Page:Spider Boy (1928).pdf/272

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to be real in any set I work in. How can an actor feel anything if he's playing with fake stuff? Why, I make the girls wear French underclothing even if they don't have to undress in the picture. I even pick out perfumes.

Perfumes? Do they photograph?

You'd be surprised, Deacon, but they do. Certain perfumes act as aphrodisiacs. Others repell. If I spray a room with Pois de senteur de chez moi you ought to see how the actors begin to behave. What's your idea, he went on without pausing, for the scene in the mountains, the scene in the peasant's hut?

Just what do you mean? Ambrose queried. Then, Isn't it clear in the script?

Oh, I don't pay any attention to a script. I look at it a couple of times, then I throw it away. By the time I get through I'll make something of your idea. No offence intended. You see, you fellows who write for the stage don't quite get the hang of pictures at first. Now there are a hell of a lot of details in this script that are all wrong for picture technique. Oh, I know you been over it, Phil, but you left plenty of bilge in here out of courtesy to Ambrose Deacon, the great playwright. I always have the same trouble when I engage outsiders. Probably on the whole it's a good thing. You playwrights buck us up, put us on