Date with Destiny 2022

 

Photo of the work by Andrea Rossetti

Marilyn Burns :   Hi Tobe!

What's up? 

Last time we met I was telling you about "Date with destiny. Confessions of Marilyn Burns" the book I was writing, remember?  I would like to add some inserts at the end of the story, could you interview me?

xx 

Marilyn

Tobe Hooper:      Hi Marilyn, hope you doing well. Guess I don’t have same memory skill as you do.

I don’t even remember when was last time we met! So long didn’t see actually! Maybe was at this found raising auction dinner for World Release Found. I remember well about your neck collar, that was stunning! But anyway, of course I would like to interview you. What should it be about? 

Hope to hear more from you soon! 

All the Best,

Tobe

MB:    Super! Let's do it here by email.  

Ahhh, the collar is a gift from Dan... his taste for the details it's over-the-top!

I had told you about my book last summer, when we had met by chance outside Mashti Malones ice cream shop in LA. I remember it well because you insisted that I get the Rosewater Ice Cream with Rice starch Noodles, claiming it was the best ice cream flavor in the world. And it made me so sick I had spit it out on the sidewalk.

Anyway, I’m envisioning it as a pretext to reveal things about myself, but without me doing it in a self-centered way. You know, writing 250 pages of a monologue about your life, from when you first have memories until now, can sometimes be egocentrically  alienating.

So…if it's all right with you, we can start for me!

TH:      Seems like Dan know how to please you better than I do! 

Sorry to hear your didn’t like the ice-cream. Probably I might have a cringe taste for food. Or not only for that I guess. By the way I remember I told you was the most expensive, not sure if I told you was the best in taste! 

I have a question actually. Why did you choose me to held this interview?

MB:     mmm...It was quite simple, after all, it was because of you that I started my acting career.

TH:      Well, not sure about that.

If I remember well at the time I received a letter from a guy I don’t remember who this person was, but he sent me this letter with some pictures he took of you. One was cringe, you were inside sitting on the couch of the hall of a hotel, crossed legs, wearing an oversized t-shirt, you were holding a cup of coffee in your hands and you had a confused expression between fear and hanger. Do you have any clue about who took this photo of you?

MB:     Ahh Tobe, what you are bringing back to my mind!

The one who took the picture was Robert. Everybody called him Bobby. But I liked to call him the whole Robert. A guy about my age, or maybe younger...I don't think I ever asked him how old he was.  I was working at the diner that summer as a waitress. Robert was working at the gas station just up the road. He came every morning for breakfast at the diner, he didn't skip one. He was very kind and full of pimples. I'm sure if I met him now, he'd be one of those very masculine men with a tanned face hollowed out like a stone in the desert. He attracted and repulsed me at the same time. One morning I proposed that we meet when I got off work. He shortly did not faint from surprise. The evening was bad; the photographs you received were the result.  We were in the car almost the whole time, driving around meaninglessly. Each time we got to the planned destination, we realized that we didn't really feel like being there.  So we would set off again, blasting music. I like to sing, and I used to sing at the top of my lungs. I sing badly I know, so do you. He told me those screams were perfect for a horror movie. The pictures you got, he took them in a motel reception in the morning. After that night, I told him I didn't want to see him again. Surely he sent them to you to spite me, to tease me, he must have thought, "That chick could only fit inside a horror movie." He never thought that because of those pictures I would become the best of the scream queens.

TH:      Is it a true story or you just made it up to impress me?

Sounds like I could have written it. I don’t know him I guess, but I’m glad he knows you. He was definitely caring about you if he did forward those photos and sent them to me.

Anyway, I’m curious, what’s the most inconvenient thing I asked you to do during the shooting of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”?

MB:     Definitely get along with that bitch of a makeup artist.

And the lights, here headlights were burning my eyes. When I went to sleep, I would close my eyes, and the halo of the lighthouse would remain in my retina.

TB:      No roleplaying regrets?

MB:    Uhm, the jump out the window. At that moment I felt like I jumped like in a real action movie. 

I thought I had made a graceful leap, like a feline. Looking at myself again, I really felt like a fruit falling from a tree and splatting on the ground. Expectations are so different from reality.

TB:    Talking about expectations, what are your plans for the summer? Will you be able to leave a bit Lausanne? We both both know is such a comfortable place to live, but also a sort of a cage. Lac Leman is not a sea, you can navigate but is quite hard to set sail off shore. Is quite hard to survive from summer there. 

MB: I sure hope so, that place is like a retirement home with bbq. I am dreaming of a very long vacation in Bretagne.  Those places are permeated with a history of piracy. Get on a vessel and go around the islands surrounding  there. You know I don't like to see people when I go on vacation. But it would be nice to see you. 

TB: Thanks for the invitation. You know I don't like Bretagne, but maybe we can see each others somewhere else? In Zurich for example, we call the lake Zürichsee. Sounds quite promising. And maybe we can start the interview again, cause I'm not sure we reached a point.

Caterina De Nicola (TB) and me (MB)