Chapter 38

The Movie I am most proud of

The second script Jiks had given me to review was a mess.  And boring.  And nasty.  Another American missionary.  Another bastard.  This time he had a daughter.  Small role.  Just an annoying young shit.  Always saying the worst things at the worst times.  Basically she needed a punch in the mouth in act one and needed another in act three.  I wasn’t sure anyone would sit through the film long enough to see if she got punched or not.  

So I rewrote the whole damn thing.  The missionary and wife?  Predictable, pedantic, arrogant, annoying.  No character development.  I killed them off in scene two.  Some disease came to town, and they died.  Good riddance.  The daughter (and most of the town) also gets the disease, but she survives.  She is twelve and alone in the world.  The local Confucian Scholar takes her in.  She joins the other girls in the household.

And that becomes the heart of the film – girls growing up.  We see them doing laundry together, cooking together, minding the younger children together.  And talking.  Scene after scene it is just girls talking about the world they see around them.  They have dreams.  They have hopes.  They have a bond among themselves.

In two quick scenes the girls grow.  Glimpses.  Laughter.  A happy childhood.  And then, we see the girls become women.  Marriage.  Talk now is of matchmakers and husbands.  First one girl, then another finds a husband.  Much of the film is now elaborate weddings.  Beautiful gowns, colorful ceremonies, happy women finding the men of their lives.  Fully half the film is about preparing for and getting through one marriage ceremony after another.  Laughter, love, and excitement.  Beauty.  Passion.  We see the girls blossom.

Permit a cultural comment here.  Yes, I wrote about the beauties of marriage in the hope I might move the film’s director to take the final step and make our marriage official.  I wanted him to look at me and decide it was time.  But I was also responding to a need I had become aware of.  Chinese women are hesitant about marriage.  They are career oriented, and after many years of college, and years building a place for themselves in some company, they have limited interest in getting married and staying home with kids.  Legally, all restrictions on kids are now off.  No more one-child policy.  Couples could have two, three, or ten kids.  Did they?  No.

There is pressure on women to marry – generally from their parents.  And there is some criticism.  Single women are often referred to as “left-over women.”  Not a very kind or cuddly phrase.  But demographers have already determined that China’s population has begun to shrink, and they see that shrinkage accelerating.  My movie, with all the scenes about marriage, was a response.  I guessed it would be popular with the government (it was), but more importantly, I thought young women would enjoy it.  At least it would give them something to talk about with their peers.

But back to the movie.  All the girls in the household have now gotten married except one – me.  Now twenty years old, I kneel before the Confucian scholar and ask that he use a matchmaker to find me a husband.  Would I marry a Chinese man?  Of course.  A matchmaker is found, a prospective husband is found, we court, we marry.  I am in love.  Our marriage is perfect.

Now for the drama.  A young missionary arrives.  The local church has stood empty for a decade.  He moves in.  I go to see him.  He is shocked to see me.  Everyone thought I had died with my parents.  He remembers me.  We had played together briefly when our parents were in missionary training.  He is attracted to me.  I try to be helpful as he moves into the old church and home.  He interprets my helpfulness as interest in him.  I am married to a local man and dress in the local clothing.  I feel myself to be Chinese.  He sees an American woman in need of “rescue.”

Things quickly build to a climax.  He brings me into the church one day and proposes.  I tell him I am already married.  “Was it a Christian marriage?”  When I tell him no, he tells me the marriage is not valid.  I am free to marry him.  I refuse.  He backs me into a corner and things get physical.  He kisses me, and his hand starts pulling up my skirt.  I fight him off, scratching his cheek with my nails.  He forces me against a wall.  I scream.  Several men come to my rescue, including my husband.  The missionary is beaten.

What do I want done with the man?  I tell the village I just want him to leave.  He is put on a horse, and his church is burned.  The final scene is me standing in the arms of my husband.  I whisper to him; he will soon be a father.  So, happy ending.

Is the film yet another slap at American missionaries?  Yes, but it is really a small segment of the film.  The film is about girls growing, girls falling in love, girls starting their lives as wives and mothers.  Very conservative.  But it presented a vision of girls and marriage I endorsed.  I certainly endorsed it for the director.  I finished every day’s shooting knowing he had seen me in marriage costumes and seen me in the arms of another man (the actor who played my husband was gorgeous).  Get the hint, Jiks.  This woman is yours.  Take her.

We spent eight months shooting the film.  Much of it was filmed on village sets we had used before.  All of it was done in the Shanghai studios.  Jiks was able to save lots of money, all of which went into costumes.  Every girl was beautifully clothed (even when it was just us doing laundry), and every wedding ceremony was set in decorated halls or out under blossoming arbors.  Pick a dream wedding venue.  We had five that were spoken about for years.

Me?  I married next to a small pond, my hair covered in pearls, my red satin gown flowing out across a perfect lawn.  My husband came to me and took my hands as I bowed to him.  Words were spoken.  Magic was in the air.  Two ethereal creatures were joined.  My husband held me and spoke quietly to me.   A shy girl/woman, I dared to raise my eyes just once, acknowledging my acceptance of his mastery over me.  I was his wife, his love, his own.

It was a beautiful moment, and the film had many of those.  It was a two-hour long advertisement for marriage.  I knew it would be popular with young girls, with the government, and with luck – with my man.

Was every moment beautiful?  No.  I wrote in some realistic dialog.  I knew there would be love between the five girls, but also competition.  I thought back to junior high and some of the things we girls did to each other.  In the film our competition first took the form of seeking our father’s favor.  We wished to make him his favorite food, or be first to serve him, or say the right things, always looking for his attention, his smile, his nod of approval.

As we approached marriage, we competed over beauty.  Here I was at a huge disadvantage.  The four Chinese girls were gorgeous.  Perfect faces, perfect form, poetry in every step.  Delicate flowers.  And there was me.  I was “big nose.”  Yes, I wrote that in the dialog because I sometimes heard it behind my back.  True, my nose was larger than theirs.  Racial trait.  Not much I can do about that.  I had the other girls say it lightly, as a mild joke, but it seemed something that would be said.  So I put it in the dialog.  They said it.  We all laughed.

Beauty was a problem for me (I had so little), but it was a source of insecurity for all the girls.  They fussed over their hair, used far too much makeup (we pretended it existed two centuries ago), and spent endless hours sewing this or that adornment onto their clothing.  Their appearance determined their marriage partner.  It determined their life.  Yes, they were from a good family with a noble father, but still, appearance was everything.

I tried not to make that a dominant theme in the film, but it did move some of the dialog and add some interactions between the girls.  I think I added just the right amount of tension, only to release it when they got the boy of their dreams and had the wedding they had imagined all their lives.

I think I also added the competition and beauty themes because I was feeling both at home.  Jiks.  Since we filmed in the studio, I was home every night.  Jiks often worked later, but he was home eventually.  As before, I often played my part for him.  I stayed in character, the young innocent girl hoping for his favor.  And I teased the hell out of him.  Should I stand with my husband this way?  That way?  Show me.  Hold me.  Hold me as a husband holds a new bride.  Tell me how I might respond.  Where are my eyes?  Where are my hips?  How close do I stand?  I swear I drove him crazy every night we were shooting.  

Or at least I tried.  Some nights I succeeded.  Other nights?  Let’ s start with beauty.  Did I mention girls were insecure about their appearance?  How about me?  Big nose.  One night I woke up with this terrible insight.  I wasn’t hired to make films because I was beautiful, I was hired because I was not beautiful.  They didn’t want a classic Hollywood beauty.  They wanted an average American girl who would never measure up to the Chinese beauties who shared the stage.  That was me.  Average American girl.  Not repulsive, but nothing special.  How much more sleep did I get that night?  Damn little.

And how about competing for Dad’s favor?  “Dad” of course was the director.  Five young women on that sound stage.  All five being watched by Jiks.  He and the editors would determine which scenes made the final cut.  He would determine who was invited to his next film.  He could make a career, or watch it fade.  So they had many reasons to compete for his favor.  And they did.

I didn’t mind the obvious – the smiles and comments as they met him in the morning, or the careful touching and smiling if they met him at some party in the evening.  I even backed away if they wanted a private conversation.  I did mind the evenings he didn’t come home.  Worse were the two- or three-day visits to “meet the finance people.”  One of the four actresses would also be gone.  Not the same one.  He was an equal opportunity seducer.  Or did he seduce them, or did they seduce him?  Either way, I was alone in the apartment.  Then there was the morning he returned.  Back on the set.  And the woman who had been his queen for the weekend would be all smiles and light touches, making sure the rest of us knew she had been the one.  I hated those mornings.  And, yes, I hated the way people looked at me.  Sympathy.  Is there anything worse than sympathy?  Especially false sympathy.  They saw my pain and pretended to care.

As we neared the end of the film it got worse and worse.  The other girls all had agendas.  They wanted support for their next film.  And I think at least two of them wanted him.  They weren’t quite at the stage of measuring his apartment for new curtains, but they had ideas. 

They had ideas, I had fears.  I didn’t handle the fears well.  On nights when he was home, I tried to seduce, tried to entertain, tried to attract.  I had my own agenda, my own plan.  But my fears got in the way.  I would hold him, feel his hands on me, feel our hips touch, feel his lips on mine, and I would wonder if I was doing as well as the women he had slept with the night before.  Big nose.  Did he want me as much?  Could he ever want me as much?

Most nights I kept control of myself, but other nights, I just exploded.

“You said you would be faithful.  My husband.  Not my legal husband.  My secret husband.  But my husband nonetheless.  Faithful, Jiks.  You promised to be faithful.”

Here things could have gotten completely out of hand.  He could have filled the air with excuses.  I would have gotten more angry at the obvious lies.  It would have been awful.  He solved the problem in a simple way.  He picked me up, carried me to bed, and fucked me with one hand over my mouth.  No more words.  Just him and me.  Me on my back, hot and wet and soon too breathless to talk.  Or argue.  Or scream. 

But I did cry.  He wiped my tears away.  He held me, he stroked my hair, he caressed my cheek.  And at some point he said, “I’m sorry.”

A week later we would go through it all again.  Four other women.  My competitors.  I promised myself I would never again write a script with that many young women in it.  Big nose.  I would always be the woman at home crying.