Outtake

She always listened patiently to the stories he told, He was a great actor once
now he is eighty four years old.
Raymond used to say «this world is like a bad piece of art,
Movies give it a poet’s tongue a dreamer’s heart.»
She came to me in her naked animal beauty with a rainstorm cupped in the palm
of her hands."
I said that in nineteen fifty two in Fortune’s Fondest Fool,
My greatest work my exception to the rule,
And Joan Vincent she had eyes that made you feel that line,
The camera had to strain to catch her curves; a star so fine.
She married Rich Stafford and the whole world thought they were the happiest
couple since Romeo and Juliet,
But we all knew he beat her up; once right on the set,
He produced some of her greatest movies though, Vampires And Lovers;
Heroes Desert; and Angel Of Woe.
There is a scene in Vampires And Lovers where she finds out her husband just
married her for her money,
The camera angle; the way the light prints her face; pure honey,
So she goes to the bank; writes him out of her will; there is no dialogue or
music; just silence and thought; this sequence can still make me weep,
Then she comes back home swallows a white knuckled fist full of pills and lays
down to final sleep.
But that’s not all; she suddenly jumps up and becomes violently ill,
Throws up everything and just sits there; later her husband comes home and says
«you don’t look well dear; how do you feel?»,
Then the camera starts on her feet; but from an angle that implies you are
looking thur her eyes then slowly pans up her body and miraculously flips up to
shoot her face and you’re locked on these eyes that can see,
And then with an unreadable tilt of the lip she answers with a breakable
intensity «I believe I’ll be ok.
Something I didn’t eat agreed with me».
Her last movie; at the beginning of filming on her next picture there was a
minor incident,
The actor playing her brutish husband was supposed to slap her but he
accidentally hit her and I guess something just broke that had never bent,
She ran off stage screaming hysterically he wasn’t supposed to really hit me;
over and over again,
The film was going to be called Adam’s Revenge; it never got made;
instead they mutilated it into that huge flop The Saint Of Sin.
I went and visited Joan several times but she was never the same,
Even years later she would occasionally start muttering he wasn’t supposed to
really hit me as if she’d just remembered who to blame,
But Rich took care of her to the very end; although he had his share of women
while she was put away,
I’m really getting tired honey could you take me back to my room I believe I’ll
«set the night to dreaming up a better day».