Death of a Blue Movie Star (7 page)

She asked them again how many men they were going to put on the case but they just looked at her blankly and told her they were sorry for her troubles.

And then they confiscated the tear gas.

After cleaning up, putting hydrogen peroxide on the scrapes and digging a new tear gas canister out from under the sink, Rune went to L&R Productions.

“‘ey, what’ve we got ’ere?” Bob asked, examining her face.

She wasn’t about to tell him that the injuries might have to do with her movie—since it was L&R’s Betacam that would be at risk if she got machine-gunned down on the street.

“Guy hassled me. I beat the crap out of him.”

“Uh-huh,” Bob said skeptically.

“Listen, after work, I need to borrow the camera again. And some lights.”

Bob, in a lecturing mood, said to her, “You know what this is, Rune?” Rubbing the large video camera as if it were a blonde’s rump.

“Larry said it was okay. I’ve used it before.”

“Humor an old man, luv. Tell me. What is it?”

“It’s a Betacam video camera, Bob. It’s made by Sony. It has an Ampex deck. I’ve used one about fifty times.”

“Do you know how much they cost?”

“More than you’ll ever pay me in my lifetime, I’ll bet.”

“Ha. It’s worth forty-seven thousand dollars.” He paused for dramatic effect.

“Larry told me that the first time he loaned it to me. I didn’t think it’d gone down in value.”

“You lose it, you break it, you burn out the tube, you pay for it.”

“I’ll be careful, Bob.”

“Do you know what forty-seven thousand dollars will buy?” he asked philosophically. “A man could take forty-seven thousand dollars, move to Guatemala and live like a king for the rest of his life.”

“I’ll be careful.” Rune began numbering storyboards for a TV commercial estimate that Larry and Bob were bidding on next week.

“Like a king for the rest of his days,” Bob called out, retreating into the studio.

Rune set the Sony up on the deck of her houseboat, next to a single 400-watt Redhead lamp. She tore bits of silver gaffer tape from a large roll and with them mounted a pink gel on the black metal barn doors of the lamp. It put a soft glow on Shelly’s face.

To master cinematography, luv, you master light
, Larry had told her.

She added a small fill lamp behind Shelly.

Rune also found she was picking up the lights of the city over the actress’s head, without any flare or afterimage.

Looking through the eyepiece, she thought, Totally excellent.

Thinking too: It also looks like I know what I’m doing. She was very eager to impress her subject.

As she’d been stuffing the storyboards into an envelope Rune had been thinking up questions for Shelly. Jotting them on a yellow pad. But now, as she turned the light on and started the tape rolling, she hesitated. The questions reminded her of her journalism course in high school.

Uhm, when did you get started in the business?

Uhm, what’re your favorite movies, other than adult movies?

Did you go to college and what did you major in?

Shelly, though, didn’t need any questions. Rune got the opening shot she’d been planning all along—an ECU, extreme close-up, of those reactor-blue eyes—then pulled back. Shelly smiled and began to talk. She had a low, pleasing voice and seemed wholly in control, confident, like those feisty women senators and stockbrokers you see on PBS talk shows.

The first hour or so Shelly discussed the pornography industry in a matter-of-fact, businesslike way. Adult films were experiencing a reluctant death. They were no longer chic and trendy, as some had proclaimed them to be in the seventies. The excitement of illicit thrills was gone. The religious right and conservatives were more active. But, Shelly explained, there were other factors that helped the business. Certainly AIDS was a consideration. “Watching sex is the safest sex.” Also,
people tended to be more faithful now; with fewer affairs, couples experimented more at home. You didn’t have to go to some stinky theater in a tawdry part of town. You and your partner could watch sexual acrobatics in your own bedroom.

The mechanics for viewing porn had changed too. “VCRs’re the biggest contributor to the new popularity,” she explained. Porn, Shelly felt, was meant for the video medium. “Fifteen years ago, the heyday of big-production porn, the budgets for a film sometimes hit a million dollars.” There were elaborate special effects and constructed sets and costumes and ninety-page screenplays that the actors memorized. They were shot on 35mm film in Technicolor. The producers of the classic
Behind the Green Door
actually campaigned for an Oscar.

Now, porn was virtually homemade, with dozens of small companies in the business. They shot on tape, never on film. A producer was somebody with five thousand bucks, a good source of coke and six willing friends. There were few superstars like John Holmes or Annette Haven or Seka or Georgina Spelvin. Shelly Lowe was as famous as anyone. (With a tough glance at the camera: “Hell, I’ve got five hundred films under my belt. So to speak.”) But stars’ fame was limited to New York and California mostly. In Middle America Shelly Lowe was just another face on the boxes of tapes offered for rental in curtained-off corners of family video stores. If she’d been in the business in the mid-seventies she would have done live appearances at theater openings across the country. Now, that didn’t happen.

Making a film was easy: A three-person crew rented a loft or took over somebody’s apartment for two days, set up the camcorders and lights and sound, shot six to ten fuck scenes and twenty minutes of transitions. The script was a ten-page story idea. Dialogue was improvised. In the postproduction house two versions were edited. Hardcore
for sale to the adult theaters, mail order, peep shows and video stores; soft for sale to the cable stations and in-room hotel movie services. Movie theaters weren’t the biggest outlet for adult films anymore; they went out of business or put in video projection units, then went out of business anyway. But people rented porn tapes and took them home and watched them. Four thousand X-rated videos were made every year. They had become a commodity.

“Mass production. It’s the era of pornography as Volkswagen.”

“What about you? Like personally?” Rune asked. “You get forced into the business? Were you like kidnaped? Molested when you were ten?”

Shelly laughed. “Not hardly. I wanted to do it. Or maybe I should say that the pressures were subtle. I wanted desperately to act but I couldn’t get any legit jobs. Nothing that paid the rent. Porn was the only job I could get. Then I found that not only was I acting but I was making great money. I had control. Not only creative control but sexual control too. It can be a real high.”

“Weren’t you exploited?”

Shelly laughed once more, shook her head. Looked straight into the camera. “That’s the myth of pornography. No, we’re not poor farm girls who get enslaved. Men have the power in legitimate films but in porn it’s the other way around. Just like with sex in real life: It’s the
women
who’re in control. We have what men want and they’re willing to pay for it. We make more money than men do, we dictate what we do and what we don’t do. We’re on top. Forgive the joke.”

Surprise in Rune’s voice: “So you like the business?”

A pause and the sincere eyes glazed back easily into the Betacam’s expensive, glossy lens. “Not exactly. There’s one problem. There’s no sense of … beauty. They call them erotic films but there’s nothing erotic about them.
Erotic connotes emotional stimulation as well as physical. Close-ups of people humping isn’t erotic. I think I said this to you before: The business has a real low common denominator.”

“So why have you stayed with it?” Rune asked.

“I do some legitimate theater now. Not much but every once in a while. And most I’ve ever made has been four thousand dollars a year. Making porn, I made a hundred twelve last year. Life’s expensive. I took the path of least resistance.”

Shelley slumped an inch and Rune noticed something. The tough, flirty woman who’d begun talking, the Shelly with the facts and figures, the Shelly with the newscaster’s grit in her voice, wasn’t the same person who was talking now. This was someone different: softer, sensitive, thoughtful.

Shelly sat up, crossed her legs. She looked at her watch. “Hey, I’m beat. Let’s call it a wrap for tonight.”

“Sure.”

The hot lights went dark and made tapping noises as they cooled. Immediately Rune felt the chill of the evening envelop them.

“How did it go, you think?” Rune asked. “I thought it was super.

Shelly said, “You’re a very easy person to talk to.”

“I’m not even using any of my questions.” Rune sat in the lotus position and flapped her knees up and down like butterfly wings. “There’s so much material … and we’ve hardly started talking about you yet. You’re so good.”

“You’re still interested, we can go to that party.”

“You bet.”

Shelly asked, “Use your phone?”

“Sorry, remember? I’m Miss Incommunicado.”

“A ship-to-shore radio. That’s what you need. Then let’s stop by the studio for a minute? I’ve got to see if
there’s a shoot scheduled for tomorrow.” She noticed Rune’s small JVC camcorder. “Why don’t you bring that. You can do some taping at the party.”

“Great.” Rune packed the small camera. “You think they’ll mind?”

Shelly smiled in a way that was also a shake of her head. “You’ll be with the star, remember?”

Lame Duck Productions’ soundstage was only three blocks from Rune’s company.

Both were located in Chelsea, a neighborhood that changed block by block—while L&R’s building sat next to an overpriced, gentrified restaurant, Lame Duck’s squatted in a gray and greasy stretch of Korean importers and warehouses and coffee shops. Rune smelled garlic and rancid oil as they walked along the street. Cobblestones shone through the asphalt. Battered cars and delivery vans waited for another day of abuse on the streets of New York City.

They walked into the lobby of the building, stained with the residue of a thousand halfhearted moppings. Shelly said, “I’ll be right down. I just have to check the scheduling board. Is it too dark to shoot some exteriors?” She nodded toward the video camera.

Rune said she would.

The security guard said, “Oh, Miss Lowe, phone message for you. It says urgent.”

Shelly took the pink message slip, read it. She said to Rune. “Be right down.”

Rune wandered along the sidewalk outside. She held the camera to her eye but the low-light warning flashed through the eyepiece. She put it back into her bag. The garlic was making her hungry and she wondered what there was to eat at pornographic film parties.

Food, like everybody else, girl. What do you think? Shelly’s just like anybody else. She—

“Hey, Rune!” Shelly’s voice filled the street.

Rune looked up but in the gloom couldn’t see which window she was calling from. Then she saw the actress outlined in a third-floor window. She called back, “What?”

“I’m shooting at eleven tomorrow. You want to watch?”

“I guess,” she said quickly and then just as quickly realized that she did not in fact want to see the shoot. “You think it’s okay?”