HOWL AND THE PUSSY-KAT.4

PORN-KING AL KAZMAN NOW OWNS HUNT STUDIOS. KATHERINE (PUSSY-KAT) KANE MUST BE CAST IN THEIR NEXT BIG MOVIE.

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Chapter Three: PRE-PRODUCTION (Part One)

‘PORN KING IN FIRE-SALE RESCUE OF HUNTS’ shouted the headline in Variety in the third week of September. Al Kazman had reportedly bought a controlling interest in the studio – lock, stock and backlist – for $50,000,000.

Kazman’s $50 million stake in Hunts’ was a stake through Isaac’s heart. It came with an ironclad option to buy the studio for a further $50 million in one year’s time unless Isaac bought back Kazman’s interest – for $100 million.

If Kazman was the rock, Nunns Inc. was the hard place. Hunt Studios owed Titus’s bank a little over $200 million. Titus himself, released on a $10 million bail bond, was out of the picture – out of pictures. With continuances and appeals he might die before he went to jail, but under RICO, the racketeering laws, his bank’s assets faced sequestration by the federal government. Isaac’s $200 million debt was one of those assets. His Finance Division was already negotiating with the federally appointed Administrator who could, if he chose, foreclose on them and then pick over the studio’s carcass.

For now Isaac had $50 million to keep his studio afloat. This was peanuts: one third of the budget for San Francisco or 20 percent of Fox’s budget for The Big One which had stiffed ‘the Big Bouncy’ at the box office.

Lady Van-de-Meer’s Wind hadn’t – quite – cost $50 million to make but, even with Oscars for Joan Collins et al, it had only returned $60 million so far. Mr W.H. had cost almost exactly $50 million but despite better reviews in Europe and the famous purchasing power of the ‘pink dollar’ it had not put 5 million fag asses on cinema seats at 10 bucks per ass. Returns to date on the two pictures totalled almost exactly $91.4 million, the sum Titus Q. Nunns (who never forgot a decimal point) had invested in this year’s Big Movie.

Ray, a.k.a. ‘Waterbabies’. A giant ray marauds the Bermuda Triangle, attacking swimmers, fishermen, drug runners, Customs patrol boats and, finally, a whole cruise ship. Pitched by Ben as ‘Jaws meets Titanic’. Well, it certainly sank at the box office.

With layoffs $50 million could be stretched to cover one year’s running of the studio plus the production costs of a couple of low-talent comedies, two no-talent slasher-pics and, on the tightest of budgets, one quality picture.

Such as Now and Then, Voyager. Re-christened Again, Voyager.

This year’s crop of teen-flicks, plus Ray, plus the income from Hunt TV and video residuals, would just about halve the outstanding debt to Nunns Inc. With Voyager, next year’s income would yield the other half. But Isaac would still lose the studio to Kazman. And with over $30 million in personal debts he would have to file for bankruptcy. Graziella would leave him. Maybe Yetta too.

Of course, one of the new quartet of comedies and horrors might be the next American Pie, the next What You Did Last Summer, and bring in a cool $150 million. Pigs might also fly. Year on year, teen-flicks and TV movies kept the studio afloat while Titus financed the Big Pictures – latterly, the turkeys.

Isaac pipe-dreamed Again, Voyager becoming the next Four Weddings, the next Mrs Bates, taking $200 million at the box-office, winning him Oscars and Golden Globes and a Palme d’Or at Cannes.

Could he somehow stall the Administrator and hang on to $100 million of Titus’s money, buy off Kazman, buy himself one more year? More flying pigs.

There was one final alternative. He could jump off a high building.

* * *

Al Kazman’s stake entitled him to call a few shots. He called the first one in the third week of September in the marble crypt that was Isaac’s office and might, a year from now, be his tomb.

Kazman had a firm handshake and firm ideas. His voice was soft but insistent. He addressed Isaac as ‘Mr Hunt’ throughout their brief meeting. His smile - wide, cosmetic, friendly - stabbed like icicles into Isaac’s tortured bowels.

* * *

‘He wants what?’

‘A major part for Kathy Kane in our next big production.’ Isaac would need to be told that Kate hated to be called Kathy.

Ben felt his blood race at the thought of working with the Beaver Queen. He had seen most if not all of her oeuvre. ‘So - are we going into soft-core?’

‘Over my dead body.’ Isaac’s hands clenched on his desk blotter. ‘And Kazman says that Elizabethan thing has turned Ms Kane into “a serious actress”.’

His fingers supplied quotation marks.

Ben didn’t bother to set him straight on the period of Poor Nellie. In Isaac’s lexicon ‘Restoration’ was the era between having hair and wearing wigs. During the Restoration Era Isaac had experimented, vainly, with creams, sprays and the painful surgery of applied scalping.

‘Yeah,’ Ben laughed, ‘about as “serious” as Maria Casablanca.’ Cheerleader turned centrefold, Maria had also turned tricks prior to her break into cable TV. The call-girl agency had sent her to Ben a few times.

Isaac stared bleakly across his less-than-well-polished maple desk (cleaning layoffs). ‘Kazman’s really got my tit in the wringer. We have to do this.’

‘No big. Kane’s up there with Peaches and Fay Wray in the league of screamers. We’ll put her in the next slice-’n’-dice.’ The blood racing in Ben’s vein’s consolidated in one place as he pictured Pussy-Kat Kane running from Hunt’s disfigured Axman, her breasts and crotch clearly visible through a rain-soaked dress, a filmy negligee – or even totally nude.

‘If Kazman had come onboard last year,’ he added, ‘we could have done with her in Ray. A bit more tit and pube might have made the difference.’

‘Kazman won’t settle for a slasher flick,’ Isaac said.

‘How old is she? Twenty going on sixteen? She can play one of the teens in High Ho.’ Having narrowly escaped from American Pee, Kate Kane might be amused to find herself in Hunts’ rip-off of American Pie. ‘Or I could make one of the teachers a major-league bimbo.’

Scripting on the hoof again. With the cutbacks Ben was now practically the entire Writers Department.

‘She could screw some of the jocks. We’d have to be careful to keep the 12 rating, but the older kids would go for her big-time …’ He tailed off.

Isaac shook his head. ‘It has to be a major production.’

‘You don’t mean … Voyager?’

Isaac nodded, grimly. Ben didn’t feel grim. Ben felt like punching the air. With the hot new star of Poor Nellie on board, Voyager 2 (his private name for it) could be a serious smash. But it wouldn’t be easy to reconcile Isaac to the idea of the ‘Cunt in Front’ in a Bette Davis remake.

‘She could do great things for us box-office-wise,’ he began cautiously.

‘She’s a pornstar, for Christ’s sake,’ Isaac said. ‘Where exactly does that square with a classic love-story about a tight-assed spinster?’

Ben had one of his brainwaves. ‘She could play Tina Durrance! I can beef the part up a bit. She’d have to –’ he just stopped himself from saying ‘screw’ – ‘have a love-scene with Jerry before the car-smash.’

Isaac did not beat about the Beaver Queen’s bush.

‘More screwing? There’s already too much. And how’s it gonna look with the Howl kid settling for Dolores after Kathy Kane? Kane would make Dolores look like a bag-lady.’

‘It happens in opera. The one with “Nessun Dorma”.’

‘We make movies for kids who know Oprah, not opera,’ Isaac said. ‘If we put Voyager on hold, how quickly can you script a vehicle for Kathy Kane?’

One wet dream and I’m there, Ben could have said. ‘There is an idea I’ve been kicking around in the back of my mind,’ he said instead. ‘A life of Catherine Howard.’

Isaac looked blank. ‘Who she?’

‘Fifth wife of Henry the Eighth. Bit of a royal slut like – what’s-her-name - Fergie. Henry beheaded her after he found out she’d been screwing around with other guys – not just noblemen but some of the valets. Katharine Kane would sleepwalk the part. Could be another Poor Nellie.’

‘After the “Prancing Queers” I’m not sure I want to get back into Shakespeare territory.’

‘Or I could reinvent her in the modern era. A sort of Jackie O. or Ivana Trump. Make her - allegorical. Iconic.’

Ben, at this moment, was more sold on – the wings of inspiration flew obligingly in with a title – The Queen Who Wasn’t a Virgin - than he was on Voyager 2. He saw a period movie whose receipts would rival Braveheart. He saw a Screenwriting Oscar.

Isaac looked unconvinced. He sighed. ‘God, I so want to make Voyager. Homage to Bette and all that. But I guess we could put it on ice for a year or two. If I’ve got two more years.’ A fresh spasm contorted his tortured guts.

Ben pointed out some more upside: ‘Wait three years and Dolores will be out of contract. If you don’t lose your head over another blowjob.’

‘No chance of that.’ Isaac looked resolute. Isaac was resolute. ‘What would really suit Kazman would be if we could dump Dolores now and let Kathy Kane play Charlotte!’ He managed to smile at this outlandish prospect.

Ben held his breath for a moment, then took a deep one before speaking:

‘She could do it, Isaac.’

‘Yeah, and Peaches Snatch could unretire and play her mother!’

‘Isaac, I’m serious. She could do it. She’d be perfect for today’s audience.’

Isaac examined Ben’s face as if looking for signs of premature dementia.

‘We’re talking about a plain-Jane old maid who’s practically frigid. You’re telling me we should hand that part to – to the “Beaver Queen”?’

‘Isaac, we were at the premiere of Poor Nellie. Look how good she was at the end. Her death scene. People were in tears. OK, the make-up helped. But she played old and sick. I think she could play frigid if she had to. Think of the transformation when Jerry Durrance “awakens” her from frog to princess.’

‘But – she’s from porno, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Joan Crawford was in porno.’

‘I never believed that was her. And it was one crappy movie which hardly anybody saw, not ten million videos or how ever many Kazman has sold.’

‘Isaac, the publicity would be fantastic. She’s – she’s a weed turning into a perfect rose. Not just Charlotte. Pussy-Kat herself. Katharine. I don’t see how Voyager could fail to make a hundred million. You’d be in a position to pay off Kazman and hold on to your studio. We could maybe hold on to Kane, make my Tudor movie, win some real Oscars.’ Now Ben could feel a moistness in his Calvins for which Katharine Kane was only partially responsible.

‘But what about Dolores?’ Isaac wailed. ‘What about Myra Mae?’

Sometimes, just when you need a miracle most, one comes along.

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TRAILER FOR HOWL AND THE PUSSY-KAT.5

Scandal ends the career of Dolores Delano.