LITMIR.BIZ

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right up my bracket.

      I am also feeling narky because Justin has told me that he will not be able to give me a credited part for fear that the union might cut up nasty. Blooming marvellous, isn’t it? If it was not for me there probably would not be a film in the first place.

      ‘Plenty of extra work, Timmo,’ says Justin. ‘Once everyone gets used to your face I can start exploiting your potential.’

      ‘Don’t get upset about it, ducky,’ chips in Crispin. ‘I started at the bottom.’

      I have about half a dozen answers to that one but luckily the arrival of Mac, looking like the bearer of important news, prevents me from using them.

      ‘He’s here,’ says Justin.

      For the first time that I can remember, Justin looks less than totally at ease and I wonder who the new arrival can be. There is one dead simple way to find out.

      ‘Who is?’ I ask.

      ‘Ken Loser,’ breathes Justin.

      ‘Never heard of him.’

      ‘Never heard of him?! The most famous British director of the decade? Surely you’ve seen some of his tellyvision work? His series on the New Testament?’

      ‘You mean when he had Jesus dressed up in a wet suit and flippers diving off the top of the Eiffel Tower? Yes, now you come to mention it, I do remember something about it. There were a lot of complaints, weren’t there?’

      ‘Only about the brothel scene. People are incredibly reactionary, you know. I thought it was very meaningful myself.’

      ‘Very meaningful,’ echoes Mac. ‘It makes the point that Jesus is the Devil is Man more clearly than anything else I have ever found sexually stimulating.’

      ‘He’s going to direct the film, is he?’ I ask.

      ‘Yes. It’s a fantastic coup,’ breathes Justin. ‘His presence alone ensures that we get our money back at the box office.’

      We all look towards the door expectantly and through it come two enormous tawny hounds pulling a geezer in white chauffeur’s uniform with jackboots and Nazi-style peaked cap. He is wearing dark glasses and has a long gold cigarette holder drooping from his lips.

      ‘Is that him?’ I gasp.

      ‘No!’ Justin’s tone is almost contemptuous. ‘That’s Otto, his, his –’

      ‘Personal assistant,’ says Mac helpfully.

      Stupid of me, really, but you do get these funny ideas about film people, don’t you? Of course there is no reason why they should be any different to you or – ‘Blimey!’ My exclamation is sparked off by the next bloke to come through the door. He is wearing a shaggy sheepskin coat that drags along the floor behind him, and from the niff that sprints across the room you would reckon the sheep was still in there with him. He has matted shoulder length hair that makes Justin’s coiffure look like that of a Sandhurst cadet, a wooden cross round his neck and open-toed sandals revealing ten of the dirtiest little piggies that ever went ‘wiggy, wiggy, wiggy, all the way home’. In his hand is a riding crop which he twirls impatiently.

      ‘Ken!’ says Justin expansively. ‘Marvellous to see you.’ He steps over one of the hounds which is pissing against his desk, and grabbing Loser’s upper arm with one hand, pumps his mitt up and down with the other.

      ‘I see this thing as totally nihilistic,’ says Loser, shrugging him aside as if he did not exist. ‘I want everything – the orgies, the rapes, the desecration, the infanticide, the underwater lesbianism, to bring every man, woman and child in the audience face to face with the fundamental question.’

      There is a long pause in which Justin smiles and then nods briskly, as if, having considered every aspect of what has just been said, he is in total agreement with it.

      ‘What fundamental question?’ I ask.

      ‘Exactly!’ Loser’s whip crashes down on Justin’s desk and the dogs bolt across the room pulling the geezer in the chauffeur’s uniform over an armchair. ‘That’s the question, isn’t it? The question is: What is the question? I am the only genius making films today who has got the guts to ask it!’ He takes another swing at the desk, and throws his whip out of the window, before sinking into a chair and covering his face with his hands. ‘I want a cast of nonentities. I want them unspoilt, untainted. I want to pillage their experiences, to plunge my arm down their throats and eviscerate them! There must be no preconceptions to come between them and the truth. No text, no words, no script, nothing! Nothing! Nothing!’ He is practically sobbing as he snaps his fingers at his assistant. ‘Cigarette!’

      Otto nods and lights a cigarette which he inserts in the gold holder and passes to his master. Loser removes the fag and grinds it out on the back of his hand. ‘Only my third today,’ he says triumphantly, ‘I’m cutting down.’

      Blimey, but there are some funny people about aren’t there? Justin gets rid of me saying that he has some business matters to discuss with Loser and as I go through the door I see the great man tucking into a bacon sandwich he has produced from somewhere inside his sheepskin. I know the British Film Industry is going through a bad time but this is ridiculous!

      The next exciting star of stage, screen and labour exchange that I meet is Glint Thrust. He is undoubtedly one of the best looking blokes that I have ever seen and also, I reckon, one of the best looking blokes that he has ever seen. His nostrils are permanently flared and his piercing eyes filled to the brim with a kind of distant loathing as if he has just trodden in something too unspeakable to think about in the middle of the duchess’s sitting room. He is very big on suede and moves around stiffly as if his underpants are made of it. All the birds on the set think the MGM lion roars through his backside and he is not slow to capitalise on the fact. He has his own special caravan and is disposed to retire to it between takes, with a different dolly on each occasion. It is fantastic the number of birds he goes through and they say that he has ‘comfort breaks’ as he calls them, written into his contract.

      ‘I’ve got to keep in shape,’ he keeps Mumbling, flinging his arm about. ‘Booze and broads, that’s what does it. They don’t call me Glint Thrust because of the way I stick stamps on envelopes.’

      As he himself says, booze is another of Glint Thrust’s consuming interests and he gets through so much that you feel he must have parked his corpuscles in a blood bank to make room for it. How he remembers his lines is beyond me, but luckily, under Ken Loser’s direction he does not need many of them. At first I am surprised to see Glint Thrust in the film after what Loser has said in Justin’s office but after watching a few takes I can understand why Loser maintains that he is the biggest nonentity in the business. He is always scratching himself or the nearest chick and keeps nodding with his eyes closed and Mumbling ‘yep, yep yep,’ every time Loser says anything to him.

      The other key ‘property’ as Justin persists in calling her, is Dawn Lovelost, who I remember seeing on telly about the time you had it facing the street so all the neighbours knew you had one. Her face is a watercolour of a once beautiful woman painted in something a lot stronger than water. Like Glint she fancies a drop of the hard stuff and, it is rumoured, is also quite fond of a drop of the hard. Certainly four marriages suggest that she has more than a passing acquaintance with the old spam ram.

      I am surprised to find that Sandra does not have a part in the movie but Justin explains that big tits are anticulture and down market.

      ‘Show me one classical actress with big tits,’ he says. ‘Dame Sybil Thorndike, Edith Evans, Dulcie Gray; not a spare ounce of flesh on any of them.’

      Sid is still chuffed to bollocks because he is now an impresario or ‘Empress aerial’ as he prefers to call it.

      ‘What I like about it, Timmo,’ he explains, ‘is that it’s culture, isn’t it? I mean, I wasn’t too keen on all that nudie-pics nonsense when you started telling me about it, but this is different. I mean, I don’t mind watching films like that,

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