a movie...and a Book
Table of Contents
To Trent and Billy
Acknowledgments
This book found its way to the wide open with the help of Tom Schmidlin, Alexis Lasheras, Fritz Bergstrom, Barbara J. Zitwer, Todd Siegal, Marty Asher, and Jennifer Jackson. Thank you so much.
the movie
We see a big empty room.
Of course, it’s not a room the way we know them, with length, width, height, and all. It’s just a room projected on a screen.
In a way, it’s a dirty trick. We aren’t used to empty rooms. Yet an empty room is understood in one glimpse. So after the short time it takes your brain to realize,
It’s
an empty room,
you start to wonder,
What for? Is it possible that the whole thing blows up all of a sudden? Or is
it a lousy movie and they simply couldn’t afford more?
And while thinking about it, while thinking about these kinds of things, the movie makers have you already glued to your seat. I guess they teach this stuff in art school nowadays.
As expected, the big empty room is still on the screen . . . and some whispering is already spreading through the theater—
What a setup.
In a way, you can’t blame the movie makers, though. It’s us. It’s our messed-up attention span. If you just start telling a nice story, right from the beginning no one is interested. Me neither, naturally. Sometimes I sit in front of the TV thinking about—
Hold on, an old guy enters the picture, holding a chair in his hands. He places the chair in the middle of the room and takes a seat. Basically he looks like a typical old man. He wears a baseball cap and old-fashioned glasses, and there is some excess skin around his mouth.
That’s another trick. Just use a guy who looks a little funny—with too much skin around his mouth, for example—and the viewer, again, starts to think about it. Probably only half consciously you start to wonder if he had this excess skin even as a child. Then you try to picture him as a child. It doesn’t make much sense, so your brain starts to look for other solutions.
It could be a side
effect of arguing with his wife,
some might speculate. Others may even start to worry a little and wonder if gravity can do this over time.
That’s how the brain works—and don’t think the movie makers don’t know it! They use your curiosity, they make you wonder, that’s all they do; and while you’re thinking about those things, you already start to relate to the characters. That’s the whole trick.
I didn’t even notice it. He’s holding a book in his hands. He gives it a little shake. He gives it another little shake . . . and the excess skin around his mouth joins the shake a little.
Now he’s leafing through the book.
It looks as if he’s starting to read from the book.
But no, he just looks up again, starting to speak. “They asked me to read this book to you. Actually, it’s not a book; it’s a movie they said.” The way he’s acting, it’s clear he doesn’t have any idea what’s going on—they probably just picked him from the street and shoved some money in his pocket. All you need to do is take an old guy who doesn’t have all his marbles, then give him an assignment—but make sure you don’t explain it so well to him that he will behave awkwardly—and in nine out of ten cases it comes off as funny. No one knows why. But it’s funny anyway.
He’s leafing through the book again, as if he’s not sure how to begin.
“I probably should start to read now.”
Now he’s looking all around the place for some sign of confirmation . . . a nodding head, or a thumbs-up from the movie director, I guess.
Someone probably nodded. In any case, the old guy puts his shaking index finger to the book, squints a little, and then finally starts to read.
“We see the outside of a suburban house from a moving perspective,” he reads, then stops and sends a puzzled frown into the book again.
Ha!
You should see what happens now. He twitches, as if a fly were bothering him on his neck.
“Ahhh . . . I guess that’s a comment for the movie director,” the old guy says.
Now he smiles proudly into the camera and the flesh around his mouth tightens a little.
“Okay, let’s start again,” he says, and clears his throat. “We see the outside of a suburban house from a moving perspective.”
And now we see a suburban house on the screen.
Now we see the old guy again.
Now the suburb—
Now the ol—
I guess it’s supposed to transition us into the movie. As if your brain slowly starts to picture the old guy’s words.
We now see the suburban house continuously.
“The usual credits start to roll,” the old guy reads.
Even though we now see this suburban house, we still hear the voice of the elderly guy. It’s like you’re looking at a picture book with your grandfather.
“The scene changes. We are now in the house, in a room that has been emptied for renovation,” he reads.
And—
swoop
—there we see this room on the screen. Someone is painting something next to a window.
the shooting script
NARRATOR (
an elderly man
). Jim, a man in his forties, was holding a brush and a bucket of paint. He was drawing a decorative line on the wall next to the window. He stepped back to scrutinize his work— probably more to plan the next step than to dwell on his success so far. He looked irritated about something—the way a man must look when his wife has repeatedly told him to renovate some room he doesn’t even like to use or something.
Jim was trying to give the window an ornamental frame. Again, he didn’t look too happy.
Jim came to a decision.
(
We clearly see that he has come to a decision . . .
)
NARRATOR. He took a chair, and put it in front of the window. Then he stood on it and started to look for the beginning of the adhesive tape. First with his fingernails, then with his teeth. Finally he put the end of the tape on the wall. This time
over
the window—the same way he must have done earlier on the sides. It looked awkward. The chair was too small and he had to work so far over his head that he could hardly see what he was doing.
At this moment the door opened and Beth came in. She was eating an apple.
BETH. How’s work progressing?
NARRATOR. Jim apparently couldn’t hear her
.
Or he was so deep into the taping that he wasn’t able—or in the mood—to process an answer. Right at this moment he ran out of tape.
JIM. Damn it.
BETH. What’s wrong?
JIM. Tape’s empty. Do you really think it needs a line over the window? I think it looks pretty good like this.
NARRATOR. It is obvious to the viewer that it needs one.
BETH,
still eating her apple
. No. It definitely needs one.
JIM,
exhausted
. So give me some tape.
(We see a close-up on Beth’s mouth chewing the apple.)
NARRATOR. Jim was looking at Beth, annoyed at the way she ate her apple.
BETH. Hmm. (She gives it another glance.) If you lead your brush real carefully, you can do it without the tape.
JIM. Come on—I can hardly see it from down here. (He sighs.) I told you, we need a ladder.
BETH. You move the brush, and I’m going to lead you from back here. I can see it beautifully from here ... Just move the brush real slow.
NARRATOR. Jim didn’t care about the line anymore, so he put his brush to the left starting point.
BETH. Okay, you can start.
NARRATOR. Jim started to move the brush.
(
We see a close-up of the brush going over the wall.
)
BETH’S VOICE, from behind. A little up.
(
We keep looking at the moving brush.
)
BETH’S VOICE, again. Now down.
(
Our view cuts from the brush to Beth.
)
BETH. Up. (
She tries to focus better on the brush.
) I said up—you’re still going down!
NARRATOR. Jim made a face toward the window.
BETH. Down. (
She observes it, then gets a little irritated.
) Down!
NARRATOR. This last comment from behind triggered something Jim couldn’t—and didn’t want to— control. He made a small but clearly exaggerated downward move.
BETH. Up! Up! Up!
NARRATOR. The already much-strained rubber band in Jim’s mind snapped.
JIM,
stupidly mimicking Beth. U
p! Do
wn
!
U
p! Do
wn
! (
He
looks back to Beth.
) What about this! (
He starts to
move the brush up and down over the wall.
) Eh? What about that! Up! (
Up goes the brush.
) Down! (
Down
goes the brush.) Up! (Up goes the brush.) Down!
NARRATOR,
casually.
Another rubber band snapped.
BETH, shouting. Are you crazy? Are you absolutely crazy!?
NARRATOR. Jim started to echo again.
JIM. Are you crazy? (And up goes the brush.) Are you
abs
olutely
cr
azy?! (
And down goes the brush, spreading
paint all over the wall.)
NARRATOR. A door slammed shut. Beth was gone. About two seconds later, the door opened with a jolt and Beth was striding in with shoe polish in her hand. She started to smear the shoe polish all over the other wall.
BETH, shouting. What about that ... eh? What about that!
At this moment the scene cuts with a black flash and
we are hovering over the ocean. The elastic surface
reflects gray-green patterns, the way it does on
cloudy summer days. The song “Blanket” by Imogen
Heap with Urban Species starts to play. It gives the
cloudy weather something snug. The credits continue to roll.
We keep looking at the surface of the water. After
a while some single raindrops start to hit. Then the
rain gets a little heavier.
The camera starts to move now, floating over the
water. Gradually the rain ceases.
After a moment—a moment long enough to
make us forget the first scene, and long enough for us
to get caught up in the peacefulness of the music and
the ocean—the camera starts to level up and we can
see the horizon. In front of us is a small island. We
are heading toward it.
We float for some time along the sandy shoreline,
with the cloudy horizon to the left. Then we spot two
people on the shore. We float a little closer to them.