Save Me the Plums - Ruth Reichl Page 0,84
him, even if he was a jerk. He said it was my loss, and he’s right. Brand Ruth may be good for the magazine, but I don’t think very much of her.”
The next day my publisher came up with yet another way to market Brand Ruth: Nancy persuaded American Airlines to sponsor a second television show. The shooting schedule would mean being away from the magazine for months at a time, which did not make me happy. But the deal was worth more than a million dollars to our bottom line, and there was no way I could possibly refuse.
As Nancy’s team wrangled celebrities—Dianne Wiest, Jeffrey Wright, Tom Skerritt, Lorraine Bracco—I grew increasingly apprehensive. We’d be traveling the world on cooking adventures, and I worried that these divas would be impossible to please. By the time I left to shoot the first episode with Frances McDormand, I had worked myself into a state of high anxiety.
It did not begin well. The movie star frowned while examining her palatial suite at Blackberry Farm in the Great Smoky Mountains, grumbling as she took in the enormous marble bathroom with its spacious dressing room and walk-in closets. She was openly displeased with the bedroom; she glared at the huge fireplace and seemed to consider the giant four-poster bed particularly offensive. The airy screened-in porch did not meet muster, and when she saw the little kitchen she snorted derisively. Whirling on the cameraman, who’d been filming the tour, Fran demanded, “Take me to your room. I want to see where you’re staying.”
Alan shot me an exasperated glance; what had she been expecting? Did she really think his room was going to be better? He gave a world-weary shrug, as if to say, “Celebrities,” turned off the camera, and led her out the door.
He tried going for drama. “This is all mine!” he announced, attempting a sweeping gesture to fling his door open. The door creaked, opened a tiny crack, then stopped, blocked by a mountain of camera equipment.
“As I suspected!” Fran put her eye to the slit in the door, staring into the small, cramped room. “This is just wrong.” She stamped her foot. “You have to switch rooms with me. I certainly don’t need all that space and you can obviously use it.”
Alan’s face became a comical mixture of amazement and disbelief. “C’mon,” she urged, “all you have to do is say yes. You know you’re going to be working harder than I am.” Then she saw my own face, which must have mirrored Alan’s. “What?” she asked.
It was pure Fran. She likes to cook and came along on a lark, but our little show meant nothing to her. Nevertheless, she threw herself into the enterprise as if it was the most important assignment she’d ever accepted. Neither dirt nor heat nor rain fazed her. She picked peas and stuck her hands deep into the dirt, crowing when she came up with handfuls of potatoes. The day we went fishing, she waded hip-deep into the stream, shouting with delight when she caught a trout (and laughing even harder when I caught a tree). Faced with a swarm of bees, she stood very still while they dive-bombed her head, then dipped a curious finger into the honeycomb, put it in her mouth, and grinned.
Fran was the anti-diva, so contrary to anyone’s idea of a movie star that we all forgot she was famous. Only later, as we dashed through the airport on our way home, was I reminded that Fran is a solid-gold celebrity: People stared openly, their mouths agape. When we heaved ourselves into our seats—we’d made the plane by seconds—the woman across the aisle fixed her eyes on Fran, refusing to remove them for a single second. Fran calmly ignored this until the woman leaned across the aisle to hiss in my ear, “Is that Frances McDormand?”
I nodded.
The woman scrabbled in her purse, looking for pen and paper. “Autograph!” she demanded, thrusting them at Fran.
Fran frowned down at the paper for so long I thought she was going to refuse. At last she accepted the pen. “I’m just an actor, and no more interesting than you are.” She scribbled her name. “Probably not as interesting, actually. You should pay more attention to yourself and less to people like me. You’ll be better off that way.”
And that, I thought, is the secret to happiness: There is no Brand Fran. Suddenly I knew exactly what I had to do. It was time