“Maddy,” he said, “I’m from a different generation.”
On a sweltering day in August while she was with Jake on Governors Island, Maddy got an email saying that Pinhole had been accepted into Toronto. When she opened it, she screamed, jumped up and down, and called Zack. She felt that her years of slaving over the script, and all her hard work as an actress, had finally paid off. Whether it won anything or not, she would be going to Toronto with a project she had generated from her own mind, out of the story of a complicated woman’s life.
Steven offered to take care of Jake in his Gramercy Park apartment so she could be completely focused during the festival. She paid for their cast and crew to fly over, and rented a huge house near the festival headquarters so everyone could stay together.
The first screening of Pinhole was at eight on Friday night, a prime spot. The theater was already packed when Maddy walked in with Deborah and Zack.
Maddy took her reserved seat next to her cast and crew. Lane Cromwell’s daughter, Jean, had flown in and would be watching the film for the first time.
The lights went down.
The opening shot was a point-of-view from a 1920s camera snapping photos. The shutter closed, and the next frame was Maddy as Lane, posing for a slip ad. The flash popped again and again, and you could see by Lane’s expression that she was uncomfortable and out of her league. The photographer in the film called out directions off camera and she vamped, and then there was a freeze-frame and the screen went to black. Over a gypsy-jazz song, the credits appeared in simple, stark, white-on-black. Maddy’s title card was the last before Deborah’s. When she read the words “written by Maddy Freed,” they felt like a prediction.
There was a panel discussion following the screening and she trotted up to the stage along with the cast and crew. After a few questions about her writing process and discovery of Lane’s story, a heavyset bearded guy with black-framed glasses raised his hand. “This is the first film you’ve written since your divorce from Steven Weller, isn’t it, Maddy?”
“Just to clarify, it’s the first film I’ve written,” she said. “Ever. I collaborated on some things before, but this is my first solo screenplay.”
“I was thinking as I watched it that Lane kept trying to find her happiness in men, but it didn’t work. Is that something you relate to personally? Would you say this film is on some level about your anger at your ex-husband?”
There were whispers in the audience. People seemed to get that the guy was putting her on the spot, or maybe they wanted her to say something buzz-worthy and scandalous because her divorce had been all over the news.
“You know,” she said, “I would never write a script out of anger. It’s hard enough as it is to get independent financing.” The audience laughed, and her crew did, too. She could feel the support of Deborah, Victor, and Zack around her. “Filmmaking is first and foremost about storytelling. That’s what gets people into a theater. That’s why we’re all here. To me, this film tells the story of an artist who tried to make work that was meaningful, and at the same time really struggled with her personal happiness. In part because of the sexism of her time.
“But beyond that . . .” The theater was quiet even though there were twelve hundred people in it. “I don’t regret my marriage, not in the slightest. I learned so much from Steven. I learned things I never expected to learn.” The house lights were bright, and she shaded her eyes. “I guess you could say . . . you could say that Steven Weller made me the actress I am today.”
And then someone asked a question about camera lenses, and Maddy exhaled and faced her cinematographer.
Acknowledgments
In inventing the life of Maddy Freed, I found the following books influential and essentiaclass="underline" Is That a Gun in Your Pocket?: Women’s Experience of Power in Hollywood, by Rachel Abramowitz; Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier; The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Writings, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; Natalie Wood: A Life, by Gavin Lambert; In Spite of Myself: A Memoir, by Christopher Plummer; and The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830–1980, by Elaine Showalter.
A novel about an actress provides an opportunity to watch and rewatch great films. In particular I drew inspiration from Don’t Look Now, directed by Nicolas Roeg; Gaslight, directed by George Cukor; Inside Daisy Clover, directed by Robert Mulligan; Rebecca, directed by Alfred Hitchcock; and Repulsion, directed by Roman Polanski.
For research assistance, thanks to Howard Abramson, Angie Banicki, Gisela Baurmann, John Connolly, Annette Drees, Sara Gozalo, Detective Nils Grevillius, Lillian Hope, Franklin J. Leonard, Terry Levich Ross, Jennifer Levy, Sara Memo, Kelly Bush Novak, Lateef Oseni, Victor Pimstein Ratinoff, Brian Savelson, and Jamie Yerkes. For detail work and production assistance, thanks to Melissa Kahn, Sarah Nalle, and Ed Winstead. For productivity assistance, thanks to Fred Stutzman and Freedom for Productivity, the Brooklyn Writers Space, the Brooklyn Public Library, the Cambridge Public Library, and the Writers Guild of America East Writing Room.
Thanks to Rebecca Gradinger for inspiring this idea over tea at University Restaurant. Thanks to Ernesto Mestre-Reed and Will Blythe for being great critics and great friends. Thanks to Richard Abate for being my consigliere, reluctant driver, and tireless advocate, and to Jonathan Karp for believing in The Actress and seeing it to fruition. Special thanks to Millicent Bennett for deep thinking, attentive editing, structural help, and an extremely kind manner.
Most of all, thanks to my husband and my daughter, whose encouragement, patience, and laughter allow me to do what I love.