I never asked my mom to run lines with me the night before; I was happy to memorize and do the work on my own. I liked hearing it in my own head before getting the input from anybody. This meant that I was experiencing much of the filming on my own and within my relationships with actors and the creative team on set. I loved having this entirely separate family and life to the one Mom and I lived together. It felt safe and fun and we all had a common goal.
But things began getting difficult and I was becoming run-down and tired. The schedule had been extended, and we were overbudget and tensions were high. Mom intervened and insisted that whenever my feet were not visible in the frame I could wear other shoes or go barefoot. She called a doctor and he prescribed a medicinal salve I was to use nightly. Mom would coat my feet in this ointment and then wrap them in bandages or athletic socks. Each morning it was a relief for them to be soft and a bit less cracked. My feet eventually healed, but Mom remained displeased that it had gone on for as long as it had and that nobody on set had bothered to address the issue. I had never told anybody else how bad it really was. I tried to explain that to her, but she said they still should have been more conscientious when using worn period items.
Up until this film my work environments had always been very controlled. We knew what to expect and Mom had been fine leaving me at a bit of a distance to do the job at hand. On this set she was more around, but contrary to popular belief, she was not always intruding; I never saw her giving her input to the director. She knew call times and locations, but I honestly felt she didn’t want to interfere with the creative process.
Tensions were mounting between Polly Platt and my mother, and if it were up to Polly, Mom would have not set foot in New Orleans at all. Everybody wanted control of his or her own domain. When it came to me, my mom had no intention of relinquishing any. I was eleven years old.
I liked knowing Mom was near, and I was glad she intervened, but I never wanted her too close to me when I acted. I hated it when she watched me perform, and would get distracted if I saw her out of the corner of my eye. I never thought I was good enough, and her watching me would make me too nervous and I’d freeze. I felt I was good enough for basic strangers but feared my mother would be somehow dissatisfied. I was embarrassed and nervous about not being perfect for her. I just wanted her to think I was good, but I feared I might not be.
What was strange was that Mom always said she was proud of me and that in her eyes I was perfect, but she’d also make little comments that seemed like jokes or throwaways but made me feel less than. I couldn’t get past the self-doubt and the insecurity of wanting to always be the best for her.
I am sure it made her feel sad and left out when I told her I didn’t want her to watch me, but she found other ways to feel needed and important. I’m also sure Mom spent a good portion of her day drinking. She had a favorite bar she frequented during the days and nights and quickly became a regular. It was sort of near the St. Charles Hotel, and if I wrapped and the van dropped me off at the hotel and she was not there, I could usually find her at Igor’s Lounge. Teri Terrific gravitated to seedy bars no matter where we were. She always had her favorites and loved being a regular. She often met our tall, slightly disheveled hippie of a boom operator at this famous bar they called “EEEEYYYOORRRSS.” His name was Ringo and he had an unkempt sex appeal about him. He was tall and had muscled arms from holding up the heavy boom all day. He was very sweet and protective of me and I know Mom had a crush on him. I don’t know if they ever hooked up. To be honest, I didn’t want to know. It made me squeamish and jealous and angry just thinking about it.
• • •
Pretty Baby was based on a real story, and Violet was modeled after an actual person. The real Bellocq was rather unattractive, however, and was said to have had an enlarged head caused by hydrocephalus. (Obviously our version of Bellocq was the very handsome Keith Carradine.) It could have been because of his deformity that the girls in the brothel trusted him, but they also believed his intentions were pure. He was an artist with no ulterior motives who wanted only to capture the girls beautifully and with their individual personalities.
The still photos we took of the actresses were direct duplicates of the original Bellocq photographs and were remarkably similar. There was a scene, adapted from the actual historical photo, where Violet’s image was being taken while she lay naked on a chaise lounge. I had been given a G-string, but it was determined by all of us that it wasn’t necessary. My legs were slightly crossed and Louis did not want it to be pornographic in any way. The shot was quick and represented the snap of Bellocq’s lens right before my character jumps up to petulantly destroy some photo plates.
We copied the famous photo and I was unself-conscious and unfazed by what was an extremely short scene. I remember only being slightly disappointed that I had no real breasts yet, but neither did the young girl on the photo plate. I didn’t feel violated or compromised. I put the G-string back on once I was standing and was also only photographed from the shoulders up. I had not yet learned how to use my sexuality as any type of tool and was therefore able to play this scene with the calm quality it called for.
Mom again didn’t watch the filming of this scene and no one seemed to fret. It was quick and I was so young and innocent. Mom was crucified for permitting any of it, and in many ways I understand the criticism, especially now that I’m a mother. But the world and the industry were markedly different back then.
I have been asked this question over and over in the press, but I have always maintained that, at the time of the filming and thereafter, I did not experience any distress or humiliation. When the movie came out a year later, the press was up in arms about the whole thing. There was a sense of fury and a need to assume that I was a victim in this circumstance. The press wanted me to have shame and regret and could not handle my being cognizant and wise and self-possessed. There was a firestorm and Mom took most of the heat. My poise, whether innate or earned, gave me a certain adult perspective, and I remained clear in my convictions of the scene and of the film in its entirety.
As a mother of an eleven-year-old today, I am equally clear that I, myself, would not allow my daughter to be photographed topless. But it was a different time, and not only did my mother really believe we were creating art, but this film was special, too, and the scene was one of the shortest ones in the entire film.
I was not yet a sexual being, and this was how Louis Malle wanted it to be. He was more interested in showing my emerging sexuality through my attitude rather than via gratuitous nudity. We simply did not make a big deal of it. I was never scarred in the way the press wanted to speculate and hope.
I was, however, deeply concerned by a much more innocuous scene. Later in the film, once Violet and Bellocq have gotten to know each other a bit better, they’re playing a game they call “sardines” and find themselves alone in an attic and kiss for the first time. During the filming, I kept scrunching up my face right before a first kiss. Louis kept saying “Cut” and I could tell he was getting slightly disturbed. He wanted it to look tender and beautiful, not like I had just sucked on a lemon. All of a sudden Keith, who played Bellocq, whispered to me, “You know it doesn’t count, right?”
“It doesn’t?”
“Of course not, it’s fake.”
This was the first time I had ever kissed anybody on the lips except my mother, and I was so relieved that it would not count as my first kiss that I totally relaxed and the scene went on without another hitch. In hindsight, I feel that the director, or at least my mother, should have shared this sort of insight with me before Keith had to do it. I was very lucky that Keith was so kind. He was such a gentleman and was lovely to both my mother and me. I am sure he was struggling by having to film romantic scenes with a young girl, but he showed me such gentle respect that it made it all easy.
• • •
I would not be quite as lucky when it ca
me to Susan Sarandon, who played my mother, Hattie. Hattie and Violet had a difficult relationship, and the scenes Susan and I had together were very challenging. Her attitude toward me ran the gamut, and while she could be sweet to me off set, she sometimes approached me during filming in a manner that seemed to cross a line. It would always be in the guise of staying true to her character but also hinted at something I did not quite understand. Now, she was extremely talented and beautiful and maybe she was just really being a serious actress who chose to stay in character for the duration of the film, but there were inconsistencies in this theory.
My mother seemed to understand early on that there might be some discomfort between Susan and me. Mom actually warned me that there might be some jealousy between us. I didn’t get it. Susan was young and very sexy, and it was obvious Louis liked her. Why would she have a problem with eleven-year-old me? But I will admit that I felt something was up. Something was uncomfortable and I got the feeling she did not like me very much. I am almost positive she would not interpret any of it this way, but it was a vibe I was constantly trying to navigate.
Mom hinted that Susan may have been threatened by me because I was the lead in the film. In addition, it turned out that even though it was not yet public knowledge, everybody on set knew that Susan and Louis were involved in a romantic relationship.
Susan was breaking up with her then-husband, Chris Sarandon, and would be divorced within two years. I don’t remember how Mom alluded to this, but where Mom lacked in maternal advice, she seemed to make up for with regard to a woman’s mind and her actions. Mom was pretty intuitive when it came to other people’s internal emotions. Which was funny, since she usually wasn’t particularly in touch with her own.
One day we were filming a scene in which Hattie tells her daughter that she is getting married to a respectable man and leaving her daughter behind, at least temporarily. She has told her fiancé that Violet is her sister so he would marry her. Violet stands stoically, and instead of commenting, she just cocks her head, raises her eyes slightly, and smugly offers her mother some lemon custard she had been eating from a little bowl with her index finger. Hattie immediately and violently slaps her daughter across the face. The slap conveyed so much. Before shooting the scene, Susan explained to Louis that she would be unable to fake the slap. She would have to actually slap me in order to act her most convincing. She literally said, “I can’t do this unless I actually slap her.”
I remember thinking: Is this being a real actress, or does she really not like me? Oh, well, I’ll show her she can do what she wants. She won’t hurt me.
It was in this scene that Louis’s direction to me was simply to be “defiant.” In any case, I decided to act as if I couldn’t care less what she did. So I stood there and took repeated slaps across my left cheek without flinching. I remember feeling stubborn and resilient and that I was showing her how she couldn’t affect me. This reacting was also telling and was equally appropriate for Violet and for Brooke. There was something hurtful yet empowering about standing up to her in this way and in response to her trying to rule how the scene went. It was perfect for the scene, so maybe Susan did this on purpose, but I’ll never know.
The funny thing is that in truth, although seemingly polarized in life, Violet and I were not that different. I had been supporting my mother’s sometimes distant or angry attitude with a similar approach for years. When Mom drank, she would get flippant, and hurtful verbal attacks were not uncommon. Nasty barbs and inappropriate insults could fly out of her mouth without warning. I often chose to remain stoic and unaffected by her change in behavior. She would often impatiently bark orders at me to “sit up” or “say thank you” or “don’t do that” or “God, Brookie, wise up.” “Move your ass. Stop being such an ingrate.”
I actually learned to thrive by adopting the attitude of “I don’t care, you can’t hurt my feelings.” As Violet, I summoned a jaw-jutting, smug, steely gaze that felt very familiar from real life.
It took a minimum of nine takes from each angle to complete the coverage on this scene. Oddly enough, I got a smidgen of a payback when I saw the finished movie. As I closely watched this scene on film, I noticed red finger marks on my cheek from a previous take. This may have been wrong for the film, but I felt privately avenged.
• • •
This particular incident excluded, for the majority of the time, everybody involved with the making of Pretty Baby, including Susan, treated me quite well and with genuine kindness. But, as time went on, and the movie went overbudget, things got more intense. I always felt Mom was there to protect me against whatever threats existed.
My mother and Polly Platt had begun as friends, but this friendship rapidly deteriorated. Polly and Tony were at the helm of a ship that had found itself in troubled waters, and they would stop at nothing to get their film made.
The long hours started really getting to me, but I still would never complain. I was never a quitter and would keep that proverbial Hula-Hoop up around my waist for as long as necessary. Mom began outwardly commenting that she couldn’t believe a minor was being allowed to work as much as I was working. I had made only one small independent movie and Mom and I were still relatively new to the film industry. We had no idea how big studio movies were made. She made a call to the local labor board to find out their rules regarding working minors. She was just trying to get basic information and find out what the local laws were. As a model in New York City, there were some protections for models, but not many, and nothing like those protecting TV and film actors. I was already a member of SAG because of my first movie, so we thought the same protection that was provided elsewhere had to apply in this case.
But, because I was a New York hire and not a Louisiana hire, they led us to believe that the same rules didn’t apply to me. The producers were hiring mostly union actors for their film, but they wanted to work them as much as they needed to complete the project, so they just kept stretching the rules. That was until my mom began sniffin’ around. She had no idea what rock she had just overturned.
Apparently the union that represented the film’s crew was working together with the local authorities and therefore also “collaborating” with New Orleans organized crime. The powers that be got wind of Mom’s call and spread the word that my mother was trying to shut down production. This wasn’t true, but they wanted to put a stop to anything that threatened to delay the filming of this overbudget and overdue film.
As I remember it, the night after Mom called the labor board, she and I returned to our hotel room to find the lock had been broken and the door left ajar. In my adjoining bedroom, written in Mom’s red lipstick on the mirror over the dresser, were the words: This is to let you know what we can do!
The next day, when we picked up the room phone we heard clicking on the line. Mom said she feared the lines were being tapped. I had no idea what that meant, and when she explained that somebody might be listening to our conversations, I immediately thought only of my potential romantic life. I became terrified my calls to the Bodack boys back home would be listened to. Naïvely, I didn’t know there was anything else to fear.
Mom had befriended the cleaning lady in this hotel and showed her the writing on the mirror. The woman said that there was clearly something going on in the producer’s room because she would find blood splatters and needles in the garbage baskets. Outwardly, Mom seemed unruffled, and I continued to work the long hours. Mom had a plan, though. Mafia or no mafia, drugs or no drugs, she was going to do something about it. Whoever was causing trouble didn’t know my mother.
But the opposition was ready to play dangerously dirty. One day my mother took the same hotel cleaning lady out to lunch for her birthday. Mom drove to meet her on her day off from the hotel. They went to a restaurant off a highway a bit away from town and had a celebratory birthday lunch. After the conclusion of lunch, both women got into their cars and began the drive back
. My mom was driving a rental, and as she entered the highway, she lost control of the car. The brakes failed and she swerved and was only able to slow the car on a truck incline. Mom told me that within seconds, a patrol car’s lights began flashing and a cop was out of his car approaching my mom. There was no doubt that Mom drank during lunch, but it was a sad (and unfortunately true) fact that my mother was capable of driving drunk and avoiding being pulled over for being beyond her limit. There was something suspicious about her losing control of the vehicle and how quickly the cops arrived. It was as if the cops had been waiting for her and they weren’t the only parties involved. Something seemed suspicious about all of it. Man was arrested on the spot for drunk driving and was taken to a holding cell at the police station.
From the cell Mom called her lawyer in New York City immediately. Being a tough broad who could fight, Mom and her lawyer came up with a plan to deal with how we were being treated. She had only a lucky nickel she kept in her Levi’s minipocket but decided to save it for now. She decided to call a friend from the set and reverse the charges, asking the friend to tell me that she was fine but that she would not see me tonight. Mom then used the actual nickel to call my French tutor, who was also on set, to come and bail her out.
All I remember is this friend telling me to come directly to her room in the hotel after work and not to tell anybody where I was going. It all seemed kind of exciting to me and I played along. In the room I spoke to Mom on a phone that had evidently not been tapped. She told me that some people were not happy with the fact that Mommy had had lunch with the black cleaning lady and that something strange had happened to her car. She said laws were different down in New Orleans and it would all be OK. She insisted I not let anybody know where I was but to report to work as usual the next day. Now, she was not wrong about the racial tension in New Orleans at the time, but something quite big was going down and she wanted to spare me the truth.
There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me Page 9