I rang Wendy Hill personally to ask her to direct the film.
"Absolutely not," she said, and hung up.
Naturally I was so infuriated that I could not approach her again for days, but after such a refusal I was irrevocably attracted to her and would not consider any other director until I had discovered her objections to working with me and overcome them. It would then be appropriate to dump her.
Initially I had thought to direct it myself, but the more I contemplated this, the more the memories of my sole attempt at directing a movie returned to remind me of the humiliation it led to. You will have read that story in Victor: my varied life [Chapters 58 to 67].
So though I considered directing again, I only did so briefly. I am a fine straight-actor and (though I say it myself) one of the best vari-actors in the business - did I tell you about my awards; the Oscar, the two Emmies, the Trevor? (Once or twice, I hear you groan.) The point is, given good direction and intelligent audience interaction I can make any film work, and as executive producer I would retain enough artistic control to guide the film to verisimilitude and, I hoped, beauty. But my heart quaked at the thought of directing. It is the part of me that tries to soften my falls by not allowing me to take sole blame for anything - the heart, spurning sense, sometimes lacks confidence. If I have failed in life it is because I ignored my heart, preferring the coolness of logic and the veiling confidence of public praise.
So I needed a director. I wanted to use an Australian director, partly to patronise local talent, partly because I have always thought (perhaps with simple, chauvinistic patriotism) that we do things as well as anyone else, but also because I have finally managed to break from Hollywood. You may argue that I am turning my back on the people that made me rich, but, as well as my saviour, Hollywood has been my bane [see almost any chapter in Victor: my varied life, but particularly Chapters 40 to 122] and, being the most worldly place on earth, Hollywood is fit to betray.
I first met Wendy in Cannes last year. Since the demise of the Academy during the morality riots Cannes is the only festival still exclusively for straight films. But the filming techniques are nearly the same as for varifilms and directors have little trouble changing between them. The differences are largely in the post-processing of the film: you can edit it and make it a straight film; or you can just dump the data into a computer and let some varifilm software do its worst. Anyway, I was a at Cannes looking for a director when I saw Wendy's second film "Diamond Stick". I was not surprised when it won the Palme d'Or. That biographical film had impressed me deeply, as did the beauty of the young director - not the casual surface beauty of a star, but the artistic carriage, the sensitive bearing, the enchanting, luring, lurid voice. She took my hand and warmly accepted my congratulations, but in a moment the warmth flickered from her eyes, momentarily replaced by a look I thought could invoke terror in even the strongest-willed; my celebrity invokes strange passions in some people. I remember shuddering briefly before she released my hand. That foreboding resonates through my feelings to this day, and sometimes I wish I had been more restrained with my effusion. But it was a commanding film, and its power drew me toward its creator. From the nothing life of a down and-out-prince who had finally found a job she had created compulsion - so what, I thought, would she do with the turmoils I have described in Victor: my varied life?
I guess I was a bit numbed by the attention and champagne after winning the prize, for I did not notice who the old man was that was calling my name. He was quite handsome for his age, evidently having lived the most expensive rejuvenations, and I just heard his nice deep voice saying, "congratulations. It was a wonderful film."
Then I realised it was Victor Lawrence. I had heard he was was here, one of the antique celebrities they use ornamentally on the jury. Now he was pumping my hand, perhaps trying to milk me for awe. But typically he was perving at my chest as he spoke his congratulations. I just wanted to get away ...
From her decision to reject my offer so quickly I assumed she simply misunderstood me, or mistook me for someone else; I am not yet disconnected from the film world and this would be a prestige project, even for her. But when I called her again she said she understood perfectly, and she refused my blurted offer of a generous package by bluntly hanging up.
I resorted to working through our respective agents. Mine offered her first refusal to direct a filed biography, the subject of which was not to be disclosed to her until a later date, but agents are part of the clumsy world that surrounds us, and she soon rang me herself to say just two words - "Forget it."
Since my vanity had been teased and honed by a life in the public eye, I naturally decided to be furious at her scorn. I say "decided" because a lifetime acting has left me a legacy of confusion, and sometimes when I should be highly emotional the words I choose turn out to have been written by someone else, in another time, for someone else. I regret them the moment they're out of my mouth, feeling that some alien motivation has bled into and blended with my own. Fury, as a highly charged emotion that can leave one speechless, I find difficult to guide by myself. It can leave me spluttering incoherent nonsense, and ultimately (one might say gratefully), speechless. She excited me momentarily by calling back, but it was only to say, "I don't do variflix anyway."
Was that it then, I wondered? Was she just a cultural bigot: I knew that the straight film mob who spawn under the full moon in Cannes were prejudiced against my chosen art-form - like the twentieth-century prejudice against television, but I somehow expected her to be outside that clique.
Anyone who can make a straight film can make a varifilm, but not just anyone can act in them, though you would never guess that from the scorn we receive from the self-appointed intelligentsia. It's not as if we are like the computer generated zombie-fodder that goes into the varivision telly boxes every day in every household the world over. Unlike varitelly, in the best varifilms we must act. The computer could do it for us, but even the best computer-generated characters are usually too inhuman to be credible, as their programmers overcompensate for their own wooden lives. Computers can generate a far wider range of nuances than even the most flexible human face; left alone they would twist our faces into flesh-burning super-heated emotions, pouring out everything in every scene. We do need them in varifilms, but the human actor can guide the computer to settle into a recognisable character, wobbling about in an unsteady equilibrium like the attractors of a chaotic system.
But the most important reason not to untether the computer is that no human face would be recognisable from film to film, for a computer can create a new identity - a new face - every time by borrowing from the infinite variation of nature. The public needs a real identity to worship, and if we let the computers change our faces, the audience will be denied their idols. Fandom would cease to exist.
I thought Wendy Hill would be above such prejudices, but even before I had calmed down from her call, my agent rang to tell me that "Ms Hill had informed him that since her win at the Cannes Film Festival, Ms Hill had no shortage of offers of work, and that Ms Hill would be most pleased if I left her alone. It was even added that Ms Hill would not be swayed by any amount of money I could dangle in front of Ms Hill, since Ms Hill would rather work for peanuts than carrots..." Still angry, I hung up on this insufferable parrot and set to work. You will remember that the year "Diamond Stick" won the Palme d'Or was unusual in that the prize was actually shared by two films - a dead heat. The other film (by a young Quebequoise) was halved in French with English subtitles and English with French titles. It was monstrously affected, but as the English part was all car-chase, gun-play and grunting, and the French part was tediously slow with no dialogue, the film was "greeted rapturously". What price subtitles after that?
Before I tell you why I make this reference to a movie whose name I can't even remember, let me add that I am continually amazed, as I age and my social jaundice grows, at the speed with which news travels in this photonic world. I simply e-mailed a message to 3 people, and within 2 minutes of the birth of the rumour that the directorship of the film of Victor: my varied life had been offered to some young Canadian director, I had a phone call from Ms Hill herself.
"I'll see you," was all she said, but it was enough to make me smile.
I went on smiling until she walked through my door next day. She was wearing faded jeans, t-shirt and sandals, and the beautiful face I remembered from our meeting in Cannes was marred by a frame of unkempt dark hair, matched by two deep black sockets where her eyes should have been. Neither of us said anything, and I lead her to the balcony where the lavish lunch I had prepared for her was spread. She took one look at the food, ran to the balcony rail, leaned over it and breathed deeply, swallowing as if to avoid being sick. Then, having added vertigo to her gastric ills, she covered her mouth with her hand and let her eyes plead with me. I led her to the bathroom then went back to the balcony where I ate all the caviar myself, washed down with most of a bottle of champagne before she reappeared, looking much improved - almost composed. I stood to greet her again and pushed a glass of bubbling champagne under her nose. It was a churlish impulse, I know, but can you blame me? She retched again and pushed the glass away, sat down heavily, breathed deeply for a few moments and asked weakly, "Coffee?"
Since the request was delivered with the beginning of a smile I laughed and obliged her.
"Got a little bit pissed last night," she said.
"Really?" I was flabbergasted.
"Can you tell?" she asked.
"Not at all," I replied, my astonishment showing. "I thought you must have the flu. I hear there is something abominable going around. Actually I hear there are many abominable things going around." And damn! I thought, did I make that up?
She said, "I did it deliberately. To make myself ugly."
She began to pick at the food, and with the coffee she slowly brightened. We said nothing for a while, content to learn each other's proximity, feeling our presences. Presently she said, "I have two questions: how do you live with your vanity, and why do you want me to help you perpetuate it?"
"Everyone who has seen one of my films," I replied, "shares the load of my vanity. And everyone who has read the book of my life wants a larger share. And..."
"Let me guess," she interrupted. "You want to give them an even bigger piece by filming your autobiography. Your burden of vanity is so large you can't shoulder it alone."
"Do you want to answer your second question as well?" I asked.
She grabbed a bunch of grapes from the table then absently put several into her mouth, chewed, grimaced and spat them back out onto the table.
"These grapes have stones in them."
"Only the best. Very hard to find the genuine article."
"Exactly," she said. She then took the grapes one by one, chewed them carefully, then spat the pits onto the table. "We tend to think truth is very expensive these days. But you saw 'Diamond Stick' didn't you," she said between spits. "You know what drama I can create out of a nothing script with just the minimum software, which I pirated by the way. I turned a postage stamp into a romance, and you want me to do that for you, don't you? You want me to take your nothing life and make it into a palatable movie. You're just another boring movie star that thinks a few divorces, a bout of alcoholism with an expensive recovery and a suicide attempt after a series of bad reviews makes for a dramatic life. We've seen it. You want some of these posh grapes?"
I declined, for she had only left the bruised grapes, and she continued.
"And you know that if the movie is not brilliant you're going to get slammed by the critics for simply displaying your vanity, and worse, you know no one will go to see it. Obviously you think I'm the only director who can rescue it."
"Yes," I said. "That's what I thought, or at least I thought you were one of the few that could do it, but now that I've met you I've changed my mind. The job is obviously not for you." She appeared not to be listening, engrossed in digging grape pips from her teeth with her dirty fingers. I stood and walked inside, adding, "Please help yourself to the food until you are replete. I'll see you out when you've finished."
I sat in the lounge, drinking coffee and pretending to read a newspaper. Wendy did not follow me in, but instead put her feet on the balcony table, skulled her glass of champagne and went on to drink the rest of the bottle - from the bottle. When it was empty she came inside and roamed my apartment looking for the kitchen, from which she returned with another bottle of champagne and a glass. She sat near me, opened the bottle, poured a glass and offered it to me. I took it and sipped, watching her over the rim as she tilted the new bottle and drank deep.
"Tell me more about the film," she said. "Who do you think you will get to play you in it?"
"The film is not a simple biography," I said.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean it is an autobiography, like the book, though instead of telling my story in words on a page I'm going to tell it with pictures."
"You mean you will play you?" she asked, her voice rising with incredulity.
"Precisely."
"What about when you were young? The war years, the London and Hollywood years, as a child in wherever it was you were a child."
"I shall be... how do you know about the war and London? Have you read the book."
She blushed, but it was too late. "Of course not. My mother used to be a fan. She made me watch all your bloody movies."
One up to me, I thought. I said, "Anyway, I shall be playing all those parts. And the people that were with me, unless they are dead or cannot be bought, will also be playing themselves."
"It's a documentary. Ring a varivision station. Try 60 to 70 Minutes."
"It's an original drama."
"You're not only vain, you're nuts. It'll be boring as hell."
"If I just stood there reading from the book it might be. Remember hundreds of thousands of people have read the book..."
"Accessed the book, you mean. How many finished it, or even downloaded the whole thing?"
"Oh don't be jealous, little girl," I said, and to my great delight she became angry.
She said, "Listen buddy...."
"Oh an Americanism!" I interrupted. "Delusions of Hollywood have we, young female artist?"
"You decrepit old has-been," she said as she fell of the lounge, skilfully recapturing the champagne bottle as it fell with her. "Have you seen any movies lately? Out of the countless millions of ridiculous movies ever made - black and white, silent, colour, musical, holovision, varivision, whatever - your story has been done a thousand times over."
"Tell me a story that hasn't been done a thousand times a thousand times," I asked her.
"Well not many have been done as many thousands of times over as yours."
"I know there is nothing new about an old fogy prancing fondly through the softened memories of youth, but I know, and more to the point, you know even though you refuse to admit it, there are many people out there who would like to see a dramatised version of my life. I'm part of today's royalty. I am a modern courtesan. People want to see me doing the things I did, so that they can aspire to grandeur. People want something to hope for, and I will show them what it is. I am one of the grand people, and they want either to see themselves as grand, or to let me wipe my feet on the doorstep of their worship."
"If people come to see it," she said, "it will be to make sure that you are just as small as them. That your life, with its money, or what you call grandeur, is just as petty as their own."
"People want to be grand."
"But they know they can't, so they'd rather no one was."
"Well why don't we show them what it's like and let them make up their own minds?" With that statement I grabbed the champagne bottle from her hands and drank until it was empty. She watched this quietly then shrugged and fetched a third. Returning, she sat next to me, popped the cork through the open window, swigged deeply and handed me the bottle so I could do the same while she rubbed in the bubbles she had spilled on my lounge.
As she sat brooding I could examine her face closely. The eyes I remembered from Cannes had returned, and were flaming again. Presumably there was a pilot light in there that needed a strong flow of emotion to burst into life.
"What did you intend to call this film?" she asked.
"'Victor: the film of the book'," I said.
She took another swig at the champagne and said nothing, but I think she was slowly shaking her head in bemusement, for I have always admitted that the title sacrificed catchiness for accuracy. I sighed and stared again into her eyes. I thought of the myriad directors around the world who would willingly do my film, for I could meet anyone's price, yet this contrary, juvenile drunk had captivated me. I sighed a second time and gently put my manicured hand onto her knee, feeling the grime in her jeans. She turned her head sharply to me but I did not remove my hand. Instead I said, "We could make a great movie, you and I. We would be a good team."
"Are you making a pass at me?" she asked.
"You sound surprised. Proper form is to either reject me subtly or accept me gracefully. Are all young women so brazen and abrupt these days?"
The cloud of disappointment gathering over my head was swallowed by the raucous storm of joy that gathered over hers, and rained contemptuous, ear-splitting laughter for minutes after.
"You're older than my father," she cried between the spittle that jerked between her teeth. "In fact, you're old enough to be my grandfather you dirty old bugger."
Mortified, more by truth than rejection, I stood and pointed toward the door, and again I was left virtually speechless. Not only was I deserted by my own voice and improvisational techniques, nor could I summon the words of any of the dear writers I most liked to plagiarise. All of them from Aykbourn to Brontė - all left me alone, with the loneliness of inexpressible rage. I was left with just one word:
"Out," was what I said, though I said it with gusto.
Still laughing she stood, then suddenly kissed me on the forehead, winked at me with the most mischievous look I have ever seen and said, "OK Grandpa. I'll do your film, but don't you dare touch me ever again."
Again I cried, "Out!", and this time she walked away from me, but before she left she turned to me and asked,
"Oh, can I borrow a copy of your book? I haven't read the thing, and I'm certainly not going to download it on my own account. Or are there varibook versions on the blacknet? Maybe I could download a version where I can kill you."
"Don't you dare play illegally with my history," I said, but the door had closed and she could no longer hear me.
I felt the door close behind me, and breathed a sigh of relief. That had gone better than planned. I'd been rude and ugly and he still wanted me to direct his film. Well he would. I did my hair, then before moving out of sight of the security camera I winked at the old lech.
