Her son grew up to marry an Italian dancer. They met in Rome during the shooting of his father’s momentous failure, Cleopatra, with the strange excitement of catastrophe on a grand scale somehow increasing the passion. Christopher was a romantic in every way. Devoted to classical music, susceptible to literature, mad about women, it was only the lack of wealth that in the end served to protect him. As a young studio executive in New York where we first met, he wore expensive double-breasted suits with the enviable aplomb of a fat man, spoke perfect Italian, used a cigarette holder, and possessed a failing, to me invisible, but which his wife saw clearly: the millions he promised her he would have before he reached thirty were not forthcoming. Perhaps, like Rassam, he was too brilliant for ordinary success.
Still, his shrewdness and the momentum of his early career carried him far. He had strong friendships, many based on his wit and taste as well as his outspoken opinions which, despite their validity, were often undiplomatically rendered. The confusion of letters strewn about a large desk; the heaping meals in restaurants, quickly devoured; the apartments and luxurious suites — these began to slowly slip away. He worked in Los Angeles, where, in his father’s assessment, he ruined his chances on innumerable occasions. “Isn’t it time you left town?” his father commented finally. “You’re finished here.”
In Rome, in the early 1970s, he was working for Grimaldi, an important Italian producer. His life had become nocturnal. At four in the morning the lights were still on. In an undershirt he sits at his desk doing a vast jigsaw puzzle. His mother-in-law, of whom he is very fond, is asleep, his young son also. This son, Jason, is six years old, beautiful and petulant, a compulsive talker with a slight lisp. Early in the morning he comes into the room. “Do you know what this is?” he demands. “This is my favorite book. In this book you can learn about everything. You can learn about the stars, and what is the deepest hole in the sea, and about thunderstorms and how to stop them. This is my best book. And this,” he says, showing it to me but also to himself, “is a script I wrote. All alone. And this! This is a book — have you seen this book? This is about soldiers.” He then begins to explain to me, with remarkable accuracy, how children are born.
Now he is still sleeping, however. The blue haze of cigarette smoke hugs the ceiling. The third act of Aïda is on. Christopher passes his hand over the table. “I’ve done all this section here,” he indicates. His face is innocent, unweary, a face that will never show corruption.
We were working on a script, the odyssey of which had only begun. This was the best part, the freshness and hope at the start. There had even arrived an encouraging letter from his father, remarkable in that it was only the second, and turned out to be the last, Christopher had ever received from him. In addition to praise the letter went on to suggest an entirely different approach. Day after day we talked about it until it grew dark.
Once, late in the afternoon, there was a tapping at the etched-glass door to the garden. Pressed against the glass, arms spread, was a figure like a huge moth against a pane. “My God!” Christopher cried. “Bruna!” His wife, from whom he was virtually separated. In she came, out of the evening, smiling, her face filled with joy. She was working as a model. She had canvas luggage and a long, stylish coat. She went in immediately to surprise her young son.
A festive hour. All was laughter, excitement, familiarity. One would never dream they were a couple on the brink of divorce.
They had married too young, that was the trouble, Lydia, the mother-in-law confided. What did I think? “Bruna was too young,” she continued sadly, “Chris was too young.”
We dined, all of us, at a trattoria on Via Flaminia, beneath bright lights, as if on a stage. It might have been a play; the dialogue was polished, the actors had worked together many times. By the end of the evening they were at each other’s throat.
The next scene: London, a year or two later. The Grimaldi days were over. Chris was living in the basement room of a friend, trying to put together the elements of the film I had written. He had a Mercedes and a black overcoat, chalky with stains, but little else. He was, he said, keeping up with events by reading the newspaper under the cat dish.
I like men who have known the best and the worst, whose life has been anything but a smooth trip. Storms have battered them, they have lain, sometimes for months on end, becalmed. There is a residue even if they fail. It has not been all tinkling; there have been grand chords.
We ate at inexpensive Greek restaurants with his associate, Ned Sherrin, who had considerable theatrical experience and had joined forces with him. We were definitely going to make the film; it was called Raincoat. “The deal is almost done,” they said.
They were like revolutionaries. For the cause, even if dubious, one gave everything. Their feet were not really on earth; they were leading a visionary existence, the life which was to come. One day they would walk up wide steps to tremendous applause. What was I doing now? they asked indulgently. Finishing a book, I explained.
“Is there a film in it?”
“There’s no film in anything I write, not even scripts,” I said.
Things, however, take time. The tide of battle wavered. They had a star, Alan Bates, who had agreed to play the lead, and based on that, much of the financing. A few months later the star was gone, though the money was still there. Then a studio materialized and someone wanted the script revised and the location of it changed. The drama moved to Los Angeles. For a while there was a flaring of interest and a flight to Rome to obtain the commitment of another star, Donald Sutherland.
Months passed, an uneventful week at a time. Years. At some undetermined point the whole thing slipped into an unmarked grave, the common fate, as it were. We spoke of it less and less, finally not at all. It had simply perished along the trail.
It is probably the common touch that is crucial in movies, not only for their success but for their very existence. Without it, one is at a disadvantage. I think of a producer Christopher worked for at one time, the hero, like a mobster or corrupt politician, of many favorite stories — Bruna rather liked him, as it happened. He once told Christopher the actual secret. He had made ten movies, he confided, and not one of them, not one, had ever made a penny. But he would go on making them, he said, you know why? “Because I know how the game is played.”
—
In Toronto, under amiable conditions, the last of the films I wrote was made. It was called Threshold, prophetically for me. Although I wrote other scripts, I had a deserter’s furtive thoughts.
The movie was about a cardiac surgeon and the first mechanical heart. The writing, as one sees often in retrospect, was imperfect, but I could not at the time imagine how to improve it. The budget was too small and the actors were not all ones we wanted. Some of the best scenes were dropped or awkwardly played as a result.
The entire screen, I wrote, is filled with an image too immense at first to have shape, a gigantic sun — big as a city, grainy, raging — that in silence or to strange, unnerving music slowly opens to reveal its core, for the heart is the sun of the body. There were a number of other defining metaphors, only one of which rather startlingly survived.
When I finally saw the movie, feeling as always naked in the audience, I saw mostly the flaws, quite a few of them my own fault.
Sometime in here, perhaps a little earlier, I flew to London one final time. I was with a producer who was said to have been one of two heirs, the displaced one, to a great studio. We had taken a night flight from Los Angeles over the Pole, bringing a script I’d rewritten to a director who was about to begin shooting, a delicate mission. We arrived at five in the morning and fell into the illusory world of the Dorchester’s luxurious rooms — rich woods, fabrics, carpet. I woke after a few hours, dazed, the winter light gray at the windows, muffled sounds in the hallway, an apologetic maid half-entering.