“Good heavens, you’re naked,” roared Jeanne Moreau, the French cinematic legend, as I entered my bedroom, dripping from the shower, on the first day that Merchant Ivory came to film in our East Side apartment.
“I’m afraid that my coiffeur has commandeered your room,” she laughed, seeing my surprise, “and now you will never find your underwear!”
I was not the only one caught with my pants down that day.
Later, I remembered a friend’s dire warning when I first told him about the movie. “You must be out of your mind!” he yelled. “One, they’ll destroy your apartment. Film crews do. Everyone knows that. And two, your building will go ballistic.” I chose to ignore him.
A ferment of activity had consumed the apartment I share on 66th Street with Barbara Ziegler—my Auntie Mame, a wisecracking octogenarian—since I invited Ismail Merchant to meet her and see the apartment.
“I-deeeal,” the producer purred on seeing the double-height living room. “This is the perfect apartment to shoot The Proprietor. All the stars, Jeanne Moreau, Nell Carter, and Sam Waterston, will love it.” Beguiled by his famously persuasive eyes, B.Z. (as Barbara is known) melted. “It’s yours if the building agrees,” she said.
Giddy as kites in a hurricane, we called the building superintendent. As if summoned to the headmistress’s study, he rushed to pay his respects to B.Z. “The most exciting thing has happened,” she began. “Perhaps you saw Howards End and A Room With a View? Well! Merchant Ivory want to film my apartment in August.”
“I’ll have to ask the management first,” cautioned the super. Getting the building’s managing agent on the telephone, he asked, “Does Mrs. Ziegler need permission for Merchant Ivory to shoot a movie in her apartment?” A pregnant pause. “No? And there’s no need to tell the co-op board, if all the filming takes place in her apartment, not the lobby? “Thank you.”
This news came as a delightful surprise; our building is infamous for its board. Tongues wagged last year when it refused to allow Caroline Roehm to buy Baron Guy de Rothschild’s apartment across the hall. But cheered by the management’s assurance, B.Z. signed the movie contract. No one could guess the calamity that lay ahead. I decided to keep a diary, scribbled on scraps of paper as I walked around the set.
Tuesday, August 22, 1995
Ismail arrives early. The super is already becoming agitated. The film equipment was supposed to arrive early this morning and is not here until midafternoon. The extent of it is awesome, but B.Z., who normally winces when a chair is moved to the left or right of where she placed it 30 years ago, is enjoying the circus.
Seeing the gigantic production truck parked outside, I urge that it be parked elsewhere. “Impossible,” says the location manager. “It contains the generator, and there’s no place else to park it.”
Wednesday, August 23, 1995
The first day of filming. The crew is here, all 35 of its members crammed into our apartment. I am at my computer when the screen fizzles and the air-conditioning grumbles to a halt. Venturing out to discern the cause, I find chaos. Fernando, the hairdresser flown in from Paris, is in tears, wailing, “Elp, ‘elp! Her hairs will be a fallen soufflé.” Nell Carter, splendid and serene amid this vortex of confusion, sits reading her lines beneath a giant hair dryer, which has blown every fuse in the house.
Ismail is on the set, ignorant of the hair wars upstairs, while B.Z. descends the staircase in scarlet Chinese pajamas to greet Jeanne Moreau. They converge like visiting empresses, bowing with compliments.
Running downstairs to assess the mood of the building, I see a pious board member parading the sidewalk, clucking with disapproval as she surveys the truck. Soon, filming is under way. I tiptoe in to join the hush behind the cameras. “Quiet! Rolling! Action!” Nell Carter saunters onto the set. To my horror, the portable telephone in my hand starts to ring. Fierce stares. “I’m so sorry,” I whimper. “Keep rolling,” says Ismail, managing a smile. Whoops.
Fearful rumblings in the bowels of the building: Donald Rosenfeld, the producer, has been called to the basement by the super. He returns, grim-faced, to report that the board, angry because it has not been consulted, has issued a decree that filming must cease. An icy letter arrives from Brown Harris Stevens, the management company, instructing Merchant Ivory to “withdraw forthwith from the premises.”
Told of the problem, B.Z. is in a rage. “They can’t do that. I’ve lived in this building for 30 years, longer than anyone else on that board!”
Half an hour later, a missive arrives from Milbank Tweed, lawyers for the co-op, drawing her attention to a paragraph in the proprietary lease forbidding nonresidential activity in the building without the board’s permission. “How would I know what’s in the lease?” wails B.Z. “I can’t read legal documents. Why didn’t the management handle that?” Seeing Ismail’s stricken expression, she sobs, “I’ve always behaved like a lady. How can they do this?”
In the face of such devilish goings-on, an infectious esprit de guerre fills the air. Springing into crisis mode, Ismail and Donald get on the telephone, calling the mayor’s office, New York senators, champions of the arts, powerful lawyers, and sympathetic neighbors, beseeching them to intercede with the board. Patricia Reed Scott, commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre, and Broadcasting, tells me that she was in the dentist’s chair when her cellular phone rang. “It’s Ismail Merchant and he says it’s urgent,” she explained to the dentist, jumping out of his chair. When the receptionist stepped into the waiting room to remind her that the dentist was still waiting, a fellow patient shouted, “Don’t disturb her! She’s fighting for artistic freedom!” The receptionist rolled her eyes and growled, “Jeez. This is so New Yawk.”
Jeanne, Nell, and Sam are available for only a few days. This is serious. The calls go on into the night. Donald asks me to be at the front door at six the next morning just in case there is any trouble.
Thursday, August 24, 1995
Bleary-eyed and heading downstairs at the appointed hour, I hear yelling at the front door. “You promised us we could be here until 1 P.M.,” shouts Donald. “You’re right,” says the beleaguered super, “but now my job’s on the line, and I can’t allow more than two of you up at a time. Listen, you and I are caught in the middle of something bigger than the both of us.”
I find Nell Carter out on the street, looking restless. “I’m here to work, honey,” she says. “They told me where the board president lives, and I notice his window’s open,” she adds, laughing, “so I figured I’d give him a little show!” She launches into her famous tap routine from Ain’t Misbehavin’, then belts out a rousing dawn chorus of “There’s No Business Like Show Business”!
When two nuns from the church across the street cross traffic to take in the show, they recognize her and applaud. Nell asks if they know what is happening. “Is this a racist thing, Sisters?” she asks. “Oh, no, Miss Carter, it’s just that building,” say the nuns with a sigh. (continued on page 130)
Mason continued from page 71
Ismail arrives, anxious to get upstairs. To his astonishment, he is told by a remorseful doorman that he and Nell Carter must take the service entrance. With the super nowhere in sight, I cannot appeal on their behalf. Just as the dark-skinned Nell and Ismail are riding the garbage elevator, the super appears and escorts Jeanne Moreau to the front elevator. “He was very kind to me,” says Jeanne. “He said, ‘Miss Moreau, I am so embarrassed.’ I said, ‘You know me?’ He said, ‘Of course. I saw you on 60 Minutes.’ ” She laughs. “You can spend your whole life making movies, but all they remember is 60 Minutes!”
Ismail is in my bedroom consulting with Jeanne. “Should we try to reason with the board?” he asks. “Oh, Ismail,” she replies sadly, “why should we stay here in the claws of these people who hate us?”
That evening, the telephone rings. Miraculous news. Hamish Bowles, a friend who is looking for an apartment, has just seen a townhouse across the street that looks perfect for the movie. I arrange to see it first thing in the morning.
Friday, August 25, 1995
Time is running out. The panic is audible in Donald’s voice. “Beep me if there’s any possibility it might work,” he pleads.
I dash across the street to see the townhouse. Promising. It is empty, it has high ceilings, and there is no co-op. Fortunately, it has just been bought by Dr. Joseph Santo, owner of the Sign of the Dove, who was there when I shared the piano with the late President Nixon at Jeane Kirkpatrick’s birthday party.
Joe recalls the bizarre duet. “Yeah. Nixon played bass; you played top,” he laughs. “What can I do for you?” Donald explains the urgency of the situation, begging for mercy. Immovable at first, Joe capitulates when his secretary Leonor remonstrates that Nell Carter is her favorite singer and reminds him that his 16-year-old nephew wants to get into the film business. “Can he hang out on the set?” he asks. You bet.
Within minutes Ismail has arrived with the art department. He is overjoyed. “Don’t you love it?” I ask Kevin Thompson, the production designer. “Sure,” he says, “but do you know what this means? We have to paint, furnish, and decorate a townhouse in two days.”
Later, I rush home to get a paint chip from our living room. They want to re-create B.Z.’s apartment in the new space.
Saturday, August 26, 1995
As I step out early in the morning, the doorman is smiling. “You know what’s da beauty of this location?” he chuckles. “It’s gonna drive the board crazy.”
B.Z. has been persuaded to lend every stick of her furniture for the new location. “But I’m not having it dragged through the service exit,” she firmly. “Not after the hell this building’s put me through.” Consulted, the super says he has no choice. “There’s a war on and I’ve got a family to feed,” he says. “I can’t afford to get fired.”
Monday, August 28, 1995
B.Z. is wailing about her disappearing treasures. Everything has gone, even the carousel rabbit. “I love dat rabbit,” says a doorman, sounding like a sentimental Elmer Fudd, as it gets wheeled outside.
“You should see the members of the board peering out of their windows as Mrs. Ziegler’s furniture moves over there,” laughs another doorman. “You couldn’t make this stuff up. It’s hilarious.”
Tuesday, August 29, 1995
I run into Nell Carter. “Tell Mrs. Ziegler I’m sorry for what happened to her. She’s such a nice, gentle, un-fake kinda lady. Tell her I’d like to move a few of my friends into that building, like Oprah Winfrey, Mike Tyson, and Barbra Streisand, and see how that board’d handle it. If I lived there, I’d put a sand pit in that uptight lobby and let my 8-year-old kids have some fun!”
“Tell me, Christopher, has the board apologized to Mrs. Ziegler?” asks Ismail when I see him. “No?” Because it is quite wicked, what they have done to her. There are ways of dealing with people. She is a lady with dignity and class, and they have treated her like an urchin.”
Wednesday, August 30, 1995
I nip across the street to see how filming is going. The buzz is good, but no one has forgotten the nightmare of being thrown out of our building. “They’re like city-states, these co-op boards,” observes James Ivory when I see him on the street. “We’ve filmed in places that are like a roll call of the great cultural sights of the world. It’s funny to think how obdurate this board has been, when you consider we have been allowed to shoot in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, the Grande Galerie at the Louvre, and inside Santa Croce in Florence. You know who gave us permission? The Pope.”
As I return to the building, I am cheered by the doormen. “We love those guys from the film company,” says one. “We’ve been going over there getting their autographs. Nicest people we ever had in here.”
Friday, September 1, 1995
In the elevator, a neighbor is railing about the board’s president. “He’s worse than Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole put together,” he carps. “This is the new Contract With America, and it’s called ‘Fuck You.’ ” “Come on, you have to feel sorry for him,” his wife retorts. “He’s only trying to protect the building. And he must hate looking like such a schmuck.”
The only scene left to shoot is an apartment lobby. I call the board president of the smart building two doors down. “Merchant Ivory?” they say. “Well, I’ll have to ask the board, but I can’t see any problem.” An hour later, she calls back sounding cheery. “We’re rather looking forward to it.”
Published in New York magazine on October 9, 1995.