Read Online Reality and Dreams by Muriel Spark - Free Book Online

with her.
As a practised director he knew when he could go no further with his demands on
an actor. It was in any case enough that Rose looked plausible. She was a star
without great quality.
    She was
a box-office draw, written into the film for that reason.
    The hamburger
girl herself was essentially a minor personality. The actress’s name was Jeanne
both in the movie and in the flesh. The whole point of the movie was that the
hamburger girl should not be a star. Jeanne should be a throw-away item seen
always at an angle.
    Well,
Tom told himself that it was enough. But in fact nothing was enough. The film
had been held up by his accident. It had been stopped; it had been shelved;
then unshelved, as he recovered in health, dusted off and started again. Now
that it was once more in progress, the difference was that now he was in love
with the overwhelming beauty Rose Woodstock, a fact which discouraged that very
attractive waif-like nonentity Jeanne who played so well that subordinate
role, the hamburger girl. Jeanne, with her high cheekbones and ragged
hairstyle, was not only discouraged by Tom’s indifference to her off the set;
she was positively infuriated. She knew she was essentially the important
personality of the film. Jeanne resented the glow of attention that Tom turned
on box-office Rose whenever she appeared on or off the set.
    Rose
had counted on the screenplay being altered so that her status was no longer
mistress; when the benefactor made love to her in bed, at intervals in the
film, with much heaving and munching, he ‘saw’ the hamburger girl.
    Rose
Woodstock’s husband in real life was a young television director, at present
without work. Tom paid him for a while. Tom imagined that Rose was not supposed
to know about this, but she did. As the shooting of the film proceeded she fell
commercially but genuinely in love with Tom, which in her case was possible.
    The
producers now wanted to make Jeanne into a more prominent personality. Tom’s
financial share in the film, together with his reputation, gave him a good say
on the artistic side.
    They
called a meeting. It took place in a beige suite at the top of a London hotel.
Five people in all, two of whom, a man and a woman, were silent.
    ‘Jeanne
is nothing. Nothing at all. She’s a throw-away item. You see her only at an
angle. She’s an idea. If you make her a somebody,’ Tom said, ‘the movie falls
to pieces. It is nothing. Nothing at all.’
    He
compromised by agreeing to do more close-ups of Jeanne. ‘I’ll have to look at
Rose’s contract. She’ll be furious. I’ll have to work in a few more close-ups
of Rose.’
    ‘Close-ups
of Rose are always money in the bank,’ observed one member of the meeting,
philosophically.
    Tom
cruised around with Dave that night. ‘The trouble with producers,’ Tom said, ‘they
want both an art film and a commercial success. They want sentimentality,
emotion and the higher moods of detachment. They want bloody everything.
Fortunately I have some money of my own in the film which gives me a certain
pull. But I’m both director and script-writer which means I have to appear to
hear everybody’s ideas while taking no notice of them.’
    ‘Follow
your instinct,’ Dave advised. ‘Ignore the rest.’
    ‘But I’m
in love with Rose,’ said Tom. ‘So much in love, I can’t tell you. Off the set
she is simply delicious.’
    ‘Sounds
unprofessional.’
    ‘Oh, it’s
not professional,’ Tom said. ‘But the greatest trouble is Jeanne. She suspects
I’m having an affair with Rose. She resents what seems to be her minor role in
the film when she is in fact the important element in it. The whole environment
of the movie world is bad for Jeanne’s acting. She is beginning to get ideas.’
    Not
long after this Jeanne phoned Tom’s house at about nine at night. As she had
imagined Tom wasn’t in. ‘Could I speak to Mrs. Richards?’
    ‘I’m
Jeanne, the hamburger girl,’ said Jeanne.
    ‘Oh,
hello,