faggots parade up and down the streets, inhabit the clubs and bars and baths and discos and shop the stores and cruise the men’s rooms of hotels and universities and bookstores and subways and how many tens of thousands go to Fire Island and the Hamptons and Jones Beach and Riis Park and, yes, there exist approximately seventy-two places where I can go on any evening, or afternoon for that matter, where I can engage in physical activity leading to orgasm, to actually touch and be touched. Yes, seventy-two places I personally know about, which means there are many more that others know about but I yet don’t. And I also know that I am not seeing the same faces over and over again, that I am seeing strangers, and that they are increasing into armylike proportions. And this information, which put to proper use could probably elect a President, means only two things: one, that for the life of me I can’t understand why it’s taken me so long to find the right one among this horde for me; and two, we’ve got to make the movie! Abe, until domani.”
Abe Bronstein, bored with his business, bored with the fights with his brother, Maury, who preferred breads and biscuits when Abe, quite accurately, had predicted the surge in America’s sweet teeth, bored with his bimbies, and bored with his two sons who never called to chat or visit, had turned to movies as a means for other, more creative, outlets for his energies.
At first it was just a chance to get out of the loft on Saturdays, when Peetra was apt to require more money for shopping. Then he would go up to Third Avenue and take in a movie, see perhaps something intelligent from England or a nice color film from California with such pretty photography, though maybe that tootsie is a better looker than she is an actress. Then he noticed in his Wall Street Journal that certain movies made a great deal of money, many millions if they hit just right, and he began to take a closer look. Soon he was reading his Variety each week, and then he was going to Brentano’s to buy screenplays published in paperback form. From there, he started attending the Museum of Modern Art in the afternoon, to sitting with the old ladies and gentlemen with nothing better to do than cluck over young Conrad Veidt or miss the point of Griffith and Pudovkin and Eisenstein, and if they didn’t like the movie, they would kibbitz in the darkness, driving Abe crazy. He decided the Museum of Modern Art was the noisiest movie theater in town and he took to attending the Carnegie Hall and the Bleecker Street and the tiny old house on St. Mark’s Place where the audiences were all more serious and the seats were all falling apart.
And then one day, feeling excited, courageous, Abe decided he would make his own first film. A lesser man would have sought affiliation within the established industry; a man of Abe’s standing in the financial community did not lack for contacts. But he’d been in business long enough to know that every business was more or less alike, filled with hanky-panky, mumbo jumbo, and lawyers, lawyers, lawyers, all dished up by the residents to hand to the immigrants. So he went about it quietly, in his own way. First he found a book he not only thought would make a good movie but also reflected something he felt worth saying. It was a novel about connections among big business, organized crime, and the United States government, and how they all helped each other. He purchased the rights to film it and, having enjoyed an English import called Lest We Sleep Alone (written by one Fred Lemish), which he also understood from Richie had become a cult favorite at college campuses everywhere, he looked for and hired Fred to write him a script. U.S. Mobsters, Inc., made unpretentiously and out of the country for a budget of nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars of Abe’s own money, went on to earn him a profit of four and one half million, which represented an awful lot of
Abe Bronstein, bored with his business, bored with the fights with his brother, Maury, who preferred breads and biscuits when Abe, quite accurately, had predicted the surge in America’s sweet teeth, bored with his bimbies, and bored with his two sons who never called to chat or visit, had turned to movies as a means for other, more creative, outlets for his energies.
At first it was just a chance to get out of the loft on Saturdays, when Peetra was apt to require more money for shopping. Then he would go up to Third Avenue and take in a movie, see perhaps something intelligent from England or a nice color film from California with such pretty photography, though maybe that tootsie is a better looker than she is an actress. Then he noticed in his Wall Street Journal that certain movies made a great deal of money, many millions if they hit just right, and he began to take a closer look. Soon he was reading his Variety each week, and then he was going to Brentano’s to buy screenplays published in paperback form. From there, he started attending the Museum of Modern Art in the afternoon, to sitting with the old ladies and gentlemen with nothing better to do than cluck over young Conrad Veidt or miss the point of Griffith and Pudovkin and Eisenstein, and if they didn’t like the movie, they would kibbitz in the darkness, driving Abe crazy. He decided the Museum of Modern Art was the noisiest movie theater in town and he took to attending the Carnegie Hall and the Bleecker Street and the tiny old house on St. Mark’s Place where the audiences were all more serious and the seats were all falling apart.
And then one day, feeling excited, courageous, Abe decided he would make his own first film. A lesser man would have sought affiliation within the established industry; a man of Abe’s standing in the financial community did not lack for contacts. But he’d been in business long enough to know that every business was more or less alike, filled with hanky-panky, mumbo jumbo, and lawyers, lawyers, lawyers, all dished up by the residents to hand to the immigrants. So he went about it quietly, in his own way. First he found a book he not only thought would make a good movie but also reflected something he felt worth saying. It was a novel about connections among big business, organized crime, and the United States government, and how they all helped each other. He purchased the rights to film it and, having enjoyed an English import called Lest We Sleep Alone (written by one Fred Lemish), which he also understood from Richie had become a cult favorite at college campuses everywhere, he looked for and hired Fred to write him a script. U.S. Mobsters, Inc., made unpretentiously and out of the country for a budget of nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars of Abe’s own money, went on to earn him a profit of four and one half million, which represented an awful lot of
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