Читать книгу Ordinary Joe - Jon Teckman - Страница 7

The first thing I noticed about Olivia Finch – that very first time I saw her in the flesh – wasn’t her breasts bouncing like pale pink pomegranates as she worked herself into a frenzy on her lover’s lap, nor even her ‘billion-dollar backside’ – an epithet conferred upon her in a recent article in Variety, which reported that ‘Olivia Finch’s rear end is now a bigger box office draw than the faces of most of her Hollywood rivals.’ No – God’s truth – the first thing I noticed was the small, amateurish tattoo scratched into her left bicep in blue ink. ‘John 3:16’ it read. I looked it up in the Gideon when I got back to my room that evening: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. I asked her about it later – when all the madness was at its maddest – and she told me it was just a stupid thing she’d had done when she was a kid and off her face on cheap booze. But, she said, she still liked the message: the idea that one person could love another so much that they would give up everything for them.

That first time, all I could think about was how come I’d never noticed the tattoo before. It certainly hadn’t been apparent in her Oscar-nominated role as Cleopatra in the recent remake of Antony and Cleopatra. They must have CGI-ed it out in the edit. It’s impossible to know what’s real and what’s faked in the movies these days. Olivia’s breasts looked real enough, but who knows what work she’d had done to them. And what she was doing to her co-star Jack Reynolds – while a small group of us stood watching in spellbound silence, occasionally nodding our appreciation as the couple pulled off a particularly complex manoeuvre – looked real too, but, of course, was only acting.

I was standing in a makeshift studio in Queens, dressed in a set of ill-fitting blue overalls, watching top director Arch Wingate re-shoot scenes for his latest movie, Nothing Happened. Standing next to me, his huge frame squeezed uncomfortably into a similar outfit, stood the film’s producer, Buddy Guttenberg, beaming like a spoiled child on Christmas morning. The overalls had been his idea. ‘I’ve been in this business twenty-five years, Joey,’ he’d told me as we put on our costumes in an empty trailer in the studio car park, ‘and I still haven’t been allowed on a closed set unless I’ve been togged up as a gaffer or fucking electrician.’

Wingate had a justified reputation for being a perfectionist. The joke in Hollywood was that he would still be re-editing the film while the posters were going up outside the cinema. His passion and attention to detail made him one of the best film-makers in the business but also one of the most expensive. As one of the people responsible for raising the money for this film and ensuring a return on our investment, I should have been concerned about how much he was spending on almost imperceptible improvements to his creation. As a film buff, though, I was delighted by the chance to watch the great man in action.

‘Bit more passion, please, Olly,’ Wingate shouted as the couple cavorted wildly on the oversized bed. ‘Jack, move your left leg across to the right half a foot so I can get a better view of Olly’s butt as she straddles you. That’s it! And give it a bit more energy, guys, OK? You’re supposed to be enjoying this!’

Somehow, it seemed the most natural thing in the world for this beautiful couple to be making mad, passionate love in a tandoori-hot building on a warm October afternoon while Buddy and I looked on like spectators at a lawn tennis championship.

‘So what do you reckon, Joe? Happy with the way we’re spending your money?’ Buddy whispered from the corner of his mouth, elbowing me sharply in the ribs to make sure he had my full attention.

‘It’s amazing, Buddy,’ I replied. ‘The camera angles Mr Wingate is going for are incredible. No one else would dream of shooting it like that.’

‘Camera angles?’ Buddy laughed, ‘Fuck the camera angles, Joey – have you ever seen tits like those? Jesus, Mary and Joseph! She’s like the Venus de fucking Milo with arms! That girl is so hot she’s melting the polar ice caps all by herself. Those UN Climate Conference guys are considering having her banned to save the fucking planet.’

After half an hour of repeated takes of the same scene – each one, to my untrained eye, exactly the same as the last – Arch Wingate announced a break. The actors were handed robes and bottles of water and did a few warming-down exercises, Jack Reynolds flexing and admiring his biceps while Olivia laid the palms of her hands flat on the ground six inches in front of her feet, stretching her hamstrings.

‘Hey Arch,’ Buddy bawled, ‘meet my good friend Joe West from Askett Brown in London. He’s the guy who raised all the money you’re now chucking away on this meshugganah movie. He was just admiring your camera angles!’

Wingate smiled and shook my hand. ‘Glad to meet you, Joe, and thanks for all your work on this. I really appreciate it. Tell me, is there enough cash left in the budget to hire a hit man to get rid of this fat putz?’

I stammered back that I was pleased to meet him and how much I enjoyed his work, but stopped short of agreeing to his request for extra funding. I stood and listened to these Hollywood legends as they exchanged further insults, speaking only when spoken to like a well-behaved child. When the actors walked past on their way to their makeshift dressing rooms, Buddy called them over too.

‘Hey folks, come and meet the guy who’s paying your wages!’ The actors smiled indulgently at me, enjoying the joke. They knew as well as Buddy that it was their names attached to the production that pulled the money in, not me. Everyone was, in effect, on their payroll.

Close up, Olivia Finch had an aura that transcended her physical beauty, lighting up the room more brightly than the thousands of kilowatts of energy pouring from the hot studio lights. Even her feet, peeping out from beneath her long robe, seemed perfect.

‘Hi,’ she purred in a soft Southern whisper, taking my hand momentarily in hers, ‘nice to know ya.’

I tried to reply with an intelligent comment about her work, but all I could manage was an adolescent grunt. While I blushed and burbled, Olivia showed no sign of concern that I had just seen her knicker-naked, throwing herself around in mock ecstasy. There was no more reason for her to be embarrassed by me watching her work than if she’d caught me poring over a particularly complex set of accounts.