by Don DeLillo
“Making films,” he said. “That’s great. Tell me about it. I hate my life. I’m at the point where I want to hear about other people’s lives. It’s like switching from fiction to biography. The beginning of the end.”
“What I’m doing is kind of hard to talk about. It’s a sort of first-person thing but without me in it in any physical sense, except fleetingly, not exactly in the Hitchcock manner but a brief personal appearance nonetheless, my mirror image at any rate. Also my voice when I start using sound. It’s a reaching back for certain things. But not just that. It’s also an attempt to explain, to consolidate. Jesus, I don’t know. It’ll be part dream, part fiction, part movies. An attempt to explore parts of my consciousness. Not quite autobiographical in the Jonas Mekas sense. I’ve said part movies. By that I mean certain juxtapositions of movies with reality, certain images that have stayed with me, certain influences too. I mean you can start with nothing but your own minor reality and end with an approximation of art. Ghosts and shadows everywhere in terms of technique. Bresson. Miklós Jancsó. Ozu. Shirley Clarke. The interview technique. The monologue. The anti-movie. The single camera position. The expressionless actor. The shot extended to its ultimate limit in time. I just got laid incidentally.”
“You’re really going strong,” Wild said. “I haven’t the slightest idea what the hell you’re talking about but it sounds great, it sounds really heavy, it sounds committed.”
“I feel I’ve got to do it. I’m also doing a documentary on the Navahos for television. That’ll be done out in Arizona and around there. Where the reservation is.”
“But you’re not working for anybody.”
“Independent basis,” I said. “I don’t want anybody making decisions for me. I’m not getting rich, mind you, but I’m holding my own. When all this is over I may do something for Svensk Filmindustri. Just outside Sweden there. I mean Stockholm. Bergman’s turf. So you’re divorced. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“She was a bitch. I was a bastard. Good riddance to both of us. I hate my life. I really hate my life. What about you—married?”
“Actually I’m living with a Vietnamese girl,” I said. “Marriage is a lost art. Maybe if we decide to have kids. If not, things are fine just the way they are.”
“Their women are beautiful,” Wild said.
We finished our drinks and got a table. Wild was obviously well known in here. He joked with the waiter, ordering an angst on pumpernickel. Then he asked for two more drinks.
“But you’re making money, aren’t you?”
“I’m making money,” he said.
“I bet you’ve got a great apartment with all sorts of stunning creatures to choose from.”
“This is bunnyland,” he said. “Both ears and the tail for the sloppiest of kills.”
We had a bottle of wine with lunch and two brandies at the table afterward. Then we went to the bar and ordered stingers. Wild was in no hurry to get back to the office. It was about three o’clock. I had been driving a good part of the previous night and I felt dazed and weary. We drank quietly for half an hour.
“We’re consultants to government and industry,” Wild said finally. “Want to know about production flow systems? Materials handling? Centralized processing and distribution? Automation you know isn’t necessarily the answer. First you study the operation. Then you analyze the system in terms of costs and functional elements. Maybe automation isn’t the answer at all. Maybe it’s selective automation you want. One or two small changes can turn the trick. Relocate a conveyor line. Design a special component. Too many people think automation is the answer to everything. This is a fallacy. I work with good men. They do their job and they like what they’re doing and they don’t ever squawk. Once I dated one of their daughters for a period of several some odd months. She was all jugs. I liked her. But she kept using a word I couldn’t stand. She was always using it. I tromped over to the museum. I went tromping through the park. I tromped down Rush Street. Automation is no panacea. We understand that in my father’s outfit. Systems planning is the true American artform. More than jazz for godsake. We excel at maintenance. We understand interrelationships. We make it all work, from parcel entry to in-plant distribution to truck routing and scheduling. We know exactly where to put the nail that holds the broom. A lot of countries can’t do that. They don’t know how. Practically nobody in Europe knows where to put the nail. You know that Frenchman who wrote that book, what he said? There are three great economic powers in the world. America. Russia. And America in Europe. We have to show them where to put the nail. But the Russians still lag. They lag in industrial research, in computerization, in automated systems. They lag. We know how to plan things, like overall corporate policy, like inventory management, like distribution, like site suitability. We’re experts in containerization, unit loads, electronic data processing, feasibility studies. We know how to zero in. What’s so terrible about that?”
About fifteen minutes later he said:
“Talent is everything. If you’ve got talent, nothing else matters. You can screw up your personal life something terrible. So what. If you’ve got talent, it’s there in reserve. Anybody who has talent they know they have it and that’s it. It’s what makes you what you are. It tells you you’re you. Talent is everything; sanity is nothing. I’m convinced of it. I think I had something once. I showed promise, didn’t I, Dave? I mean I had something, didn’t I? But I was too sane. I couldn’t make the leap out of my own soul into the soul of the universe. That’s the leap they all made. From Blake to Rimbaud. I don’t write anything but checks. I read science fiction. I go on business trips to South Bend and Rochester. The one in Minnesota. Not Rochester, New York. Rochester, Minnesota. I couldn’t make the leap.”
The sun was going down when I opened my eyes. I was on a boat. I could see the towers of Marina City. I was on a sightseeing boat on the Chicago River, that silly little river which modern engineering has coaxed into flowing backwards. The ribs on my left side ached badly. It was sunset and somehow I had lost several hours. Then we docked and I started walking toward the Drake, trying to remember where the car was parked. I stopped in a drugstore and called Wild at his apartment.
“What happened? I just woke up. I was on a sightseeing boat.”
“You son of a bitch,” he said.
“We were at the bar. That’s all I remember. I woke up ten minutes ago. What happened in between?”
“My goddamn neck.”
“My ribs,” I said.
“I shouldn’t even talk to you.”
“We were at the bar. We were drinking stingers.”
“You got in an argument with Chin Po.”
“Who’s that?”
“Chin Po’s the guy who was sitting next to you. I was sitting on one side and he was on the other.”
“Right,” I said. “Then what?”
“We started drinking toasts. You and I and Chin. We drank a number of toasts to Chiang Kai-shek.”
“Wonderful. Really great.”
“Then you started the argument. You and Chin.”
“What were we arguing about?”
“An afterlife,” he said. “Whether or not there’s an afterlife.”
“That’s incredible. I don’t even have any convictions on the subject. Which side was I taking—pro or con?”
“I don’t know. That part is hazy. I just remember you and Chin arguing violently about an afterlife.”
“Then what?”
“Then you took a swing at Chin.”
“God.”
“Luckily you just grazed him and before he had a chance to swing back I stepped in between and tried to calm you down.”
“What happened then?”
“You got me in the headlock.”
“Jesus, Ken.”
“You got me in the headlock and I couldn’t break it. You had my head twisted up under your armpit and I could hardly breathe.”
“I’m really sorry. I just didn’t know wh
at I was doing.”
“Then I blacked out,” he said. “I couldn’t break the hold and I just blacked out. When I came to, the bartender was punching you in the ribs to get you to let go of me and old Chin was back on his barstool calmly lighting a cigarette.”
“That’s incredible.”
“The bartender, Frank, kept smashing you in the ribs until you finally let go. I headed straight for the john, bounced off some chairs, got in there, flashed once or twice, threw cold water on my face and then just sat on the floor. When I came out about five minutes later, you were gone. I’m not sure but I think you came in the john for a second and shook my hand. But I’m not sure.”
“Ken, I don’t know what to say. I’m really sorry.”
“You’d be a lot sorrier if Chin Po had ever got his hands on you.”
“Why?”
“Frank told me he’s a black belt in karate.”
“God.”
“He’d have broken your windpipe just like that.”
“God, I know.”
“Fat old Chin. He’d have maimed you for life.”
“And I still don’t know what happened to the last two or three hours. Jesus God, it’s frightening. I’m really sorry, Ken. I’ll make it up to you somehow.”
But I wasn’t sorry. I was, if anything, exhilarated. Wild was husky and compact; he brimmed with strength. And yet he hadn’t been able to break the headlock I had put on him.
“Let’s forget it,” he said. “Look, I’ve been working hard and drinking kind of heavy and I think I need a vacation. Maybe I’ll go dry out somewhere. You said you were going to Arizona or someplace to do a documentary. Maybe I can meet you out there. When are you due on location?”
“Tomorrow,” I said, and that was the truth.
10
I hurried toward the hotel, my pockets full of scraps of paper, index cards, neatly creased sheets, Scotch-taped fragments, throwaways uncrumpled and hand-pressed, what detritus and joy, a grainy day, child of Godard and Coca-Cola.
I asked the desk clerk, an old man this time whose face was purplish with broken blood vessels, if he could turn up a portable TV set somewhere in the building. I needed it for an hour and I was willing to slip a discreetly folded five-dollar bill into the breast pocket of his sturdy mail-order shirt. He came up later carrying the thing, a bulky Motorola, as if it were a wounded man he could not wait to deposit somewhere. I plugged it in, turned the sound down to nothing, then set the Canon Scoopic on the tripod.
Soon Glenn Yost arrived. I thanked him for giving up his lunch break, explaining we had to film in the early afternoon in order to get the right kind of TV show and commercials, and then I asked him to go over the pages I had prepared for him. We would read and record on tape my questions and his answers; he would not appear on camera in this segment. I talked fast so he wouldn’t have time for second thoughts.
A game show was on TV, young married contestants and a suavely gliding master of ceremonies; there were frequent commercials, the usual daytime spasms on behalf of detergents and oral hygiene. This is what I filmed for roughly eight minutes, the TV set, having to break twice for reloading, as Glenn and I, off camera, read from the wrinkled scattered script. Glenn spoke in a monotone throughout.
“We’re going to talk about test patterns and shadows. Certain forms of darkness. A small corner of the twentieth century.”
“I have all the answers.”
“And I have the questions,” I said. “We begin, simply enough, with a man watching television. Quite possibly he is being driven mad, slowly, in stages, program by program, interruption by interruption. Still, he watches. What is there in that box? Why is he watching?”
“The TV set is a package and it’s full of products. Inside are detergents, automobiles, cameras, breakfast cereal, other television sets. Programs are not interrupted by commercials; exactly the reverse is true. A television set is an electronic form of packaging. It’s as simple as that. Without the products there’s nothing. Educational television’s a joke. Who in America would want to watch TV without commercials?”
“How does a successful television commercial affect the viewer?”
“It makes him want to change the way he lives.”
“In what way?” I said.
“It moves him from first person consciousness to third person. In this country there is a universal third person, the man we all want to be. Advertising has discovered this man. It uses him to express the possibilities open to the consumer. To consume in America is not to buy; it is to dream. Advertising is the suggestion that the dream of entering the third person singular might possibly be fulfilled.”
“How then does a TV commercial differ from a movie? Movies are full of people we want to be.”
“Advertising is never bigger than life. It tries not to edge too far over the fantasy line; in fact it often mocks different fantasy themes associated with the movies. Look, there’s no reason why you can’t fly Eastern to Acapulco and share two solid weeks of sex and adventure with a vacationing typist from Iowa City. But advertising never claims you can do it with Ava Gardner. Only Richard Burton can accomplish that. You can change your image but you can’t change the image of the woman you take to bed. Advertising has merchandised this distinction. We have exploited the limitation of dreams. It’s our greatest achievement.”
“What makes a good advertising man?”
“He knows how to move the merch off the shelves. It’s as simple as that. If the advertising business shut down tomorrow, I’d go over to Macy’s and get a job selling men’s underwear.”
“Let’s get back to images. Do the people who create commercials take into account this third person consciousness you’ve talked about with such persuasiveness and verve?”
“They just make their twenty-second art films. The third person was invented by the consumer, the great armchair dreamer. Advertising discovered the value of the third person but the consumer invented him. The country itself invented him. He came over on the Mayflower. I’m waiting for you to ask me about the anti-image.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s the guerrilla warfare being fought behind the lines of the image. It’s a picture of devastating spiritual atrocities. The perfect example of the anti-image in advertising is the slice-of-life commercial. A recognizable scene in a suburban home anywhere in the USA. Some dialogue between dad and junior or between Madge and the members of the bridge club. Problem: Madge is suffering from irregularity. Solution: Drink this stuff and the muses will squat. The rationale behind this kind of advertising is that the consumer will identify with Madge. This is a mistake. The consumer never identifies with the anti-image. He identifies only with the image. The Marlboro man. Frank Gifford and Bobby Hull in their Jantzen bathing suits. Slice-of-life commercials usually deal with the more depressing areas of life—odors, sores, old age, ugliness, pain. Fortunately the image is big enough to absorb the anti-image. Not that I object to the anti-image in principle. It has its possibilities; the time may not be far off when we tire of the dream. But the anti-image is being presented much too literally. The old themes. The stereotyped dialogue. It needs a touch of horror, some mad laughter from the graveyard. One of these days some smart copywriter will perceive the true inner mystery of America and develop an offshoot to the slice-of-life. The slice-of-death.”
“Have you spent the major part of your adult life in the advertising business?”
“All but four years.”
“Where were they spent?” I said.
“I served a hitch in the army during the war.”
“Where?”
“The Pacific.”
“Where in the Pacific?”
“The Philippines.”
“Where in the Philippines?”
“Bataan: they made two movies about it.”
“Do you ever feel uneasy about your place in the constantly unfolding incorporeal scheme of things?”
“Only when I try to pre-empt the tr
uth.”
“What does that mean?”
“One of the clients I service is the Nix Olympica Corporation. They make a whole line of products for the human body. Depilatories, salves, foot powder, styptic pencils, mouthwash, cotton swabs for the ears, deodorants for the armpit, deodorants for the male and female crotch, acne cream medication, sinus remedies, denture cleansers, laxatives, corn plasters. We were preparing a campaign for their Dentex Division; that’s mouthwash primarily. Okay, so we zero in on one of the essential ingredients, quasi-cinnamaldehyde-plus. QCP. We take the hard-sell route. Dentex with QCP kills mouth poisons and odor-causing impurities thirty-two percent faster. Be specific. Be factual. Make a promise. Okay, so some little creep says to me in a meeting: thirty-two percent faster than what? Obvious, I tell him: thirty-two percent faster than if Dentex didn’t have QCP. The fact that all mouthwashes have this cinnamaldehyde stuff is beside the point; we were the only ones talking about it. This is known as pre-empting the truth. The creative people do a storyboard. Open on Formula One racing car, number six, Watkins Glen. Action, noise, crowd, throttling, crack-ups, explosions. Number six comes in first. Beauty queen rushes up to car, leans over to kiss driver, then turns away with grimace. Bad breath. She doesn’t want to kiss him. Cut to medical lab, guy with white smock. This is a dramatization—charts, diagrams, supers, QCP thirty-two percent faster. Back to original guy, number six, different race. Checkered flag drops, he wins, wreath around the neck, beauty queen kisses him, dissolve to victory party as they dance, kiss, whisper, dance, kiss. We took the idea to Dentex. They loved it. We took it upstairs to Nix Olympica. They loved it. They were delighted. They gave us the okay to shoot. We get cars and drivers and extras. We go up to Watkins Glen. We use helicopters, we use tracking shots, we use slow-motion, we use stop-action, we zoom, we wide-angle, we set up two small crashes and one monster explosion with a car turning over that nearly kills half the crew. I called a special meeting of the agency’s planning board and ran the final print for them. They loved it. When I told them it cost as much, pro-rated, as the movie Cleopatra, they were delighted. They would have something to tell their wives that evening. The next day we showed the commercial to Dentex. They loved it. They were delighted. We took it upstairs to Nix Olympica. They turned it down flat. The money didn’t bother them; they were impressed with the money; they would have something to tell their wives. But they turned it down flat. They ordered us to re-shoot both sequences in the winner’s circle.”