"I was reminded that only in unfamiliar bedrooms do we perceive with such clarity the true nature of our existence -- true because astray -- only away from our own bedroom, from the room that I longed for every minute of my trip -- how I longed to be there, to slip into it -- in the persistently unyielding space of a deserted place that just won't be appropriated." -- Nathalie Léger (trans. Natasha Lehrer and Cécile Menon)
Suite for Barabra Loden is a fiction that has its author reading and writing her way through Barbara Loden's film Wanda (1970). Thus, an auto-fiction, since Literature too is a car lot where readers crave new models.
Léger mentions Loden's appearance on the Mike Douglas Show, though she doesn't mention the name of the show. Nor does she mention what Loden told Douglas after he asked her a couple of questions about her working method relative to that of her filmmaker husband, Elia Kazan. "Does your husband have anything to do -- does he stick his toes in anywhere in your filmmaking?" Douglas asks (2:26), to which Loden responds in a way that brings in the episode's other two guests, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, pointing out how Lennon and Ono work "together," while she and Kazan "have separate interests."
As for the next question (3:12), Douglas asks (in his trademark foreboding tone): "How does he feel about you making your own films, Barbara?" and Loden, seemingly unaffected by any suggestion that a male filmmaker could be threatened by a female filmmaker marriage partner, answers: "Well, um, he was the one who made me do it."
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