I SUSPECT HENRIETTA IS plotting to kill me. I can’t say that I blame her. I am the department favorite and, whereas I have many other irons in the fire, with my book on Ingo soon to be fully remembered, then written, then released, and then my plan to film a live-action remake of the film, this is it for Henrietta. I heard her confide to a colleague in the ladies’ room, while I was secreted in a stall, that she had wanted to work in shoes since she was knee-high to a grasshopper. She actually said “knee-high to a grasshopper.” I was astounded. Meanwhile, I had never even considered a job like this until I was halfway through a masturbation fantasy about being a salesman in a shoe store fitting Tsai into a pair of slightly too-tight red Mary Janes. Oh my Lord. Tsai! In all the distractions of the new division, I had almost forgotten about my reason for being here. It takes Henrietta and her friend so long to leave that I am ready to scream and charge from the stall. But I do not. I am in control.
While waiting in my stall, I read in a discarded newspaper an article about a poor man who was brutally murdered somewhere; I can’t remember where. It is a heartbreaking story, and one wonders how one can go on after reading a piece such as that. But one does go on, doesn’t one? Perhaps in the end, one goes on for him, the brutally murdered man. A man such as that, who clearly had a family or was desirous of one. What sort of murderer would not even consider the repercussions of this brutal murder on the man’s family or his potential one? The rending of the universe through such a vile act is unfathomable and yet struggle to fathom one must. It is what one owes this man. It is both the least and the most one can offer him.
ON THE WAY to Barassini’s, I am transfixed by the chatter of animated fur in a sequence of a young boy walking his dog past me. It is positively Lovecraftian. It will haunt my dreams, I am certain. It brings lie to the notion that true stillness is possible in this world. The Zen masters are wrong.
In the hospital again, I watch Marie smoking while staring out the window. She picks a piece of tobacco from her tongue. Patty reads to the comatose Molloy.
“Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle, / Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong…Oh, this isn’t the lady writer, Chick. I should clarify that. This is the beginning part, before the book starts. The…oh, what is it called? The part that’s a quote before the book starts?”
“Epigraph,” says Marie.
“Epigraph! That’s it! By…A. E. Housman.” Patty clears her throat. “Think rather, call to thought, if now you grieve a little, / The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long. / Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarry / I slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn; / Sweat ran and blood sprang out and I was never sorry: / Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born. / Now, and I muse for why and never find the reason, / I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun. / Be still, be still, my soul; it is but for a season: / Let us endure an hour and see injustice done. / Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime foundation; / All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all are vain: / Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation— / Oh why did I awake? when shall I sleep again?—A. E. Housman. Oh, it is very sad! Maybe too sad for now! I didn’t even think! I mean, it’s not exactly about being in a coma, but maybe it brings bad associations. I’m sorry, Chick. Maybe we should read something about how waking up is good! I don’t know. I can go down to the hospital library and ask if they have any books about waking up.”
“I think it’s good,” says Marie. “I think you should read it. I dated a Jewish boy once.”
“You did?” says Mudd.
“In high school, yes. A grand kisser. Ira Something-or-Other. Millman, perhaps. Something like that.”
“Huh,” says Mudd.
“So, I’ll continue?” says Patty.
“Yes,” says Marie. “I think you must.”
“Sure,” adds Mudd. “Let’s hear all about Millman, the amazing kissing Jew.”
“One of the questions they were sometimes asked,” begins Patty, “was where and how they had met, for Marc Reiser was a Jew—”
I leave at this point. I’ve both read this book three times (terrible!) and Ring Lardner’s unproduced screenplay adaptation of it twice. (Lardner was a hack. The movie M*A*S*H was saved only by Altman’s surgical dialogue trims.) In Ingo’s film, Patty does indeed read the whole book to Molloy. It is shown in real time, over the course of several weeks. Patty reads with emotion, while a ceaselessly smoking Marie listens and looks forlornly out the window. We imagine she is picturing her Jewish boyfriend and, in fact, at one point she almost certainly mutters, “Mazel tov, you kike son of a bitch, mazel tov,” under her breath. Mudd comes and goes, bringing paper cups of coffee and sandwiches wrapped in wax paper.
Molloy, kept alive with an enteral feeding tube, is losing weight. No one else has much of an appetite.
I make my way to the street and find myself in mid-forties Los Angeles. The cars, the pedestrians, the buildings. I wonder if it goes on forever. Or did Ingo build it anticipating how far I’d go, where I’d look? I glance up, to the right, to the left. I do it fast, trying to catch something missing, but I don’t. A young couple ducks into a movie house showing a film called Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer Robot from The Phantom Creeps. I follow. This is not a real movie. Of this I am certain. As an Abbottandcostellophile of the first order, I am intimately acquainted with their entire oeuvre. Perhaps Ingo is poking some fun at the boys. He does seem to have a bone to pick with them. Was I led to this movie theater? I think I made the choice, but there is no way to know. It’s where I wanted to go, but why? Perhaps I have been manipulated, some synapses lit up like Pavlovian chaser lights. Perhaps it is illustrative of the block universe theory, a theory to which, with no little despair, I subscribe. Perhaps Ingo is such a master of filmmaking that he can lead me where he wants. In this case, I am led to a film within his film. I stay close to the couple because I am not sure if I can manage doors in my current disembodied invisible eyeball state. Do I even need to? Can I walk through walls? Regardless, I am intrigued by this couple and follow them in via what is amounting to some elaborate tracking shot out of a Martin Scorseso film. I take a certain pride in this shot, passing the candy counter, weaving through chatting moviegoers and pulchritudinous uniformed usherettes, into the theater, down the aisle, then along the row as the couple make their way to two empty seats near the middle. I remain behind them as they sit, carefully situating their heads and shoulders in the lower third of the frame, focusing on the screen beyond. The film is already in progress. On screen, a giant killer robot is chasing Costello through a cornfield.
“Abbbbbbotttttttttt! Hey, Abbbbbbbotttttttttttt!” yells Costello.
It is the funniest thing anyone in the audience has ever seen. The robot catches Costello and stomps him into a bloody pulp. Costello moans in high-pitched agony. It’s his funny “panic” voice, but it is not funny. The audience grows silent.
“Oh, stop being a baby,” spits Abbott, having caught up.
This seems to embolden the audience, for a man in the fifth row shouts, “What a baby!” and everyone once again erupts in laughter. “What a baby!” everyone chants in unison. I find myself laughing, too, uproariously, like the toothless chain-gangers at the end of Sullivan’s Travels, but soundlessly, because I don’t exist in this world. I can laugh at the pain of others with impunity because here I am an eyeball.
HENRIETTA BEGINS HER presentation on dog booties with an irrelevant Debecca DeMarcus quote:
Our phlogiston designed to escape, to dissipate, we are revealed as the ash we have always been. It is the phlogiston that fooled us, made us believe we could be individuals instead of the anonymous ash we have always been. This seduces us into terrible acts of cruelty and horror.
“You’re only quoting DeMarcus because I did so in my presentation,” I suggest. “I doubt you even know the definition of phlogiston.”
“Debunked substance once believed to be present in all combustible bodies. Asshole.”
“Phlogiston is real. DeMarcus knew that and so do I. Ash-hole.”
“Contemporary science begs to differ. Dickweed.”
“They can beg all they want. That does not change the fact that you will burn up nicely once the end-times come.”
“Allen, B. is threatening me.”
“I am not,” I say. “I have no control over the end-times.”
“TELL ME WHAT you see,” demands Barassini.
“A gaunt man. Serious. Focused. Broken. I can’t remember his backstory. I don’t know his name or if he ever had one. He is a meteorologist.”
“Meaty horologist?”
“Yes.”
“Interesting. Bizarre. Continue.”
“It might be the 1950s. He sits at his desk and writes in a notebook, his voiceover filling the space in my head: ‘If for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and if these reactions are wholly predictable, it stands to reason that given all data for a single moment in time and space, one should be able to accurately predict the next moment, and from there, the next, ad infinitum. Furthermore, one should be able to determine, using this same method, the moment preceding the instigating moment and so on, for physics recognizes no direction in time. The key is to have all the data available, which might be feasible in a small and controlled environment. On a grander scale, this could someday be a great boon for weather prediction. It would require electronic calculating machines of such power and sophistication that they are unlikely to exist in my lifetime.’ ”
This notion is scientifically nonsensical, of course—although clearly Ingo was familiar with the insane prescient ramblings of meteorologist/pie-in-the-sky pacifist/Ralph Richardson uncle Lewis Fry Richardson—but if one cannot suspend one’s disbelief in the cinema, when can one? The meteorologist places a potted philodendron in a miniature glass wind tunnel. He takes measurements, jots down notes, switches on a 16mm motion picture camera trained on the tunnel, closes the tunnel door, adjusts some controls, then turns on the wind. He and the camera watch as the plant’s leaves and stem are blown to and fro, this way and that. After about fifteen seconds, a single leaf detaches from the plant and, spinning through the tunnel, hits the far wall and falls to the floor. The meteorologist turns off the camera; then, in filmic montage, he does a series of calculations on his chalkboard: mathematical equations and graphs intercut with calendar leaves flying, shots of the philodendron leaf flying, the meteorologist sleeping at his desk, eating Chinese from cardboard cartons, pounding his fist in frustration. Weeks pass. A beard appears on his face. He draws the plant, precisely, on graph paper, seemingly by translating equations from his book of calculations. He draws it again. He draws it again. He draws it again. He draws it again. He draws it again. Calendar leaves fly once more; the beard grows fuller. The montage ends, and the meteorologist, now exhausted, sits in his darkened office behind two movie projectors trained on two small portable movie screens. He switches them on simultaneously.
“What do they show?” asks the voice.
On the right is the film of the philodendron blowing in the wind tunnel, its leaf dislodging and hitting the far wall. On the left is an animated drawing of the same, playing out simultaneously and in precisely the same way. Both films are on a loop, and the meteorologist watches them over and over.
Cut to him writing in his notebook: It worked! From only the initial data, I was able to predict precise future events. That it took me a full five weeks to do so is a hiccough that will eventually be remedied once a more sophisticated calculating machine than my all-too-human, fallible brain becomes available to consumers.
IN THE SHOWBIZ trades, I read that the film rights to Grace’s blog were purchased, having become a “hot” property in today’s burgeoning feminist film market.
In what can only be described as a fast-forward, Grace directs the movie, which she has entitled Father Nose Jest. It is released to great critical acclaim. The movie is unfair, to say the least. I, as a film lover and a critic of cinema, am obliged to review it on my website Critical Condition even though it pains me deeply to do so.
FATHER NOSE WORST
Full disclosure: Grace Farrow (birth name Grace Rosenberger Rosenberg) is my daughter, and I suspect I might be the model (at least in part) for the father in her movie, so I do have a horse in this race. But I am putting that aside to objectively evaluate this film. Father Nose Jest is a small, sincere debut by a talented young female filmmaker, and one is tempted to let it go at that, because the filmmaker’s intentions are pure and because one needs to offer some slack to a director in the process of learning her craft. But perhaps a critique from an experienced and disinterested film educator will, in the end, be helpful to this budding auteur. It is in this spirit that I offer my thoughts. Father Nose Jest follows the trajectory of an aspiring filmmaker attempting to find her way in a society openly hostile to her gender. Her father, C., played with nary a trace of nuance by the always over-the-top Bob Balaban, is a film critic obsessed with the very male (according to the film) notion of ranking. Throughout the filmmaker’s childhood, he pontificated on all things cultural, constantly compiling lists of “Bests” (best films, best paintings, best symphonies, et chetera). The filmmaker, named Grace Less (get it?) in the movie, is burdened with the notion of being best (Melania Trump, anyone?) and has thus found herself paralyzed in her work. That is until she meets an older woman poet, who opens up Grace to the exploration of herself and of the world. Grace Less goes on to make a film entitled A Coming of Rage Story (get it?), about her own journey and her relationship with her father (toxic, of course) and with the poet (beautiful, sensuous). The film within the film becomes an arthouse darling; scenes of award shows are intercut with extended lovemaking sessions between Grace and Hypatia Reliquary, the poetess.
Certainly Farrow is a filmmaker to watch. One sympathizes with her desire to separate herself from her father’s well-known surname, as well as his nose—for it seems apparent, if one compares earlier and more recent photos, Farrow has undergone cosmetic rhinoplasty. Still, one wonders if there will be some regret down the road. Of course she can always reapply her true surname but not her true nose. One understands the necessity of forging one’s own identity, but it must be said that herein lies the film’s major flaw, and it is a profound and ultimately fatal one. By making the father such an impossibly caricaturish buffoon, Farrow renders the conflict between the two inert. The film hinges on this conflict, for the relationship with her father is the most crucial one in the movie. If the filmmaker makes no attempt to show him as a complex human being with his own set of frustrations and indeed monumental artistic integrity, not to mention an unwavering love for his daughter, then the truth of this relationship is erased, leaving a gaping hole in the story. As a father to a daughter myself, I feel much sympathy for the struggles of any young person to forge an independent identity, but the film’s falseness is ultimately so egregious that I cannot in good conscience recommend it. I do think Ms. Farrow is a promising young director, and I look forward to her next outing. Two stars.
Father Nose Worst becomes an arthouse hit, almost, it seems, to spite me. Grace Farrow and her real-life girlfriend, poet Alice Mavis Chin, become media darlings, put out a children’s book called Ambitches designed to empower young girls, develop the perfume Farrow by Chin, and perform in a two-woman rap musical about the love affair between pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read entitled Booty Call. They are the toast of New York. They also create a women’s toaster called My Very Own Toaster.