“But he has some special feeling about Sally?”
“Well,” I said, “if you know Clete’s reputation, you know that he particularly enjoys sticking it to other people’s wives. I think he considers Sally to be Mann’s wife, so it has an added attraction.”
“And Mann knows about this?”
I shrugged. “People can be blind and deaf, if they want to be.”
“Anybody else in the picture getting to know Sally?”
“Well, Sally is such a sweet girl. She was always nice to McDougall.”
“How nice?” Perkins said, looking a little exasperated.
“It’s just vague talk,” I said. “You know how movie companies are. The company comes back from location and everybody goes to their room to wash up. If Sally and McDougall happen to come down an hour later than everybody else to dinner, there’s talk.”
“I see.”
“Do you want to go talk to Clete Williams now?” He had to be the leading suspect at that point, I was thinking.I mean, right?
“Not yet,” Perkins said. “Right now, I want to talk to the one man who’s really in charge of this mess.”
CHAPTERSIX
The hallway was dead silent when I took Perkins up to the room of Tom Franklin, the director. Most of the company was asleep. Perkins eyed me. “You look tired,” he said. “There’s no reason for you to follow me around.”
“It’s part of the service,” I said as cheerfully as I could.
“You mean you’re the company spy?”
“I’m supposed to look after you.”
“Well,” Perkins said, “then I guess you’ll just have to be tired.”
I knocked on the door and Tom Franklin opened it. If he was surprised to find us out there, he gave no indication. He waved a felt pen in the air. “Come in, come in,” he said. He was, as usual, filled with energy. I had never seen Franklin looking tired. Neither had anybody else. He was known in the company as the Jet-Propelled Elf. That was because of a funny mistake where the studio gave Franklin the usual gift to a director, a leather-bound copy of the script with his initials on the cover. But there was, as usual with the studio, some kind of screwup. In this case, they got his initials wrong, and they printed JPE on the cover. The crew decided it must stand for Jet-Propelled Elf. It’s probably silly to mention it, but a company has lots of little jokes like that.
Anyway, Franklin waved us into the room. There were diagrams and sketches scattered all over the floor. They were scene diagrams, and Franklin was marking out camera angles.
“Tomorrow’s shoot,” he explained, pointing to the diagrams. “We’re shooting the scene when Clete comes into town for the first time since Black Jed’s gang burned down his homestead. It’s also the first time he meets Sally, the girl Jed has claimed as his personal property.”
The movie was being shot in an old, imitation Western town called Old Tucson, which was about a half hour west of the city. A few other films, and many TV episodes, have been shot there. It isn’t very large, but it has a certain dusty authenticity, which was why we were using it forBloodrock. Also, studio overhead dropped if we did more than half our work on location, so it paid. (In between productions, they open it up to the public as a sort of mini-Disneyland attraction. You pay a few bucks to get in, and you can see a show—gunfighters dueling it out every hour, stuff like that. They pack them in for those shows. Believe it or not, a hell of a lot of people pass through Tucson and want to stop and visit Old Tucson.)
An overhead map showed the general layout of the buildings, with a single street running between them. “At this point, we’ve got to shoot whatever,” he said. “Clete rides in, dismounts, and then Sally walks out of the saloon. I’ve got to get in and out in one day. Five pages.” He shook his head. “From experience on this show, I know I can squeeze sixteen setups out of Ellsworth. So I’ve got to be in and out with sixteen setups.”
Ellsworth, the DP, was known as an artist of film. He was a crusty guy of about fifty, and a demanding perfectionist. He drove his grip and electrical crews wild.
Normally, a cameraman can move faster on exteriors, because he doesn’t have to light everything—he uses the light of the great gaffer in the sky, and maybe a little portable fill. But Ellsworth was no faster outdoors than in. Sixteen setups, like clockwork.
“I think I finally have it,” Franklin said, looking at the diagrams. “Long shot, POV random townies as Clete rides in. Matching reverse—that will become an over-the-shoulder for a piece we can cut in. That’s two. Pan the townies watching him. Switch lenses and do it tighter. That’s four. Waist shot and tight head on Clete riding in. That’s six. Clete dismounting. Then one of Black Jed’s men approaches him. I have a lateral two—seven—and matching close-ups—nine—and a high angle down in case I have to close up dialogue—ten. Then I have two inserts: Clete putting his hand near his gun, then the other man—that’s twelve. They shouldn’t count as setups, but they do. Now I have a cowboy shot, that’s head to knees, holding the gun—as Clete is about to walk down the street. That’s a lens change from the first setup, so it’s thirteen. And a tight head. Fourteen. Then Sally comes out of the saloon. Full figure and head and neck—sixteen. I just make it.”
Perkins said, “You enjoying working with Ellsworth?”
“His craftmanship is outstanding,” Franklin said.
Now, Franklin is a smart man. There is no smarter director in the business. He manages to keep everybody a little off-balance while still managing to avoid offending anyone. He is famous for the way he talks—which is completely unpredictable; one minute sailor profanity, the next minute psychiatric jargon. And he’s famous for the way he dresses—one minute combat fatigues or coveralls, and the next minute Beverly Hills chic. I mean cotton shirts with epaulets and nice detail work, and rough leather pants.
If anybody ever asks him about these traits of his, he just laughs and says, “I’m a director; I have to be all things to all people.” If you ask me, the truth is, he’s slumming. I mean, this guy went to Harvard with John Frankenheimer, and then with Frankenheimer and Mulligan and Penn he did TV in New York—Playhouse 90, the quality stuff—and then he came to Hollywood to do movies. He thinks it’s all a big game, and so he talks in different ways and dresses in different ways because it’s just a game.
And his hobbies: Tom Franklin’s hobby is old biplanes. He collects them and buys them and flies them around at county fairs. I mean, it’s really strange to have somebody go to Harvard and end up doing that. But he’s smart—and very, very politic. The stars love him.
