Playing evil German officers while there is a war going on in Europe and Africa was very lucrative; playing evil German officers after the US finally entered the war enables Max to buy that house he's had his eye on for a while, and get a three picture deal with himself as the director to boot.

"There are other people playing Huns, you know," the producer tells him in what is a hollow bluff. Of course there are. But none the audience loves to hate as much as Max von Mayerling, not least because most actors can't resist the instinct to ask for at least a little bit of sympathy. They need to be beloved. Max, who doesn't see himself as an actor as much as he sees acting as a better way to finance the films he actually wants to make than doing stunts does, doesn't have that problem.

"And I want Norma Desmond to play the nurse," he says.

"Isn't that one of Sennett's girls? Do you want the audience to start giggling when they're supposed to piss in their pants?"

"They won't laugh."

Norma has lost the last of her baby fat a while ago, and has made it to leading parts, but Keystone isn't where you get to play dramatic roles. The best part she got was a Chaplin imitation, a female Little Tramp; hilarious, and extremely satisfying to Sennett because Chaplin can't sue, but nothing original.

"We've got Lina Lamont under contract and she still owes us one more picture at her old rate," the producer argues.

"I want Norma Desmond."

He gets her, too. She plays the Belgian nurse at the hospital the evil German officer attacks. In a scene that will make the audience gasp in terror and not so hidden thrills, he'll drag her to the floor, tearing the cap and blouse away to expose her long dark hair and young white flesh, photographed luminously. Then a baby in the nursery she's defending will scream and Max , topping every villain he ever played in evilness, will throw it out of the window before getting on with the rape.

"She should pretend to go along with it and should kill him then," Norma says when he tells her the story. This is why he loves her. In the original script, the brave British soldier wounded and hidden at the same hospital hears the cries, comes into the room and shoots the evil German, but that is expected, that is boring.

"Kill him how?"

With the pins in her hair that fall out when he grabs it to drag her to the floor, Norma suggests, and when Max points out they won't go deep enough, she says the nurse can stab the officer's eyes with them, then, as he tries to strangle her and can't see her anymore, taking the man's pistol and shoot him. It's cruel, extremely visual and exciting; the audience will eat it up.

They've been married for a year now. It became necessary when she started to be in enough comedies that a man claiming to be the long lost father who walked out on her mother and siblings when Norma was a baby showed up to be reunited with his still underage daughter and collect her earnings. Max never asks Norma whether the man was actually her father, or at least could have been. She never asked him about his lengthy tales of life as an officer in the Austrian Empire, either. Neither of them truly existed before they came here, after all. But he does ask her to marry him. The man who may or may not have been her father has seen enough films to look somewhat scared, as if he expects Max to pull out a whip at any moment, and never shows his face again.

They've been married for a year now, and they never had sex. Not because she refuses him, or because he doesn't want her. He tells her they can't risk her getting pregnant and thus unable to film, or ruin her health with an abortion. It sounds more sensible than the real reason, which is this: he finds it more satisfying to have her in the presence of the camera. You can have sex with any woman in the privacy of your own rooms. They become interchangable after a while, or at least they do for Max, who, ever since becoming "The Man You Love To Hate", finds himself never lacking interested female company. This kind of sex is easy and basically a better form of sport.

But. Putting Norma in front of the camera. Creating and recreating her there. Knowing she understands what he's getting at, takes it and makes it her own, creating herself; sharing that with her while making everyone in the audience desire her, while knowing no one, not one of them can have her in this particular way, not like he can and does - that is true satisfaction.

He finds a new way to light her face for the scene in which she kills him, sculpting her cheekbones like the work of art they are. Watching the rushes, he becomes aware that the focus of the film has shifted. The audience will still love to hate him, and they'll root somewhat for the British officer, but the one they'll worship, the one they'll come back to watch a second and third time, will be the nurse, Norma, lips glistening as she blinds him and saves the day.

He's made her a star, he thinks, and the hot satisfaction rises from his spine through the cranium until it reaches his mouth and burns him.