LINDA, A Highly Successful Call Girl

A London lady of the evening with dignity and business sense is superior to her circumstances.
 

Linda is so beautiful, so refined, so aloof that her clients fall in love with her.

She's making a pile with American businessmen—who introduce her to the Prince—who falls for her too.


Her passion for independence only inflames him—he wants to
marry her, have children!—they all do, but she is resolutely herself.

Professional cool is the secret of her success, and the allure that enslaves powerful men.


Cops, pimps, hookers, judges, prison guards, psychiatrists, politicians—there isn’t much she can’t deal with.


And when the Prince introduces her to the former American President…


Proposed cast: Julie Delpy (Linda)

LINDA is a call girl, a businesswoman and an independent spirit.  Presidents fall in love with her, though she’s not that interested, and she winds up in the Oval Office advising one of them.

Proposed cast: Peter Sarsgaard (Barry)

BARRY is the American  junior executive who’s in love with her.  He will do anything to have her, and ultimately kills for her, which finally gets her attention.

Proposed cast: Guy Ingle ("the Prince")

Proposed cast: Wendy Ellis ("the Duchess")

Proposed cast: Timothy Watters ("the former American President")

Proposed cast: Teresa Barnwell ("the presidential candidate")

Proposed cast: Gerardo Puisseaux ("the President")

Pretentious Pictures presents a dry comedy.

Boccaccio's "The Stupid Friar"

"Nothing is so indecent that it cannot be said to another person if the proper words are used to convey it."―Giovanni Boccaccio

Around the year 1340 a high-born lady of Florence fell in love with a gentleman who didn’t notice her. She had been looking for someone to fall in love with. Her husband, a rich wool merchant, was not high-born, and thought of nothing but weaving and carding and wool-combing. She despised him.

But the man she chose to fall in love with didn’t know she existed. Letters? Messengers? Too dangerous. She discovered however that he confessed regularly to a certain friar who was widely admired for his holy life although, like many friars, he was fat, stupid and vulgar.

She went to the church where he lived and asked if she could confess to him. Friars live on donations, and she was clearly a gentlewoman, so he agreed immediately. When she had unburdened her heart she confessed also that she had a problem. Her husband, a very rich man, indulged her every whim. She loved him more than she loved herself, and would never do anything to hurt or dishonor him. But.

“A gentleman whose name I don’t know,” she said, “but who seems to be a friend of yours—a tall handsome well-dressed man—has been stalking me! If I go to the window he’s there. If I go to the door he’s there. If I leave the house he follows me! I’d be surprised if he weren’t here right now!” She looked over her shoulder.

“I don’t want to tell my brothers. You know men—it might get violent. Do you think you could speak to him?” And she wept.

He praised her virtue, and incidentally reminded her of the beggar’s life a friar leads, at which she made a weighty contribution, and asked him to say masses for the dead in her family. And the next time the gentleman came to see him the friar introduced into the conversation, very politely, the problem the lady was having.

The gentleman paused. “What?”

“Don’t try to deny it. She told me herself. And she is not interested. This doesn’t look well on you. You’d better leave her alone.”

The gentleman thought for a moment. “Okay.” And when he left he went straight to the lady’s house and saw her standing at a window. She looked at him, and in her eyes was a certain merriment. After that he found occasion to pass that way again, and when they saw each other his eyes held a certain merriment.

That was all she needed. “It’s worse than ever!” she told the friar. “He won’t stop! He sent a girl to my house with a message, and gifts!—a sash and a purse!” She held them out. “What do I want with a sash and a purse? I almost gave them back to her but then I thought, no, she’ll just keep them for herself, so here, please return them to him. If this goes on I’ll have to tell my husband and my brothers, I don’t care what happens!”

“No no no, you mustn’t do that! Control your anger. No blame will fall on you, my child, your chastity is perfect, I’ll testify to that.”

She sighed. “I see my dead mother in dreams, and other dead members of my family. Please say the Forty Masses of Saint Grigorio so God will spare them from the flames.” And she gave him a gold florin!

“What are these?” demanded the friar, shaking the purse and the sash at the gentleman. “She told me to give them back to you! She threatens to tell her husband and her brothers!” The gentleman nodded, embarrassed.

“Promise me you won’t see her anymore!”

“I promise,” he said, and went straight to the lady’s street. Finding her in the window, he discreetly showed her that he had received the gifts. She smiled. He smiled. And when her husband rode off to Genoa on business she went back to the friar.

She said, “Father, I promised I wouldn’t do anything without telling you. I don’t know how this man found out my husband is in Genoa but this morning before dawn he entered the garden, climbed a tree to my bedroom window—which is the one in front that overlooks the garden—and was coming in when I woke and jumped out of bed nude! I was about to scream when he told me who he was and begged mercy for God’s sake and for yours! So I didn’t scream, but I slammed the window in his face. Because of you I’ve suffered along with this, but now I have to do something!”

The friar was very angry. He said, “Give me one more chance. I’ll deal with him.”

“Well,” she said, “I won’t come back again. I’ll act on my own.”

“Don’t worry.”

She stormed off, and very soon the gentleman appeared at the church. The friar took him aside and shouted at him, heaped abuse on him, called him names. 

The gentleman listened patiently. “What’s wrong?”

This drew forth new insults, and a description of what the gentleman had done that morning. “What are you going to do if she tells her brothers?”

“You’re right,” said the gentleman. “Your anger, your holiness, your harsh words, they guide me to heaven.”

And that night he was up the tree, through the window, and in heaven. And so were they both, for many a night, thanks to the stupid friar.


LINDA, A Highly Successful Call Girl

An Athens lady of the evening with dignity and business sense is superior to her circumstances.


Linda is so beautiful, so refined, so aloof that her clients fall in love with her.

She's making a pile with American businessmen—who introduce her to the Prince—who falls for her too. 


Her passion for independence only inflames him—he wants to
marry her, have children!—they all do, but she is resolutely herself.

Professional cool is the secret of her success, and the allure that enslaves powerful men. 


Cops, pimps, hookers, judges, prison guards, psychiatrists, politicians—there isn’t much she can’t deal with. 


And when the Prince introduces her to the former American President… 


Proposed cast: Antigone Kouloukakos (Linda)

LINDA is a call girl, a businesswoman and an independent spirit.  Presidents fall in love with her, though she’s not that interested, and she winds up in the Oval Office advising one of them.

Proposed cast: Duncan Skinner (Barry)

BARRY is the American  junior executive who’s in love with her.  He will do anything to have her, and ultimately kills for her, which finally gets her attention.

Proposed cast: Guy Ingle ("the Prince")

Proposed cast: Wendy Ellis ("the Duchess")

Proposed cast: Timothy Watters ("the former American President")

Proposed cast: Teresa Barnwell ("the American Secretary of State")

Proposed cast: Gerardo Puisseaux ("the President")

Pretentious Pictures presents a dry comedy.


Foreign Matter—the movie


Toby travels with a woman who pays. He's got it made, except that her nine-year-old daughter is smarter than he is.  Based on the novel:

   

“A very, very funny book"—The West Coast Review of Books 
“Enormously enjoyable”—Kirkus Reviews 
“Fresh and spirited”—Publishers Weekly

Think of:


Toby Tucker gets along as a tour guide, though all he knows how to do is keep the clients amused. 
In Venice he falls for rich bubble-head Marcie but can't afford her style.  "To-bee!  Let's just live on my money!"  Well—it’s awkward but what can one say?  He reclines into the good life.
Marcie Harding, sweet, fresh, blonder than blonde and all heart, is a lonely widow who takes a tour in Venice.    Toby abandons the tour to take her to Rome, and when he runs out of cash is about to abandon her.  He loves her more than he knows.
But for Andrea, things would be perfect.  "The child."  Toby and Marcie are no smarter than anybody else; the child is smarter than anybody else.  She'd have got rid of him long ago but her mommy loves him, so she keeps him around to, how shall I say, play with.  When you’re not looking she rotates her head like Linda Blair.

Proposed cast: Tom Wilkinson
Marcie’s father-in-law, billionaire Hazelton Turnbull “Hard Turd” Harding IV, loathes Toby, and loathes giving Marcie her allowance to feed him.  But he loves his little granddaughter, and there lies the control.
When Haze spends Marcie’s money on a painting for the Harding Memorial Museum it looks like Toby's meal ticket is gone.

Proposed cast: Catherine Tate
Johna Nerg is the butch-nightmare artist whose painting Toby accidentally steps in, sits in and sets on fire.  He really doesn't mean it but she thinks, as who does not, that he's trying to destroy it—and gets real mean with him.
 
He has no choice, finally, but to try to steal it.  But until the child takes a hand, nothing works.

Foreign Matter is part of the Toby series: 
Pretentious Pictures presents a summer comedy. 

Pretentious Pictures Presents:

Jennifer, and how she got this way
Why is Jennifer on a plane to New York with a nuclear bomb?
She made a pornographic film in jail—not by choice—if you want to eat you do what you’re told.
Why was she put in jail?  Her mother died when Jennifer was fourteen after sitting straight up out of a coma and staring at something horrifying—Jennifer's future?—and even in death wouldn't let go Jennifer's hand.
At nineteen she gives birth to a little girl, her father's child, but the baby is sick—constant pain, early deathcaused by the Ovatrine she was taking.  The doctor files a report to the FDA, and the Ovatrine lawyers want to know who the father is.  Dad suicides.  "CORONER FINDS FAYNOR BABY FATHERED BY GRANDFATHER."  Now she's a pariah.  Everybody stares.
The baby is in constant agony.  "She can’t take it! It’ll kill her!"  "Yes," says the doctor, "it will."  The tenderest of mothers, she allows her baby to slip under the surface of the bath, and holds her there.  She is taken away.  "Child-murderer!" shouts one neighbor.  "Father-fucker!" shouts another.

"Either it was an accident, or it was a mercy killing," says her lawyer.  "It can’t be both."  She goes with accident.  The court is disgusted.  Ten years, possible parole after five.
The other prisoners, who miss their own kids, hate her, and take her food.  Starving, she resorts to the protection of Mean Bitch—but she has to play ball.  Playing ball means putting out for Mean Bitch and whoever else—and making a video that will put a little money in Mean Bitch's pocket, a sex video involving a dog.
When she gets out she waitresses and goes to night school, where Phil, taking a course to upgrade his status in his company, can't take his eyes off her.  She avoids him, but finally goes with him to a company party, where his boss Brice fires him on the spot.  "It’s unfortunate.  He’s a good accountant.  But he’ll never forgive me for taking you away from him.  I can’t work with someone like that."  The company CEO wants her too, but holds his peace.
Courtship.  She confesses to Brice that she's been in prison.  Ouch, but OK.  Because she killed her baby.  He goes down for the count, but the next day he's back.  Marriage.  Second anniversary.  Company stag for somebody else.  Phil goes shopping for porn flicks to show at the stag, and finds Jennifer's.  When Brice and the other men in the company see it, he pukes, gets drunk, gambles away his money, burns down their house and drives his car into the river.  
At the funeral home she prostrates herself on the floor.  Malinson, the CEO who's been watching and waiting, pays for the funeral and puts her in a rooming house.  "The insurance company doesn’t pay when you burn it yourself."  She's no longer really there.  

Gradually she comes around, and he takes her to the opera.  He loves her.  "I'm not lucky," she warns him.  He says, "But within your bad luck—you're lucky.  Aren’t you?"  "There’s a curse on me. I don’t want it to touch you."  He doesn't care.  But his friends don't like what she is, or was.  They can't be a social couple together.  
He takes her to the French Riviera.  Prince Omar spots her and meets them by buying shares in Malinson's company.  Jealous, Malinson wants to take her away to Porto Fino—but lingers, because after all Omar is a shareholder.  

She can't go back with Malinson or he'll be ruined, though he doesn't care.  But he does see what she wants, and leaves her with Omar, who effectively kidnaps her, though with charm, into a world where she isn’t an outcast.
In his palace at Abu-al-Abbas she has royal dignity.  He introduces her to Winthrop, a CIA agent who suspects him of financing terrorists, and to Rashid, an Afghani terrorist who warns Omar against her, but wants her.  The CIA man shows Omar the porn film, with which he can humiliate Omar, and Omar gives her money and sends her away—to be assassinated by his servant.  She seduces the servant, cuts his throat and drives away—but where?  
To Rashid, whose number a saleswoman had pressed into her palm at the market, and to his fellow student-activists.  Omar, who has become an American agent, will kill her.  Should they help her escape?  No, she should help them deal with Omar.  She returns to the palace in Omar's car, loaded with explosives.  The servants park it in the underground lot, and she confronts the shocked Omar and the amused Winthrop, and ticks them off good and proper.  Then she takes the servants shopping for good-bye gifts, and the palace goes up in a column of fire.
Now she really is an outlaw.  The puritanical Rashid is in love with her, but disapproves of her, and of himself.  He and his comrades take her to a market in the Khyber Pass where the international military shop for weapons, and acquire the parts for a nuclear device which they disguise as musical instruments to be assembled as they approach New York.  They call it The Manhattan Project.  
And she has to stop itdoesn't she?  Yes, she does!  But can she?  How?  She picks up drunken Harry, a Harry Dean Stanton kind of guy—"I’m with a private military consultancy. (lowers his voice) We’re doin’ fuckin’ things here you wouldn’t fuckin’ believe!"—and the two of them board the aircraft with her terrorist lover and his partners.  Can she stop this bombing?  

Well, sort of.

Pretentious pictures presents
Jennifer, and how she got this way


Robert MacLean is an independent filmmaker. His The Light Touch is on Amazon PrimeTubi and Scanbox, and his 7-minute comedy is an out-loud laugh. He is also a novelist, a playwright, a blogger, a YouTuber, a film reviewer, a literary critic, and a stand-up comic poet. Born Toronto, PhD McGill, taught at Canadian universities, too cold, live Greece, Irish citizen. No brains but an intellectual snob.


I was beastly but never coarse. A high-class sort of heel.

The Light Touch on Amazon Prime

The Natural Wish to Be Robert MacLean