The Ferrari in the Bedroom (9 page)

“They stopped.” The phantom rock band apparently was just tuning up somewhere.

“VIP scene, shot two, take two.” CLAP!

Bunny Pert, her gamin face lit with an incandescent smile, laid an icy slab of fish on my plate. I grinned dumbly at it; trying to look elegant as across the table John was doing likewise. Behind me the gas fireplace roared menacingly. It wouldn’t look right in the scene if my coat was on fire. This could turn into a Marx Brothers picture very easily.

“Beautiful, beautiful. Wrap it up!”

Art had triumphed again.

“Okay, gang, all I need now is a couple of reaction shots. We’ll take you, John, first.” Jack and his minions focused the camera full-face close-up on John.

“Shep, you sit out of range and give him something to react to.”

Again the clapboard routine. John smiled casually into the camera, a grizzled pro, something he had done into countless lenses.

“Wrap it up. John, give Shep something to work on.” We reversed places. This time the faint blue glittering lens focused on me. CLAP!

My lip curled casually, a man enjoying a fish dinner amid Bunnies. I, too, have faced many a camera. I turned my Cute face on, full camera.

“Beautiful. Wrap it up. Strike it, boys. That’s it. That went real good.”

The VIP scene was over, a full day’s work for a crew; actors, cameramen, Bunnies. God knows how much it cost. It would last maybe forty-five seconds on screen and would look so easy, so natural.

We went downstairs to the Living Room again. By now I had no taste for fish. I had a steak. John ordered ribs. Fenton had London Broil. By unwritten protocol the crew eats at a different table from the producer and stars. A deafening
rock band made conversation impossible. We shouted back and forth for a while but our heart wasn’t in it. It had been a tough day. Outside, the temperature was dropping. It was now near zero and as black as the inside of your hat, but here in the Playboy Hotel it was all golden and warm and totally affluent. John went up to bed. Fenton and I lingered for a while and then called it a day. For some reason I was tired. Tomorrow will be a real bummer, to use Lee’s phrase, especially in this cold. They’re calling me at 6:30
A.M.
That means maybe four hours of sleep. I’d better grab ’em.

January 19, 1972 10:40 PM

[written aboard United Airlines 727 flight Chi./NY]

Never again will I consider ice fishing a sport that real human beings indulge in. Masochists, yes. Idiots training to join Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, yes. Guys writing books who want to experience first-hand what the Panzer divisions went through in the frozen wastes of Mother Russia, yes. As for me, if dem warm breezes ain’t blowin’, old Dad is gonna get all the fish he needs at the nearest A & P.

I should have known, after that nightmare. What a buster! I had this dream where I was trying to buy a ticket at the box office that they had set up next to a trout stream in Montana. There were two hundred thousand wildly cheering fans in the stands, watching Elvis Presley and Bob Hope fish for rainbows while Fred McMurray played the saxophone. I couldn’t get a ticket. It was sold out, and the next thing I knew I was trying to climb under the fence at this stadium they had built entirely around a North Woods lake, where the cast of
Oh! Calcutta!
was fishing for Northerns from red, white and blue kayaks. They were in costume, and it was being televised by Telstar around the globe, on some show called “Interplanetary Sportsman,”
choreographed by Gene Kelly, with an original score by Henry Mancini. A giant neon-encrusted blimp sailed overhead, emblazoned:

ROONE ARLEDGE PRESENTS

Just at the point when the cast, in costume, was singing a salute to Curt Gowdy to the tune of “Old Black Joe” I woke up in a cold sweat. For a minute I lay there not sure whether it was a dream or not. After all, I was about to go ice fishing with a couple of Bunnies and a TV Marshal.

During the night the temperature had dropped to around zero and a steady snow was falling, causing camera problems. After a breakfast of scrambled eggs done Playboy style, which naturally includes vast copper pots and twenty-seven different varieties of muffin. Playboys live good. They lounged all about the place, Kenosha shoe salesmen and Green Bay insurance men, a speedy lot.

Fenton was dressed in an exceedingly expensive Abercrombie & Fitch style cowled Arctic coat. It seemed designed for film directors. Unfortunately he didn’t know how to work the complicated belt buckle, but that was only incidental to the dashing hood, which was more photogenic than practical.

John wore earmuffs and a dogged look. His heart was still in the Bahamas, but his backside was in Wisconsin. I pulled my Robin Hood hat down over my ears, wound my scarf around my neck and we waddled out into the bracing atmosphere of the tundras, which we would battle through a long, miserable, numbing day.

Jack had set his camera on the highest balcony of the hotel, pointed out at the distant hills. Below the hotel the land angled steeply away to a great hollow, at the bottom of which is a man-made pond. There are no houses, telephone
poles, or signs of habitation to be seen from the balcony, just a great valley of snow, dotted with sharply-etched black trees right out of a Japanese print. A steady 18 mph wind out of the North set the snow swirling in rolling clouds. Jack was excited by the desolation and beauty he saw through his viewfinder. He hopped up and down and slapped his hands together, his green sunglasses dotted with snow flakes.

“Look, they make real stars!” He was from California, and like many members of primitive tropical tribes, he had never seen snow.

“Yes they do, Jack, and when you get a lot of those stars piled up you can make a snowman, Jack, or even roll a Bunny in the snow.”

He couldn’t get over the snow flakes. He kept looking at one that was stuck on the end of his thumb. It was so cold our breath hung steadily in the air. A tall, thin, weather-beaten man, beanpole rather, right out of Central Casting plodded up the hill, wearing a dark green Arctic thermal suit. It was Slim Lechner, “Fishing Technical Advisor” on our expedition, operator of the Fox River Bait Store and classic Midwestern outdoorsman. He was instantly likeable, a born Pfc. which in fact he was.

“Yep, I was a private for two and a half years, which ain’t easy to manage,” he told me when we began reminiscing about the Army. “They only made me a Pfc. ’cause they put out some rule that they hadda give you a stripe when you went overseas.”

“You didn’t start throwing your rank around then, Slim, did you?” I asked.

“Naw, I demanded respect, but I wasn’t too hard on the boys.”

“We’re gonna open with a Doctor Zhivago shot, with a
vast Arctic scene of snow,” Fenton explained the scene to John and me while Slim shifted from foot to foot in the snow.

“Now this is gonna be the first thing they’ll see on the screen. They got no idea that you guys are fishing at the Playboy Club. We come right out of the Bahama sequence into this scene that looks like it could be Greenland or some place. We see two tiny figures struggling through the snow, just two dots, y’got it?”

We nodded, blowing steam in great clouds. It really would be a spectacular sight on a color TV set. It was genuinely a good idea.

“Then we cut to you two guys actually fishing and the audience meets you, Shep. You are showing John how a hip fisherman operates, first class. He doesn’t know that you are at the Playboy Club. Neither does the audience, and then, suddenly, out of the snow, come these Bunnies serving you coffee with rum in it. John is amazed, but you play it cool because that’s the way you live. Okay?”

Slim grinned at this Showbiz talk. Ten minutes later John and I alone, pulling a sled behind us with our “gear,” were far out down the valley, in knee-deep snow, tracking through virgin drifts, getting colder by the second. A half mile away, the cameras ground.

“You fall down, Shep, and I’ll reach down and drag you out of the snow.”

I flopped over sideways, my arms flailing like semaphores. Snow trickled down my neck. John reached down and grabbed my scarf, dragging me to my feet. We pretended to struggle forward. He stumbled and fell headlong. I reached down and pulled him to his feet and the two of us, bowing into the wind (which was real, very real) tottered onward, dragging our little sled behind. Through the sigh of
the wind a distant shout drifted down into the valley. It was Fenton, letting us know the scene had been shot.

“Fantastic! You guys looked like something right out of the frozen Yukon, like the Mounties were after you.”

“My god, is it cold!”

John blew his nose into a mitten. Icicles hung from the brim of my Robin Hood hat. This job was rapidly ceasing to be fun. We trudged on down to the site they had set up on the surface of the pond where we were to “ice fish.” As a gag Fenton had had the crew lay a red carpet on the ice. Two holes had been bored through the ice and through the carpet. We were to fish through a red carpet for elegance. Behind us, a two-man green pop tent leaned into the wind. A table and two chairs on the red carpet was where we would play out our dramatic scene.

Now began the process of delay, backing and filling, bitching, recrimination, and total boredom that accompanies every shooting sequence in the film world, whether it is a monster Biblical epic or an innocent one-minute commercial for disposable baby diapers. It is this predictable yet unavoidable period which causes film stars to take up all manner of vice, from heady gambling sprees in Las Vegas to forays into politics. The intense boredom that a performer feels while the crew battles endlessly the elements and the equipment, while delay piles upon delay until there is nothing left but a dull buzzing in the head as the hours meander by, can be tolerated, but barely, in the confines of a warm studio, even mildly enjoyed when shooting in the tropics; but this day on the ice at the pond within snowball range of the most luxurious pleasure dome in the country it became sheer frigid torture.

First the camera froze solid. Then the heater which had been brought down from the hotel refused to work. The
wind was causing bad noises in the sound man’s earphones, and the holes which had been cut in the ice for fishing kept freezing over. The camera was wearing what looked like a little Arctic parka, under which Jack would peek from time to time, swearing delicately. Roy, his assistant, fiddled with the cables. John and I sat at the table, pretending to fish, rehearsing our lines.

“I GOT IT!” Jack shouted into the howling gale. “WE GOTTA GET WARM FILM CARTRIDGES AND SHOOT BEFORE THEY FREEZE UP.”

It was the cartridges and not the camera that were causing us trouble, apparently, so a party was sent up to the hotel to get cartridges. We were using a big Johnson Sno Horse which roared up and down constantly, sending up clouds of fine snow. We were racing against time, as the Wisconsin January night comes on fast. We still had no clear idea of what to say or do on screen, even if the camera did work.

Simultaneously all three of us, John, Fenton and myself, arrived at a “Story line.” The camera would open on John fishing alone. He would call me out of the tent. After introducing me, I would appear, sit down, and we would have a short, snappy scene. This was Take One.

“Let’s go, you guys, before this magazine freezes up. It’s working!”

Roy and Jack huddled over the camera protectively. I crouched in the icy tent which was loaded with film cans, reflectors, spare cables and props for the next scene. This would, of course, not be visible to the audience. Slim had set up our fishing gear, complete with tip-ups and tiny ice bobbers. Fenton took charge.

“You guys know what you’re gonna do, now,” he shouted, “let’s go. Slate it.”

Lee popped up with his board. Meantime, I crouched in the tent, waiting for my cue. My nose began to run from the cold. The tent flapped and groaned all around me. I heard the clapboard distantly, and then silence. Then came my cue:

“Jean, Jean!…”

I stuck my head out of the tent, as we had rehearsed.

“What do you want?”

John swung his arm toward me. I left the tent and trotted across the ice, conscious of the camera and the crew lurking about tensely. They were as tired of the frozen North as I was and wanted to see it over and done. I squatted on my icy chair. The dialogue began:

SHEP:
“How you doing, John baby? Any action?”

JOHN:
“Nothing.” (He peers at bobber disgustedly.)

SHEP:
“No wonder. They’re not due here yet.” (delivered with
look of superior knowledge, an on-top-of-it look)

JOHN:
(looking up, look of confusion) “What do you mean
they’re not due yet?”

SHEP:
(chuckling in superior fashion) “Look, John, a gentleman doesn’t waste his time fishing when there are no fish around. Fish only appear when action is imminent.”

JOHN:
“But how do you know …?”

SHEP:
“Don’t worry. I know. Just watch your bobber. They’re about due.”

JOHN:
(in amazement) “Well I’ll be darned! I’ve got one!”
(His bobber dips. He struggles with a fish.
SHEP
watches in satisfaction.)

JOHN:
“Well what do you know! A catfish!” (He pulls catfish
out of hole. Catfish had previously been attached to line by Slim Lechner, who took it out of a tank for that purpose.)

JOHN:
(holding up fish delightedly) “How do you like that, a
catfish!”

SHEP:
“It’s a bullhead.” (He snorts.)

JOHN:
“What do you mean, a bullhead? It’s a catfish!”

SHEP:
(laughing) “It’s a bullhead.”

JOHN:
(holding up fish so camera can catch it) “Let me tell
you, they’re mighty fine eating.”

SHEP:
(in close-up, lip curling sardonically) “John, a gentle-
man does not fish merely to eat.”
(JOHN
does take; looks at S
HEP
with reproach.)

SHEP:
“Oops! Well what do you know.” (He hauls out
Bluegill.)