“So you want to direct films.”
“Yes. I want that control,” John says, leaning forward, his dulcet voice warming to the subject. “I want to shape
the story, the mood, use the close up to show what is going on in the mind of those people and then”—he sweeps an arm overhead—”show a big scenic view of New York City. Like Shakespeare would loved
to have done.”
“I wonder what he would be doing today,” I say, caught up now in his enthusiasm.
“Well, you can tell from Henry V, where he has the chorus come in and say: “O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention! A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, And monarrhs to behold the swelling scene!”
What he’s talking about is using movie technology. And really modern movie stars are like kings and queens, in Shakespeare’s sense, for that’s what Shakespeare knew would work. Car crashes, battle scenes.”
As I bask in the glow of having been the only audience to one of America’s premier actors, the mysterious woman pokes her head inside the door. She wants him to help her splice sound cues for the play. John strongly suggests I join them while they work on this task, so we stroll back together through the theater’s catacombs, to a back room where the chestnut-haired woman is manipulating controls on an electronic console. John introduces me and I discover that she is indeed Emily Frankel, who was an internationally known dancer and is now an actress, novelist, and playwright. Between sound cues, John fascinates with talk about Scott (“a dangerous man off stage but a great actor with a discipline you don’t suspect”) and Burton
(“a great intellectual actor who could not play anguish” due to some deep emotional injury), and of his desire to play Lear.
But in the meantime I watch them work together. There is a certain gentle irony in his manner with her that she responds to dryly, knowingly, all in a subtext that I am, of course, not privy to. perhaps he is playing von Stroheim to her Swanson? Well, okay, just as long as I don’t have to pass any swimming pools on
the way out. MM
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