Chapter 16: Preview

I WAS CONCERNED about my afternoon appointment. The students had already shown they liked the show with Michael. I wasn’t sure how they’d respond to a female posing.

Fortunately, Adrienne had scheduled only two a day. With the time I took posing and getting the pictures, plus the time we spent answering questions with the students attending the shoot, two a day was the maximum I could do. My afternoon session was with an actress named Isabella Rivera. Beautiful black-haired Spanish girl with a trace of accent, but not so much that you’d identify where she was from. I knew because she told me.

“Isabella, are you here of your own free will, without being coerced by anyone?”

“Oh, yes. I met Adrienne and she showed me your portfolio. I want a picture like that.”

“I’ll let you explain that a little more as we get going. You’re aware that there are photography students who will be watching our session together? How do you feel about that?” I asked.

“I’m very nervous, Nate. I want the glamorous photo like I saw in your book, but I have never taken my clothes off in front of people before. Will that make me an exotic dancer?” she asked.

“Oh, no. I am not going to ask you to undress for the students. That is strictly between you and me. We aren’t here to entertain them. I will shield you from their eyes as much as possible. In posing you and getting your clothes off when necessary, I may touch you intimately. I will try not to be too intrusive, but I want to create a connection with you so that you think of the camera as your lover.”

“I will not have sex with you,” she said firmly. “I have a boyfriend.”

“I don’t have sex with models and never have sex in the studio,” I sighed. “I do not shoot pornography. But those touches might be what turns a snapshot into a work of art.”

“The pictures of these girls in your portfolio ... You touched them all intimately?”

“Most of them.”

“Could you wash your hands first?”

I looked at her a little surprised and puzzled, then saw a gleam in her eye. She finally chuckled a little.

“For you, anything, my dear Isabella,” I said.

“If we are going to be intimate, you should probably call me Izzy.”

I did wash my hands.

We started with standard portraiture. Like with Michael, I tried to get a portrait that would be unique and not just look like a high school yearbook photo. Nothing against them. I’d taken hundreds. It felt like Hollywood needed something more.

I took a couple of shots and then moved her to the low stool. I draped the high stool with black cloth and set it in front of her, then had her fold her arms on it and lean forward.

“I don’t want you actually resting your chin on your arms,” I said. “We don’t want to squash any of your features. That’s good. Now let’s tilt your head a little.”

Through all my instructions, I touched her, adjusting her arms and head, then stroking the corner of her mouth with my finger to get her lips to turn up just a little. I took the picture and then went behind the privacy screen with her to look at what clothes she had brought. I asked her to change into an off-the-shoulder dress and returned to the set to look into the trunks Gary had packed for me.

I immediately saw the sense of how he’d packed the trunks. This one had a decidedly more feminine look to it. Not that I’d hesitate to use something from the other trunk in working with a woman, but the items in this trunk were more delicate and artistic. I pulled out a music box and looked at it. It had a little popup ballerina and played something from ‘Swan Lake.’ My sister Deb had one a lot like this.

When Izzy emerged, she looked delightful. But her bra straps were showing over her shoulders. I led her back behind the screen.

“Izzy, honey, we can’t have the bra straps up over your shoulders like that. We need to take it off.” I was behind her and already unclipping the bra. She sighed and shrugged out of the straps.

“My tetas will show.”

I stepped in front of her. Yes, her very dark nipples and areola showed through the white dress.

“They’re lovely,” I said. I gently lifted each breast and felt how firm it was. “No wobble or distraction. This will make it easier when the dress comes off for the bedroom scene, don’t you think?”

She caught her breath.

“I did say I wanted that. This is like an intermediary step, isn’t it? Just don’t make a big thing out of them.”

“No, they’re the perfect size as they are,” I chuckled.

She hugged me and started to giggle.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

I led her to the setting and presented her with the music box. She was delighted. I positioned her and changed the lighting slightly, then got behind the camera. We went through half a dozen poses, and her ‘tetas’ weren’t really visible in any of them. I had my assistants roll the bed onto the setting and changed to a red backdrop. Then I draped bits of fabric from every available hook, pole, or rod. Dana, my second assistant, who was working primarily on lighting, cautioned me about getting fabric too close to the lights.

“Do you think we could position a light low behind the bed that shines up and illuminates the drapery from behind? Kind of makes it glow?” I asked her.

“Oh, yeah. That would be cool,” she answered.

She went to work as I made up the bed and had Elliot find me more pillows. I wanted the bed to look as much like a painting by Rubens or Renoir or Watteau as I could make it. My sister had educated me about those artists the previous summer when she was painting Julie and Kathleen. Drapes seemed to fall out of anyplace in some of their paintings. When I felt the scene was set, I got Izzy from behind the privacy screen and led her to the bed. She still had the music box in her hands.

“I took off my braguitas,” she whispered to me. “I hope you weren’t planning to do that yourself.”

I looked at her questioningly.

“My panties,” she explained.

Ah! So, she was planning on becoming fully nude for her Attic Allure scene. I knew now the direction the afternoon was going. The full skirt of her dress made the presence or absence of panties a moot point. I picked her up, to her surprise, and laid her gently on the bed in the position I wanted her.

“Picking you up keeps your clothes from being twisted around as you get in position on the bed,” I said. “We will get to your full nude, but it will take us a few shots. It might be one of the earlier pictures that becomes a work of art.”

“I have come to trust you, Nate. I know you are working for the perfect photograph. That is what I want.”

It took an hour of shooting and adjusting her position before I had her dress completely off. In that time, she’d become comfortable with the students seeing her body and with me touching her. I decided to try something different for me. I removed all the furniture, props and drapery and just pulled out the white drop. This would require some very careful lighting.

Izzy had a thick black bush of hair, but it had been shaped so it didn’t escape the region where it was supposed to be. I had her sit on the floor and lean back on her hands, carefully arranging her long hair so it flowed down to the floor. I lifted her legs at the knee so one foot was extended and the other pointed just under the first knee. I stroked her stomach as I whispered to her.

“Think passion, love. Throw your head back in ecstasy. This will show you as the incredibly sexy woman you are.”

The words were like magic.

“Miss Rivera,” one of the women in the class said, “how could you tolerate being assaulted by Mr. Hart? His hands were all over you!”

I cringed. Izzy had consented to answer some questions, but I wasn’t expecting to be accused of assault. I looked over to her and just held my hands up in surrender.

“Uh ... I don’t think you understand,” Izzy said. “Nate and I talked before we ever started posing and nothing he did was outside our agreement.”

“But that’s so demeaning!”

“No, honey. It was not demeaning. I am a feminist, but I didn’t put aside being a woman to become one. What Nate told me was that I needed to look at the camera as if it was my lover. I couldn’t do that. It’s a thing. I had to look at Nate as if he were my lover. He made it possible and I know you will see the love in my eyes when you see the pictures.”

“But...”

“I think that question has been answered,” a faculty person I hadn’t met interrupted. “Other questions for Nate or Miss Rivera?”

Everyone was suddenly quiet and started packing up their notebooks. I turned to Izzy and she smashed herself against me and gave me a deep and intense kiss.

“I always like to kiss my lover,” she said. Then she grabbed her bag and departed.

That set the tempo for the next two days. I had two models on Tuesday and one on Wednesday before I had to leave for the preview Wednesday afternoon. As a last session, members of the classes that had watched could line up for a photo. I spent a few minutes commenting about each person and they were allowed to pick a prop from the trunks if they wanted one. I tried to quickly pose them in a way that would suit their prop. Then I popped a picture of them. I only used the Hasselblad for this as I didn’t want to waste a bunch of 4x5 film on students.

“Does it really help if you touch your models?” the girl who’d complained twice this week asked when it was her turn.

“It’s a matter of building a connection in a rather limited timeframe,” I said. “When we’re going for a work of art and not just a snapshot, the model and I need to be completely in sync. When I move, he or she needs to move with me.”

“And it’s not just because you like to feel girls up?”

“The pleasure of touching a woman—and a woman’s pleasure at being touched—is a side benefit,” I chuckled. “I won’t deny that I enjoy it.”

“You can touch me.”

I noticed the prop she’d chosen was an old western bullwhip. Telling.

“We aren’t really doing that kind of photo,” I said. “While I don’t doubt that the experience would be pleasurable for at least one of us, it isn’t necessary in this instance.”

“I’m not a lesbian feminist,” she justified herself, opening her shirt so it hung like an invitation to caress her boobs. She might not be a lesbian feminist, but she was definitely a bra-burner.

“It wouldn’t make a difference if you were,” I said, adjusting her shirt so one nipple peeked out. As long as she was offering them, I’d at least get a photo of one. “One of my girlfriends is a lesbian.”

“One of them? How does that work?”

“Other than making me a kind of honorary lesbian?” I laughed. I stepped back and focused the camera. “In the course of our relationship—which started with us sharing a girlfriend—she discovered that she likes girls. And me. And I love her to the end of the world.”

She pulled her shirt open fully and faced the camera. I took another picture.

“Show her my picture and see if she’d like you to bring me home with you. We could share.”

That ended my session. Adrienne had the rest of my camera equipment packed and we hustled out to the limo to get to the theater.

We were in plenty of time at the Gordon Theatre just off Wiltshire and Melrose, but there were already people lined up to get in.

“What is all this?” I asked. “I thought this was just a preview.”

“Oh, it is,” Adrienne said.

She pointed to the marquee that announced, “Sneak Preview: Over Exposure.” We went straight to the front of the line and Adrienne showed our passes. We were escorted right inside.

“It’s a test showing,” Adrienne continued. “We get in first, but the theatre will fill with actual paying customers who will get to see the director’s cut. They will also fill out a survey before the eight o’clock feature showing.”

We were shown into the auditorium where we saw nearly a hundred people already gathered. I hadn’t seen any of the production crew or actors since I got to LA. Fran squealed and ran to me for a hug and kiss. I shook hands with Bert, Reg, and Frank. We were seated just about center in the theater that must have seated close to a thousand people. The doors opened and film-goers flooded the theater.

“Isn’t this exciting?” Fran said as she clutched my arm on one side and I held Adrienne’s hand on the other side.

“Pretty overwhelming for a kid from Chicago,” I said. “Don’t mind me if I go to sleep. It’s been a long week already.”

“I’ll just poke you whenever I’m on screen so you’re awake for those parts,” she giggled.

There were previews of coming attractions, and a five-minute cartoon that featured a cat. No dialog, just stupid situations as the hapless cat tried unsuccessfully to catch a mouse. Then dramatic music played as the titles ran over a view of Tenbrook—Otter Falls in the movie—and the camera panned upward to the window of my studio. As the camera zoomed in to the window, it cross-faded to the studio set I’d taken pictures on during filming. One of the actresses I remembered was being photographed by Joe. As titles continued to run, we watched him stroke her cheek and unbutton her blouse, ending with her leaning back with her breasts exposed and the camera’s click.

Then we were into the ‘action.’ Only there wasn’t really much action for the next twenty minutes as Joe talked to his various photography clients and seduced another.

There were some exciting parts. The truck accident in Otter Falls was spectacular. It plowed into a tractor with a wagonload of hay, which burst into spectacular flames. We saw Joe out photographing the scene and then newspaper pictures of the bodies of the farmer and the truck driver lying on the road or draped over the wheel of the truck. I guess it was to show that Joe was a serious photographer who got the photos for the newspaper.

I’d been living on coffee all morning and two hours into the movie, I needed to pee. They’d just gotten to the point of the murder being committed. Damn, it was long. I excused myself down a row of crew and headed out to the bathroom.

I met Lyle in the restroom.

“Reg has a vision,” he sighed. “But damn, it’s long. The best part of the movie is me sleeping with Sally Jane. They’ll have to cut that to pass the censors. It wasn’t all that interesting anyway, and I slept with her!”

“You actually slept with Lorna?” I asked.

“Yeah. She has a thing about sleeping with all her co-stars. I was just one more notch on her bedpost. She really does up the juvie thing. Thinks every guy wants to sleep with a twelve-year-old. I’ll be just as happy when she gets her boobs done. If she lets her pubes grow, it will be almost like sleeping with an adult.”

“I suppose I should get back in for the big reveal,” I said. “They brought me all the way out here to see this.”

“Yeah. I’m out of here. Lost interest already. See you around, Nate.”

I went back into the theater and crawled over people to get to my seat. The whole last hour of the movie was pretty good. They brought in Clint McCullough to play the FBI agent who ultimately cracks the case, but local police, played by a couple of lesser known actors, stayed unconvinced, even after the case was closed. With the look Joe gives Jenny in the last scene, you just know he’s thinking about killing her, too.

Three hours and fifteen minutes.

Adrienne and I headed for our limo and dinner at the The Brown Derby. I guess after the sneak preview, the execs wanted to be where they could be seen celebrating. I saw actors and actresses I almost recognized. That is, they looked familiar, but I found out quickly that in Hollywood actors don’t look the same on the street when they aren’t in costume and makeup. I guess if I was a real devotee of any of them, or if I lived here, I’d learn to recognize them more quickly. The way it was, I’d look at an actor and think, He looks like that guy in Star Trek with the pointy ears. I didn’t remember the name, nor was I really sure if this was the same character.

What a thing living with that would be. Can you just imagine people going to a movie or watching a television show and seeing some master spy or something and saying, ‘Oh yeah. That’s the Star Trek guy.’

Bert, Frank, and Reg were already counting the money they’d be making from this movie. Some of the less senior people on the staff were wearing grim expressions. Geraldine, George, Chrystal, and Dave were all downing drinks. To get some courage or to make them numb. I didn’t know which.

“Well, what do you think, Nate?” Reg asked as we settled in for the famous Cobb salads.

“Um ... I’m not really a movie critic,” I said. “The photo sequences seemed realistic enough.”

“Come on. Every person in that theater today is a critic. What are we going to hear?” Frank asked.

“Um ... It needs an intermission or something. I had to get up just as he was committing the murder to use the restroom,” I said.

“And that’s a great scene!” Bert said. “You really captured it there, Reg.”

“What else, Nate?”

“I appreciate you really keeping the story off me. Anyone who knows me and sees the movie will immediately say, ‘That’s not Nate.’ I kind of wish it wasn’t set in Tenbrook, though. Makes the village look like a real—What’s that movie that’s synonymous with gossipy people sleeping with everyone?”

“Peyton Place?” Adrienne offered.

“Yeah. Anyway, it’s not very kind to Tenbrook and the town is filled with really good people. I wish it showed more of that.”

“Okay. That’s fair,” Reg said. “I could be convinced to add a scene of people just helping each other. We’ve got footage like that, don’t we, Geraldine?”

“Yes, Reg, but that would make the whole thing longer,” the script supervisor said.

“Hey, another fifteen minutes and we can cut it in two and make it a movie with a sequel,” Frank laughed. “Two for the price of one.”

And that was how dinner went. It was mostly the three top guys congratulating each other. I was glad to get home and fall into Adrienne’s bed. She gave me a really nice massage, but I fell asleep before I could make love to her.

I was always thankful when these corporate meetings began ‘first thing in the morning’ California time. First thing for these guys was usually around ten o’clock and that gave me time to make love to Adrienne and do a good thorough job of it.

Adrienne had a new suit for me in her closet and dressed me up for the meeting. When I looked in the mirror, I could almost believe that the clean-shaved face in the navy blue suit was a movie professional and not a kid from Illinois. Adrienne emerged from the bedroom looking sort of professional in a wool suit. If the skirt was a little shorter than might be found in most of corporate America, that was offset by the absence of a blouse under the neatly buttoned jacket that gapped open tantalizingly.

Lest anyone doubt our relationship, she wore her Fifi collar and the gold chain looped around her neck and dangling between her boobs.

“Are you intentionally dangling your sexuality in front of the producers?” I asked. I was joking, but Adrienne stiffened.

“I will change if you so desire,” she said. “And I will bring you a paddle if you wish to punish me.”

Hmm. I wondered if instead of dangling her sexuality in front of the producers, she was actually making an invitation for me to punish her. By her posture, I was guessing the latter.

“We don’t have time for any of that now. I won’t have you making me late for the meeting. If Frank or Reg maneuver for position so they can see inside your jacket, you will simply have to endure having them stare at your titties,” I said.

“Yes, master. I will endure. Whatever punishment you feel is needed, I will endure.”

We headed for the limo.

“Well, I can’t say the comment cards were encouraging,” George said. “We got some good comments about the cinematography and the realism of the scenes, but there were also a lot of ‘boring’ comments.”

“Okay. We’ll get to all those comments in a bit,” Frank said. “There’s just one we need to deal with off the bat. Adrienne, what does the boss say?”

Adrienne pulled a fax out of her purse. I’d heard it come in sometime in the middle of the night. I was vaguely aware of Adrienne getting out of bed to pick up the phone.

“He has just a few comments,” she said looking down at the fax. “1. Cut an hour. 2. Cut any scene that will get us an X rating—especially the underage titties. 3. Move the murder to the title sequence.”

She folded the fax and put it back in her purse, then looked up at the group at the table.

“That’s all?” Frank sighed.

“That’s all he put in the fax. I talked to him about one o’clock this morning,” Adrienne said. “He said Lombardi can keep this copy as a ‘director’s cut’ but can’t release it for five years. He said, ‘Tell Slocum he’s not F. Scott fucking Fitzgerald. Action, not words.’ And he said Loras had better want to make money from this project and not just think it’s an artistic success. He doesn’t say much. Those were his comments.”