Anybody remember Frankie Lindo? He had a huge hit in 1961 for HiTone Records with his single, “Hurt Me Tender.”

That’s all true, but Frankie never existed, except for hanging on a wall in my film, Johnny Suede. Brad Pitt references him as he’s trying to impress his girlfriend’s mother, Tina Louise. “That’s Frankie Lindo, isn’t it, Mrs. Fontaine?”

Tina came to the auditions we were holding in a motel in LA in 1991. My casting director, Marcia Shulman, and I were staying at the motel, and the auditions were in my tiny kitchenette. Catherine Keener came in. So did Juliette Lewis and Brad Pitt. But I’ll never forget looking out the window and seeing Tina Louise standing beside the empty motel swimming pool. She was wearing a tight, short black skirt and holding a leopard print parasol. She looked just as sexy and gorgeous as she had when I watched her as a 12-year-old on Gilligan’s Island.

I met with Tina again in NYC after we cast her. She invited me up to her studio apartment to discuss the role. The only furniture was a bed in the middle of the room. As we talked, I couldn’t stop thinking over and over, “Tom, did you ever imagine you would end up sitting on a bed alone with Tina Louise?”

She was fantastic in the part; subtle, funny and very, very sharp. The Art Dept set up this still shot in a corner of the production office. In another corner, we were shooting the scene of Brad and Catherine in the bathtub. In between takes, they grabbed me and pulled me over. They’d hung a piece of velvet and made the gold record and the sign. Costumes rented the jacket; Make-up did my hair and painted on my sideburns—totally low-budget and totally exhilarating.

All for a 3-second shot of Frankie Lindo hanging on the wall.