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09/30/2007
Different Flags
Important Moments in Different Flags, the Treatment
1. Ani, 26, receives a telegram from Argentina. Her Uncle Juan has died.
2. She decides to go against the wishes of her family. To pay for the ticket, she sells her jewelry.
3. Once she arrives there, the neighbors who pick her up at the airport tell her that her widowed aunt has been asked to vacate the house she and her husband have been renting for 16 years.
4. Ani, seeing her Tia again after almost three years, cannot help but notice that she has changed for the worse.
5. Ani is introduced by her Tia to Padre Luis, her young and good-looking parish priest of San Vicente
6. Ani and Tia go to San Tomas, a town near San Vicente, to seek legal advice. The lawyer offers them no hope.
7. Tia suggests to Ani that she go back to San Francisco. Things are going to be tougher from now on. Ani refuses, and convinces Tia to let her stay for at least three months.
8. On one of their walks around San Vicente Ani and Tia run into Padre Luis. Ani refuses to shake hands with him because her hand has warts.
9. A meeting with the landlady is unsuccessful. They will have to move out.
10. Ani decides to help her Tia find a new house. She likes San Vicente, but she is beginning to realize that her feelings for Luis are not a passing fancy.
11. With this in mind, Ani joins a church group. Maybe somebody will say something awful about Luis and that will stop her feelings. he search for the new house is far from over when Ani receives news that her father has cancer. She must go back to SF at the same time that she is torn over leaving her Tia—and Luis. Before her trip, she tells him that she loves him.
12. Soon after Ani returns to SF her father dies.
13. Ani goes back to Argentina to help Tia get ready for the eviction lawsuit.
14. Ani and Luis meet again. He has not answered the letter Ani wrote him from SF. He promises they will talk about it. He agrees to help Tia.
15. The landlady wins the lawsuit. Ani and Tia move away.
16. Tia dies. Luis offers Ani his condolences.
17. He tells her he loves her.
18. Ani rejects him
19. She goes back to California to a new and uncertain future.
Main Characters:
1. Ani, 26—a woman in transition
2. Tia, 68—a frail but gutsy widow
3. Padre Luis, 28—the neighborhood parish priest
Supporting Characters:
1. Olga—the next-door neighbor
2. Doña Teresa—another neighbor
3. Members of Ani´s family of origin
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Carol´s Story
Carol And Her Story: Carol Remembers Her Grand Past
Life From WW2 England to The Argentina of the 40s and 50s
Working Title: An Englishwoman in Buenos Aires
For Carol, life began in England around 1925.
Joyce (her real name) is on leave. She and another A.T.S. both go for a drink in a well-known bar on Regent Street. It is almost time to leave when Joyce stands under mistletoe and is kissed by a young captain by the name of Douglas Flanagan. It is friendship/love at first sight for both of them. Joyce and her captain spend the next 48 hours (of their leave) together –then both go back to their respective regiments. They write to each other for 5 months until Douglas asks her to marry him. Joyce accepts, gets permission from her commanding officer, and then travels to Scotland, where Douglas has been sent with his unit. Joyce and Douglas are married in Scotland, and they spend 2 wonderful weeks together until the order comes for his regiment to go to Liverpool. Liverpool is the port city where the allied troops are getting ready for the invasion of Europe, which is occupied by the enemy. Douglas leaves, and Joyce does not see him again for two years. In the meantime, Joyce, who was only 18, meets another army officer, an Argentine of Belgian ancestry who has enlisted as a volunteer. They have an affair and Joyce becomes pregnant. The war ends, and Douglas, her husband, who at first was listed as missing, comes back to the United Kingdom. In the meantime, the Belgian-Argentine officer leaves the about-to-give-birth Joyce temporarily. He promises to return for her and the baby.
Joyce is now alone in London—a bomb has killed her mother a few months earlier. Douglas, her husband, returns from the War and finds her quite pregnant by another man. He says he still loves her, but he will not accept the child. He suggests she give it up for adoption once it is born. She refuses, and they divorce. The Argentine/Belgian comes back when the baby girl is three-months-old. They stay in the United Kingdom for a year, then Joyce, her new husband and the baby travel to Argentina. By this time, Joyce is pregnant again.
Joyce finds life in Argentina very different from what it was in the UK: there is no such thing as food ration, since there is more than plenty to eat, and the women she runs into are beautifully dressed. Joyce is overwhelmed by the abundance of it all.
After a few years, Joyce comes to realize that her wealthy Argentine/Belgian husband is not exactly what she expected him to be. He had a very definite attraction as far as other women were concerned. This was extremely difficult for her to cope with. Without her knowledge, most of his extramarital affairs took place in her own home. One day she discovers him making love to the mistress of his own father in the bathroom.
Her life in Argentina is one of parties, trips and jewelry from Cartier Jewelers. But behind closed doors her husband soon turns out to be a jealous man. He slaps his wife in public on several occasions, yet his affairs with other women continue. She stays, yet she herself has an affair. But when her husband leaves her to get a divorce, she wishes they could all live under one roof, a happy, normal dysfunctional family going about their business.
The novel starts in 1942 and ends in 1961. It goes from the main character being a 17-year-old British army recruit in WW2 to Bs. As. in the 1940s and 50s to 1961 when she has been divorced. She goes from adolescent British Army officer to young married immigrant to sophisticated socialite in Argentina/Punta del Este. And from divorcee to the longtime mistress of a nice man with alcohol problems.
Carol started to drink during her first years in Argentina because she was shy in this new country, and drinking helped her cope with all the changes going on around her. Later it became a way to drown her sorrows.
Will the story end in 1961, or will it end in 2001, with Carol believing she’s dying of something in her pancreas? I think it’s best for the story to end in 1961, when she’s still young and beautiful. It would make a nice contemporary period piece.
And Carol now, almost seventy-six years old, with that aristocratic bearing, especially with her done up short grayish hair and a black outfit. She looks like a duchess living in the wrong environment. She’s a duchess living in the boondocks.
. She just can’t forget her aristocratic past. There’s no real way she can get adjusted to what her life is now and she doesn’t have the money to lead the kind of life she once did. Drinking to forget only numbs her. It makes her feel worse. And then she stops and eats nothing except for a yogurt. Funny thing about Carol: she looks great from a distance.
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Suitcase
Displacement: Being Nowhere
I always had a suitcase hanging from my hands. I was never safe. I was never sure about anything. Could I start a new project, a new anything? No, there was no time. I was leaving town. I had to fly. I would not be around to finish it. In that other place, the next place—wherever that would be. There, in that Promised Land I would start to live and do things there. I would be able to be myself there because it was going to be the home I had always searched for: My real home. A place where I would have the warmth and protection I had always wanted.
It was quite obvious that to be displaced had given me an up-in-the-air feeling. I kept
myself walking on that tightrope for a long time. There was nothing else I could do except say good-bye over and over again. There was nothing I could do except cry on the inside and smile on the outside while I did it. There was nothing else except cheer up the one or two people I would be leaving behind.
Should I accept this, accept that; accept this other thing, I would ask myself. Which is the right one, the right way? Which is the one I want? Where is it that I belong? Not in my own backyard—not anymore. Not in my lifetime.
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Hollywood Stud
My Hollywood Years and Beyond
Oh, yes, my dears. I was the wife of a movie star. My husband was what they called a real Latin Lover type. What a bastard he was, always strutting and showing off his manly charms! And his affairs with other women, just like the fans that adored him, were legion. “Osvaldo Saavedra certainly has it,” people would say to me almost daily. I would nod, smile and ask myself: “What does he have that he hasn’t already shown me a million times? Beats me.” But people still flocked to see his movies. Maybe they were fools. Maybe his movies just helped us become rich.
Osvaldo—you would think that would be a hard name to pronounce in English, but no. People learned it very quickly because of their enthusiasm for him. Of course, they twisted the o around a little bit and made it sound like ou, but that was natural. After all, they were only Americans, and they didn’t know any better. But they did love Osvaldo’s films and his Latin accent—the same accent that came in so handy when it just wasn’t convenient for him to be understood. Poor Osvaldo! He was a big baby trapped in the body of a hunk. He was a little boy in search of guidance, too shy and vulnerable for words. But that was only when the wrong mood struck him. At other times, when he was sure of himself he was, as I said, a real bastard. Very conniving and clever at getting what he wanted from almost anyone. I envied him. How does he do it? I asked myself that question all the time. He drives people nuts, but he seems so lovable that they have no choice but to give in to him.
Whatever he wanted, it was his just like that. And nobody, nobody at all, dared ask any questions. He was Osvaldo, and that was good enough for them. Osvaldo deserved all the privileges of stardom—he was It, the Latin It Boy par excellence. And, I, unfortunately, was the It Boy’s wife, his faithful keeper. I was the one who knew all the secrets and never breathed a word about them.
I can see him now. I can see Osvaldo wearing white trousers, a dark yellow shirt, dark sunglasses and a dark blue scarf around his neck. How jaunty and sure of himself he looked! How modern he seemed! He was always wearing the latest fashion, the latest thing from Paris, or Milan or even Hollywood. People used to say how coqueto Osvaldo was and how much his vanity amused them. It made them smile. He was a little boy right up to the end. My husband was the child we never had.
But it is not what I want to talk about all the time—it’s always been Osvaldo this, Osvaldo that. Enough already of that man! I can’t remember him forever, as if my own life didn’t exist. I have interests of my own; there are things that I can do to distract myself. But it’s him, always Osvaldo day and night. I’m sick of it! But Osvaldo is like a fatal disease and even now I can’t shake him off. Nothing I do allows me to forget. The man is everywhere—and I mean everywhere! He’s everywhere I don’t want him to be. Osvaldo is a ghost that shadows every minute of my life. His friends were no better than he was. The men were horny, at least most of them were, and the women all seemed to want my husband for themselves. I didn’t really mind that, except that they made me laugh: they were so obvious about their lust for him. They were so downright stupid! These women were sophisticated actresses and film executives? Nobody would have guessed that about them. They act like naïve schoolgirls around Osvaldo, always waiting for him to do something, say something special to them. And they never stopped coming over to our mansion, using the most absurd excuses to try to see him.
Finally I had enough, and one day I told Osvaldo so. The man just laughed in my face. Those women mean nothing to me, he said in his fakest Latin Lover voice. You are the only one, my darling, my sweet gauchita. Being nice to them is good for business. These silly fools expect me to play the smooth Latin Lover. How could I possibly disappoint those poor girls? No, mi gauchita, I can’t do that to them. They would never forgive me. Besides, there might be another Latin Lover waiting in the wings to take my place. Why should he take all the fame and all the money that belongs to me, to us?
Osvaldo lost his accent when he spoke with me, but with those women, his dear fans, you would think he’d just stepped off the boat coming over from Argentina. Even I could hardly understand him. But Osvaldo was right: the foreign accent was very good for business.
I met him in the early 1940s. I had gone down to Buenos Aires with Lisa, my best friend. Osvaldo was a waiter in a café downtown. He had the most beautiful dark brown eyes I’d ever seen and a smile even better than William Holden’s. When Osvaldo smiled, you could tell he meant it. He had his faults (and they were many), but he was no fake. Whatever else he was, Osvaldo was genuine. He didn’t seem to be a real person; he actually was one. And that drew people to him.
I thought that for a waiter, he was a little uppity. But his face was charming and sensitive. It was a good natured and ambitious young man’s face. He certainly had a virile, Latin lover face. He was no Valentino, but I’ll say one thing for him: Osvaldo had sex appeal to spare. No wonder he became Hollywood’s top Latin boy. And I became his keeper, his unofficial Mama wife.
His English was almost flawless, except when he had an audience. Then his accent was nice and thick, like an ad for a trip to South America. And he did look like a high class Latin, with his good looks and his refined ways. Even when he wore slacks and a plain white shirt, he still stood out.
Yea, he always stood out. There would be other handsome and sexy men at a party, but he would be the one women would gather around. When he walked in, they all stared. The men, of course, hated his guts. Osvaldo was so male, he had so much virility, that they just had to envy him. What does this guy have, anyway? They asked. But, he wasn´t one of them. Osvaldo had an exotic accent and good looks to go with it. The other men were the usual, there was nothing out of the ordinary about them.
How, did I, his wife, put up with his numerous liaisons? And, a more obvious question: Why did I put up with them, with him? Prestige is the answer to both.
How many women can say they´re married to the Great Latin Lover? Hardly any.
Yes, yes, I loved him. I was passionate about the guy. Nobody quite like him, as they always told me. But he was also a pain in the neck.
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Forbidden Love in Argentina
My Forbidden Love: Newsletter Two
There was no question about it.
I knew I loved him. I loved him, with or without the white clerical collar around his neck. I loved his eyes. I loved the way they looked at me even when they were not supposed to. And in the beginning, I loved running into him anywhere and everywhere. Later, when my love became something more solid and magical, I grew to hate running into him when he was surrounded by a roomful of people. How could we have time for each other that way? I wanted to steal him away from them, but I was scared. I dared, but I did not dare do it. And how could I dream that a future for us actually existed when people called him Padre? Was he a Father to me? Was he replacing my own father, my first authority figure and was that why I loved him? No. I have thought about it often since then. I have gone over it in my mind, and if I am convinced about anything, it is this: the man I loved was a man. He was a man with faults, a man with some good qualities. To me he was not a priest. My heart did not see him that way. It refused to tell me lies. My heart did not feel him as a priest, a hot subject for some juicy gossip before, during, or after Mass. I understood he way I felt when we were in the same room together. And I discovered that we did not have to touch to love each other. Had they known about it, the gossipmongers would have wrong: sex was important, but it was not what it was all about.
We felt our love differently. We were in an unusual situation, and nobody needed to know anything about it. We were hidden lovers and we played our roles accordingly.
There were no rules except for the ones we made.
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Malena
Malena, A Woman’s Life in the Buenos Aires of the 40s
It takes place in San Telmo, one of the most traditional (and Bohemian) neighborhoods in the city. It´s the neighborhood where she was born. The name Malena is also the name of a famous tango, the name of an unhappy woman who drinks to hide her pain and sorrow. And, judging by the lyrics of the tango, Malena had a lot of pain and sorrow in her life. But why did they call the protagonist of my new book Malena? Why when she was not that unhappy? Not at first, anyway.
She didn´t want to get married. A carefree existence: Malena wanted that more than anything else in the world.
She didn´t like to be tied down to anything or any one.
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Statistics
Sunday, September 30, 2007: It is estimated that 10 tourists per day in Buenos Aires are robbed by thieves. This information has come out after F.F. Coppola´s house was broken into the other day. The tourists make complaints to the police and the Tourist Protection office.
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09/28/2007
Correction
Friday, September 28, 2007: The Coppola house address is Gorriti 4746, not Gorriti 4776.
18:45 Posted in Film | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
Welcome Back, Mr. Coppola!
Thursday, September 27, 2007: Last night, at around 10:45, 3 kids broke into Francis Ford Coppola´s Palermo house at Gorriti 4776. There were 3 employees inside, one American and 2 Rumanians. The thieves got away with money, jewels, and 5 notebook computers. In these computers Mr. Coppola had the original script and the back up copy of Tetro, the new movie he´ll be making here with Matt Dillon and Javier Badem.
The way the crime rate has gone up here, it was only a question of time before something like this happened. The employees say that the youngest thief must have been around 18, the oldest in his 20s.
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09/23/2007
Disappointed
Sunday, September 23, 2007: I am taking a writing class here in BA. Last Monday, the teacher invited one of his former students to come give us a talk. This man has recently published a book of short stories. After he read one of them, the class asked him questions like What inspires you? What is your writing discipline? Who are your favorite authors? When two of my classmates wanted to know if he had submitted his work to editors of well known publishing houses and what had these editors said, the teacher cut off the answers. Then another student asked a question about money. How much had being published cost him? Again, the teacher said no. We will not touch that subject.
This surprised me because who wants to write for free? Being published is hard enough and we, who have that luck, should do everything within our power to make our work known. One of the rewards we need to seek is sales. If someone pays for our book, it means validation. It means that our efforts to reach that reader have not been in vain.
The teacher is very good and knowledgeable and the story read by the guest student was interesting and well written.
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Incredible
Sunday, September 23, 2007: Now, over 4 weeks later, it is clear that I probably made a mistake when I let my new dog go. He was a puppy and puppies are a handful, but this feeling of missing him surprises me. I never expected it to last this long. I know he´s doing well because I went to see him the other day, but it does not satisfy me. I want his life force, his vitality again.
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09/22/2007
NY Times Letter
Dear Editor, I am glad that the mortgage rules will be revised, though, unfortunately it is too late to help me. My condo in Atlanta foreclosed in November 2005. I was a victim of predatory lending and mortgage fraud. Yes, I signed the papers, but I trusted the mortgage officer and the real estate woman who was working with him. They were the professionals, the ones who should have known better.
I think that if I have suffered greatly as a result of this horrible experience, they and people like them should, at the very least, be put out of business. It is all about money. It always is, at least to them, because of their commisions, etc. But to us, the borrowers, buying a house means wanting to have a home. Emotions are involved even when we are advised to think things coldly, in a business-like way.
No one has a right to play with or take advantage of our situation, especially at such a vulnerable time. Email: haedo1881@yahoo.com
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Spring Day
Friday, September 21, 2007: Today is another big day in Argentina. The first day of Primavera is always celebrated by young and old alike, mostly by teenagers and college students. The parks around Palermo are crowded with kids and policemen and women watching the kids. Flowers and happiness and beer and condoms everywhere.
00:18 Posted in Leisure | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this
Kid Crooks
Friday, September 21, 2007: Groups of kids, the oldest not even 13 years old, the youngest around 6, are doing their crooked little thing in the trendy barrio of Palermo. Something straight out of Oliver Twist, with a 21st century Fagin? Maybe.They move around Avenida Santa Fe cross street Bulnes and they hold up pharmacies, dress shops and other businesses. It is said that their leader is an adult, sometimes referred to as Tio, but he may not be their real uncle. He, neighbors suspect, tells them which stores to go into, how much to take from the cashier, what to do with the owners and/or employees. If these kids are on drugs, like the notorious and cheap paco, that is no longer an excuse for their deeds.
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09/17/2007
Colectivo Express
Monday, September 17, 2007: 12:45 P.M. Last Friday, on the number 17 colectivo, a passenger asked a 21 year old guy for directions. How do I get to such and such a street? The guy gave him an answer, but instead of hearing the word gracias, he was asked to get off the colectivo with his fellow passenger. The colectivo was crowded, but nobody paid much attention. Before getting off, the thief took the guy´s cell, his wallet and was disappointed to discover that he didn´t have an ATM card. So, the thief asked him to call his parents, who just happened to be away in Bariloche. The kid didn´t tell them what was happening, but they understood anyway. And they gave him the ATM pin number. Then the thief´s accomplice appeared and they took as much of his ATM money as they could.
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09/16/2007
Rain
Sunday, September 16, 2007: Today is just very grey and coldish, but the rains started coming down earlier this week, Wednesday and Thursday. There was the usual thunder and lightning, the usual window rattling, the wind blowing hard and treating people like puppets on a string. Spring doesn´t want to come on the 21th. Looks like it´s playing hard to get.
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09/11/2007
Palermo Viejo
Tuesday, September 11, 2007: Yesterday afternoon took me to Palermo and Palermo Viejo again. It was raining, not much, just a little bit, and I walked from the 6000 block of Calle Soler to Calles Honduras, Costa Rica and El Salvador. Some of the houses are really beautiful, and I jotted down the addresses in my notebook. As is the custom in Buenos Aires, there is a new house next to a 1900 building. Many of the old houses have the architect´s name written on the wall, while others tell you who contructed it or who the civil engineer was.
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09/10/2007
Fake Kidnap
Monday, September 10, 2007: The kidnapped 9- month mother to be in the provincia of Santiago del Estero was not kidnapped after all. It turned out that she, her husband and a friend concocted the plot to get money from an aunt. It seemed strange that she was able to use her cell phone freely while supposedly hidden somewhere by her kidnappers. The sum of money that she requested was about 10,000 Argentine pesos, about 3,300 U.S. Dollars. Now all 3 have been arrested.
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09/09/2007
Coppola in BA
Sunday, September 9, 2007: Last night I was able to go to the always trendy and hip barrio of Palermo. On the 4700 block of Calle Gorriti, cross street Malabia, I saw the house that F.Ford Coppola has bought. It´s across the street from an ice cream parlor. Because the weather was warm (over 25 Centigrade) people were seated at sidewalk tables chatting and eating lots of ice cream. Gorriti has some nice houses, some in the traditional old fashioned style, and one or two modern brick mansions. When I came back home, I found out that Coppola had returned to BA yesterday to start preparations for the movie he´ll be making in February.
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Amor Prohibido--Forbidden Love
Hola Programa Todo Por Hacer, Para mi lo prohibido fue un amor que tuve con un cura hace años. En muchos aspectos lo senti como algo maravilloso e inolvidable. Tan inolvidable que he escrito una novela basada en ese amor. Eugenia Renskoff
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09/06/2007
Wheels
Thursday, September 6, 2007: Car sales have been going more than well here. It is said that about 50,000 new cars have been sold in the last month or so. This is a historic record as far as the industry is concerned.
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09/05/2007
Kidnapped
Wednesday, September 5, 2007: In the provincia of Santiago del Estero, a 9-month pregnant woman was kidnapped by 4 or 5 people. A call to her family demanded a payment of 10,000 pesos (about 3,300 USDollars) for her release.
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09/04/2007
Gallery Night
Tuesday, September 4, 2007: Last Friday´s monthly Gallery Night in Buenos Aires was one of the best I have attended. The art, highlighting contemporary and past local art, was extremely good. There were paintings by Berni, Splimbergo among others, and it was usually very well displayed. The prices are no bargain, but they they are cheaper than they would be elsewhere. Musicians played jazz on the sidewalk and, while tourists and residents enjoyed the paintings, pink Chandon champagne was served in tall glasses. Women wearing mink jasckets and coats chatted it up with friends and acquaintances.
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