the last book I ever read (Richard Hell's I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp, excerpt eleven)

from Richard Hell's I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp:

I made another crude and virtually unknown New York movie in 1978 too, a faux-noir feature call Final Reward. It was largely copped, I eventually realized, from Jules Dassin’s 1955 masterpiece of a dark heist flick, Rififi, but was shot for almost nothing in 16mm black and white. I think I was the only actor in it who was paid. The director, Rachid Kerdouche, thought I was the blank Mickey Rourke, art-slum music’s romantic tortured embodiment of coolness. (All my career I’ve been described as quintessentially “cool” or “hip.” I supposed I’ve fostered this, on levels, in order to seem desirable to girls and to avoid standard hypocrisy and routine consumer life, but I am not cool. I’m cranky under pressure, I’m a mediocre athlete, I get obsessed with women, I usually want to be liked, and I’m not especially street-smart.) Rachid’s view of me was flattering, all things considered, but I wouldn’t have made the movie if he hadn’t paid me the $50 a day or whatever it was I needed to maintain my drug habit. My acting in it was even worse than in Lommel’s flick, mostly because my degeneration had had a few more months to progress since then.