GP

I’ll save some of you the trouble and just start with Jewels. Will you let me set the scene?

Billy Chambers had pitched me the script in L.A., six months before. He cornered me at Velvet in that back left corner and even though I’d had a half dozen I could see it in his eyes. We went back to his with a small crowd and barricaded ourselves on a little balcony with a pack of Pall Malls and a lot of whiskey. I was hooked quick. 

Billy wrote longhand with a scrawl that seemed to lilt like brogue. The pages were all marked up but the corrections were always right. He knew we needed a name for the lead but didn’t tell me right away and later he said that was a test. When I finished the script I kissed Billy on his forehead and thirty minutes later I was at my agent’s door but he was asleep so I lined a four-seamer through his window and a few moments later some birdshot screamed out the barrel of his mossberg; I ducked most of it.

“Get me Grace Wilson!”I yelped.

Everything came together. The studio agreed to fly everyone out to Morocco for two months to shoot. I thought Billy was alright so I took him with us even though they didn’t want to pay. I figured he’d be good for a laugh if things went south because I’d seen him drink and he was shit with women and I knew I could count on him.

I’d never actually met Grace Wilson before. Billy and I had been on the line with her and a few studio windbags to talk casting, but that was it. He said he wanted an unknown for her love interest but nobody liked that so I suggested a has-been. Grace asked who, and I’d just seen The Orange Grove three nights back, so I blurted out Jim Hall on a whim. Billy looked surprised, and some old relic stifled a harrumph, but Grace bit real hard for some reason and when we called his people they accepted right away.

Billy and I arrived two days early to entrench ourselves with the localsunder the guise of scouting a better spot for the car scene, the one at the end. We got in early on Tuesday; I shared words with the customs official; we dropped our luggage at the hotel; we set out. 

Fortune bade us take refreshment at some paint-peeled dive where I sensed that the gargoyles at the bar [habitual, maybe permanent, fixtures] would give us a run for our money, so I offered to buy a round. I was met with a dozen smiles, a half dozen teeth. Moments later it was Wednesday night, and I am being exited from an establishment called Puss. It is run by a man named Eddy; he refuses to see the irony. 

Thursday morning brought us a pattering mist and we were supposed to rendezvous with the rest of the cast and crew, but I didn’t like the airport and we’d found a good cheap brunch up the street from the hotel and woulda been too late anyways. I never understood folks that didn’t like brunch. I left word with the concierge before Billy and I reconvened with our newest friend Abboud, who was a sturdy drinker, excellent athlete, and polished rapscallion. 

That evening is again dark, though it ain’t the fog of long embellished memory, rather the reliable effects of several liters of good ale; however, Billy and Abboud have claimed extensively that at precisely no later than three in the morning I performed a virtuosic rendition of Liszt’s second Hungarian Rhapsody while Darla balanced on my shoulders.

I don’t entirely disbelieve them as I gained consciousness at seven still saddled by Darla. I roused Billy and could not find Abboud so we left for the hotel.

In the lobby I noticed that the rumpled patriarch who manned the desk the night before had been replaced by a rather pert young Greek. She guessed us quickly by our stench and revealed that our party breakfasted on the patio.

We ambled out and when Billy said Ta Da I tried to laugh but an atonal moan limped out.

Of course I’d seen Grace Wilson on the screen. I’d even seen her across the room at the awards. But there she was, sitting in a classy wicker piece, chatting with my pudgy cinematographer, Jan Láslò. Láslò was a squat fellow who always seemed to have a bent collar or crooked feather. I always beamed when I saw him but there was nothing laughable about his prodigy with a camera. And I never tired of reassuring him of his brilliance, which was often, as his confidence seemed to sweat out of him underneath that hard sun. He turned to me and nodded briefly before resuming conversation. Grace didn’t but glance at the two of us.

But I always liked that. A whole mess of faces turning and staring until whatever it is breaks across ‘em. 

The first to speak was our producer, a lanky job of a man with birdlike cheekbones. He shot up and lurched toward us. I still don’t know his first name but we all called him Bunky and his last name was Carneva. He fretted often, always pulled off miracles, and didn’t mind when I tuned him out. I trusted him. 

He ushered us to empty seats. I took it all in. 

Láslò had brought his usual crew. They did their job and they did not bother me. They were Czech.

There were some other folks I didn’t know then, but in my estimation they did ok. 

James Hall looked out of place and nervous, but critics say Jewels was his best so I think I was right to keep him at arm’s length while we were out there. [Of course we had a crack group of support, but they weren’t due for a couple weeks.]

The food was edible and it wasn’t till our evening meal that I shared a word with Grace. 

Shooting was to begin the next day and Bunky had planned a tour of the city to acclimate the rest of the folk. I suspected dullness, so Billy and I chose recuperation to sharpen our senses in advance of nocturnal worship.

Dinner was at this swell joint called Palms, or La Palma, or something else frond themed. We had a great big banquet table outside on a private patio with firefly lights and a dynamite view of the water way below. Bunky put Grace and I right next to each other and as she approached I finally took her all in with a courteous smile and held out her chair. She returned the smile and said, “Thank you,” but I just nodded. 

It’s this moment I think of when I wish to remember the way those freckles broke across her nose and cheeks.

Billy was on my other side so we spoke most of the night. We’d gotten there around nine, and folks were dropping like flies by eleven. Even Billy looked like he needed respite. But Grace stayed and she kept up with me on liquor. 

At a quarter to midnight, Láslò stumbled and stuttered his goodbyes. Only Bunky, Grace, Billy and myself remained. I was about to give Billy the nod, but I realized he was fast asleep in his chair, so one of the cooks slung him over his burly cook’s shoulders, and nestled him into a cab.

Bunky and Grace were deep in conversation so I flagged down the serving girl for a skosh of decent port and slunk to the edge of the patio. The Maitre’d brought out the port and a box of Cohibas. I demanded he share one with me and we smoked mostly in silence although he made a funny remark about my last picture.

Once he made his goodbyes I turned back to the table to see Bunky doing the same. Grace stood and hugged him and he Bunked out.

The woman and I. She turns to me, halving the distance.

“Cab?”

“Ten should do it.”

I deposit 10 francs on the table and walk out.

Call time is eight so I arrive to set at six. I swiped a croissant from this hole in the wall near the hotel that was run by an old couple with smiling eyes before meandering the short distance to where we’d shoot our first scene. Incidentally, it was also the first scene of the picture. I don’t need to shoot chronologically, but sometimes I like it. 

I start pacing the area and thinking it out. It’s relaxing to me. I don’t have a copy of the script on hand, but Billy will bring one soon I guess, and then I can see if I’ve made any mistakes, but I haven’t. What I can tell you is that when I’m at my best, it’s just a little like dreaming, and if I don’t try too hard it’ll be ok.

Láslò gets there at seven and we establish a great deal without speaking much. His crew are all set up by quarter to, then Grace and Jim Hall come out of makeup at five of.

It’s a simple scene and I don’t expect problems, but after two takes it is apparent that Grace has been possessed by a talentless poltergeist, and even Hall with his wispy self esteem knows something is up. I call cut and pretend to ask Billy if he brought my glasses, but I don’t have glasses and really he just looks at me while I think. 

For a moment I seriously ask myself, Is Grace Wilson a talentless hack? But I’d seen her work and that isn’t right. Is she torpedoing this project on purpose? I deduce with sherlockian surety that it must have been about the night before.

So I turn to the crew.

“We got it.”

Dissension in the air! It’s radiating from even the kid handing out coffees, like he has a clue, but I’ve got a reputation so no one says a thing. I hold back a chuckle, because it’s my great pleasure to be myself, and I just repeat. 

“We got it. Start packin’.”

Bunky has attuned a purple hue and looks suicidal, which nearly makes me burst. I’m so sure that Grace will give in that I almost look right at her as if to say checkmate, but I keep my cool and it’s lucky I did because she’s a pro and doesn’t budge. She just smiles at Hall, who is now questioning reality, and turns towards her assistant.

I turn towards Billy as he decides if in fact he is a man, and finally he wrests his fear into a scowl and he asks me, “What the fuck?!” [I knew I could count on the bastard!] I tell him we’re at war. 

You might think: Why didn’t you say something? It’s a fair question. I could have run the scene two dozen more times. I could have told her any number of things. But she played a move and my gut was screaming at me to play one back, and I have good instincts. 

If I give in and plead, then she wins because she’s undermined me, and the picture gets finished, but it ain’t my picture anymore. If I play the right move, I win. And Jewels becomes Jewels. 

As we’re setting up for our next shot I still don’t have a plan in mind. Even though I know I could let her torpedo two or three more shots before Bunky says something, she knows that too. And if Bunky says something, then she as good as wins. 

The next shot is from about a third of the way into the flick when her and Hall’s character kiss for the first time. Billy wrote it to be this slow kiss, a classic smooch. Tentative and longing. Hall has a few lines and Grace has one and then Hall has a few more and then he leans in and stops and then she hesitates and then he kisses her and then she kisses back. It’s so right on the page and it’s one of those scenes where I knew Billy was a natural.

I say action and Hall begins and I tell you he’s just great. You’d never have guessed the titles he’d just got done with [or how many numerals were in ‘em] by the way he pulls those pages into life. The guy is good and I almost laugh at how good he is and when Grace gives him nothing but stone I almost weep. But then they kiss and a wicked idea foments. I don’t want to seem too obvious so I pull Hall to the side for a second after the first take, which the crew takes as sacrilege because he’s just gone yard at Fenway, and I bring him to a quiet corner and I say, “Jim, I forgot to ask you earlier if you have an extra pair of sunglasses?” I can see he’s dumbstruck but he bites his lip and says, “No. No. Sorry, I don’t think so,” which is just perfect. 

So we go back to the scene and I say action and the guy somehow tops what he’s just done and she gives him nothing and I want to scream but I’m a real pro too so I wait until the second their lips unclasp and say, “No it’s more like this.” I step forward.

Grace almost smirks and Hall begins to move off the mark. Billy’s jaw is on the floor and I know what he’s thinking and I know what everyone else is thinking. Bunky is now unsure if what he’s hearing is the pumping of his own heart or there really is a horde of Mongols signaling their approach from around the corner.

“No, Jim, you stay.”

Grace actually starts in disbelief and Lászlò trumpets a cough. Billy, sweet Billy, turns his smile into concentration but I can see the admiration gleaming. Bunky still hasn’t caught on as his eyes have glazed over into lost dollar signs.

I take her place and call action and Hall goes again and he’s just as good as before and somehow elevates me to his station and my lines sing out and when it comes time for the kiss he doesn’t break and I’ll be damned if I don’t admit I might have broke if he broke but he didn’t break so I didn’t break. Our lips meet and I just believe that I love him and I think about my first love, Janey Jones, and I think about my first car, that old Ford, and I think about my first film, Summer Of.

There is a stillness to the air and we uncouple and I’ll be double damned if that funny little kid that was handing out coffees doesn’t have a tear on his cheek. It stays silent as I walk back to my spot without looking at her. “Ok, we’ll go again.” I don’t dare glance at her. She returns to her mark. 

If you ask anyone on that crew, to this day they’ll tell you that that was the moment they knew this film was gonna be something special. But as I’m about to restart the scene, I’ve got doubts.

“Action!”

Hall serves, Wilson returns.

Folks, we’ve got a picture on our hands.

So it was that I won the war on the first day. It ain’t all rosy, but things looked up. 

If you recall, we’d started shooting on a Friday. That same night, the Kid and I treated ourselves to a ripping good time and ended up in Spain by Saturday morning. I was so tranqued out that I thought I’d fallen in love with this matronly beast named Helga, but cooler heads prevailed. [Read: Abboud and Billy found a straitjacket and wrestled me onto a steamer and we got back to set an hour before Monday’s start.]

There’s not much to say about the first full week of shooting. Grace and Hall were dynamite together. If you’re reading this I assume you saw the picture so you know I ain’t lying. We ran through scenes and really all I had to do was tell Lászlò where I wanted the camera. 

At the end of that week we had plans to excur into a neighboring city and Bunky had rented a bus. Billy and I borrowed Abboud’s roadster, but were not able to borrow Abboud as he had family in town and although his wife was a lenient old gal, she drew the line and he respected it. For a moment I thought about offering Billy’s seat to Grace, but I was growing partial to the lad and could not condemn him to the drudgery of the old tin bucket that Bunky had scrounged up. And I ‘spose I didn’t want to teeter whatever balance I’d structured on that fateful first day.

I can’t remember the name of the city we went to and I owe that to this funny little man that Abboud told us to look up when we got there. His name was Abdelkouddous but he went by Abbi and he had these queer little pills that made everything look a little cartoonish. The only downside is that large blocks of time went missing from memory. When I first met Abbi I smiled inside and had a hard time looking away. Every moment I knew him he had a cigarette lodged in the crook of his mouth. When you looked closely as I did, you saw that his commitment to the habit had formed a sort of divot in the tissue of his lower lip where the cigarette remained comfortably and evermore nestled. He was a talented drawer too.

Billy and I primed ourselves and met our group out for dinner at 10pm. Thankfully Bunky sat me down far away from Grace, and as our meal progressed I had all but forgotten her. I had the house Tagine and Billy tore into a pigeon meat pie which I took a bite of and almost ordered one for myself. We’d discovered quite quickly this swell Moroccan beverage called Mahia that they make from dates or figs and Billy and I had had our fair share, but it was Friday so we tried to remain civil at least because Bunky couldn’t get his heart medication out there.

Afterwards we took a couple of the pills we got from Abbi and it was about midnight so we corralled a few of Lászlò’s boys and the coffee handler and the real drinking commenced as we went in search of seediness. 

It wasn’t long until Lászlò’s boys started getting picked off by professionals. Billy and I remained resolute alongside, quite surprisingly, the coffee boy. He had his mettle tested on three occasions by some real earners but stayed with us till about four in the morning and then some classy older broad caught his eye and I daresay she was the one paying him based on her mink and her wrinkles and his energy the next morning.

I was tired from the week and so I actually slept alone back in the hotel room. Billy fell asleep standing up in the canteen we’d crawled into and I didn’t have the heart to wake him so I guess that’s where he woke up too.

Saturday was a peach of a day as Abbi took us out on his boat from about nine to two. We being Billy and I and Coffee, who I’d taken a little shine to by this point. We fished a great deal and popped another few of those infamous pills and it was a real good time. The sun shone bright out there on the blue and Coffee and Billy are a bit more fair complected than I, so they lit for aloe when we made port. Abbi and I found a nook to cook our catch in and primed our gullets with some more of that Mahia.

Bunky had been on me at dinner the night before to spend more time with the cast and crew, but he always did that because he never got that I couldn’t exactly do that. They were all decent folk but I didn’t need them to be my friends. Hell, I’d done six pictures with Láslò and I might have loved the guy, but I didn’t know a thing about him other than his name and how funny he looked. Even so, I acquiesced to dinner that Saturday because I’d napped from four to eight and that did the trick.

At dinner I had this couscous dish that went down real easy with some more Mahia. Coffee had us corralled at one corner of the table with some outlandish story about some friend of his from back home on the east coast who’d apparently married some French princess almost by accident. Coffee knew how to tell a story and even though he was the youngest among us, we didn’t pay him any less attention when he was at the wheel of a tale. He sprinkled half-truths here and there and his excitement was infectious. He finished the story with a nifty callback, real classy like, and I realized suddenly I’d been under his spell, really under it, the whole time, which made me respect the lad.

After dinner, Bunky made us all go out together to a bar where he’d negotiated a group rate, but it was rotten and I had to get out of there. I took Coffee with me as Billy was making actual headway with a real woman. We rented a couple scooters and took ‘em down to the waterfront. He was starting to like the nickname, I could tell. He’d crack a little grin whenever I used it so I was careful not to say it too much and ruin the thing.

Down at the water we lit some Pall Malls and I had brought some Mahia from the restaurant. There were fewer buildings by the water back then so we got an ok view of the stars and that was fine by us. Coffee asked me if he could ask me a question and I didn’t answer, but smiled. He caught on quick after a pause and just asked me. He asked me how you know if you got what it takes. I gave him the only answer I could. You don’t know until you try, and then you try some more and you keep trying until you don’t have to know, or can’t. He was too sharp to ask any further. I think he already knew the answers. I think the damned kid was testing me. We took a calm fifteen and then hopped on the scooters and drove around for a bit. Then we decided to walk and find the others. 

This next bit has become some sort of legend and maybe you got it right, but either way I’ll set it straight.

As we’re getting close to the miserable shack we’d escaped from, we hear a ruckus and spot a crowd. It’s a whole mess of locals and a few odd tourists all circled up. We can hear music from inside the circle and we’re just as curious as anyone so we make our way over and hop up on some benches to get a look.

At the edge of the circle there’s a boy drumming next to his friend whose playing some sort of lute. Dancing in the middle is a handsome Spaniard I’d never seen, and as you all know, Grace Wilson. I’m immediately shocked to notice that Bunky is nowhere in sight, but there’s ol’ Lászlò looking like he’s either run a mile or just downed a quart of very hot curry.

I’ve heard all the different versions of this story, all of ‘em. Some involve Grace and the Spaniard actually making love right on the street in plain view. Some say they danced for four hours straight and the sun didn’t rise that day. Some folks claim it wasn’t Grace Wilson or she was dancing with a German or a dwarf Eskimo or the music came from them and not the fellas with the instruments. I’ve heard ‘em all.

But none of ‘em. I tell you, none of ‘em, will ever capture proper, the scene we stumbled onto.

You gotta realize it’s three in the morning. It’s moonlight and flickering gas lamps leaking through shuttered windows. It’s cobblestones and crooked old brick and stone buildings. It’s two Moroccan kids that got in between them a mismatched shoe spilling over with francs from however many hours or days they’d been out there. It’s fishermen, bakers, builders and drunks and all their heat and their sweat from their work and their life under that African sun. It’s whispers from women and it’s disbelief from the old man that came down in his nightclothes. It’s some kid from Spain and it’s Grace fucking Wilson. 

Now, my favorite version of the story is the one where I fall through the second story window with a bottle in my hand, land on my feet, and the Spaniard slinks away and Grace and I dance while everyone cheers. I get a ride out of that, but it ain’t true. 

The two of ‘em danced and I watched for a good bit with Coffee. It was a good moment because I don’t think either of us had ever seen a thing like that. Afterwards I spoke to Coffee about it and he said he wished he had a camera on him just then and I smiled and paused, but I said it after all; I told him that moment can’t exist but in the ether of dream and legend and I could see he didn’t buy it, but he brought it up some years later and he laughed and said it woulda made bad film and that I was right.

So we backed off from the scene all cautious-like. We left it to itself. Best not to know the beginning or the end of a thing like that because then it’s really good and really true. 

Sunday was pleasant as Abbi took us on the boat again. Then Billy and I returned in Abboud’s roadster, all leisure-like. We had to stuff Coffee into the backseat, but he was just happy to be included and so were we.

Mondays were always my best day to shoot. There’s a fire that grows almost to inferno when I don’t work for a couple days and that’s a double edged sword.

That Wednesday, three of our supporting actors were to arrive: Miles Cranning. Alice Hall [who was not related to Jim, by the way], and E.J. Brown. Then Midge Peters got in on Saturday. Midge was a gas. She didn’t love to party like we did but she’d come out with us a handful of nights out of graciousness and she did a hell of a job convincing you that you hadn’t ever really partied before. She was beautiful and talented and smart and remained a good friend till she went. I never made a pass at her and that seemed right. 

We were on schedule and things were going well, so much so that Bunky had even begun cracking jokes to crew members, which deeply unsettled them, but I took it all as a good omen.

On Monday we reshot the scene Grace had torpedoed. In the afternoon and on Tuesday and Wednesday we did some of the car shots, not the ones from the end but some of the early shots where they’re cruising through the mountains.

Thursday is where the fun began, as now we’re shooting more intricate scenes and I finally get to test my mettle. But really, everything sorta worked itself out.

You remember the poker scene? Well it’s the first thing we shot with our supports. And as it turned out, E.J. had had stomach problems ever since he shot Boughs of Havana the year before and so his Doctor put him on this medication that made him expel excess gas with ruthless efficiency. And, ever since he had landed, E.J. had been stuffing his face with couscous, figs, and fava beans.

So we’ve got five hotshot actors sitting around the table doing their best poker face while E.J., against his own will, is doing a passable impression of an idling V8. The guy is apologizing every ten seconds, but it’s clear he has no control over the symphony of unfortunate squelches and trumpets reporting from his gut. Luckily we shot the scene as a bunch of closeups from the center of the table and the dialogue is so rapid that we could cut around it. But if you pull any one of the shots from the final cut and play it just a few moments longer, you’d encounter echoes of E.J.’s breakfast whining out of his tail pipe into a low bassoon blast that, without fail, would trigger an avalanche of uncontrollable laughter from just about everyone in the vicinity. Even Grace doubled over a few times. I mean, this is E.J. Brown. He’d won an Academy Award not three years before, for that demented priest he played in Doherty Park. This guy was in as much demand as some of the heavy hitters not for his box office draw but because he was just that good. And now there exists about six or seven continuous hours of this guy hard clipping our mics with his asshole.

To our delight it didn’t totally stop after Thursday. His gut did begin to acclimatize, but every so often some lingering note of intestinal entropy would careen through set and spark another fit of merriment. I’ll be damned if I ever provided a better morale boost than a boost from ol’ E.J.’s better half.

As I said, Midge was due to arrive that weekend, but it wasn’t until sometime on Sunday, so Bunky had planned another event. This time it was a weekend cruise that began Friday night and terminated Sunday evening. I found the idea deeply revolting and promptly feigned illness. To my surprise, Billy and Coffee both jumped at the idea, so I was to be alone for the weekend. Abboud still had family visiting, and his wife was on maximum security alert after she discovered a note I’d left in his bedroom window that crudely depicted him making love to a circus donkey. At least he says it was from me, I remain unconvinced.

After they boarded, I treated myself to a grand feast in the hotel restaurant, which had a very decent menu. The place was almost empty and I made no acquaintances with whom to adventure. I resolved that I would have a quiet night and that I would walk down by the water, then maybe see if the local theater had anything on.

As it turns out, they were showing Yesterday’s Laundry, and in the original English too. I always thought that that was a real underrated flick and just a superb piece of cinema. Sometimes I like to wonder which pictures will make it big a hundred years from now and I’d still put my money on Yesterday’s Laundry.

I snuck in a flask of Scotch Whisky that I’d smuggled on our flight, then I kicked back right up front. As the titles ran I glanced around and didn’t spot a soul which felt real swell.

I won’t go on about the flick. It’s damn good and I don’t need to sing about it here. But I’ll say that the ending always gets me. I can feel it all coming just about ten minutes beforehand. Or it’s less that I can feel it coming and more like that clever bastard Martinez ushers you right into your own feelings and just a nice bit of truth. And he does it so right and so easy that you really for a period forget not just where you are but you become incapable of forgetting altogether. Dammit if I don’t butcher it when I go and say it out loud. 

The end credits roll and my tears are warm on my cheeks and there’s some jerky thaw in my chest like some sort of spiritual calcium’s being chiseled off my heart. And that’s not just words, I really feel a thing in my chest and I look down at my hands and they look back up at me and I just chuckle for a moment. 

I stand up and turn around to leave but spot another patron. I go to wipe my cheeks but I catch myself when I realize I know this person. It’s a woman. She’s famous actually. Some big star in the pictures. Here to film her next big project. And she’s got the same salty streaks I do and the same wide eyes and the stare.

The woman and I. 

I got this gift. Realized it when I was 18 or so. It’s hard to describe and I ain’t the only one that’s got it, maybe we all do. And it comes and goes for me, but I remember when I found out about it. 

I was at some party in my college days. With loud music. And I was dancing with this gal. She wasn’t too interested and the music was just okay and the house was kind of a dump and I was hot and sweaty and rightly drunk. But I looked around for a second. I looked at all of it. And I saw where I was right then. That’s the best way I can tell it to you. I saw where I was. And I heard and I felt and I knew it.

And so we stepped out of the theater and we walked. And we were both there, then. And we’d look each other in the eyes some moments. And we’d bump into each other by accident. And we’d hear the buildings and streets and people. And we didn’t exist as more than a whisper of soul. And only we knew.

Later we were at a table outside a cafe that ran all night. The beignets were hot and good and so was the coffee. The clink of porcelain and the steam curling off the dough being the only conversation. She got some powdered sugar on her cheek.

“Cab?” I said.

Smiling, just barely:

“Ten should do it.”

As a kid I wrote an essay about sex. It was demented and funny and so so crude. I burnt it one day and was always sore no one ever got to see it. So I got this vulgar urge. But lovemaking cannot ever be vulgar.

We did take a cab back. And as I’m thinking of it now I have to chuckle. Of all the romantic possibilities, a hotel? Sure, it was a classy place with nice linens and sweeping sitting rooms and balconies and good wicker, but it was still– Or heck, maybe there is something romantic about it. That hotel ain’t there anymore. But that night– Isn’t it?

We moved so slowly out to the balcony and it began again with our eyes. Her hair and her neck and the small of her back. Then my inhale brought on some of that adrenaline and dammit I kissed her! Just once at first. Then again so slowly. And it was almost plainer than kissing, I tell you. It wasn’t so grand or powerful or special. It wasn’t destiny fulfilled. It was simple. You ever listen to snowfall?

A seeming hitch presented itself in the morning over breakfast as Midge appeared much earlier than expected and walked right up to us on the hotel terrace. She took a hard look for maybe two seconds and let out a guffaw.

“You’re fucking!”

We were dumbstruck and she let out another guffaw and strode away. For a moment I panicked, but it was Midge, and she was a goddamn professional and an old friend and she knew better than to gossip that gossip. Even so, we agreed not to see each other for the remainder of the shoot.

The rest of our party returned earlier than expected in the afternoon and I learned that in a stroke of poetic and dastardly irony, the entirety of the crew had contracted debilitating food poisoning and turned around immediately. I had been looking forward to a rundown from Billy and Coffee, but they were both in a very bad state so I let them be and took a walk.

Despite the fervor of nascent love, the ol’ tempest within had already begun stirring and I found myself deeply preoccupied with Monday’s possibilities.

What was so great about Billy’s script, was that he took the classic heist concept, the one we’d seen a thousand times, and turned it at first into this beautiful love story, then into almost a psychological thriller once we begin to piece together that Grace’s character is playing Hall’s character for a fool. And by the end we’re just heartbroken to see this guy lose it all because of the way Billy writes him. He’s so damn sympathetic, even his foibles, especially his foibles. And Grace’s character is nearly just as heartbreaking because Billy makes us really fall in love with her and we’re the only ones that can see how damaged she is. It busted me up to see how Hall’s character ends the picture hating her. It was so unfair. Rightly unfair.

Before I knew it I’d crossed the length of the city. I’d been marveling at Billy’s vision and ended up in some place I wasn’t familiar with, but I found a wonky little joint that looked appreciable and I bit. I hadn’t drank since sometime the week before and so I had the maitre’d introduce me to an aged beaujolais and it was pleasant to be on my own.

It was maybe 15 years since I’d last loved. It felt surreal ‘cause love ain’t ever the same. And so, as I sat in that funky little den with its stumpy seating and indigenous accoutrement, that alien corner of my experience, I got a little scared. But I knew that fear was no good. So I finished my meal and resolved with a steely glint in my eye to embrace the unknown and lightly stoke that fragile flame newly sparked deep in heart.

But it didn’t turn out like that.

Sunday passed slowly.

On Monday we shot. Grace arrived on set and she stood on her mark and she spoke her lines and when she needed direction I gave it but that was not often so I spoke to her little. My heart did not flutter, my palms did not sweat. We shared no knowing glances. 

Midge had her first scenes and we spoke as old friends and nothing more. She was a real professional, Midge. 

And then Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday. 

On the weekend I had to fly to Paris because we had planned to shoot Leftman’s Agreement two months after Jewels wrapped and the financing had fallen through so Bunky scheduled us a meeting with these hotshot French businessmen who liked some of my earlier work.

My French was rough so we spoke in English and they had decent English but they also had too many ideas for the script. I never understood why folks want to give you ideas, especially bad ones.

So the trip was a bust. We stayed the night on Saturday after the meeting and had a hot meal. All things considered, Bunky wasn’t in bad shape and he was swell to be around for once.

We got back to the hotel late on Sunday. And on Monday we continued shooting.

We’d all hit a rhythm on set and it felt good and I don’t remember a great deal of shooting after that because of it. Because we hit our spots. 

And on the weekends we hit our spots too. Billy eventually got a girl back to his and Coffee kept seeing that classy broad. I continued on and Grace didn’t come out with us probably because Bunky was flying off for meetings every weekend and wasn’t there to force us all together.

On the last day of shooting I finally let myself remember that weekend and I think Grace did too because I called cut and she looked at me. I think she wanted me to say let’s go again. I told you before it wasn’t destiny. But I think we both wanted it to be. And if I said cut and that’s really it, then we go on a plane tomorrow and that’s it and we leave this little dream. And I wanted to say it. I wanted to scream let’s go again. I wanted to scream and rage and burn up all that celluloid and soak Billy’s beautiful script in ink and stab my pen through its heart so we could have another chance at the dream. But we were pros, right?

And we did fly out the next day. Billy and I cut the film together with Lew Overaker back in L.A. She was at the premiere and we all took photos together and we still didn’t say a word. The film was a hit of course. At the awards I didn’t see Grace and that made me wonder why I even showed up. 

Why couldn’t I pick up the damn phone? Dammit, why couldn’t she? No. If she called me– No.

I ‘spose my cynicism is the result of a deep seated belief that can’t reckon with my sense of reason. Belief without faith, or something like that. And every now and then I really forget about my belief and so I’m cynical for some time until something beautiful comes along.

P.S. I’m not sure if you guessed it already, but ‘Coffee’ went on to make a couple of pictures that did alright: South of North, Garando Express, Three Shots of Water, and of course: Pinche Perro. Good lad.