by Nick Cole
ORSON
Except it wasn’t true! It was a lie. Each film had the potential, the raw material, to be a Kane. It was me that got in the way. Let me ask you this now: Was there such a moment for you? Did you have your muddy river moment? More importantly, when did you lose it? Because I’ve tried since then to figure out where I lost my moment. And I can’t.
THE GREAT DIRECTOR
(pause)
I did. I never think about it, but yeah I have my... my muddy river moment. I was on a highway just after dawn, measuring the light. Waiting for the shot. I had my light meter in my hand. No one could have paid me enough... to sell that moment to them.
ORSON
And yet you gave it away?
THE GREAT DIRECTOR
I did.
(pause)
Can I go back? Can I make it right? Is there a way to start over?
ORSON
Back to what? You’re dead. You’re a Judas. You betrayed what you believed in.
THE GREAT DIRECTOR
Let me fix the movie. Let me make it right. I know truth. I know in my heart I believe now. I know I’m no Judas. Maybe... maybe I’m more of a Peter. Maybe I just got lost in the night. Lost when things seemed darkest. I just forgot and got a little crazy, said some things I didn’t mean. Maybe my rooster has crowed, maybe I did deny what was true. But I can repent. I can be forgiven for wrecking everything. Because... I can change.
ORSON
Ah, but the cock hath crowed and brought your betrayal to light...
THE GREAT DIRECTOR
I can get it right this time! This time I’ll fight that damned rooster! This time I won’t deny what’s true! I’ll find my light meter.
ORSON
I don’t know. That... that’s just not done.
THE GREAT DIRECTOR
It could be though. It could be fixed. It could be forgiven.
ORSON
It could. It’s just time. Time is the enemy, kid. It’s a cage, you know. Even if it’s gilded, even if it’s everything you want, it’s still a cage. And we get lost in that cage, which is the saddest thing of all. Repeating our same mistakes. Making our entrances and our exits time and time again, to the same cheer, the same applause, the same hiss. In the end we die cursing our fate. We vow not to repeat our folly as the curtain falls, the applause begins, our story is told. And the next night, we do it all over again. If the circumstances were different you’d be back here eventually. Bet on it, buddy boy!
***
And the Great Director was falling, pushed forward into the abyss.
Chapter Thirty
The Wrong Side of the Tracks, in Hell
or
Things You Do Repeatedly, Expecting Different Results Each Time,
in Hell
or
Farther Down the Rabbit Hole, in Hell
The drums start and Perry Farrell begins his demonic chant-croon-hum. In hell, thinks the Great Director, this is the music you listen to.
Carmelita, in a too-short, too-tight white dress that screams against the soft latte of her skin, extends her long legs and shapely rear away from the jukebox. Every eye in the room watches her. She is perfect. Too tall, too busty, too much for any man. She is gasoline, and in this room every narco cowboy, coyote, drug dealer, assassin, thief, pimp, drunkard, and the Great Director are on fire. They cannot help but covet the rise and fall of every soft curve. She turns to face the room, and every not-seeing eye sees the proud jut of her impossible chest and the pout of her too-luscious lips. She owns their hearts and minds.
They do not really see. They stare at the ground, or their cervezas, or the fan, or the play of color and light against the out-of-place cognac and suspiciously unlabeled tequila bottles at the back of the bar. With their eyes they do not see, for they are afraid.
In their hearts though, they sigh and die a thousand times more as they ache the way no gringo can ever understand how it is to ache for a woman. The closest a gringo may ever come to understanding this ache is to hear a mariachi, just one mariachi, and a guitar, or maybe a guitarrón, the big fat guitar, play “Le Son de Negra” in the night, alone. To play softly, mournfully, achingly. To play as the wind sweeps the paseo clean of dust and hope, leaving only an empty hole inside oneself where once something beautiful lived.
No one stares at her because they are afraid. Not of her, which in truth they are. But because of who owns her, whose woman she is. This is not Hollywood. This is not a stage or a set. It is a hot afternoon in a cathouse slash bar in Ciudad Juárez, Sinaloa province. Country of Mexico. Hell on Earth.
“I jes love theese band,” says Carmelita as she stands over her man. “I jes love theese guys.”
The Great Director, “her man,” looks at the floor. Carmelita stops dancing, plants one leg firmly next to his shoulder, and slaps the daylight out of him with one terrific blow. Her painted pink fingernails, long like her legs, exact their tax across his cheek. Now he is bleeding for the sin he has committed against her. She must be adored to the exclusion of all else. A price she requires at all times.
“Oh, baby, I am so sorry,” she says, bending low. Her hips and butt cause the fabric of her too-short dress to scream with threatened disintegration. “Oh, baby,” she says over and over again. “I am so sorry. Let me take you up to our room and make it better. We listen to Juana’s Addición and lay down. Oh baby, I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you so bad.”
Now Perry Farrell is starting again and the drums are pounding away, slowly, rhythmically, building, waiting. Just as everyone in the room is waiting. Waiting for the Devil.
The Great Director eases her down onto his lap and now she’s kissing his wounds. Cleaning the blood with her lips and tongue. They must wait for the Devil on this hot afternoon, in this place, in this war zone. On the streets outside, narco cowboys are fighting for control of the drug trade with pistols and knives. Shotguns and submachine guns. Suicidal language and, of course, quixotic bravery. No one dares to stop the fighting. Instead they just accept it and wait for the balladeers to record with verse and song the fatalities of those killed on this fetid never-ending afternoon.
Justice served.
Freedom retained.
Love lost.
Tequila hot, death cold.
The Great Director takes a drink from his glass. Some tequila, mostly Squirt. A lot of ice. It is so hot, and the white suit he wears and the Panama hat he occasionally fans himself with are doing nothing to shield him from the oppressive burden of the smothering heat. He considers putting on his mirrored sunglasses to mitigate the blinding glare from the street outside the bar. But that would only make Carmelita jealous. Suspicious that he is not looking upon her with lust at all times.
Carmelita is the lead actress in this latest installment of his trilogy of revenge, drug war violence, and redemption set in the Norteño frontier of the streets of Ciudad Juárez, Sinaloa Province, Mexico. It is the twenty-third movie he has shot this year.
“No, no, we must wait with our friends,” he says, indicating the narco cowboys, coyotes, drug dealers, assassins, thieves, pimps, and drunkards all around them. He signals the bartender to purchase another round on him, for everyone. After all, he cannot keep his crew waiting without something to drink. They will need to shoot scenes later today. It is better to keep them here and drinking than out in the streets and shooting with guns. It doesn’t pay to have your sound guy getting killed for revenge, or love, or, as is so often the case, both.
“No, no, we must wait, Carmelita. We must wait for the producer to finish arranging for the money so that we can shoot more today. Do you know your lines?”
“Of course I know my lines, stupid. Ay yi yi, you never want to have fun.”
“I know. It’s just that this is an important scene. You discover your novio has been murdered and Hector de
cides to avenge his death. You really have to show that while you’re still sad over losing your novio, you don’t want Hector to get killed too. So you give him your novio’s favorite shotgun. This is a really important scene. Lots of drama.”
“I know that already. Latinas can do theese stuff all day long. I will be very sad. More sad than you have ever seeen. Okay so don’t worry. I will be very sincerely sad.”
“Okay. What are you going to wear?”
“Theese dress. It’s muy sexy. Don’t you think?”
The Great Director has fallen into this trap many times before in the short time he has been with Carmelita and the various other Mexican actresses that have attached themselves to him since his exile south of the border. The answer he wants to give her has something to do with all his years in Hollywood. All the years of picking the right costumes for his actors. Costumes that reflected the character, emotional depth, and attitude that needed to come out in the scene. A soft brown jacket for sincerity. A blue shirt for emotional work. Gray for cold calculation. But for these Mexican actresses, for Carmelita, the answer is always “yes.” Yes to the white too-skimpy dress, and the six-inch heels are perfect for the scene in which you mourn your dead lover and plead with your new lover not to shoot it out with a drug lord’s small army. Muy sexy works for lots of occasions in Sinaloa.
“When will he be here?” whines Carmelita. Her too-big brown eyes grow even larger at the thought of once again being captured on film for all of Mexico, and the world, to see.
“Soon, Carmelita, soon. Maybe an hour, maybe sooner.”
“No, no,” she whimpers. “I hope it is sooner.”
The Great Director hopes for this also. He needs money to finish this film. He needs money to pay the bar tab. He needs money to remain dead, burned up in a fire.
How do you end up directing Narco Cinema films in hell when it seemed like you were on your way to heaven?
Money.
In Narco-Cinema Hell, Jay Jameson is your producer. You run out of money quickly once you’ve fled to Mexico, and Kip, as Jay, tries to make some the old-fashioned way by dealing drugs. Within hours he has passed himself off as a drug lord of some note, and shortly you’re kidnapped, bags over your heads, thrown into a van, kicked, pistol-whipped, and beaten. When the bags are removed, the blinding sunlight of the Mexican desert stabs at your brain like so many shards of a bright and broken knife.
The last sky you’ll ever see reels infinitely blue over the top of your head as Limon Herrera, drug runner, assassin, and pimp, holds a .44 caliber Desert Eagle handgun with a pearl handle and a picture of his long-suffering mother engraved on the grip. He shoves it in Kip’s face.
“Chu,” he says, meaning “You.” “I don’t like so much.” Wisely, for once, Kip opts for silence.
“But chu,” he says, indicating the Great Director with a wave of his massive pistol. “I don’t know so much.” Now he sticks the cannon in the Great Director’s face as a couple of his compadres mill about in the background, unloading shovels and sacks of quicklime.
“Who the hell are you?” asks the desert drug lord.
All the sleepless nights of fear, days of personal inventory, and years of therapy are boiled down into this bluntest of questions. Punctuated by the business end of an overly macho weapon wielded by a cross-eyed Mexican sociopath.
Who in the hell am I?
At that very moment the Great Director urgently and finally realizes who he is.
“I’m a film director. I make movies,” he cries as though there is salvation, or at least some kind of explanation, contained within his identity statement.
Limon Hererra, aka “El Serpente,” aka Juan “The Widow-Maker” Domingo, aka “The Drywaller,” smiles. He has killed a lot of people. He prides himself on all the professions he has killed. Other drug dealers, gunmen, whores, other pimps, cops, judges, a flower vendor. But he has never killed a film director. When he got up this morning between two of his “B” team whores, he didn’t think anything special was going to happen today. Just another long day of struggle for his slice of the narco cowboy dream. But things are turning out well. Today he gets to kill an American filmmaker. It just goes to show you, he thinks, life is indeed full of surprises.
Fortunately, or unfortunately—how you look upon it really determines what kind of person you are—Limon “The Drywaller” Herrera has been doing really well in the drug running business as of late. So he literally has tons of cash. He has cash everywhere. His left pocket looks as though it has swallowed a football. A football of one-hundred-dollar bills. It’s his walking around money. The rest of the cash is walled up inside his mesa-top hideout. Each day he has to break open, and then reseal, the walls of his house to either deposit or withdraw cash. He has quickly become very adept at the art of drywalling. Hence the nickname.
The Drywaller smiles coldly. He aims the gun at the Great Director’s face once more with renewed cross-eyed intensity. The day is turning out to be a fortunate one, what with getting to kill a film director and all. He toys with the idea of also killing his Most Trusted Lieutenant just to show the rest of his organization what kind of upward mobility program he is offering.
Now his Most Trusted Lieutenant, whom the Drywaller does not actually trust, approaches him and offers a suggestion as to what “they” could do with all that cash he’s been walling up inside his house every day and night. By “they” he means Limon Herrera. You don’t reach Most Trusted Lieutenant status by ignoring the psychotic glint in your boss’s eye that has so often accompanied previous promotion opportunities. For a brief moment he whispers into the Drywaller’s ear. High above, the Great Director can see gathering desert scavengers sensing the way things should be turning out shortly.
“Make movies?” screams the Drywaller as he spins about and levels his gun into the face of his Most Trusted Lieutenant. “That’s the stupidest idea I ever heard. I don’t even know how to act.” Again the Lieutenant whispers into the Drywaller’s ear, this time slower, yet no less urgent.
Limon “The Drywaller” Herrera listens intently, nodding slightly. He lowers his pistol, and Kip and the Great Director release their breath.
“But then no one would call me ‘The Drywaller’ anymore. I really like that name.” Now his pistol is up again, pointing at the Most Trusted Lieutenant. Everyone resumes holding their breath. Again the Trusted Lieutenant whispers into the Drywaller’s ear. Again the nodding. The pistol lowers. Everyone releases their breath. The whispering stops. Everyone waits.
Now, Limon Herrera begins to wave his pistol about at everybody as he seems to undergo some sort of sputtering attack. In the months to come the Great Director will find that this is the Drywaller’s way of thinking. To wave his pistol around as his eyes roll back into his head and he snarls at unseen demons. Occasionally, people die as a result of his “thinking.”
“All right,” he says, now pointing the pistol back at Kip and the Great Director. “Chu can make films for me so I can clean up my money. Oh, and call me ‘El Producer,’ okay, got it?”
They did get it. And six months later they found themselves waiting in a cantina, waiting for the man everyone calls “The Devil.”
Making films here in Mexico is a very different experience than in Hollywood. The Great Director has a freedom of sorts. He can make whatever film he chooses to make, so long as it involves guns, pickup trucks, handlebar mustaches, and voluptuous Latinas. No one has ever forced him to choose which actors to use unless those actors were forced upon him by members of the various crime cartels, or were, in actuality, members of said crime cartels themselves. This is not dissimilar to the mega-talent agencies in Hollywood, who use similar, if not identical, tactics on occasion. Furthermore, he can get any shot he wants as long as he gets it before the three-hour lunch that occurs every day. Also, they can shoot on location if the bribe Kip has paid is sufficient for them to use the locatio
n they are shooting on and not be shot, raped, robbed, stabbed, or beaten by any of the local street gangs.
Hollywood, his Perfect Robot Wife, the agents, the lawyers, the actors, the executives, and every other person who has smiled through perfect teeth as they cheated, lied, stole, and broke every law in the book, and some that weren’t in the book, to get to the top, can’t touch him anymore. He has escaped their grasp. Their insanity. Their games of smoke and mirrors. Every day here in Ciudad Juárez, Don Fatalé stalks the streets. Here everyone carries a gun, even the makeup artist. Here, where tempers flare and gunplay almost always ensues, people smile, step aside, measure with respect twice and conduct themselves as if there is just a “once” in the amount of chances you get. Maybe the reality of Ciudad Juárez makes people think a little more carefully about what’s important. Maybe.
The hot streets and the unending violence are rules, thinks the Great Director often, rules of cinema. Rules not to be broken. Rules to tell a story. If you don’t break the rules, maybe everyone can be a little happy. It’s not that Hollywood phonies aren’t tough enough for this place. It’s that they’ll never learn the rules and thus, never get to him here.
Carmelita dances, and the rogues who are his crew drink more tequila mixed with Squirt. Soon the Devil, that Fat Devil Boy, walks through the door smiling, grinning, leering. Again, the Great Director can see that this film has acquired a new financier. Another Mexican Businessman, silk shirt goon, cowboy hat goon, bombshell blond Latina in tow. And of course a battered briefcase. Who knows what’s in it. Cash, or assets that must be converted into cash?
The Great Director sighs and stands to shake his new business partner’s hand. Carmelita stops dancing, sizing up the new Latina. One is ambivalent. The other casts glances of casual murder in her long-lashed brown eyes. Trouble, thinks the Great Director. Sooner than later. Most definitely trouble.
Kip leering, everybody silently macho, arrogantly Latin. Tequila, neon, darkness, heat, danger, death, and yes, in its own way, a sort of escape. Escape at last.