“It’s the director’s credit on the film,” Alice said. “I cut it
“Why did you do that?” Janelle said.
“Because I thought it would make you happy,” Alice said.
I was watching both of them. I had seen the film. It had been a lovely little piece of work. Janelle and Alice had made it with three other women as a feminist venture. Janelle had screen credit as star. Alice had a credit as director, and the other two~ women had credits appropriate to the work they had done on the film.
“We need a director’s credit. We just can’t have a picture without a director’s credit,” Janelle said.
Just for the hell of it I put my two cents in. “I thought Alice directed the film,” I said.
Janelle looked at me angrily. “She was in charge of directing,” she said. “But I made a lot of the director suggestions and I felt I should get some credit for that.”
“Jesus,” I said. “You’re the star of the film. Alice has to get some credit for the work she did.”
“Of course she does,” Janelle said indignantly. “I told her that. I didn’t tell her to cut out her credit on the negative. She just did it.”
I turned to Alice and said, “How do you really feel about it?”
Alice seemed very composed. “Janelle did a lot of work on the directing,” she said. “And I really don’t care for the credit. Janelle can have it. I really don’t care.”
I could see that Janelle was very angry. She hated being put in such a false position, but I sensed that she wasn’t going to let Alice have full credit for directing the film.
“Damn you,” Janelle said to me. “Don’t look at me like that. I got the money to have this film made and I got all the people together and we all helped write the story and it couldn’t have been made without me.”
“All right,” I said. “Then take credit as the producer. Why is the director’s credit so important?”
Then Alice spoke up. “We’re going to be showing this film in competition for the Academy and Filmex, and on films like this, people feel the only thing that’s important is the directorship. The director gets most of the credit for the picture. I think Janelle’s right. ”She turned to Janelle. “How do you want the director’s credit to read?”
Janelle said, “Have both of us being given credit and you put your name first. Is that OK?”
Alice said, “Sure, anything you want.”
After having lunch with us, Alice said she had to leave even though Janelle begged her to stay. I watched them kiss each other good-bye and then I walked Alice out to her car.
Before she drove away, I asked her, “Do you really not mind?”
Her face perfectly composed, beautiful in its serenity, she said, “No, I really don’t mind. Janelle was hysterical after the first showing when everybody came up to me to congratulate me. She’s just that way and making her happy is more important to me than getting all that bullshit. You understand that, don’t you?”
I smiled at her and kissed her cheek good-bye. “No,” I said. “I don’t understand stuff like that.” I went back into the house and Janelle was nowhere in sight. I figured she must have gone for a walk down the beach and she didn’t want me with her, and sure enough, an hour later I spotted her coming up the sand walking by the water. And when she came into the house, she went up to the bedroom, and when I found her up there, I saw that she was in bed with the covers over her and she was crying.
I sat down on the bed and didn’t say anything. She reached out to hold my hand. She was still crying.
“You think I’m such a bitch, don’t you?” she said.
“No,” I said.
“And you think Alice is so marvelous, don’t you?”
“I like her,” I said. I knew I had to be very careful. She was afraid that I would think Alice was a better person than she was.
“Did you tell her to cut out that piece of negative?” I said.
“No,” Janelle said. “She just did that on her own.”
“OK,” I said. “Then just accept it for what it is and don’t worry about who behaved better and who seems like a better person. She wanted to do that for you. Just accept it. You know you want it.”
At this she started to cry again. In fact, she was hysterical, so I made her some soup and fed her one of her blue ten-milligram Valiums and she slept from that afternoon till Sunday morning.
That afternoon I read; then I watched the beach and the water until dawn broke.
Janelle finally woke up. It was about ten o’clock, a beautiful day in Malibu. I knew immediately that she wasn’t comfortable with me, that she didn’t want me around for the rest of the day. That she wanted to call Alice and have Alice come out and spend the rest of the day. So I told her I had gotten a call and had to go to the studio and couldn’t spend the rest of the day with her. She made the usual Southern belle protestations, but I could see the light in her eyes. She wanted to call Alice and show her love for her.
Janelle walked me out to the car. She was wearing one of those big floppy hats to protect her skin from the sun. It was really a floppy hat. Most women would have looked ugly init. But with her perfect face and complexion she was quite beautiful. She had on her specially tailored, secondhand, specially weathered jeans that fitted on the body like skin. And I remembered that one night I had said to her when she was naked in bed that she had a real great woman’s ass, that it takes generations to breed an ass like that I said it to make her angry because she was a feminist, but to my surprise she was delighted. And I remembered that she was partly a snob. That she was proud of the aristocratic lineage of her Southern family.
She kissed me good-bye and her face was all rosy and pink. She wasn’t a bit desolated that I was leaving. I knew that she and Alice would have a happy day together and that I would have a miserable day in town at my hotel. But I figured, what the hell? Alice deserved it and I really didn’t. Janelle had once said that she, Janelle, was a practical solution to my emotional needs but I was not a practical solution to hers.
– -
The television kept flickering. There was a special tribute in memory of Malomar. Valerie said something to me about it. Was he a nice person? and I answered yes. We finished watching the awards, and then she said to me, “Did you know any of the people that were there?”
“Some of them,” I said.
“Which ones?” Valerie asked me.
I mentioned Eddie Lancer who had won an Oscar for his contribution to a film script, but I didn’t mention Janelle. I wondered for just a moment if Valerie had set a trap for me to see if I would mention Janelle and then I said I knew the blond girl who won a prize at the beginning of the program.
Valerie looked at me and then turned away.
Chapter 40
A week later Doran called me to go out to California for more conferences. He said he had sold Eddie Lancer to Tri-Culture. So I went out and hung around and went to meetings and picked up with Janelle again. I was a little restless now. I didn’t love California that much anymore.
One night Janelle said to me, “You always tell how great your brother, Artie, is. Why is he so great?”
“Well,” I said, “I guess he was my father as well as my brother.”
I could see she was fascinated by the two of us growing up, as orphans. That it appealed to her dramatic sense. I could see her spinning all kinds of movies, fairy tales in her head, about how life had been. Two young boys. Charming. One of your real Walt Disney fantasies.
“So, you really want to hear another story about orphans?” I said. “Do you want a happy story or a true story? Do you want a lie or do you want the truth?”
Janelle pretended to think it over. “Try me with the truth,” she said. “If I don’t like it, you can tell me the lie.”
So I told her how all the visitors to the asylum wanted to adopt Artie but never wanted to adopt me. That’s how I started off the story.