Posted by critmk on June 05, 2003 at 08:36:45:
I love writing and reading snuff stories, but all of us authors fantasize about our stories being transformed into images. So enjoy this fantasy upon a fantasy.
See the pictures that go with this satire at
http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/critmk/lst?.dir=/The+Movie!+Scamming+Stew...&.view=t
Many thanks and all credit to dear friends Barbanne, Juli, Becky, Sandi and Yoko, who contributed greatly to this yarn by answering the interview questions, playing themselves, in a manner of speaking. Special thanks to Shoot 2 Kill, a splendid writer himself, for playing film director Joel Hovey and answering the interview questions in character.
What if my snuff-necro novel, “The Scamming Stewardess” (read it at http://www.necrobabes.org/public/messages/pubarch/critmk/index.htm) were made into a big-budget netcast movie?
It might go a little like this:
The Making of “The Scamming Stewardess – The Movie”
a BBC2 Documentary
Time: Summer 2006
Opening Scene: Three slender young models in off-white business suits are gunned down by machine-gun fire as they grab for derringers in thigh holsters barely concealed by their short skirts. They bob and weave as they take hit after hit in slow-motion and end up in a bloody heap.[1trio.jpg goes here.]
Camera pans left to reveal our thirtysomething narrator, Nigel Ian-Jeremy. He’s wearing a tweed jacket and a turtleneck sweater.
NI-J: Good evening, Nigel Ian-Jeremy here for BBC2.
Tonight, we will examine the most controversial development on the internet since the wide availability of broadband changed the nature of the movie and entertainment industry: “The Scamming Stewardess – The Movie,” with its shocking mix of violence and sex, has not only caused a social furor, it is at the cutting edge of entertainment technology and, one might add, taste.
Snuff and necro, just a few years ago, were a fringe of the pornography industry. Few people were even aware of it. “Scamming Stewardess” has changed all that. It has a production budget of over $9 million. Its ad campaign has leveraged word of mouth and controversy to make its impending release the talk of the internet and a cover story for People magazine, Vanity Fair and the tabloid press.
Of course “Scamming Stewardess” has been roundly condemned by the feminist left and the religious right. The producers have avoided direct confrontation with critics by shooting in secret locations and distributing exclusively on the internet. Thus, there are no studios, video stores or theaters to picket. The secrecy has also given an air of mystery to the men and women behind this strange and groundbreaking project.
In our special presentation tonight, “The Making of ‘The Scamming Stewardess,’” we will take you behind the scenes of the production everyone’s talking about but no one knows anything about. You will hear from the author of the underground web novel upon which the movie is based, from the director, from actors and actresses who appear in it, from the technologists who made it possible and the investors and business strategists who believe that they will make a great deal of money from it.
PAN OVER THE THREE “DEAD” MODELS AND FADE TO BLACK
RISE TO AUDITION SCENE, Los Angeles; WAITING ROOM CROWDED WITH ATTRACTIVE WOMEN, AGE 18-52, VARIOUS ETHNICITIES AND BODY TYPES, JEANS AND T’S TO EVENING GOWNS. NIGEL IS WORKING THE ROOM, STICKING HIS MICROPHONE IN GIRLS’ FACES MORE OR LESS AT RANDOM.
Nigel I-J: We’re in Los Angeles in the early days of the production process. The women in this room are trying out for parts in “The Scamming Stewardess.” They are auditioning for death. [He turns to a tall, busty, 24 y-o black girl]: How do you feel about participating in a movie in which dozens of women are murdered?
Black Girl: Fine, if they pay me, they can rip my throat out. I’m a graduate of the Yale Drama School, but no one’s hiring me to do Chekhov. Last year, I played a dead prostitute in a mainstream action film. At least maybe I’ll get to say a line or two and die on camera in this one. And these guys are paying way over scale. I hope I get it.[2black.jpg goes here.]
NI-J (to a stately blonde in her 40s): And how about you?
40s Blonde: Hollywood had no use for me once I got a few lines around my eyes. I want to play something besides moms in TV commercials. I like to be sexy, and dying is the most fun an actor can have.[3blondemature.jpg goes here.]
NI-J: Have you read the book? Do you know what you’re in for?
40s Blonde: I read it. They sent a copy to everyone who signed up to audition. Part of me was horrified, but I laughed a lot, too. It’s like some goofy snuff kung-fu movie, but with hot women instead of Chinese guys. Really, it’s outrageous. Some of that stuff I just couldn’t do, but I think the people making the film understand that. The letter said that it will be toned down from the book. We’ll see what they ask me to do, if they offer a part. I have kid – no way I’m gonna spread my legs for the camera.
THE CAMERA FOLLOWS NIGEL INTO THE AUDITION ROOM, WHERE TWO ASIAN SISTERS IN THEIR LATE TEENS ARE BEING INSTRUCTED ON THEIR AUDITION SCENE BY CASTING DIRECTOR LAURA HOLT. An assistant with a clipboard is taking notes; another is shooting digital video. Two more assistants, a young man, Andy, and Martha, an older woman, are playing killers in the scene.
Laura Holt: Okay, girls, this time, we’d like to have you just in bras and panties, please. [They casually strip off their jeans and blouses.] Miki, Martha will shoot you four times, then you slide down the wall dead. Mai, you’re in shock for a second, then turn to run. Andy, here, will catch you and then cut your throat from behind. [Mai winks at Andy and smiles; he blushes deep red.] Get it? Any questions or comments before we start?[4asiaduo.jpg goes here]
Miki: Where will I be hit?
LH: You choose. I’ll just say ‘bang’ four times, and you react. Ready, go!
WITH THE FIRST BANG, MIKI GRABS HER CROTCH…
CUT TO NIGEL’S POST-AUDITION INTERVIEW WITH CASTING DIRECTOR HOLT.
NI-J: So, did you find any hot prospects today?
LH: Several. I really liked those Asian girls, the sisters. They weren’t at all self-conscious, they were very comfortable with the whole process, and that’s important. They were creative and improvised well.
We don’t want actresses breaking down in tears on the set. We want people who will have fun with this thing, which we view as a sort of high-tech, high-body-count lark. Not quite Matt-Helm silly, but more light than grim. Our director, Joel Hovey, likes actresses who can contribute to a scene, not just play it as scripted.
NI-J: Have you been surprised by the turnout at these auditions?
LH: Yes. We’ve held them in New York, here in L.A., in Las Vegas, Bangkok and in Hong Kong. More than 1,500 girls applied. We looked at almost 900.
NI-J: Who are they?
LH: Every stuntwoman in the business turned up. They love this getting shot and falling down stairs stuff, which they rarely get to do because of taboos against killing women on screen in mainstream movies. Some are actresses with real training who just need a job. Strippers and showgirls and porn actresses are in the mix, but we won’t take anyone who can’t act, regardless of what sexual things they’re willing to do. We have several actresses with experience at the Necrobabes fetish site, and they’ll be great. And we’ve had a surprising number of non show-business women who are just into the snuff-necro thing as a fetish.
NI-J: [surprised] Really? Have you cast any of them?
LH: Yes, several. We really like a beautiful blonde named Sandi, a former pro athlete, among others.
CUT TO NIGEL, SITTING IN A TYPICAL TV INTERVIEW SET. SEATED BEHIND HIM, IN SILHOUETTE, WE CAN MAKE OUT SEVERAL SLUMPED FEMALE FORMS.
Nigel: Weeks have passed since the preliminary auditions. The film is cast and in rehearsal at an undisclosed location. We’re visiting now with five of the dozens of women who will play victims in this bizarre film, which many consider highly exploitative. They are not professional actresses; all of them have long been participants in the internet fantasy-snuff scene. Let’s get to know them, shall we?
[He turns and the lights come up on Sandi, an athletic blonde in her 30s; Juli, a pert Chinese-American in her mid-20s; Becky, a jovial, open-faced Canadian in her late 30s; Yoko, a lanky Japanese woman in her early 20s; and Barbanne, a slender, frizzy-haired Australian charmer of about 30. All of them are playing dead, staring into space. Their short skirts are hiked up, revealing lots of leg and lacey briefs.
They continue to play dead until Nigel becomes uncomfortable. When Becky slides out of her chair and tumbles onto the floor he tries a few false, stammering starts before giving in to laughter. The girls come to life and laugh with him, Becky regains her chair and the interview begins.]
Nigel: Thank you for agreeing to this interview, ladies. Would you mind telling our viewers about your parts in “The Scamming Stewardess.”? And, if it’s not too embarrassing, describe the circumstances of your characters’ deaths.
Juli: It’s not embarrassing at all! I play a bad girl – this movie is loaded with bad girls. I’m doing a deal for some stolen computer thingies, when violence breaks out. The hero, such as he is, tricks a whole bunch of us into killing each other. It’s quite an orgy. I’m negotiating with this English woman, Petra – oh, she’s sorry she couldn’t come today – when the hero shoots her and sets off this huge battle. I stab her assistant like 20 times with an icepick before Petra shoots me in the back. I wear this really cute little sleeveless black dress. The bullets rip into my back and blow out my chest. One of them hits this girl I just killed right between the eyes. I fall back on this glass table, and Petra finishes me off with a shot in the throat. The table is supposed to spider-web crack beneath me. I hope it works. It would look super-cool.[5juli.jpg goes here.]
[NIGEL,DUMBFOUNDED, BLINKS AT HER.. Becky jumps in.]
BECKY: I’m her tough, leather-girl bodyguard. I have this really nutty scene where I’m all hurt because Juli loves the other bodyguard more than me. I play it absolutely straight, and it’s BLEEPing hilarious. Then I go up some steps and get machine-gunned and fall all the way down. I get shot 13 times – in the crotch, the thighs, the breasts, everywhere – and leave a bloody trail as I roll down. I land with my legs spread, and my character doesn’t believe in underwear. Which is odd, because, obviously, underwear DOES exist.[6Becky.jpg goes here]
[NIGEL, AGAIN, IS SPEECHLESS, THEN BEGINS TO GIGGLE WHEN HE REALIZES THAT BECKY HAS MADE A JOKE.]
Nigel : Becky, doesn’t that hurt, crashing down those steps?
Becky: No. Because they’re shooting all digital, I can go step to step as slow as I need to, and they can make it look really violent in the final cut.
Yoko [in halting, Japanese-inflected English]: He make me strip, then stab in back, but that would not kill. Dominic kill by snapping neck. I tell director, I want snap neck.[7yoko.jpg goes here]
Barbanne [beaming]: I have the longest death scene in the whole film. Dominic and Leona sort of play with me, slowly strangling me with a silk stocking to stoke up the old romantic fire. The script gives me 11 minutes of screen time to die, and I intend to make the most of it. I inspired one whole chapter in the original novel. The author’s an old cyber-pal of mine, and he insisted that I be in the movie. The rehearsals have been great fun. Mark and Lena Dorrance – they’re the killers, Dominic and Leona, in the story – get a huge kick out of the fact that my hardest acting challenge is quieting down my orgasms while they kill me. They’re really nice, by the by. Fun to be around.[8barbanne.jpg goes here.]
Nigel: And you, Sandi?
Sandi: I’m one of the stewardesses. Leona, the hero’s girlfriend is one, too, and I lead the other stews in an attempt to horn in on their big score. Then Dominic – the hero, well, not really a hero, he’s kind of a murdering double-crossing bastard – tricks me into thinking that he’s replaced Leona with me. He gets me to shoot a woman I think is Leona and then six other stewardesses. Let me tell you, shooting those seven beautiful women was a gigantic rush. This is all part of a epic babe massacre at this really nice resort in Thailand. We’ll get to stay there free when we shoot that part. It’s gonna be like a vacation.[9sandi.jpg goes here]
Nigel: And how do you die?
Sandi: Well, Dominic and I are standing amid all these dead and dying stews, and who shows up but Leona, who I think is dead. She’s looking fantastic in these sky-high heels and really short skirt, and she’s got an Uzi in her hand. While she’s standing there aiming this gun at me, I’m screaming at Dominic to kill her. Instead he lifts her skirt and screws her from behind while she blows me away with this machine-gun.
SANDI’S CHEEKS ARE GETTING FLUSHED AND HER BREATHING IS RISING AS SHE DESCRIBES THE SCENE. THE OTHER GIRLS SNICKER. NIGEL IS ALARMED.
Nigel, to Sandi: And you find this erotic?
Sandi [rising]: Um, yes… I’ll be back in 10 minutes. I.. have to use the ladies’ room.
[THE REMAINING FOUR WOMEN ARE CONVULSED IN LAUGHTER, AND NIGEL CAN’T HELP BUT JOIN THEM. THE LAUGHTER GOES ON FOR SOME TIME BEFORE PLAYING ITSELF OUT. IT’S CATHARSIS. THE TENSION IS BROKEN, AND NIGEL CAN GO ON. HE CLEARS HIS THROAT AND BEGINS TO FORM A SYLLABLE.]
Juli [interrupting]: Did I mention that Dominic rapes my dead body while I’m sprawled out on the table?
Yoko [cheerfully]: Yes, me also, but on a desk! Rape while snap neck. Fun!
Nigel, under his breath: Oh my god. [He sighs, then tries to regain control of the interview. He waits a moment for a smiling, relaxed Sandi to sashay across the studio and take her seat]: Ladies, I realize that you’re making sport of me, but could we please be serious for just a few moments? None of you are professional actresses, I understand. How did you become involved in this production?
Becky: I’ve been producing and acting in snuff photostories on the net for years. I know critmk, the author of the novel, a little, too. He made me – all five of us, actually – into characters in the story. Just for fun.
Juli: When the movie people got involved, he suggested that they contact us to be in the film. I think they were skeptical about casting us, but they liked our auditions and put us in. In my case, I play the same character that critmk wrote for me in the novel.
Sandi: [putting on diva airs]: I demanded a larger role. In the novel, I’m a cameo bimbo victim. I gave critmk a hard time about that.
Nigel: Am I to understand that all of you have these snuff-victim fantasies?
Barbanne: That’s right, love. Pretend croaking makes us wet. Strange world, eh?
Nigel: But many people, especially feminist women, take strong moral issue with your fantasies and this film. I wonder whether any of you have thought about its implications. Don’t you find that a movie such as this, in which women are murdered in a sexual context, degrading?
Becky: Oh it is graded, it's triple x!
Yoko: No, I don't. I think all fantasies must be shown in movies. It can help the guy or girl not pass from fantasy to real life.
Barbanne: I don't always agree with my feminist sisters that for a woman to be portrayed as a victim is necessarily degrading. Let's face it, men have the physical strength to dominate women and that is something a woman admires in the right type of man. I think if we were honest, a lot of us would have to admit that having a male in our lives who can share and deal with our problems is something we desire.
Sex is about passion and passion sometimes leads to violence and violence can result in death. The sex killer is an icon of our imagination, both as he exists in reality >
Juli: I find it degrading to be depicted as a brainless twit like so many movies do these days. At least if you get murdered for sex you get to have some fun before you die.
Nigel: What do your husbands or boyfriends think about your fantasies and your work in this movie?
Becky: Think? Are men allowed to do that?
Barbanne: Right now I'm unattached and have been for a while. My previous partners have been pretty much total arseholes and what they think about anything is irrelevant.
Juli: Matt, my husband, likes helping me rehearse. God knows it takes many many rehearsals to get just the right moan in your orgasm as you die. He makes sure I have it just right before I quit rehearsing with him.
Nigel: How did you all come to know the author of the novel?
Juli: Through the message boards at Necrobabes. He posted a lot of stories there.
Yoko: I was reading “Scamming Stewardess,” and ask him to put me in story. He did. I’m in chapter 4. I asked him to break my neck, and he did. I play my own part in movie.
Nigel: Did you contribute any dialogue or action to your scene, or did you just play it as written?
Yoko: Yes, more fighting. I had orgasms as I played the scene. My acting partner was very surprised by this. Later, when I have a DVD of the movie, every time I watch it, I will pleasure me or "rape" my boyfriend.
[Nigel takes a long look at Yoko; she’s beautiful. Is he fantasizing? He snaps out of it and goes on.]
Juli: Critmk wrote me into the story, and I’m so grateful he did. Really, the story was enough, and now the movie! I’m having a blast. I’d do another film in a minute! My hubbie stands ready to help me go into rehearsal on the drop of a hat or a dress which ever comes first.
Nigel: If you don’t mind my asking, how much are they paying you to do this?
[The women smile at one another.]
Sandi: Should we tell?
Becky: Oh, why not? We were just comparing notes before we dropped dead for the BBC at the top of the show. Turns out we’re all being paid the same, $1,500 U.S. a day plus all expenses and $200 per diem when they start shooting; $500 a day for the rehearsal period. They also have some sort of profit-sharing set-up, although I’m a little fuzzy on how that works. We’ll all come out of this with a pretty good payday.
Barbanne: Just as important as the money is that they’re treating us with respect and professionalism. They’re all sweeties.
Juli: We want people to understand that we are not being exploited. The money’s good, the people are nice. It’s been great for us to meet face to face after all those years of just being names on the net. We’re having fun. We all get into the part and love watching each other, and the body piles are so much fun.
Yoko: Sometimes, we rehearse together at hotel, for fun.
[The women laugh, conspiratorially.]
Sandi [standing near Nigel]: Should we show the folks at home how much fun we’re having?
[Juli makes a finger gun and shoots Sandi, who grabs her breasts, falls into Nigel’s lap, and slinks down his body to the floor. He’s flustered, but getting turned on.]
[Becky pulls Juli from her chair and runs a finger across her throat, as if it were a knife. Juli grabs her throat, staggers backward into Nigel’s lap. Before she dies, she gets two shots off; Becky grabs her crotch and then her heart, pitches forward and lands on Juli; they both slide off Nigel and land in a heap on Sandi. Barbanne has come up behind Yoko; she grabs her by the chin and head and snaps her neck, Yoko convulses and falls onto the pile. Nigel’s eyes are the size of silver dollars. Barbanne removes “dead” Juli’s high heel, reaches up her miniskirt and removes a stocking. She loops it around her neck.]
Barbanne: Well, Nigel, it’s just us. [She kneels in front of him and tilts her head back to expose her throat.] Be gentle – it’s just pretend, you know.
[The scene fades to black as Nigel takes the ends of the stocking wound about Barbanne’s neck into his trembling hands.]