Flesh and Fantasy

Brothel insider exposes bare facts behind ‘Moulin Rouge’

Writer David Templeton takes interesting people to interesting movies in his ongoing quest for the ultimate post-film conversation.

Alexa Albert doesn’t want to wait. “Can we get right to the prostitution?” she asks. The waiter slides glasses of water onto our table. If my guest’s query caught his ear, he does not acknowledge it. He merely takes our orders and moves on to other customers, many of whom–it now seems–are engaged in similar conversations. A number of the restaurants patrons, like Albert and myself, have just been to the movies, where we saw Baz Lurhman’s colorful pseudo-musical Moulin Rouge. Set in 1900’s Paris and spiced with contemporary pop songs, it’s the over-the-top tale of Christian (Ewan McGregor), a young writer who falls fatefully in love with Satine (Nicole Kidman), the Sparkling Diamond, the city’s most famous and sought-after courtesan. Packed with spectacle, crammed with feverish eye-candy, Moulin Rouge is a truly original celebration of truth, beauty, freedom, love–and prostitution.

“I have lots to say about the prostitution,” says Albert.

A Seattle-based doctor, Albert is the author of BROTHEL: The Mustang Ranch and its Women (Random House, 2001). A sensational read, the myth-busting exposé–already attracting a great deal of attention–is based on unprecedented research conducted over the course of six years, seven months of which Albert spent as a live-in observer at the Mustang Ranch, Nevada’s most famous house of ill repute. It was a unique opportunity to study, for the first time, the inner workings of a world-class brothel.

Among other things, Albert learned this: it’s nothing like the movies.

That said, let’s talk about the prostitution.

“The thing I liked about Moulin Rouge,” Albert begins, her hands animated as she talks, her voice emphatic and passionate, “is that right until the bitter end, I didn’t feel any of the usual stigma of prostitution. The movie had none of that stigma. Satine was a member of a community of folk for which prostitution held no stigma. I loved that.

“I heard Satine talking about what the women in Nevada talk about, saying that this was her job. Sex was her job, and she knew it, and I believed it–as I believe the women in Nevada are doing a job.”

As a symbol of a society that has de-stigmatized prostitution–an institution that Albert thinks should be legalized throughout the country–the character of Satine is a step in the right direction. But, Albert says, the film also contains negative stereotypes that are not so useful. For instance, Satine’s remark that a woman in her profession cannot afford to fall in love.

“Being in love and being a prostitute are not mutually exclusive,” Albert insists. “I don’t think anyone who worked at the Mustang Ranch saw it that way. Everyone wants to be in love. But it’s written somewhere in our minds that you can’t sell your body and have love too. That’s nonsense.”

Satine’s affair with Christian is threatened by the possessive advances of the Duke. A wealthy investor in the Moulin Rouge–the legendary dance hall where Satine plies her trade–Satine agrees to sleep with him as part of a financial bargain made to keep the club from the auction block. But the minute Satine falls in love with Christian, she suffers pangs of guilt in regards to her profession.

Of the real-life courtesans in Nevada, Albert says, “I think many of them are capable of compartmentalizing the sex they do with the customers, and the sex they do with their lovers. I don’t mean that relationships with their partners are easy.”

Here Albert mentions Brittany and John, the Satine-and-Christian style couple whose courtship she describes in the book. “Because of the weight of what these women do,” she continues, “and the circumstances of living in these brothels for 36 hours at a time, it makes for very complicated relationships. But the two things can be separated.

“So when Satine was going to service the Duke,” she goes on, “I was disappointed, somewhat, that suddenly she had an issue with what she was doing. There was something unbelievable about that. I’m very struck by how effectively the women in Nevada can do it.

“I don’t think these women are having these kinds of dilemmas when they’re going back to the room with these men. I didn’t buy it when Satine was in the room with the Duke, having decided to sleep with him, that she would have any trouble doing it.”

Albert stops. “Am I babbling?” she asks. “‘Cause this is what I do when I’m on a subject I really care about.”

And if others could babble so eloquently, the world would be a richer place. Assuring Albert that all is well, I mention that, during the film, she almost came out of her chair when the Unconscious Argentinean (that’s his name) exhorts Christian, “Never fall in love with a prostitute. It will always end badly.”

“And the story of my book is that nobody would ever say that!” she exclaims. “In the brothels, it’s the women who should never fall in love with the customer, since that’s what ‘always turns out bad.’ That’s the belief in the house. I did almost come out of my chair. It bothered the hell out of me.”

The other thing that bothered her was a scene where the Duke attempts to force himself on Satine. In her observations of the Mustang Ranch, such a thing would never happen.

“These women are masters,” she says. “These women control that bedroom like you’ve never seen. So the part where Satine loses control and the guy is about to rape her, it just does not happen in Nevada. On the streets, it happens. Other places, it happens. But in the brothels, the women are in complete control.”

Of the Duke, she says, “His disrespect of her was intolerable. ‘I own you!’ That’s not what a customer thinks when he walks into the room. These men are in awe. They are so overwhelmed. Not because the women are deities, but because they don’t know how to be with these women. These are bumbling, awkward men. You wouldn’t see them come in saying, ‘I’ve paid for you, you’re my property!’ I never saw that.”

One final note. Satine secretly dreams of becoming an actress. In reality, says Albert, when the Mustang Ranch women leave the profession, they tend to gravitate toward customer service jobs.

“They run daycare centers,” she says. “They become nurses. They help people. They do people skill jobs. Because–and I’m sure Satine would agree with this–what is prostitution if not a people-skill? It’s the ultimate people skill. And if you’re good at your job, your customer always goes away feeling good.”

From the May 31-June 6, 2001 issue of the Northern California Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Second Harvest

Varda film finds poetry in scavenging

THE FILMS of Agnes Varda are famous for leading viewers to places they never expected to go. Occasionally these destinations are as bleak as the empty roadside where Sandrine Bonnaire is found dead in 1985’s heart-rending Vagabond. Other times, as in the 1987 comedy Le Petit Amour, you round a corner expecting more farce to find yourself authentically moved by the odd romance between 15-year-old video-nerd Mathieu Demy and 40-year-old divorcée Jane Birkin. Even in her many short films and documentaries, Varda indulges her delight in defying expectations.

Consider The Gleaners and I, a charming new documentary about people who collect things others have left behind. The film begins simply, with a straightforward definition of gleaning–“To pick up grain that the reapers have left behind”–and several shots of 19th-century paintings in which bands of gleaners are oh-so-romantically portrayed, stooping in picturesque fields to pull leftover wheat stalks from the ground.

Suddenly we’re shown a real-life gleaner, an elderly French woman who talks of gleaning the wheatfields as a child during the wars, a practice that has almost disappeared. At this point, we think we know what kind of film this will be–an homage to a fading agrarian custom. But this is a Varda film, so of course we’re mistaken.

What follows is a winding journey among a colorful array of modern gleaners–Gypsies, artists, homeless people, gatherers, rummagers, anarchists, and dumpster divers. These are people who, by necessity or choice, take what others have left behind. This in turn becomes an examination of waste itself, illustrated by such images as the mountains of leftover produce after an open-air market.

Varda, whom cineastes have affectionately nicknamed the Grandmother of the French New Wave, has produced magnificent, daringly experimental movies since the mid-1960s. An icon among students and lovers of film, she has spent the last 40 years redefining the language of cinema, inspiring generations of young men and, notably, young women to take up the camera.

But Varda has been doing something else these years as well: she’s been growing old. One of many underlying themes in The Gleaners is Varda’s love-hate relationship with her aging body, a fascination that appears in short, delightful flights-of-fancy where she does a bit of her own gleaning, capturing curious shots of her own aging hands–“Fascinating and ugly,” she narrates–or her wrinkled, cherubic face peering impishly from behind a handless clock. “A clock without hands is my kind of thing,” she says. “You don’t see time passing.”

These intimately autobiographical diversions beautifully support the film’s subtle message: that in a world with so much richness, nothing should be wasted, or left unexamined and unused.

‘The Gleaners and I’ opens Friday, June 1, at the Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St., San Rafael. For details, see , or call 415/454-1222.

From the May 31-June 6, 2001 issue of the Northern California Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

A marketplace of ideas: Morris Turner of Rohnert Park has created the African Marketplace and Film Exposé.

Paint It Black

Film fest organizer hopes to raise cultural awareness

By Paula Harris

“SOMEONE once said it’s a very small world, and it’s true,” muses Morris Turner, executive director of Missing Pages Productions, a local nonprofit organization focused on helping cultivate a richer understanding of other cultures. “And things are altering dramatically.”

Indeed, the local demographic is a-changing. Peek into the maze of work cubicles at any high-tech company in Telecom Valley and the faces staring back at you will likely mirror the make-up of the globe.

“We’re having to work with people who look different than we do and whose cultural background and mores are different than those of people in the United States,” Turner continues. “And in order for the community and even for business to be successful there has to be an awareness of what the cultural values are of those people and an appreciation.”

Turner, 51, an African-American resident of Rohnert Park, has lived in Sonoma County for 30 years–long enough to remember when Santa Rosa had a single stoplight. These days, he’s on a mission: He wants to share the cultures of what he calls “underrepresented populations” with the rest of the community.

“It’s always been a need that’s gone lacking,” he explains. “And for a long time the community has been able to survive without really addressing the issue.” But Turner and his organization are ready to close the gap with the African Marketplace and Film Exposé, a two-day event co-sponsored by the Sonoma Museum of Visual Art (see “Into Africa,” above).

“The museum has a history of creating multicultural programming,” explains SMOVA director Gay Shelton. “This grew out of some of that activity, and I feel delighted to offer this and to give underrepresented but vital ethnic communities more exposure.”

Turner hopes the event will be a valuable learning tool. “People will have the opportunity to really be immersed in the African experience as it has occurred around the world and is occurring here in the United States,” he says.

The event features films by domestic and foreign filmmakers that highlight the lives of African people throughout the diaspora. For example, Black Survivors of the German Holocaust tells the little-known story of what African Germans experienced and endured before, during, and after the reign of Hitler.

Also featured is Djembefola, a high-energy film about African music that highlights the importance of family and culture within the context of a global community. It features Mamady Keita, former master drummer for Les Percussions de Guinea, who recently performed in Sonoma County.

And The Bronze Buckaroo (filmed in 1938), while relying on stereotypes consistent with the times, has historical interest since it depicts an all-black cast in a B-movie western. “For some people it’s never crossed their minds that there were black cowboys,” says Turner, who is author of America’s Black Towns and Settlements, a historical reference guide to pioneer black communities.

In addition, the event’s marketplace will include more then 20 Bay Area vendors offering a variety of wares such as art, jewelry, and stone carvings directly from Africa. There will also a number of children’s performances in the marketplace and five African-based children’s films.

Turner says youth advocacy played a major role in shaping the event, the first of its kind in the county. “It’s our responsibility as adults to provide an environment where children can be nurtured, supported, educated, and raised in a safe situation, and part of that safety is to acknowledge who they are culturally,” he says. “I really think that that’s an issue the American public has pretty much swept under the rug. Our country is in denial around the issue of race and culture.”

Turner hopes the African Marketplace and Film Exposé will become an annual happening, and he has other events in the same vein planned, such as the Cross Cultural Writers Forum, which takes place Sept. 15.

“We hope that, by offering this type of exposure to other cultures, people can begin to understand one another better and to appreciate the contribution of all people to our community as well as to the world,” he says. “I want to collaborate with people who are like-minded, and I don’t want geography to be a barrier.”

The African Marketplace and Film Exposé, a two-day event celebrating the cultural uniqueness of Africa and African Americans, will be held June 1-2 at the Luther Burbank Center for the Performing Arts, 50 Mark West Springs Road. A two-day ticket is $5; a two-day family pass, $10; admission is free for kids under 16 years. For more information, call 707/794-0729.

Friday, June 1

6 p.m. Opening-night gathering.

7 p.m. Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues. This film explores the lives and times of Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, and other legendary blueswomen.

Saturday, June 2

11 a.m. to 6 p.m. African marketplace features African fabrics, jewelry, natural body treatments, art, and traditional foods. Also on offer: events and activities such as face painting, storytelling, children’s films, and African music.

Noon Madam C. J. Walker: America’s First Black Women Millionaire is a film that chronicles how Sara Breedlove rose from washer woman to successful entrepreneur.

1:30 p.m. The Bronze Buckeroo, filmed in 1938, was the first to feature an all-black cast in a western B-movie. It stars Spencer Williams Jr. (of Amos and Andy fame) and Herb Jefferies, former lead singer for the Duke Ellington Band.

3 p.m. The film African Americans in World War II: A Legacy of Patriotism and Valor reveals the untold story of African Americans in the “war to end all wars.”

4:30 p.m. Djembefola, a high-energy movie that traces the journey of Mamady Keita, former master drummer of Les Percussions de Guinea, from Brussels, where he teaches traditional drumming, back home to his village and family.

7 p.m. The West Coast premiere of Black Survivors of the German Holocaust documents in graphic detail the personal untold stories of African Germans before, during, and after the reign of Hitler. Recommended for mature audiences only.

From the May 31-June 6, 2001 issue of the Northern California Bohemian.

© Metro Publishing Inc.