The books of magic 6 rec.., p.1
Movie Rogue, page 1
MOVIE
ROGUE
Legend Press Ltd, 51 Gower Street, London, WC1E 6HJ
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Contents © William Coles 2025
The right of the above author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available.
Print ISBN 978-1-91716-343-9
Ebook ISBN 978-1-91716-344-6
Set in Times.
Cover design by Ditte Løkkegaard
All characters, other than those clearly in the public domain, and place names, other than those well-established such as towns and cities, are fictitious and any resemblance is purely coincidental.
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William Coles has been a journalist for over 30 years and has worked for a number of papers including The Sun, The Express, The Mail and The Wall Street Journal.
William’s novels, Palace Rogue and Eton Rogue, are the prequels to Movie Rogue, and were published in 2023 and 2024.
Visit William at
wcoles.com
and follow him
@WilliamColes1
For Mike Hamill, stalwart
Preface
In the late autumn of 1996, the world’s most pernickety film director, Stanley Kubrick, started filming his last great project. Eyes Wide Shut would ultimately enter the Guinness Book of World Records – though not, perhaps, for the reasons that Kubrick might have hoped for. While most movie shoots last around three months, Eyes Wide Shut garnered the world record (a record that has still yet to be touched) for the longest continuous shoot in history. Kubrick’s gargantuan shoot lasted 400 days and took its toll on every single person involved. When filming finally wrapped, the entire crew – who’d not had a holiday in over a year – were close to suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Naturally enough, the world’s media was absolutely fascinated by this super-secret squillion-pound shoot. The only thing that was really known about Eyes Wide Shut was that it starred the hottest Hollywood couple of the decade, Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise. There was also talk of a searingly graphic orgy scene. But beyond that: nothing. No one even knew the name of the book that the film was based on.
This naturally led to the most feverish tabloid speculation: eye-popping tales of Harvey Keitel storming off set because he couldn’t stomach Kubrick’s OCD levels of perfectionism; talk of Kubrick constructing a whole chunk of New York City right outside London; endless chatter about Tom and Nicole’s rocky marriage. There was even a weird whisper that Kubrick was only surviving the brutal film schedule because he’d hired a body double.
One little-known story from Eyes Wide Shut was that the film set was infiltrated by a reporter from one of the British tabloids. The hack not only worked as an extra on one of the most outlandish orgy scenes in movie history, but also, it’s believed, became friends with both Cruise and Kubrick.
It is perhaps one of the better stories that’s told about Eyes Wide Shut.
It is the story of Movie Rogue.
Chapter 1
On this night of nights as the rest of Britain is all but abed, Tom Cruise steadies himself and readies himself to walk through a doorway for the 79th time. His mercurial director, Stanley Kubrick, forever thirsting for something more, but never quite knowing what it is that he wants, sips lemonade as he lounges behind the camera. Kubrick’s Assistant Director, Glenn, who does the donkey work, sucks it up, just as he’s done for the previous six months; above all Glenn tries not to wonder how many times Cruise will be made to walk through this doorway before Kubrick is finally happy (though that in itself raises the fatal question of whether Kubrick can ever be happy). Nicole Kidman – Nic to her husband – is not on the set, and instead continues with her project of general self-improvement, which this year includes learning Italian.
On the newsdesk of Her Majesty’s Sun newspaper, the night news editor seethes as her booziest reporter, one Kim by name, sips “Ribena” as he languidly leafs through the first editions.
And meanwhile over a hundred miles away in Manchester, Nina, our topless heroine, cavorts around a pole and ponders that insuperable problem that comes to all of us in the end: how the hell am I going to get out of this fix?
For reasons which we may yet come to, Nina has been working in the Red Coat strip club for four years now. She is a beautiful and accomplished pole-dancer, bringing in more than enough money to fund her impossible dream: writing a bestseller. To date, she has written four manuscripts and has had one of them published; so far it has sunk without trace. But Nina is resilient and she continues with the project. Nina has adopted as her personal mantra the heart-warming words of the late great Iain Banks, whose sage advice continues to inspire writers the world over: the first million words you write are shit.
Roughly speaking, including first and second drafts, Nina has now written nearly 700,000 words, so only another 300,000 pieces of faeces to get through, and then, truly, she will have paid her dues – and perhaps, just possibly, might have written a book which actually brings in some money. Until that happy day, Nina will continue to grind out the Red Coat hours for four nights a week – and although some might see her work as demeaning, exploitative, Nina’s glass is half-full. She’s got two good friends, one of them a keeper. She gets loads of material for her writing. And, despite considerable pestering, she hasn’t yet become a prostitute.
Nina and Mandy are entwined round adjacent poles on the podium in the middle of the club. Nina has a rich sense of humour and can indeed see the ridiculousness of the song they’re dancing to – one of the hits of 1997, ‘Barbie Girl’ by a band called Aqua. The song’s utterly banal, of course, but because they’re pros, both Nina and Mandy are giving it everything they’ve got. Certainly for Nina, her smile is genuine.
Since it is altogether possible that you have never been inside a strip club – leastways not a 1990s strip club – we’d best describe it. The Red Coat is fairly dark, the better to obscure the dark deeds that occur behind the pillars and in the nooks and corners. The walls are grey, the carpet is dark blue and dotted about the room are a scattering of chairs and little round tables. At one end, a large bar, and at the other, lounging in a booth next to the entrance, is Ali the pock-marked manager.
While Nina and Mandy are the main draw on centre stage, a number of their colleagues prowl the floor, traipsing around the tables, weighing up the punters for their looks and their wealth and, indeed, their general cheeriness. Most of the clientele are besuited menfolk, and those that are deemed not overly offensive are accosted with a smile and a question about their hometown or their business in Manchester.
If the answers prove satisfactory (or at least not wholly unsatisfactory), the girl will sit down and join the man, and with luck will persuade him to buy her a drink; with a little more luck, she will entice him off to one of the curtained booths for a private lap dance, for this is where the real money is to be made. (The rules state that there is to be no touching in these private booths, but shall we just say that the strippers have a certain degree of latitude.)
What these beautiful women are offering up is a fantasy, and one of the most common male fantasies is – perhaps regrettably, perhaps not regrettably – to have a threesome. (That is one man and two women; two men and one woman does occur, but is less common.)
Now – it’s during these threesomes that the spats occur. You might imagine that strip club fights are usually between the menfolk. Not so. Most fights are between the girls and are usually sparked by a perceived unfair distribution of the spoils. For instance… suppose that a beautiful girl, Linda, has taken the interest of a rich middle-aged whale, whom we shall call John. Now Linda may have invested some considerable time in buttering John up, teasingly asking him about his wife and his dreams, and getting him to buy a bottle of the expensive but disgusting house champagne. At length, John may decide that he’d like to go to a booth for a private lap dance with Linda, and then, what the hell, he decides to have another girl join them, and the girl who just happens to have taken his fancy is Bambi, a Russian (her real name was Svetlana, but that was deemed too much of a mouthful). Now Bambi is certainly beautiful, but she is no friend of Linda’s. The girls have previous. But still – both Linda and Bambi are both thoroughbred professionals, and professionally go about their business of lightening John’s wallet.
The altercation starts when it comes to the dividing of the spoils. John has given Linda and Bambi some £600 in cash, but the money itself had actually been handed to Linda. And the moot question is this: is Bambi deserving of half of the spoils, some £300, or should she have a lesser cut, say, £200, or even, a stingy £150? On the one hand, it’s Linda who’s put in all the hard yards chitty-chatting with John; but on the other hand, Bambi more than did the business with John in the private booth.
If only a handy lawyer was available to make some Solomon-like adjudication on how the money should be divided, but as it is, there is no such lawy
There is clawing, there is hair-pulling, and there is slapping and grappling, and the whole thing is all most unedifying. The punters, however, cannot take their eyes off the extraordinary spectacle – all save one, Leon, and since we will be returning to Leon, he shall have the benefit of a description: Leon is quite a slight man, not above 5’ 7”, and is wearing a rumpled suit and yellow-tinted glasses. He has longish shoulder-length hair which is both thinning and receding. What makes him stand out from the rest of the punters is that, on his round table, alongside his dirty Martini, is an A4 notebook, into which he jots the odd note with his Montblanc pen. He also occasionally draws a picture.
Though all the rest of the Red Coat clientele are watching Bambi as she writhes around on top of Linda, Leon only has eyes for Nina and Mandy, who continue their slick performance at the poles. And the look on Leon’s face? He has a smile of wry amusement as he wonders just how much longer these two girls can ignore the unignorable screaming scrap that is occurring right on the floor in front of them.
Now – as to the catfight, after a minute on the floor, Linda has realised that she is being bested by the younger and more agile Bambi. What she needs is a weapon – and, useful tip here, if you’re in a catfight then there’s only one real weapon in town: a stiletto heel. She hurls it as hard as she can, but instead of connecting with Bambi’s face, or even her throat, it whistles clean over her head and straight at Nina.
Nina, still doughtily dancing with Mandy, is doing what she does so very well and that is to zone out, thinking about what she’ll have for dinner that night. From out of nowhere, she suddenly becomes aware of the stiletto zeroing point first straight towards her head. She catches it, pure reflex, and now she’s still dancing away but she’s got Linda’s stiletto shoe in her hand. But… what to do with the stiletto? Place it neatly on the stage for Linda to retrieve whenever the security goons have dragged her off Bambi? Or perhaps… pretend it’s a phone? Or a microphone?
Nina happens to glance at the guy with the yellow-tinged glasses and the straggly hair, our friend Leon, who has already sized up the problem. He makes a little gun with thumb and two fingers and shoots her.
Nina, smart as paint, immediately cottons on. As the cat-fight is brought to a close by two security goons (final result? Probably a score draw), Nina channels her inner James Bond to start shooting people with her new stiletto. In her mind’s eye, Nina is the gorgeous Maud Adams, the only woman to have featured in three Bond films. First, she shoots Mandy (who then handily mimes being shot, staggering against her pole before slow-mo collapsing to the floor), and then picks off various punters. In the classic 007 stance – feet wide, knees bent – she shoots Leon, and he, pleasingly, takes the shot full in the chest, before (and this is what especially won Nina over) upending his chair and throwing himself backwards, as if hit by the full force of a Magnum .45.
The end of the song also brings an end to the shoot-out, and Nina and Mandy saunter off the stage, ten- and twenty-pound notes being teasingly tucked into their red suspender garters. Nina deposits the stiletto on Linda’s dressing table.
‘Nice catch,’ Mandy says. ‘I thought the shoe was going to hit you.’
‘So did I!’ Nina laughed.
‘Fancy a chat with Mr Yellow Glasses?’
‘Why not?’ Nina says. ‘He looked fun.’
* * *
The girls put on their bras again for the fifth time that evening, and after slipping on their red silk kimonos (hence the club’s name, the Red Coat), they sashay over to Leon, who has now righted his chair and is contentedly scribbling in his notebook.
‘I hoped you’d come over,’ Leon says. The notebook is snapped shut. ‘Nice bit of improv. Care to join me?’
Mandy pulls up a chair. On a whim, Nina turns the chair round and straddles it, legs brazenly akimbo, and leans forward, forearms on the back of the chair – seductive, powerful, the iconic pose of Christine Keeler, the woman at the heart of that great 1960s scandal, the Profumo affair.
‘So what are you writing in that notebook of yours?’ Nina asked breezily. ‘Is it a novel?’
‘I’d love to write a novel,’ Leon said. ‘Sadly, I do not have the skills.’
‘I’m on my fifth,’ Nina said. ‘I used to think I was quite good. And sadly for me, I now know I’m still in the foothills.’
‘Truly?’ Leon said.
‘Truly.’
‘Is this gig funding your writing?’
‘It is,’ Nina said.
‘Good for you,’ he said.
It was Mandy, of course, who cut to the chase. ‘You gonna buy us a drink or what?’
‘What would you like to drink?’
‘Normally they want us to buy a bottle of champagne – they make more money on that. But I fancy what you’re having.’
‘And you?’ Leon said.
‘I think I’d also like a Martini,’ Nina said. ‘Dirty.’
Three dirty Martinis were ordered, and after a pleasant pause to exhale and to settle, Nina asked the question that still lingered in the air: ‘If you’re not writing a novel, what are you writing?’
Leon smiled to himself, and, hand on chin, reflected on whether he was yet ready to share his secret.
‘That is the question.’ He plucked the stick from his third Martini of the evening and ate the olive, and because he was enjoying himself and liked the cut of Nina’s jib, not to mention her cat-like catching skills, he decided that the secret could be revealed in all its great glory.
For what Leon possessed was two golden tickets out of the strip club – and two tickets, mind, which would offer so much more than the usual passport out of the Red Coat, which was, generally speaking, a life of being a paid-up mistress.
‘I’ve been making notes on all you dancers,’ Leon said. ‘I particularly liked the way that you weren’t fazed by the fight.’
‘Really?’ Nina said.
‘Yes really.’
‘Prove it,’ Mandy said.
The notebook was opened. Leon riffled through the pages. It appeared as if every girl in the club had her own page. ‘This is you,’ he said to Mandy, swivelling the pad so that she could read his black ink notes: ‘Yellow polka-dot bikini, 5’ 10”, blonde shoulder-length hair, supple, brassy, in your face, might work.’ Beneath the words, Leon had drawn a remarkably accurate picture of Mandy, legs wrapped around the pole, with smoking eyes and pouting lips.
‘What does “might work” mean?’ Mandy said.
‘You might work,’ Leon said simply, before turning a page and pushing the notepad towards Nina: ‘Red bikini, 6’ 1 ½”, long brown hair, statuesque bordering on Amazonian, magnificent shoulders; potential.’ The line drawing was of Nina shooting her stiletto pistol.
‘I’ve got potential?’ Nina said. ‘That better than “might work”?’
‘Marginally,’ Leon said.
The three Martinis were delivered – though not by one of the usual waitresses, but by the pocked Ali, our oh-so frustrated manager.
‘Three Martinis,’ Ali said. ‘Looks like you’re having fun.’
‘We most certainly are, thank you very much indeed,’ Leon said.
‘See you’ve got a notebook,’ Ali said. ‘What you been writing?’
‘Nothing of your concern.’
‘Mind if I have a look?’
‘I do as it happens.’ Leon didn’t even bother to look at Ali.
‘That’s not very friendly,’ Ali said. He leant on the back of Mandy’s chair.
‘I didn’t realise friendliness was a prerequisite for entering your club.’
‘But you didn’t mind showing your notes to the girls.’
‘I didn’t,’ Leon said. He stretched over the table to pick up his fresh Martini and took a sip before admiring the two new girls on stage. They were good, but just not quite as silky smooth as Mandy or Nina. ‘But these girls were more polite than you.’
