The Devil's Mirror (15 page)

The bad part of the whole thing is on Sundays when i got to get into that box & tell every thing to Billy. O its not really a box any more, i just call it that, its a booth in Tony’s bar near the back & of course Billy dont wear the coller like they used to when i was a k a & he dont like to be called father but its hard for me to get used to the way it is now.

When i say it is bad, its not that i mind for myself but i can see it bothers Billy, it just tares him up inside i can tell. When i say father forgive me for i have sinned & tell him about the stiffs i have cooled that week he says my son—he forgets himself & calls me my son—you must stop this way of life & give yourself up. But i say father if i don’t do it some one else will. You know i am not the only one father, i say, i bet most of the guys you see in this box make a living the same way & then when you think of the guys you dont see at all because there not of the faith, why it is a hell of a lot, excuse me father. This is the modern world i tell him, you half to get used to it just like i had to get used to not calling you father & all that. Its a whole new ball game Billy, i tell him. Its what Maggie calls the law of supply & demand. But Billy he dont say anything & i can tell he feels awful. Some times i feel sorry for that young fella, he is just eating his heart out, he cant tell no body not even his wife & kids, Well i guess its about time i went out & met Hank & did this job. The thing of it is i all most hate to go. Hank has been acting funny lately. Saying i should take a smaller cut because he does all the heavy work, but that is a lot of bull. He is younger & stronger but i have all the brains & know how. What i think is that he is fixing to cool me & deliver me to Maggie tonite & collect the whole fee & take over the business. If he does he will be sorry & so will Maggie & a whole lot of other drs. we work for.

Because i am putting this in an envelope & giving it to Billy & telling him to mail it to the feds if he dont hear from me by midnight. You know, it might not be a bad idea for me to beat Hank to the punch & deliver HIM to Maggie. After all Hank is young & in a lot better shape than i am, in fact he is just what the dr. ordered for the police comisioner. Yes Maggie would like it better that way & hell i got my proffesional pride the same as him.

I knew I was in trouble again when Maurie’s secretary, Joan, called to ask if I could see Maurie this afternoon, and would two o’clock be convenient. Maurie usually calls me himself. But when it’s bad news, he communicates through Joan. And she didn’t even call me Helen—she called me Miss Lansing.

I told her sure, two would be fine. The click, as she hung up, had the finality of a guillotine blade striking home, and I could see my blonde head plopping into the basket.

Of course, it isn’t the first time my head has been on the block. As one of the few really
big
female film directors, I’ve been a dartboard for every running-scared male megaphoner in Hollywood. Ever since I broke out of Sarah Lawrence, with my hand-held camera slung over one shoulder and my purse over the other, the male-supremacy boys have been afraid of me. I was a threat to them, they thought, Peck’s Bad Girl, a smarty-pants chick from a classy school, who’d doubled in brass (and they
did
mean
brass!
) as a fashion model and a shooter of some of the liveliest
cinema vérité
footage ever to surface from the underground.

I guess they’d expected me to be a tough bull dyke, and I was tough all right, but I was never the other. Maurie had found that out soon enough. He was my agent when I first came to Hollywood way back in 1977, and in the ten years since then he’d been the producer of all my films. He’d also been my lover—not quite exclusively—right from the start. And my protector, I’ll have to admit it. I wouldn’t have needed a protector if I’d have been a failure—but things can get pretty rough in this town for a
successful
Girl Director.

And now, Maurie was sharpening the axe and taking a good long look at my
haute couture
neck. Maybe I have it coming. You can buck the Establishment just so long, but they get you in the end. They always do. They always have. They always will. I’ve been on borrowed time for a long, long while, and now the handwriting is on the wall. But I can’t complain—I’ve had quite a run for my money.

(Funny, isn’t it, how the clichés bunch up in moments of crisis.)

I put on my sheerest see-through, got in the car, and took the long w?y to the studio—Sunset to La Cienega, then straight down to Venice Boulevard. The scenic route, full of quaint relics of the old days, the golden era, before my time. Schwab’s. Dino’s. The Playboy Club. The Losers. Ollie Hammond’s, where you can still get that steak-and-baked-spaghetti platter of theirs twenty-four hours a day. All the antiques. I may never see them again.

Reactionary. That’s what some of them have been calling me. To others, I’m a dangerous rebel, a threat to The American Way Of Life. I feel like neither of those extremes. I just want to make good pictures. But when you fight City Hall, as I’ve been doing, I guess that does make you a rebel of a kind. And when you react to the status quo, maybe that makes you a reactionary. Well, I’ve certainly been reacting.

Joan was brisk, courteous, and distant—just as she had been on the phone. I sailed past her with a wave.

Maurie’s office was the same (the Oscars on the sideboard, the plaques on the wall, the Chagall that stamped him a man of taste), but Maurie was not the same. Maurie was nervous. Even so, he got straight to the point, not even bothering to rise from behind his desk. He’s always been a direct person.

‘I guess you know why you’re here,’ he said.

‘I guess.’

‘I can’t cover for you anymore, honey. This time you’ve really torn it.’

With some ceremony, I sat down, and flicked an imaginary mote of lint from my skirt before I quietly said, ‘You’ve been looking at my rough cut.’

‘I have. Thereby violating the non-interference clause in your contract.’

‘I forgive you.’

‘Don’t get cute, darling. I’ve been looking at your rough cut, yes. And I must say—’ He broke off and started again. ‘Damn it, what
is
it with you? Have you got a martyr complex? Why can’t you toe the mark like every other director? Just because you’re a girl, with those big blue eyes and that great shape, you think you can—’

‘Hold it right there, sugar,’ I cut in. ‘I’m not having any of that. You know damn well I’ve never traded on my femininity that way.’

‘All right, all right, I’m sorry.’

‘Maurie darling, I know you’re having a difficult time trying to say what you’re trying to say. Why not cool the ritual dance and give it to me the hard way? I’m a big girl now. I can take it.’

Maurie got very tight-lipped. ‘You want it the hard way, you’ll get it the hard way. You’re off the picture. As of right now. I’m putting Bill Gahagan in charge.’

‘Best lap dog in town.’

‘Lap dog, maybe. But he’ll give me a picture I can
release
!’

‘You’ve released quite a few of mine, lover.’

‘Sure.
And
fronted for you,
and
made apologies for you,
and
took your lumps for you. But I can’t do it anymore, baby. I can’t cop a plea with Freedom of Speech anymore, or Artistic Liberty, or Creative Prerogative. No. It’s gone way beyond that. It’s not just the front office I have to fight now. Them I can handle. The civic groups are on my neck. The parents’ associations. The
government
! Your last picture was picketed in all the big cities. They’re calling you a degenerate, a corrupter of children, God knows what else. And as for this new picture...’

‘Yes?’ All innocence, I was. Couldn’t imagine what he was getting at. Like hell I couldn’t.

Maurie’s voice took on an elegiac throb. ‘I sat down there,’ he said in Hammond organ tones. ‘I sat down there,’ he repeated, ‘in the projection room, and watched every foot of film you shot, every
frame
. And frankly, Helen, I was shocked. I honestly don’t see how it can be salvaged. Unless...’

I saved him the trouble. ‘Unless I see the light. Play ball. Make... “certain changes”...’

His tone now became soft, conciliatory. ‘A scene here, a shot there, a
slightly
different camera angle somewhere else I’m not asking for much, dear. Really I’m not.’

‘Sorry, Maurie. Let the lap dog do it.’

‘
All right! I will!
’ Then he softened again. ‘But I don’t want to. I want
you
on the film, not a lap dog.’

I smiled a sad little smile and shook my head and very gently said, ‘You don’t want me. You want a revised and edited version of me.’

‘I want a
realistic
version of you. I want a You that is not bound and determined to commit career suicide. No, sit down. Don’t go. Listen to me for a minute. Please. You owe me. Like the politicians say, let’s look at the record.’

‘All right. Let’s.’

‘Want a Scotch-and-water? Good. I could use one myself.’ He got up and walked over to the bar, and I noticed he was wearing one of those new padded codpieces, lemon yellow, trimmed in red. But no sequins or clever mottos—Maurie’s always been a conservative.

While he poured, he talked. ‘It’s the love scenes, of course. That’s all. Everything else is fine. It’s really a very beautiful picture. But those love scenes! Wow!’ He shook his head in disbelief as he handed me the glass.

‘Those love scenes,’ he repeated. ‘Every time the boy and girl get together, it happens. They meet. They kiss. They talk a little. Then they go into a bedroom. Close the door. Kiss again. Sink on to the bed. And
then!
’ Maurie took a deep slug of his drink. ‘
And then you dissolve!
’

I sipped my drink and said, ‘Why not? Why state the obvious? Why not let the audience use its imagination? What the hell do you
think
they’re going to do on that bed—play Scrabble?’

Maurie sighed and closed his eyes. Long-suffering Maurie. ‘Do I have to deliver a sermon? A lecture? Do I have to remind you of the long, hard battle fought by this industry over the years—and not only this industry, the publishing industry, too, television, the legit stage—the battle against Puritanism, Victorian prudishness? Freedom fighters, that’s what we were!’

‘So am I, Maurie.’

‘
Sure
you are!’ he said, sarcastically. ‘You
fight
freedom!’ My mind wandered. I recalled something Eric Hoffer once wrote:
Is it doubtful whether the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and for power—power to oppress others. They want to retaliate
.

Meanwhile, Maurie was still talking. ‘Time was,’ he said, ‘when we couldn’t show Blondie and Dagwood reading side by side in the same bed! You want us to return to
those
days?’

‘No, of course not, but—’

‘But what? Are you trying to say you know better than the church groups and the parents’ associations about what’s best for kids? You don’t even
have
any kids, but I’m a divorced man, I know! And let me tell you something, Miss Iconoclast, Miss Free-Thinking Revolutionary—I am
grateful
for the progress that has been made in this country. I am
thankful
for the legislation that has been passed to protect my children from those who tell them their bodies are
evil
, that sex is
dirty.
’

‘Maurie, you of
all
people must know I don’t consider sex dirty-’

‘Then why don’t you show it, like everybody else? See? You can’t answer me! When you shoot a restaurant scene, do you dissolve just as your characters sit down to the table? No—you don’t. And why? I’ll tell you why. Because the act of eating isn’t dirty to you. But sex is. Obviously! So you avert your eyes—and not only
your
eyes, but the eyes of the young, impressionable people of this country. You force them to wear blinkers. You deprive them. You give them a false image of human relationships. You throttle their natural instincts. You put a fig leaf on the fountain of life!’

‘That’s a great image—do you mind if I write it down?’

‘This is no time for wisecracks, Helen. This is
serious
.’

‘I know it’s serious,’ I said. ‘More serious than you could possibly imagine. But let me try to get through to you in a way even you might understand. Money, Maurie. Box office receipts. Grosses. Your kind of picture made money at first, I can’t deny, but business has fallen off, the people are beginning to stay home, they’re watching
The Late Show
, and you want to know why?’

‘I have a hunch you’re going to answer that question yourself,’ said Maurie.

‘I am—with another question. Think back, Maurie. To when you were a kid. What kind of picture really turned you off? What kind of picture did the kids stay away from in droves—unless their parents
made
them go? Wasn’t it the kind of picture obviously calculated to please kids? In the same way, Maurie, the adults are being turned off by pictures obviously calculated to please adults. I repeat: no matter what you say, I do
not
consider sex dirty. I just don’t think it’s artistically necessary or valid to show every detail on the screen. Or on the stage. Or in the novel. In fact, I consider most of my pictures intensely
sexual
in theme—honest stories about the love between men and women—’

‘Ah!’ Maurie barked in triumph. ‘Men and women! That’s another thing!
Discrimination
. What world do you live in, sweetie? Don’t you know we’ve been striving to
integrate
our pictures? Not only cast-wise, but theme-wise, as well? And yet look at the pictures you’ve been turning out in the past five years. Just look at them. How many of them have dealt with homosexuality? Lesbianism? Bestiality? Fetishism? Sadism? Masochism? Ill tell you how many.
Not one!
That’s tow many!’

‘Maurie...’

‘Don’t Maurie me! So not only do I have the parents and the church types breathing down my neck, I also have all the minority lobbies, all the pressure groups—all the fags and dykes and kinkos—every one of them screaming for your blood! Not only are you a degenerate, you’re a bigot!’