What Movies Made Me Do

by Susan Braudy

  “More the opposite.” He grinned. “Those two couldn’t mate if the species depended on it.”

  Then he changed the subject. “Israeli since 1982.” He waved a hand at the uninhabited sand hills. I kept looking at them. They cleaned out my mind. They loomed huge and shone white. I licked salt off my upper lip and inhaled the fragrant air like a newborn baby. My hair blew all over.

  I lay my head back on the warm seat and rubbed my eyes at the miles of dazzling sunstruck dunes. “You talk to Michael?” I asked.

  Paul shifted gears with a terrible crunch. “When he calls, I pretend I got a bad connection and hang up on him. Been ducking studio executives with that one for years.” He grinned again. I liked the flash of his gold fillings.

  The car smelled of gasoline and Paul’s working sweat. My neck ached. I needed a cold drink of water. Back home, nobody besides Rosemary knew I was speeding into this valley. I dropped my forehead in my hands. My head was spinning slowly, like the tilted metal globe in my parents’ house with the orange mass marked Israel in the blue sea and the small yellow thing near it that was now bleached by hot sun. Our tires shot loose stones off the dirt road as we descended into a valley of bright rippling sand.

  I put my head on my knee. A minute later he touched my wrist. I sat up, my eyes blurring black.

  “You tell Anita I’m coming?”

  “Nah, you need the element of surprise.” He pointed beyond the bright sand dunes at something like a huge mirror. It was a piece of the sea.

  “Buck up, don’t hide your face,” he said. I smiled weakly, crossed my fingers, and held down my flyaway hair. My ears clicked. We spun downhill past miles of dunes toward distant shadows of mountains that looked like uneven line drawings sketched by a child. The landscape looked big and empty and old. Everywhere I looked I pictured Bible patriarchs. I had to hand it to Anita. It would make a magical film.

  “Any more local problems?” I asked.

  “Oh, the locals.” His forehead deepened into a frown. “They think Anita’s a white witch. In a week she colored the ocean red, burnt a mosque to the ground, and activated a stinking volcano. They’re awed by the way she torments Jack.”

  He slapped the old leather steering wheel. “What in hell are you going to do?”

  “I’m not worried,” I lied. Here as always Anita was two steps ahead of me. At Bryn Mawr she dazzled me by playing the rich dashing beatnik. For Hollywood hustlers she was the untouchable artist. Now she’d gone right to the top of the religious framework.

  The terrain lifted, and we crossed into silent and empty mountains. Green fields broke the rocky hills. A perfectly preserved stone farmhouse came at us out of nowhere in the sunlight. Two long rows of yellow tulips marked the white pebble path to the doorway, where a black goat with a wispy beard chewed a green leaf.

  Suddenly I wanted to stop fighting Michael. All I wanted was to give up and play house here with Barry. Part of me had always expected to grow up and cook breakfast in a place like this for a man I loved. It wasn’t just me. Every time Anita got engaged, she and the fiancé hunted old farmhouses with matching red barns. I call her the romantic fool. But I spent years dragging my husband to the green hills of the Berkshires, listening to real-estate brokers telling their life stories.

  “This is it,” Paul said. “Take your suitcase.”

  I twisted the handle of my door, watching him rub the windshield with his neckerchief. If we were married, he’d decide what to eat for dinner. He’d talk for me at parties and I’d get fat on secret chocolate binges.

  I slammed the car door behind me and whispered, “Anita honey, we’re a long way from home.”

  Feeling melodramatic, I followed Paul past the munching goat to the marble doorstep. Then out of nowhere I heard her voice pleading with somebody. Excited, I elbowed past the startled guard and into the hot farmhouse kitchen crowded with gnarled old men in boxer shorts and face paint. Paul stooped to pick up bits of a broken wine bottle. My eyes jumped the room searching for Anita. Children played tag around two long wooden tables covered with plates. A fat iron pot steamed in the stone fireplace, smelling of savory tomatoes, garlic, and oregano. In a far corner the crew was setting up a dolly shot, a boom microphone, and tall lights.

  I spun around when I heard Anita’s persuading voice again. “Please, Solly Cohn, listen, listen to me. I am your admirer, I’m a serious movie director, and you are a beautiful human being. I bet you once had your way with girls. Now please, just take your pants off for me and you get fifty American dollars.”

  I finally found her on the other side of the fireplace, hopping on a single orange crutch around one nut-brown old man sitting on the floor in his undershorts and turban, his arms folded resolutely. I clucked my tongue. What was going on? Anita had a fat Ace bandage wrapped around her right ankle.

  She laughed wildly at the old man and chucked him under the chin. A bit of a manic-depressive, it looked like she was on the top of her cycle. She looked healthy enough in a chic yellow halter that barely covered her nipples, and French khaki jungle shorts. But I was worried; Anita dressed to the nines when she was flipping out. She was tangle-haired, and deep brown from her peeling nose to her bare feet and crimson-painted toenails. She was also bone thin; Anita always loses weight when her mood shoots up.

  “Sssh,” hushed a guy kneeling next to her with a video camera on his shoulder. Paul hugged a little boy to him who was strolling too close to the video lens. A red-bearded assistant ushered the shirtless old men out the door. It looked like a run-through. A child began singing a Hebrew hymn. Then another started like a classroom round.

  “I love it, Jim,” Anita said to the video cameraman tracking her as she bent over and listened to each of their sweet voices. I realized he was Jim Calio, according to the list of Rosemary’s I read on the plane; he was making a documentary about Anita.

  She jammed the crutch into her armpit and clapped her hands for silence. “Book them for the manger shot,” she told the sullen-looking young man with the long red beard and a red ponytail. He was probably Allen Rosenbaum, her p.a. He scribbled on a clipboard. Then Allen lit a cigarette and passed it to her. She took a long pull at it.

  I edged past the heat from the fireplace to where she was talking in little croaks. “These kids are worth fifty retakes; it’s finally starting to live.” Puffs of smoke were popping from her mouth. Allen hugged his clipboard and made assenting noises. She always hired obsessive students of film history as assistants. “Just pray tonight for a silver sky, Allen,” she chortled.

  I steeled myself. “Don’t be alarmed, honey, but you got company. Hey, hi, Anita,” I added, opening my arms as she whirled around. She dropped the cigarette in surprise and she threw herself at me, the crutch falling behind her, and squeezed me around the waist. I always forget how small she is. She came up to my shoulder in her bare feet. “Baby, baby snooks,” she whispered affectionately into my shoulder. She pulled her head back and looked up at me appraisingly, biting her lower lip.

  “Why are you here?” she mouthed silently.

  “I thought this was a closed set,” Allen said behind her.

  I bent and hugged her again. “We got a little personnel problem,” I whispered into her ear. “A certain major motion-picture star wants his face in this movie.”

  Suddenly I sensed the friendliness between us evaporating. I knew it was going to take a while to get it back.

  Anita twisted out of my grasp and gnawed her lower lip. “You always come right to the point,” she said grimly.

  She smoothed her hair off her forehead, while I put an arm around her again. I heard that introspective whistle of hers between her teeth, percussive and authoritative. I let her go. “I’m fucking tired,” she said, sagging heavily onto her crutch. “You must be exhausted from your flight.”

  “No, but my knees ache. What’s wrong with your ankle?”

  She clasped her right hipbone. “Nothing”—she smiled weakly—“but I got to sit down. I threw
out my hip again. The cartilage grows back stiff.”

  “Doing the ice packs this time?”

  “When I lay down.”

  “Calcium.” I wagged my finger. “My mother clipped an article from Prevention magazine.” I stared with horror as she sagged to the floor, ballooning out her baggy khaki shorts. I sprawled beside her on the warm tile in front of the fireplace.

  “Is it from those two nights in the desert?”

  “Yeah, it tore when I dragged the video camera up a dune. Stupid, right?”

  “You are the most stubborn person.”

  She tilted her chin defiantly, and then waved her crutch at Allen. “Take five minutes, I need privacy to talk to the big cheese from New York,” she said sarcastically.

  Allen didn’t move.

  “You got a chiropractor?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” She fingered the hipbone gingerly. “I do grass and Demerol.”

  I grimaced, feeling pain in my own hip, and put my arm around her again. We rocked a little from side to side and I could feel her relax. A new tiny red heart tattoo throbbed over the pulse at her neck.

  “Why did you take off into the desert?”

  “Oh, I dunno. Rewriting.”

  I pulled away. “Dammit, you promised me you’d shoot the script.”

  “I got a great idea lying there in that godforsaken dune,” she whispered excitedly. “The Bible is all about male bonding. I thought of two more scenes for Mary and I gave Jesus an aunt. This whole story needed a woman’s touch.”

  “The Bible?” I asked, incredulous. But it was the kind of kooky thing she just might carry off.

  She changed the subject. “Like my heart tattoo?”

  I hesitated, knowing it was another careful addition to her myth. “Well, there’s a fine line between—”

  “Sexy?” she prompted me, and laughed. “No, you probably think it’s vulgar, you’re so straight.”

  “It’s hooker chic,” I said, smiling, as I remembered how at school she called me Miss Prude when I refused to let her photograph the performers naked in the burlesque movie senior year. My prudishness paid off in spades when we earned $600,000 in revenues because we got booked into legitimate movie houses.

  Her smile drooped. She was running on adrenaline and marijuana. I reached into my briefcase. “I heard you were out of lox,” I said, hefting the slim square box packed with fish and dry ice.

  She was absolutely amazed. “You carried this all the way from Zabar’s?” She turned it reverently between her hands. “Welcome,” she said, smiling.

  “Remember your mom carting these to school like Care packages?”

  “I’d give away a gross point for cream cheese with scallions,” she sighed. I reached back into the bag. “I can’t believe it,” she giggled, opening the container to smell the scallions. She clamped the lid shut and looked at me cautiously. “What are you really doing here?”

  “Where’s your star?”

  “I’m the star of my movies.” She sounded nuts; I watched her hand the boxes to Allen, who set them on the table, crossed his arms, and watched us.

  “How’s Jack feeling?” I asked delicately.

  She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “His back is out. He insisted on carrying a hundred-pound cross.”

  I had to smile. What a metaphor. “The old back routine?”

  Anita rolled her eyes toward the ceiling.

  When a star wants things his way, he can’t just walk off the set, because the studio would sue him for the entire cost of the movie. Instead he keeps slowing down the shooting by absenting himself until he wins.

  “He claims he’s in terrible pain,” she said airily, lighting another cigarette with a big wood matchstick, “and he’s got a local virus. He says he needs hot sulfur baths by the hour, massages, and he’s even got some Swiss doctor shooting novocaine into the muscle spasm.”

  “You got big headaches,” I said, slowly shaking my head. I didn’t bother to ask if she was watching out for his depression over the breakup of a ten-year relationship. The gossips said the lady refused to marry him because she liked living in her converted barn in Wales. I figured it had more to do with his legendary womanizing.

  Paul was tugging on my elbow, standing above me. “I got to go for gas.”

  Anita’s head snapped up at him. “You picked her up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “A fucking conspiracy,” she muttered.

  “I bumped into her at the airport,” he lied sheepishly.

  She smacked at the floor tile.

  “Let’s sit on chairs like humans,” I said.

  She rejected Paul’s arm as she clambered to her feet with the crutch. Allen dragged out two carved wooden chairs.

  “We were talking about Jack,” I said, watching Paul walk happy children out the door.

  “Jack won’t take direction.”

  “Anita, we need his face in the movie.”

  She waved her fingers dismissively. “I got the idea last week. He’s not a convincing Christ, so I’ll just hide his face.”

  “You’re a maniac. You’re not making sense. Nobody wanted to finance you until he committed.”

  A hurt look lit her eye. I heard Allen curse under his breath behind me. “The power broker speaks.” Anita shifted her weight off one hip. “In this business the only art is raising money.”

  I put my hand on her bare knee. “A human Jesus has a face.”

  “Look, the way I see it, everybody’s got a private image of Christ,” she said in a rushed voice, “and it’s not his sexy shallow face.”

  “You cast him, you liked him at first.”

  “Don’t change history,” she snapped, “you forced him on me.”

  “Poor you, always being bullied.” I smiled. She didn’t.

  “When De Mille shot The King of Kings he never let anybody see the face of the big star playing Christ. On lunch breaks, the guy ate through his veils.”

  “The man became too drunk to work,” I reminded her.

  “You saw Ben Hur and The Robe,” she continued, gnawing at her hair. “They shot his shadow, his effect on people, his hands in prayer, the back of his head. They never show his face, they leave it to your imagination. That’s the art of it.”

  She had a reasonable aesthetic point. But I had to argue. “First of all, I thought you were doing something better than the cliché Bible movies. The challenge is to show Jack’s face and keep the holy feeling.”

  She snorted.

  I continued. “Cecil B. De Mille wasn’t working with the world’s most charismatic male face. Charisma is something a religious leader has in common with a movie idol.”

  Anita flicked her cigarette into the fireplace. “He doesn’t want to make movies, he wants to stop everything and debate his motivation for each word.” She stood and bent to sniff at the steam from the soup pot. The room was empty except for Allen and Jim pointing the video camera at us.

  Anita sat down slowly. “Jack is scared stiff of the role. But I had a great shoot last night, sixty red birds, all flying over the beach, the synagogue burning. Murnau never had such textures. You’ll see dailies; I love you for making this happen,” but her voice cracked with tension.

  I pulled her last two weeks of production schedules out of my shoulder bag. “Look, you never worked with a major star till now. He’s probably shattered over his failed romance. God knows, you been there. Handle him. He’s destroying you. You stopped shooting his face and he’s been unavailable for work three days out of four; you’re twenty-eight days behind schedule.” I began reading production reports out loud. “ ‘Mr. Hanscomb late for beach scene forty-five minutes, his sandal straps don’t fit.’ ”

  “He’s sickly,” she yelled, “he had polio as a kid and he has everybody convinced he had a heart murmur on that picture in Tahiti three years ago. He’s a hypochondriac when it comes to work.”

  I kept reading. “ ‘Mr. Hanscomb unhappy with beach scene, sun too bright, robe too warm,
argued with director, delay two hours. Scene shot without Mr. Hanscomb.’ ”

  She shrugged. “He wants every shot his way. He’d love a whole movie of tight shots of his profile.”

  “ ‘Mr. Hanscomb’s blood squib hit his right eye, scratched cornea, one-day delay. Mr. Hanscomb’s foot stepped on by Roman soldier, two-day delay, examined by first aid.’ ”

  “Candy-ass actor.”

  “ ‘Mr. Hanscomb inhaled smoke inside burning synagogue, set caught fire, absent three days.’ ”

  “Great scene. More passion than Malick’s fire in Badlands.”

  “His face get in?” I asked, impressed despite myself.

  “No, it’s easier to shoot around him than argue.”

  I shook the papers. “He’s a seasoned actor. He never makes a mistake in front of the camera.”

  Her eyes flashed at me. “I don’t like to sound mean, but he’s a star, he doesn’t act. He makes personal appearances in movies.”

  “Redford played The Natural.” I read the last entry before she could answer me. “ ‘Work incomplete, Mr. Hanscomb lost his voice, he also informed production manager he was unhappy with crucifixion.’ ”

  “What didn’t he like about it?”

  “He wanted more light.”

  “Where?”

  “Oh, all over.” She poked her crutch at the glowing logs in the fireplace, trying to ignite a flame.

  “Did he get the light?”

  “No way.”

  I knew her all too well. My friend was five feet tall and compensating like mad. The only woman I knew who had a Napoleon complex.

  “What scene was it?”

  “Just a routine two-shot with Mary Magdalene.” A shower of sparks jumped at her. She burst out: “My idea of filmmaking is to do storyboards, set up cameras, rehearse actors, and do my job. He wants hours of discussion with me, the wardrobe girl, and anybody who’ll listen until he gets himself in the right mood to do a fifty-second take. Then he holds seminars on which takes to print. He’s very expensive.” She leaned close to the fire. “He would spend three years on this island.”

  I watched her sweaty brow over the flame. I knew Jack saw this movie as his chance to do serious work, and she wasn’t catering to him enough. I said, “Anita, Michael sent me here to fire you.”