The film is set thirty years ago, in the months following the end of the Confidence Crisis. Popov has fled battle since crossing into Mongolia two years previous. His T-16 Armatas hide from the Indian Empire, no matter their superiority in numbers. The Desert Screwhorn was jeered on release for showing war is horrible, not glamorous, that the sane reaction is to refuse to fight, to ignore the demands of glory. The panning it got at release is not because of its supposed political attitudes, but because it is a war movie with no violence. The audience felt cheated.
46.
RATS IN THEIR SUNDAY CLOTHING
DIR. JAMES OSVALD
6 MINUTES
To prevent budget overruns, Jonson insisted I storyboard the shots for Altarpiece.
He said, If you will not accept outside funding, then you will have to economize.
My excuses of previous weeks. I do not know Bellono well enough. The cells of my visual sense have not yet begun to divide. Forgot my pencils. Venus is not in the correct house. My data was throttled because I fell asleep with my fridge open. Food poisoning. I need special paper from New Korea. I forgot my New Korean paper on the rail. The storyboards are getting done but I can’t show them until filming begins because of superstitions I can’t mention.
Monday I arrived at the trailer to find a note saying he was going to the Eastern Hub. He expected the storyboards to be finished when he returned, or he would finance a different film. It is unlike him to be so primitive. Our office trailer is not a glove factory. Cinema moves at its own speed. He has left to spy on his wife, hence the anxiety, the uncharacteristic lack of tact, the abrupt departure, the scribble on notepaper, as if I were his indentured servant.
Since I have no intention of using the storyboards and do not want to suck the energy from my authentic ideas, but must convince Jonson of the legitimacy of my method, this has proved to be a hemorrhoid on my imagination.
I work evenings. The hours after midnight make me nervous, the slippery Osvaldian quiet, time’s eels. The night is largely Osvald’s. The hours can be divided between us, although not cleanly between light and darkness. Likewise, our influence respectively wanes and waxes over the course of the year, as the zodiac trudges circuits of the sky like prisoners in the yard. May is an auspicious month for me, disastrous for Osvald, but he is the luckiest man in his data bracket come November.
The cocktail hour is mine, and bedtime, when the sensations of the day coalesce in an exhaustion resembling affability. The sunrise is his since he is awake to observe it, as are the darkest hours. Reduced visibility is propitious for Osvald. Neither of us is blessed during hours of business. The hours when I pencil my shots are his, and the pencils I draw with were his, rutted, monogrammed, greasy, obsolete.
If, at the premiere, fidgeting between Jonson and his scowling wife, I were to notice a shot cribbed from Osvald’s student work, or a narrative structure he had diagrammed on his bedroom wall, I would be mortified. Ideas sabotage long after their introduction. I have no use for his movies. But, to be sure, I had to have another look. It is not hard to understand why Orpheus turned to look at Eurydice on the threshold of sunlight. What is following us must be encouraged to continue.
Osvald is trying to fund A Replicate. He has no benefactor with money but little sense. No Harris Jonson, who can’t enter a room without opening his wallet. His attacks, his attempts to take over my body, to insert his ideas into my film, were from jealousy.
Wherever he was, I was there, seeing what he saw, his sky’s handsomest rain cloud.
The meeting at the Heritage Authority offices, which Osvald was ejected from for having the nerve to ask for government money to make a film attacking the government.
His GroupFund page garnered eighty dollars.
His mother donated sixty. I kicked in twenty under the name Verne Gyula.
Osvald tried the Weide Foundation. Irene Weide bequeathed her estate to support filmmakers. The director of the Weide Foundation liked his application and his short film. Osvald was invited to the offices to talk about grant opportunities. The Weide Foundation is located in the Tudor pile used in Sweet Anonymity. Weide did so much structural damage in the course of filming, she was obligated to buy the house.
The director, one Ms. Heavey, thin and nervous, missing incisor. I noticed, from my vantage of Osvald, a peculiar scar on the inside of her forearm.
She said, Please, follow me.
Osvald was brought into a basement room. On the table was nothing but a pair of silver shears. Osvald knew that they were the prop from The Daughter of the Queen of the Night, but it seemed too obvious to acknowledge. Play it cool, Osvald.
Ms. Heavey said, We do things differently here, per Ms. Weide’s instructions.
She unrolled her sleeve.
Ms. Heavey said, If you want the money, you know what to do.
Ms. Heavey left the room. A camera running overhead.
Osvald thought about it a minute, but he’s frightened by blood. It makes him faint.
I was present at his excruciating lunch with the assistant to the adviser to the producer Gerald Jackson, who asked him if he’d consider adding an extended shower scene to attract Maquilla, in the sunset of her vanities, for the role of Mayor Alison. When Osvald explained that he wouldn’t be using known acting talent, whom he considered corrupt for refusing to use their platform as a celebrity to draw attention to the Transit Authority’s excesses, the assistant laughed, put his cigarette out in Osvald’s bisque, and took his leave.
Osvald’s catalogue raisonné was on a Pinger in my apartment, where it had sat for some years. He’d compiled the shorts and mediums for a grant application to fund his biopic of Mavis Tenderloin. We held hopes for succor from arts organizations. We thought a council, foundation, or an agency would fund our projects. American society was deficient in avant-garde cinema. Painter’s tape labeled ACCEPTABLE MATERIAL clung to the device’s belly. I ignored the films without a pretense of narrative.
The rest I queued on the monitors in the production trailer: Bargaining with Maroat, Charlie Scuttles Ivy’s Battleship, Rubber Bible, Max’s Joke Flops, The Witch of Acorn Street, Aubade, Dad, Re-Dad, and Rats in Their Sunday Clothing, Osvald’s masterpiece.
A man, me in fake gingerbread beard and pancake makeup, is visited in the hospital by his wife, played by Isabel, in a pink wig, scowl, and sequined orange slippers. The man is dying. His illness has spread to his brain. He has hidden their money. I have hidden our money.
She says, Why would you hide our money?
He says, So you won’t forget me. Until you find it, you’ll search and wonder, and I’ll live in you a while longer. Don’t worry. It’s findable, if you know where to look.
She says, Tell me or I’ll kill you.
He says, Ha. Ha. Ack. Aghch. I’m choking.
Isabel doesn’t need the money but the puzzle torments her. A big itch unscratched. She needs to find him in the afterlife and ask where he’s hidden the loot. His destination is not known. Living in virtue, to hopscotch in the fields of heaven. Living in sin, to sidestroke in the lake of fire.
Smash cut, Isabel shawled, Sharpie wrinkles.
Voice-over, Isabel, saying, A mystery is a gift.
47.
SCALLOP
DIR. TERRY ICE
83 MINUTES
The magic of names was a preoccupation of the fantasy serials I enjoyed as a child. Each was priced under seven dollars, the limit of what I could coax from my mother. The best ran twelve to eighteen volumes, with hundreds of characters, political factions, maps, appendices, battles, magical instruments, betrayals, cuisines, etiquettes, treaties, hygienic practices, architectures, coutures, genealogies. They were punitive boluses of plot, hairballs of exposition that were, contemplated after the chief hobgoblin was resealed in her crystal cave, as flat as death.
To read a fantasy with one’s critical facu
lties is not as important as the ability to inhabit its zones of possibility. Their trade and culture are inevitably more interesting than the battles and romances. My hope A’ron Eaglefeather or Sindriss Sankara would catch a crossbow bolt kept me reading. Heroism is metastasized self-interest. Vanity, aggression, greed, and insecurity are the forces driving these narcissists to hoist the realm onto their thews.
Fantasy worlds mulched time before I could go to the movies alone, before puberty’s fangs. I spent summer nights in bed with The Alchemical Neuromancy of Lord Gribben, listening to the neighbors argue, break their dishes, and have dramaturgical sex after their frustrations were exhausted. Lord Gribben, although he entered into intrigues with the chimerical ladies of the Bog Senate, and his income was among the highest in the Blaggerlands, did not get even a pity kiss. The subtext with his valet went over my head.
Scallop was adapted from a fantasy series written by a reclusive old woman who was rumored to have been the assassin of numerous, nonconsecutive Hub mayors. Scallop is a scullion terrorized by her aunt, the vespine tyrant of a backwater coffee shop three nodes north of the Southwestern Hub. The knock-kneed mouse of the books was replaced with a starlet augmented to appeal to men who become dejected if they have not seen a good set of tits in twenty minutes.
Enter an old man in pajamas emblazoned with sigils and runes. He fits in well with the marginal denizens of the dusty burg, where there is neither theater nor printer. A thug attempts to boss the old man from his table. Comic interlude. Wizards pretend to be senile. He informs Scallop she has the potential to become a sorceress, but there is a catch.
To undergo pedagogy, Scallop is obliged to write her real name in the Ledger of Sorcerers and Sorceresses, located in the Eastern Hub’s Tranquility Tower. The wizard, Merrifield the Maudlin, informs her she needs to know her true name. Merrifield is an obtuse fellow. He indulges freely, and the meaning behind his name becomes apparent after his sixth tankard of beer. Scallop does not know her real name, whispered in one’s ear on one’s twelfth birthday by one’s mother or father. Her parents died. All parents, in the fantasy milieu, are dead. It’s dangerous to propagate. Latent magicality lurks in one’s genes. After one hatches a hero, one is slaughtered in one’s hut by reactionary forces.
Scallop has adventures. Men are skewered. Digital eyesores are destroyed. I despise generated effects. Give me puppets and corn syrup. A budget is spent. Marketing tie-ins are introduced. After a satisfying path of travails, Scallop finds her name scrawled on a railcar. The gates of the magic mansion open. To be continued for ten consecutive Decembers.
Poor Scallop’s parents, fried by lightning. Sorrow can be deferred if one knows the method. The rupture must be squeezed. Grope inside yourself, theatergoer, and you will find it. Keep your grip tight. Pinch it closed. In others’ theaters, you are a field of color, a nip on the neck, a familiar groan. You are stardust tormented with electricity. There is no need to indulge your small griefs.
48.
BENSON’S PASSING
DIR. JACK MERDLE
91 MINUTES
I caved and told Jonson about Dr. Lisa.
We were sitting in the trailer, throwing darts at the ceiling. Days later, one would fall, point down, to land on Jonson’s desk between his left ring and middle finger. His luck infuriating. I didn’t get around to seeing Benson’s Passing, playing tomorrow at Zone Cinema, but Jonson said it was good when we were throwing darts, if you want to take his word.
Jonson said, I knew something was up. I have a sense for when people are concealing a secret from me. I should have been a psychic. But you didn’t want to be premature, I understand. I say, give a man time, wine, silence, and he will unburden his heart.
I said, This is tea.
He said, Well, we must have you over.
I said, Jonson, don’t make this a thing.
He said, Drinks, Wednesday, after dinner. You can take her to the little pizzeria with the elderly ladies playing cards. It’s foolproof. Even Lucretia thinks it’s charming.
On his Pinger, pinging his wife.
He said, She says okay.
He said, Aren’t you going to ask Dr. Lisa?
I said, Right now? But what about the storyboards?
He said, You’ve been drawing battleships for three days. Are those battleships?
I said, They’re bunkers. I was thinking, if one had sufficient money, one could withdraw from the world.
He said, Bunkers haven’t been fashionable for some time. If you are interested, it would be better to purchase one made for an oligarch and forgotten about. Maybe we can arrange a tour? But only if you bring her around.
Asking Dr. Lisa.
To compose the domestic sentences thrilled me. To refer to Jonson as my friend and partner at the production company. The business half. His wife a delight.
Dr. Lisa bought me a pizza. Before we walked to Jonson’s, through his nice neighborhood, following the course of the river, I took her by our production trailer.
She said, It smells like desperation.
I said, That’s inspiration and the leftovers under my desk.
Dr. Lisa opened the windows. I lay on the couch.
I said, How about we make some excuse?
She said, You’re not ashamed of me.
I said, I’m ashamed of Jonson.
She said, Now, that’s not nice.
I said, No, it’s not. Come over here. The couch folds out.
Henri said, Sir, would you like me to put on some romantic music? Perhaps have a bag of wine delivered?
Dr. Lisa said, Gross. Let’s go.
Phillippe said, Keep doing what you were doing.
Gaston said, We’ll be quiet if you continue.
We left the trailer, disturbed.
Dr. Lisa said, How do you work with those AlmostPeople in there?
I said, It isn’t easy. Did you know that the female models were discontinued because too many men were trying to marry them? Jonson’s an investor in the company. You wouldn’t believe some of the requests customers were making.
Up the elevator toward Jonson’s apartment. Lucretia, irritated to be called from her reading. She didn’t bother to hide her disappointment.
Lucretia said, Let’s go to the terrace.
Lucretia said, I know you’ll have grapefruit juice, but what can I get you, Dr. Lisa?
Dr. Lisa said, Whatever’s good.
Jonson came from the kitchen with a platter of wizened olives, prawns, a carafe, and chocolate-covered grasshoppers.
As the number of people around me increases, so does my difficulty maintaining my attention in the present. Alone, the consciousness has nowhere to hide, but with three or four, it finds cover. Drones hissing overhead.
Dr. Lisa said, What were you reading?
Lucretia said, Another theory of how the pyramids were built at Giza. This one claimed the Egyptians had some obscure species of cattle pulling their sledges.
Dr. Lisa said, What do you think?
Lucretia said, A combination of wetting the sand and wooden rollers moved the blocks from the quarry. It must have been horrible. The ramps are the mystery. Even with our engineering software, nobody can simulate a compelling model. The lubricant was suffering.
Dr. Lisa said, I remember hearing that the workers on the pyramids were fed much better than the average peasant as an inducement to work.
Lucretia said, Revisionist wishfulness to cover for symbol worship. People project what they need onto a symbol, especially one like the pyramids, which is laden with associations of the afterlife, monumentality, accomplishment, and royalty. They speak to our deepest fantasies. No, slaves built the pyramids, and they died in great number, and painfully, for male vanity, for an inert state religion. They are a reminder of what damage governance wreaks in the common imagination, even thousands of years later.<
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Looking at her husband. Weighing his heart on the scale like her gods of the replica frieze hanging over their bed. Why is sin decided in the bedroom? The wallet would be a better place to begin.
Dr. Lisa said, I suppose you think speculation about stars and aliens building the pyramids is garbage.
Lucretia said, Nothing would thrill me more than to find out one of the conspiracy theories is true. When we study history, we ought to challenge it. We should refuse history. Not to mention it would place me as a relative expert in one of the most pressing matters of existence: why we are here, and who put us here.
This went on a little. Lucretia had splashed vodka in my grapefruit juice as a kindness. Both of us outside our comfort. Although we could converse all right, it didn’t mean we preferred to. If the metaphysical bloviating was from an authentic impulse or because these two people had their needs met so well nothing remained but to ponder existence, if they were afflicted with hedonistic fatigue, was not clear. Osvald’s cruel thought. It was better than talking about olives.
Going up, I had warned Dr. Lisa not to speak of the film to Jonson’s wife. I didn’t know how to explain Jonson’s secrecy. He wanted it to be a surprise.
She said, You mean he doesn’t think she will be confident in the film, or she thinks it is a waste of money?
I said, It’s not my marriage.
She said, Isn’t it their money? Isn’t that how money is spent in a marriage?
I said, It isn’t my place to tell.
She said, I don’t like secrecy.
Jonson asked the customary questions. Lucretia disinterested in impressing Dr. Lisa. She was talented at conveying she was following a conversation without caring about it. Gossip, which Jonson and I are fond of, does not tempt her. Lucretia did not conceal her relative neutrality to the people with whom she was speaking, and her attitudes made it difficult for me to understand how she could have the passion and self-loathing necessary for an affair with Seel. Each of us unable to be known. Maybe Jonson knew her or maybe not. Maybe she understood herself. It could be her indifference was a tactic and she was invested in the lives of those who surrounded her.
A Short Film About Disappointment Page 14