Chapter 44 – In Front of the Camera
The thirteen year old girl sitting at the table was going through changes, but she still was cheerful and engaged with the rest of the family. She hadn’t yet bailed out in favor of the strange and radical world of teenage culture, and still spoke civilly with her parents and siblings and houseguests. Catherine sat next to her, holding her hand while someone shifted the camera to a different position. Anna sat on her other side, looking across the table at Spielberg, who was pinching his upper lip, standing to the side of the cameraman. They were inside a big house and of course Spielberg had his hat on. His wife Kate was here in France, hanging out, and Anna thought of asking her if he wore his hat in bed. Anna thought wearing a baseball style hat inside was almost as bad as wearing it backwards. Being twenty-seven and criticizing how young guys wear their hats made her an iconoclast. She was older than her years.
Spielberg came around the table and said, “This scene is about how women of different ages sit at a big family dinner table and have fun.” He smiled at the young girl. “It’s about things that everyone likes, no matter how old you are, so that’s what I want you to talk about.”
That was the extent of the Director’s direction. There was lots of food on the table, and bottles of different types of wine, and the girl’s parents and brothers and sisters were standing around, but were not in the scene. Catherine knew what to do. Anna and the girl didn’t have a clue, but that didn’t bother them. They both loved Catherine, and liked Spielberg, who obviously has great rapport with kids. The little girl didn’t mind Spielberg wearing his hat in the dining room of her house as much as Anna did, though in a vague way she wondered about it, not ever having seen a man wear a hat indoors before. Even the French women who came into the house took their hats off quickly, as did the guys who worked in the vineyards.
The cameras rolled, and so did The Deneuve. “I’m sitting with Brigitte and Anna. Brigitte, how often do you have big family dinners here?”
“Every Saturday afternoon at four o’clock. Sometimes there are only six people and sometimes there are lots more.”
“Do you like the dinners?”
“Oh, yes, because people talk a lot. And they kiss a lot.”
“Do people kiss you?”
“Yes. Most of the time I like it. The more people drink wine, the more they kiss me. That’s ok, until they kiss me too much. I have an aunt who kisses me about twenty times every Saturday, and every time I have to wipe her lipstick off because she wears too much of it.”
“Do the boys kiss you?”
“They try to. There’s only two I let kiss me. The others I smack in the head.”
“Do you drink wine with dinner?”
“No, I’m not allowed to. Yet. My older brother and sister do.”
“Do you watch the rest of the people drink wine? What kind of wine do they drink?”
“They all drink wine. Everyone. My mother, and grandfather, everyone. They make a big deal about it. I have to watch, since I can’t drink it. I have a cousin who is twenty something and gets drunk right away. He stands up every fifteen minutes and offers a toast about something. Thank God he’s smart and funny.”
Anna asked, “What do you know about wine?”
“I know pretty much everything, really, because it is all around here. There’s red, white, and Champagne. My grand grandfather invented Champagne, and that’s what my father and mother do. They make it. It’s everywhere here. There’s lots of bottles of it down in the caves.”
“When do you think you’ll be allowed to try Champagne?”
“Well, I probably won’t wait for them to give it to me.” She looked over to where her mother was sitting, at the far end of the room. “I’ll probably go down into the caves someday and get one of the guys to open a bottle. They like me.”
“Do you like the Saturday dinners here, with people drinking Champagne and talking?”
“Oh God yes. Everybody acts a little different than normal. They all like being together, goofing off. And they are funny when they get crocked. Sometimes I read a book until they’ve had a couple of glasses, then I start to listen. And the food that goes with the wines is really good. They talk about that a lot, what dish goes with what food. They argue. Sometimes they really argue. There’s a wine called burgundy and a wine called Bordeaux, and half the people here think burgundy is better, and the other half think Bordeaux is better. The only thing they all agree on is that Champagne is the best. I’ve seen them open bottles of Burgundy and Bordeaux, and no one drinks them. The just drink the bubbly.”
Catherine asked, “Do you know where the bubbles come from?”
Brigitte didn’t answer, but looked directly at the camera. Then she looked at Spielberg, standing at the side of the camera. Then she looked at the ceiling, with its fresco painting of grape vines on it. Catherine smiled at her reassuringly, and so did Anna. She closed her eyes, then opened them. Her father had heard the question, and was watching.
“Oh, yes,” she said, “from yeast thingies. The bubbles come from yeast.” She waited a second, then said, “Did you know that yeast is not an animal or a plant? It’s its own thingie. A very good thingie, because bubbles are what make Champagne special.”
Brigitte looked away from Catherine again, looked directly at the camera, almost as if she expected it to agree with her. Then she looked at her father, who raised his arms in mock triumph. Yes, baby!
Spielberg cut the scene and came over to the table. “Beautiful,” he said.
The next day, in a surprise move, he took the crew out to the vineyards surrounding the estate house. The crew had to mobilize into handheld mode, all the cameras, mikes, recorders, lights, and the rest of the gear, but they were Spielberg’s crew, so they handled it. It was a surprise for the family too, but they were having fun. The Deneuve was here. Spielberg was, secondary.
It really was a surprise to the vineyard workers, who became the focus of the filming. They knew what was going on, but not that they would be actors. Spielberg headed down the rows of vines to a small group in the distance, three guys and two women, and they were pruning the vines. Each had several pairs of cutters, ranging from small scissors to big shears. Brigitte’s father introduced the film crew to the workers, and then Spielberg took over. He asked them if Catherine and Anna could ask questions about growing Champagne grapes, and working on the estate. One of the guys said, “What’s the pay? Do we get a percentage?”
One of the women turned a dominating stare on the guy, the other woman smacked him in the back of the head, knocking off his hat, said, “Your pay, you moron, is sitting with Catherine Deneuve. That’s more than you deserve.”
The guy smiled good-naturedly, picking up his hat. Evidently he got this treatment a lot.
The crew set up at the edge of the vineyard where there was enough space. Spielberg framed the group against the corner of a stone wall, with cypress trees behind, and made them take their hats off so there wouldn’t be shadows across their faces. Catherine was dressed in a gold blouse, dark green skirt, and gold satin flats. A pearl the size of a small pear hung from a gold chain around her neck. She sat on the ground, took off her flats, and curled her legs under her. Anna wore a man’s white shirt, trimmed in light blue, with the shirttail out. Below that she sported the sexiest pair of blue jeans anyone present ever had seen. They had been a gift from Catherine, who said when she gave them to Anna, “I haven’t worn these in thirty years, but I truly loved them back then. They worked wonders for my love life.” Anna kicked off her loafers, and stood barefoot in the vineyard soil, stretching and looking up at the sky.
The crew stopped working, Spielberg stopped issuing orders, and the workers stopped feeling nervous. Everyone looked at Catherine and Anna. Two generations of flaming, freezing, exquisite beauty, out in the fields. The filmies recovered first, used to being around Hollywood babes. Sp
ielberg was used to being around Kate Capshaw, so he recovered, too. The workers kept staring, men and women. This was not normal, out in the vineyard.
Spielberg rolled the cameras. “Do you like living in the country?” asked Catherine.
Four of them nodded yes, and one of the guys said, “It’s a job.”
Another said, “I like being outdoors.”
The woman who slapped the guy in the back of the head started talking. “It’s hard work during the harvest in October. We work fourteen, sixteen hour days. The rest of the year it’s nice. There’s not much to do during winter. We’ve worked together for six or seven years. We’re all from around here, except for her,” pointing to the other woman, “she’s from Paris, doesn’t like the city. We all have relatives who work around here. Families stay and work here, and we get paid pretty well. That’s why good Champagne is so expensive.” They all smiled. “There’s not a lot of turnover. People stay and work for a long time. There’s lots of old people.”
Anna asked, “You’re about my age. Don’t you want to go to the city? Paris?”
One of the guys said, “We go, but we come back. It can be boring here, but there’s something I like. The outsides of the buildings and houses are really old, but the insides are modern. I don’t believe in God, but there’s something about all the old churches. It feels good, seeing them. Woody Allen said he doesn’t like going to the country because there’s nowhere to take a walk after dinner. But that’s what I like. I take walks around the towns. Feels good.”
Catherine asked the other woman, “You have kids?”
She said, “No, but when I do, this is a good place for them. Like he said, there’s lots of old people around, and they like kids, and help take care of them. The estates compete with each other to sell their wine, but the families are good to each other. Mostly. People know each other, say hello. Mostly. Champagne is big business, big corporations. Marketing. But for us, it’s pretty nice. Mostly.” She smiled.
Anna sensed the guy who asked if he would get a percentage of the film profits was a card, so she asked him, “You got a girlfriend? You and her drink Champagne, have fun?”
“They, and I, do drink together and have fun, yes.”
“You mean you have more than one girlfriend?”
“I’m an equal opportunity operation. I don’t discriminate against Americans, like some French people do. A growing firm. I’m recruiting new members. You interested?”
“I’m part Russian. Spent time in Saint Petersburg. You like Russian women?”
“Da. Don’t worry, we’ll warm your cold feet up fast. You bring the caviar, we’ll bring the Champagne.”
He looked over at Catherine, opened his smartass mouth, started to ask her if she wanted to join his team. His female workmate, the one who smacked him earlier, was ready for this. He got about two words out to Catherine before he got smacked again. Hard. Catherine laughed, she was used to solicitations from young and old, male and female. She looked over at Spielberg, said, “You gonna leave that in?”