THE MAKING OF AN EROTIC THRILLER

Yet another of my hot Oscar-Contenders was an Austro-American goody produced in 1996 by “Erotic-Pioneer” Zelman King of “9 ½ Weeks”-fame. As usual, I got to play the butler.

The first part of this autobiographical book about my father's films is called
THE MAKING OF ATTACK SQUADRON. The second is called HERB MOULTON & CLINT EASTWOOD. Here is the third installment: an account about his work in the erotic thriller BUSINESS FOR PLEASURE.

The picture here was taken during the filming process in between takes.
Caron Bernstein and my father Herbert Eyre Moulton.

For the trailer of the film, go here:

http://www.artistdirect.com/video/business-for-pleasure/58292

Now, enjoy.
It's a bumpy ride.


The Making of “Business for Pleasure”
By well-known actor, baritone and author
Herbert Eyre Moulton
(1927 �" 2005)

I have starred in many movies, including “Firefox” with Clint Eastwood and “Mesmer” with Alan Rickman. Often, I am confused with another colleague of the same generation and of the same name. We share the same profession, but I am also a singer, a teacher, an author and have worked a greater part in Europe.
I was MCA Records’ 1950’s Hot-Shot Dinner Singer, the conductor of the Camp Gordon Chapel Choir during the Korean War, a part of the duo “The Singing Couple”, the other half being my wife Gun Kronzell, creator of the school-radio-programmes for the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation and actor in over three hundred stage productions across the world.
As for the movies, one of my more curious anecdotes concerned the following one.
Yet another of my hot Oscar-Contenders was an Austro-American goody produced in 1996 by “Erotic-Pioneer” Zelman King of “9 ½ Weeks”-fame. This was one little sweetmeat that actually got released, or it snuck out when no one was looking. I know for a fact that it was let loose back home, because a matronly towncrier of my acquaintance phoned me from the Chicago area to relay the glad tidings:

“Don Nichols called last night and said he’d rented a Soft-Porn video and guess who was playing the butler? Not just the butler, but also a sort of uniformed Procurer? Herb Moulton, that’s who! So, of course, we had to have a look at it, and we recognized you, because you were the only one with your clothes on.”

This rococo fertility-rite starred Jeroen Krabbe (Harrison Ford’s nemesis in “The Fugitive”) and two dishy young shooting stars who needed the work, I guess: Caron Bernstein and Gary Stretch, and it was filmed (my scenes, anyway) in various splendidly restored castles ornmenting the Austrian countryside. As usual, I wasn’t especially well-informed about my actual duties. All I knew was: I was to meet and greet the lissome Ms. Bernstein at the portal and usher her up several flights of long winding stairs into a vast bed- and ballroom, in the center of which stood a gilded ornamental bathtub complete with sumptuous Turkish towels and exotic perfumes and ungents. She was to make use of it at once.
On this very first day of shooting I was handed a xeroxed resumé of the convoluted, so-called plot which bore the cryptic stamp “UNAPPROVED 2/7/96”. After a moment’s persual I could see why. To match its sheer gooey grandiloquence you’d have to turn to the Collected works of Dame Barbara Cartland. Talk about “Dynasty”- and “Dallas”-Damage. Allow me to quote some purple patches:

“Isabel Diaz, a beautiful and sophisticated, rising executive, is facing a crisis,” it begins. “That moment in life, when each time she looks in the mirror, she asks herself: ‘What am I saving myself for?’”

The question being wholly rhetorical, the narrative gurgles on:

“A self-possessed woman with a smouldering sensuality, she longs to push beyond the limits of the day to day.”

Helping her push is the powerful, ultra-wealthy magnate Alexander Schutter, with whom she forms an unholy alliance. With him, she “has met her match”. This is Mr. Krabbe at his silkiest and most icky, and his first demand on Isabel is that she “pass a test of personal loyalty and cater to his peculiar sensual desires.” She is to bring two call girls to his suite and observe them making love to Rolf, Schutter’s chauffeur, whom the handout describes as “darkly handsome and gifted lover.” (Well, he’d want to be, wouldn’t he?)
One question, if I may: Why is it always the chauffeur and why not the poor old butler who has all the fun? As the gray eminence of this particular castle, I know I had to be above all that, grandly ignorant of the carnal olympiad swirling all around me, and much more concerned with such domestic duties as supervising a corps of bewigged flunkies as they served a splendiferous candlelight supper out on the terrace. The trouble was it poured wih rain on each of the all-night filming sessions (always tedious and depressing at the best of times), which rather dampended the orgiastic merriment. Luckily, Gary Stretch, alias Rolf the sexually athletic chauffeur, took pity on me and let me take refuge in his heate caravan, for which a benison on him, and may Heaven safeguard his libido.
But wait, there’s more, much more.
“The game begins,” announces the funky travelogue, and before anybody can say “Priapus”, the show is taken off the road and moved to the glitter and swank of Vienna, where “an intensely erotic triangle develops among Isabel, Schutter and Rolf.” The relentlessly lascivious Schutter gets further kicks from watching the other two making what Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello terms “the beast with two backs.” The gameplan breathlessly unfolds:

“The tension in this emotional thriller builds against the background of Vienna where love of life, beauty and luxury echoes Isabel’s growing passion for sensuality. (“Getting There Is Half The Fun!”)

But now danger looms for heedless, headstrong Isabel, along with hints of tragedy buried in the past, as

“Schutter’s world of power, risk and decadence becomes an addiction for her.”

What withdrawal struggles, what cold turkey the poor dear will have to endure while kicking the habuit must be left to the imagination. For now, the whole heroic saga is being rounded off:

“Business for Pleasure is the story of one woman’s brave journey to the heart of her own desires. Isabel’s entry into Schutter’s dark world leaves her shattered ...”

(And she’s not the only one!)
But now come the great crashing chords that signify Redemption and The Grand Finale:

“With the help of the mysterious and hauntingly beautiful Anna ...”

(Mysterious, is right. This is the first we have heard of her!)

“... she is able to pick up the pieces of her life. When finally Isabel triumphs over disaster, she helps Schutter confront his own emptiness and take his first steps into the light.”

What this reminds you of is the grand old era of Super-Soap Heroines like Mary Noble, Backstage Wife, and tragic, self-sacrificing Stella Dallas. Isabel has got to be the most distressed and poignant figure since Tolstoy or possibly Jacqueline Susanne. Yet what is the only thing that bugged those yahoo-acquaintances of mine in Chicago? The next time I’m in that neck of the woods, remind me to check out for myself the video of “Business for Pleasure”, if only to see just what fun-and-games the butler had been missing all that time.