by Howie Gordon
I didn’t envy Seka trying to wear those two hats at once. And I didn’t envy Spinelli either, his position of trying to direct her. The two of them had some nasty go-rounds. I got stuck in the middle a lot working as a bridge. It was a thankless job. They both expected my total allegiance.
On one occasion in Seka’s dressing room, the name-calling got so bad that I just excused myself and told them that I’d be in my dressing room when they were finished. I should have done more of that.
Spinelli was pissed at me for getting involved at all. He figured that she might think she had an ally and that would make her stronger. I don’t think it ever even dawned on him that I actually agreed with her position, over his, any number of times. Sam was fond of saying, “When you work for me, you take the first bullet.” I had always tried to back him up. Sam treasured loyalty.
But this film was a different story. It was muddy. As far as I could see, the conflicts were really all just about power. The cause of an argument over some movie detail would rapidly degenerate into a confrontation of just who was gonna get their way. As an experienced director, Spinelli was a heavyweight champion at this kind of infighting. But Seka, well, she was the knockout with the knockout power. She was new at taking over the management of her professional life and was enjoying using the power of her box office. Their backstage squabbles should have been on Pay-Per-View. Probably was a better movie than the one we were making. Certainly didn’t lack for any genuine passion.
I think it was a huge job for Seka to be directed by Spinelli after a whole career where, basically, the sex had been enough. It was a three week shoot. That was a long time for an X-rated movie. I think it just wore her down. I think she got tired of being vulnerable. I think she got tired of taking orders. Every now and then, she just had to assert the power that she knew she had and go against Spinelli. And when that happened, she was not gentle. These were two very tough birds. It was often messy.
The Lioness and the Rabbit
I didn’t want to do that first sex scene on the first day. I wanted more time on the set to get used to things again. I wanted more time to get to know Seka. I was overruled.
I hadn’t been on a movie set in nine months. That was a long time.
We started shooting that day at one-thirty in the afternoon. It was Friday, August 12. It was a hot, hot day in Bob Vosse’s old San Francisco soundstage and things were not going well.
We were just gonna quickly do a couple of dialogue scenes before the sex, but we managed to keep screwing them up. When the actors were good, the cameras were bad. Throw in a mix of sound problems, lighting problems, and Sam just not being happy with a take problems, and people were getting downright cranky. Next thing you know, it was nine o’clock at night and we had to stop farting around, relight the set, and do our big sex scene. Take a breath.
I was nervous. I was nervous. I was nervous. These were performance jitters. Did I tell you that I was nervous? I was nervous. Seka was Secretariat. This was the Kentucky Derby. And the sad truth was, I was not ready to ride her in this race.
I thought I was prepared. I had trained hard. I knew all my lines. My body was beautiful. I’d even had my fingernails manicured. I’d heard that Seka had this thing about guys with dirty fingernails. Mine were all cleaned, trimmed, and pretty. I hadn’t had an orgasm in four days. I should have been able to fuck a Volkswagen. But ya know what?
Lust was a feeling that had first wavered when Carly and I got pregnant and then vanished completely during all the 3 a.m. feedings. And now, we were pregnant again. I hadn’t had sex on camera in nine months and the last time had been that disastrous epic with Colleen in Svetlana’s movie. I was not eager for the erotic combat. I had no confidence. I felt like Samson after the haircut. I was not ready for another trial by ordeal.
This was like beginning the baseball season with a Game Seven of the World Series. Seka was the American League Champ. I was supposed to be the National League Champ. This was supposed to be a big sex scene in a big movie! They were paying me a lot of money. I was supposed to be a star. I was trying to run here with Jamie Gillis and John Leslie. I was supposed to know how to do this. I was supposed to go up to the plate and get a big clutch hit here with men on base.
I was being asked to have sex with Seka! Good God, she was this amazing lioness! You want to know what the problem was? I’ll tell you what the problem was:
It was now Showtime and I rolled the dice. I was hoping to be Studly DoRight or Randy Cowboy or Billy the Bone and what I came up with…was Bunny Gardenia! You ever been Bunny Gardenia? He was a fucking rabbit! This sex scene was gonna be “the lioness and the fucking rabbit!”
“Woe was me!” I did not know what to do. I was too revved up. Is this too much information? Can you stand to know this about a man?
I needed to calm down. I needed a game changer. Okay, I took a half of Valium.
I should have talked to somebody. I should have talked to Seka, or Sam, or even called Carly, but I didn’t. I mean, who wanted to hear the cowboy sing a song of fear?
Asshole! Stupid! Fuck! Shit! Piss! The Valium was a terrible idea! It didn’t relax me at all. It stunned me. It was like getting hit in the head with a hammer. I got nauseated and dizzy. It was hot. It was so hot! It was hard for me to walk. I had to lie down. I had to realize that taking the half of Valium had rendered me even less capable than I was before I took it! Dumb! Dumb! Dumb!
I wanted only to lie down and not be hot any more. I didn’t want to have to do anything. For the moment, forget about how I got here, but the idea that I was waiting to do a sex scene was just plain cruel…to me…to Seka…to Spinelli, and to the whole damn movie. Ladies and gentlemen, I fucked up.
I tried sleeping. Runaway bunny. I couldn’t fall asleep, but I tried to rest myself and calm myself down. I tried contacting my penis. “Hello? Anybody home?”
Somebody was there, but they were not answering the front door. They were upstairs and they were groggy. I worried. I had to wake them up. I ate a little. Sugar, I figured, get some quick energy. I had a piece of wretched chocolate cake and some apple juice.
If Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra had been around back then, I would have thrown them all in a blender with some orange juice and a banana and made myself a sexual smoothie. Fear and stupidity can make for dangerous allies. Probably would have ended up in the hospital.
Then the call came to get into makeup.
Put up or shut up. Susan the makeup lady began to work on me. After a while, I told her that I was feeling very, very far away and nauseated. I was too embarrassed to mention the Valium, but I did tell her that I didn’t know if I could do the scene.
Susan, very nurse-like, said, “Well, that doesn’t sound like you,” and she put a cold compress on my neck and shoulders. Seka came by. I told her that I was not in great shape. I was apologetic. Next thing I knew, Spinelli was hovering. I “suggested” that he might want to have a contingency plan ready to shoot something else because I didn’t know if I could make it. He told me to let him know as soon as I could tell.
The next thing I knew, Seka and I were in bed.
We were kissing. I was scared. I was listening to a lot of different radio broadcasts going off in my head. I liked Seka, though. I thought she was my buddy.
Y’know, all these years later, it’s apparent to me that I was so self-absorbed in my own internal dilemmas at that point, that I had absolutely no idea what Seka was going through when we shot this scene. I’m going to ask her to please tell her side of this story. And if she’s willing, I promise that I’ll put it in here, right next to mine.
So, we were kissing and I didn’t know if they were filming us or not. The scene was supposed to have started with some dialogue, but we never did it. We were just kissing.
Then we touched each other’s genitals a bit. Actually, we rubbed our legs over each other’s private parts. She was wearing a matching blue bra and panties. I had on my birthday suit, augmented by body makeup.
“Deck,” I said, “not dick.” But that too actually. For while I fumbled with this new piece of woman flesh, I lost what little arousal that had come to pass.
When my dick shriveled, I had a conversation with myself that began with, Uh-Oh, and continued on with me wondering if, and how, my erection was ever going to be coming back. All this happened while I was fumbling to be pleasuring her female parts with my left hand. Y’know, sometimes, you can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. I don’t think I looked her in the eye very much.
Somehow, after a bit, I found myself sucking her vulva.
I was a “vulvasucker!” Now, there’s a term you don’t hear all the time. “Cocksuckers” are everywhere, even on Showtime and HBO. But I don’t care how much cable you watch, you’re not likely to hear about too many “vulvasuckers,” not even on The L Word! “Muffdivers,” maybe, but not too many “vulvasuckers.” Alas, I digress…
I found myself sucking her vulva. All of it. Anything. I was fishing for her response and looking hard. I was trying not to look or lick too hard, but just be soft, and finding something that I could feel she liked.
I’m workin’ here! I’m workin’ here!
Man, I was nibbling and nervous. I had no idea what the cameras were doing and it seemed like six months since I had last heard from Spinelli. After maybe twenty minutes more of me sucking her, my dick wasn’t hard yet and I didn’t know nothin’. I imagined that they were sick of this position, but were either being too shy or too nice to say anything.
When I added my fingers to the pussylicking, I discovered the hard stubble of my beard. It had been twelve hours since my last shave.
“Oh, my God!” I thought, “I’ve been torturing this poor woman with sandpaper chin and she’s been either too shy or too nice to say anything.”
I covered the stubble with my hand and tried to use only my tongue. my lips, and my teeth as the oral sex continued.
Seka later told me that she’d had an orgasm during this time. For vanity’s sake, I certainly wanted to believe her, but I was all twelve of Santa’s reindeer when we shot this scene and I had no idea what was real.
Okay. I knew we had to change positions. Even if nobody was saying anything, I still knew it. So I came up her body and we fell into another kiss. By now, I should have been hard and I should have been fucking her. I wasn’t and we weren’t. I started fingering her again. One improvises and waits for the gods to decide. I wanted her to touch me back. She did…with kind of a feathery touch. It wasn’t enough. I wanted her to squeeze me hard, yank me, pull me. She did me one better. She journeyed down my body and took my cock in her mouth.
Well, Halle-fucking-lujah! I felt a breath come into my body like I hadn’t been breathing at all.
Still, I didn’t harden right away and I fought the fear of knowing that. I tried to stop panic. Breathe. The warmth was good. I knew that if this sex scene was gonna happen at all, this was gonna be my best shot. I remembered Carly’s advice from the early days, “Stick to what feels good.” I began to move my hips. There was more breath, deeper breath. I pumped. She sucked.
Trickle. A trickle of pleasure was breaking through the panic. I remembered the word, “yes.” Seka, God bless her, she worked me. It was slow going, but she worked me fine. Brick by brick, she dutifully built that boner.
The moment of truth was soon at hand. Would I survive the withdrawal from her mouth and remain hard enough to enter her vagina? It was like a football play, breaking the huddle and then rushing to the line of scrimmage.
“Hike!”
I made it! I was in. Now, pump, you motherfucker, pump for your life! All systems were go! Houston, we have lift off. Ride ‘em, cowboy! Bunny Geranium was in the saddle! “I’m an old cowhand on the Rio Grande.”
Seka was a thoroughbred. It was a sprint. The ride was short and sweet. They got enough footage and that was that. The rest of it was for us. The come shot was gonna be inside. This was a very un-porn like miracle. I always hated pulling out and squirting for the cameras. I thought that it was a crime against Man, Woman, God, and Nature, and good taste. We weren’t gonna do that today. The come shot was gonna be inside. I saw the finish line.
The cameras were probably on our faces when I came. I hope we had the good sense not to be acting.
Right afterwards, I whispered in Seka’s ear that we should redo this whole scene tomorrow. I was apologetic. I thought the scene was nothing. Chaotic. Bizarre. Out to lunch.
But, no, people were saying, “Fine!” Seka and I were dripping with sweat. They gave us towels.
I didn’t know. I couldn’t believe it. How could they use that scene? I was astonished. The camera people said they had all kinds of coverage. They got coverage? Where was I? I got nuts! I thought that Seka was surprised at how looney I was.
That was it. Ricky, the production manager, told me it was a wrap. He said I should come back tomorrow to finish the dialogue scene that we didn’t get to today. I was going to get an extra day of work out of this! He told me to go home and relax.
I know I promised you a long time ago that I would take you on no more long drawn-out tales of my misadventures with my dick, but, frankly, I don’t see how this one could have been avoided.
As filming on this movie progressed, we all had better days, much better days. I even got a second chance at a sex scene with Seka.
Coming down the home stretch, Sam got worried there wasn’t gonna be enough sex in the film. He wanted to add one more sex scene and he wanted Seka to be in it. For whatever reasons, her first response was to go ballistic on him. They were off to the races again. Eventually, they resolved it with a compromise. I had nothing to do with it. Seka agreed to do another sex scene—if she could pick her partner and—if she would get to orchestrate the scene. Spinelli agreed.
Seka chose me to be her partner, thank you very much. And she wanted to do the entire sex scene under the covers. Wow!
The other side of exhibitionism is the resentment for the intrusion. And after years of having spotlights and cameras up your ass, the resentment sure can build. A whole sex scene under the covers! This may have been a very childish act, but I was all for it. We had so much fun. I’ve never seen the scene, but I’ll bet it plays real hot. It was such a grand tease.
It was late in the shoot. There were no performance jitters. We’d been on the set daily for more than two weeks. We knew each other. We knew what we were doing. It was kind of like taking a victory lap.
Funny thing, I had a video camera I’d been bringing to the set all through this movie. I actually have about six hours of backstage video from Sunny Days. Sometimes, when I was in a scene, I’d get somebody who was just hanging around the set to shoot some footage for me. When this sex scene started, I had Sam’s son, Mitch, running my camera. It was on a tripod right next to the big film camera. Together they both shot the dialogue set-ups to the sex and then Mitch thought he turned my camera off. He didn’t want to shoot the sex scene, or be in the way, or whatever, so, he turned off the camera, got up, and walked away.
Well, two things happened. First of all, the camera was left still recording. And secondly, when he walked away, he bumped the camera. Now, instead of being focused on the bed, it was focused on a night table, next to the bed, with a lamp on it. As the scene progresses, you hear the noises of our lovemaking and see the lamp begin to move from our gyrations on the bed. A tremor becomes a wiggle and then a shake as this continues throughout the entire sex scene.
It’s like a film that was shot by Andy Warhol in 1964. It could win a prize at some Eastern European art festival.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
On August 25, I was hanging out with the mo
vie crowd in Seka’s room back at the hotel. I called home to check in with Carly. She told me that she had just received the results from our amniocentesis tests. At five months, we had a healthy female fetus growing nicely in Carly’s womb.
Juliana was gonna have a sister. Polly was on the way./p>
Chapter Thirty-Nine
By the time we wrapped Sunny Days after all the filming in San Francisco and Chicago, it had become something that cast and crew were all very proud of and eager to see completed and released.
As you already know, that hasn’t happened.
At one point, before everything irrevocably blew up, Seka was invited to be a guest on a talk show hosted by Alan Thicke. He was another late night wannabe who got clobbered in head-to-head competition with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. But before they cancelled him, Thicke had Seka on his show in a bold attempt to attract some ratings.
I’m glad he did because Seka brought with her a clip from Sunny Days. It is the only footage I’ve ever seen from the movie. I managed to record it off the TV. In it, we were just strolling down the lakefront in Chicago and talking about love. It was very sweet. And it was great to see us on television in that mainstream spot.
We had crazy high expectations for this film. I had crazy high expectations for this film. I expected it to take my career to the next level, whatever that was gonna be, and I expected that soon I would be making a whole lot more money for my young and growing family.
Oopsie!
Sunny Days became a phantom, a ghost of what it might have been that now only haunts itself. Very few people in the industry remember it and most people have never even heard of it, but I contend that it remains…
