BTW, Meet Vera Stark Lines

GLORIA: Maxmillian!

Gloria, you look radiant.

GLORIA: Thank you, just a little something I threw on. And who is this… lovely creature?

Allow me to introduce Miss Anna Maria Fernandez of Rio de Janiero.

SLASVICK: Von Oster.

My friend.

SLASVICK: Your timing is impeccable. I’m glad you made it.

My lovely Anna insisted. I vanted her to meet you. I think our Anna has very great potential.

ANNA MAE: Jou ‘ave a beautiful home. Ain’t it beautiful, Maxie?

Yes, my love.

GLORIA: Maxmillian, darling?

Same for me.

GLORIA: Cigarette?

Please.

GLORIA: Yes, we’re all quite interested in The Belle of New Orleans. I just adore the script, as I’ve told you, Maximillian.

It is a very good script, if I may say so.

ANNA MAE: Tell dem what jou told me, Maxie.

It is my plan to film on location in New Orleans. In brothel. I want the grittiness and sensuality of the place to be palpable.

ANNA MAE: Ain’t that exciting!?

It is so hard to capture flavors, the true essence of city like New Orleans, on studio back lot. Am I correct in saying so? The quality of light in the South, I find it so, so fantastic. It is different from the crisp cold skies of California. It is moist, thick, viscous. I vant that, because of course how I position actors in the environment will inform or perhaps transform their very performance. Indeed! I vant heat.

SLASVICK: It sounds expensive.

Of course it is, that is the point, we vant it to be spectacular. Fresh. We vant it to feel thoroughly authentic. If The Belle of New Orleans is like every other film that we’ve seen, then vhat is the point. It is time for cinema to take bold new leap. It is time to capture the truth. For instance, I vant the Blacks to be real, to be Blacks of the earth, I vant to feel their struggle, the rhythm of their language, I vant actors that … no, I don’t vant actors, I vant people. Blacks who have felt the burden of hard unmerciful labor. I vant to see hundred years of oppression in the hunch of their shoulders.

VERA: Suh, you want another drink, suh?

Yes! Thank you! (Ecstatic.) I vant to hear the music of the fields. The songs of strife and struggle. (Lottie begins to softly hum a spiritual. Vera joins in.) Yes, that is the sound. (To Vera.) Where are you from, my dear?

VERA: Me, suh?

What’s your tragic story?

VERA: I… I… um, wuz born in the Mississippi Delta, but I was raised just outside of New Orleans.

Yes, vonderful.

VERA: …sometimes in de South, a good man hafta do ugly things just to survive. (Maxmillian closes his eyes, savoring.)

… Sing something, I vant to hear the blues.

VERA: …It dun take me home, and home ain’t someplace dat so easy to be.

Yes, I understand. As child I fled Cossacks, but still for me Russia is home. But even now it vould be too painful to recall bittersweet music of home. You see, Fredrick. This is what we need on the screen. Authenticity. Just as Anna Maria conjures the flavors of carnivale in Brazil. This broken Black woman, her sad mournful face, the coarse rhythm of her language, tells the story of the South.

GLORIA: Yes, sugar, but how do you see the little ole role of Marie, the mixed race girl?

She has lived life!

GLORIA: Yes, of course. That’s wonderful, sugar.

I vant the lines and the creases in the faces of the prostitutes in my brothel to tell their story.

SLASVICK: Whores? I didn’t realize that there were any whores in the script.

It is set in brothel.

SLASVICK: Yes, but it doesn’t mean they need to be… whores. Couldn’t we make them something else, something less objectionable?

Like?

SLASVICK: …but if our lead is a whore and we have a bunch of Black people running around selling misery, we won’t even be able to open the picture in New York City.

That is little detail. It is the truth that I’m after.

SLASVICK: Fuck the truth, I signed on for a romance with pretty gals in corsets and hoop skirts.

You will have it all.

ANNA MAE: And little freshen for me too!

I must have freedom!

ANNA MAE: I love de blues.

You see that! People vant the truth. They vant real life, like this woman here. Vhat is your name?

VERA: Vera, suh.

You see, she is not actress, she is woman who wears her miserable life like blossom about to flower and it is beautiful. And vhy can’t we celebrate that beauty on the screen?

SLASVICK: …All I’m asking is that if you’re gonna give ‘em slaves, give ‘em happy ones.

I am director! Do you vant me to make something beautiful, truthful, elegant, or do you vant the shit that you pull from the asses of imbeciles? Tell me now, right here! Don’t waste my time. I demand to know! Right now! I vant answer!

SLASVICK: I want romance! There’s my fucking answer.

I love this script, and I von’t be told vhat to do! (storms out of the room)

VERA: And I told him I would wear his dress on your show.

Your dress is really groovy, I almost wore something like it to the show.

VERA: And who is this dashing young man? Are you an actor?

(laughs) No, I play rock and roll. The blues.

BRAD: Vera Stark, meet Peter Rhys-Davies. Peter Rhys-Davies meet Vera Stark.

I’m a huge fan of The Belle of New Orleans. I saw it on the tellie in me hotel room, like, last summer. I really loved it, dug it. It was really, really moving, you know it surprised me. I cried at the end, I’m not ashamed. When you said to her, what is um, um… “Stay awake”… um, um—

VERA: …And it feels wonderful to be back working the strip.

Vegas is one wild weird place. The lights, crazy. Craziness.

VERA: Yes, we recorded a wonderful live album.

I love that. You know, live, you get the audience and stuff. You know, like, ya. (leaps to his feet. Belts)

There is something I love about that gal of mine,

There is something I love about that gal of mine,

There is something I love about that gal of mine,

She treats me right and loves me all of the time.

Yeah.

VERA: …Now, well, it’s all crap with guns, bad language, and bikinis…

I’d love to see you in a bikini.

VERA: Yes, hippies introduced the notion of free love. No, back then love came with a price.

(laughs) I like you.

VERA: I like you.

You tell it like it is.

GLORIA: And you look absolutely gorgeous. You wicked woman, you haven’t aged a second.

(suddenly) You’re Gloria Mitchell?! The Belle of New Orleans!

GLORIA: Yes!

Whoa, I thought you was dead.

BRAD: Really? I can’t believe that.

Crazy. Artists, like, they don’t trust that we have a complete vision, right?

VERA: …And you know exactly what I’m talking about!

I have no idea what you two are talking about.

BRAD: Ladies, ladies, why don’t we sit down.

I don’t know what you two old birds are fighting about, but this is trippy.

GLORIA: I have no more fight Tilly.

MAX: (offstage) No. no. no! Cut.

VERA: I ain’t gonna let you go. Don’t die mis’, don’t die. You the only thing I’s got. Mis’ Marie.

(offstage) Cut. What is happening? This is no good. Ladies, please step out for camera adjustment!

(cameras shift) Ladies.

VERA: Stay awake… and together we’ll face a new day.

(offstage) Ladies. Are ready?

Sound. Camera. Action.