 entry in the Senior Citizens Are People Too comedy sub-genre, the alternative to the Geezers with Guns action genre currently owned by Liam Neeson. These comedies usually exist to (a) give jobs to elderly stars who aren’t Liam Neeson; (b) give elderly audiences not into action (read: women) something to watch; and (c) remind audiences that senior citizens still want to fuck. Though there’s a subset of these films that try to be as raunchy as the stuff made for the kids, like Dirty Grandpa (better to stick to Bad Grandpa, even if it doesn’t star an actual old person), most of them are far gentler, usually staying on the PG-13 side of naughtiness, and usually starring Diane Keaton (Book Club, 5 Flights Up, And So It Goes), Shirley MacLaine (Wild Oats, Elsa & Fred), and/or Morgan Freeman (5 Flights Up, Going in Style, Last Vegas).

Though it’s decidedly R-rated, writer-director Roger Goldby’s The Time of Their Lives is an even gentler SCAPT comedy, so gentle that it’s easy to forget it’s a comedy at all. 

Joan Collins plays Helen Shelly, a one-time movie star, now a penniless kleptomaniac living in a London retirement home where the manager (Allene Quincy) orders her charges about like a general in the Wehrmacht. Pauline Collins plays Priscilla, a doormat of a housewife upon whom her asshole husband Frank (Ronald Pickup) metaphorically wipes his feet. Thanks to a script contrivance, Priscilla accidentally gets included in Helen’s retirement home’s day trip to the beach, kicking off the pair’s madcap adventures. Helen persuades/bullies Priscilla into helping her ditch Ilsa, Wrangler of the Wizened, and abscond to France so she can attend the funeral of an ex-lover. Hilarity Wan smiles ensue.

“Perhaps you remember me?”

“I’m sorry.”

Among their adventures is an encounter with Alberto (Franco Nero, sporting a mullet that earns this movie a place on his bad hair filmography, just after The Visitor and Shark Hunter) after their stolen car runs out of gas. (Yes, they steal a car, a scene that’s not nearly as rib tickling as the movie thinks it is.) Alberto is a painter so famous he can’t walk down the street without being stopped by autograph hounds every few feet. (Quick, filmmakers, name a current living painter or poet who exists on the same strata of celebrity as Robert Downey, Jr. or Cardi B. Can’t think of any? Exactly.) For his first few minutes onscreen we suspect he might also be mute as Alberto does little more than grunt when he encounters Helen and Priscilla stranded on the side of the road. He takes them back to his mansion and, over the protests of his bitchy young nurse (this movie uniformly presents caretakers as forces of evil), invites them to stay the night. Helen all but offers the elderly painter a hand job during dinner, but it’s the shy Priscilla who captures Alberto’s (weak) heart.

“. . .”

The movie continues to follow the well-traveled map of tropes, including old people smoking pot, exposed secrets, a third act break-up, learned lessons and making-up in the finale. The movie’s only surprise is some full-frontal Franco. (I would’ve preferred seeing Franco from 40-years ago, but septuagenarian Franco—who also shows the goods in the series Delicious—makes an impressive daddy bear.)

If only we got the Full Franco when he appeared in
The Third Eye in 1966.

Some might consider Joan’s performance in this movie brave. The role of Helen requires the actress to acknowledge her true age and parody her glamorous image, but this doesn’t make her brave so much as a realist (well, as much as a woman who owns four homes yet denies she’s rich can be) and a good sport, respectively. Joan does get to sing a song, penned by her ex, Anthony Newley, and she sings it well, a pleasant surprise, but otherwise there’s not much here for her to sink her teeth into. Maybe some would find it amusing to hear a woman in her 80s drop a few f-bombs, but most would wish she was wittier lines. She had sharper dialog in The Bitch.

Pauline Collins is equally wasted, her comedic gifts squandered on a character who does little more than apologize for her existence the majority of the movie’s runtime. She does get to show some pluck when she rescues a boy who has fallen into Pertuis d’Antioche strait (Priscilla is an avid swimmer, a detail tied to her not-so-well-kept secret) and bawls out the mother of the boy for being negligent. Yet when she inevitably confronts her prick husband—a scene that really could’ve benefited from giving Priscilla at least one f-bomb—she does so with timidity of a salesclerk informing you your credit card has been declined.

Priscilla’s reticence extends to Goldby’s script and direction as well. You can tell what kind of movie The Time of Their Lives aspires to be, yet too often it pulls its punches as if Goldby is afraid to ask too much of his cast or his audience. The end result is a movie that won’t offend Nana (though seeing Nero’s dick might give her a jolt), but it won’t make her laugh, either.

No Matter How You Spell It

If a movie released today had the title No Man’s Woman, I’d assume it was about female empowerment. It might be set in the 1950s, and it could be the story of a housewife’s awakening of her own agency, realizing the inequities of her station and standing up to the patriarchy as she pursues her dreams of starting the first female-run septic tank cleaning service. It would likely star Jennifer Lawrence or Michelle Williams, and it would bomb at the box office.

But make that movie in the 1950s (1955, specifically) and NO MAN’S WOMAN has a different connotation. It’s a brand of shame, signifying a faithless wife, a two-timing girlfriend, a back-stabbing bitch. No man’s woman? No man would have her!

Plenty of men have had Carolyn Grant—well, really only two, with a third resisting her advances, but because 1950s, she’s a shameless ’ho. This B-grade noir opens with Carolyn (wonderfully played Marie Windsor, to whom Allison Janney bears more than a passing resemblance), tooling down the highway in a convertible full of paintings (she runs an art gallery, more than 20 years ahead of that being the default career for women-who-aren’t-hookers in 1980s movies). When one of the paintings becomes unwrapped she pulls over, asking her male companion, arts columnist Wayne Vincent (Patric Knowles), to take care of the problem. He does so by tearing off the wrapping and tossing it out onto the side of the highway (this movie predates “Native American” PSAs discouraging littering, but I still judged this character for it). Problem solved, Wayne decides to take advantage of pause in their travels to make out with Carolyn, but she resists. She has an appointment with Harlow. “I have to show him some consideration, don’t I darling?” she tells her blue-balled paramour. “After all, he is my husband.”

Of course, she’s cheating on her husband, but here’s the thing: the couple appear to have an open relationship, a shocker for 1955, though the movie tries to appeal to 1950s mores by implying that while the couple lives apart, only Carolyn does any extramarital fucking. The audience is led to believe Harlow (John Archer) is content to putter about his mansion between conjugal visits with his no-good wife, because the reason he wants to talk to Carolyn is to ask for a divorce so he can marry Louise (Nancy Gates). He wants to marry Louise so hard that he’s even willing to keep paying Carolyn a monthly percentage of his earnings. Knowing she’s got Harlow over a barrel, she refuses his offer, demanding $300,000 up front, on top of the monthly percentage. Well, Harlow may be rich, but he’s not that rich. The only way he could pay that is to sell off his father’s share of his company, and Harlow refuses to do that.

C U Next Tuesday!

With her husband sufficiently cock-blocked, Carolyn then decides to seduce the fiancée of her assistant, Betty (Jil Jarmyn). First, of course, is the matter of getting Betty out of the way, so Carolyn tells her she needs to work on a day Betty was originally scheduled to be off — a day Betty was planning on spending with her fiancée — expertly manipulating her into believing she got her dates confused. (Mitigating factor: Betty is as pliable as Silly Putty.) With Betty out of the way, Carolyn is now free to seduce Betty’s fiancée, Dick.

Let’s talk about Dick. Thanks to the sledge-hammer subtlety of John K. Butler’s screenplay, we know Carolyn only wanted Harlow for his money and Wayne because he hypes her gallery in his newspaper column, so presumably she only wants Dick, a man of modest means, for, well, his dick. I realize standards of beauty change—Marilyn Monroe would be body-shamed today—but Dick is played by Richard Crane, an actor who’s more father-of-my-children attractive, yet Carolyn acts as if he’s panty-soaking hot. MST3K was right, 1931-1959 truly was the golden age of the doughy guy.

Carolyn doesn’t make much progress with Dick, a fact that stings all the more when she returns from her “date” to discover Betty, having found out about Carolyn’s deceit, has quit and Wayne has been fired for conflict of interest (remember when that could cost you a job?). Worse, Wayne was blacklisted from the newspaper industry, and he is consequently blacklisted from Carolyn’s cooch. No sooner has Carolyn kicked Wayne to the curb than she has Louise stopping by to appeal to the better angels of her nature and divorce Harlow. Silly bitch, Carolyn doesn’t have any better angels. Carolyn, unsurprisingly, tells Louise to fuck off (I’m paraphrasing).

Could Carolyn’s day get any worse? No, but her night sure can. She’s awakened by an intruder and, after lighting a cigarette (priorities), Carolyn goes downstairs to investigate, whereupon she’s shot and killed.

Given that so much of this movie’s runtime is spent emphasizing how horrible she is — a witch, observes Louise; “No matter how you spell it,” says Harlow — I half expected the cops’ motivation for finding the killer was to give the perpetrator a medal. No such medal is forthcoming when they zero in on Harlow as the prime suspect, however. Instead, they hold him for questioning. Turns out the victim being a cunt doesn’t make the homicide justifiable. Harlow didn’t do it, of course, and he’s ultimately the one to solve the case.

Directed by Franklin Adreon, No Man’s Woman is like a lesser Joan Crawford vehicle crossed with a by-the-numbers police procedural. The first 40 minutes of this movie’s 70-minute runtime are its best, with B-movie staple Windsor stealing the show as the happily remorseless Carolyn. As much as you want Carolyn to die, you kind of wish she got to stick around a while longer. Once she’s gone, the last 30 minutes of No Man’s Woman devolve into the lamest episode of Perry Mason ever. This sub-noir isn’t exactly a must-see, but if you spot it on a streaming service and enjoy watching the vicious deeds of well-dressed women, be they Harriet Craig, Alexis Carrington or Cersei Lannister, No Man’s Woman is worth checking out.

You hardly can tell they aren’t actually on the water.

But What is the Cat Thinking?

WHERE’S ANNIE? is not just the title of this 1963 novel by Eileen Bassing, it’s also the question I kept asking myself while reading it. Specifically: Where’s Annie, and why is she name-checked in title? Because this novel isn’t really about Annie at all.

Annie, the young trophy wife of a retired navy admiral, is but one of a group of American ex-patriots living in an un-named village in Mexico, and even then she is only a peripheral character, having only slightly more impact on the book’s story as the natives of the village.

The book’s actual main character is Victoria, a middle-aged writer who, after ditching husband No. 4, has settled in the village to write a great novel, provided she can get past her writer’s block. Victoria is not an easy character to love. We first meet her when she nearly collides with Andrew Cunningham, Annie’s unhappy husband, while he’s out for his morning walk. “Out of my way,” she says, as though he’s the one at fault. Victoria is too involved in her own thoughts to waste time with social graces.

Victoria is bitchy, but she’s not heartless. She later comes rushing to Cunningham’s aid when his fishing boat sinks in the lake at the edge of the village, then later she organizes a search for Annie when the admiral’s young bride disappears from a party (insert title drop here).

Annie is ultimately found in the arms of another (younger) man. Annie lamely defends herself, telling Victoria that Cunningham is “so…old.”  Victoria encourages Annie to remain faithful to her husband a little longer. “You have time,” Victoria says. “He has…almost no time.” (Bassing is fond of ellipses.)

The Cunninghams leave for the U.S. the next day and Victoria once again focuses on her work. But first, she walks to the post office to see if her agent has sent her a check, then she goes drinking with Charlie, a recovering morphine addict who fights off cravings with booze and pot, and Harry, a junkie who’ll take whatever drug is available. She later meets Ned, a homosexual and gifted artist. Though Ned is perfectly charming, Victoria, who couldn’t give less of a fuck about making a good first impression, is openly hostile. Still, Ned invites her to visit him. She refuses.

Days later she decides to apologize for her rudeness, visiting Ned on the exact same day he comes down with malaria. Victoria elects to stay with him and nurse him back to health, partly out of penance for her earlier treatment of him, but mostly to avoid her typewriter. It’s during this chapter that we get one of the book’s best lines, when Victoria tells Ned, “I’d rather deal with your excrement than your gratitude.”

The pair become friends, but it’s not a healthy friendship. Victoria had to deal with Ned’s literal shit when he was sick but dealing with his metaphorical crap may be worse. It turns out Ned’s charm masks his cold, selfish nature. The pair fight and make-up constantly. He finds her too dowdy, too bohemian, too emotional. She resents his criticisms of her and her writing, but when her temper cools she’s back at his door, seeking his approval. It’s Harry, of all people, who’s the voice of reason:

“[Do] you know what I see Neddy-boy doing? I see him trying to make my Vickie, my original, over into his own mold. He is fashioning, as though he were God, another little Neddy-boy.”

Harry is a drug addict and shit-stirrer, so Victoria dismisses his observations. Besides, she’s too preoccupied with what Ned’s cat is thinking to pay attention to what Harry says.

Let me explain: Late in the book Ned gives Victoria his cat, Hassan, to care for while he’s out of town. This cat behaves like most cats (lies there, mostly), much to the consternation of Victoria.

Could it think? She stared at it and the cat stared back at her, in cross-eyed indifference. After a moment — and she was aware that a lot of time passed this way, hypnotically, with her staring at the cat and the cat staring back at her — it reached out with its paw and pushed at an envelope which was on the shelf near it. The cat did not watch the envelope flutter to the floor, as she did. But wasn’t that proof, since it was a deliberate act, that the cat must have some thought, some reasoning process? Then what could its reasoning process be?

The above text is but a mere taste of Victoria’s obsessing over this cat. Bassing devotes almost three fucking pages to Victoria wondering what makes this goddamned cat tick. I only bothered with one of those pages.

And this tangent about the mysteries of cat thought highlights my biggest problem with Where’s Annie? For all the well-drawn characters and sharp observations, Bassing too often gets bogged down in minutiae at the expense of the story’s momentum. This is a loose, character-driven narrative, with as much attention given to the characters’ inner lives as to the story’s minimal action, but I would argue that any inner life that dwells on the inscrutability of cats is perhaps not a life not worth reading about.

Not helping is Bassing’s tendency to try too hard, her writing often self-consciously literary, as if she’s more interested in impressing critics than engaging readers, similar to how Victoria tailors her writing to please Ned rather than herself. Consequently, this book felt longer than its 382-pages.

But Where’s Annie? has a lot to recommend it. Victoria isn’t particularly likable, but she is relatable. I’ve known people like her—I’ve been friends with them—and as in real life, I was alternately drawn to Victoria for her acerbic wit and put off by her surly attitude. Still, even though I didn’t entirely like her, I didn’t think she deserved the treatment she got form Ned.

Speaking of Ned, while I wouldn’t nominate Bassing for a GLAAD award, her treatment of Ned’s homosexuality is pretty progressive for 1963. She matter-of-factly acknowledges Ned’s queerness (Ned has a boy toy, Manuel), but his homosexuality never becomes his sole character trait. In fact, there are only a couple instances in the book when characters make derogatory comments about Ned’s sexuality. People don’t dislike him because he’s gay, they dislike him because he’s an asshole. 

I didn’t know anything about Eileen Bassing when I was given this book five years ago (my nephew saw it at a used bookstore and thought it looked like something I’d read). Besides Where’s Annie?, she wrote the novel Home Before Dark. According to her obituary — she died in 1977 at age 58 — she also was a screenwriter (she adapted Home Before Dark into a 1958 movie starring Jean Simmons), a story editor and an advisor for the motion picture and TV industries. I’ve seen Home Before Dark and recommend checking it out next time it appears on the TCM schedule. Where’s Annie? is worth checking out, too. If you can fight the temptation to abandon the search early, Where’s Annie? is ultimately a satisfying read.

A Gay Man Watches Straight Porn #1: ‘Every Inch a Lady’

I had a dream about Seka the other night. I was helping her dye her hair — on her head, thank you. We were streaking her platinum locks green and blue. And yes, I am gay.

The reason a porn queen from the 1970s and ’80s was appearing in my dreams at all, even in a non-sexual context, can be attributable to my new favorite podcast, The Rialto Report, in which hosts Ashley West and April Hall interview performers and directors of adult films in the 1970s and ’80s in a friendly, non-judgmental way that shows that their subjects are more than the sum of their private parts. If you ever wished This American Life devoted an episode to the life story of Pat Barrington or wondered what a Fresh Air interview with Georgina Spelvin might sound like, the Rialto Report’s podcast is for you.

But in listening to all these Rialto Report podcasts, I had a renewed interest in watching some classic straight porn. (The Rialto Report has interviewed a few veterans of gay adult film, including Boys in the Sand director Wakefield Poole and gay-for-pay icon Jeff Stryker, but the site largely focuses on straight smut. I imagine part of the reason for this is so few Golden Age gay porn stars are still alive.) Though I’ve seen a few straight classics like Deep Throat and Talk Dirty to Me, the bulk of my hardcore porn consumption has been of the all-male variety. I’ve come to find current porn videos either boring or gross, however, so why not take a break from trying to rub one out to some present day man-on-man action and instead watch some fuck films that actually played in theaters, enjoying them solely on an aesthetic level?

Though I’d been dreaming of Seka, I by-passed one of her titles in favor of the 1975 movie EVERY INCH A LADY. It starred Harry Reems (the mustache might be off-putting to some, but there's no denying he had a hot body), featured another Rialto Report podcast subject, Andrea True, but, most importantly, it was streaming for free.

It was a fortuitous choice, for although Every Inch a Lady is a straight porn movie, it has a decidedly gay sensibility.

The lady in question is Crystal Laverne (Darby Lloyd Rains, giving a performance worthy of John Waters stock player Mary Vivian Pearce), the co-owner and proprietress of Deviations, Inc., a successful escort service catering to almost all sexual tastes, save scat. Crystal has the mannerisms befitting her name, which is to say she’s a female drag queen. When we meet her, standing in the living room of her penthouse apartment, she’s decked out in a red gown and matching feather boa, supervising the alteration of one of her call boy’s jackets (for which the young hustler has stripped down to his skivvies, as one does), signing real estate contracts and imploring her lesbian assistant Edna (a bewigged Andrea True) to answer the constantly-ringing phone. She’s just so goddamned busy—but not too busy to audition Margie, a blonde bubblehead played by Kim Pope. I thought for sure this would be the obligatory girl-girl scene, but no, Crystal summons the call boy getting his jacket altered, Tony (David Savage), to do the honors. Crystal spies on them through a peephole cut into wall of the neighboring room, occasionally offering Edna a peak (“A very handsome female. I wouldn’t mind being in Tony’s place myself.”) and picking up a microphone to broadcast her pointers to the professional fuckers (“OK, Margie, a little more hip action”).

Crystal even takes time out from supervising her potential new hire’s sexual prowess to draft up some new rules. “Just last night one of our best girls came over here and told me her client had shit on her head—and only gave her $50 extra,” recounts a horrified Crystal. “So, defecation is out!”

“No shit,” says Edna, making a note of the new rule.

Business casual.

Once Margie’s audition is out of the way, Crystal slips into something more comfortable: a black lace peignoir and nothing else. Given Crystal’s line of work and the fact that this is a porn movie, one wonders why she bothered with that red gown and boa, though I appreciated the filmmakers’ willingness to keep things covered up for a while, as the tease virtually non-existent in today’s smut. Anyway, with her pussy free to breath, Crystal takes a moment to relax with Edna. Once again, I was anticipating some girl-on-girl action as the set up was so obvious, and once again Lady subverted my expectations as no muff diving ensues. (Spoiler alert: there’s no girl-on-girl action in this movie.) Rather, Crystal chooses this moment to tell Edna of her humble beginnings, sending us into a flashback that makes up good two-thirds of the movie’s runtime.

Come-fuck-me platforms.

Before becoming a successful madam, Crystal was but a lowly streetwalker, struggling to make ends meet but still able to rock an amazing pair of glittery red platform shoes. After another, um, dry day of trawling for tricks, she comes home to her apartment, only to find Chino (Harry Reems) sacked out at her door. She invites him inside, as one does when finding a stranger at her doorstep, and they immediately start getting nasty. But just before Chino finishes Crystal off, he demands $20. “What?” Crystal exclaims. “I was going to get $15 from you!” (That money wasn’t discussed up front gives us insight into why Crystal wasn’t finding success as a streetwalker.) The two laugh off the misunderstanding, choosing money shots over actual money.

We learn via voice over that Chino had been a hustler for five years, making his living “from middle-aged women and homosexuals.” The pair decide to open an escort agency, under the guise of offering massages. I find it quaint that this movie treats the concept of massage services being a cover for prostitution as simply unheard of until these two dimwitted prostitutes brainstormed it during their post-coital chat.

Crystal and Chino quickly become business partners as well as lovers (it’s an open relationship, natch). Their first trick is none other than Jamie Gillis, who sits on the sidelines masturbating while Crystal and Chino go at it. Gillis does join the couple on the bed, and for a moment it looks like he’s about to mount Chino. But no, there’s no Gillis-on-Reems action. However, Crystal does insert a string of brown anal beads (Brown? Really?) in Chino’s ass, which Gillis yanks out as Chino comes. Though the beads clearly facilitated a powerful orgasm, Chino —a trade top, evidently — decides to exact revenge by shoving a carrot up Gillis’ butt. By the way, the male butt play appears to be simulated as neither the beads nor the carrot is shown disappearing into the male performers’ assholes.

I Didn’t Know Joan Rivers was in a Porno Movie!

Crystal and Chino’s business quickly grows, necessitating the need for extra staff. Crystal enlists the help of a former cell mate, Lois, to handle an opera buff, played by Mark “10 ½” Stevens, whose dick size is so impressive that its measurement merits a screen credit. This is by far my favorite scene, if only because it exposes the Joan Rivers’ porn past.

Joan Rivers in The Swimmer; not Joan
in Every Inch a Lady.

OK, Lois is NOT played by Joan Rivers (don’t sue me, Melissa); she’s played by Erica Eaton. But considering Eaton is so similar in appearance, possesses a New Yawk rasp that’s almost identical to Rivers’, combined with the knowledge that Rivers considered all offers, you could almost believe that it’s the late comic fellating the somnolent Stevens. (And really, Rivers would’ve done less damage to her career in the mid-’70s appearing in a porno than she did writing and directing Rabbit Test.)

The scene with Eaton and Stevens’ is strictly for laughs, as only a scene featuring a Joan Rivers doppelgänger could be. When Stevens’ fails to respond to Lois’ ministrations, his famed 10 ½ inches never quite reaching seven, he asks her to talk dirty to him. So, Lois reads aloud from a porno novel (“It’s a fucking beee-yoooo-tiful cock!”) while they fuck to Wagner’s “Flight of the Valkyrie.”

Less shameful than writing and
directing Rabbit Test.

My second favorite scene in this movie features a performer billed as Dr. Infinity, in the part of Joe Blow. Consider that “character” name foreshadowing. Crystal, now operating out of an office, is about to interview Mr. Blow as a new addition to her stable, but she’s interrupted by a phone call. While Crystal chats on the phone with a disgruntled client (“Well, who could’ve foreseen that? You couldn’t have expected the poor mule to know the old Ferncliff bitch had had a hysterectomy.”), Joe Blow gets impatient. He strips down, hops atop a nearby desk, and demonstrates his special skill: sucking his own dick. He fucks himself with a cucumber as well, but that’s not a special skill, just resourcefulness. Needless to say, he’s hired. Incidentally, Dr. Infinity has a pretty interesting history, including the attempted theft of the Gutenberg Bible from the Harvard Library in 1969.

This brings us back to the penthouse with Crystal and Edna. Crystal’s trip down memory lane is interrupted by a phone call— Crystal is always getting interrupted by phone calls — reminding her of a meeting with a real estate agent to finalize a house purchase for Chino. No sooner has the harried madam rushed out the door than Edna is removing her Velma wig and her clothes. Chino arrives a minute later. Edna’s not a dyke at all (gasp!) but Chino’s lover, the pair plotting to murder Crystal and take over Deviations, Inc. Unbeknownst to them, Crystal, having forgot some paperwork and returned to the penthouse, overhears them in the bedroom. She sees them as well (Oops! Edna forgot about the peephole), and after hearing the couple’s murder plans (Edna also forgot the room is bugged), decides to use that plan to murder them. A surprisingly dark turn of events for what has otherwise been a lighthearted porno romp.

Humor in porn movies is usually crass, juvenile and/or stupid, but Every Inch a Lady is the first straight porn film I’ve seen that can be described a campy. This shouldn’t be a surprise, really; it was directed by gay brothers John and Lem Amero, who directed sexploitation movies in the 1960s before moving on to hardcore movies for gay and straight audiences in the 1970s and 1980s. Even if the sex was for the pleasure of straight men, the movie, with its hammy acting, outrageous dialog, and thrift store drag fashions, not to mention the autofellatio and male anal stimulation, seems to be giving a wink and a nod to gay men. I’d never masturbate to it, but I dug Every Inch a Lady and I plan to hunt down other works by the Amero Bros. (their movie Bacchanale looks trippy). But they’ll have to wait in line. I still owe it to myself to check out one of Seka’s movies. She’s my dream girl, after all.

The Lurid and the Literary

“Out here books are crap,” explains a screenwriter character in Herbert Kastle’s 1968 novel THE MOVIE MAKER. In Hollywood, this character goes on, books are just “words to be boiled down to a plot skeleton and refleshed for the screen. No one reads novels for the movies. They read story, skimming along and noting interesting twists and turns. Bestsellers are bought for their titles more than anything else.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out Kastle got a similar talk when he was working as a screenwriter, one of several of his early writing jobs—including editor and copywriter— before he became a full-time novelist. I also think this statement could be modified to apply to trashy Hollywood novels: no one reads these type of books for the writing; they read them for the sleaze.

The Movie Maker delivers the sleaze, but it’s too well written to be labeled mere trash. In fact, it’s so well written I can imagine Kastle’s agent having to lecture him about the hard truths of writing trashy Hollywood novels.

“Goddammit, Kastle,” his agent would have groaned, “why do you do this to yourself? All we wanted was a look at the sordid goings on in the movie business. Lots of sex, drugs and characters that are fictionalized versions of real stars, you know the drill. I know you know it because you’ve got this Mona Dearn character in this thing—a definite stand-in for Marilyn Monroe, all neurotic and fragile and shit. And giving her some lesbian leanings was brilliant. Man, I was getting hard just thinking of the possibilities, imagining Marilyn-but-not-Marilyn going down on, I dunno, an Ann Margaret stand-in, or maybe a fictional Jayne Mansfield. That would’ve been hilarious!  Sounds hot, though, doesn't it? But no, that was too easy for you. You had to go into her loneliness and insecurity and how her feelings for the movie publicist, Terry Hanford, are never reciprocated. Then the stuff about her painting, how she’s afraid to show her paintings to anyone in case they don’t like them, kind of a metaphor of how she’s afraid to show people her true self. I mean, Jesus Christ, who’s going to get hard thinking of that?

“At least you redeemed yourself with the Lois Lane and Sugar Smart characters,” the agent would continue. “God, what a couple of bitches. That poor egghead writer, Charley Halpert, didn’t know what hit him when he opened his motel room door to those two. You almost feel sorry for the bastard until you remember that it’s his fault for saying yes to a three-way with two teenagers. Serves him right, thinking with the wrong head.

“But maybe you should’ve been thinking with that other head, Kastle, instead of giving us all this insight into Charley Halpert’s inner conflicts—cheating on a wife who doesn’t support his writing ambition, his wanting to prove himself in Hollywood to win her respect but thinking maybe they should just divorce, except he doesn’t want to risk never seeing his son again. Then you involve him with this Cheryl character, the fat secretary—okay, okay, Rubenesque, but as far as today’s readers are concerned a Mae West figure isn’t much better than an Orson Welles figure. If Jacqueline Susann had that character in one of her books, Cheryl would be rejected repeatedly, maybe sexually humiliated when she does get laid. Then she’d spend a good third of the book slimming down until the men who rejected her earlier are begging to take her to bed, and then she rejects them. But I guess imitating a proven moneymaker was too simple for you, wasn’t it Kastle? Cheryl not only has two men hot for her—Charley and that producer, Alan Devon—she’s got that alcoholic, paraplegic husband of hers who seems to only want to stay married to make her life miserable. So, now the reader’s conflicted, wanting to write off Cheryl as a slut but having to wrestle with her relatable emotions. It’s too… too gray.

“Speaking of gray—or just gay—there’s that whole subplot with the schlock horror director, Carl Baiglen, being blackmailed by that young policeman from Baiglen’s hometown in the Midwest. That was good, a clever way for the cop to leverage his way into the movie business, transform himself into Brad Madison. Making him a closet case was a nice touch, too. Who was the real-life inspiration? Hudson? An amalgamation? Fine, you don’t have to tell me. Anyway, the homosexual stuff adds a bit of spice to it, but then you have to humanize him. I mean, people might forgive Baiglen for maybe-accidentally-on-purpose killing his first wife, but expecting readers to sympathize with this homo blackmailer? Worse, have him carrying on with Baiglen’s gay son Andy, and then present a reasonable argument—from Andy’s mother, no less—why Baiglen should not kill Madison? Look, Kastle, times are changing, but expecting people to sympathize for a fag actor is just too much.”

Kastle’s agent would pause here to light a cigarette, because it was the 1960s and everyone smoked. “But here’s my biggest problem,” he’d say, exhaling a pale blue cloud. “It’s your two main characters, Nat Markal and Isa Yee. Nat Markal is the head of Avalon Pictures, right? You’ve got his look right—I pictured a younger Edward G. Robinson—and he’s got the right take-no-shit personality, what people expect from a studio chief. Yet, he’s been faithful to his wife all this time, that it’s a point of pride for him? Christ, if anything could make Harold Robbins laugh, that would. Do you know how many starlets Nat Markal would’ve fucked if he were a Robbins character? At least four, within the first fifty pages. Yes, I know Markal’s staunch fidelity to his wife makes his falling for Isa Yee that much more dramatic, but who cares? And Robbins wouldn’t have Markal risking it all to make this grand epic—what did you title it? The Eternal Joneses?—for the sake of his artistic legacy. No, in a Robbins novel Markal would only make that movie if he thought it would be a huge blockbuster that would make him even richer. Fucking and making money, Kastle. That’s Robbins’ formula for success, without any of these petty concerns for three-dimensional characters. Do you know how many copies of The Adventurers Simon & Schuster sold? I could buy a yacht with that kind of money.

“Isa Yee almost gets this lost ship back on course. The sexy starlet with a dark secret. Dark, get it? C’mon, I’m not being racist, it’s a joke. Seriously, though, I thought Isa was a spitfire, and I can already see her on the paperback cover, a naked Eurasian girl—your word—practically draped over a director’s chair. The way you described her in those early chapters, especially when she strips for Nat Markal in his office, is hot stuff. But you couldn’t just let her be a conniving bitch, and one who does anal, no less. No, you had to make her smart and conflicted, adding in this race stuff. Christ-a-mighty-damn, first gays then race relations. I get it’s the 1960s, the Civil Rights movement, etcetera, etcetera, but people don’t pick up books like this for cultural insight. They just want sex and scandal, with cliché characters that are clearly good or clearly bad. You’re killing me with all this nuance, Kastle.

“No, no, I don’t want you to re-write it,” the agent would sigh, waving his hands dismissively. “It is a good book. I just wanted you to understand you don’t have to work that hard in the future. They can play up the sex and scandal when they market this thing, maybe compare it to Valley of the Dolls and The Exhibitionist, because it does fit in with that market. I just hope we don’t get any backlash when people discover they’re having their viewpoints challenged, or that the people making movies aren’t presented as just shallow vessels motivated solely by sex and greed. Who knows, readers might find it refreshing. But I still think Harold Robbins is going to laugh his ass off when he reads this thing.”

But, seriously, The Movie Maker is well worth your time, blending the lurid with the literary.  I’ve enjoyed the works of Harold Robbins, Jacqueline Susann and Jackie Collins, but their books are the equivalent of devouring a box of Ho Hos. Kastle’s books are a fattening meal that sticks to the ribs. You can read reviews of his other books here and here, and check out another review of The Movie Maker here.