Lauren and I sat in a restaurant in Covent Garden. We’d laughed and joked while getting ready. But as she fixed her eyes on the menu, bitter darkness enshrouded me. I’d been experiencing that feeling far too often. Depression has an element of death about it. Happiness is sucked away, very much like life.
The bustling diners became a film of blurred colors and indistinct murmurs. I kept my eyes on an antique chandelier above my head, which cast a soft light on the Velvet Flock wallpaper and claret carpet.
‘What’s the matter?’ Lauren asked.
‘Nothing. Why?’
‘I just spoke to you. And you didn’t listen to a word I said.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I shook myself out of the daze.
Lauren carried on talking. In that moment, my world crashed and burned around me, the unquenchable flames licking my wounded thoughts. A voice whispered in my ear, telling me everything was pointless. My career and marriage were superficial. Why did I endure this meaningless world?
‘You’re doing it again.’ Lauren tapped the table with a fork.
‘Doing what?’ I growled.
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘I don’t know. Come on, let’s order food. Waiter!’
I beckoned the waiter to our table. We ordered our food and a bottle of Cristal champagne.
People stared at me. Judged me. A flicker of derision appeared in the waiter’s eyes.
‘What’s the matter?’ Lauren repeated.
‘I’m feeling down, that’s all.’
‘But you were fine ten minutes ago.’
‘Yeah, I know…’
‘Don’t do this again, Dan.’
‘Do what?’
‘Ruin another night!’
‘When the fuck do I ruin our nights?’
‘You’re only happy when you’re snorting coke at parties.’ She leaned across the table.
‘That’s nonsense,’ I snarled.
People kept looking at me, their eyes burning into my soul as they clinked their cutlery and sipped their champagne.
‘You have problems, babes. You’re in denial.’
‘Excuse me, sir,’ the waiter interposed.
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m afraid we’re out of Cristal champagne. May I suggest…’
‘No. You may not suggest anything else,’ I said. ‘That’s what I ordered.’
‘Well, I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do.’ The waiter bowed his head.
‘Why are you doing this?’ Lauren asked.
‘I wanted Cristal. It’s what I ordered!’
‘May I suggest Dom Perignon?’
‘That’s not what I ordered is it!’
‘A few years ago you wouldn’t even drink champagne,’ Lauren murmured.
‘What?’
‘You used to order lager.’
‘Don’t embarrass me.’ I gritted my teeth.
‘How the hell am I embarrassing you?’
‘We’re drinking champagne tonight.’
‘We’re hardly celebrating anything…’
‘I’m celebrating my life. It’s fucking wonderful, isn’t it? Do you have any idea how much money I make an hour, waiter?’
‘I’m afraid I do not,’ the waiter said deferentially.
‘Neither do I. But it’s a lot. And that’s what matters, isn’t it? Money. Money is all that matters. If I didn’t have money, you wouldn’t let me set foot in this restaurant, with your crafted oak tables and antique lighting. You’d look down at me. Oh, but you do that anyway…’
‘Certainly not, sir.’
‘Don’t lie to me, you obsequious cunt!’ I pounded the table with my fist.
‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’
‘Good. I don’t wanna eat in a restaurant where they can’t even supply a man with the champagne he ordered.’
Lauren buried her face in her hands.
‘They tell you that you’re great. And you believe them.’ I sighed. ‘Then they turn against you. I have a crowd of photographers waiting outside those doors for me. They tell me I’m a cocaine addict, and my own wife listens to them. But what does it matter?’
I don’t know what came over me that evening. I apologized to Lauren afterwards. I’d made a dick out of myself. She told me I needed help. She felt I was slipping away from her.
I needed to escape, to cut away the ribbons of that false world.
My next movie was unlike anything I’d produced before. I wanted to torture audiences and strip cinema of all constraints. X was the horror movie to end all horror movies. As a child, I loved to scare people, and that never changed. I knew that storytelling gave me power. I had the power to show audiences something they hadn’t seen. The world was a brutal, menacing place. I wasn’t going to give viewers an opportunity to escape reality. I would plunge them into the very depths of the human psyche.
X was set in the swinging sixties, a time when people stood up for their beliefs. But the picture exhibited the failures of altruism and questioned perceptions of morality.
I threw every restraint out of the window. X went further than the horror movie genre had ever gone before. I cast a group of talented, relatively unknown actors. I hoped audiences would believe what they saw and empathize with the movie’s characters. I used sixteen millimeter cameras to shoot in a cinema vérité style, creating a sense of cinematic truth.
I received a lot of criticism for my treatment of the cast. But I told the actors my intentions long before shooting commenced. The cinematographer turned to me during filming and asked, ‘Do you really need to push these guys so hard? I mean, look at them. This is such a miserable set.’
‘Yeah, I need to push them this hard,’ I said, lighting a cigarette. ‘Werner Herzog did the same sort of thing with his films. I believe that if you put your actors in similar circumstances to those portrayed in the film, you’ll see true realism etched on their faces. That’s when their performances become complete. This is a horror movie, and I don’t want my actors relying on theatrical methods. They’re here to experience hell. I’m making a movie about the real world. You’ll see the desired effect.’
The picture made a greater impact than I could have imagined, selling more tickets during its opening weekend than the great horror flick The Exorcist had in 1973. It was good to see that a contemporary movie could still disturb people. Audience members would question themselves and their morbid fascination with a graphic picture like X.
The basic plotline is classic haunted house horror. Strange goings-on, poltergeist activity building towards the climax in which the house burns down in the Tenth Circle of hell. It’s a slow starter, most of the camera angles from the characters’ perspectives, gradually allowing the audience to sympathize with them. Annette, the eighteen year old daughter, complains that someone is biting her legs during the night. Baffling noises. Objects moving around the house. All these basic elements conceal the powerful theme of corrupt humanity. The first shot of the mysterious demon that haunts the family comes when Annette looks up as she descends the stairs. A hooded figure with burning eyes reaches downwards, hand outstretched in a perverse re-imagining of Michelangelo’s Hand of God in the painting, The Creation of Adam. It’s been ranked as one of the scariest shots in horror movie history, probably because it comes out of nowhere. Other scenes that X is renowned for include the moment when objects from upstairs are hurtled down the steps by an invisible force and when Annette is impaled on the garden fencing after being thrown from her bedroom window. The most controversial aspect of the picture is Annette’s rape. Naked on her bed, penetrated by an invisible demon. The camera shows everything. There was some very clever CGI involved to make it look as if the demon had entered her, first vaginally and then anally. It sounds pompous but the rape scene represented corruption and I wanted the camera to linger on the brutality for as long as possible. It’s a fifteen minute ordeal that culminates in the beheading, with a kitchen knife, of Annette’s mother, the on
e figure who stands for goodness and isn’t stained by the flaws of humankind.
The British Board of Film Classification swiftly banned it. It was also banned in Italy, Norway, Finland, New Zealand, Australia and a few other countries. It was saved in the USA by the First Amendment’s Section on freedom of speech. It had been banned on grounds of eroticized sexual violence. I was given the option to trim it down and delete the more violent footage for re-release. I refused. Even if the final product was almost three hours in length. Try telling a painter to chip away at a section of a finished painting.
Critics panned me, called the movie sick and conceived by a disturbed imagination. But audiences still queued to see it. They could call it sick and psychedelic. Reviewers could hate me for it. I didn’t care. The movie was my child and I would defend it. I retained at least some power over the tabloids. I could also tell stories if I wanted.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Stripped of Armor
I stood alone on the verge of a cliff, above raging waves that swept over broken rocks. Three suns swiftly went down, each one retiring to a different corner of the ruddy sky. The glacial waves grasped the edge of the cliff, like fingers seeking to add to the ocean’s victims. The eternal sea wouldn’t give up its dead. It rose, back and forth. Harsh then gentle.
A child cried.
I awoke, my brow damp with sweat. Lauren slept beside me, her emerald cut engagement ring glimmering on her finger. I stumbled out of bed. Sinewy rays of morning light filtered through the window. The beads of sweat stung my eyes. No. They were tears. I made my way to the bathroom and gazed at the mirror. My eyes were red and puffy. I had aged, seemingly overnight.
I went back to the bedroom and touched Lauren’s cheek. She looked so young, so peaceful. I knew age could never wither her.
I lit my first cigarette of the day. I lived for that first cigarette. I suppose it’s human nature to seek life’s pleasures in the gifts that grant us death. I leaned against the bedroom wall, dabbed the cigarette out in a ceramic ashtray and removed my pajamas. Took the gold bracelet off my wrist. And then I fell to the floor, lost in inconceivable thought. I wanted to scratch the tattoo off my right arm: ‘Life is short, but art is long’. What did I know about art? I’d spent my life riding on the coat tails of people better than me: Michael, Elliott, James. They were the cause of my so-called success. I didn’t deserve to be recognized. And recognition would fade anyway. Lauren stirred, opened her eyes and looked at me.
‘What are you doing?’
I’d curled myself into a ball. She rushed over to me and put her arm around my shoulders. Tears scorched my cheeks.
‘This is all I am,’ I whispered.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I’m stripped. Stripped of my armor. I have no image to maintain, no image left. I’m just some sad sobbing prick, curled into a pathetic ball on the floor.’
‘Eh? Why are you doing this?’
‘Because I want to be real!’ I shouted. ‘I don’t wanna be fabricated. Fuck, I don’t even know who I am anymore.’
‘You know who you are. I know who you are.’
‘I’m fictional. I have no control!’
‘Please, I don’t understand. You’re scaring me, Daniel…’
‘I’m scaring myself.’
‘I’m always going to be here for you.’
‘Spare me the love clichés. I feel like I’m dragging you down with me. I’m dwindling. It’s wrong of me to hurt you. I’m so sorry that I’m like this. I don’t know what has happened to me. It’s just all become so dull, so perfunctory.’
‘Look, you’re going to encounter obstacles, but I’ll help you.’
‘But I’m the obstacle. I have to overcome all this. I have to overcome these thoughts.’
‘What thoughts?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. They’re vague. I just feel like life isn’t worth living anymore. I wanted to be immortal, but that’s fucking stupid. The tabloids are writing my life for me. People will forget about me once the press lose interest.’
Lauren stayed silent. She just held me in her arms as the morning ambled past us.
X was the last movie I ever directed. Its cult status earned me some strange horror fans. Most people in the public eye are afforded their own personal stalker. I’d contended with a few in my career. But things got out of hand after that movie’s release.
Many stalkers saw me as Satan incarnate, and X as a weapon against Christianity. But that wasn’t the case. It forced people to think, that’s all. It had interpretative flexibility. One stalker described himself as a Theistic Satanist. He sent me letters with messages scrawled (as the police later informed me) in pig’s blood.
‘The archangel aspires to omnipotence.’
I received more letters as the weeks passed by. I ignored them. But then the stalker broke into my place in Marbella and scrawled a message on my kitchen wall.
‘In the day we eat thereof, our eyes shall be opened, and we shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.’
That sent me over the edge. I was mainly concerned about Lauren’s safety. Jonathon told me he’d make sure there wasn’t another break-in.
I still received letters written in blood. I sensed watching eyes everywhere I went. Shadows lurked in every corner. And then I started to wonder if I hadn’t written the messages myself. Worrying thoughts filled my mind and I questioned my own identity.
I moved silently through a forest. Draped over the overhanging branches, the sky resembled a fine Merlot. But not so soft. More like the bloody sea after a shark attack. Rain pattered on the crisp leaves. The sky grew darker as I continued moving through the foliage. It soon resembled a blooming black rose, sketching tentative shadows that looked like falling petals.
A noise. Sharp. Shattering. I turned around and glimpsed an indistinct figure crouching nearby. The figure became enveloped by a melancholic shadow cast by a lichen-cloaked tree. I was desperate to find out who was following me; they could help me understand my dreams.
A child cried. I called to it in a hushed tone as I entered a clearing. Spirals of white smoke emerged from the threshold and a stream glowed red in the distance like the river of Acheron. My footsteps became heavier. The earth splintered into teeth, a wide mouth ready to engulf me. The bloody water bubbled and frothed as I crouched down. Cubic crystals and Obsidian rocks burned crimson at the water’s edge. A heavy mist ascended. I couldn’t see anything anymore as the crystals exploded. The shrapnel cut a deep gash in my cheek. I held my face as the warm blood gushed from the wound. Footsteps grew louder and the child’s crying became deafening.
My vision came back as the figure moved towards me, his face emerging from the darkness. Pale skin that had lost its youthful radiance. Red, puffy eyes. He looked aged. Aged overnight.
I swatted the darkness away. Pulled myself out of that nightmare. A man stood over me with a lit candle in his hands. The hot wax had fallen on my face, accounting for the gushing blood in my dream. Lauren screamed. I hit the man to the floor and he roared in pain, an inhuman sound that burst through the night. My foot collided with his ribs as Jonathon stormed into the room. The man got to his feet. I could see him clearly now, his thin, greying hair and heavy beard. Jonathon threw his shoulder into the man’s solar plexus. As the stalker fell to the floor again, Jonathon twisted his right arm behind his back.
‘The archangel aspires to omnipotence, the archangel aspires to omnipotence, the archangel aspires to omnipotence…’ the man whispered. He stared at me as he repeated those words, his eyes searching my face, burrowing into me.
‘Get that crazy bastard the fuck out of here!’ I barked. ‘I thought you were gonna make sure nobody could break in here?’
‘I’m sorry, Dan,’ Jonathon apologized.
Lauren ran to me, buried her face in my chest.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked her.
She trembled. She couldn’t answer me. I kissed her forehead.
‘It’s okay,’
I said. ‘Jonathon will call the police.’
The man was arrested immediately. I don’t remember his name. But I know he was later diagnosed with Paranoid Schizophrenia, and sent to a mental asylum. It had been a harrowing ordeal.
The months passed by, and my marriage disintegrated. I pushed Lauren away. I needed to be alone. Hated superficial conversation. I’d become so paranoid and anxious. The press had turned me into a national joke. Nobody cared about my work anymore. People were only interested in my private life, my drug addiction.
I spent very little time sober. Between the bottles of vodka and whiskey, I did lines of coke. I’d become an addict. I could no longer deny it. I’m not sure when cocaine became more than a buzz at parties. All I know is that it became my new love. My mistress. It dominated my every thought and action. But I no longer felt euphoric when I did a line. I couldn’t stop though.
I didn’t know who I was at that time. I’d become a mess, constantly irritable and even aggressive.
Those days are blurred. So many hours are lost to me. But I still remember Lauren, crying herself to sleep each night. I could never sleep, but Lauren’s sobs still seemed distant. Those sobs stain every memory I have of her. I’ll never forgive myself for what I put her through. She was once everything to me. But I’d replaced her with drink and drugs. I became a shadow of my former self. Greed and conceit had transformed me.
I lost touch with reality and had frightening hallucinations of cartoon characters I’d watched as a child. They stood next to my bed. Their faces no longer cute and innocent, but full of rage and hatred. Gnashing teeth. Fire kindling in their eyes. They crept towards me, through the nothingness, placed their hands around my throat and taunted me.
Journalists voiced their concerns about my health. They weren’t made of stone. They wanted to help. But they were paid to write about me, just as the photographers were paid to take pictures.
Lauren begged me to seek help. She told me I’d die if I didn’t go to rehab. But I didn’t listen to her, even though I often complained of chest pains. The left ventricle in my heart had dilated, and I was later told that if I’d continued abusing cocaine I would have suffered infarction. Some days I would suffer nasty nosebleeds for hours on end, the blood issuing from both nostrils. The nosebleeds were even scarier than the chest pains.
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