"Geoffrey A. Landis - Shooting The Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Landis Geoffrey A)

Let's just put it this wayтАФSwiggs Productions never had to worry about the
budget for wardrobe, since for the most part his actors didn't wear any.
To understand Swiggs, the king of sleaze, you gotta first understand Chicago.
In the late '60s, it seems, there was this masseuse who massaged her clients
in some places which Chicago's finest thought she shouldn't ought to be
touching. The masseuse in question appealed, and Illinois Supreme Court had
ruled that the question of which parts get massaged was a private matter
between the masseuse and her client, and the police had nothing to say about
it.
Swiggs had seen the business potential released by that decision. Within two
months, he had opened up a series of massage parlors to employ busty women in
skimpy clothes to rub their lonely male clients a little bit below the buckle,
for a hundred bucks a pop. Heck, for all I know, some of 'em might have even
known how to give a massage.
Danny Swiggs made a moderate fortune at the massage business, and got out of
the business right before the bottom line went south from cut-rate
competition. He moved into magazines, the type you don't see at family
newsstands, and made money at that. From there he invested in Nevada brothels,
and when he made a pile at that, he went on to movies. He already had the
connections in the sleaze business. The laws about what you could show on
screen were loosening up. Films like Last Tango In Paris were stretching the
limits, making sex into art. Swiggs, he stretched the limits too, just in the
other direction.
When we got to Swiggs, he'd made his bundle and was trying to go legit. He
wore a magnificent wave of hair (none of it his own), a cream-colored
polyester shirt open down to his navel to show off his thick gold chains, and
lizard-skin platform shoes. Hanging from his gold chains was a crystal the
size of a baseball. "Pure quartz," he explained to me proudly. "One hundred
percent natural crystal"тАФexpecting, no doubt, that I would be impressed.
Guaranteed to balance his Chi, he said. Double his virility.
He had a girl on each arm. Not the type of woman I'd be interested in, even if
I hadn't been married; the type that were designed with the word "ornament" in
mind, the kind with too much mascara and clothes that were too few or too
tight.
Swiggs Productions was going mainstream. He was looking for a project to
establish him in Hollywood as a legitimate name, a by-god
don't-call-me-I'll-call-you producerтАФin a town where producers were treated
with about the same regard as lawyers or agents, only not quite so high class.
But his first attempt at a legit film was a dog, twenty million spent in
production and maybe twelve people actually paid money to see it.
That just whet his appetite. He had the cash, and he was looking to find the
score.
The room was full of girls, girls just lounging around in mini-skirts and
extremely tight sweaters. Even back then mini-skirts were years out of
fashion, but he just liked the look. "Hey," he said, and winked. "You take a
fancy to any of 'em, you give me the word."
Now, I know a lot of aerospace engineers, and all of them (back then) were
men, and all of them were married. The astronauts get the publicity and the
chicks; the engineers make the rockets work, and go home to their wives and
children. "I'm married," I said. "Got two kids in high school."