A Complicated Passion by Carrie Rickey

Author:Carrie Rickey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2024-07-08T00:00:00+00:00

IN 1979, with Mathieu in tow, Demy and Varda went to Los Angeles for their second California sojourn. Both had films in the works. For Varda, it was Maria and the Naked Man, based on a real-life murder in the Echo Park neighborhood. For Demy, it was Skaterella, a contemporary Cinderella, in which the title character loses her roller skate during a midnight escape from a rink. The two directors leased an apartment in Venice and, with the help of Patricia Knop and her husband, Zalman King, combed side streets, dumpsters, and secondhand stores to furnish it.

What drew Varda to Maria and the Naked Man, the true story of a policeman who killed an unarmed man who was walking outside stark naked, was the contrast between a nonviolent hippie, an engineer and neighborhood guru, and the cop who saw him walk out of his home and shot him fatally from his cruiser. The policeman pleaded self-defense and was acquitted. Maria H, who is pregnant with the child of the deceased, wants to find out what made the cop shoot. She finds an eyewitness, Betty (a role coveted by Simone Signoret).

Varda had a “step deal”—where screenwriters are paid in installments for completed work—with the film subsidiary of the British music corporation EMI. EMI liked the script, which, rather than following the conventions of a whodunit, instead asked why. They insisted that Varda, who often said that she was intimidated by stars, cast an American star in the lead, but all the established and rising stars passed on it. In 1979, Jill Clayburgh had signed to make Starting Over, Sally Field was cast in Norma Rae, Jane Fonda was attached to 9 to 5, and Sissy Spacek to Coal Miner’s Daughter. Without a star, EMI would not proceed.

Skaterella, on the other hand, seemed like a sure thing. Roller rinks were the new discos. Francis Ford Coppola had approached Demy to write and direct this updated version of Cinderella. Instead of a glass slipper, there would be a leather roller skate. Nastassja Kinski, fresh from her breakthrough in Tess, was to play the lead. Yet it, too, was scuttled. At the time, the gossip was that despite being taught how to roller skate, Kinski found it a challenge to act and skate at the same time. What is certain is that Demy’s pal Gene Kelly was slated to direct Xanadu, a kindred musical fantasy on skates with Olivia Newton-John as Terpsichore, the muse of dance. Whether due to Kinski’s lack of confidence or because two roller skating musicals were thought to be too much for the market—or both—Skaterella was canceled.

The cratering of both projects occurred at a particularly difficult juncture for the filmmakers, further straining an already stressed relationship. Five years earlier, Demy had rushed home to be with Varda during her pregnancy. Now forty-eight, after twenty-one years of living together, he wanted to live with David Bombyk.

Only their closest friends knew of their separation. For a time, they continued to entertain as a couple in Los Angeles.

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