Crystal Clear Ch. 07

I couldn't believe how fast the news traveled.

More and more American reporters showed up at our film sites by the hour; no doubt flown in by private jet. The media seemed to be sparing no expense to get some coverage on this. Mark had to hire addition security to keep them at bay and to keep them from wandering into our filming. Jill and I agreed with Sony that we would give 'official' interviews toET, Extra, People, US, andHollywood Today. Reuters and the Associated Press would be allowed to sit in on two of the interviews, as well as La Prensa, the leading Nicaraguan newspaper.

In a brief lull the afternoon of the kidnapping, Mark gave me his satellite phone, and I called Crystal in Russia -- the locale for part of the movie she was filming. Amazingly, I got through to her on the first try. The more I described the kidnap and rescue to her, the more frantic she got about my well-being. I kept reassuring her that I'd come out of the whole thing unscathed except for a dirty t-shirt. Ellen talked to her sister too, confirming that all was good. Eventually, Crystal calmed down, but then she started babbling to me about how much she loved me and didn't want me to do anything dangerous ever again in my whole life. I wasn't quite sure what was going on in Moscow, where I'd found her doing her film, but I could tell she wanted to get home and be with me. My guessed that the fascination with her hunky co-star George Rinard had worn off and he'd become human.

Both our movies were ahead of schedule. Crystal and I could have taken a week's holiday in the middle of filming and met somewhere; instead, we opted to push through the filming and then take our time off without the prospect of having to return to either Russia or Central America to continue our movies. I had asked her on the satellite call, "Does what happened make you want to change your mind and come over?"

She thought, "Yes and no. I want to see you so badly, but I don't want to come back here after -- that would break my heart to leave you again. I think we have about three more weeks, and I'm done -- really done with this one. What do you think?"

"I can wait it out. We'll need to do something special with each other. Think of what you'd like to do -- where we could go. Hanging around Nashville doesn't seem special, but I guess that'd be our starting point to reconnect."

We agreed to wait until our films were over, mostly because of the anticipation and our desire to be together for more than just a week when we were together.

As we went into the following week after the abduction, our film locale had at least fifty members of the press hanging around our film locations all the time. I felt sorry for them, but we stuck to our various plans for limited interviews and filming in the remote location. I know we were getting photographed with those huge telephoto lenses, so Jill, Claire, Ellen, and I all tried to behave ourselves in public. So did the other stars like Barry Peters and his pequeña Spanish girlfriend -- Maria.

Barry talked Maria into playing in some of our swap games, and she took to them like a duck to water. Whenever we got together at the hotel Maria proved insatiable until the rest of us had each given her an earth-moving orgasm. She reminded me in many ways of Nadia, so much so that I arranged to have flowers sent to Nadia from Ellen, Claire, and me so she knew we hadn't forgotten her.

Many of the women on the set made a point to flirt with me too. Besides, the ones I had to work with on wardrobe or makeup, other women came by, gave me a seductive smile, perhaps dragged a finger along my square jaw, and offered an invitation to 'visit' if I got lonely. I'd first been through something like this over a year earlier on my road trip through Pennsylvania when I'd rescued a farmer from his burning barn; the females of the home I had stayed at went out of their way to make themselves available -- an opportunity I didn't turn down.

Our sex lives suffered little with the 24-7 presence of the paparazzi. The daytime bed hopping between trailers that we'd been doing slowed, as we tried to minimize someone with a telephoto lens catching one of us on the prowl. We laughed about it all over dinner, but generally once we went to work, we worked, were fully presentable, and businesslike at the work site.

Understandably, Jill took to sleeping in our room. Four in the king-size bed seemed cramped, but the sex more than made up for the inconvenience. Jill obviously took comfort in the sex -- from all of us.

I suggested to Mark that to preserve Jill's reputation, he should say something informally to the press about her mental state and her temporary need to be with friends around her to feel safe. I guess he did, because we never heard, or read anything of our cohabitation arrangements. Amazingly, the press didn't think to mention Claire or Ellen, or their relationship to me.

I tried to visualize a totally innocent and sexless relationship between all of us inside the walls of the hotel room. I didn't succeed. I probably didn't succeed because whenever I tried that exercise, I recalled what we'd done the night before, or the morning before, or the afternoon before.

I knew the women around me on the set had strong libidos: Jill, Claire, Maria, and Ellen; however, after the hostage taking everyone's sex drive ratcheted up a dozen notches. The four women in our circle couldn't get enough sex. This new found fascination with all-things-sexual carried over into the movie we were making in several ways.

First, Jill wanted to fuck anything with a penis; however, she limited herself to Mark, Barry, and me, and her Sapphic interplay with the women. She'd always been willing before, but now she wanted sex about six times a day. Thus, second, we had to take breaks in filming to accommodate our lust. This called for rearranging the 'press lines' -- the areas where the paparazzi could prowl. We moved them so our motorhomes weren't in their line of sight.

Mark, Barry, and I talked about the prescription that would help Jill through her angst about her kidnapping. Besides trying to meet her new and improved nymphomaniac sex drive, we agreed to pull out of Nicaragua as soon as possible and to get back to Hollywood as soon as we could. He thought he could finish filming in a suburb of Guadalajara -- a more urban and civilized place than the one he'd chosen for the past month of filming. He put the wheels in motion of breaking camp. I went off and fucked Jill again.

Guadalajara is mostly a large sprawling city; part of it includes the small historic area of Tlaquepaque --a beautiful upscale historic, trendy shopping area of restaurants, souvenir shops, arts and crafts, and galleries. The area is undoubtedly Mexican, yet on some of the side streets you could blink your eyes and wonder which South or Central American city you were in. Travel a little closer to Guadalajara's center and you find some tenements run down and tatty, and they too could exist in any Latin American urban area.

Our filming of'Pressure Limit' took over six of the blocks in this run down area. The movie dealt with smuggling drugs and guns, the cartels, and power. I played a crusading ex-DEA agent, intent on seriously wounding the drug trade despite having been framed and pushed from the service. In the process, I'd joined forces with a sympathetic female agent -- Jill who believed in my innocence. I think I'd seen similar movies a dozen times before, yet I starred in this one so I had to 'get it right.'

We'd been filming for five months, sometimes with two or three crews working in parallel -- even in different cities. The last shots of the movie were shot in Tiaquepaque. The ultra-bad guy ends up dead -- good guys win, bad guys lose; and my character is vindicated by evidence the bad guy kept.

I'd shot the start of the scene, chasing the bad guy -- the head of a cartel and king pin of all the bad things happening south of the U.S. border. The camera had followed me, through fifty or more sequential scenes, as I ran after this nefarious man: up and down stair ways, through dark alleys, behind homes, even through some houses, jumping through windows headfirst, and other daring deeds. Near the end of the chase, we ended up on a roof, racing along the peak, and jumping between buildings.

Of course, this is where my stunt double Jason Lake took over for me, and one of his cohorts for the character I was chasing. At first, I worried about their longevity -- the roofs were steep and uneven; tiles broke away and made you slip on every fifth step. This looked great and daring on film, but also looked exceptionally dangerous. But then I caught on to many tricks of his trade -- hidden wires, guides, or harnesses, air bags carefully deployed on the ground 'just in case,' and other safety measures. The chase would look wild, risky, athletic, and authentic.

Most of the cast and crew watched from behind the main camera as Jason gradually caught up to the 'bad man' near the top of a narrow wall seventy feet above the ground. Just as his nemesis would escape he lunged forward, tackling the man on the roof top just before he would jumped across an alley into the arms of his confederates and escaped. The two men grappled, and then 'ultra bad man' slipped to the edge of the adjacent roof with his legs and body going over the edge. He precariously held onto the edge -- a gutter of some kind, his fingers slowly slipping off his perch.

"CUT." Mark yelled into his portable megaphone. He yelled at me, "OK. Jim, replace Jason up there. Cesar take over for Antonio." The two of us clamored up the stairs and a ladder up to the roof top as the other two men came down. My safety harness was attached; Cesar didn't need one. Two stage hands positioned us for the start of the final scene.

"ACTION"

I slid down the red roof tiles to the edge of the roof behind Cesar. He slid slowly over the edge, but he actually stood on a scaffolding that had been erected there just for this scene. We'd rehearsed the scene a dozen times at ground level, mugging the last couple of steps.

As I slid the last ten feet to the roof's edge, Cesar was holding on by his finger tips. I reached over and grasped his wrist and tried to pull him up -- to save him.

He locked eyes with me, "You are a good man, señor, and I am bad. I go now to meet my God, and to see exactly what this place called hell is all about."

As I struggled to pull Cesar up, he used his other hand to pry my fingers loose. And, then, he's gone. I am left empty handed seven stories above the ground. A sickening thud will be heard on the soundtrack when the audio editors are through with this part of the film. In reality, Cesar had only crouched down on the scaffolding out of sight of most cameras.

"CUT -- AND THAT'S A WRAP."

Mark had also filmed Cesar falling away from the camera with his arms outstretched earlier. The airbag in the drop zone was that special shade of green so it could be eliminated in the layovers. What the audience would eventually see after he drops from my hands is Cesar falling seventy feet to his death. The end of the movie is a close-up of my face, partially satisfied with the results. The credits would start rolling as I scrambled back up the roof, went downstairs in the building, and met Jill who has been waiting for me -- holding off the rest of the 'bad guy's' henchmen. We head off in the opposite direction as emergency vehicles start to scream past us to the scene of the crime lord's death. We'd done those scenes earlier in the day.

Mark ran out from behind the camera. He hugged me and gave Jill a big kiss. He was dancing around like the village idiot in glee that filming had been completed. Mark still had three or four months of tough work ahead of him working with the various editors to piece together this block buster.

After some of the elation wore off, I asked, "Can I go home now. I've got a girlfriend I haven't seen for too many months. I need to reestablish our relationship."

"Go. Get going," Mark yelled with a grin a mile wide. He pushed me to the police line that held back the crowd of tourists and the curious and then to the street where I could get in my limousine. He knew I'd already packed and had airline tickets from Guadalajara to Houston, and then to Nashville. Ellen and Claire would be going with me, and their jobs were finished too. They stood expectantly beside our limo on the sidewalk.

Jill came and gave me a hug. "I'll see you in a few weeks when we start doing the road show to promote this movie. Meanwhile, go fuck Crystal -- and Ellen and Claire some more. Don't forget my pussy -- it'll be waiting for you. Oh and make some beautiful music. I love your music -- heck, I love you." I got the kiss of all kisses from her.

I ran to the waiting limousine. Ellen and Crystal got in, we shut the door, and started rolling to the airport. We were going home.

To be continued