"It is sports makeup," said Ivanka. "You can wear it at work if you wish."
I asked, "So, you two ready to see porn being made? We're shooting Bekka and Rio's scene today."
Ginny said, "So how come there's only one scene with two girls in it in this movie? Why don't you make stuff us dykes can enjoy?"
I explained, "That's a niche market. Our stuff is aimed at straight males because that's who spends the most money on porn. While there is a demand for all girl-on-girl video, it would differ from actual lesbian video in its style. Straight guys wouldn't appreciate a lesbian tape. It would be like Ferrari running ads in off-road magazines. The twain never shall meet."
"This scene we're filming probably won't seem very believable to you," said Bekka. "It's fantasy. It's what straight guys like to think two girls would get up to when left to their own devices. The whole witchcraft aspect only adds to that."
"Hell, Ginny, write your own script, rent some cameras and lights, and make your own movie. It's easier to find performers than you think, and you'd be able to market your film any way you want. Give it a shot. The worst that can happen is you lose all your money."
Ginny said doubtfully, "I dunno if I could find enough exhibitionists to round out a cast...."
"A paycheck is a big motivator, too," I said. "And exhibitionism isn't that big of a factor. Properly producing a fuck scene doesn't leave a lot of room for getting one's jollies."
"One thing I've been wondering about, Lenny. Does it bother you to watch your wife make porn? I have a hard time watching Ivanka dance and work the crowd at her clubs. Seeing your wife have sex with other guys must be a challenge."
I smiled. "It's what Bekka was doing when we first met, and when we first got together. I rarely watch her perform, but I rarely watch anyone perform. I'm just the producer, I'd only be in the way. That, and I don't watch Bekka perform out of respect for the males. They tend to get nervous when the husband of the girl they're with is standing there with a gun under his arm."
Bekka added, "I have sex with other men. Lenny is the one who turns me on."
I was finishing the dishes when both Steves came in. Calm Steve went straight up to the soundstage --- no surprise, as he and I didn't like each other --- while Small Steve, our director, stopped so we could discuss the morning's shoot.
"Rio and Bekka are both professionals, so there shouldn't be a problem with shooting both the dialogue and the fuck scene all at once," he said. "At worst, we'd have to re-shoot the fuck scene again and edit them together. Is Rio here yet?"
"No, neither is Mickey. You've got time to play with the cameras. And I think I mentioned it already, but there'll be an audience today. Two girls who are into girls are going to watch Bekka and Rio have it off, they get to see what making porn is like. They're friends, and they know to stay out of the way."
Small Steve frowned. "As long as they stay against the wall, they'll be fine. We'll be moving cameras around a lot, so they can't be on the edge of the action."
"Not a problem," I said. "You tell them where you want them, they'll be fine."
"Is the one with the short bleached hair into girls only?"
I affirmed this was true.
"Damn. She's really cute."
I said, "Sorry. You're barking up the wrong lesbian. Those two are a couple."
Rio and our makeup artist Jeanette entered together, they'd taken to carpooling when they could. I told Jeanette, "Get Bekka and Rio in their makeup. As soon as we have a sound man we'll be ready to shoot. You ready for today, Rio?"
She smiled. "You bet, boss."
"Good. Really ham it up. Remember, you're scared of Bekka through that dialogue scene, to the point of panic when she zaps you with her wand. Sell it to us."
"Got it."
The shoot started. Rio entered the "shop" and began berating Bekka.
RIO: You cannot go through with your plans. The coven considers your ideas to be madness.
BEKKA: I have no plans. I have already started.
RIO: You cannot! Unleashing your powers on mortals in such a manner will only bring disaster!
BEKKA: I shall bring joy, and release, to a world in desperate need of it. Why is that so hard to grasp?
And on like that, culminating in Bekka zapping Rio with her wand (a drumstick with the tip sawed off and painted black) driving Rio into a state of lust. The girl/girl scene started from there.
Ginny and Ivanka quietly sat against the wall, taking all this in. Rio and Bekka got their dialogue shot all in one take, with no errors and a good deal of drama from both. Small Steve called "Cut" and there was a ten minute break before Rio and Bekka would start going after each other. Both were wearing black slinky semi-transparent gowns with nothing on underneath; these would be shed quickly.
Our two actresses wanted to smoke before their fuck scene, and I gathered the two girls up and brought them downstairs so I could smoke too. Bekka smiled at them and said, "So what did you think?"
Ginny said, "I don't associate actual acting with porn. Are all your productions like this?"
Bekka considered this. "Well, our loops are just fuck scenes with no plot. But even a fuck scene demands some acting skills. You can't get through a scene without pretending to be interested in what you're doing. You'll see what I mean in a few minutes."
"You sure you're comfortable with your fall the way we rehearsed it?" Rio asked Bekka.
"So long as I don't hit my head, it should be great," said Bekka.
I said, "You two are pros, so my only concern is shadows from either Steve."
"Think Small Steve will try to shoot this without any cuts?" asked Rio.
"No. There are too many close-ups, him and Calm Steve will be on the carpet with you for too much of it to shoot straight through."
"Wait a minute," said Ginny. "You guys interrupt two people having sex?"
"We have to," I said. "We've got to change cameras around, maybe adjust lighting. It's all part of movie making."
"Why do you think we call it performance?" said Bekka.
"That doesn't seem fair," Ginny grumbled.
I said, "The whole point of this exercise isn't to get the performers off, but to get the viewers off when they see the completed product. If Bekka and Rio here come on camera, great. But that's not why we go to all this trouble. And speaking of trouble, we should get back upstairs."
We went back to the soundstage and Rio and Bekka took their marks. "Bekka, do your last line, then go into action. Ready? Sound.... And action."
Bekka spoke her line, "Now you shall feel my power," and strode up to Rio, kissing her deeply and drawing her gown down to her waist. Calm Steve made half an orbit around the two of them, getting good angles with his camera. Bekka pulled Rio's gown all the way off and began going down on her, Rio leaning against a display case, giving off the requisite pants and moans. Small Steve, also using a shoulder-mounted camera, came in close on Bekka. He let her continue for several minutes before calling "Cut!"
From the sidelines, Ginny called, "Hey, no fair!" Steve spun and said, "What?"
"Just as they were getting into it, you cut them off! What the hell?"
Steve muttered, "We're changing camera angles. I'm gonna be over Rio's shoulder."
Looking over from between Rio's thighs, Bekka said to Ginny, "This isn't sex, it's performance. We've tried to explain that to you."
I walked over to where the two girls were sitting and said, "I thought we'd gone over this. Small Steve wants to get a different camera angle, so he called cut. Like Bekka said, this isn't sex. You're going to be seeing plenty of cuts, that's how we get things done. If this bothers you, you may want to go sit by the pool for a while. Do you understand?"
Ginny looked up at me with contrition. "Sorry. It just seemed like they were really getting into it."
"It wouldn't matter if they were both on the edge of ripping really good ones. Steve is the director, and he calls shots as he sees them."
"I'll be quiet. You guys are the pros here." Ivanka put her hand on her shoulder, and she leaned back against the wall again. I stood on the edge of the action with my script in hand.
The rest of the shoot went swimmingly, with the afternoon's dialogue scenes yet to come. Bekka and Rio got off the floor to applause from Ivanka and Ginny. Bekka draped her gown over the back of a chair, announcing her need for a shower and some lunch. "Care to join us?" I asked Rio.
"Sure," she said. "Triplets, like usual?"
"Absolutely. Steve, what time should we be back?"
He considered his watch and said, "No later than one." Rio trotted down the hall to take her own shower.
"Can I bring back anything for you and Calm Steve?" I asked.
"Sure, bring us each a Reuben sandwich with french fries," he said.
"Not a problem. Let me go see if Jeanette wants anything."
The five of us got a table at the back. Our favorite waitress, Renee, brought us menus and asked how the day's filming was going.
"Smooth sailing," said Bekka. "Me and Rio just did a scene." Renee took our drink orders and whisked away.
"So, what do you think of making porn so far?" asked Rio of Ivanka and Ginny. "Is it all the magic you expected of it?"
"It is much more involved than I would have thought," said Ivanka.
Ginny said, "You guys put a lot more thought and effort into it than I would have expected. And remind me to apologize to your director. You and Bekka seemed to really be getting into it, and I thought it sucked that you'd be interrupted. If I made porn, my actors would be allowed to follow through on what they were doing."
"I'm glad you like our acting," said Bekka. "We try to keep scenes real, not oversell them. If we convinced you we were having a good time, and you were in the room, then it should look good on tape."
"Weren't you having a good time?" asked Ginny.
Rio said, "We were, up to a point. Bekka and I both enjoy girl/girl scenes, and that's why we were selected to play the roles we did."
"Are you into girls in real life?"
"Sort of," said Bekka. "I'm married to a man I love now, so it's a moot point. I've already tried to inadvertently wreck our marriage, and I'm never doing that again."
"How did you wreck your marriage to Lenny?" asked Ivanka.
"Oh.... Lenny was out of town on business, and I rekindled an old fling. Lenny came home early and caught us. You may have noticed he never speaks to our second cameraman? That's who it was with. It was stupid weakness on my part, I felt lonely, and Steve and I had been hooking up since well before I even met Lenny. Like I said, stupid weakness."
I said, "It was the first --- and hopefully last --- time I ever pointed a gun at someone in anger."
Ginny asked, "And all the other times you've pointed a gun at someone?"
"Those were either in self defense or matters of practicality. When somebody is holding information you need, convincing them just how unhealthy they'll get if they don't cough up always works. I've spent damn little time pulling the trigger, though."
"Bekka here has killed. Have you?"
"No. I've crippled a man, my former boss. He's in prison for attempted murder. I severed both his femurs with a Beretta firing hollow-point bullets. When that happens, it fragments a lot of the bone, and they have to put you back together with pins. Even if he gets off crutches, he'll walk funny for the rest of his life."
Ginny looked amazed. "Why did you have to shoot him?"
"Because he was going to shoot me," I said. "He'd just shot my friend Vinny, who you've met, and was turning the gun at me. Rick hates me, for various reasons. There was no choice in the matter, so I fanned my Beretta at him. If I hadn't, I'd be dead, and various members of the Inana family would be too, including Bekka. There's no doubt in my mind she was his next target."
"You two seem to have lived quite the violent life."
"Not by choice," said Bekka. "Shit always seems to happen around us."
"Maybe if you guys didn't carry the guns...."
I responded, "If we didn't carry the guns we'd be dead. Every time either of us has pulled a trigger outside a firing range it's been in self-defense. People who want to kill us. There's no bargaining in those situations."
Bekka said, "I've never shot first, and neither has Lenny. Those situations were dictated by other people."
"I'm planning on buying a little gun for my purse," said Rio. "I'm starting to be recognized on the street, thanks to the video box art and my photo spread in Fox. I'll feel safer for it."
"Oh! I'll take you shopping," said Bekka.
"I'd appreciate it. I don't want to spend too much money on something that doesn't work right."
"So are you having another sex scene this afternoon?" asked Ivanka.
Bekka said, "No. We're doing two dialogue scenes, one with Chip and Dale, the other with Vince and Elspeth. We've already shot one of the scenes, but looking at the rushes we decided it could be better, it needed to be punched up, given more life. If you two want to go to the beach again this would be a good day, since it's going to be real boring to watch. No sex."
"Are we allowed to watch another sex scene?"
"Do you want to?"
"I'll leave that up to you guys," muttered Ginny. "Cocks kind of gross me out."
"Then you won't like watching what we're shooting next week," I said. "It's all straight stuff from here on out."
We finished our lunches, I gathered up the to go orders, and we headed back to Inana.
"I have to admit," said Ginny, "making porn is a lot different than what I thought it would be."
"How so?" I asked.
"I dunno, I expected there to be a lot more giggling."
Bekka said, "We only giggle when it's scripted. We're allowed to smile, though."
No comments:
Post a Comment