By Francesca Lia Block

This is how my movie begins. The credits floating in the pools, written on the license plates, on billboards, lighting up in neon over the bars. I am in the helicopter dressed in Gautier black and shades, pointing out the shots to the cameraman.

This is how my movie begins but not my life. My life started seventeen years ago in a hospital in West L.A. There were no cameras at the event, no sign above the hospital announcing the opening of THE LIFE OF VIOLET SAMMS. Maybe there should have been. Who knows, if I got famous, I told myself, it could be very valuable to have all that on film.

I knew even then that I was destined for a life of cinema. It seemed more real to me than real life, sometimes. As soon as I could walk I discovered cable and began to watch the classics. The parents could not get me away from the screen. The first word I learned was "Rosebud." I imitated Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, waltzing around the living room. I tried walking like Charlie Chaplin. When Marilyn was on I didn't do anything. I just sat there with my hands stretched out trying to touch her. Why was she just electric static? I thought she'd be as warm and silky as she looked.

Now you might assume that I wanted to be an actress. But that wasn't it at all. That would have limited me. I could never have dreamed of just playing one part, saying somebody elseÕs words, doing what they told me to do like a lovely puppet. No-I wanted to be the one to give the words, and actions, too. I started by directing my dolls, but they did not cooperate. They had none of the vivid but ephemeral essence that emanates from a real star. I could dress them certain ways and twist their bodies around into the right positions, but I was frustrated by the lack of life in their eyes. That was when I began fantasizing about real actors. The boys and girls in the neighborhood never lived up to my expectations. They got bored fast and went off to play games that I never understood. Also, they had an aversion to some of the more strenuous poses that my dolls, with all their lack of emoting ability, always complied with.

Speaking of emoting-the neighborhood children weren't much better than my dolls with that. And then, most humiliating of all, they rejected me! They plotted ways to avoid me after school. I grew up alone but in the best company. Dating Cary Grant and Bogey at the revival house, hanging with Jarmusch at the art house, spending the night with Garbo and Veronica Lake on my VCR. Wondering why I couldn't find my own little Marilyn and Jimmy Dean to work with. I knew I was worthy of their talents, even then.

And one day, finally, I saw her.

EXT. HIGH SCHOOL QUAD: DAY

She was wearing a Tinker Bell T-shirt and her hair was up on her head in a goofy blond ponytail. You could tell she had no idea she was pretty. But I knew that on film she would glow with that weird light that certain people have. I've got an eye for those things.

I was working on my laptop, still trying to figure out what the script was going to be about. Of course it was going to be about me, but even I couldn't take one hundred and twenty minutes of pure Violet. We needed something. We needed a story. The proverbial "we," because so far the only one on the team was me.

There was no one at school that even had a clue what I was up to. They thought I was from another planet, and maybe I am. At least they usually left me alone. The girls admired my clothes and my hair and the boys checked out my body, but none of them wanted to talk to me. They thought I was some heavily attitude-endowed bitch whose only friend was her PowerBook.

Well, it was true. I didn't have many friends. Make that any. And that would have been all right as long as I could have been making movies. But for movies you need to collaborate. It is one of the laws of film, even if you are a dictator. And so, even if I didn't need any friends, I needed an actress. And there she was, sitting under the big magnolia tree with its fat white flowers, her hair up on her head in a ponytail and her scruffy Tinker Bell T-shirt and her toes poking through the holes in her Vans. It took an expert eye to recognize it in her but I recognized it-she was my star, my Miss Monroe junior, my teen queen extraordinaire, my young diva, my sweet celluloid goddess waiting to be captured on the luminous screen.

I was getting ready to talk to her when this boy Steve decided to come over. Atrocious sense of timing-he could never do stand-up, let alone be a leading man. Also, he desperately needed a stylist. I tried to ignore him, but he stood there, insistent, trying to see what I was writing.

"You must have the longest diary of any girl at this school. Is it about all your hot dates?"

I shouldn't have indulged him but I said it wasn't a diary.

"Oh, excuse me. Zine."

He was trying desperately to find some hepcat credentials to whip out. It made me nauseous.

"No, it's not a zine," I said patiently. "It's a screenplay."

"Awesome!" he exclaimed. "Can I read it?" I bet you can guess my answer, even in the short time we've been acquainted.

Unfortunately, he was not so astute. He seemed surprised and said, "If you don't ever do anything except write you'll need Prozac."

This was especially not funny since in junior high I had gained notoriety from a serious bout with depression that caused me to cut my arms with razor blades.

I asked him point-blank what it was that he wanted.

If you liked chapter one of Violet & Claire, find out more about the book.

Go to the Francesca Lia Block page.