My Secret Life

It is the last day in August and surprisingly it has not been nearly as hot as past summers in New York City.  I am happy to wave farewell to sweat, loud music, sidewalk barbeques and stinky people on the train.  Having spent all of August in wool Victorian clothing, the cast of Londinium will be ecstatic to see some cooler weather as well…if it comes.  I have a moment to speak with Whit about his preparation for Richard and he informs me that the director asked the lead actors to read an abridged copy of “My Secret Life”.  It is an anonymous memoir encompassing eleven volumes of a gentleman and his sexual exploits with servants, whores, milkmaids, respectable ladies and a few male hustlers for good measure.  It is a staple of Victorian erotica and was first published beginning in the year 1888.  Bingo!  Anytime I see that year I immediately think Jack the Ripper now.  I can’t help it. I do a quick google search on my crackberry to find things that I cannot write in a public blog.  Sorry folks.  You’ll have to get the book or find it online for the juicy tidbits.  The only bit I can post is this li’l ole’ review:

"...a parade of genitalia, pornographic writing of the most explicit and lascivious kind .. unusual as a surviving piece of hardcore Victorian pornographic writing" --  Maya Mirsky. 

It was banned for nearly eighty years and only underground copies seemed to circulate. It was also reviled as one of the most filthy, pornographic, smutty pieces of literature in modern times.

“She wanted us to read it so that the highly erotic nature of some of our scenes, though not explicit, are flavored by the thinking that goes behind the follow through of the sexual acts.”  Whit explains.  “You know, Richard is very, very similar to Walter.  He is a womanizer. He’s addicted to sex.  Not just merely the act of it---that’s the finish line.  But the whole chase.  The whole dance, if you will.  There is the voyeurism and the manipulation and the urge to control another person.  To control that other person’s pleasure or fear.”  He adds.

“Catherine is a lot like Walter, too.”  Judy says.

“How can that be?”  I ask.

“Well, she is of a higher class than Richard.  She is a lady.  She can pull strings for him or put his very life in danger if she wants.  She can make him perform his manly duties or refuse his advances.  She likes a challenge and is willing to perform sexually deviant acts as a kind of one-upmanship with Richard. I think she’s addicted to sex, too.  No, wait.  She’s addicted to Richard.” Judy says

“Obsessed.”  I add.

“Maybe.  But she’s not shadowing him.  She has her own life. She has her entourage and her parties and her female lover.  No, she’s not obsessed.

“So what do you think the difference is between obsession/addiction and plain old love?” I ask.

“When it is destructive to you or the other person it is an addiction/obsession.  When the experience proves positive change in both participants, that’s love.”  Judy explains.

“Well done.” Whit adds.  “The book can be disturbing in its graphic nature. Walter seduces girls that are way underage.  That’s just gross.   I mean, the guy pretty much rapes some of the women and they can’t do anything about it.”

“Rape back then wasn’t much of a crime unless it happened to someone of prestige by someone of a lesser class.” Judy says.

“What we consider date rape today would have been the norm back then.”  Whit adds.

“We see Richard with several women throughout the film.  He loves the conquest.  Until he meets the one person who shows him ‘truth’.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Victoria shows him his authentic self.  She shows him his spiritual nature by acting in a spiritual and altruistic way towards him.” Whit says. “At every turn she either tends to him, helps him, encourages him or adores him.  Usually one mirrors the person they are attracted to.”

“Catherine belittles him, uses him, abuses him and almost destroys him.” Judy says.  “Who would you choose?”

“Who was this guy, this Walter?” I ask.

“He was a book collector, writer and bibliographer. Some believe it was a man named Henry Spencer Ashbee, a man of the gentry with a trust fund that he spent on wine women and more women.”  Judy explains.

“Do you think he was a murderer?” I muse.

“Do you think I think he was capable? Certainly. But it would have been a sloppy murder of passion not of precision.” She answers.

“He wasn’t Jack the Ripper.” Whit adds. “Walter loved exploiting and fornicating with women, Jack hated women.  Period.”

“Besides there was no intercourse or assault at the scene of the ripper crimes. Precision.” Judy says.  She is called on set to begin the first scene of the day.

After nearly destroying Richard leaving him to rot in prison by setting him up to be arrested, Catherine decides that honey is better than vinegar.  She arrives at his studio to try and make peace and hopefully love.  He answers her with silence and indifference.  “We play games.  That’s what we do.” Catherine coos.  A revealing bit of dialogue as to their ongoing affair.  But the rules change.  When she kisses him and the same indifference cannot be ignited into anger or rage or passion, she realizes that there is no game if there are no participants.  If she can’t press one button she’ll find another.  She amuses herself out loud that Richard believes Victoria could actually love him.  “She’s just using you.” She says just like Catherine is using him.  “You are a superb lay, but you’re common.”  Life in the East End of London requires that someone is always out to get something and so why would human nature change.  It is his Achilles heel and it plants the seeds of doubt.  She finds the button and he launches into a fit of rage.  But wait, this one is different.  This fit is exclusively combative with no hope of a sexual release.  Catherine has lost this round.  After a box of breakaway wine bottles has been successfully hurled just to the right of Catherine’s head and small canvases torn up again and again, we break for lunch as the prop and art departments clean up and restore the room.  The incomparable Keith Herron (Charles) arrives and is whisked into wardrobe and make-up for the next scene between Charles and Catherine.

Catherine knows by this time that Victoria has a thing for Richard and that Richard is falling for Victoria.  She can’t find Richard at any of his haunts and decides to pay a visit to her cousin to find out where he is hiding.  She is met by Charles and he tells her that Victoria has spontaneously gone on holiday.  Catherine stirs up trouble when she insinuates that Richard and Victoria are having an affair and they probably rendezvoused somewhere in the country.  Further she warns Charles that the ‘family’ can’t afford a scandal.  It would ruin them (Charles and Victoria).  Charles poopoos Catherine and realizes that Catherine is in love with the painter.  Judy plays it with such finesse and subtlety.  Her slip is showing as they say.  This is where her humanity resides and we can’t help but feel a pang of sympathy for her as she seems to be the one left out.  She is no longer the puppeteer, but the marionette of her emotions.

Later the director and crew shoot one of the first scenes of the movie.  Richard slips away from a notorious pub, the Ten Bells and meets with a local prostitute, played wonderfully by Anne Pasquale.  Standing in a back alley it is obvious that they know each other and like Walter, Richard ‘keeps’ this woman, paying for her doss and her food and some of her drink so that she sticks around.  She is an object to be possessed to him.  That is all.  Most prostitutes of the time were respectable women, mothers, daughters, sisters who fell on hard times and the only way to survive was to sell the only thing they had.  Many succumbed to alcoholism and opium use to escape the dark realities of such a hard and savage life.  When the hooker asks for more money Richard demands to know what she spent her last stipend on?  She is obviously drunk.  He cuts her off and tells her she can take care of herself. He does it with the same indifference as if setting an animal loose to fend for itself.  In retaliation she hits him with a bottle.  He punches her the way a man would deck another man and she is falls hard like a sack of potatoes.  To start off with a completely unsympathetic character is difficult.  For a villain to be fantastic the audience needs to identify with their own shadow side.  The part of themselves they would never, ever act on.  Richard is so brutal in that one action.  The magic happens when he begins to redeem himself.  When we are able to see that he is treated no better than the hooker in the alley and he overcomes the stigma to find himself in Victoria.