by Nick Cole
“Well, okay, that’s good,” said the Great Director. Even though it was not good, and he now had to worry about this Jay Jameson taking over creative control of the film, which only his artistic direction could sufficiently wreck.
“I have something I was hoping you could help me with,” began the Great Director cautiously.
“Sure, Sparky. Shoot.”
“I need you…” said the Great Director, looking toward the window as though to downplay the nuke he was about to hit his producer with. “I need you to get me Goreitsky, the cinematographer. He’s the only one who can shoot this movie the way it needs to be shot.” Now that he’d said it, after all his wonderfully apocalyptic visions, his cursed quest of doom had come out somehow weak and understated. He waited, fully expecting Jay Jameson to now throw himself to his Persian rug and wail for redemption.
“All right. No problem, Sparky. For you, the world.”
“Really?”
“I’m here to make things happen for you, Chief.”
“Goreitsky,” tried the Great Director again, less tentatively. He’d always expected some sort of objection or whiny reason why it could not be done. This Jay Jameson really was a can-do kinda guy. At least in his own mind.
“Yeah, got it. I’ll get him in here tomorrow.”
“All right. Well… guess I better get back to work.” The Great Director looked around at the bizarre furnishings once more. His eyes fell on a psychedelic poster of a robot gunslinger illuminated in black light.
“You’re sure you can get him?”
Kip nodded.
“Also better get someone to get rid of that skunk. It’s probably out in the parking lot.”
Kip and his victim snickered, then broke into hysterical laughter once the Great Director had closed the door.
Chapter Eleven
The Great Road
Parker nursed the Yugo up yet another grade. Its three-cylinder engine banged away with a foreboding metallic clang.
In the passenger seat, Kip enjoyed a brief respite from being Jay Jameson. He gazed out the passenger window onto the valley floor four thousand feet below the winding mountain road. It was hazy down there among the crisscrossed patterns of farm and field, street and town. Kip’s mind wandered to the landscape of the high alpine as they passed sleepy hamlets, decelerating for the brief moment it took to thread the villages, then accelerating away past the few cabins that marked the outskirts of each mountain hamlet. They passed a quiet restaurant hanging precariously over the side of a cliff. It was not quite ski season, so there was still an amount of warmth in the air. The days were getting shorter, the nights colder.
The narrow road cut across the face of the high mountain. A clean blacktopped path girded with bright red dirt wound through the secretive and gloomy pines guarding the high forests. They encountered less and less of civilization as they climbed the winding road higher and higher. Villages grew farther apart, and soon the extent of man’s progress seemed satisfied with the occasional lonely cabin set back from the road, curtains pulled, doors closed.
“So who is this Goreitsky?” asked Kip above the growl of the Yugo’s tiny yet determined engine.
“I can’t believe you’re a movie producer and you don’t know who Edvar Goreitsky is,” admonished Parker, a film geek’s geek.
“There are a lot of people I know that you don’t know,” smirked Kip.
“Really, who?” demanded Parker.
“Thomas Aquinas.”
“The theologian?”
“No, the other one.”
“There is no other one.”
“That’s what the Man wants you to believe.”
Kip often used this tactic to dodge any topic he could not easily dominate. A lecture would soon follow on the “other” Thomas Aquinas.
“Right,” said Parker, sensing the tripwire. “Edvar Goreitsky is one of the most respected cinematographers in the business. He hasn’t made a movie since 1981.”
“What was that movie?” asked Kip, deftly cutting to the one question Parker did not want Kip to cut to.
Parker sighed.
“The lamentably bad Goin’ For It! starring no one you’ve ever heard of. Anyway, Goreitsky shouldn’t be remembered for that bomb. Goreitsky was a real artist. He didn’t just shoot a movie, he painted a movie. He made Tony’s Story, Southside, The Untamables, Now and Never, El Biblioteca, and my favorite and by far the best, Tall Ships.”
“Haven’t seen a one,” said Kip in his best Phil Hartman imitating Ed McMahon voice.
“Oh man, they’re great. In—” began Parker.
“No wait, I have seen one, and I remember really liking it a lot. When I got kicked out of culinary school and I got into Cal State Fullerton, I was getting ready to pledge for a fraternity. I watched a bunch of movies for research. I think Goin’ For It! was one of ’em.” Kip’s brow arched lecherously in pleasant remembrances of past DVDs.
“So you haven’t seen some of the most gorgeous movies to come out of the late sixties and early seventies? But you have managed to see a film whose premise, if I remember correctly, is one in which a nerd at a local college wants to join a fraternity. He enlists the help of a vampire who teaches him how to be cool and pick up chicks. Isn’t there a pie fight at the end of that movie?” Parker’s voice was rife with disgust.
“Yeah, it was great,” crowed a giddy Kip.
“Swell,” sighed Parker. “That’s just swell. And you’re a movie producer working with one of the greatest directors Hollywood has seen in the last twenty years.”
“I am.”
“Well maybe you can convince him to put a pie fight in the movie,” enthused Parker falsely.
“Forces are in motion,” replied Kip. “Forces are, indeed, in motion.”
Parker groaned and began anew. “Listen man, I’m glad you saw that cruddy film, because that film is the reason Goreitsky left Hollywood. It’s the reason he stopped making pictures altogether.”
“Why? That movie was great!” exclaimed an indignant Kip.
“No, actually it wasn’t. I’m not really sure, but I think that might be an important ability for you to have as a movie executive. You know, the ability to differentiate between a good movie and a bad movie. I’m not sure, but maybe. Think about it, okay?”
Kip promised to, and after a moment’s pause he proclaimed the obvious hilarity of the piece by stating, “Well, it was funny to me!”
“Not to Goreitsky. He’s one of those artist types who defected from the East during the height of the Cold War. He did the whole London underground scene. He was a photographer, like Warhol. In fact, Warhol loved him. Afterwards he went to New York. Advertising, photography, that whole business. He was respected. He married one of his models and got involved with the Dennis Hopper slash Elliott Gould crowd out in Hollywood. He worked on all those films I mentioned, and he designed them with a whole new approach. The directors loved him. Especially after their movies became critical successes, which they always were. He took his time and he took chances. The end results were cinematic masterpieces that should rightfully be hanging in museums instead of not even being available on Netflix.”
“I think I could mount an effective argument for Goin’ For It! to hang in a museum,” interjected Kip.
“No you couldn’t. Unless it was a museum devoted to cruddy teen sex comedies that drove Eastern European artist-cinematographers to make rash proclamations that they would never again work in films. Then? Yes, yes you could. If there were such a museum. But Goin’ For It! would be your only exhibit and no one would go to your cruddy museum and you would die penniless in the gutter.”
“I see your point,” said Kip, not seeing any point and imagining what a great museum such a place would be. Especially regarding sesh-related activities.
“So anyways,” continued a determined Parker
, “he makes this piece of poo film, and it’s so bad he throws up his hands. He holds a sad little press conference and denounces the film, the film community, and most of Western Civilization for good measure. Then he walks away from Hollywood forever.”
“Poo?” inquired Kip.
“Yes, poo.”
“So why did he come out here?”
“He said the mountain would provide him with an excellent view to watch the decline and fall of Western civilization as he knew it. He blamed MTV.”
“Excellent!” shouted Kip. “I now have some sort of common ground with this genius. I also blame MTV. It used to be—”
“Yeah, I know, I’ve heard your spiel before. MTV… blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda. But stop before you get started. We’ve got to focus. If you’re going to do this, and we’re almost there, then I don’t think we can just spend three hours with Goreitsky ‘seshing’ our way through the complete history of MTV as you, Kip Jameson, see it.”
“You’ve changed, man. You used to totally be into that.” Kip turned outward toward the mountain and the sky, his contempt worthy of the most patrician of upbringings.
“I still am into it, believe me,” coaxed Parker. “I acknowledge you as the supreme authority on all that is wrong with MTV. I have encouraged you time and time again to write these thoughts down. Possibly a pamphlet, or even a manifesto. I agree MTV is evil and messed up. Somewhere along the road they took a wrong turn. Believe me when I say the day of reckoning is coming. Soon. But not today, man. Today, we get to meet Goreitsky, and I still haven’t even told you about the road he built.”
“The road?” mumbled Kip, still staring out the window even though his eyebrows seemed independently possessed by two completely different demons and now betrayed his piqued interest.
“Yeah. It was in his last published interview. He interviewed himself for Architectural Digest. The whole article is about this road he built up to his, what did he call it… Shangri-La.”
“So he built a road, big whoop-dee-doo! What’s that got to do with anything?” Kip tapped lightly on the beige plastic dashboard of the Yugo as though he were restoring order to the court.
“After he quit the business, he bought the top of the mountain we’re going up. It cost him a fortune.”
“How much?” Fortunes interested Kip. For most of his life he’d harbored a secret desire to accidentally find one.
“I don’t know. A lot for back then, probably not so much for now. Anyway, he disappears, not that anyone’s really looking for him, and doesn’t resurface until the interview.”
“I gotta ask, dude. How do you know all this?”
“Last night, when you told me what our little road trip was all about, I wiki-ed him.” Kip had no idea what “wiki-ing” meant, as he had primarily used his computer access for obvious and lascivious purposes. Never research, unless he was researching where the most bacchanal of all spring breaks was to be held based on pictures of the previous years.
“Oh yes, wiki-ed him, did you? Smart move, Parker. Go on,” said Kip.
“The article focused on this road he built up to the mountaintop estate he was working on. Now when I say road, you think of something akin to what we’re driving on right now, correct?”
“Yeah,” said Kip, who had not been thinking about that kind of road, or any other type of road, whatsoever.
“Goreitsky’s road and this one are related only in the vaguest of senses. Like a mouse and a bat,” lectured Parker.
“Huh?”
“Batman and Plastic Man,” Parker clarified.
“Ah, gotcha.”
“This road is… outta sight. It’s like something right out of an antique Japanese scroll or a movie that’s never been made. He spent millions on it. In the article, the engineers told him it was impossible to build because he’d bought the land on top of the mountain, which is generally not the best land; you know, hard to get to, cold and windy, that sort of thing. To get to the top, he had to buy a small strip of land between two spurs that…”
“Spurs?”
“Two geographical features, like fingers or ridges coming down the mountain. They create a little canyon called a draw.”
“Ah, a draw!” said Kip, a little too enthusiastically.
“Not the greatest land features for development at this altitude, but he designed a road that wound back and forth across them, up the side of the mountain to his estate.”
“So what does this mean to me?” ventured Kip.
“It means what it means. It means that this guy is probably way beyond ever wanting to come back to Hollywood and make a picture. He’s a renaissance man. He’s done everything. Photography, art, film, engineering, and oh yeah, horticulture too. He flew in all these exotic plants from across Asia and designed this fantastic garden. That was close to twenty years ago. Who knows what he’s done since? Probably constructed a giant sculpture of his wife.”
“Is she hot?” Kip nodded to himself at the possibilities.
“I guess. She was a model. She looked great in the seventies. A kinda post-Georgy Girl thing going on. In the last interview she looked the same only a little older, and maybe… tired, I guess.”
“Huh!” Kip’s mind struggled to grasp the image.
“Suffice it to say, he’s probably not coming back down the mountain with us. He’s way beyond all that now.”
For a long while they were silent. They were atop the ridgeline now, on a small, freshly paved, rarely used road racing along the crest. It was definitely colder up here. The air was startlingly clear. The trees had thinned out, and the few that grew were stunted and twisted. Gnarled veterans of a life in thin air. There were no houses here, and every so often the little red Yugo would pass a lonely radio tower.
Who was the lonely soul who watched over these high outposts? Did they find here a solace or an escape that had eluded them below?
“Got any music?” Kip asked, in a daze brought on by the intense quiet that surrounded everything.
“Radio antenna’s broke. I’ve got a CD.” He was hesitant, knowing Kip would embark on a diatribe of all the wrongs of the yet unannounced title.
“Who?” asked Kip.
“A soundtrack,” replied Parker quietly.
“Which one?”
Parker felt a moment’s relief at the question. He breathed softly as though he’d just dodged a bullet and knew there were more to come. He felt the cylinder of Kip’s mind revolve, chambering another round.
“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” Parker mumbled, bracing for the onslaught.
Contemplation.
“That’s a good one,” murmured Kip.
Soon they were listening. The mountain rose higher and higher. The road wound its way farther and farther south and to the east, an inherently uncomfortable direction for most Angelenos.
They were down range now, beyond the perimeter. Each locked into a combination of scenery, thought, and music. Meditation fuel for any road trip. Occasionally an updraft would buffet the sturdy little red Yugo. Parker would hold course, his knuckles gripping the tan steering wheel. Years later, Parker, married with children and protected by a suburban landscape which at times he would find too close, would drive to a convenience store in San Bernardino and look up at the mountain. Trying to remember this day. Trying to remember the person he had once been. Everything.
Not the now of his life then, but this moment when he was living the memories of his future. He was on a real adventure.
Bilbo Baggins.
Here Be Dragons.
Ahead, the cumulus clouds, or the chubasco as the Mexicans and gringo high-altitude jet pilots call it, began to roll up the mountainside from the southwest. Parker guided the little red Yugo down a small incline, a thin saddle leading to Goreitsky’s mountain. He reached in back for his directions—this place wasn’t ev
en on Google Maps—scanning the trees and the side of the road ahead for the entrance to Goreitsky’s mountaintop estate. Two miles later he found it. Turning left, they began a descent even farther down the backside of the mountain. The clouds swirled in around them, swaddling the car in thick mist. Parker reduced speed, lowered the volume on the CD, and manually rolled down the window. Outside the car, above its tiny engine, all was deathly still and strangely warm.
A moment later Parker swerved sharply to the right, veering into a hole in the mist, and suddenly, looming before them, rose the colossal structure of the gate to Goreitsky’s road. Parker slammed on the brakes. The car skidded across loose gravel and came to a sideways halt before a massive teak and black iron portal. Two stone dragons topped the gate—drooling, tongue-lolling beasts, eyes wild with carved fire, one frozen stone claw upraised in warning.
A slender concrete post stood defiantly, challenging anyone to use the call box attached to it. Beyond and above the fifteen-foot-high gate, glimpses of a road and other shadowy structures could be seen rising up the side of the mountain and disappearing into the clouds. High above they could see a structure that caused them both to ask aloud, “Is that some kind of bridge?”
“Call box,” whispered Parker after a moment.
“Right,” mumbled Kip. “I’ll do it.”
Kip got out and waddled around the front of the car to the box. Parker followed closely behind. Inspection found it to be battered and rusted, almost unusable. Kip pushed the lone button. He had doubts as to whether it would work. Shortly, a ringing tone could be heard. It rang for what seemed two full minutes.
Finally, “Yes?” A small, cautious voice. The speaker popped and crackled. Parker and Kip leaned in.
“We—” began Parker.