Free A View From a Broad by Bette Midler

her restraining straps, dashed out of the plane and embraced the genius madly.
    Miss Frank, who had never heard of Vilmos Angst, thought the forced landing had driven Miss M loony and shouted for her to get back into the plane and behave like a lady.
    But Miss M was beyond hearing, so delirious was she over this opportunity to meet, albeit under peculiar circumstances, the world-famous genius of cinematic art. Who knew where this could lead?
    It led, almost immediately, to a large barn located near the farmhouse Miss M had seen from the air. There Mr. Angst was filming his newest epic in total secrecy.
    The barn’s interior had been renovated to resemble a medieval sauna, complete with giant crucifix and plenty of fir boughs.
    “This film, which I shall call Thighs and Whispers,’ Angst explained, “represents a departure for me. It will be a comedy of manners, in which pain and guilt and man’s inborn need for humiliation and despair will play only a minor part.”
    “That’s too bad,” Miss Frank interrupted.
    “Actually, the plot is quite simple, since, along with other things, I am eschewing the convolutions of my past work: A young nun, who has run away from a sadistic Mother Superior and a string of petty thefts from the convent treasury, arrives in the middle of the night at the home of a rich and titled dwarf. She begs sanctuary. The dwarf, who has been a recluse for most of his life, preferring the company of his books and pet baboon to the hurly-burly of the world at large, believes the nun to be a messenger, the instrument of God, sent to him for his salvation,and so agrees to provide the exhausted and kleptomaniacal nun with shelter, hoping to learn, during the night, of the mysteries of her mission. Although somewhat dismayed by the sight of the clearly vicious baboon, not to mention the somber intensity of the dwarf, the nun thanks him for his hospitality and comes into the castle, closing the door on the night and the world outside.
    “There, you see? The situation is rife with comic possibility, is it not?”
    “It is genius. Sheer genius,” Miss M replied, tuned-in as ever.
    “And you,” Angst continued, “you must be in it. Now that you are here, for you not to be part of my work would be unthinkable.”
    “But what would I do?” Miss M asked. “You seem to have developed a two-character plot. Three if you count the baboon.”
    “You shall be Urtha, Goddess of Fire!” he cried. “Urtha, who figures so largely in the dwarf’s dreams. I did tell you the dwarf has dreams, did I not?”
    “No, I don’t think you did,” Miss M replied.
    “Well, then, let me explain. . . .”
    B ut at that very moment, the pilot returned dripping with grease and announced that the engine was repaired and the weather fine. They would have to leave immediately if Miss M was to get to Stockholm for her performance.
    “But you can’t leave now!” Angst cried. “Now that I have seen you, no one could possibly play Urtha for me but you, darling, you! If you go, I shall have to cut her out of the film altogether. And then what shall I do? No dreams; no movie.”
    “Well then,” Miss M replied, “let the baboon dream. Of his goddesses.”
    “Why . . . why, that’s brilliant!” the world-famous genius exclaimed. “Brilliant! Frieda! Bring me the script!”
    As Miss M left the barn, Vilmos Angst was scribbling furiously in the tattered pages of his notebook. “The baboon must dream,” he cried again and again. “The baboon!”
----
    “What was that all about?” Miss Frank asked as the two women plodded across the meadow to the waiting plane.
    “That is the climax of two thousand years of Western civilization,” Miss M answered proudly.
    “That’s our punishment, if you ask me” was all Miss Frank said.
    And perhaps Miss Frank was right. As we shall see in Part Two of The Continuing Saga of The Divine Miss M .

• DRIVER TO THE STARS •

    L et us talk for a moment about chauffeurs. When