Jesus’s Nanny

Let me set the scene. We’re in Morocco, way out in a remote mountainous region where they are shooting The Last Temptation Of Christ. I’m with 6-year-old Jack, the son of the star of the movie, and we’re watching his father (Willem Dafoe) in the distance as Christ, nude and covered with fake blood up on a cross. He’s beckoning us (and not in any divine way) to come up and visit between takes, and I’m little concerned about the awful positioning Willem’s body has been contorted in for hours. Jack and I stated trekking up one of the hills, littered with fake ceramic skulls that had been fashioned by Italian craftsmen for the film. Our shoes crunched on thousands of broken skulls. But as we’re trudging along I suddenly look down at Jack and he’s shaking like a leaf. I was suddenly thunderstruck that I was that stupid not to have realized how fucked-up this whole scenario must be for Jack– seeing your dad naked and nailed to an old rugged cross. So, I waved to “Jesus” and yelled “see you for lunch,” and we hurried back to our little trailer.

How I became Jesus’s nanny was rather fortuitous. I had been managing a movie theater in Provincetown for many years and Ron Vawter, one of the most fearless of actors with the Wooster Group– a Soho-based troupe doing radical theater, convinced me to move to New York. “I’ll get you a job doing the box office.” And sure enough, that’s what happened. Elizabeth LeCompte, the director of the group, was like a mad alchemist when she attacked a new project. It usually started with a play she was interested in re-imagining in her own inimitable way. She used a dizzying range of multi-media and different sources she felt related or complimented the piece. Often the results were exhilarating and slightly terrifying too. Her use of sound, music and visual imagery, not to mention the physicality of her amazing group of actors resulted in incredibly daring theatrical experiences. I remember seeing early works like Nayatt School and having my brain permanently scrambled. For me- there’s theater, and then there’s Liz LeCompte.

Willem Dafoe was one of the core actors in the group, and he and Liz had been romantically involved for a while before they decided to have a child. Jack was the most astonishingly beautiful kid you’ve ever seen- with blonde curly hair and an infectious sweet smile. He used to come over to the Performing Garage (the Wooster Group’s theater) and hang out with all of us and he always gravitated to me, pointing at me and laughing. That was why, when I met Harvey Keitel on the set of The Last Temptation Of Christ, I introduced myself as “babysitter and sight gag.” I really can’t remember exactly how I ended up with the job of taking constant care of Jack (at home, bringing him to school, and on sets when Willem was shooting a movie). It just sort of happened, and to tell the truth, it was wonderful. Jack was such a smart, great kid, and daily we skipped off to art galleries, museums, zoos, movies, or we’d just spread out a blanket in Central Park and read hundreds of books.

Here we were on the set of a Martin Scorsese film. Scorsese had attempted to do The Last Temptation Of Christ once before, but the money dropped out at the last minute. Actress Barbara Hershey (Mary Magdalene) supposedly gave the book to the director years before. Willem Dafoe was actually an inspired choice to play the lead. I remember vividly when Willem was just starting to get movie roles. We all went to a screening of William Friedkin’s To Live And Die In L.A. Willem played a nefarious counterfeiter and when he appeared on screen I was stunned. His face was so unusual and extreme and scarily beautiful. The camera just loved him- and he was riveting to watch.

Scorsese had given Willem all this homework to read and movies to watch, particularly Pier Paolo Pasolini’s incredible The Gospel According To St. Matthew, where the director used ordinary village people to play parts in his biblical tale. That made sense to me when we got to Morocco and I glanced around at the cast Scorsese had assembled. There was that wonderful musician John Lurie. Terrific character actors like Victor Argo, Harry Dean Stanton, Gary Basaraba, Paul Herman, Roberts Blossom. And Harvey Keitel too, as a henna-haired Judas. What was this- The Greatest Story Goodfellas Ever Told?

It still was a bit daunting to be there with Martin Scorsese directing. I’ll never forget hitch-hiking to Boston to see Taxi Driver on opening day and 15 minutes into the film the friend I was with whispered, “Why are you standing?” The movie had so electrified me I rose up out of my seat and wasn’t even aware of it. And there he is, in the flesh and in cargo pants, discussing camera movements with cinematographer Michael Ballhaus (another God to me for his work with Rainer Werner Fassbinder). Jack and I hung pretty far back from the action. Elizabeth LeCompte was off with her video camera shooting everything (and if memory serves, some of the footage did end up in a later show- Frank Dell’s The Temptation Of St. Antony). But Mr. Scorsese motioned for us to come over. He was so sweet with Jack, talking about filming and then asked if there was anything Jack wanted to know. Jack responded, “How do you know you won’t accidentally get in the shot?” referring to us being on the set. Scorsese quietly said “If you see the camera, then you’re in the shot.” Well, a half-hour later, they’re shooting a scene, and I look down and tears are rolling down Jack’s cheeks. “What’s the matter?” I asked him. “I can see the camera,” he said, trembling. Thanks a lot, Marty.

 

Morocco is so burned into my head from the movies, and not just for Marlene Dietrich kicking off her shoes, wrapping her head in a scarf, and trudging over the sands after foreign legionnaire Gary Cooper. Once there I was amazed to find myself in the same big bustling marketplace that Doris Day and James Stewart were visiting when their son gets abducted in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much. While I was standing there, entranced, I remember clutching Jack’s hand tightly, a bit freaked out that any minute he was going to be kidnapped.

Jack and I had a deal when we were on tour, either with the Wooster Group or when Willem was shooting a movie. Most days we would spend sightseeing, going to galleries, book stores, museums and zoos. But then I would get my day, where we could go to some key movie location from a favorite film, or else a notorious true crime scene. I remember Jack rolling his eyes at me as we spent a long day getting to what once was the rooming house where serial killer Dennis Nilsen lived in London. He’s the one who would bring guys home, kill them, bury them in the floorboards. and then take them out from time to time to watch TV with. Killing for company. What a novel idea. I was spellbound standing in front of 23 Cranley Gardens on Muswell Hill, while Jack tapped his shoe impatiently.

Our short stay in Morocco was pretty wonderful. We met Scorsese’s wonderful assistant Julia Judge, who was such a doll and lovely to us. And we hung out with Scorsese’s long-time friend Jay Cocks (who was working on the script with Martin), along with his actress wife Verna Bloom (astonishing in Medium Cool) and their son Sam. It was a jolly time, and I still have dreams of waking up in the early light of day and hearing the Muslim call to prayer which was haunting and so exquisite.

We came back and waited until the movie was finished There was a special cast and crew screening and the movie was mesmerizing. I really thought Willem was just sensational. Even Martin Scorsese’s parents were sitting behind us. Scorsese had done movies about them, but you can’t really imagine how lovely and warm and wonderful they really were. During the screening, I was so delighted hearing Scorsese’s mom whispering to her friend: “That’s Lazarus- he’s coming back.”

But then all of a sudden people began protesting the film. There were even death threats. What was so infuriating was that if the protestors had actually seen the movie they would have quickly realized how incredibly reverent it was. But the controversy really hurt the movie, and I imagine it was a crushing disappointment for Scorsese. Willem, Jack and I were on the subway and a man angrily accosted Willem saying, “You’re screwing with my Lord!” Jack was horrified and confused. “Who- Jack Lord?” I wanted to scream at him but he probably would have beat us to death with his Bible. We even had a bodyguard at the premiere, which I have to admit was kind of a kick. But I was determined to make sense of all of it to Jack, so I took him to the Ziegfeld Theater one afternoon where Last Temptation was playing. There, behind barriers were all the protestors, and when Jack saw this motley crew of deluded losers and their idiotic signs it made it all less scary.

But those memories of Morocco were so sweet. I remember a funny moment while Jack and I were in the trailer drawing and there was suddenly a knock on the door and there was Harvey Keitel, in full Judas robes, who rather sheepishly asked if I knew any other babysitters (he and his wife were planning to go away on a trip). “Are you nuts?” I remember saying to him, “Do you think Willem & Liz got me from an Au Pair Agency? Look at me. The only people I know work in theater and movies and all the others should never be allowed anywhere near a child.” He left us to our crayoning and the sweet sound of Mary Wells coming from my portable tape player, drowning out the agonized cries of Jesus dying on the cross in the distance.