I could remember. I could remember everything the stars had brought Lauren and me, but I couldn’t begin to wonder what they had in store for us.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Through a Glass Darkly
Cruel, serpentine thoughts often whispered in my head, and I wondered if Lauren still loved me. Maybe she lived for Marbella and didn’t care about me anymore. When
I was away, filming or publicizing a new project, I’d imagine her happy with someone else. Someone who kept her warm, made her smile like I used to. Those thoughts were lies swirling in my clouded mind, but I couldn’t find any good in truth anymore. Our marriage had become a rickety roller coaster.
I drank. Drank to avoid the constant questions. But new questions waited at the bottom of each bottle. I attended various celebrity bashes at the time. People would never guess how unhappy I felt. But then I was photographed doing a line of cocaine by some journalistic twat who’d gotten himself on the guest list. It wasn’t a habit of mine. I just did it from time to time, like everybody else in those circles.
The tabloids insisted I was a drug addict. According to them, I was on a coke binge every night, taking the broad way to self-destruction. Hell, it was a good story for the headlines. Photographers scrambled to take pictures of me after nights out, so journalists could comment on my pale, hungover appearance. They said I looked aged and needed help.
Nonsense. All of it. I rarely did drugs. But I’d do it if someone put the stuff on a table. It’s just something celebrities tend to do. To escape the pressure, to escape from themselves. The press turned against me, vilifying me, making out that I’d become a pathetic junkie. My work had been driven by my addiction. My Oscar meant nothing. My critical acclaim had been misplaced. They didn’t care that I was always sober when I worked.
Words like ‘addict’ and ‘binge’ became synonymous with my name, to the extent that I wondered if the press were telling the truth. Next to the photographs of me were words that told the world a story. A fictional story with me as the central character, a fading star among the constellations of the celebrity world. I’d become a fallen hero, once praised, but now reviled. Villain of the month. I couldn’t escape from the cameras, couldn’t go into a public bathroom without photographers spying on me as I took a piss. I lived in an Orwellian nightmare, my every move watched and scrutinized by story spinners.
The press create truth for us and we’re indoctrinated. We become addicted to sensationalism. The tabloids distort reality. Otherwise the world would be a very dull place. Life’s a story, full of heroes and villains, and every story has a conclusion. Readers demand a resolution.
Finis coronat opus
.
I wondered what ending the press would give me. Would I part from the world as a tragic hero, or a fallen angel?
Lauren and I sat in a restaurant in Covent Garden. We’d laughed and joked while getting ready. But as she fixed her eyes on the menu, bitter darkness enshrouded me. I’d been experiencing that feeling far too often. Depression has an element of death about it. Happiness is sucked away, very much like life.
The bustling diners became a film of blurred colors and indistinct murmurs. I kept my eyes on an antique chandelier above my head, which cast a soft light on the Velvet Flock wallpaper and claret carpet.
‘What’s the matter?’ Lauren asked.
‘Nothing. Why?’
‘I just spoke to you. And you didn’t listen to a word I said.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I shook myself out of the daze.
Lauren carried on talking. In that moment, my world crashed and burned around me, the unquenchable flames licking my wounded thoughts. A voice whispered in my ear, telling me everything was pointless. My career and marriage were superficial. Why did I endure this meaningless world?
‘You’re doing it again.’ Lauren tapped the table with a fork.
‘Doing what?’ I growled.
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘I don’t know. Come on, let’s order food. Waiter!’
I beckoned the waiter to our table. We ordered our food and a bottle of Cristal champagne.
People stared at me. Judged me. A flicker of derision appeared in the waiter’s eyes.
‘What’s the matter?’ Lauren repeated.
‘I’m feeling down, that’s all.’
‘But you were fine ten minutes ago.’
‘Yeah, I know…’
‘Don’t do this again, Dan.’
‘Do what?’
‘Ruin another night!’
‘When the fuck do I ruin our nights?’
‘You’re only happy when you’re snorting coke at parties.’ She leaned across the table.
‘That’s nonsense,’ I snarled.
People kept looking at me, their eyes burning into my soul as they clinked their cutlery and sipped their champagne.
‘You have problems, babes. You’re in denial.’
‘Excuse me, sir,’ the waiter interposed.
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m afraid we’re out of Cristal champagne. May I suggest…’
‘No. You may
not
suggest anything else,’ I said. ‘That’s what I ordered.’
‘Well, I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do.’ The waiter bowed his head.
‘Why are you doing this?’ Lauren asked.
‘I wanted Cristal. It’s what I ordered!’
‘May I suggest Dom Perignon?’
‘That’s not what I ordered is it!’
‘A few years ago you wouldn’t even drink champagne,’ Lauren murmured.
‘What?’
‘You used to order lager.’
‘Don’t embarrass me.’ I gritted my teeth.
‘How the hell am I embarrassing you?’
‘We’re drinking champagne tonight.’
‘We’re hardly celebrating anything…’
‘I’m celebrating my life. It’s fucking wonderful, isn’t it? Do you have any idea how much money I make an hour, waiter?’
‘I’m afraid I do not,’ the waiter said deferentially.
‘Neither do I. But it’s a lot. And that’s what matters, isn’t it? Money. Money is all that matters. If I didn’t have money, you wouldn’t let me set foot in this restaurant, with your crafted oak tables and antique lighting. You’d look down at me. Oh, but you do that anyway…’
‘Certainly not, sir.’
‘Don’t lie to me, you obsequious cunt!’ I pounded the table with my fist.
‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’
‘Good. I don’t wanna eat in a restaurant where they can’t even supply a man with the champagne he ordered.’
Lauren buried her face in her hands.
‘They tell you that you’re great. And you believe them.’ I sighed. ‘Then they turn against you. I have a crowd of photographers waiting outside those doors for me. They tell me I’m a cocaine addict, and my own wife listens to them. But what does it matter?’
I don’t know what came over me that evening. I apologized to Lauren afterwards. I’d made a dick out of myself. She told me I needed help. She felt I was slipping away from her.
I needed to escape, to cut away the ribbons of that false world.
My next movie was unlike anything I’d produced before. I wanted to torture audiences and strip cinema of all constraints.
X
was the horror movie to end all horror movies. As a child, I loved to scare people, and that never changed. I knew that storytelling gave me power. I had the power to show audiences something they hadn’t seen. The world was a brutal, menacing place. I wasn’t going to give viewers an opportunity to escape reality. I would plunge them into the very depths of the human psyche.
X
was set in the swinging sixties, a time when people stood up for their beliefs. But the picture exhibited the failures of altruism and questioned perceptions of morality.
I threw every restraint out of the window.
X
went further than the horror movie genre had ever gone before. I cast a group of talented, relatively unknown actors. I hoped audiences would believe what they saw and empathize with the movie’s characters. I used sixteen millimeter cameras to shoot in a
cinema vérité
style, creating a sense of cinematic truth.
I received a lot of criticism for my treatment of the cast. But I told the actors my intentions long before shooting commenced. The cinematographer turned to me during filming and asked, ‘Do you really need to push these guys so hard? I mean, look at them. This is such a miserable set.’
‘Yeah, I need to push them this hard,’ I said, lighting a cigarette. ‘Werner Herzog did the same sort of thing with his films. I believe that if you put your actors in similar circumstances to those portrayed in the film, you’ll see true realism etched on their faces. That’s when their performances become complete. This is a horror movie, and I don’t want my actors relying on theatrical methods. They’re here to experience hell. I’m making a movie about the real world. You’ll see the desired effect.’
The picture made a greater impact than I could have imagined, selling more tickets during its opening weekend than the great horror flick
The Exorcist
had in 1973. It was good to see that a contemporary movie could still disturb people. Audience members would question themselves and their morbid fascination with a graphic picture like
X
.
The basic plotline is classic haunted house horror. Strange goings-on, poltergeist activity building towards the climax in which the house burns down in the Tenth Circle of hell. It’s a slow starter, most of the camera angles from the characters’ perspectives, gradually allowing the audience to sympathize with them. Annette, the eighteen year old daughter, complains that someone is biting her legs during the night. Baffling noises. Objects moving around the house. All these basic elements conceal the powerful theme of corrupt humanity. The first shot of the mysterious demon that haunts the family comes when Annette looks up as she descends the stairs. A hooded figure with burning eyes reaches downwards, hand outstretched in a perverse re-imagining of Michelangelo’s Hand of God in the painting,
The Creation of Adam
. It’s been ranked as one of the scariest shots in horror movie history, probably because it comes out of nowhere. Other scenes that
X
is renowned for include the moment when objects from upstairs are hurtled down the steps by an invisible force and when Annette is impaled on the garden fencing after being thrown from her bedroom window. The most controversial aspect of the picture is Annette’s rape. Naked on her bed, penetrated by an invisible demon. The camera shows everything. There was some very clever CGI involved to make it look as if the demon had entered her, first vaginally and then anally. It sounds pompous but the rape scene represented corruption and I wanted the camera to linger on the brutality for as long as possible. It’s a fifteen minute ordeal that culminates in the beheading, with a kitchen knife, of Annette’s mother, the one figure who stands for goodness and isn’t stained by the flaws of humankind.
The British Board of Film Classification swiftly banned it. It was also banned in Italy, Norway, Finland, New Zealand, Australia and a few other countries. It was saved in the USA by the First Amendment’s Section on freedom of speech. It had been banned on grounds of eroticized sexual violence. I was given the option to trim it down and delete the more violent footage for re-release. I refused. Even if the final product was almost three hours in length. Try telling a painter to chip away at a section of a finished painting.