Maggie learned to take it for granted that once the days of the interview were over there would be no more sexual contact. At first she thought there might be a carry-over into real life, but she found out that unless she was actively working on an article about him, an actor was not about to have an affair with just another magazine writer. As far as they were concerned, once the interview was over she fell into the category of super-groupie, cute but not to be taken seriously.
Each month brought a new assignment, a new notch for her belt, a new name for her private collection. Although she was a small-town Jewish girl, who had once had small-town Jewish values, Maggie’s sexual adventures with stars never seemed to her to violate anything she had learned at home. They had nothing to do with love or commitment or caring. It was one of the perquisites of her growing talent. Still, something about it bothered her, although not enough to make her give it up. It was nothing moralistic or petty; it had nothing to do with feeling, inside, that she was acting in a cheap or easy way—oh, those fatal words from high school, which she had put behind her—but, undeniably, there was something.
It wasn’t until Maggie interviewed Vito Orsini that she learned what it was.
Vito Orsini was Maggie’s first movie producer. Her ideas about producers were vague and reflected the common wisdom. There hadn’t been any great producers since Thalberg, or was it Louis B. Mayer or Selznick? In any case, everyone knew that the day of the producer was long dead, that the people who called themselves producers were probably agents putting together a package of star, writer, and director and selling it to a studio, or else a producer was somebody on a studio payroll who was used chiefly as liaison between the studio heads and the director, a glorified gofer. The director and screenwriter reigned supreme—to them belonged the credit. Those anonymous middle-aged men, usually at least two of them, who came up to the podium on Oscar night to receive the Best Picture Award—were they the producers or people from the studio or what? Not that it was important. Producers were businessmen—not stars. Well, of course Bob Evans was a star producer. But he was special—he used to be in movies.
The common wisdom, or rather common ignorance, which Maggie accepted so easily, was, as it frequently is, right to a degree.
In the case of Vito Orsini it was utterly wrong. He belonged to the small group of producers who are the magic glue that holds every facet of a finished picture together. There are a small number of such men, alive and flourishing, in Hollywood, England, France, and Italy, and probably there always will be. There is no substitute for the kind of man who makes a picture happen from the moment of germination to the time the lines start forming at the box office.
Vito Orsini was a passionate producer. His properties often sprang from one of his own ideas, sometimes from a book he had read or a script that had been sent to him. Once he had settled on a project, his first task was to raise the money needed to finance the picture. When this basic element of the production was nailed down, he was free to divert much of his attention to the screenplay, conferring with the writer or writers on every revision, playing a major hand in shaping it in its final form. Often he had personally taken the risk of advancing money to the writers for a treatment or an option even before finding financing for the picture. Vito Orsini himself hired the director, chose the actors with the director’s help, found the right key technical people, selected possible locations for filming. He was fully in control of every aspect of his film until it reached its start date. By this point he had given at least one year of his creative life to the project. Unlike some massively successful producers, such as Joe Levine, who have managed to put their names as producer on hundreds of films, Vito did not delegate responsibility. He never abandoned to highly paid employees his right to imprint each film with his personal taste. His interest was in the film, not in the deal. Stanley Kubrick has produced eleven films in the course of twenty-two years. Carlo Ponti has produced more than three hundred films in fewer than forty years. There are producers—and producers.
From his first success in 1960, when he was twenty-five, until the day in 1977 when he married Billy Ikehorn, Vito Orsini had produced some twenty-three pictures. He did this by sometimes working on as many as three pictures at a time, one in its preproduction stages, one actually in photography, and one in postproduction.
Although Vito Orsini worked in Europe so frequently that many people assumed he was Italian, he was actually born in the United States, the son of a Florentine jeweler, Benvenuto Bologna, who had immigrated to the United States long before his son’s birth. Quickly understanding the disadvantage of being named after a luncheon meat, Benvenuto took the noble name of Orsini, as many another Italian has done with as little justification. He made a handsome fortune in the wholesale silverware business and brought up his family in the prosperous corner of the Bronx called Riverdale, where his neighbor was Maestro Toscanini. In 1950, when Vito was at the impressionable age of fifteen, he saw his first Italian film, Bitter Rice, produced by Dino De Laurentiis. From then on he bathed himself in the thrilling, ground-breaking excitement of postwar Italian movies and took for his three heroes De Laurentiis, Fellini, and Carlo Ponti. He went to the University of California to major in film, and after graduation, while other film majors were busy getting jobs in the mailrooms at Universal or Columbia, Vito took off for Rome. There he worked as a propman, extra, stunt man, writer, assistant director, and unit production manager before producing the first of his own films at the age of twenty-five. Vito’s success was due to the fact that his passion for film making was equaled by his intelligence, gilded by his nimbleness, and propelled by his raw talent and energy. His first film was one of the genre that later became known as Spaghetti Westerns. It made money and so did his next three highly commercial, totally unpretentious works. Finally, in 1965, just as he reached thirty, he had enough of a track record to enable him to raise the financing to make the kind of pictures he really wanted to make. He hadn’t looked back since.
As each one of his twenty-three pictures reached its start date, Vito was forced, reluctantly, to loosen the tight reins he held over the production in order to allow the director freedom. Once the camera starts to roll, the film essentially belongs to the director. He tried, but rarely succeeded, to force himself to restrict his visits to the set to two each day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, feeling like a mother who isn’t permitted to be present during the upbringing of her own baby. On the set he could be found hovering a tactful twenty feet behind the director, slightly to one side, observing everything the director was seeing by narrowing his focus, yet far enough away to watch the functioning of the crew, to observe the attitude of the cast members who were not in the particular shot, to keep his eye on the supporting actors. Why was that girl reading a magazine when she was in the next setup? Who was the grip who chewed gum so noisily? Why couldn’t that assistant lighting man wait to take a leak later? People who couldn’t stand a kvetch didn’t work for him twice, but many workers in the film community so admired his perfectionism that they willingly put up with Vito, nicknamed “That Italian Mother.” When he wasn’t actually on the set of any one of his films, he was always expected momentarily, was temporarily in conference, couldn’t be disturbed for five minutes, would be with you as soon as he finished, or had had to leave the set but would return shortly. And invariably, like royalty, he was where he was reported to be and always met people on time. Many people suspected there were two Vito Orsinis.
A passionate producer spends his evening sitting through dailies of the picture currently shooting and screening rough sequences that have been put together from prior dailies. When he isn’t on the set during the day, he’s out raising money for future projects, seeing his last film through postproduction trauma, attending editing sessions, finding the right music, omnipresent at the looping, dubbing, and sound mixing, and then, staying right on top of the film until the advertising campaign is running smoothly, watching carefully as the film re
ntals come in, auditing, if necessary, the distributor’s books to make sure he is getting his proper percentage. And, of course, making deals to sell films in Kuwait and Argentina and Sweden. Before he goes to bed he may make a half-dozen phone calls to theaters that are playing his most recent film to ask the theater manager about the daily box office. A crowded life with many manic moments, many depressive ones—a life only a passionately obsessed man would choose.
In the fall of 1974 when Maggie was first assigned to interview Vito Orsini, he was on location in Rome, with two more weeks of shooting left on a film starring Belmondo and Jeanne Moreau. The excitement of going to Europe for the first time more than made up for Maggie’s disappointment that it was Orsini she was going to be talking to, not Belmondo, for whom she had always had a major yen. The magazine had made reservations for her in the modest Hotel Savoia, a mere half block away from that famous moviemakers’ headquarters the Excelsior, on the Via Veneto, but only one quarter of the price. The Hearst Magazine Corporation is nothing if not conservative in its attitude toward expense accounts.
Before going off to interview movie stars, Maggie had always consulted the recent periodical file at the New York Public Library to get the background from which she could devise her fiendishly unexpected, acute questions. But to interview a producer, that inconvenient, time-consuming trip to the library, the searching through the files, the most important one of which was invariably missing, just seemed like too much trouble. She’d been to Orsini’s last two pictures—both of them critics’ delights—and that should give her enough to start on.
Orsini’s suite at the Excelsior was exactly what she had expected: ornate, impressive, phones ringing, two secretaries typing, a number of people waiting around in varying attitudes of despair and anxiety while they ordered from room service, Telex messages being delivered. Maggie knew it was a bummer. How do you do an interview with somebody who, to begin with, doesn’t particularly interest you and, second of all, is the center of a whirlwind? Maggie’s touch depended on intimate conversation in intimate circumstances. Yet, at the promised minute, one of the secretaries ushered her into Orsini’s inner sanctum, the smallest of the three sitting rooms of the suite.
Maggie’s first intimation that common wisdom about movie producers might sometimes be faulty came when she laid eyes on Vito Orsini. In some ways he looked the part. The custom-tailored Brioni suit, the obviously Italian haircut, the Bulgari watch, the highly polished thin leather shoes. But where was the little fat man with the cigar? Where was the little balding man with the funny accent? She’d expected Vito Orsini to look Italian but not like a noble Caesar. She brightened considerably.
“Welcome to Rome, Miss MacGregor.” What’s more, he spoke English without an accent and did a neat hand kiss.
“My goodness,” said Maggie, who made a specialty out of deliberately gauche remarks, “I thought you’d be a lot older.”
“Thirty-eight,” said Vito, favoring her with a smile that indicated clearly that even if she was deliciously young, he was not yet old. His smile came through his eyes, not just from them, his nose had a proconsular boldness, and his coloring was bronze all over. His presence radiated a kind of flash. He had the physical authority of a great orchestra conductor.
“Tell me,” said Maggie, still in her most naïve manner, “what is it exactly that a movie producer does?” She had decided that ignorance was not just sensible in this case but downright appropriate—it might provoke him into making some comment for which he would be everlastingly sorry. Those were always the best interviews.
“Thank God you asked,” Vito said. “You’ve no idea how many people have interviewed me without knowing precisely—or even vaguely—what I do. They’re too lazy to bother to find out. I’m going to tell you all. But not now—I have to be at the studio in fifteen minutes. Could you possibly have dinner with me tonight? We could talk then.”
Like taking candy from a baby, thought Maggie, nodding agreement.
“I’ll pick you up at eight and take you to one of my favorite places. Meanwhile, remember that the Gucci shop here is just as expensive as the one in New York, so don’t go crazy.”
Movie producers who survive inevitably develop a high degree of ESP.
That evening, at the Hostaria dell’ Orso, Maggie didn’t need her bag of interviewer’s tricks: the ability to go for the jugular, to ask just the wrong question to get the right answer, to give just enough of her own self to disarm suspicion, to be neither too deferential nor too cozy. All she needed to do was listen. Vito hadn’t stopped talking for three hours and he had, so he insisted, only scratched the surface.
“Please, Vito, I can’t take any more. I’m out of tape, I have writer’s cramp, I know more than any reasonable human being would want to read.”
“I keep doing that to people. Well, you should never have asked. Nobody warned you about me, eh?”
“Nobody told me anything. Just said, get on a plane and talk to you.”
“Why don’t we go back to my hotel and talk about you.”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
From Vito, Maggie learned what had been bothering her about star fucking. It wasn’t making love. Vito Orsini was a great romantic. When she went to bed with him, Maggie suddenly understood that she was the star of this particular production. She learned, for the first time, that her large breasts and voluptuous bottom were a stupendous plus when they weren’t being regarded in comparison to the American ideal. She learned that there existed a famous man who did not think that he was doing her a favor by letting her get acquainted with his cock. There was in the first night, and all the following nights she spent with Vito, none of that feeling she used to unconsciously ignore in her star-fucking episodes, an intimation of being an inferior who was allowed a short peek into the way the better people live. Vito cured her, once and for all, of what he called her “upstairs maid” complex in which she shone only in borrowed fame.
Maggie stayed two weeks in Rome in that warm early fall of 1974, sending cables to the office every three days that she was having trouble with the Orsini interview because he was too busy to see her. Everyone back at Cosmo understood perfectly. They all knew about Italian movie producers. Impossible people. Maggie and Vito became loving friends, fellow conspirators in an unnamed sense against an unnamed force, sincere appreciates of each other’s body and mind. Maggie wondered, from time to time, whether this encounter, like the others she had had, would come to nothing once the article was researched, but gradually she learned to trust Vito. They would not always be lovers, but they would always be friends.
Vito let Maggie sit in on all his conferences, listen to all his phone calls, follow him around on the set, watch dailies with him. By the end of two weeks she knew more about the mechanics and business aspects of movie production than almost anyone writing on film in the United States, knowledge that stood her in good stead when she got her television show. But that was almost six months in the future, six months during which Maggie wrote five more movie-star profiles and found out that she didn’t need to fuck a star to write about him. In fact, the ability to keep her distance became one of her most powerful weapons. Only when she stopped needing to be loved, even if only for a night, was she able to see movie personalities clearly, put them in absolute focus. Her interviews lost the faint flavor, so common in such writing, of revealing more about how the reporter feels about the star than about the star himself. Rereading her first profiles, she felt sick at the opportunities lost for devastatingly truthful reporting because of the memory of just another pretty face bending over her.
In the spring of 1975, six months after Maggie had said good-bye to Vito in Rome, she learned that he was producing a new picture, Slow Boat, on location in Mexico. The star, Ben Lowell, was one of the five leading male box-office attractions in the United States, a specialist in strong, stalwart roles, admired as much by men as by women. The female lead was being played by a brilliant, notorious English actre
ss, Mary Hanes, who had a reputation as a devil in bed and the possessor of the foulest, funniest mouth in what was left of the British Empire.
Maggie persuaded her bosses at Cosmo that the time was right to interview Ben Lowell, that most all-American of performers in an age in which all-American boys were getting scarce on the scene. Her real reason for going to the Mexican location, infamous for its heat, discomfort, and bad food, was, of course, to see Vito again.
Maggie was the only member of the press to brave the location. Joe Hyams, Jane Howard, Laura Cunningham, and a dozen less important writers had all politely declined the invitation to suffer through a long trip in a chartered plane to a decayed fishing village on the coast, attractive only for its dependably calm sea and its authentic tropical sordidness. There were other, more agreeable invitations. Always.
Vito embraced Maggie as she stumbled out of the small plane on the badly kept landing strip.
“How’s the picture?” murmured Maggie even before she said hello.
“A dog.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I smell blood in the water.”
“What does that mean?”
“I can’t tell you exactly—many reasons, but so far I only know some of them,” answered Vito. “But I smell it, Maggie, I’m positive.”
After a day on the set, just watching and taking mental notes, as she usually did when beginning an interview, Maggie was more baffled than she had ever been since she started writing. She was accustomed to the deliberate pace of movie making, but on the set of Slow Boat there was an air of tension that she had never felt before. She found herself getting an anxiety attack just from hanging around, and Maggie had learned to dissociate herself from the normal temper flare-ups of a set since, in a way, they were all grist to her mill, just as a reporter doesn’t feel personally involved in a traffic accident he is covering.
Scruples Page 38
