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TRICKSTERS AND HUCKSTERS: SHOW BIZ ARCHETYPES
by Addison De Witt
“The Diva” Part II
“Ambition has been defined...as hubris (excess of pride), perhaps the worst of all Greek faults of character,” says James Hillman in Kinds of Power (p.131). “Vaulting pride in one’s own capacity; no need of the Gods; no need of the counsel of mentors – this is the ambition universally condemned in tragic literature and heroic epic.”
After years in Development Hell, as detailed in “The Diva: Part I”, filming of the lush,
superstar-powered musical fantasy had finally begun. The day before The Diva was
scheduled to arrive on the set, a memo was circulated to the cast and crew on her behalf. A hush came over all assembled as we began to read a list of instructions to follow in the presence of the great star:
1. No talking to The Diva on the set, unless she approaches you first (which is unlikely). Like everyone else, she is there to work and will need to concentrate.
2. No looking at The Diva. She hates to be stared at. Direct eye contact is especially forbidden. Please take care to stay out of The Diva’s range of vision at all times.
3. No hovering around or near The Diva at any time. She must be given her space.
4. No autographs. At the end of the shoot, a time will be set aside for all requests.
After reading these rules, of course, the cast and crew were hardly inclined to want
autographs, anyway. A pall came over the set.
On her first day of shooting, The Diva was five hours late to the set. In spite of the fact that she was the star of the movie, she was also its “Executive Producer”. Put aside, for the moment, the poor example she was setting for the rest of the cast and crew. On a movie set, particularly a movie for television with a limited budget, time is money and every minute lost costs a fortune. By keeping the cast and crew waiting for five hours that first day, The Diva not only sent the carefully planned schedule spinning out of control, she cost the studio and her fellow producers somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000. And this was just on her first day. This was time that could not be made up at the end of the schedule. (To my knowledge, there was nothing in the budget earmarked for “Diva” behavior.) And The Diva’s own tight schedule, which had been negotiated down to the second, did not permit her to make up the lost time on another day. Now, all of her scenes, some of which involved complicated special effects, would have to be rushed, or cut, or both. But she was The Diva, and NO ONE COULD SAY ANYTHING.
The Diva’s actual physical entrance onto the set was rather comical, or might have been if a crew member hadn’t been injured in the process. After keeping everyone waiting for five hours, The Diva finally emerged from her trailer, in full costume, and was escorted by her entourage into the nearby sound stage on the studio lot. She was preceded by her personal bodyguard – excuse me, her Security Expert – a little guy with a puffed-up air of self-importance and a fierce “don’t mess with me” look in his eyes. Ignoring the miles of cable and piles of lighting and sound equipment in his way, he led The Diva on a bee-line straight for the set, forcing crew and cast members to jump out of his way, knocking over everything in his path. It was as if he had been trained to behave this way, as if he had sized up the route from the trailer to the set countless times, and was determined not to follow the most sensible path, but only the straightest one, no matter what obstacles might lay in his wake. When an unlucky crew member, attending to one of his myriad duties, happened to accidentally cross The Diva’s path as he was uncoiling some cable, her bodyguard simply shoved him aside and to the ground, as if this crew guy had actually planned to attack The Diva during the pandemonium of a Hollywood Premiere. It seemed as if the bodyguard suddenly saw himself as Kevin Costner, and the hapless crew member as a would-be assassin! During all of this, of course, The Diva is oblivious, and everyone is busy averting their eyes, as directed...in that way you’re not supposed to look directly at the sun during an eclipse. But no one missed the crew guy being shoved to the ground, and what had been a half-amused antipathy of the cast and crew toward The Diva turned into outright hatred.
The Diva’s female co-star was an up-and-coming young singer who spent her childhood dreaming of becoming a star just like The Diva, and now her dream was coming true: Her first film, co-starring with her idol. (Shall we call her “Little Diva”? Yes, let’s.) The Diva had an alternately maternal and competitive relationship with Little Diva. For P.R. purposes, she was happy to be cast as the fairy godmother annointing her own successor in the firmament of the entertainment galaxy. There were hugs and kisses galore in front of the publicity cameras. But, in truth, though she’d never admit it, The Diva was a little threatened by Little Diva and lost no opportunity to play Margo Channing to her Eve Harrington and keep the child in her place.
Not unlike Miss Harrington, in fact, Little Diva enjoyed fostering the image of herself as a naive, wide-eyed, somebody-pinch-me-please innocent who would never dream of trying to fill The Diva’s shoes. But Little Diva was already a show business veteran and the star of her own television series by the time she was cast as The Diva’s co-star, and was armed with her own entourage, led by her “I’m tough because I have to be” mother (hereinafter “Mama Rose”). One of Mama Rose’s most important jobs, as she saw it, was to make sure that her daughter, Little Diva, enjoyed the same on-set perks as The Diva herself.
For the first couple of weeks of filming, Little Diva was the darling of everyone on the set. She was bubbly, charming, self-effacing, hard-working and earnest, determined to make everyone proud of her in her movie debut. But with the sudden arrival of The Diva, mid-way through filming, all attention – often negative attention, but attention nonetheless – switched from Little Diva to her. For starters, it did not escape the attention of Mama Rose that The Diva’s trailer was a few feet closer to the sound stage than Little Diva’s. And, to add insult to injury, The Diva’s trailer had a couple of bright orange construction-site cones in front of it, presumably to signal the importance of its occupant. And, worst of all, The Diva had her own golf-cart, the ultimate symbol of the studio lot pecking order. Never mind that the trailer was too close to the sound stage to necessitate a golf cart. To keep Mama Rose happy, Little Diva got her security cones and her golf cart, and began zipping around the lot with visiting friends between takes.
All was polite on the set between The Diva and Little Diva, and no mention was made of The Diva’s tardiness. But in her mind, Little Diva was taking notes. The big showdown happened on The Diva’s second day. This time, The Diva was only a couple of hours late. But Little Diva made a point of arriving 90 minutes late herself. When The Diva heard of her younger co-star’s tardiness, she summoned Little Diva to her trailer and chastised her for her unprofessional behavior.
Outraged by the obvious hypocrisy, Little Diva had a fit: “How dare you criticize me when you were five hours late yesterday! You’re unprofessional and everybody hates you!” The cat fight that followed ended with Little Diva running from The Diva’s trailer in tears. No one on the set knew if either of the divas would deign to appear to shoot their next scene together, which was to be one of the most important in the film. But after some make-up repairs, they both emerged from their respective trailers and arrived on the set. Taking professionalism to new heights, the two divas played their scene together calmly. But between takes, each retired to opposite corners. They never spoke to each other, they never made eye contact. You could cut the tension with a knife, and everyone else in the cast and crew was waiting for an explosion.
Finally, after a couple of excruciating hours of this, The Diva gingerly approached Little Diva’s corner during a break, like the Mountain coming to Mohammed. The rest of the cast and crew held its breath as the two divas whispered. Detente was reached, apparently, and for the rest of the shoot the two acted like giggly girlfriends, laughing and hugging and making up for lost time.
The pressure, however, may have been too much for The Diva. As day wore into evening, The Diva returned from a break in her trailer a much different woman. As she was led back to the set for her next shot, The Diva was glassy-eyed, unsteady on her feet, and noticably slow of speech. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, but the superstar was stoned out of her mind. It was like a scene out of “Lady Sings The Blues”. All of those tabloid rumors were apparently true. As much as I personally disliked the woman, I was overcome by a wave of sadness at the waste of such a blessed life and of such a monumental talent.
The Diva stayed high for the rest of her time on the set and, needless to say, her performance was an incoherent mess. The director and his skillfull editors were able to salvage enough bits and pieces here and there to crib together scenes in a way that made some sense, but the script had been mangled beyond repair. When I was shown the rough cut I was told, in no uncertain terms, that we were lucky to get as good as we got. End of story.
For the rest of the shoot, Little Diva’s behavior was never quite the same. Gone was the gee-golly-I-can’t-believe-it’s-me persona. Once she saw what The Diva was able to get away with, Little Diva began testing the limits of her star power. During one long, exhausting day near the end of the shoot, Little Diva grabbed my arms and announced in a voice that sent a chill down my spine: “I want to be a movie star. Am I gonna be a movie star?! Tell me!” “Of course you are!” I replied, “Of course you are!”
Three years have passed since my last encounter with The Diva, and evidence of her drug use has become more public even as her career has continued to soar. But as James Hillman reminds us in Kinds of Power (p. 131), “Cocaine, uppers and muscle-building steroids are the concrete examples in our world of ambitious hubris. They show that enhanced performance follows a truly mythical pattern – an extraordinary rise and a disastrous fall. The one single wisdom taught by all the classical stories is: remember the limits put on mortals by the immortals (as the Greeks called their divinities).”
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