Whenever I hear about something odd that falls outside my own experience, I try and think of a film that depicted same. Yesterday’s oddball thing (8.24) was Aram Roston’s Reuters story about the seven-year sexual arrangement between Jerry Falwell Jr., his wife Becki Falwell and “pool boy” Giancarlo Granda.

The arrangement began when Ganda was 20. He told Roston that for years he had sex with Becki while Jerry, former head of Liberty University and a staunch supporter of Orange Plague, looked on from the corner.

Right away I flashed on a scene from Paul Schrader‘s American Gigolo (’80). Richard Gere‘s Julian Kaye drives out to Palm Springs to attend to the wife of a wealthy financier named Rheiman (Tom Stewart). Rheiman asks Julian to have rough sex with his wife Judy (Patricia Carr) while he watches.

(l.) Judy Rheiman (Patricia Carr) and Julian Kaye (Richard Gere) during an ominous bedroom scene in American Gigolo (’80).

Standing in the corner just like Falwell allegedly did, the financier barks out orders….”slap that bitch!” or something equally repellent. Julian, sitting on the bed with Judy under a sheet, turns and gives this 50something creep a look that says “Jesus, man, who are you?”

Roston: “Granda says that he met Jerry and Becki Falwell while working as a pool attendant at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel in March 2012. Starting that month and continuing into 2018, Granda told Reuters that the relationship involved him having sex with Becki while Jerry looked on.

“Granda showed Reuters emails, text messages and other evidence that he says demonstrate the sexual nature of his relationship with the couple, who have been married since 1987.

“’Becki and I developed an intimate relationship and Jerry enjoyed watching from the corner of the room,’ Granda said in an interview. Now 29, he described the liaisons as frequent — ‘multiple times per year’ — and said the encounters took place at hotels in Miami and New York, and at the Falwells’ home in Virginia.”