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“That’s a beautiful idea for a film,” Füsun would say each time.
“When we make it you’re going to have to agree to star in it,” Hayal Hayati would reply, in the ma
According to Hayal Hayati, the Turkish film industry was free to do more or less what it liked, provided that films did not include lewdness or sex scenes, or unacceptable interpretations of Islam, Atatürk, the Turkish army, the president, religious figures, Kurds, Armenians, Jews, or Greeks. Of course, he’d smile when he said it, because for half a century the members of the board of censors did not just obey the dictates of the state, ba
Hayati Bey told stories about the films he had ba
As he sat with us explaining how this scene and two other family quarrels, likewise offensive to the censors, had been taken in all i
Hayal Hayati remained convinced that it was “a relatively good thing in the end” if censorship led only to the cutting of scenes deemed objectionable by the state. For even a heavily cut film could be shown in the cinema, and if it still made sense, then you could make back your investment. The worst possible outcome was an outright ban. To prevent this disaster, the state was prevailed upon kindly to divide the censorship process into two stages.
In this first phase one would send the screenplay to the board for approval of the subject and the content of the scenes. As was typical of all situations involving work for which citizens had to seek “permission” from the state, a complex bureaucracy of permits and bribery had developed, which in turn gave rise to a network of agents and agencies offering to guide a citizen’s application. I myself recall many times during the spring of 1977, sitting across from Feridun in the offices of Lemon Films, smoking cigarettes as we considered at length which agent was right for Blue Rain.
There was a hardworking, well-liked Istanbul Greek known as Daktilo Demir, or Demir the Typewriter. His ma
When we discovered how much we owed to Daktilo Demir for the most lyrical moments in those films that had so affected us the previous summer, the three of us-Feridun thought Füsun should come, too-decided to pay a call on the “Screenplay Doctor’s” home in Kurtuluş. In a room filled with the ticking of an enormous wall clock, we saw the old Remington on which he had earned his legendary name, and we felt the same distinct magical aura as in the films he’d rewritten. Demir Bey welcomed us graciously, saying that he would be delighted if we left our screenplay with him, so that if he liked it he could recast it on his typewriter into a version sure to pass the censors. Showing us the stack of project files between the plates of kebab and fruit he had set out, he went on to disclose that the process would not be quick considering his vast workload; gesturing at his twenty-something twin daughters, sitting at the end of the enormous dining table, gazing myopically through their owlish glasses at the screenplays their father couldn’t find time for, he allowed, with paternal pride, that they had become “even better” than he was at getting scripts into shape. Füsun was very pleased when the more buxom of the twins remembered her as one of the finalists in the Milliyet National Beauty Contest from years earlier. What a shame it was that so few others did.
The same girl would deliver us back the screenplay, rewritten and polished specially for Füsun, and accompanied by kind words of admiration (“My father says this is a real European art film”), but by then three more months had passed. Füsun met the delay with pouts and occasionally cross words, compelling me to remind her that her husband’s work had been just as slow.
Few opportunities to speak to Füsun privately, away from the table, occurred during my evening visits to Çukurcuma. But toward the end of each evening we would go together to Lemon’s cage to make sure the bird had enough food and water and some squid cartilage to peck on (I bought this in the Mısır Çarşısı, or Spice Bazaar). But this was hardly ideal, and we had to whisper.
From time to time an easier opportunity would present itself: When she wasn’t spending time with the neighborhood friends she hid from me (mostly unmarried girls or newlyweds), or going with Feridun to film haunts, or doing the housework, or helping her mother with the sewing work Aunt Nesibe still took in, she would go by herself to paint birds. She put it so prosaically, but I sensed the passion behind this amateur’s nonchalance, and her paintings made me love her all the more.