Belinda

by Anne Rice

  And by this time we were sitting on the couch together, and he was asking me how I’d like to come to LA and see my mother be big again, bigger than anybody. And he was throwing in all that crap like, “Hey, what’s your sign, no don’t tell me, you’re a Scorpio, aren’t you honey, yes, I knew it, terrific, you’re a Scorpio, honey, and so am I. I am a double Scorpio. And I knew you were a Scorpio the minute I saw you because you are independent.” And so forth and so on.

  It sounds sleazy when I try to describe it, but there was this immense conviction behind Marty as he poured this on. And he was holding my hand and I could feel something coming through his hand. I mean, I felt a sort of overwhelming physical thing for him, and I wondered how many other women felt this, instantly, just from the touch, the way that I did.

  I mean, I looked down at his hand and the way the dark hair was on his wrist, coming out of the white cuff, and the way the gold watchband was there with the dark hair. I mean, just this little thing was attractive to me. It was driving me wild.

  I could tell you things about you that made me feel the same way, the way that you let your hair just grow loose and kind of wild, and the expression on your face when you look down at me, and the way it feels to sleep against your chest.

  But the thing I am trying to describe here is the way that the attraction got to me, and short-circuited me, and how unprepared I was for all that.

  Marty was meantime tuning in to everybody in the room, saying: “Can’t you see that independence in her, can’t you see that, Sally?” and the truth is, he hardly knew Sally, he had just met her. And: “You don’t mind if I smoke, do you, ladies? Daryl, how about that Scotch now? You think the lady”—and that was Mother—”would mind if we had a little, what do you think, Daryl? Sensational!” And then he had his arm around Daryl and Daryl brought over the glass.

  “Listen, honey, you and I have to be good friends,” he was saying. “And you’ve got to let me make your mother big again in America, I mean big, sweetheart. Belinda, Belinda, is it? Sensational! Daryl, where’d your sister get that name for her? Talk to me, sweetheart. What can I do for you while you’re at Cannes? What do you and the lady need? You call me. This is my number “Blah, blah, blah and all the time his eyes narrow and brilliant like this is all earthshaking what is happening, then he says he has to blast off.

  “So do I,” I said. And I headed out the door, and before they could stop me, I was gone to find Susan while he was still kissing Sally Tracy and shaking hands and all that.

  I thought Susan would be hysterical about Mother backing out. But she wasn’t. We got right into rehearsing for the press conference. And she had already talked to two Continental distributors. It was a sure thing they’d take the film in Germany and Holland. And United Theatricals was very interested and, of course, United Theatricals was one of the biggest distributors worldwide. That would be dream stuff to get United Theatricals. But she had the inside track that they wanted it. They had heard the rumor that the film had a good narrative line.

  When I got back to the room, I found out they had sedated Mother because she couldn’t sleep. She was out cold. I went into her room and she was lying there with all those flowers around her and, I tell you, it looked like a funeral, this perfect statue of a lady lying there on the satin cover and the flowers all over the room. She seemed to be scarcely breathing. And it always scared me to see her drugged like that.

  But they were going to show her most famous film at the Palais des Festivals, and there would be a supper and the tribute afterwards, and United Theatricals was somehow involved.

  Well, that’s it, I thought, and Susan’s right. We might get United Theatricals to distribute after all.

  The screening of Final Score the next morning was one experience I’ll remember forever, in spite of everything else that went on. I mean, we really had the audience. You could feel it. And when those scenes came on and I saw the brand-new me up there—not the kid who had been in Mom’s films years and years agog—well, what can I say? I had never seen the final cut either. And I was really stunned and grateful for how good Susan had made us all look.

  When we got the standing ovation, Susan was holding my hand and Sandy’s hand. And she was squeezing my hand so hard it hurt, and it felt just great at the same time.

  The press conference was in the lobby at the Carlton and right off Susan got into the sexual issue, that this was a picture by a woman about women and the sex was clean. The idea was that the woman in the film had a private experience and it made her see the shallowness of the life in the fast lane and all that. The Texas band of dope smugglers had risked everything for the cocaine score. And yet, as they hid out on the island, they realized that they had no idea what to do with the money. The final dope score wouldn’t change their lives at all. But the interlude between the two women, that had made for a change in the heroine. And to say it was a gay film would have limited it. It was about a new kind of woman, who tries a variety of experiences in life, a woman who had the pressures and freedoms of a man.

  From there it went right on to women in film, did women get a fair shake? And did Susan see herself as an American filmmaker, which of course she did. Her dope smugglers were Texan Americans. And then Susan threw in the fact that Bonnie had helped produce the film, and this was one woman helping another, the way Coppola had once helped his friend Ballard to make the Black Stallion, and so forth and so on.

  That threw the focus right to me. And then the questions started about Mother’s financing. And I tried to keep my voice steady while I explained how much Mother believed in the film of integrity, like the ones she had made in the past.

  Then it was: Did I feel the love scenes in the film were tasteful and in the tradition of Mother’s films?—and, of course, I said yes. Did I want to make more films? Yes, definitely. How did I feel about playing in a film that maybe I wasn’t old enough to see in the United States? And Susan stepped in immediately and explained that no way would the film be Xrated. Had the reporters just been to the screening? What did they see? Final Score would get an R-rating, of course. And then she talked about me and Sandy as two of the most exciting actresses on the current scene.

  Then came Sandy’s moment, and she probably got as much mileage out of monosyllabic answers as any beautiful woman ever did. Susan rescued her a couple of times, and there was a lot more about America and Europe and Texas, but by that time it was repeating itself.

  I’d say even now that it went wonderfully well. Susan was natural and convincing, and the reporters were never hostile to us. After all, we were the underdogs at Cannes. Nobody expected us to win anything. Nobody was out to get us. It was our moment of glory, and everyone was on our side.

  Rumors were all over about United Theatricals distributing. But Susan wasn’t going to lose her Continental people. She holed up in the room with the phones as the talk about United Theatricals brought more and more offers in.

  Reporters attacked us when we went out for drinks. We were mobbed with questions. Did I have any new offers? Would Susan work in Hollywood? We told everybody about Of [Vill and Shame, the Brazilian film.

  I was floating when I got back to the suite, but something was brewing in me, too. I was hurt by Mother in a way that I had never been hurt in the past. I could look back on many terrible things, but no matter what Mother had ever done to me, Mother had always suffered worse.

  But this time Mother had hurt me, and it didn’t involve her self-destructiveness or her carelessness. It involved something else. She hadn’t come to the showing! And that hurt me as bad as her not coming to the press conference. Mother had not seen my film.

  Yet again, when I came into the suite, I didn’t flip over it. I couldn’t. I was blocked again by the thought that I would be acting like Mother if I flipped over it. I’d be drawing attention to myself as Mother always did.

  When I walked in, nobody even noticed me. Nobody even knew I was there. The whole place was in confusion. The showing of Mom’s fil
m had turned into a special evening of clips from all Mom’s best. And Leonardo Gallo, who by the way had made a lot of garbage with Mom, was going to make the address. Well, he needed that all right. And maybe everyone would remember his younger days and not the garbage that killed Mona’s career.

  Anyway Mother was on the couch with Marty, and Marty was making her eat some cold cuts and some cold fish from a china plate. Mom looked wonderful, she really did. She looked fragile and just about ageless. And Marty was absolutely feeding her, putting the bites right into her mouth. And he was telling her in a hushed voice that television was easier than film. They had to shoot so many pages in so many days and you never got involved in extensive rehearsals or retakes. Her kind of professionalism would be perfect.

  Mother was trying to eat. She kept saying that she didn’t know if she could do this television thing, and, of course, I had seen this routine a thousand times before. I had seen her do it with Gallo on every picture and in Germany and in Denmark, and each time the director would take over, inspired by her vulnerability and humility and all that.

  So this sexy guy, Marty, is some kind of director, I thought, and it is television of all things. Well, for a major role in an American film Mom would have done anything. But for TV? I almost laughed. Poor Marty what-ever-your-name-is. You better wipe your hands on a napkin and give up.

  I went in to shower and change for dinner, and I tried not to think about the screening, that nobody, not Mom or Uncle Daryl or Trish or Jill had come. Don’t think about it, Belinda, I kept thinking. You had all those strangers cheering for you. So what if these guys didn’t even care? But I was getting more and more upset and finally crying, and I just let the shower run and run.

  Then Trish was banging on the door. “Hurry, Belinda’.” she said. “There’s a press conference in the lobby right now.”

  Well, the crowd down there was easily five times what it had been for our conference. There was no comparison at all. Mother had really brought them out. And the whole thing was to announce that she’d be going back to the States to work for United Theatricals on a nighttime soap called “Champagne Flight.”

  Now if you know anything about movie people, Jeremy, you know that they really look down on television. You ask Alex Clementine. They disdain it utterly. So why the hell was this happening at Cannes?

  Within seconds the answer was clear. Mom was the American Brigitte Bardot, Marty was saying, and the American Brigitte Bardot was coming home. On “Champagne Flight” she would play herself as Bonnie Sinclair, the émigré actress returning to take over the Florida airline empire of her father, and Mom’s old films would be used in episodes of “Champagne Flight.” Clips from Gallo, Flambeaux, all Moro’s Nouvelle Vague successes would be used in this brand-new concept series, that would have the thrust of “Dynasty” and the style of Mom’s old films.

  In sum, Marty had made television news into film news and he had used the moment, on the moment, maybe better than anyone else could have done.

  Now we were off to the special tribute and the dinner. I had to find Susan and Sandy. Surely they had been invited. Then somebody took my arm. It was this handsome young man from United Theatricals, I don’t even remember his name if I ever knew it, and he said he was my escort, I was to go with him. We made a triumphal march out of the lobby, and, of course, somewhere under the noise and the glare of the lights and all the madness there was this little voice saying, “Not one word was said in Moro’s press conference about Final Score.”

  But frankly, as we left the lobby, I was pretty damned horrified not by their not mentioning us but by the idea of TV. I mean, what the hell was Mom doing in a nighttime soap?

  But I didn’t understand then what big business these nighttime soaps were. My mind really was on films. I didn’t know that people all over the world watched “Dallas” and “Dynasty,” that the stars of these shows even have their voices recognized by the overseas operators when they make long-distance calls. I didn’t understand the immediate fame and money that this sort of thing conveyed.

  I iust thought, OK, ifMom wants to do this, this means we’re going to the States and that’s terrific, and what kid my age doesn’t want to be in the States right now? And then Mom can make United Theatricals distribute Final Score. We are really doing just fine. Like hell we were doing just fine.

  Susan was not at dinner. No Sandy, no Susan at all. It was eleven o’clock before I finally found Susan in the bar. I never saw anything like the change in her. It was worse than the change in you when you hit me, because that was really the other side of the same coin.

  Susan said, “Do you know what your mother b. as done? She’s killed our picture. United Theatricals dropped us. We’ve got nothing. It’s all over Cannes that the film’s unmarketable. Everybody has backed off.”

  I said that couldn’t be true. Mother was all wrapped up in herself, of course, but she would never have gone that far to hurt somebody else. But in my heart I knew Mom could let something like this happen. I had to find out what was going on.

  I ran upstairs. I said I had to talk to Mother, and I practically shoved Uncle Daryl out of the way. But it turned out Mother’s door was locked. She was in there with Sally Tracy, the American agent, and Trish, and they wouldn’t answer when I knocked. They were talking over all the details, it seemed, little things that had to be worked out. Uncle Daryl told me there was really no problem, of course, with “Champagne Flight.” The money part was done.

  Then I started screaming. What about Susan? What about our film? Susan and Sandy and I had gotten a standing ovation out there.

  “Now you calm down, Belinda,” he said. “You know perfectly well if I had been there you would never have been in any such film.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked him. “Mom made all her money off ‘such films’ and you know it.”

  “She wasn’t fourteen when she did it,” he told me.

  “Well, I was playing bit parts in them when I was four,” I said.

  He yelled back, “That’s got nothing to do with it. We are making the deal of the century in there, Belinda, and this is as much for you as for your mother, and I cannot believe that you would come here at this moment and “You get the drift.

  I don’t know what I would have said next. I could see already I was against a wall. Uncle Daryl is forever loyal to Mom, and no matter what anyone has ever told him, Mom is his only concern. When she nearly drove me off the cliff on Saint Esprit, Uncle Daryl said to me long distance, “And why did you let her drive, Belinda? Good Lord, on the ranch you’d have been driving at twelve years old. Don’t you know how to drive a car?” That is Uncle Daryl. There is but one cause for Uncle Daryl and that cause is Bonnie, and, of course, Bonnie and Uncle Daryl have made Bonnie and Uncle Daryl very rich.

  But to get back to the story, I didn’t have a chance to say anything to him, because Marty Moreschi appeared right behind him. And when I saw this big mogul from United Theatricals, I just shut up.I went into my room and slammed the door.

  I am telling you that at this moment I felt alone. I couldn’t reach Mom, I didn’t really want to, and I had lost Susan. Susan had looked at me with coldness in her eye.

  Then comes a knock on the door. Marty Moreschi. Can he come in? I said, “Later,” but he begged me, “Please, sweetheart, let me come in.”

  OK, suit yourself, buster, I was thinking. But if you start that bullshit again, I’m going to scream.

  But this was where Marty’s intelligence came into play.

  The look on his face was very serious when he walked into the room. “I did it, kid,” he said. “I killed your film.”

  I looked at him for a minute, I guess. Then I burst into tears.

  “I understand how you feel, kid. I really do. But you gotta believe me. That film would have done nothing in the U.S. And this, what I am doing now with your mother, is for you, too.”

  Now, as I am telling you this, I know I am not able to get across the way this w
as done. The sincerity of it and the way that he looked. Like he was going to cry suddenly, too. Like he really felt rotten about what was happening, too.

  And I know what you think, Jeremy, that I probably fell for this, that it was just crap. But I think I will believe to my dying day that Marty was the only one there who really understood. I mean, he knew I was disappointed, at least he knew.

  So this is how it happened that Marry and I were sitting on the bed and he was telling me in this emotional way that I had re trust in him, that there would be big deals for me in America, too.

  Of course, I hated the way he said it. But that is movie talk, deals. You may mean art and beauty, but when you’re talking the bottom line, you say deals.

  There would be deals for Susan, he was telling me now, yes, Susan, he hadn’t forgotten Susan. Susan was sensational. But Final Score had to be sacrificed. It wasn’t the way to introduce me to the American public, and it wasn’t the way to introduce Susan either. United Theatricals could do better making a deal with Susan to do a picture, just on the basis of how Final Score did at Cannes, without it ever being seen at home.

  “But will you do that deal with Susan?” I asked him.

  He said he had it very, much on his mind.

  He said that once we got “Champagne Flight” underway, I’d be in a position to do whatever I wanted. Just wait and see.

  He said, “That Susan, she is the real thing. And you are the real thing.”

  “You’ve got to trust me, Belinda,” he said. And there was a kind of frankness to all this. He had his arms around me and he was very close to me, and I guess about halfway through I realized that his physical presence was sort of confusing me. I mean, he was very attractive and I wasn’t so sure he knew it or was even attempting to be.