Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins

by Rupert Everett

  Unbeknown to most of us, Guy and Madonna were having a baby. Strangely enough, so was Ingrid. Guy’s body curved around his rock princess in acquiescence though his face was a sheer contractual addendum that night. It said: whatever else, never Miami. The impact of this was dawning on poor Ingrid, who had moved Madonna to Miami in the first place, but she held on doggedly to the fraying lasso around Madonna’s neck. For the time being it could stay there, but nothing was going to be the same again in the house of the immaculate deception. Gwyneth had been flirting with Guy Oseary, the child prodigy who ran Madonna’s record company, but that liaison was another thin strand that Gwyneth cut with the brisk cheer of a dignitary opening a new wing of a hospital. “I name this ship . . . Over.” It had snapped before the party even began. Actually, she was thick as thieves with Christopher, and after midnight the two of them danced like whirling dervishes until they wound up slumped and feverish on Donatella’s garden couch.

  And this was the night that marked the beginning of the end for Christopher and Madonna. They had been inseparable through a trippy childhood in a huge family with a wicked stepmother, and she had taken him with her to the material world, where Christopher had provided a solid raft in the shark-infested waters. And for anyone who came into contact with Madonna, to know her at all you had to know him. The one was incomprehensible without the other. He was her dark side and she was his. People reeled in horror at the mention of his name, because he had a blunt aggressive manner, and he often looked as though he was laughing at you, particularly when he was drunk, but underneath he was a vulnerable funny friend in the old tradition. Once you were friends—you were friends. But Guy and Chris were from different planets, and in a way the one’s success relied on the other not being there. Also Guy was not particularly comfortable with queens, and so, as the relationship between him and Madonna quickly deepened, it was a last call for a lot of the disco bunnies and club-mix queens that made up the fabric of Madonna’s mantle. It was a surprise, because Madonna came out of the womb blowing a disco whistle, but a whole aspect of her life was about to be hit by the delete button.

  The Next Best Thing hung over the table that night as well. “American Pie” played endlessly on South Beach that Christmas like the first chilling breeze before the hurricane to come. For me, hearing myself chanting away behind Madonna, later that night at Twist, or later still, in a weird remix by Junior Vasquez, it was about as exciting as life could get. The movie was coming out in two months’ time and we knew it could make or break us both.

  And so, shortly before midnight, Jennifer Lopez swept into the courtyard on the arm of Benny Medina, her new manager. Donatella got up and walked over to greet her while Gwyneth and Madonna gave two snorts of derision and noisily left the room. The men and Ingrid were momentarily flummoxed but followed suit, leaving me and my hairdresser Jamie alone at the table. It could have been a moment from The Women. A thousand pairs of eyes swivelled between the two groups of divas, one caravan threading its way grandly towards the garden and the disco lights, the other moving slowly towards the table through a sea of upturned adoring faces. As the last member of the M team left, Donatella arrived with the J team, only to find Jamie and me alone at the huge table.

  “Where is everyone?” asked Donatella, startled.

  “We don’t know,” Jamie and I replied hopelessly.

  Jennifer had given a rather startling interview a few weeks earlier, one of her best, as a matter of fact, where she had regally dished all and sundry, saying, among other things, that Madonna couldn’t sing and that Gwyneth couldn’t act. This broke an unwritten Hollywood law. Think it but never say it. Jennifer was still learning the ropes. (She learnt fast. When Iraq kicked in, somebody asked her what she thought of the war and she replied, “I leave all that sort of thing to Ben [Affleck].” Jennifer was no Dixie chick.) I say, let’s have more catfights. The public love it because they finally get a feeling of the diva involved, a glimpse of the snarly side of her character; and certainly, everyone there at the party that night adored the drama. They were visibly shaking with the thrill of it, and so were the girls in question. They were like ducks during a rainstorm, preening, stretching their wings, shaking themselves and quacking. Jennifer sat with Benny, holding a beatific smile in place for longer than a porno star keeps an erection. Gwyneth and Madonna huddled around Donatella’s garden couch like bullies from the upper sixth. Guy and Guy were puzzled but played along. Ingrid was like a cartoon cat, caught in a ravine between two cliffs. Jamie and I locked ourselves into a bathroom with Donatella, a bodyguard at the door, and informed the rest of the world what was going on outside. We popped out briefly for midnight and then went back to the bunker like war journalists to phone in the latest explosion.

  The next day Madonna had a barbecue at her beautiful house on the bay. It was the last time anyone would see it. She sold it two months later. It was a beautiful white mansion, built in the twenties and had been decorated by Christopher. It stood in front of a huge expanse of sea and sky and had a strange, uninhabited feeling. You wouldn’t know she lived there; there was nothing personal within it. A little freshwater creek ran through the bottom of the garden and that day the sky was off-white, so was the bay and so were we. Everything merged into one. Far away on the horizon, Miami Beach was a thin line dividing the elements upon which the new towers of South Point were like little jagged blips on a fading cardiogram.

  Everyone was exhausted. Especially Mo, who nearly drowned in Madonna’s pool. Luckily Lola was watching and we hauled him out. I thought he’d had a heart attack because he staggered out of the water and collapsed in a puddle on the terrace. I became quietly frantic. Elsa, an eccentric Cuban, came and sat by us. Mo couldn’t move. He lay there looking at me from the corners of his eyes. We fed him bread and milk. Finally he got better and staggered to his feet.

  Everyone who was anyone left the next day. Madonna and Donatella sold their houses. Jamie and I flew back to a freezing Chicago where we were filming, leaving Mo with Jay. With the coming of the millennium, la belle époque was officially over. Hardly has a star been seen on South Beach since. Now it was open season for everyone else.

  The première of The Next Best Thing was the breathless summit of my Hollywood year. Paramount flew me and my friend Baillie from London on Concorde, and for a brief dazzling moment I was on everybody’s mind. The trailers were on the TV; “American Pie” was on the airwaves; my airbrushed face stared petulantly from the magazine stands. My relationship with Madonna intrigued America, and for a few seconds on the street the world froze and I walked on by.

  At the première, which was orchestrated with a military precision by Madonna and her field marshal the formidable Liz Rosenberg, our cars pulled up simultaneously at the kerb; the crowds screamed our names as we stepped out into the firing squad of paparazzi, like condemned men with smiles glued to our faces. Guy and Madonna walked ahead. I kept one pace behind, like the Duke of Edinburgh. We made our way down the long red carpet as the dark holes of a thousand cameras dilated in scrutiny, looking us up and down while I said what I loved about her and she said what she loved about me. Stunned by the flashlights and faces—among them, Salman Rushdie and Cilla, of all people—we were swept along by the current, wide eyed and wired, guided by the invisible hands of “our people” towards this journalist or that studio executive, until we eventually arrived at our seats in the theatre, where various members of my life waved from different corners of the stalls. Julia and Ben appeared out of an explosion of flashlights, looking glossy and unruffled.

  “Hi, I’m Julia,” said Julia, with a huge smile.

  “I know who you are,” said Madonna icily.

  It was the only good moment of the evening.

  The movie opened across America on Friday. At eight o’clock on Saturday morning Baillie and I arrived in the Concorde lounge at JFK. The first person we saw was Robbie Williams. “Oops,” he said and disappeared to the loo.

  “What’s wrong with Robbi
e?” I asked Baillie, as we meandered through the lounge.

  On a table were the morning papers. “Madonna Lays an Egg” was written in huge letters across the cover of the New York Post. “Rupert’s Mediocre Thing” said another. “Next Best Thing is a Stinker.” I nearly fainted. It was a catastrophe. Baillie and I rummaged through the papers as the dowagers and tech billionaires watched us with amused distracted smiles from their comfy leather couches. At a certain point we began to laugh.

  “Oh, no! Look at this one. Actually maybe you shouldn’t,” said Baillie. I grabbed the paper: “Rupert Everett’s performance has all the energy of a pet rock.”

  “That’s why I said oops,” said Robbie returning from the loo.

  I have never read such bad reviews in my life.

  But a film has a Picture of Dorian Gray quality to it. Even though its image is “locked down,” the perception of that image ebbs and flows with the years. Sometimes a movie coins the catchphrase of the day but it looks hollow and contrived a year later, and ends its flickering life as a campy classic to be watched, stoned, with a bunch of queens who chant every line. Sometimes it sinks without trace in the initial race, torn to shreds by the vultures in the know, only to re-emerge years later on cable TV with a strange resonance and a new meaning that was unintended or overlooked by its creators. Thus Doris Day and Rock Hudson, the “It” couple of their day, end by revealing the hypocrisy of their age. Their relationship seems hopelessly fake in an America of suppression and segregation, whereas Nick and Nora in The Thin Man series are strangely fresh and true. But what is true? Mommie Dearest killed Faye Dunaway, but was Faye as bad as all that? Or was she too brilliant? What made James Dean live on and then suddenly die? They were forced to close his tribute museum this year due to lack of interest. These are questions we in the business ask our shrinks every week.

  The Next Best Thing is not a great film. Its tone and delivery are unremarkable. It blew my new career out of the water and turned my pubic hair white overnight. But over the years it has had a strange life. Maybe it was painted in blood. Certainly it was a snapshot that sucked up many souls. The vitriol engendered by Madonna’s performance says as much about the resentment felt by a world of neurotic fans for its household gods as it does about her thespian skills. Acres of acting have been cheaper than hers and have yet been awarded Oscars and crowns. It all depends on how the liquor is hitting you. My mum watched the film at a screening and she felt as if she was in a muddled dream of her own life. She was heaving with sobs after twenty minutes and nearly had to be carried out at the end, she was so upset.

  In Cambodia three years later, a country largely beyond the clutches of Hollywood but not of Maverick Records, I walked into a bar and The Next Best Thing was playing on a TV above a pool table. Madonna was looking sadly at her breasts in a mirror, holding them in her hands. “Nineteen-eighty-nine,” she said, before letting them flop down. “Nineteen-ninety-nine.” It was the best scene in the movie.

  Kids with billiard cues in their hands stood motionless before Madonna, intrigued and challenged. Now our film was shocking and avant garde, winking at me across the smoky room. Who knew that a chance moment in a bar at Phnom Penh would be one of the high points of my career. Me watching them watching her watch herself was as good as it ever got.

  CHAPTER 42

  Charity Begins as Far Away as Possible

  By the summer of 2000 the whole storm had passed by. I was in London on my way to Rome where I had rented a flat for the month of July. It was the beginning of a nomadic wander around the world that still hasn’t ended.

  One morning the phone rang. It was my legendary PR, Connie Filipello. “Good morning, my sweetest little angel,” she sang down the line.

  Alarm bells rang. This was the Connie strategy for starting a bumpy conversation.

  “Hello,” I replied cautiously. “This is very early for you.”

  “I just wanted to catch you, my little sugar plum fairy, before you left for Rome.”

  “Oh, right. Well, I’m leaving in a couple of hours.”

  “Hughie and I loved having dinner with you the other night.”

  “I loved it too, darling. I thought you were looking magnificent,” I said, hoping to deflect the conversation on to one of our favourite topics—our faces (all four of them). There was the slightest pause. She wasn’t biting. I braced myself.

  “Darling, I was wondering, do you think you’re becoming a tiny bit selfish?”

  “Selfish? What a funny question. You know me, Poops, the selfish shellfish.”

  “Yes, I do.” She chuckled knowingly. “I want to organise a little trip. May I?”

  “What kind of trip?”

  “Just a little trip to Ethiopia, darling.”

  “Why, do I have something coming out there?” I was still half asleep.

  “Not exactly, darling. I have organised for you to go with Oxfam to help them make a little film about famine. I’m sending Marina with you, and she can write about it in the Sunday Times. I think it’s important, darling, honestly, or I wouldn’t ask.”

  Marina was in the same Buddhist chapter as Connie. She was the daughter of the last king of Romania, and was part of Connie’s stable of reliable journalists. I liked her very much. We had met several times, in various different places, and she had written some great articles.

  It was the summer that Concorde blew up. I was living in a beautiful apartment behind the Piazza del Popolo in Rome. It was an unbearably hot July, and the afternoon before I left we had all the shutters closed to keep out the heat. In the dark Jay turned on the TV only to find our favourite means of transport had burst into flames and crashed outside Paris. It was an eerie exclamation mark for the new millennium, a Hindenburg for today. It went down again and again on channel after channel until we could take no more. Mo was particularly upset, although he hid it well. French Concorde was the only plane in the world that took dogs on board. Back in the hold, thought he with a deep sigh and a sideways glance.

  I was conducting a rather prickly romance with a Roman boy, and after an unsatisfactory farewell dinner in the restaurant downstairs, where I had hoped that the dramatic nature of my impending departure to the dark continent would wring some profound declaration from his haughty patrician mouth (no such luck), he walked me to the taxi rank on the north side of the piazza. I was driven through the midnight city to the airport. No need to ask which gate once I got inside. Crowds of giantesses in printed turbans with beautiful slender necks made the announcement and hung around the gate with their equally huge men in coloured kaftans.

  The next morning I arrived in Addis Ababa where I was met by Marina and a girl from Oxfam. It was pouring with rain. The sides of the roads were caked with mud and rubbish, and people picked their way along them. Plastic bags hung on every twig like beached jellyfish. I was taken to the Oxfam office, a ground-floor flat in a house on the edge of town. Rain dripped into a bucket like a metronome as a man in a khaki outfit gave a talk and pointed at a map with a ruler. It felt like being back at school. He was a romantic-looking fellow, with kind eyes, although he didn’t seem to be quite sure where everything was. That night we all had dinner and were joined by another group just in from the bush where they had been inoculating babies. News was swapped, conditions were berated, bygone disasters were discussed with fondness. Some people had not seen each other since “the flood in Eritrea.” One girl mistook me for someone else and asked me whether I had seen Penny since the earthquake. A photographer called Brian arrived, with a handlebar moustache and droopy eyes. No one had seen him since the Susan Sarandon trip to Zambia. The guys were the stars living in the trenches, trekking into town with a backpack full of dirty clothes. The girls were the fans. They came here from the Banbury Road in Oxford every few months with provisions or a celebrity or a TV crew, or all three. Each campaign sounded like the name of a play and if I closed my eyes I might have been sitting among a group of actors. (“Brina has just got back from Hedda Gabler in
Leeds” became “Brian had a great success with Mosquito Nets in Uganda.”)

  The next morning we flew north to a flat desert. More plastic bags clung to dead trees. Blue and white, they flapped in the endless wind, beautiful and hideous at the same time. The Oxfam compound was like a scout camp surrounded by a high wattle fence. Inside, huts stood in rows with a latrine at the end wrapped in a sheet of bright blue bin liner. The loo roll hung on a piece of string and waved in the breeze. A trowel was stuck into a pyramid of fresh earth beside the ominous hole. Over a wall there was a kitchen hut and a large trestle table around which we ate. It was quite extraordinary. I was feeling less selfish by the minute but couldn’t help wondering how Connie would have managed.

  The first afternoon we drove out to the feeding station. Thousands of little egg-shaped tents made out of wood and plastic stretched far into the distance. The whole nomadic world had ground to a halt and now hundreds of thousands of people were glued to the feeding stations. A culture was being killed but this was the price for a sort of survival. Long lines of women waited for rations. The men did nothing. Groups of them sat about while the women and children seemed to be endlessly moving, looking for anything that could be eaten or made into a hut. As they moved across the horizon, slowly with extraordinary poise, their colourful robes flew behind them in the wind, hugging their skin and bone into pitiful silhouettes against the baking white sky.

  Seeing all this, at first my brain froze. It was impossible to take in and there wasn’t any time because now my job began. The TV crew and Brian the photographer were going to walk with me to the feeding station to meet a woman who had just arrived, and accompany her back to her hut. It was an excruciating experience. The woman’s husband was dead. She had walked a hundred miles to get to the feeding station. On the journey, one of her children had died. The other was a little, barely breathing bundle of bones in a sling around her neck. She recounted all this, through an interpreter, in a listless voice, with vacant dilated eyes. There was no emotion. Hunger had taken all her energy. There was none left for the superfluous. When we got to her tent, she and I went in, followed by Brian. The plastic roof bathed the hut in a ghostly green light. She looked like a Martian in it. Everything she had was there: a blanket, a wooden bowl and a baby. Brian started taking pictures.