by Rudy Rucker
On this day's shooting there were three actresses and two actors as well as Terence, Bob and me. The funniest actor was called Duarte Barrilaro Ruas; he looked like Bela Lugosi with slicked back hair, lab coat, and a pasted-on goatee. He had a huge mouth, and liked to do crazy laughs.
For filming us they were making us go up on a creaking lacquered-wood ladder - like a library bookcase ladder - to get near the eyepiece of this huge telescope, a telescope with a big lens at one end and a little lens at the other end, the traditional idea of a telescope in other words, and not some newfangled thing with a mirror. The place was trippy and rundown but still actually functioning. The telescope was in a giant cylindrical room with the traditional penislike slit-silo-dome on top. A rotating slit. There was a bal-
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A simulated swarm of flies.
(Image generated by Boppers.)
cony/catwalk all around the edge up high, with windows looking out on this part of Lisboa.
An actress called Margarida Marinho had lunch at a table with Edgar, Bob and me. She was such a funny actress; I'd been watching her pretending to be an astronomer adjusting a telescope during the morning's shooting. It really taught me something about acting to watch her seemingly endless free flow of improvisations of gesture; different ways of twiddling the dials, looking surprised, moving about, and so on. They were doing shots with us standing on a kind of ladder next to a huge brass telescope.
After lunch one of the guys ran up to me with this ice cream-cone shaped cigarette and said, "Rudy, would you like some psychedelic? This is tobacco with hashish." And we all smoked some of that and the afternoon got funnier. Bob Wilson cheered up a bit, but then was cranky again, and when I said enthusiastically, "We're going up on the wobbly observing ladder to be filmed again," he said, "I don't like to see sadism in a man," and I said, after a minute or two of it sinking in, "I didn't mean to sound sadistic, I was just trying be cheerful," and then Terence chimed in, "I hate to think of all the atrocities that have been committed under the name of trying
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to be cheerful." Well that moment was bum, but much else was wavy during this stony afternoon.
I noticed that rain leaked in through the windows on the high room circling balcony, and that there was crumbled-off window-glazing on the sills, and there were lots of little flies there, breeding in the water or something, funny little baby Portuguese flies, and I got into this rap, rehearsing it to whomever would listen, that the insects were timeflies, which relates, you wave, to Zeno's Second Paradox of Motion: "Time flies like an arrow, but at each instant there is no time, so how does the arrow move?" And relates further to the classic automatic language translation program which translated "Time flies like an arrow," into Russian and back into English, yielding: "Insects which live on sundials enjoy eating arrows." And, most weightless fact of all, the arrow which the timeflies enjoy eating is Zeno's arrow!
In the milling around, I happened to walk up the stairs behind Durte and Juanne, a striking woman who turned out to be a professional model, aged 19. You could tell she was a model from the way she held herself, posing so perfectly. Before I'd grasped that she was a model, she'd just seemed kind of bland and skinny, but once I thought of her as a model, she seemed very attractive. She was wearing thick-soled sexy boots and tight leather pants, oh my. I filmed her a little with my own video camera. And then they filmed a big scene of me and Terence talking on the room-circling balcony, and Juanne was supposed to turn a big crank on the wall next to me as I talked, and I'd been flirting with her a little, and she said, "In the scene, I will bump you, yes?" And I said yes, so then she kept bumping me with her leather butt while I was talking - what thrills these sporadic contacts sent through me! I tried to act a little, and show reactions to the bumps. Finally in fact I pulled out my handkerchief and started polishing her bent leather butt - much to the filmed outrage of Terence who was just then holding forth to me about liberating oneself by pursuing the erotic element of life, and, noticing my polishing of Juanne's butt, complained that I wasn't listening to him. Another of my favorite moments that didn't appear in the film - ah, the heartbreak of being an actor.
My clowning was greatly to the amusement of a hip young guy
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called Daryl Pappas, moved to Portugal from L. A., who was taking publicity still photos for the film. When we finished shooting, he was hitting on Juanne. ''Are you a virgin?" Juanne: "I'm saving myself for God." Daryl: "Well, I'm him!" Juanne: "No, God has no head." Heavy. Juanne's way of showing heightened sexual interest was to chew her gum a bit faster.
Back at the hotel, I had a few drinks in the hotel bar with Bob. He cheers right up when he's having drinks or drugs. It would be fun to write an SF story together sometime, he's an incredible fount of knowledge with an idiosyncratic worldview. A little later, I had dinner at the hotel with Edgar, his wife Marguerite, Terence, Catarina, Bob, and Michael. I had dried fish appetizer (swordfish and lox), some duck breast in a delicious Madeira sauce, and a lot of drinks.
January 12, 1994. Around Lisbon, the Alfama.
I slept late, till 10:30, and woke feeling like shit. In the morning we went out to shoot on location in Lisbon. Terence was friendly and full of gossip about all the Mondo 2000 people on the way over.
Our first shot was in a giant free-standing outdoor seven-story elevator that goes down a cliff into the shopping district, known as Beixa. I talked a lot to Carlos, he was explaining a headline I saw about a man named Xanana being arrested. What a cool first name. He's a Portuguese-speaking resident of East Timor who is leading a rebellion against the Indonesian government, which took over Timor about seventeen years ago. The Portuguese are on the side of the rebels, but according to Carlos the U.S. has been on the side of the lndonesian oppressors. Then we walked down the Beixa main street to the dock where the ships used to arrive, the caravals. According to Terence, the king's men would be right there to take the valuables from the ships as they landed.
Speaking of first names that begin with an "X," Terence told a story about going into the Amazon and taking a weird drug with some short brown natives, and how after about an hour, he's looking at them, at their eyes that were "black and glittering like a cockroach's" (Terence's quote from William Burroughs), and starts wondering if his new friend Xlotl is going to kill him. Xanana and Xlotl. "How do you spell Xanana?" "Like banana with an x." Xanana and Xlotl are
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going into my new book Freeware for sure as surfer limpware moldies; flickercladding dudes infested by psychedelic camote fungus.
Then we drove to Edgar's studio and had lunch in a dive next to it. I had two whole grilled fish, quite good, though dangerously bony. If I'd eaten them as fast as I normally like to eat, I would have choked to death.
Inside Edgar's studio was the "Time Lab," an amazing set with lots of clocks going at all different speeds, and a smoke machine, and colored lights, and dials and meters and big weird gears to roll back and forth and make strange shadows. The set was in the shape of a cylinder, so that standing inside it, the cameraman could pan, and never pass a wall-corner, giving the effect of the lab's being huge, even though it was only about twenty or thirty feet across.
Edgar would frequently argue with Michael the cameraman about how to do a shot; Michael was quite knowledgeable about how to shoot a scene - it's like the cameraman gets the picture, and it's more the director's job to put the pieces of picture together. There was some conflict because, as Edgar later told me, he likes to not be like a dictator, he feels that if he lets situations evolve spontaneously, people do better work for him. And Michael, feeling the power-vacuum, kept trying to start bossing, but Edgar - when push came to shove - wouldn't let him. Michael felt that the movie was being shot too slowly, while Edgar felt that it was better to wait until everything was right before shooting a scene.
So we waited about four or five hours until everything was right, and then shot our last scene in the Time Lab. I cra
nked up my adrenaline by singing some songs for the actors - they videoed me doing my Dead Pigs version of "Duke of Earl." Bob had a tantrum just before this scene about his clothes - they made him take off his camel's hair coat and white T-shirt again, so as to match his other scenes - and he kind of did his best to spoil the scene by complaining about his clothes in the scene instead of talking about time; so this scene didn't make it into the movie either. And then Bob had a tantrum about getting our checks from Catarina. A difficult man, but a genius, able to quote page after page of Pound, Joyce, Shakespeare, the last words of Dutch Schultz, you name it. But egomaniacal much more than me. I had some fun in the scene anyway by way-
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ing around a giant wrench and starting a mad scientist laughing jag which Durte got into.
By now it was eight, and Edgar had invited us to his house for supper at ten, so I killed an hour or so walking around the neighborhood of his studio. This was the Alfama neighborhood, the old Moorish part of town. It was one of the most amazing experiences. Built all of tiles and cobblestones and stucco on a steep hill, the district has alleys and staircases leading every which way. It reminded me of Escher's engravings of Maltese hill towns, or of his pictures of cities with ambiguous perspectives. To make it the more completely Escher-like, many of the buildings are entirely covered with tiles that are patterned in arabesques, or in trompe l'oeil designs. It was one of the most exciting strolls I've ever taken, and the more enjoyable after a day of being cooped up with all the film crew's (and especially Bob's) personalities.
When I got back from my marvelous walk, they were through shooting, and I rode over to Edgar's house with him. It was me, Edgar, Marguerite, Edgar's friend Pedro and his wife Lourdes, Durte, Carlos, then Catarina and her production higher-up Marie-Juana (loved the name!), also Terence and Bob. Dinner was served at - get this - 11:15 PM. And nobody thought this was particularly late! It's sure not Louisville, Kentucky.
Before dinner, Edgar said something to me in his sincere way that really made me happy. "Everybody loves you. All of us on the movie." That felt so good. He was very satisfied with my work for his film. I'd made a point of mentioning his plot line several times during the filming, which will be a help in trying to make the movie feel like a coherent whole.
Dinner was pot-roast with a nice pureed carrot sauce. During dessert, one of the guests passed around tobacco and hash jays. It was like the '70s again - nicely dressed lively young people having some civilized tokes together after a fancy dinner at home. I haven't seen anything like that in the U.S. for 20 years. Maybe I travel in the wrong circles - or is it that Americans really have gotten more puritanical? Or maybe it's that my friends and I are all middle-aged.
After dinner, we watched some rushes on Edgar's TV - mostly of Terence, as the rushes lag two days behind. There were some really funny scenes with Terence; he has a golden tongue. "You are
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such a great talker," I exclaimed to Terence, and he answered, "It's the only skill I have. If it weren't for that ability, I'd be sleeping under a bridge." Another time I heard him introduce himself to someone saying, "I'm a criminal and a bullshit artist." Not a pretentious guy. I hope some of my scenes come out well - the one with the eyestalks looked promising, and there ought to be more. And I hope there's some good ones of Bob, too. After watching all the rushes of Terence we were both wishing there was more of us.
Some of the movie is shot in speeded-up time, like there's a love scene in a factory. The love scene was a panic, it was like Chaplin in Modern Times.
With any luck, The Manual of Evasion might be a psychotronic classic of cinema. Or at least a highly respected work of surrealist film. It's supposed to be about 55 minutes long. Edgar's trick was to have some of the action take place in front of landmarks of Lisbon, so that the City of Lisbon will be satisfied that the movie is "about" the city - even though it is science fiction. Terence came up with a rant how all great cities are transtemporal and transspatial, and that Lisbon has a bridge like San Francisco's. And in one of my scenes, I made the point that if you go across the Golden Gate bridge and look at San Francisco, the ocean is on your right, but if you go across the April 25 bridge and look at Lisbon, the ocean is on your left, implying that Lisbon is a mirror-image of San Francisco . . .
I liked acting. It was a big adrenaline rush; you'd know when your scene was coming, and you'd get ready for it, trying to think of what you'd say and what mood you'd project, and then it comes, and it's over in a flash. Once the company applauded after I did a scene ranting about time, chaos and temperature (as per request), and it felt wonderful. You get this big ego boost right back; it's addictive, a true fix. After their scenes everyone is trembly and smoking cigarettes. Another great thing was to be working in a group instead of working all alone, as I do when I write.
This was really a terrific trip. I did something interesting and creative, managed to party without ending up feeling like I made a fool of myself, and forgot completely about my usual life. I can't believe I'm going to have to go back to work.
Appeared as "Zip.5 The Manual of Evasion"
in bOING bOING. #13, Spring, 1994.
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Memories of Arf
In September of 1981 we were living in Lynchburg, Virginia. Audrey and I were in our thirties; Sorrel was twelve, Tom was nine, Ida was six. We decided we wanted a family dog, partly as a present for Ida's seventh birthday.
We looked in the classified ads and found an ad: Free Puppies. I called and got directions and the place was in the boonies north of Lynchburg. We had to drive on smaller and smaller roads to get there; it was a farm, with lots of bare red dirt. The farmer's dog had done it with two different males and had given birth to a litter of six puppies on July 3, 1981, though later we always like to say that it had been the Fourth of July.
Five of the puppies were black and shorthaired, one was orange and white and had long hair. He liked to lie on his back when you petted him; the farmwife liked him best, she said she always brought him inside to pet while she watched TV. We all practiced petting him, and he eagerly rolled over on his back to offer us his stomach. The farmer gave him to us. On the drive home we agreed to name our new puppy Arf, a.k.a. Arfie.
At first I thought we'd keep him in a box down in the basement, but he whined so pitifully that the children got him promoted to the kitchen. We all took turns walking him around the little neighborhood streets of Lynchburg. A lifelong characteristic of Arf's soon became evident: he didn't like to come when you called him. At all. Ever. Although, according to Sorrel, if you squatted down very low and clapped he was likely to come a-runnin'.
We had a big house, and Arf spent a lot of time inside with us. There was a wide pie slice-shaped step where the carpeted staircase turned: that was Arf's special spot. He could sit there and be aware of whatever was going on upstairs or down.
I did start trying to make Arf spend more time outside after our first Christmas together. We had a bunch of houseguests and every-
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one was slipping pieces of turkey and country ham to Arf, and during the night he got very sick, from both ends, in lots of different places all over the house. I asked our guest Eddie if he'd heard anything during the night, and he said, "He was scampering around - and squealing."
Arf didn't learn how to bark until he was about six months old, and he never became a big barker. Occasionally he would stand out in the yard barking into the night with all the other distant dogs the way they like to do, "Here I am! Here I am! Here I am!" But he wouldn't bark at friends, just at menacing strangers - especially if we were picnicking in the woods, where it really helped to have him defend us, what with rural Virginia's many crazed rednecks. But mostly, Arf would only bark to let us know he wanted something, like to be let in or let out or taken along on an outing.
One of our neighbors put out a doghouse for the trash one day, and I brought it home, probably on the kids' wagon. I put the doghouse in our
open garage so that Arf could sometimes sleep outside. I was always trying to get him to be outside more - I was, after all, allergic to him, as I am to all hairy animals - but it was kind of a losing battle. Arf learned how to open the back screen door by hitting it with his paw. "He's so bright it's frightening," we liked to say, though actually Arf was only bright at things that served his immediate purposes, and not always then.
Two stories about Arf's doghouse. Across the street we had a bachelor lady with a small female chow dog. The little chow got loose one day and was rumored to be in our doghouse with Arf. When the bachelor lady heard what was going on, she came over in a fury and yanked Arf out by the scruff of his neck - even though the chow was already elsewhere. The other doghouse story had to do with a four-year-old girl who lived next door to us. She was a grubby brat who wouldn't learn how to talk properly. She would point and grunt for things she wanted. She wasn't retarded, she was just spoiled and lazy. Her two big sisters played with our kids quite a bit. One day she crawled into ArCs doghouse, and her father came and got her out and spanked her. My children, her sisters and I were in paradise.