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Huston is full of praise for his stars. "Ava," he says, "can belt it out as well as belt it down." He knows that by bringing them all together in such a remote tropic, he has in effect manufactured a human grenade. "I plunked these people down together, and they have to live their parts 24 hours a day," he smiles. So far he is managing them well. The film is five days ahead of schedule. Last week he gave derringers to Richard, Elizabeth, Ava, Deborah, Sue and Producer Ray Stark. Each pistol contained five bullets in its chambers. All bullets were engraved, with the names of the other five recipients.
Smoldering Group. Iguana is being filmed on a small peninsula about eight miles by water from Puerto Vallarta. Daily at noon, Taylor arrives by launch, often dressed in a pink bikini, bringing a picnic lunch for Richard from the kitchen of their four-story villa. Ashore, she and Richard go around in a Jeep with a red and white striped canvas top. Burton is the company champion at flinging frisbees. He has learned Spanish, using records and written grammar. He is working well, too. With Williams and Huston behind him, it is conceivable that this movie could win him an Academy Award. "I can tell when I'm in a good picture," he says. "If by eleven in the morning I haven't had a drink, I know it's a good picture."
Tennessee Williams has his doubts. He hustled down to Puerto Vallarta last month to try to talk Huston out of using a Happy Ending. But Huston is obstinate, so Williams grew a beard and tried to keep cool by going swimming in the luke waters with Taylor and Burton. Tennessee wears a bathing cap and Elizabeth does not.
All these interknotted emotional geometries are really unusual for a mere movie set, where one or two rabid love affairs are about all that ever happen. Puerto Vallarta seems more like a New Jersey suburb.