tried getting together an article trying to find out how it is that he has all these cinema owners eating out of his hand, but no one he works with was prepared to say anything. I'll talk to him, but I can't put any pressure on him.’
He did talk to him and got him to watch The Secrets of the Cellar. The following day, she received a phone call, saying that Javits would meet her in Cannes.
At the time, Maureen didn't even dare to say that she was just ten minutes by taxi from his office; instead they arranged to meet in this far-off French city. She bought a plane ticket to Paris, caught a train that took all day to reach Cannes, showed her voucher to the bad-tempered manager of a cheap hotel, installed herself in her single room where she had to climb over her luggage to reach the bathroom and (again thanks to her ex-boyfriend) wangled invitations to a few second-rate events - a promotion for a new brand of vodka or the launch of a new line in T-shirts - but it was far too late to apply for the pass that would allow her into the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès.
She has overspent her budget, travelled for more than twenty hours, but she will at least get her ten minutes. And she's sure that she'll emerge with a contract and a future before her. Yes, the movie industry is in crisis, but so what? Movies (however few) are still making money, aren't they? Big cities are plastered with posters advertising new movies. And what are celebrity magazines full of? Gossip about movie stars! Maureen knows - or, rather, believes - that the death of cinema has been declared many times before, and yet still it survives. ‘Cinema was dead’ when television arrived. ‘Cinema was dead’ when video rentals arrived. ‘Cinema was dead’ when the Internet began allowing access to pirate sites. But cinema is still alive and well in the streets of this small Mediterranean town, which, of course, owes its fame to the Festival.
Now it's simply a case of making the most of this manna from heaven. And of accepting everything, absolutely everything. Javits Wild is here. He has seen her film. The subject of the film is spot on: sexual exploitation, voluntary or forced, was getting a lot of media attention after a series of cases that had hit the headlines worldwide. It is just the right moment for The Secrets of the Cellar to appear on the posters put up by the distribution chain he controlled.
Javits Wild, the rebel with a cause, the man who was revolutionising the way films reached the wider public. Only the actor Robert Redford had tried something similar with his Sundance Film Festival for independent film-makers, but nevertheless, after decades of effort, Redford still hadn't managed to break through the barrier into a world that mobilised hundreds of millions of dollars in the United States, Europe and India. Javits, though, was a winner.
Javits Wild, the saviour of film-makers, the great legend, the ally of minority interests, the friend of artists, the new patron, who obviously used some very intelligent system (she had no idea what it was, but she knew it worked) to reach cinemas all around the world.
Javits Wild has arranged a ten-minute meeting with her in two days’ time. This can mean only one thing, that he has accepted her project and that everything else is merely a matter of detail.
‘I will accept everything, absolutely everything,’ she repeats.
Obviously, in those ten minutes, Maureen won't have a chance to say a word about what she has been through in the eight years (yes, a quarter of her life) that have gone into making her film. There will be no point in telling him that she went to film school, directed a few commercials, made two short films that were warmly received in various small-town cinemas or in alternative bars in New York. That in order to raise the million dollars needed for a professional production, she had mortgaged the house she inherited from her parents. That this was her one chance because she didn't have another house to mortgage.
She had watched as her fellow students, after much struggling, opted for the comfortable world of commercials - of which there were more and more - or some safe but obscure job in one of the many companies that made TV series. After the warm reception given to her short films, she began to dream of higher things and then there was no stopping her.
She was convinced she had a mission: to make the world a better place for future generations, by getting together with like-minded people to show that art isn't just a way of entertaining or amusing a lost society; by exposing world leaders as the flawed people they are; by saving the children who were now dying of hunger somewhere in Africa; by speaking out about environmental problems; by putting an end to social injustice.
This was, of course, an ambitious project, but she was sure she would achieve it if only through sheer doggedness. To do this she needed to purify her soul and so she turned to the four forces that had always guided her: love, death, power and time. We must love because we are loved by God. We must be conscious of death if we are to have a proper understanding of life. We must struggle in order to grow, but without falling into the trap of the power we gain through that struggle, because we know that such power is worthless. Finally, we must accept that our eternal soul is, at this moment, caught in the web of time with all its opportunities and its limitations.
Caught in the web of time she might be, but she could still work on what gave her pleasure and filled her with enthusiasm. And through her films, she could make her contribution to a world that seemed to be disintegrating around her and could try to change reality and transform human beings.
When her father died, after complaining all his life that he had never had the chance to do what he had always dreamed of doing, she realised something very important: transformations always occur during moments of crisis.
She didn't want to end her life as he had. She wouldn't like to have to tell her daughter: ‘There was something I wanted to do and there was even a point when I could have done it, but I just didn't have the courage to take the risk.’ When she received her inheritance, she knew then that it had been given to her for one reason only: to allow her to fulfil her destiny.
She accepted the challenge. Unlike other adolescent girls who always dreamed of being famous actresses, her dream had been to tell stories that subsequent generations could see, smile at and dream about. Her great example was Citizen Kane. That first film by a radio producer who wanted to make an exposé of a powerful American press magnate became a classic not just because of its story, but because it dealt in a creative and innovative manner with the ethical and technical problems of the day. All it took was one film to gain eternal fame.
‘His first film.’
It was possible to get it right first time. Even though its director, Orson Welles, never made anything as good again. Even though he had disappeared from the scene (that does happen) and was now only studied on courses about cinema, someone was sure to ‘rediscover’ his genius sooner or later. Citizen Kane wasn't his only legacy; he had proved to everyone that if your first step was good enough, you would never lack for invitations thereafter. And she would take up those invitations. She had promised herself that she would never forget the difficulties she had been through and that her life would contribute to dignifying human life.
And since there can only ever be one first film, she had poured all her physical efforts, her prayers and her emotional energy into one project. Unlike her friends, who were always firing off scripts, proposals and ideas only to end up working on several things at once without any of them ever really coming to anything, Maureen dedicated herself body and soul to The Secrets of the Cellar, the story of five nuns who are visited by a sex maniac. Instead of trying to convert him to Christian salvation, they realise that the only way they can communicate with him is by accepting the norms of his aberrant world; they decide to surrender their bodies to him so that he can understand the glory of God through love.
Her plan was a simple one. Hollywood actresses, however famous they might be, usually disappear from the cast lists when they reach thirty-five. They still continue to appear in the pages of the celebrity magazines, are seen at charity auctions and big parties; they embrace humanitarian causes, and when they realise that they really are about to vanish from the spotlight entirely, they start to get married or have messy divorces and create public scandals - and all for a few months, weeks or days of glory. In that period between unemployment and total obscurity, money is of no importance. They will take any role if it gives them a chance to appear on screen.