EPILOGUE

(From The LA Weekly)

FRENCH DISS

A year after it took the Cannes film festival by storm, RICK KENT ruminates on the international smash hit Black Neon, and the myth and bullshit surrounding the story of the “imploding dimwit”, Jacques Seltzer.

Given his virtual canonization since his untimely death a year ago this month, taking a swipe at the controversial movie director / photographer / auteur / over-hyped fraud (take your pick) Jacques Seltzer is not a move destined to win you many fans. In fact my original obituary for Seltzer, published in these very pages (“The Legend of the Imploding Dimwit”) earned me more hate mail in one fell swoop than I had previously managed in my twenty year career in cultural criticism. The (admittedly less plentiful) letters of encouragement I also received at least convinced me that I was not the only one who was totally sickened to see the posthumous blowjob being awarded to this guy ever since his much anticipated BLACK NEON finally hit the screen, after fifteen years of intrigue, rumor and delay.

Instead of a coherent follow up to the much loved (by some people) DEAD FLOWERS, what we got instead was the retarded, drug-addled cousin of the wonderful HEARTS OF DARKNESS: A FILMMAKER’S APOCALYPSE (which documented the quagmire that was the making Francis Ford Coppola’s APOCALYPSE NOW). The audience is served up a self-indulgent mess cobbled together by Chainsaw Pictures from the raw footage of the unfinished movie that ultimately killed Seltzer. Instead of any kind of overarching narrative, the viewer was subjected to endless shots of Seltzer getting high, copping drugs, having sex with prostitutes, and rambling at great length about art and destruction in his usual pretentious, faux-intellectual manner. This dull mess was strung together with a series of talking heads. The usual suspects – Bono, Henry Rollins, Kenny Azura, Thurston Moore, James Stein, Sean Penn, Charlie Sheen – pontificate at length about Seltzer’s supposed brilliance, often offering little more than well-worn platitudes and clichés about the link between genius and self-destruction. This cinematic travesty was soon followed by a tie-in coffee table book of photographs that has spent the past twelve months hovering around the New York Times non-fiction list’s top twenty, and the kind of media fanfare that is usually reserved for movies with some… oh, what’s the phrase? Artistic merit?

For years, people debated what BLACK NEON meant. That deliberately mysterious title was dangled in front of the unfortunate aficionados of Seltzer’s work for well over a decade, causing all kind of ridiculous speculation as to what it might actually mean. It seems the kind of fan boys who worship Jacques Seltzer’s particular brand of faux-artsy hokum are especially susceptible to this kind of manufactured speculation. Blinded by their notion that Seltzer was producing Great Art, they drove themselves into paroxysms of intellectual gymnastics, inventing and superimposing all kinds of profundities into his work when the simple truth was that this stuff was no more profound than the latest piece of shit by Michael Bay. Back when Dead Flowers was out, we remember the spectacle of Jacques Seltzer pissing on a Playboy journalist, showing up for an interview – drunk of course – on French national television in blackface, the drunk-driving crash that killed the beautiful and talented Isabella Simonelli, the declarations that he was the messiah, and all the rest of his tacky, shlocky nonsense. Instead of condemning this overweight joker for what he was – a spoiled, talentless moron who had mistaken obnoxiousness for wit, and drug addled stupidity for some kind of Blakean profundity – the public gobbled up this unseemly spectacle, egging him on to ever greater heights of ridiculousness and self-parody.

If we can bring ourselves to flick to the last image contained in the aforementioned bestselling photo-essay “SICK CITY: THE LAST TESTAMENT OF JACQUES SELTZER” (Fantasmagraphique) we find an image of Seltzer laying there dead as a dodo, as naked as the day he came into this world except for that iconic eye-patch. The emperor truly has no clothes. Jacques Seltzer, a man who had once been compared to both Andy Warhol and Federico Fellini in the space of a single New York Times review (which says more about the idiocy of the critic making the statement than it does about any alleged talent that Seltzer actually possessed) is finally exposed for what he really is: a fat, dead moron whose heart conked out in a sleazy Hollywood motel room. Not a martyr, not a genius, nor any of the other ridiculous labels that have been thrust upon him since his squalid little death. He’s just another dead junkie, and not even a particularly talented one.

What is BLACK NEON?

A year after its release I think we can finally answer the fan boys’ question.

First and foremost BLACK NEON is an unholy mess. It’s a collection of snapshots of drug addicts, transvestites, whores and drug dealers. Unlike, say, Diane Arbus who managed to infuse her subjects with a peculiar kind of beauty and pathos, here street life is presented as a spectacle to be gawked at, even as the line between the subject and the artist becomes blurred. Does BLACK NEON really mean – as Bono speculates in one monologue – “That twilight place where the darkness inside of Jacques Seltzer finally ignited with the eerie combustion of Creation”? After viewing this sleazy, disjointed mess most people are still none the wiser. In their naivety, they seize upon this lack of narrative coherence as a sign that the movie is somehow intellectually daring and simply operating on a level that our small minds cannot yet comprehend. My friends, the truth is hiding in plain sight. BLACK NEON is a suicide note, the last gasp of a man who knew he had been wildly overrated, a man who could never – with his meager abilities as a filmmaker – live up to the hype he had himself created. Instead of even trying he chose the easy route – an OD, an unfinished movie, and let the public fill in the blanks with their own fevered imaginations. “It’s better to burn out than fade away,” claimed Neil Young, and for Seltzer it was not just better, it was actually a necessity. If Seltzer hadn’t died trying to deliver this movie then there is no doubt that BLACK NEON would have been the cross his reputation was ultimately nailed to. Instead BLACK NEON remains the shadowy, elusive beast it has always been despite a successful theatrical run and huge sales on DVD and Blu-Ray. One critic has called it the cinematic equivalent of the legendary lost Beach Boys album, Smile. I call it bullshit. It’s this critic’s opinion that if Jacques had have delivered a finished movie, the best he could have been expected to come up with would have been Kokomo. And that’s being generous.

No, BLACK NEON, despite the puzzling success it has achieved in these last twelve months, is a stinker. It is as vague and non-committal as its title, profoundly un-profound, about as deep and meaningful as a puddle of skid row piss. In other words, it’s the perfect homage to the dubious talent of Mr. Jacques Seltzer, one of the most overrated hacks in all the annals of cinema…

*

Randal shuffled slowly forward, moving inch-by-inch toward the customs desk. Weak and shaky, he had downed several whiskies on the plane in an effort to smooth over the insanity of his current situation. Now the combination of the tropical heat and all that booze made him feel unsteady. Sweat poured down his pallid face. Around him was a sea of pale, white flesh in Hawaiian shirts, flip-flops, khaki shorts and sun hats. Just ahead of him a group of blonde, corn-fed girls from somewhere in the Midwest squealed as a tiny crab scuttled past their feet, eventually disappearing underneath a vending machine. The line moved forwards. Randal wondered one more time exactly what in the hell had possessed him to get on that plane. His shirt was soaked through as the last of the meth worked its way out of his system. In his bag he had enough clothes to last him a couple of days at the most. He looked once more at the hastily scribbled address on the scrap of paper in his hand.

Jesus Christ, he was out of his mind.

He was supposed to have checked into a North Hollywood treatment centre called Cri Help this morning. Instead he allowed himself to be talked into this insane rendezvous. From the moment he ordered the cab driver to head to LAX instead of the rehab, Randal’s recollections of the day took on the woozy logic of a fever dream. Smiling at the girl at the booking desk as he handed over his credit card. Shooting the last of his 8-ball in an Applebee’s bathroom, dumping the syringe down the toilet bowl. Talking to a pretty brunette in some faceless airport bar, telling her his name was Tommy and that he was on his way to his brother’s funeral. Filing on the plane. The cold bolt of dread as he watched Los Angeles – splayed out before him, glittering and empty as a just-paid whore – submerging further and further beneath a sea of smog. It seemed it was only then that he fully comprehended the enormity of what he had done.

Now, as he edged closer to the customs desk, he considered the possibility of turning around and begging someone from the airline to put him on the next plane back home. Maybe he could tell them that his mother was dying. Who in the hell could say no to a dying mother, for Chrissakes?

“Next!”

Randal looked up. While he had been standing there debating whether or not to turn around, he had somehow worked his way up to the head of the line. He walked up to the customs agent – a pretty but stern-looking young woman – and handed over his passport.

He smiled nervously as the agent swiped the passport and then proceeded to tap disinterestedly on her computer for a while. An insane notion gripped him. The computer would tell her that he was on the lam – from his family, from drug treatment, from life itself – and he would be carried out of here in chains. He was about to break down and beg her not to have him arrested when she looked up to Randal and asked, “Where will you be staying while you are in the country?”

“Uh… I’m staying with a friend of mine. In…” he peered at the scrap of paper again, “Montpelier?”

The girl looked him up and down and then nodded. She smiled, revealing a row of bright, white teeth with a prominent gap in the middle. She stamped his passport, and then handed it back to Randal.

“Welcome to Jamaica,” she said.

*

The cab ride took around twenty minutes. He had followed Jeffrey’s advice, and avoided the van drivers who congregated around the main entrance of Sangster International airport eager to hustle the tourists over to their all-inclusive enclosures for inflated prices. Instead he walked out to the car park, where he found an idling taxi. The car was old, beaten up. The driver was skinny and weather-beaten, eyeing Randal up and down before gesturing for him to get in the backseat. The driver stopped along the way several times to pick up more passengers and by the time Randal had made it to his destination he was sandwiched in between an old Rastafarian who was singing along to the radio in a sweet, high voice and two teenage schoolgirls in their uniforms. In the front seat was their mother, an enormous woman with a braying laugh, and everybody talked among themselves in an impenetrable patois while Randal drifted in and out of consciousness.

“We’re here, man! Wake up!”

Randal jerked awake. The car was empty now. Randal handed the guy a ten and stumbled out onto the roadside without waiting for change. He was on what looked like an unfinished two-lane highway. On the opposite side of the road were lush, green hills that rose up toward the sky until they were totally engulfed by a low ceiling of mist. On Randal’s side was the Caribbean Sea, perfect, blue and sparkling. It was late afternoon, and the humid air was cooled slightly by a breeze that blew in from the water. He was standing outside a wooden shack with a hand-painted sign that read Jerrell’s Place. Music drifted out from the bar, the clinking of glasses, laughter. Outside the shack a child who looked no more than ten or eleven years old was cutting up mangoes with a machete. He walked in.

It was easy to spot Jeffrey. For a start he was the only other white person in the place. He was dressed in head-to-foot black. All eyes turned to Randal as he walked into the shack. Jeffrey was sitting at the bar, tossing back a drink. When he noticed Randal he waved him over. The locals went back to their conversations.

Randal took the seat next to Jeffrey. The far side of the bar was completely open, so you could step out onto the white sand if you wanted. Beyond that was the pure blue of the Caribbean sea.

“So you made it, man…” Jeffrey grinned, “I thought maybe you mighta changed your mind.”

“Me too.”

The barman, a tall, old guy wearing a neon green vest with a head full of grey dreadlocks came over and filled Jeffrey’s glass again. “Same for my friend,” Jeffrey said, and the barkeep lined up another shot glass full to the brim with a clear liquid.

“How you feeling?”

“Edgy as hell. Did my last hit right before I got on the plane.”

Jeffrey nodded. “You’ll be fine. Have a drink, this shit’ll blow the cobwebs out.”

“What is it?”

“John Crow batty. It’s a kind of local moonshine. Come on. We’re celebrating.”

They clanked their glasses, and tossed back the shots. Randal nearly choked. The burning, fuel-like substance made him break out into a cold sweat. “Holy fuck,” he croaked, “That shit is disgusting!”

Jeffrey grinned. “You get used it. You know I kicked my dope habit with nothing but a bottle of this shit and an ounce of weed? It was weird. I was expecting the worst cold turkey of my fucking life, but being out here… knowing that I couldn’t get it, even if I wanted it… it made it seem more manageable, you know? After the third day, I was on my feet. Stayed drunk for about two weeks after that. Now…” Jeffrey looked out to the sea. The surface of the water was still except for the shimmering reflection of the sun. “Now, the very idea of going back on it just seems alien.”

“You’re telling me you’re clean? Really clean?”

“Clean as I’ve ever been. I haven’t touched dope in six months. Nothing stronger than rum or weed for me, and I gotta tell you…. I never felt better.”

Randal looked his old friend up and down. It was true; he looked almost like a different person from the ghoul he had last seen shambling away from him in Koreatown. He was still pale – positively ghostly for someone who had spent the past six months in the Caribbean – but nothing like the translucent white of the old Jeffrey. His face had filled out a little, his hair was clean, and his cheeks were no longer covered in angry-looking sores. The biggest change of all, however, was in his eyes. Randal noticed, for what felt like the first time, that Jeffrey’s eyes were green. They’d always seemed a lifeless, jaundiced yellow before. Now they sparkled as he spoke, burning with the intensity of the newly born.

“You’re singing a different tune. Last time I saw you, you told me that you’d made your decision. You were gonna stay on using until you croaked.”

“That’s not what I said. I seem to remember saying something about… barring a message from God himself this was my life. Well, surprise sur-fuckin-prise; old God came through for me. I got a message from him all right, clear as day.”

“Oh yeah? Go on...”

“It started off with Rachel. You remember this from the last time we spoke, right? Rachel had OD’d and I’d split? I left her there at the hospital when the pigs showed up?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Well, I told you I had a feeling that Rachel was in trouble. After I saw you the last time, she dropped off the face of the earth altogether. I didn’t hear boo from her for months. All of a sudden I get a call from a number I don’t recognize. It’s her. Turns out she’s still alive and I was right – the cops busted her that night. Right there on an emergency room stretcher.”

“You gotta love the LAPD…” Randal shook his head. “What they pinch her for?”

“Possession. She told me they planted a balloon of dope on her, the fuckin’ assholes. It was the end of the month, you know? I guess they were trying to make their quotas. Anyway, it gets better. When she got downtown, they put her in isolation… away from the general population. I guess they were worried about some asshole queer-bashing her, you know? She was locked up in a cell with this other crazy transsexual chick that was being held over an outstanding warrant. Turns out this chick was a member of this fuckin’ church, The United Church of the Forbidden Gospels of Our Lord Christ.”

“No shit? I heard of that outfit! They’re, um, a breakaway evangelical sect who minister to transsexuals, right? They’re run by that fruitcake… shit…. Sister Ruth, right?”

“Yeah, Sister Ruth Magdalene! That’s them. You actually heard of them?”

“Only bits and pieces. I read an article on them in the Weekly.”

“Well, apparently Sister Ruth usedta be a big hit on the drag circuit, performed under the name Miss Kunty Kinte for years. Then, so the story goes, Jesus came to her in a vision and had her transcribe some gospels that she claims were written out of the bible over the years by unbelievers and bigots. When she came to there were all these new gospels all written out while she was in a trace, or whatever. She’s been running that church ever since. Supposedly she believes that Mary Magdalene was actually a tranny, and that transsexuals and cross dressers are especially blessed in the eyes of the lord, and blah blah blah. The regular church has denounced them as quacks, but apparently they’re one of the fastest growing evangelical sects in California, ya know?”

The barman came and re-filled their glasses. Randal tossed back another. “You know something, you’re right. This shit does get better the more you drink…”

“Told you. Anyway, fuckin’ Rachel swallowed that bullshit hook line and sinker. The chick she was locked up with hooked her up with a lawyer on church funds, she made bail, and the next thing you know she’s out in Reseda running around in some damn commune with this bunch of nut jobs, calling herself Sister Naomi and telling me that she can’t see me unless I quit dope and accept Jesus Christ as my savior.”

“So she got clean, huh?”

“Uh-huh. Kicked cold turkey in the cell. This fucking cellmate supposedly laid hands on her or some fuckin’ mumbo-jumbo, and Rachel claims that the withdrawals just faded away like magic. A miracle, she says.” Jeffrey laughed, sadly. “That’s the fucking thing man, I loved the shit outta Rachel but she was always as gullible as hell. I had to keep her from joining the fuckin’ Scientologists after she did a personality test with them one time. So now this bunch of drag queen evangelists got her head all twisted. She was quoting the fucking gospels to me over the phone, man! The only thing I ever saw Rachel read in the whole time we were together was that fucking O Magazine. She useta steal it from the all night newsstand on Cahuenga. All of a sudden the bitch sounded like fuckin’ Joyce Meyer on crack.”

“So wait. You’re gonna tell me that she converted you or something? Where does God come into this?”

“I’m getting to that part. Obviously I wasn’t gonna start praising Jesus with the rest of the nutcases so Rachel and I had to go our separate ways. Now Rachel was gone, and I was broke. Things got right down to the wire around seven months ago. I was at the methadone clinic. I’d spent my last ten bucks on my dose and I’m figuring out what the hell I’m gonna do now. I had, like, a day left paid up on my room. I go back there and the guy at the front desk tells me I got mail. Now this was weird. I’d been at the Gilbert for the best part of a year and I never got mail there. Figure maybe it’s a mistake, but there’s my name on the fucking envelope. I almost threw it away, figured it had to be a court summons or some shit. I open it anyway, you know what’s inside?”

“What?”

“A check. For thirty thousand dollars. You wanna talk about miracles? That was God, right there.”

They sat in silence for a moment. “God sent you a check?” Randal asked, incredulously.

“Nah. Gibby sent the check. It was all about that contract you had written up to protect me. Apparently they used a ton of footage of me in some dopey documentary that came out, and I was featured on the cover of this photo book they did. That shit’s been selling like hot cakes, and ever since then I’ve been getting paid to do nothing. You ain’t been in touch with Gibby recently? You really didn’t know any of this?”

Randal shook his head. “I relapsed. Went out big time. He might have tried to call me once or twice the past few months, but you know how it is when you’re using. I didn’t wanna deal with the outside world, you know?”

Jeffrey nodded. “Well, when the money started coming in, that’s when I decided that I needed to change things around. I mean, I could have stayed in LA for sure and put every dollar into my arm. But… I dunno. Something… some voice inside of me told me ‘no’. I looked at the map, picked out a place, and just…. went. Before I split I hired an accountant Gibby put me in touch with, and he takes care of shit for me. Every quarter he sends me a statement. It’s unbelievable.”

“What’s unbelievable is the fact that I’m here. I must be out of my fucking mind.”

“That was God again. Or fate. Or whatever you wanna call it. I had a dream about you last night, that’s why I called. And there you were, all ready to check into rehab again, start up with all of that bullshit again. I got to you just in time, Randal. Saved you from yourself. Look around you, man. You’re in fucking paradise.”

Randal looked around the little bar. A cool breeze blew in from the ocean. The smell of marijuana smoke hung in the air. Glasses clinked, laughter echoed around the cool, wooden shack. “I’m gonna be cut out, you know. This is it. I couldn’t stay clean; I just skipped out on rehab and got on a plane to fucking Jamaica. I’m done. I’ll never see a penny of my inheritance after this. I bet Harvey’s down at the lawyer’s office right now, thinking of new and exotic ways to fuck me over.”

Jeffrey shook his head, and smiled indulgently. “What you mean is – you’re free. That money was just a trap, man. That’s what they used to control you. If you weren’t the guy they wanted you to be, they’d threaten take your money away. Look at you. You were unhappy when you were clean, you were unhappy when you were sober. You needed to get away from all of that bullshit, Randal. That shit was either gonna kill you or drive you crazy in the end.”

Randal shrugged. “You could have a point. I managed to get a bit of money squirreled away. Enough to last me a little while.”

“I got a place, the next town over. It ain’t a mansion, but it’s home. I owe you, big time. If you hadn’t set that shit up with Gibby I’d still be scuffling in Hollywood, man. There’s no need to work. So long as those checks keep coming, the cost of living here is low…” Jeffrey shrugged. “There’s nothing to do, and all the time in the world to do it.”

Randal nodded. He looked around the beachfront shack. “So what do we do now?”

Jeffrey smiled, and motioned for the bartender to fill their glasses. “We get drunk.”

“And after that?”

“You’re free Randal. I’ll help you get over your speed jonze, and then you can do whatever the hell you wanna do.”

Randal picked up the glass and held it to his lips. The strong, pungent smell of the alcohol stung his nostrils.

“To new beginnings,” he said.

Jeffrey clinked his glass to Randal’s. The warm breeze that blew through this place cooled the damp shirt against Randal’s skin, and he shivered slightly. They tossed back their drinks, wincing, and then Randal threw his arms back, stretching, beginning to feel relaxed for the first time in as long as he could remember.

“So come on,” Jeffrey said. “You’re in Jamaica. Nobody knows where you are. Just think… you could be in some crummy rehab right now, eating stale hot dogs and writing some fucking essay about your higher power. Well fuck that… the world’s your fucking oyster. What do you wanna do, Randal?”

Randal rubbed his face, and yawned. All around him were the strange and foreign sounds of the Caribbean – alien-sounding words rising and falling in a musical synchronization, speaking all at once, voices thick with the mish-mash rush of patois. The soft undertow of song was carried all around the island; booming out from passing cars, the melodic implorations of an old man as he sold plantains by the roadside, the languid, rhythmic pulse of a reggae number crackling from a transistor radio behind the bar. Suddenly there was the rasping, mosquito-like buzz of a moped as it tore past them, the sound rising then falling until there was nothing left but the echo that bounced off the green hills inland, ricocheting out to the warm, still sea. Jeffrey was no longer on junk time, Randal mused, he was on a different clock altogether now. Still, it was a clock that was divorced completely from the rigorous demands of American Time. Maybe that was why withdrawing over here had seemed so easy to him. Maybe the pain originates not in leaving junk time behind, but in being dragged kicking and screaming back into the nine to five constraints of Their Time. Maybe his own withdrawal from Meth Time and into some other time would be as easy as stepping out of his clothes and into the warm blue waters a few feet to his left. Maybe this was what he had needed all along – to be divorced from Time completely. Maybe the drugs had just been a means to an end. Maybe his problem was time itself, and all of this, all of this madness was just a simple attempt to disentangle himself from its all-consuming constraints.

“You still with me?” Jeffrey said waving a hand in front of Randal’s thoughtful face. “I told you that stuff is powerful.”

“I’m good.” Randal said with a contented smile. “Thanks Jeffrey. I got a weird feeling you could be right about everything. I think I finally know what I want to do.”

Randal sat back and smiled dreamily.

“Oh yeah? And what’s that?”

“I wanna do nothing.” Randal watched as the barkeep refilled their glasses. He picked it up and held it to his lips. “I wanna do absolutely fuckin’ nothing.”