He Made Me a Movie Star
He knew James Toback. He was a Lebanese man and so beautiful it hurt. I thought: I’m falling for this guy. So he’s a psychopath, every woman warns me.
Mackenzie Kapalous has sideburns and dark hair on the top of his chest. Mackenzie, the director is thirty eight years old and very famous, in indie circles.
He discovered me in Tribeca, eating peanuts and drinking Chinese bubble tea, reading Interview, my white blouse and my black school girl tartan skirt. My trademark. I had big Natalie Wood eyes.
MacKenzie has appeared in Interview too, ironically. (Something he pointed out right away, before he asked me to star in his movie.
What’s your name, honey?
I blinked.
Vanessa Apollo.
The concept of the film is 70’s. It’s about a stunning knockout Greek girl. He called her Vanessa because I was named Vanessa. It was a dig at his blonde ex girlfriend, who was named Abby. He changed the name, in a rewrite, and kept it. Which probably destroyed Abby’s heart.
Vanessa works at a law firm by day, and by night bar-tends in St. Marks. In this underworld of cocktail waitress-ing for Wall Street rejects, and drunk binges with a sultry Bernard Herman soundtrack, she discovers herself, that she is actually a bad girl.We all know the big cat is Mac.
Mac greases the lens for soft focus.
He likes Taxi Driver, Eyes Wide Shut. The Outlaw. Gritty matter with babes in ever frame. He also really dug that movie Exotica: he took his inspiration about a exquisitely dark haired young Canadian stripper, and her dirty older men.
He is taking grad classes at NYU. He went to the La Guardia High before that. The Fame school.
Mac is a Svengali, with a memory of every critical darling of a movie ever made. I feel insecure. His emotions ripple here and there.
“I’m seeing that severe actresss from Days of Heaven. If we could make another one of those for the Times, I would be in heaven.”
He steps forward and whispers in my ear, pushing Lance the chunky crappy video tech aside.
“I’m talking to Vanessa,”
He’s vibrating something super star. He’s like that super amazing tennis player who you know is going to hit a perfect serve. Always. Smack!
“Have you thought of being topless?” he says quietly. “Just throwing it out there.”
I realize, like all the men in my life, he is a creep.
I tighten my plaid jacket back over my tiger print lingerie, and the school girl skirt. And I flirtaciously deny his wish, avoiding his gorgeous blue eyes.
I’ll meet you later, and think about it.
As ashamed as I feel, I meet him later that night at his luxurious Chinatown apartment, to go over the script.
I can’t give up that biting ambition, that fatal hungriness, that actress desperation to be Somebody in Vogue.
He finally sees me in the light of the moon, which slants through the panoramic window. I shrug off my green army jacket. And that tiny plaid Soon Yi Previn-ish skirt. Ingenue time!
He cups my chin in his hand, and strands of my raven ponytail tangle.
“Wow. You’re real pretty, honey.” He whistles.
“Thank you.”
“Such a knockout. I’ll be killed if I don’t give you a closeup.”
Mac holds me in a cozy embrace for five minutes. With his alto voice, I trust him inherently. This genius will not harm me.
He sees my beauty, the beauty of my childhood, my college years, all of it. He sees me.
In the dark of his snazzy apartment, I feel the fiction. A new fiction. I let the shoulder of my blouse reveal flesh and the strap of a yellow silk bathing suit, revealing the best cinnamon- tinged rack this side of an Los Angeles beach.
“Great body.”
He turns on the camera and props it on a table.
But playing pretend as a girl named Vanessa, all with this dashing, hirstute director, and the theme of Madame Butterfly on the record, and the fresh garlic bread and beer, is too tempting.
And we kiss. It’s not tawdry, it’s like poetry.
And he keeps the whole scene on video camera.
“Thanks, honey.” He says in a bored tone, at the close.
I look back, tear-stained.
“Yeah, back at you.” I say, grabbing my army jacket. So now, I’m a legit indie actress. I’m the next Chloe Sevigny.
I have done what was asked. I have become one with the Chinatown night.
