A Surprise

"Cigarettes?" The young woman had a bob and wore an ancient Egyptian costume, with a cigarette tray suspended in front of her. She looked hopefully at the young man seated at the table.

"No, thanks. I don't smoke." He shook his head, studied her with interest, then turned to his companion in apparent amazement. "Anything with a pulse, huh, buddy?"

The words were flippant, but his surprise carried an unmistakable admiration, as though her beauty had caught him off guard. It kept the remark from sounding insulting.

He went on almost at once. "God, would you do me a favor? Could you smile for me? Just a little?"

There was a sincere eagerness in his voice, as if seeing her smile mattered enormously to him. His gaze held the same appreciative interest. He lifted a hand, his mouth moving slightly as though he were silently marveling at her.

Despite the flirtatious request, the cigarette girl hesitated only a moment before smiling, showing a row of straight white teeth.

"There, that's it. You see? Your upper lip's a little short. Makes your smile even more beautiful." He brought both hands to his chest, looking entranced.

"That's such a lovely smile. Could I see it again?" He reached toward her face, then seemed to catch himself and withdrew his hand, still looking at her with obvious reluctance to look away.

"You really ought to smile more. Do you like smiling?" His eyes narrowed slightly. He made no effort to hide either his admiration or his desire to have her.

"Martin?" an assistant said quietly beside the director's chair.

In the script, Hughes was supposed to stroke the woman's calf as he flirted with her. The dialogue had him wondering what gave a woman like her pleasure, then asking whether she liked the touch of his fingertips.

Adrian had changed the movement and the lines. To the assistants, that was a questionable decision. Actors did sometimes improvise, and some directors were willing to let them. But making it work generally took an exceptional actor and a director who knew exactly what he was doing.

The actor had to know how an altered line would serve the scene. The director had to keep the improvisation from getting away from him. Adrian had won plenty of praise and a Best Actor nomination, but his career was still young. These assistants had seen too many fine performances to assume he could handle that freedom.

To their surprise, Scorsese said nothing. He signaled to keep rolling and watched the actors even more closely. The assistants exchanged looks, then turned back to Adrian. Was he really doing well enough for Scorsese to let him improvise?

"Come on, don't be shy. One more smile. Show me how beautiful you are." Adrian's voice stayed soft. There was an elusive charm in his smile that made the words sound completely sincere.

Then he took her hand, a teasing look returning to his eyes. With the period clothes and hairstyle, the image was complete: a playboy who knew exactly what he was doing.

Scorsese smiled and nodded. The improvisation had clearly won him over. A moment later, though, he frowned. The actress playing the cigarette girl wasn't keeping up. Apparently thrown by the changed dialogue, she looked lost, unsure how to respond.

'What a shame.' With a more experienced actress, he could have had the awkward excitement of a woman who wanted to accept the compliments but was afraid of being taken in.

He couldn't expect too much from an actress in a small part. Besides, her uncertainty wasn't entirely out of place. Sometimes genuine bewilderment could be convincing too.

"I only want to make you happy. I want to know everything about you. Would you let me? Would you give me that chance?" Adrian's smile grew gentler, though there was still something insistent beneath it. He had brought the playboy to life.

"I'm off in half an hour." The dialogue had returned to the script. Recognizing her cue at last, the actress smiled and delivered the line without incident.

That was the end of the scene. Scorsese was the first to applaud. "Beautifully done, Adrian."

Everyone else joined in. Adrian made a show of relief and raised a hand, smiling. "I was terrified, Martin. If you'd hated it, I'd have been crushed."

"So was I. But once you got going, it felt so natural that I thought it might work. And I was pretty sure Martin would think so too." Beside him, Adam Scott, who played Hughes's publicist Johnny Meyer, managed to flatter both men at once.

Scorsese laughed. "If it hadn't worked, I'd have stopped you."

"Then what grade do I get, Martin?" Adrian asked, looking hopeful.

"Let's see..." Scorsese rubbed his chin. "As Hughes, an A-minus. As a playboy, an A-plus!"

Laughter broke out around them. Adrian rolled his eyes, gave a rueful smile, and spread his hands. Scorsese's reputation for being demanding on set didn't mean he couldn't make a joke.

He was in a good mood, of course. Adrian hadn't let him down. At Long Beach, the actor had struggled to get into character. His work in the factory scenes had been competent. The hotel scenes, though, had come as a surprise.

A playboy had to know how to charm women, what to say, and how to read a response. Even Howard Hughes was no exception.

Had he been nothing but an unpredictable eccentric, neither his money nor the protective instincts he might arouse could have explained his success with so many women.

Scorsese's familiarity with DiCaprio wasn't the only reason he had liked him for the role. His ease with women had probably helped too. Yet Adrian seemed to have the advantage there. Consider the women linked to him: older, experienced women, apparently no less susceptible to his charm. Nicole Kidman had dated him for months, and she was hardly the only name in the stories.

Scorsese had asked people to look into Adrian. This would be their first film together; he wanted to know whom he was hiring. Gossip like that was difficult to hide in Hollywood. Sorting the truth from the invention was another matter, one the person collecting the stories had to handle.

He called over his new assistant director. "Patrick, tell everyone we're changing the shooting order. Put the aircraft-factory scenes on hold. I want to concentrate on the hotel material."

The original plan had been to finish the opening work at Long Beach, then alternate between the aircraft factory and the hotel parties on the soundstages.

Both groups covered long stretches of the story. The factory material included two inspections of new aircraft and the construction of the huge passenger plane. The hotel scenes included borrowing cameras from MGM, meeting Juan Trippe, and dining with Hepburn.

Each group would take at least two or three weeks. Spending that long on similar material could tire out cast and crew, so Scorsese had decided to alternate.

Both required sets anyway. With the studio's agreement, they could rent neighboring stages, or one large enough to hold both sets. Moving back and forth would be straightforward.

Now Adrian had given him a reason to reconsider. Scorsese wanted to make use of what he'd found and keep him in that atmosphere. Most of the hotel scenes involved romance, or the young Hughes challenging Pan Am's Trippe. They belonged to a brash, confident period of his life.

If Adrian had found his way into that part of Hughes, Scorsese wanted him to stay with it and go deeper. He was confident they could improve on what they already had. Their conversations before filming had shown him how thoroughly Adrian had prepared. The tape that had impressed him so much was another reason to expect more.

Adrian didn't mind the change. He believed he'd prepared well enough. Cate and other complications had affected his early work, but he was sure the performance would come together as filming progressed. Showing what he could do a little sooner was hardly a problem. Even if it began with a bit of playing himself, that didn't matter, provided he could create a Hughes people believed in.

The crew adjusted quickly and began filming that material in story order. As Scorsese had expected, Adrian did well; the younger, more impetuous Hughes was easier for him to play. Then he met an old friend on set. Not Cate this time, but Jude Law, who played Errol Flynn, the hugely popular and notoriously disreputable star of the 1930s and '40s.