“Any chance that you could fly down here for a couple of days and meet up with him?”
Well, I am not filming on the weekend. I could drive to London and take the plane… yes!
Saturday lunch at Appassionata is the date. The English television executive, always delighted to have an excuse to linger in the south of France an extra day or two, to wriggle out of the mind-grinding business of buying and flogging programs, is more than happy to lunch with us at our home.
February is traditionally a wet month on the Côte d’Azur. Just in case, I prepare lunch at the table inside. From the dining room, through tall French windows which command a view over the front terraces across to the sea and distant horizon, I gaze down upon the splendidly pruned olive trees. They are a magnificent spectacle. With their height lopped and their remaining branches hanging low and wide, tumbling almost to ground level, they remind me of whirling dervishes.
One of the great joys of Appassionata is its ability to surprise; the ever-evolving, complex shift and balance of the surrounding nature. Determined by time of day, season and the weather, the hills, mountains, forests and the sweep of the watery bay transform themselves. We live in a world of kaleidoscopic colors, softening or deepening shades and an array of perfumes, tantalizingly sweet, fragrant, musky or dusky. In this month, when the sun is busy elsewhere and the dove-gray skies lower and clouds bank up thickly above us, the deciduous trees are naked skeletons tightly withholding any promise of spring—save for the almond which, though leafless, has already begun to burst with the palest of pastel pink blossoms. Beyond our farm, the distant mountains appear as dense, stubby shadows while the sea, an ominous battleship gray, is lifted to poetry by slender rays of nacreous silver.
This is an altogether unencountered tapestry. These nuances of shadow and light are steelier than in the brighter, warmer seasons. But February justly claims its own stark beauty, and it is always wonderful to be home again.
My sole concern is No Name, who is angry with me and will not draw close. She glowers at me from various corners of the room or peers in through windows from the terraces, refusing to approach. Whether her anger is born of grieving for her puppies or my absence, I cannot tell, but nothing I do consoles or appeases her. And what is worse, while her reproach of me is unrelenting, with Michel she is playful and tender.
I hear the smoky cough of Michel’s old powder-blue Mercedes. He is returning from the train station in Cannes, where he has collected Harold. I have met Harold before. In fact, I have worked with him, as an actress. He is a well-meaning Brit who has spent his entire career in the poorly paid service of children’s and adolescent drama. (Why it is that networks feel obliged to cut the cloth so tightly when it comes to creating programs for the young, I have never quite understood.) I hurry out onto the terrace to greet them. Harold calls out, “Yooey!” I smile at the sight of him: even in this season, he has arrived dressed in a crumpled off-white linen suit and Panama, with his Times clutched tightly in the crook of his arm. I find his appearance touching, so wonderfully British. He looks as though he has ambled out of the pages of a Somerset Maugham short story.
He has read my scripts and likes them very much. We talk of the filming as though we might be commencing the following day. I am thrilled by his enthusiasm, and he is delighted with lunch and the wines on offer. As far as he is concerned, we can begin picking the key members of the production team and start the joyful process of location hunting. The development budget he offers is generous. It is sufficient to take us into preproduction. This leaves Michel with ample time to slot the remaining financial partners into place. Business matters are concluded satisfactorily. As a natural accompaniment to the cheese, glazed apple tart and dessert wine, Harold’s conversation grows more frivolous, turns to gossip within the British television industry. He revels in his topic, attacking it and the brie de Meaux with a lusty appetite.
As afternoon pitches toward deepening dusk, Harold is transported back down the drive. Disappearing out of view, head poking out of the car window, he gazes back up at me on the upper terrace, waving his Panama in the air like a man setting sail for the ends of the earth.
Later, alone by the fireside, Michel and I discuss two essential matters: the first is my distress about No Name. Was it thoughtless to have given all the puppies away? Should we have kept one for her? Whisky was her companion for many months, and now she is lonely and bereaved and I feel wretched about it. The second is that as soon as my work in Wales has been completed, Michel will employ a production manager—he has the ideal man in mind—and with luck, by summer, we will be in production on my first entire series as screenwriter.
MIRACULOUSLY—ANYONE operating in the world of film finance will know that these affairs are usually tortuous—the money falls into place with ease. By April, everyone has committed the sums Michel has requested of them. We have a major French network, our Englishman abroad, Polish national television and a prestigious German company. I am both excited and overwhelmed. My summer is to be be spent traveling with the producer and designer to the various countries, meeting with the networks, listening to their requirements and making any requested script adjustments. Then later, toward autumn, once principal photography is underway, I will be employed to play the role of the mother in the series. I have structured the scripts so that most of her scenes take place on the Île Ste. Marguerite. I will be able to work from home. The future looks rosy.
Michel bases the production office in Paris. Early in May, we find a very pretty girl to play the main role. During those same weeks, many of the other major players are also contracted. Three weeks from now, carpenters will start building sets in London; from there the crew moves on to Paris. I am finding this early process of filmmaking very exciting. There is much to be said for being on the other side of the camera.
I, with the producer and designer, am bound for Warsaw, Kraców and Gdansk and then on to Bialystok, close to the Russian border. We are in need of a Polish propertymaster and master carpenter. There are props to be built, most importantly a huge wooden windmill to be constructed in a remote field in the countryside outside Bialystok, which, during the course of the film, will be set alight and burned. In Paris and London, a team of design assistants, propertymakers, set dressers and costumers have already been brought onto the payroll and are out shopping, sewing, constructing, measuring and painting.
My plane is flying out from Paris the following morning. I am in my element and happy as a lark, but during our last supper together for a few weeks to come, Michel mentions to me that “there is one small concern clouding the horizon. The English money hasn’t arrived. Well, yes, the early development funds have, but nothing since.” According to the contracts, which as far as I can comprehend are built like a pack of cards, the English money was scheduled to be the first to arrive, followed by the French who are due to come in at a slightly later stage, followed by the Poles and so on and so forth right through to postproduction.
In my naïveté and perhaps blind excitement, I don’t pick up on the gravity of the situation. Harold and Michel have shot numerous television film series together, one or two of which have picked up awards, and the station he represents in England is solid and wealthy. Whatever the delay, it can be nothing more than a minor bank hiccup, surely? Then I learn that the contract has not been returned. This has never been a concern before. On at least two of the programs they have shot together, the contracts arrived only after the films were delivered. Well, then? But in each of those cases, though the contracts were delayed, the money was not.
I place my fork back onto my plate. I fear I am beginning to get the gist of this. “Are you worried?” I ask, attempting desperately to keep the jitters out of my voice.
“Well… no, not really.”
I recognize that bluff, that smoothing-over, mellifluous tone that Michel has fine-tuned over the years. One emotion a producer can simply never convey is panic. Rather like the captain of a torpedoed ship, he
cannot fall to pieces and bellow with fear. I am staring across the table in shocked silence.
“Give me the worst scenario,” I say, barely audibly.
This rattles him, which is certainly not what I had intended to do. “Why do you have to look for the worst in everything?” he snaps.
“No, don’t!” My hand has leaped the distance and is attempting to meet his, but he withdraws, rises from the table and goes in search of a corkscrew. I rest where I am, listening to the opening and closing of drawers beyond the room, silently calculating how many members of the team in how many countries across Europe have already been contracted. And what of those already on salary? If the English funds are not covering all their fees… who is?
“That early development budget must have run out…” My palate is dry. My words stick in my throat. I cannot complete the sentence because Michel has returned to the table and, while opening our dinner wine, is looking at me in a way I have never seen before.
“The French network advanced several hundred thousand francs,” he replies, pouring the glasses.
“So there’s no real problem, then?” I hear the plea in my question, the need to know that everything is right with the world. It is quite pathetic.
“No, probably not. I shouldn’t have mentioned it,” he mutters, and the subject is closed.
I lie awake while Michel sleeps. I am the perennial insomniac, and our evening together has given me plenty to toss and turn over.
The following day, we say our good-byes. I promise to call from Warsaw. He promises to keep me abreast of what is happening. It is a muddled, unsatisfactory parting and I hate to go like this.
“Everything will be fine,” he assures. I nod and set off for Charles de Gaulle Airport, leaving him on the telephone.
WARSAW IS EXTRAORDINARY. Poland is a heady mix of reformation, modernization and long-lost chivalry. Every color shrieks like a drunken song in streets which have known only the grayness and deprivation of communism for so many years. I am fascinated and attracted and, occasionally, repelled by the weight of recent history here. Blocks of ugly buildings lean in over me as though they will squeeze my presence right off the streets, and I want to run for my life. And then I stroll to the old town, entirely rebuilt after its wartime bombings, and sit in a quaint café and listen to the accordion players and the bell-like chatter of waitresses, plump and girlish and innocent whatever their ages, pleasing and polite, and I am seduced. I love the fact that we are here to film and create and fuse with these people who see the world through eyes that are so different than mine. Artists who have known mental and creative imprisonment. I know I can add this vision to my story.
Poland is a country emerging. My tale is of a girl emerging from the pain caused by the breakup of her parents’ marriage.
The work process is going well; both teams are enjoying each other’s contribution. The only drawback is that everything takes twice as long as I would have expected because we are being translated. Our interpeter, not always accurate, I fear, sits between us or trots alongside as we hurry from meeting to meeting, location to location, and repeats in Polish all that we have said and vice versa. Dear Gruzna, whose shiny plump face seems buried beneath layers of bright blue eyeshadow and thick black mascara, has been assigned to us by the local production company. She is a rather lazy girl who has no truck with our Western ways and longs to return to the security of the old regime, where she knew that at half past four she could go home, her work for the day done. All day long, she jabbers empty-headedly of romance and tells us how she and her husband are starving and surviving on love alone, but her heavily painted eyes light up like a magpie’s when she sees currency or jewelry, and she sidles close, hoping for a gift. She, like everything here, is a curious paradox.
One evening, after traveling eleven hours in a van without suspension on country roads that seem never to have been completed, so rutted are they with deep potholes, I stagger exhaustedly to the hotel reception desk to collect my key. The porter hands me a message, left early that morning, asking me to call Michel. Frustratingly, but not unusually, it takes me a while to get an international line out of Poland. I know instantly by the tone of his voice that all is not well, so the words—the English have withdrawn—only partially stuns me. I have no idea what to say. “Why?” is all I can think of.
“Restructuring within the network. It looks as though Harold might be given early retirement.”
“Poor Harold,” I bleat, unable to contemplate where it leaves us.
Michel is used to the roller coaster of film production crises. Unless an actor has invested his own money in a film, he is rarely, if ever, burdened with such problems. Actors are cushioned, cosseted, so this is a completely new and rather scary scenario for me, but I remind myself silently that I am sitting on the other side of the fence now. I have to take the blows with the rest of the team. “What now?” I ask eventually.
My question is returned by a silence broken only by the crackling on a very inadequate and antiquated telephone line. Eventually he says, “I’ve spoken to the French and German networks today. Both are willing to up their investment and make first payments earlier than originally scheduled. It doesn’t cover the shortfall, but it will pay the production salaries and keep us going for the time being. I’m flying into Warsaw tomorrow and I’ll meet with Agnes midafternoon.”
Agnes is the head of Drama here. One of the other discoveries that has surprised and pleased me about Poland is the power given to women here. I am thrilled to know that Michel is coming, but I am very troubled by the reason for his trip. We say good night and he sounds as tired as a thousand-year-old man. I cannot sleep.
OVER A DRINK IN THE darkly lit bar, I hear from Michel and our producer that the meeting with the Polish network has gone smoothly. They are still very keen and are offering to double their commitment to the project. I, in my naïveté, am thrilled, believing this to mean that we have jumped this tricky hurdle and are out of trouble. Michel gently explains that because the Poles are not rich and are operating in a currency which has no buying power on the international market, they are offering “their extra commitment to us in below-the-line costs.”
I stare blankly.
“It means to say the Poles will make extra services available to us here in Poland. Hotels, crew, facilities…”
The three men sitting with me around the table read the confused look on my face. I have never been confronted by this problem before, but I am not so blind that I cannot discern from the lack of overabounding joy at the table that the matter is not fully resolved. I attempt a lighter approach. “Such matters never concern actresses. We learn our lines, climb into our frocks and are driven to the set…” I look from one to the other. “Help me,” I add.
“We will shoot a greater chunk of the story here, more than we had originally envisaged. This means that we, or rather you,” says the producer, “will have to relocate certain episodes.”
“Relocate?” I repeat stupidly.
“The story will not begin in London. It will begin in Paris, and then, instead of two episodes in Poland, we will have four set here.”
I silently take this in. “But it’s not possible…”
“It has to be, or—”
“Fine,” I mumble, having absolutely no idea how I will achieve this unexpected order.
Later, alone with Michel in my hotel room, I learn that there is still a shortfall of over half a million pounds. He is returning to Paris at first light to begin the process of finding another source of finance to cover it.
“Wouldn’t it be better to cancel the series?” I ask. No. We are already committed to such an extent and to so many contracts still to be paid that, ironically, it is cheaper and less risky to keep going.
“I see,” I mutter, but I don’t.
Michel leaves, and I am driven to the studios to meet with Agnes and a script editor before being put to work. Apparently, there is a considerable amount of Polish history that I m
ust learn and include in the storyline. I dare not ask what Polish history has to do with our rites-of-passage tale. I am at the point where I think the best course of action is to just do as I am told.
We are ten days away from principal photography, and I am five scripts short of my thirteen. The thirteen which it took me the best part of a year to write and polish. If I cannot produce four acceptable Polish scripts, we will have no film, and then what? I do not allow myself to dwell on it.
I am put to work. Everything I need is installed in my hotel room. Food is brought in at intervals, as well as limitless supplies of dark, stewed coffee. Squires of paper arrive to feed a monstrous printer which barely succeeds the original printing press. In Paris, it would sell in a fashionable Marais boutique, a techno-antique converted into some natty home device, but here it is dumped on the floor because there is no shelf or tabletop in the room spacious enough to contain it. Cables festoon the room. Every time I stand up from my work, I trip over them or the printer.
For forty-eight hours, I work without sleep, feeling guilty if I pause to brush my teeth, and emerge at dawn on the third day having produced two newly rewritten scripts. I am gibbering with exhaustion, and to remind myself of what is wonderful in life, I pick up the phone and call Quashia. Extraordinarily, I get through without a problem. The chuckle in his voice, his lighthearted good humor, warm and relax me.
“How are you?” he hollers. Quashia still seems to believe that talking long-distance on the phone involves a great deal of shouting. But it’s part of who he is, and I am deeply glad to be in touch. It all seems a lifetime away.
“Terrific,” I lie. “How is No Name?”
All is well back at the farm, and I am buoyed by the news. No Name is in good form and has adopted Ella, the small golden retriever puppy we bought for her, who is now four months old. I close my eyes and picture them prancing across the terraces in the bright sunlight. I try to draw energy from the tranquility there. Whoopee birds flitting to and fro in the garden, the two white doves who have appeared since Christmas and fly in and out daily, cooing and nuzzling on the phone line by our bedroom terrace, buzzards wheeling high in the deep blue sky. All is right with the world back there, and I am so profoundly grateful for it.
Olive Farm Page 27