Word Play

Since Roger alluded in yesterday's comments to my meeting my wife, I feel it incumbent on me to explain. I was, in fact, casting a film I'd gone to Italy to direct. I had not then nor have ever been a lecher, and was always the soul of propriety when in casting sessions. Indeed, I'd long envied the ability of some directors and producers to circumspectly allow professionality to give way to the expressions of a more prurient interest, on occasion at least. My reluctance, I think, to engage in suggestive banter with job aspirants has less to do, I think, with any admirable morality, and more to do with my fear of coming off as ridiculous. At any rate, when Carla appeared in my office in Rome accompanied by her agent, almost the first words out of my mouth, which escaped before I could edit them, were, "do you have a boyfriend?" I was just kidding around, but as it turned out she did. And lied. So that's how I became a living cliche, the director who married the leading lady.