Up Till Now: The Autobiography

Actually, once I got used to working with the spiders it didn’t bother me at all; what did bother me was the fact that a lot of these spiders died making this film—you could actually hear them being squished when cars ran over them. And I didn’t like working with the rat. This was a trained rat that had an invisible monofilament leash on it so it couldn’t get loose—until it did get loose and jumped on me.
    But perhaps the most difficult stunt I’ve ever done was a nude scene with gorgeous Angie Dickinson in Roger Corman’s film Big Bad Mama . As the posters promised, the essence of this film was Hot Lead! Hot Cars! Hot Dames! Hot Damn! It was Roger Corman’s “tribute” to Bonnie and Clyde, with a little more violence and a lot more skin, and it proved forever that Angie Dickinson is not a natural blonde.
    Angie Dickinson played a gun-totin’ mama who robbed banks with her two sexy young daughters; I was a con man who went alongfor the ride. And Angie Dickinson. Oh, she was a magnificent woman. Smart and beautiful. As a total package she was delicious. We did this film just before she became a TV star on Police Woman. They had already been filming for about two weeks before I arrived on the set. The only person I knew on the set was Roger Corman. The very first scene Angie Dickinson and I were going to shoot together was a love scene which required both of us to be totally naked. I wasn’t overly concerned about working nude; let’s be honest, I was working with Angie Dickinson, who was going to be looking at my body? Most people weren’t even going to notice I was in the scene.
    Before we shot we had a table reading with Roger Corman. Angie was very reluctant to do this scene. “I don’t know about this nudity,” she said. “You know, I’ve never been naked in front of a camera before. I’m very apprehensive.”
    Roger calmed her down. “Okay, Angie, here’s what we’ll do. We’ll just close the set. We’ll just do it with the minimum crew. We’ll eliminate anybody who really doesn’t have to be there.”
    “All right,” she agreed. “But Roger, please, I don’t want anybody else there. I don’t want to look up in the rafters and see people looking at me.”
    Corman gave his word. “It’ll just be you, Bill, me, and the cinematographers.”
    She smiled. “That’s okay, then.”
    Roger turned to me. “How ‘bout you, Bill? Are you okay with it?”
    “If she’s all right with it, it’s fine with me. My only worry is that I’m going to get an erection.”
    Everybody laughed, assuming I was kidding. I wasn’t. I was going to be in bed with a gorgeous naked woman. Not getting an erection was going to be very . . . hard. Normally when I was going to do a scene or a stunt I knew how to prepare for it. But in this situation I really didn’t know what not to do.
    We shot the scene that afternoon. Angie and I walked onto the set wearing bathrobes. “I’m so nervous,” she told me.
    “Don’t be,” I said, meanwhile trying to think about anythingexcept the fact that this beautiful woman was completely naked beneath that robe.
    “Okay, everybody,” Roger said loudly. “Let’s clear the set, please. Everybody off the set, and I mean everybody. I don’t want to see anybody except Paul behind the camera. Come on, let’s move it. Close the doors behind you, please.”
    Angie focused on my eyes, and then shyly let her bathrobe drop onto the floor. I stood there in awe. I was looking at the perfection of the female body. This was an ode to the beauty of woman. Her silken skin flowed mellifluously over her hips into the rising swells of her ripened breasts, her long blond hair just barely covering her...
    But let me pause here for just one moment to tell you about something particularly meaningful to me. More than twenty years ago I attended a charity horse show at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center. It was a wonderful evening. The funds raised that night were contributed to a hospital at USC. Afterward I learned that the women running this show had decided that this would be its final year. I thought, if these women can run a horse show, why can’t I? I’ll get some people to help me and do this. In 1990 I renamed it the Hollywood Charity Horse Show. But then I needed to find a primary charity to be the recipient of the money we raised.
    Fate intervened. One afternoon I was standing on the balcony of the equestrian center and when I looked into the ring I saw a