https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeUOUNNpYMc

The thing most people remember from the 2013 Golden Globes (if they remember anything) was Jodie Foster coming out when she received that year’s Cecil B. DeMille award.  The thing I remember is that the montage of Jodie Foster clips included two scenes from “Carny,” a movie I wrote in the 70s—a quick shot of Jodie dancing, and then a longer clip from a scene in which Jodie’s character, Donna, in her debut as a string-store agent (“Pull a string, win a prize”), hustles a lesbian couple by dangling the ends of the strings between her legs.  (The clip earned me my only “Carny” residual:  $182.)

My first exposure to Jodie was in 1973, when I started writing After School Specials.  The producers showed me “Rookie of the Year,” in which Jodie starred as an 11-year-old girl who joins her brother’s all-male Little League team.  She was simply the most natural child actor I’d ever seen.  (Child acting has improved wildly in the last 45 years, but her performances set the bar.)

That was also the year I wrote the first draft of “Carny.”  By the time the movie was shot, in 1979, Jodie had scored heavily in several movies, notably “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” (playing Alfred Lutter’s androgynous pal), “Bugsy Malone,” and “Taxi Driver.”  Everyone felt lucky to have her aboard, and lucky that her agent (and mine), Harry Ufland, had always been a fan of the script.  At the first pre-production meeting, she showed up in her Lycée Français blazer.  Totally poised.  Preternatural.  Unearthly.  “She’s going to the first President from outer space,” I told people.  (I didn’t know she had Presidential ambitions, assuming Robert Downey Jr.’s Globe intro wasn’t totally invented.)

During the totally chaotic shoot she was a total pro, absolutely dependable, and fiercely indomitable in the face of Gary Busey’s dogged attempts to improvise every scene he appeared in, and (depending what drug mix was in his system) vary his emotion from take to take.  (He was also terrific in the movie, so no hard feelings.)  The strain never showed, though eventually Jodie had “Gary Abuse Me” T-shirts made up and distributed to the cast and crew.

There was talk on the set about Jodie’s aloofness.  Considering how much weed, cocaine, and alcohol were being consumed, one could hardly blame Brandy, her Muslim-amulet-wearing mom, for keeping her out of harm’s way.  But there was a definite move to get her hooked up with someone.  “Jodie needs a boyfriend.”  Jamie Rosenfield, the puppyish third A.D., seemed to be the designated candidate.  Did anything ever come of it?  Not that I knew of.  Nobody, in my hearing, suggested she was gay.

I don’t recall whether Jodie was at the wrap party, during which many people and much furniture ended up in the Master Hosts pool, and Harry Stradling, Jr., the D.P, who had carried the entire shoot on his back, as unwavering in his self-control as Jodie, began talking in tongues.  I could be wrong, but I imagine she got out while the going was good.

“Carny” got some early good notices, but basically tanked, and until recently was unavailable on DVD or YouTube.  I once Googled “Carny” and “DVD.”  One of the posts asked the same question: “When will ‘Carny,’ one of the leading candidates for best film ever made, be available on DVD?”  It’s surely not the best film ever made, it’s a flawed movie at best, and the best thing in it is a genius actress (better, a genius who happens to be an actress), who, I have a feeling, won’t be running for President any time soon.  But she had my vote then, and she’d have it today.