Growing Pains

March 15 is Hungarian Independence Day, when Hungarians celebrate the 1848 revolution against Austria and the Habsburg monarchy. It's kind of like our (U.S.) July 4th, except it's March 15th. And, from what I can tell, it differs from July 4th in that shops close for it, rather than pimp it as a reason to have a sale.


I decided to spend my Independence day at the voluptuous Book Cafe, located on the second floor of the Budapest's upscale Alexandra Bookstore. Twice before I felt like a rich man in its splendor; I was going for a hat trick.


I arrived at the bookstore and took the escalator up to the second floor restaurant, which was delightfully empty. The room sits beneath a huge, ornate, vaulted ceiling. Seats are a mix of small black tables and chairs, overstuffed leather loungers, and plush banquettes that line the walls. 

I spotted the banquette where I sat last time I visited, on which I spent several delightful hours drinking Cabernet Franc and listening to Norah Jones beneath a gilded firmament. 


As I shed my backpack I spotted and overheard the three customers at the corner of the same bankette, two tables  over from mine, drinking cappuccinos. They were all speaking English, one American, two Hungarian. I glimpsed a bit more. The American, sitting in a plush chair and most visible to me, was chubby, fifties, wore a greying goatee and grey wiry hair pulled into a pony tail. The two Hungarians, a woman and a man, both sat on the banquette. I could only catch their profiles. She, closest to me, was late forties, I guessed, chestnut shoulder length hair, no makeup and nothing remarkable about her dress. The man alongside her was, like me, shorn of hair. He looked to be in his sixties, maybe seventies, but hip. He wore two small hoop earrings in his left ear, and camo cargo pants. The American, leaning to the side away from them, arm draped over the back of the chair, was clearly the center of the Hungarians' -- and his own -- attention.


I unpacked Will Shortz's Crosswords for 365 Days, which, is in fact, a big fat lie, because I have had this compendium of New York Times crossword puzzles since I went to Reykjavik, Iceland in January 2007, well over a thousand days ago. And I am only only puzzle 251, "Growing Pains." 


I settled into my little corner there, soon to be greeted by the same young waiter I had during my last visit. He remembered me and the wine I ordered -- to excess, I now surmised. "Cabernet Franc," he declared standing by the table, as though prompted in his head by the Jeopardy! question, "What did this American drink last time?"

"Very good memory!" I said, envious of his recall. "I'll have another, köszönöm." He smiled, rightfully impressed with himself. He also pointed out a smoked trout paté plate on the menu he thought I would like. "Okay, sold," I said. But then he disallowed me from having the Cabernet Franc. "You must have white with the paté," he said, probably mistaking "must" for "should" or "ought to." Whatever. "Fine. Pick one for me."


The truth is, I don't really care for white wines, but he was trying so hard, I didn't have the heart to say no. "Chardonnay," he said conclusively to another Jeopardy! question. 


Off he went and on I went to "Growing Pains." 


The threesome next to me were speaking loudly enough so that in the otherwise quiet room, even with Norah Jones singing over my should, I could still pick up their conversation with crystal clarity. Clues abounded. He, the American lived in LA, and apparently traveled a lot, or at least widely, as he spoke about having been in Indonesia the week before. He also said that whenever he flies, he always takes an aisle seat. Always.


Talk turned to Charlie Sheen, his fiasco with CBS, and how the execs had no choice. "As far as I'm concerned, I couldn't care less what someone does, as long as they show up for work. He didn't. What choice did he leave them?"


Hmm. Sounds like an insider to me. I snuck a peek. Clearly not an actor; talking like a director. Maybe he's a Hollywood somebody.


I corrected my posture, in the event that, like Lana Turner, I might be discovered. 


More talk about unstable movie stars. "I mean, look at Nolte. The guy goes to the liquor store in his bathrobe, for chirssake. But he shows up for work. That's the difference."


Wine arrived. Who cares. I had a mystery to solve. 


So, he is some kind of Hollywood player. What was he doing in Budapest? And who were the Hungarians with him? What was their role? Local casting, perhaps?


I weighed introducing myself to him, real laid back like, one American to another, to see if he was somebody I knew ("Ah, so you're Ethan Coen. I admire your work, mostly, though I found True Grit disappointingly two-dimensional"), or should know, and to see if perhaps he wanted to cast a Fulbrighter in his next film. 


I decided instead to remain demure, appear to be quietly tending to to "Growing Pains," my wine, and soon to arrive trout paté, all the while gathering and piecing together more clues. 


I also concluded that if he was a somebody, it would begin to grate on him that I wasn't paying attention to him, wasn't, apparently, interested in discovering just what a somebody he was. The only thing that annoys somebodies more than being recognized is not being recognized.  


Eventually, unable to stand my disinterest, he'd get out of his chair and come over to my table demanding to introduce himself to me, when he would learn just how cool and collected I am -- "Hi Ethan," I'd say, extending my hand, but not getting up, "Name's Jerry." He then would ask if I've ever done any acting, and how I'd be a "natural" for his next lead role of a suave and sexy academic who spends a semester in Hungary teaching but also working undercover with the CIA to crack a global crime ring. I'd chuckle, a little embarrassed. And he'd call Harrison Ford right then and there to tell him he's been fired. 


So, I played hard to get, and just listened without appearing to.


"Depp and DeCaprio. They're the ones to watch. Neither of them has peaked yet. But they've got the look. They're the new look."


Depp, okay; but DeCaprio? He's a wimp.


The trout paté arrived in a clip-top jam jar, along with several slices of toast. I gave one a schmeer, and took a crunchy bite. It was good. I swigged -- no, sipped -- the wine, trying to appear nonchalant -- in case "anyone" should be watching --, as though I have trout paté with Chardonnay in elegant restaurants all the time. It's just one of the many sophisticated things I do.


"Bottom line, it's a business. And actors just don't get that." The Hungarians commiserated. "I mean, I'm paying for the shoot, and if one of them doesn't show because they got too drunk the night before, or they had a fight with their boyfriend, or whatever -- that's money out of my pocket. They just don't seem to understand. If they don't show up, or show up late, I've still got to pay for the location, for the cameras, the whole bit. That costs me. I mean, I'm sorry for all the troubles in their life, but I've got a movie to make. I've got a business to run."

The Hungarians understood, totally. And, in fact, so did I. Prima donna actors mucking up the works. Prissy little Leonardos screwing things up. And zonked out Charlie Sheens.
"And then if they don't get along. I've got to do all this hand holding, as if they aren't professionals being paid to do a job. I mean, they are professionals, right? So, why does it matter if they like each other? Just do your job and let's call it a day."


I was beginning to see how actors could really be a director's nightmare. But which actors? I wanted to know which actors, specifically, he was talking about? Someone famous, I hoped, I have to admit. But someone I disliked, too. (Leonardo for sure.) I didn't want to think that any of my favs -- Helena Bonham Carter, perhaps -- could be anything but the most professional and productive of actors. I was positive that, if given the chance, I would be a model actor, the polar opposite of nightmare. A director's dream.


I continued my feint with "Growing Pains" and chomped through another crunchy bite of the patéed toast, causing me to miss the question posed by the Hungarian woman.


"Oh sure," the American said. "That's something I always try to do. Add a story. I want it to be more than just the sex. I mean, there are those who want the sex and only the sex. But there are others, plenty of others, who want a story also. It's for them that I make my movies."


Wait. What did he say?


"I mean, how many times can we see the plumber come to fix the kitchen sink? It just gets boring after a while. So, I try to give my movies a story, some drama, something to watch besides the sex. And I try to cast my movies with actors who want to mix a little bit of acting -- real acting -- into their roles."


Hmm. So. He's not quite the director I thought he might be. Not likely to fire Harrison Ford, or even know his phone number. I started to rehearse in my mind how I would tell him, in the end, I just didn't feel right for the part. I just couldn't risk my acting future with a starring role in a porno movie.

I have to admit that, despite having to soon turn down the not-yet-offered-role, I remained interested in their conversation, not out of my own prurience (okay, well, maybe a little), but rather because the more they talked, the more I learned about the other side of porn, the business side, what happens behind the lens, so to speak -- and how unerotic it is. I am not a big devotee of porn -- I'll watch it if there is nothing else on -- but he was knocking the stuffing out of it, stripping it of all its allure. It got so I expected to hear him kvetch about how hard it was to make a living in porn these days, what with the Chinese producing it at a fraction of the cost.

So, porn ain't what it seems. 


But why stop there. Maybe the movies I thought he directed before I learned he directed porn, maybe those, too -- and the assumed charmed lives of actors in them -- are equally illusional and delusional. Maybe if we spent a day with Depp or DeCaprio we'd be bored to tears.
Even dining in that bookstore opulence, beneath the painted ceilings and chandeliers, the ooh-lah-lahness of it is kind of make believe. Certainly my waiter, by now, ceased to see the cafe's splendor, and instead saw it as a place to go to put in his hours, serve awestruck Americans trout paté and Chardonnay, make his money and go home.


Maybe everything is cool-lah-lah only from a distance. Maybe all the things people lust over -- be it pornographic fantasies, or fantasies of wealth and celebrity -- maybe those fantasies are propped up more by what we are kept from seeing than by what we are shown.  


I got through "Growing Pains." It took time, and the glass of Cabernet Franc that I had asked for way back when, and a bit of sneak-peaking at the completed puzzle in the back, and the departure of the director and his friends.