Free Diana by Carlos Fuentes

Cooper went on working. Others, who refused to talk, never again set foot on a movie set. Not part of the U.S. political world but from a moral world that transcended it, I was caught between my leftist convictions and my personal ethics, which rejected facile Manichaeanism and, above all, the slightest hint of Pharisaism. Was the case difficult to judge precisely because it stood between bloodthirsty, vengeful, envious, opportunistic squealing and the weaknesses and failures to which, perhaps, all of us are susceptible? Cooper’s moral ambiguity made him more interesting than blameworthy. One among so many people had to be my own double. Who could reassure me that under certain circumstances I myself wouldn’t have done what he did? My entire intellectual and moral self rebelled against the idea. But my sentimental side, human, affectionate, or whatever you’d like to call it, tended to forgive Cooper, just as one day someone else would have to forgive me something. There are people who replicate our weakness because we instantly recognize ourselves in them. Cooper deserved not my censure but my compassion.
    Anyway, I was curious about all the people involved in the film, but Diana lost patience with my questions. “Hollywood adores capsule biographies. They save time and, best of all, excuse us from thinking. They let us put on airs of being objective, but actually we’re just swallowing gossip consommé. Marilyn Monroe: a sad, lonely little girl. Irresponsible father. Insane mother. Bounced from orphanage to orphanage. She never should have stopped being Norma Jean Baker. She couldn’t stand the burden of being Marilyn Monroe—pills, alcohol, death. Rock Hudson: an extremely handsome truck driver from Texas. Used to driving the highways by night, he would pick up boys and make love to them. He’s discovered. He becomes a star. He’s got to hide his homosexuality. He’s locked in a closet filled with spotlights and cameras. Everyone knows he’s a queen. The world has to believe he’s the most virile of leading men. Who disillusioned them? Death, death…”
    She laughed and poured herself a whiskey without bothering to ask me to do it for her. “Sweetheart, don’t believe my biography. Don’t believe it when they say: Diana Soren. Small-town girl. The girl next door. Wins a competition for the part of Shaw’s Saint Joan. Wins out of eighteen thousand contestants. From anonymity to glory in a flash. A genuine sadist directs the film. He humiliates her, tries to get great acting out of her with his cruelty, but only manages to convince her she will never be a great actress. And that’s a fact. Diana Soren will take any shitty part the studios offer her so she can disguise herself, so the world will believe Diana Soren is just that: only a mediocre actress. Then Diana can dedicate herself to being what she wants to be and no one can impose limits on her…”
    I toasted her. “What do you want to be?”
    â€œWe’ll be on location for two months.” Her gray (or were they blue?) eyes disappear behind a veil of amber glass. “You can tell me yourself when the time’s up.”

XI
    We had dinner with the leading man, the girlfriend, and the director only a few times. Diana loathed that species of utopian colony which tried to reproduce Hollywood life far from Hollywood—a sublimated version, more disdainful, obvious, relaxed, and weary of what North Americans usually look for when they leave the United States. I mean home away from home, Holiday Inns identical to one another, the same towels, the same soap in the same places, the same information, magazines, filters for mental security … The difference between ordinary tourists and Hollywood people is that tourists, despite being afraid, live with the word wonderful on their lips; the world seems fascinating to them, incredible, exotic … but only if they