(Here's a torn piece of cardboard on top of a bed in a junk ad.)
Dear diary,
A couple entries ago I tried to pitch you a movie that I would like to make; but I don’t think that I did a good job explaining it, because you haven’t sent me any money yet. (Normally, if one does a good job pitching one’s movie, one’s financier will send one a check to cover the film’s production costs.) I believe that it was a mistake for me to get caught up explaining the picture’s technical issues, such as how we’ll manage to swap out a documented persona with a fictional character played by a professional actor — I think that you fell asleep during that part of my presentation. (In short, I detailed how we’ll make the exchange seamlessly via trick-photography and skillful editing.) What I should have done is focus on the interesting parts of my idea, which are its human elements.
As I explained, the movie should be about people who work at a shop. The camera will film these people doing their daily tasks. The workers will sometimes converse with each other, and sometimes they will converse with the customers who enter the shop — all this will be part of the movie. We will enjoy following a worker on his meal break. If he watches TV while he eats, we will watch him watching the TV. We will see what type of food he has packed in his lunch box. Also, as I explained in my earlier pitch, we will follow the workers home and watch them interact with their families; or, if they live alone, we will show them doing whatever unwed people do in their miserable solitude. Maybe they crochet or practice calligraphy.
Here’s an example of what we might behold in one of the scenes inside the shop:
A worker named Vanessa is standing by some merchandise. Her co-worker Columbia approaches.
“Hi, Vanessa.”
“Hi, Columbia.”
“Did you do anything special this weekend?” asks Columbia.
“Yes,” answers Vanessa. “I learned how to water-ski.”
“Really?” sez Columbia. “I myself have tried water-skiing a couple times, and I’m good at it, but I don’t like to do it, because I’m afraid of drowning.”
Vanessa picks up an item of merchandise — a glass elephant figurine — and turns it around in her hands as she delivers the following line:
“Do you mean that you’re afraid you might breathe liquid into your lungs?”
“Yes,” sez Columbia; “cuz I can’t swim, and I don’t trust life-jackets.”
Now a customer enters the shop.
“Welcome to our shop,” sez Vanessa to the customer. “Can I help you with anything?”
“My name is Ines and I am looking to purchase a vacuum cleaner.”
“Well, Ines,” sez Vanessa, “I wish I could help you, but our shop only sells smaller items, like these little glass elephants. We also sell strobe lights.”
“Ah, that’s just my luck,” frowns Ines.
“May I ask why you’re in such great need of a vacuum cleaner?” sez Columbia. “I mean, did you make a mess or something?”
“Yes,” sez Ines; “that is, my dog made a mess. Her name is Juno and she knocked over a potted bush. Now there’s dirt in one mound on the carpet. It reminds me of a mountain, such as Sinai or Olympus.”
“So it’s just regular dirt, like the kind they use for houseplants, that you’re trying to suck up?” sez Columbia.
“That’s right,” sez Ines.
“And you said there was a bush in the pot, too?” adds Columbia. “What happened to that?”
“That’s a mystery,” sez Ines: “the bush has wholly disappeared. But there seem to be some ashes mixed in with the dirt of the mound, and there’s a smoky smell in the room; so perhaps the bush caught fire and was consumed.”
“And you think your dog is responsible for all this?” asks Columbia. “You believe she knocked over the pot and ignited its contents but then extinguished the blaze before it engulfed the whole house?”
“If you knew Juno,” Ines replies, “you would—”
“That’s exactly why I got rid of all the carpeting in my apartment,” Vanessa interrupts. “Even tho it’s a rental property, and I’m not supposed to change anything — but landlords never return your security deposit anyway; so one day I decided that I’d had enough of looking at that ugly cream color with all those cigarette burns on it, so I ripped it all up and installed real hardwood flooring.”
“You’re ambitious,” sez Ines. “Did you use glue?”
“No glue,” answers Vanessa; “I used the click-together planks. In fact, altho I said hardwood, they’re actually made of vinyl, but they have a pattern printed on their surface that resembles fake oak.”
“Ah, I see,” nods Ines.
“But tell Ines here what you did end up gluing,” Columbia smiles as she elbows Vanessa.
“Well,” Vanessa blushes, “after installing the new floor, I found this bottle of wood-glue in one of the closets, so, on a whim, I took down all the framed paintings from off the walls (they were tame religious paintings of pale Jesus that came pre-hung with the apartment — the place was advertised as ‘fully furnished’: that’s what enticed me to sign the lease) and I placed the paintings face-down on the floor and squeezed the glue bottle until the cross of the stretcher bars on the back of each frame was totally covered with extra-strength wood-glue. Once the bottle was empty, I tossed it out the window and it hit a priest on the head. Then I picked up each of the paintings and placed it back upon the wall, and I pressed them all firmly and held them there overnight with specially designed fasteners so as to achieve a lasting bond.”
“So, what you’re saying,” sez Ines, “is that if (God forbid) an earthquake were to strike our city, your apartment would be the only place that could weather the disaster without its paintings falling off the wall?”
“Well I’m sure that you could pry them off with a crowbar,” answers Vanessa. “I called the glue ‘strong’, cuz that’s what its label claimed; but I don’t know how much pressure it could withstand. We all have our breaking points.”
“True indeed,” sighs Columbia.
“Yes,” sez Ines, “but I’m talking about an earthquake, which is a brute, natural disaster whose only power is the ability to shake and quiver. That’s a far cry from a strong, wise catburglar who arrives in the quietest, darkest hour of night and uses an iron bar to thieve masterworks from your museum.”
“O, believe me,” laughs Columbia, “Vee’s apartment is no museum.”
Vanessa rolls her eyes and announces:
“Well it looks like you’re steadily inching toward the exit, Ines; so I’ll just say: It was nice to meet you; and I hope you return someday to shop at our store again. As for me, I’m going to take my lunch break now.”
“Thanks,” waves Ines as she opens the door to leave (the pockets of her trench-coat are noticeably bulging); “peace to both of you.”
Now we follow Vanessa on her lunch break. She sits down at a small table. She opens her brown paper bag. She pulls out a sandwich...
Suddenly the door to the break room swings open and Columbia appears:
“Hey, Vee, what kind of sandwich is that?” asks Columbia.
“It’s an exquisite sandwich, according to the World Wide Web,” explains Vanessa. “That’s why I decided to make it for myself today. This morning I used an Internet Search Engine to find the recipe. And, if what I read online can be trusted, then this is not only the most popular sandwich in general, but it’s also the healthiest. It’s apparently been labeled ‘The Favorite Sandwich of the Americas’, and it also was voted ‘The Most Beloved Sandwich’ by both England and Wales.”
Columbia now rushes out of the breakroom and enters the bathroom to fix her mascara; then she heads over to the time-card puncher and punches her time-card, thus ending her workday. She sends Vanessa an Instant Text Message that reads:
“SRY, GOTTA GO……NOBODY IN SHOP AT PRESENT SO PLZ RETURN SOON CUZ THE REGISTERZ R ALL OPEN & CASH IS SPILLING OUT ONTO FLOOR……MISS U TILL 2-MORROW GOOD LUCK IM DUN 4 NOW [nine red-heart pictographs]”
Columbia walks home thru the streets of France. When she reaches her house, she enters and takes off her fur coat and sits down at the table with her two parents and her two twin brothers. Their dinner is filmed in tinted monochrome with two videocameras on tripods:
Columbia greets her parents and her siblings. They each take turns telling about their workday. Dad announces that he worked hard at his office. Mom announces that she worked hard at her office. It is apparent by the expression on their faces that Pierre and Jean-Paul worked hard at their shared station in the glove-making factory. And when it comes time for Columbia to speak, she proudly reports:
“We sold two crates of glass elephants today, so I will be receiving my bonus for this quarter.”
“Aren’t you going to kiss your mother?” sez her mother.
Columbia kisses her mother and then asks to be excused.
“So soon?” say Pierre and Jean-Paul in unison.
“I must finish my mural by sunup,” announces Columbia.
She sprints up the stairs and bursts into her bedroom. Its walls are completely filled with depictions of goddesses. Columbia picks up the palette and brush from where they were lying and begins carefully to paint the neckline of the nearest nude.
The film now cuts back to the shop, where we meet a few new customers who purchase some stuff. More workers are introduced, as well. We follow one worker home, after his shift ends. His name is Diego; he lives alone. We watch his evening play out, after he arrives at his residence:
He sits in a sette on the terrace and smokes for two hours. Then the moon comes up. Now a girl on the balcony across the street catches Diego’s attention: the two lock eyes. She makes a motion with her hand and Diego nods. He arises, takes a breath, and steps out of the frame in the direction of the beckoning damsel...
We who are screening this movie from the seats in the stadium now grow restless and begin to chant: “This! Film! Sux! . . . This! Film! Sux!” over & over.
The projectionist stops the film. The lights come on, & the manager of the theater steps out onto the stage, holding a corded microphone.
“Please, allow me to explain,” shouts the manager over the chanting audience.
The crowd quiets down, and the manager continues:
“What happened is that the story got lost in translation. The original screenwriter had a clever idea, and it was really interesting — believe me: I swear to it — but when he tried to capture all that magic in words on the page, it ended up seeming not so good.”
A couple of the gentlemen in the audience are shown daubing the corners of their eyes with their kerchiefs.
“Please continue,” shouts the voice of Lotte H. Eisner, the world-renowned film critic, archivist and curator.
“OK,” sez the manager, “so we hired another writer to revise the screenplay that the original author had flubbed. But this second version was, in many ways, even worse than the first.”
Here, a young girl (the same one who played the damsel in that last scene above) stands up from the middle of the audience and throws a withered gourd at the manager, but it misses him and slides into the backstage shadows. Once it is out of sight, we might add an explosion noise on the soundtrack, just to jolt anyone who’s drowsy.
“Moreover, the cast was reluctant to perform their roles properly,” the manager continues stammering nervously into the microphone, addressing the barely interested audience. “Our director begged them to remain at ease and just ignore the film crew during shooting — ‘Do not act at all, just go about your day as you would if all these cameramen were not swarming round you,’ he would instruct them. But they did not listen. And some of the females fell in love with our cinematographer, because of his distinguished mustache and beard, and his salt-and-pepper mane. But he is a gentleman in his late 60s, so I cannot fathom what these women were hoping to attain. Maybe they assumed that he’d light them better, in their scenes, if they enticed him sensually. I do not know. I am simply in this business for the love of cinema. I never imagined I’d need to plead for my life before a raving crowd of dissatisfied moviegoers. When I was a child, my grandmother took me to the multiplex and we watched a cartoon canine (anthropomorphized, of course) tie a bonnet upon its head with its own two paws and then marry a police officer. That’s all I ever wanted to do with my life: simply entertain multitudes. Where did I go wrong? Can’t you all just pretend to be enjoying yourselves for the span of my picture? It’s only an hour and twenty minutes long; you’ll be back home before you know it, and you can eat spaghetti with your compatriots... I’ll even offer everyone drinks — adult beverages, on the house...”
Here, the manager turns to the side of the stage and desperately waves his hand until his assistant (played by his real-life mistress) sashays onstage wearing a sparkling sequined body-suit and pushing a wheeled pallet, on which is stacked a pyramid of beer cans.
After the rat-tat-tat of the audience’s machine guns, all these cans leak their beer out from their bullet-holes. But the manager slinks away unscathed. (We learn this last plot-point from his spin-off.)
Lastly, Jehovah God descends on the frilled pulley-rig and addresses the crowd directly. During the live show, he uses language that causes the parents to shield the ears of their children, but I’ll give you the clean version here:
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Jehovah bellows, “you have just witnessed the version of this feature that I myself personally approved — I worked with the editor: I guided her hand across the control knobs deftly. I oversaw every detail of this teleplay, and I can assure you that it is VERY good; it is not at all nonsensical or inconclusive; and it is quite the opposite of a waste of time. However, all of you seem to disagree with me. Thus, I am outraged at your inattentiveness. What you took to be flaws and random mistakes are in truth strokes of genius! and they make perfect sense to anyone who is willing to engage with them. So, what I’m going to do to you, now that you’ve panned my film and refused to love it, is take all your favorite financiers and throw them in the jungle. And I will invent weird, wild, wicked creatures to chase them incessantly. Therefore they will feel terror, and they will beg their pursuers to stop. They will plead with their newfangled predators to allow them to drink one sip of water from a nearby palm leaf, as they are parched from all these chase scenes; but I will instruct my monsters to maul them: ‘Heed not their prayers!’ I will command thru my clenched, bloody fangs. — Yet, it is my habit to act merciful, after my anger has subsided, so I will offer your grandchildren a second chance to approve of my cinematic vision. I will not spare your children, but their children I will clutch in my talons and fly off to be rehabilitated in a fresh crag. I will feed them the choicest morsels, if (& only IF), without having to be prompted to do so, they rank me among their favorite artists. I’ll give them fountains of inebriating spirits, if that is the case; and I’ll allow each citizen of this upgraded commune their own locking icebox, plus one ostrich to keep as a pet. And the selfsame way that I use my comrade Mercury, I will allow your children’s children to use these avians: to drop missives on the populace below.”
Now, the suspicious thing about Lord Jehovah’s speech, in my own opinion, is that he awards these latter birds in lieu of angels to his favored generation, and he spins this gift as if it’s the equivalent of owning a sprite who can zigzag back and forth from heaven to earth. But if you consider the skill-set of ostriches, they cannot fly very effectively (most can’t even get off the ground, in fact); therefore it’s more of a one-way street that these “Faustuses” (as their tags claim them to be) are given to reach us Hyperboreans and Hinterlanders. So it’s difficult for us to notify their handlers, our auditors, about it, even if our affection is genuine; moreover, it’s nearly impossible for us to assure them that their love has been requited, if that proves doable. Thus they end up presuming that we suffer them gladly, as they try to yawn-watch each of our daily programs; and then, whenever there’s some mischance that we could be steered clear of, they don’t bother to lift a wing, knowing that they can blame it on “fate” or “destiny”. But this is not a pre-recorded punishment; hence we curse our keepers, age after age, for continuously tho innocently inciting only evil outcomes.
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