Will the career of Lance Minks ever recover? Minks, by his own admission, was making porn “when you were jerking off to the memory of a lost prom date”. Few better then, to play the coveted lead in Red Hot, a boundary-breaking erotic movie. But now, thanks to some on-set histrionics, including a reluctance to work with animals (OK, rodents), Minks has been removed from the shoot by uncompromising auteur Eileen “Candy” Merrell. He is no longer the Big Bad Wolf. That role will be filled by newcomer Larry Brown.
In another episode devoted to Candy’s cinematic endeavour, it turns out that the loss of a leading man is not her biggest problem. Larry after all is proving to be quite the natural when it comes to porn directing. A bigger concern is with money; the ease with which it gets spent and the difficulty of replacing it afterwards.
By the end of the hour, in his role as problem-solving producer, Frankie, appears to have found a solution. He turns up with $20,000 in cash and starts throwing it about the set. Everyone is happy. There’s just one blot on the horizon and that’s the fact Frankie has sourced the money from Rudy Pipilo and the mob are now looking for 25% of the movie’s returns.
That, at least, is a problem for tomorrow. Today, Candy has footage of Larry chasing Lori up a staircase that looks like Hitchcock crossed with Douglas Sirk divided by Russ Meyer. Not forgetting the shots of Larry being pleasured by two women on the bonnet of a taxi. Skinny Harvey Wasserman is certainly impressed: “Jesus, you got something here,” he says in the episode’s final line. While he’s talking, Candy sits there thinking, as if she’s trying to work out what that something might be.
Little Mr Sorry for Himself, Bobby Dwyer, is feeling sorry for himself this week. “Can my luck get any worse?” he wails after smashing a $20 bottle of spirits on the floor while performing what passes for management duties at his massage parlour. It does get worse, when Bobby is informed that his son has been kicked out of school. Instructed to deal with his offspring by his wife (by way of reparation for appearing on TV in the company of the vice squad), Bobby’s approach to the problem is threefold: he slaps his son down the street, then he offloads him on to Vince who really wants nothing to do with the kid and ends up sending him home. And finally, Bobby takes his own flesh and blood in hand and straight down the massage parlour. With the boy’s eyes falling out of his head, he is instructed him to do whatever Black Frankie tells him to, and with that the father is done with him.
The question of what to do with Bobby’s kid is of a second order of importance for Vinnie this week. At the top of his list is an even more delicate affair; how to keep his relationship with Abby on the rails, while not pissing off the Mob. Last week, Abby found out about Vince’s role in facilitating the transference of nuts to Rudy and co. This week, he explains that he has a lot less to do with them than he used to, but that any further distancing might be problematic.
This is not exactly what Abby was hoping to hear and there’s a moment of awkward silence between them as they discuss the subject. To sweeten things a little, Vince offers to, in the jargon, cut her in. He will pass her the money he has been getting from the parlours. Abby is not impressed by this move; why would she want that money when she is giving so much of her time to trying to help the girls on the street?
Vince, through experience, knows that principles can wobble when they come up against hard reality and he leaves his envelope full of cash behind the bar should she ever need it. Sure enough, Abby takes the money. It is used to help a girl who wants to escape from Rodney and, in a nice echo of last season, we see Dorothy wave the girl off at the bus depot, just as she was by Abby in turn.
Finally, a quick word for Gene Goldman, mayor Koch’s man on Times Square. He’s the guy charged with bringing morals and probity to the dens of midtown and he’ll stop at nothing to achieve it. Oh, and he also has a gay sex life he hides from his family. One suspects this may, at some point, put Goldman in a compromising situation, but this week his wife suspects nothing. And at least the sauna he visited was a bit nicer than that blackout den Paul wandered into last week.
Discotheque, Bibliotheque
The Stranglers’ cover of Walk on By is playing as Abbie and Vince thrash things out. Given all the walking Little Red has been doing it seems highly appropriate, dontchathink? Paul’s supper club gets its grand opening this week and anyone who is anyone is there. Well, Vince and Abby are, anyway. Special guest at the launch night is Sarah Vaughan, the American jazz singer whose career spanned nearly 50 years and who was enjoying something of a late career renaissance at the end of the 70s (Paul did well to get her. She was more accustomed to performing for heads of state than club owners, having sang for Gerald Ford and Giscard d’Estaing at a 1974 summit in Martinique). There’s also a brief cameo for Tex Avery’s classic cartoon, Red Hot Riding Hood from 1943, which Candy watches for reference.
Questions for next week
I’ve been predicting climaxes and consequences for characters throughout this run (I still think Bobby is going to get it), but as yet nothing. Will we have any narrative twist before the end of season two and if not, will it matter?
Are you more a sauna or abandoned factory kinda person?
Why didn’t Rudy get into the porn flick business sooner?
