Mon amie américaine Read Online Free

break this spell?

FOR LACK OF POSITIVE MESSAGES TO DELIVER TO YOU IN A TONE MORE OR LESS NATURAL , we’ve had the idea of enlisting some people from your photos, those VIPs who were kind enough to ask for news of you to begin with. We’ve drawn up a list of your fifteen favorite personalities, the ones whose voices we think you’d be most likely to recognize, and we’ve supplied them with that magic telephone number that we were having more and more trouble dialing ourselves. The most famous blonde in French film has even left you a long message.
    When I think that it’s thanks to Tom Cruise that we met … I was working for a movie magazine, and you were a publicist. Tom Cruise was insisting on some absurd requirements in exchange for the sale of a series of photos of him that I urgently needed because we were finalizing the issue. You’d listened uncomplainingly to me defendingmy point of view. Then, in a very calm voice, in contrast with my stridency, you’d said to me, “So I’m going to explain to him that you accept all his conditions and I’ll give you access to the photos. Then, if he sees the magazine, he can blow a gasket about it all by himself because I’m quitting this gig in fifteen days. As a matter of fact, I agree with you: he’s unmanageable.” A friendship was born.
    Since that time, you’ve changed jobs, and so have I. I counted: we’ve both been doing the same work for ten years.
    Do you remember that young intern last year who sent you a cover letter? You forwarded me a copy of it with the following comments: “He’s cute. He thinks we live in the dark and watch masterpieces while we eat popcorn.” You’d underlined a sentence in which he explained, “I’m dreaming of spending entire days next to you in the dark.”
    You ended up letting him come in so you could explain to him that you spent the lion’s share of your days hunting down news items in order to find out about films that are being produced, watching stuff that was mostly a chore, and reading screenplays every day that were more often hard tostomach than mind-blowing. That hadn’t seemed to discourage him. So you dealt him the death blow by asking him if he liked gambling. Thinking he was giving the right answer, he’d answered that he hated it. That put an end to the interview.
    You and I gamble all the time, for real. We take risks, put substantial sums on several projects. We bet on a story, a team whose job it is to tell it. And then the film is shot. We wait with our stomach in knots. When the betting is closed and the film is finished, when it has been released to theaters, the audience returns its verdict. It is only at that point that you know whether you’ve gambled well, whether you’ve won or lost. You call that having
the knack
. The trick, the mojo. But you need luck as well. It’s the reason why you always wear a charm bracelet on your right wrist. I remember a tiny cube of dice, a miniature fish, a key, an imp. If you come out of this, I’ll have a little four-leaf clover made for you. Me, the person who has never found one.
    For many years, you’ve had your room at my place, and your habits. In Manhattan, you found me a hotel around the corner from your office. We’re always together at film festivals, except atnight, because your messiness and my fussiness don’t go hand in hand, and our jet lag is never in sync, so one of us would keep the other from sleeping. Most of the time you’re ahead of me because of jet lag and the fact that you travel more often. As was the case in London recently, we spend ten or so days one-on-one, five or six times a year, a united front against the rest of the profession, seeing and discussing films. And now, I’m preparing to go without you to a festival where I’m going to feel lost, where everybody is going to ask me for news of you, and where I