Читать книгу Antkind: A Novel - Charlie Kaufman - Страница 16

“THAT’S THE FIRST reel,” Ingo tells me, then adds: “It’s a comedy.”

“This is extraordinary,” I say. “How much more is there? I’d love to watch the whole thing, if you’ll have me.”

“It’s three months long,” he says.

“Three months, as in months?”

He nods, regarding me sagely through weary, rheumy, bloodshot, glassy African American eyes.

“The film is three months long?” I say again. “Just so I’m clear.”

“Give or take. I’ve been making it for ninety years. Give or take.”

“You realize that’s about three times longer than the current record holder for length. I know this because I wrote an exceedingly long monograph—of record-breaking length in tribute—on long films called Shoah ’Nuff: The Undervaluation of Lengthy Films in Our Current Fast Food Film Culture. Perhaps you read it?”

“It’s on my nightstand,” he says.

“Well, when you find a minute. Well, not a minute. A year. My point is that the length of your film is a huge accomplishment in and of itself. What do you call it?”

He thinks.

“I guess I’d call it an accomplishment, too,” he says.

“No, I meant the film. What do you call it?”

“The title or are you asking if I have a pet name for it?”

“The title,” I say.

“There is no title. But I call it my girlfriend.”

“That’s sort of brilliant. There Is No Title but I Call It My Girlfriend.”

“No. It has no title.”

“So you’re saying there is no title, not it’s called There Is No Title?”

“You’re seeming a little willfully dense right now.”

“Well, I—”

“The purpose of a movie title is to give audiences something to call it when they purchase tickets or talk about it with friends. It is to allow marketing departments a hook. It is to reduce the film to something bite-size, manageable, understood.”

“Well, I happen to like titles. I take great pleasure in constructing witty titles.”

“Since I have no intention of sharing this with the public, I have no need of a title,” he says.

“Sure. I guess. On a slightly different topic: Why do you sound different every time I talk to you?”

“What are you inferring?”

“Implying.”

“Implying, then.”

“I don’t know. In the car from the hospital you were talking in kind of a folksy manner. There was a point when you were responding to me only with Bible quotes.”

“I am the work of someone or something, and so are you. So God created man in his own image. Genesis 1:27.”

“See, I feel like you just added that quote because I reminded you that you do Bible quotes.”

“You are to be the only witness to this film. When you have viewed it in its entirety, I will destroy it. Or if I am dead, you will destroy it for me. Those are the rules.”

I nod, but of course I will not destroy it. I am Max Brod to Ingo’s Kafka. This film, even if over the next three months it descends into incomprehensible drivel, must be protected for posterity. The world must see it. But most important, I must see it seven times.

“I will destroy it after I watch it seven times. There is method to my madness in this regard—and some other regards! Ha ha! You see, any film of substance, to be properly understood, must be viewed at least seven times. Years of trial and error in critical viewing, first as a cub critic at The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper of Harvard University, where I went, then for various imprints, journals, ‘zines,’ and an experimental two-month stint as the film critic for the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog, have allowed me to perfect my viewing technique. It has been a hard-won battle for dominance over the form. Let me explain: The first viewing is to be accomplished utilizing only the right hemisphere, the so-called intuitive brain center. Years of practice have allowed me to allow the film to wash over me. I remove my critic ‘hat’—you know all about hats!—and watch the film as a layperson might, that is without accessing the enormous library of film history within the very center of my brain center, without searching for the director’s filmic references or ‘echoes,’ as some might call them. That type of viewing will come later. For now I am Joe Everyman or Everywoman or Everython. This go-through I refer to as the Nameless Ape Experience, named thusly for an ape’s lack of intellectualism and ego and thon’s unrestrained savage passion. In the end, ‘feeling’ the movie must come first and is perhaps the most essential viewing. So Step One: Yes, this film causes me to weep uncontrollably or to laugh uncontrollably or to ponder uncontrollably. Step Two: Why? In this second viewing, I doff my Nameless Ape ‘hat’ and put on my psychologist’s ‘hat,’ which is not a literal hat—hence my air quotes—but rather an attitude or approach toward the film, although I do, for the sake of full separation of the viewings, imagine myself in various hats during this process. The psychologist ‘hat’ I see as a sort of modified trilby, since du Maurier’s novel is at least in part about human psychology. I have often said that I am both Trilby and Svengali and yet, at the same time, I am neither, but rather du Maurier himself. Ah-ha! This ‘why’ viewing requires me to dig deep into my own psyche and find my personal connections to the movie. How is this movie about me? I must ask. This is perhaps the most essential viewing. As you may know, Ingo, my now famous essay on The Royal Tenenbaums, entitled ‘Fathers and AnderSons’—which is itself a play on the title of Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons in which I add Ander as a prefix to Sons as a nod to Anderson’s surname, which is Anderson, but also to reference Ander Elosegi, the Spanish canoeist—is a result of the important personal work I did in Step One. That I relate to all the sons and all the fathers—as well as daughter Gwyneth Paltrow, ooh la la—in Anderson’s films is no secret to anyone. That I relate navigating my psyche to Elosegi’s ability to navigate river rapids might be less known to lay readers. Step Three is how. Here is where I tap into my vast filmic knowledge to explore how the filmmaker achieved his/her/thon’s results. What does that ‘pan’ signify? How is that ‘zoom’ essential? Why a ‘24mm lens’ here? I also examine ‘juxtaposition,’ ‘mise-en-scène,’ ‘blocking,’ and ‘dance numbers’ to determine how these and other cinematic techniques forced me to cry, laugh, or ponder uncontrollably in the aforementioned Nameless Ape viewing—which, remember, was Step One. In addition, here is where I take note of the director’s references to other films. In the case of a Scorsese or a Tarrantinoo, this will be a massive undertaking, so encyclopedic are their knowledges of the form. Granted, I am not a great admirer of Tarrantinoo’s oeuvre, as his infatuation with a false, stereotypical African American culture as well as his adolescent obsession with violence leave me cold. He is, however, expert in devising unusual camera ‘angles,’ most notably the astounding ‘trunk shot,’ which is known as the ‘boot shot’ in the UK, the ‘coiffre de voiture shot’ in France, and the ‘suitcase bin shot’ in American Samoa. Step Four: backward viewing. Designed to look at the film as a ‘non-narrative avant-garde experiment in a foreign language.’ In other words, it allows me to see the film as a pattern of images unencumbered by meaning. This, dear Ingo, is my chance to see the film as a purely aesthetic construction. The human animal has it programmed into his/her/thon’s DNA to ask why. The assignment of causality is hardwired into our brains. But ‘why’ is undoubtedly only a human construct. It is my belief that why is not an independent feature of the universe. The universe does not have questions. The universe does not wonder how a microwave works. The universe simply is. So by removing narrative, the concept of causality, the why is removed, the assumed order is removed, and the film can be seen—at least it is my hope—as it is viewed by the universe itself. Step Five: upside down. We as Americans take gravity for granted, I think you’ll agree. Perhaps this is true in other cultures; I do not feel qualified to say. But here gravity is just whatever: Stuff falls, get used to it. By ignoring its effects on us and on the physical world, we ignore its effects on our psyches. Upside-down viewing allows me to focus on that aspect of a movie. Some filmmakers don’t consider gravity any more than the average American does, but in a precious few cases—Apatow!—we get to witness a filmmaker grappling with gravity in every frame. Had I not watched This Is 40 upside down—by the way, it is no accident that upside down it is This Is 04. Children having children! Right?— I never would have caught the deeper meaning of Paul Rudd sitting on the toilet while talking to Leslie Mann. He is literally keeping his shit from flying all over the room. One can see he has been directed by Apatow to pretend to be sitting casually on the toilet, and there is the surface humor of a couple who have been married so long there is no mystery left; they talk without embarrassment while they shit. But watch it upside down and suddenly Paul Rudd is struggling mightily to keep the feces from spilling out all over his life. Your Tarrantinis, for all their pyrotechnics, will never explore gravity in the manner of an Apatow joint. After the upside-down viewing, in Step Six, I watch the film one more time in a conventional manner to cement my reaction and to establish the film’s ranking—if any—on my many lists: best films of the year, best films of the decade, best films of the century, best films of all time. Then all of the above in each genre: horror, comedy, western, thriller, action, drama, science fiction, war, foreign. Then by performance: actor, actress, thon, supporting actor, supporting actress, supporting thon, ensemble, thonsemble. Then by direction, cinematography, editing, score, writing, casting, best LGBTQIA films: best thon, best thon, best supporting thon, best supporting thon. It is a terribly time-intensive task, but necessary. Without these lists by truly educated critics, laypeople would find themselves at the mercy of Hollywood marketeers and celebrity sycophants. The seventh step is to not watch the film. This is the seven-step method toward a clear-eyed viewing of any film. Oh, and Ingo, it’s funny that your film is a comedy—oh, hey, that’s funny! I’ll have to open my lecture ‘The Apatower of Song’ with that; I’m presenting it to the music supervisors’ union next month on the second floor of the West 4th Street McDonald’s. But what I was saying is that comedy is not about wisdom and kindness. It is about gravity and idiocy. A man in control of his environment is not funny. A man who understands his life is not funny. So why is a person falling funny? Why is a person acting stupidly funny? And is it really funny? Is it funny in real life when someone gets physically injured? Is it funny in real life when a person is overwhelmed and confused? The answer for most people would be no. So why does it elicit laughter in a movie? The reason is complex. In part, perhaps, it could be argued that one understands in a film that it is make-believe, that no one is really getting hurt. Of course there are those illuminating moments when this or that comic performer has died onstage in the midst of a performance, and audiences, assuming it to be part of the production, laughed and applauded. Harry Einstein and Dick Shawn are two notable examples. Let’s suppose the thing, the machine set in motion—physics, longing, mortality, futility—is a Rube Goldberg–like contraption, designed with no efficiency and no purpose other than to be witnessed by, let us say, some Lovecraftian entity, for its amusement. We can laugh at a violent Monty Python and His Flying Circuits bit in which a fellow’s limbs are ripped off because we know it’s make-pretend, but this entity can laugh at a person’s limbs being ripped off in actuality because the attendant suffering is irrelevant. My sense of your film, as much as I’ve seen of it, in any event, is that you are more Apatow and less Lovecraft, that you have true empathy for the characters you’ve created. Yes?”

I look up and Ingo seems distracted. He is counting out his medications. (His pill holder is the size of a wall calendar and also is a wall calendar. It hangs on the wall.) Was he even listening? I am reminded of my ungrateful students at Zookeeper’s High School. Not that they count out their medications during my lectures (for they are young and virile), but they do text and read gossip on their computers and often leave and also often don’t show up. I am not a disciplinarian. Far from it. It is my belief that when the student is not texting, the teacher will appear when they look up to the front of the room. I am not Sidney Poitier as To Sir, with Love. Nor am I Sandy Dennis as Up the Down Staircase. I am not the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie as The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Nor am I Mr. Chip or any of the seven Robin Williams films in which he plays inspiring teachers (Help Me, Teach!, Teacher of the Year II, The Teacher Who Cared Very Much, Professor Salvador Sapperstein and the Sad Students of Salisbury High, Help Me Again, Teach!, I Am Your Teacher and I Love You, and Dead Poets Society). I am a font of wisdom, if you will. I am a resource. I am here if you want. Until then, I will teach as if no one is listening. I will write as if no one is reading. I will love as if everyone in the world is dead.

Ingo has finished sorting his pills. He looks up.

“Oh, hi. So anyway, would you like to see the rest of the film?”

“Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! Well, seven times yes, technically. Only seven. Because of the aforementioned technique and also the film’s apparent great length.”

“So here’s how it’s gonna go,” he says. “The film runs for three months including predetermined bathroom, food, and sleep breaks. My idea is the relentlessness of the movie will cause it to enter your psyche and thus infect your dream life. It is a filmic experiment of sorts that posits an equal relationship between artist and viewer, in that the viewer will not, after viewing it in its entirety, be certain where the film has left off and his own dreams have taken over. Or hers.”

“Or thon.”

“Granted, there is some intent on my part to nudge your dreams in a certain direction, but in the end, what you add to the film will largely be determined by your own psyche.”

“Sort of like Brainio.”

“What?”

“Sort of like Brainio,” I say again.

“First bathroom break in five hours,” he says, ignoring me. “You’ll have to use your own bathroom. My bathroom is off-limits, except to me, who can use it and will.”

“You’re sounding very much like me again.”

“That won’t get you into my bathroom, mister.”

“Fair enough. But you do. Or Ocky. It’s spooky.”

“I don’t know what Ocky means. Are you prepared to begin?”

“Let me prepare to begin,” I say.

“OK. Prepare then.”

“OK, I’m trying.”

“OK.”

I activate the Nameless Apenessness of my soul—which I can do almost instantaneously after years of study and practice of some or another Eastern-style religion—through a quick intake of air.

“Go,” I grunt apily.

The following seventeen days pass in a blurred yet brilliant fever dream of unimaginable cinematic luster, ramen, missed phone calls to my African American girlfriend, Neelon’s Genuine Tuna Fish, troubled dreams, bathroom breaks, and brief enigmatic conversations with Ingo about mucilage. I weep. I laugh. I whine. I sigh. I sweat. I punch the air in triumph. I am transported to a country of alien emotions, a country I have perhaps spent my entire life avoiding. It is everything.

On the seventeenth day, somewhere between 3:05 and 3:08 P.M., Ingo dies. I check behind me when the reel is not seamlessly changed to find him slumped on his crutches, still standing. I perform CPR, which I don’t know but I know there is pounding and I believe it is on the chest. It doesn’t work. I stare into his unseeing, glassy African American eyes and weep.

IN MY GRIEF, a night conversation of several days ago with Ingo, occurring as he tucked me in, replays like a ghost in my head:

“There are multitudes of Unseen,” he said.

“Unseen?”

“The ones not seen.”

“I see,” I said.

“In the movie.”

“They’re in the movie?”

“They’re unseen in the movie.”

“So then they’re not in the movie?”

“They’re in it. But the camera is facing away from them. As it is for most of us.”

“So it’s more or less a conceptual notion.”

“No. The puppets have been built. With as much care as the seen puppets. They have been posed movement by movement, just as have the seen puppets. They have lived their lives. But have not been witnessed by the camera. Only by me.”

“You animated them but didn’t film it.”

“It sextupled my workload. Had I not, I could have made the film in fifteen years. It was a necessary sacrifice.”

“But why?”

“Because the Unseen live, too. Because if I don’t see them live, who will?”

“But why not film them and allow them to be seen by the world?”

“Because they aren’t seen. And were one to see the Unseen, they would no longer be the Unseen.”

“Did you record on paper at least? Their names? Their loves? Their families?”

“Only in my head. And over the years, I have forgotten many of the details, many of the names. They blur together into a mass, into a notion, into the moth-eaten coat of memory. When I die, what remains of them dies with me.”

“That seems wrong and horribly sad,” I said.

“Such is the world.”

“Would you show these puppets to me?”

“No.”

“Will you tell me about them?”

“Only by way of census. They are only known as numbers. There are 1,573 black adult males over the age of twenty.”

“You built 1,573 black male puppets over the age of twenty.”

“And animated them.”

“That’s an extraordinary amount of labor.”

“Not enough. Not nearly enough. Never enough. But it is all I was capable of. My time is finite. There are 1,612 black females over the age of twenty.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“There are 1,309 black males under the age of twenty; 1,387 black females under the age of twenty. Among them the eight Adventure Girls.”

“Adventure Girls?”

“I took a special interest in them,” Ingo said.

“Who?”

“The Adventure Girls. I was young when they came into being. I thought they could break through. I gave them every opportunity. I made them warriors. I made them brilliant. I had them solve crimes within the Unseen. I made them sexy horse thieves. I loved them. I favored them. I imagined myself as them. But I was wrong.”

“How were you wrong?”

“Even with all my control over their destinies, I was still an Unseen myself. An Unseen God to Unseen Girls and there was nothing I could do. And so they fought. And I loved them. But in the end, they, too, fell back into the sea of invisibility, taking on thankless jobs, losing their sparks, working at Slammy’s. Emotional labor, they call it these days. It was inevitable. I know that now.”

“Can I see them?”

“No. Only a few are still alive. They are old and sad. It is hard to look at the Unseen, even if you are Unseen yourself. It is hard to look. One doesn’t want to be reminded. It is better to look at the Seen. The Unseen are the audience for the Seen. They are here to watch, not to be watched.”