It rained paint. Two hours and thirty minutes into the highly acclaimed film A Cold Night Jazz, it began to rain paint. Paints of various colors, the audience observed. Pencil-thin streams of candy-pink paint fell from the gutters of the bassist’s house. A curtain of what was assumed to be water-based red paint extinguished the serene fire in the middle of the street, whose flames only moments before were sensually massaging the partially self-immolated saxophonist. The flutist swung on a park swing as thin pellets of light blue paint sprinkled his space. Two extramarital gay lovers, drummers, lay lifelessly in a field, supine, as softball-sized globs of green pounded the grassy knoll. A trumpeter played his sad ode to a former lover as night-blue paint drops dropped on the awestruck amphitheatre audience. When the rain ceased, a slow, sparsely occurring bass kicked in, and a montage of close ups on the grinning mouths of all the characters, even the lifeless lovers, popped in and out of the screen. Fade out: the screen went black, and pasted in white letters was the director’s final message: “Kaleidoscope eyes, our mutated cries, we all fall down, sometimes.”
The downtown Los Angeles movie theater was at full capacity, not counting the walleyed people sprawled in the space between the front row and the screen, and the tightly packed people seated on the stadium-seating stairs. When the lights turned on, most of the audience sat, humming, whistling, trying to digest the last three hours of their lives. Someone clapped. It was barely heard.
It was the last Friday of 2006. This was the first showing on the first day of A Cold Night Jazz’s theatrical run in the U.S. Lauded by critics as a visionary production and promoted by The Industry as the runaway favorite for Best Picture, A Cold Night Jazz had sold out all its downtown L.A. shows for the weekend within the first hour that tickets were made available on the internet. Yet despite its surefire status as the latest phenomenon of the cinema, no one really knew what it was exactly about. It was about jazz, some said. Some said the characters of the film were all drenched with this intense longing for the intangible. That it was about longing for something, and nothing else. Somewhat bravely, a young blogger summed up the basic plot: it was about six jazz musicians making ends meet, trying to love, trying to achieve genius, trying to take another step but to where, they did not know; all that was known was that a Biblical rainstorm of paint wrapped all this up, somehow.
Director Sam Singslow would not explain anything about the film. Most found this alluring, though it was noted for future filmmakers that this had been done before with less gratifying results. Apparently there wasn’t much to say. In the few interviews that there were, Singslow, donning a black masquerade mask, simply, very seriously stated, “If I could tell you, it wouldn’t be art.” The mask had a happy expression, many thought.
•…•…•
A Metaphor for the Cinematic Experience No. 1
Every time the boy calls him “Papa,” the man takes a deep breath to keep himself from crying. “Papa, the scientists will awaken the lady that lies in front of them. For five seconds, exactly five, the scientists will all think in unison whether or not this is a replica or if this is a reincarnation of the lady. After five seconds pass, it’s the lady, not the scientists, who’ll speak. What do you think she’ll say?”
The man, tightening his grip on the steering wheel with his left hand, looks over to his pale, emaciated child in the passenger’s seat, wearing a polka dot hospital gown, smoking his first cigarette. It is afternoon. The man takes out his fifteenth cigarette of the day and shrugs rather comically. The gun in his pants shifts into an uncomfortable position.
“She’ll say, ‘How long was I asleep for?’”
Thirty minutes ago, thirty minutes after he got out of A Cold Night Jazz, the man drove to the psychiatric ward where his eleven-year-old son had resided for the past three years. It was the first time in a year that the man had visited his son. His son’s monthly status report, delivered to the man’s house in Bel-Air two days ago, read: “Depression only gets worse. Tried to swallow his eating utensil last week. Continues to suffer from paranoia due to what he calls, the science community’s imminent perfection of the cloning process and processes of the same, perhaps more advanced and (what he calls) ‘more insidious’ ilk.”
Pale blue paint blanketed the walls, tile floors, and ceiling of the psychiatric ward. When he first saw his son, sitting at the cafeteria table, he could only focus on his deep breaths and he could only extend his hand for a handshake. With his shaved head noticeably trembling and his shoulder struggling to hold his arm up, the boy took his father’s hand, very formally, and shook it five times.
Money was involved. “Only for the weekend,” the head doctor said, not looking the man in the eyes as he fingered the envelope of cash. Once outside, the California winter reacquainted the boy’s skin to the sensation of a silk blanket. The boy giggled. The man, surprised and shocked and convinced that what he was planning to do was the right thing, could not tell whether or not the boy had noticed the piece of fly paper wrapped around the trigger finger on his right hand, which undoubtedly would have put the boy more at ease.
“I wrote a story about all this while I was locked up, Papa,” the boy says, with a gibing smile, grabbing his father’s hand on the gear shift. “I wasn’t sure how to end it. I mean, I wanted a happy ending. But I wasn’t sure how it could happen. I just wrote, ‘Our hero dies happily,’ and then I stopped writing.”
The man takes a deep a breath. He notices the road has taken a cold blue hue as a large cloud occludes the sun. The boy flicks his cigarette out the window. The man twists the last of his cigarette into the car’s ashtray, and clears his throat. “You know what I’m going to ask the first person I see on The Other Side?” the man asks. “I’m going to ask for ice cream, yes, yes, I’m going to ask for ice cream, a banana split to be exact.”
The boy laughs and bangs the back of his head against the seat. The man can see the harbor in sight. In fact, he can see his boat pretty clearly. “What are you going to do if they say there are no bananas or even worse, no ice cream?” the boy asks earnestly.
“Jump off the nearest cliff and see if there are banana splits on the other side of The Other Side!”
The boy eats this up, struggling against his laughter to convey his hope for bacon on The Other Side. Pulling into the parking lot, knowing perhaps this may be the last time for final thoughts, the man does not think of his ex-wife, who has been with his best friend for the past three years. He thinks about his first encounter with love. There was a thorn bush and there was a girl, Nancy Peterson if he remembers correctly. He remembers how she leaned into his ear and asked him what he thought of her. Not thinking, he swiped his thumb down several thorns. Blood pooled and then dripped down onto his palm. He held his hand out and, perhaps not thinking herself, the girl made a fist around his thumb until the bleeding had stopped.
With the car slotted carefully into a spot in the empty parking lot, the boy undoes his seatbelt and climbs into his father’s lap. At this particular point in time, the man allows himself to wish that the people, who will read tomorrow’s or the day after tomorrow’s or the day after the day after tomorrow’s newspapers, including his wife and his best friend, could see this scene: the boy grinning for the first time in over three years, probably longer than that, the father looking his son straight in the eyes, both tossing laughter and quips about the afterlife back and forth, like a baseball. If only they could see this, he thinks, then perhaps they would hesitate before saying this was wrong.
•…•…•
A Metaphor for the Cinematic Experience No. 2
She asked her boyfriend why he didn’t ever say anything coherent. She asked this daily. He said, “The shadows lurk, lurkily, luckily, quietly, and wait for light to slumber.” She said she had no clue what that meant and that they should continue walking to the bus stop before she really boiled over.
With the fresh pit stains of bemusement spreading out on her skin, she wondered why she agreed to see A Cold Night Jazz with her boyfriend. This would only make things worse, she thought. She could already see this was beginning to make things worse. Before the show, the worker at the concession stand had asked a little too comfortably, “Communication issues?” She had laughed a little too loud for a little too long, while her boyfriend had sucked down his large cup of cola, before holding it out for a refill.
The clouds briefly occluded the glow of the sun. “Tell me right now that you love me. Just say, ‘I love you.’ Say it, if you want me to know it then say it.” She had grabbed his wrist and had stopped walking.
“Tumescent queens walk down tenuous lines and scream but are heard by nobody.”
She lay on the sidewalk. A few people walked around her. Their stifled laughs sounded like fire ants chewing on skin. He opened his mouth but she told him she’d knock his eyes out if he said another word. So he picked her up and slung her over his shoulder.
“I hate you! It is over, mister, over! I’ve had enough! Put me down! Put me down!”
She demanded he put her or else she’d scream rape, and when he did she looked at him, shook her feet, and sighed. They were at the bus stop. The bus approached from the distance. It sat two traffic lights away. She sighed and punched him in the arm. “The bluest part of the ocean calls for all the hawks to convene, convenient for the waves to swallow them with ease,” she said, somewhat impressed with herself. He smiled and poked her in the nose, and when they got on the bus, they sat in the back and kissed passionately.
•…•…•
A Metaphor for the Cinematic Experience No. 3
“You had to see it to believe,” I said to Cindy Baines, the mother of Brian who was My Erik’s best friend. Cindy being Cindy, her first reaction was negative. She didn’t believe me. She didn’t believe that one day My Erik would just picked up the phone, dial the suicide hotline, which he still does not know that I work for, and talk to me without recognizing my voice.
At first I thought she was hot in the head because she didn’t understand the movie. I didn’t understand it either, but I let her ramble on about how confused she felt. Soon though, I realized she was just jealous because last month Brian had taken several of her vicodin and sank to the bottom of their god awful swimming pool (I keep my vicodin in a safebox behind my furs, in with my pearls, my husband’s pairs of diamond cufflinks). Because she was jealous and could never be happy for my exemplary mother-son relationship, bereft of any finding-your-son-naked-and-unconscious-at-the-bottom-of-your-god-awful-swimming-pool incidents, I did not tell her that I had been stuffing the hotline’s business cards into My Erik’s nudie magazines. And there was no god-grabbing way, I was going to tell her of how I often, okay, every other day, visited his high school locker to slip in a few of the hotline’s business cards. I simply, very casually and very coolly, I must admit, showed her the transcription, hoping she wouldn’t read into it too deeply.
-“Hi, Call-For-Care Suicide Prevention, where your problems are our problems. Who is this I’m speaking with?”
-“Jeremy…”
-“Oh. My.”
-“What?”
-“Is that your real name?”
-“Why do I have to tell you my real name?”
-“…”
-“Whatever, it’s Erik. Let’s move on. You seem to know who I am anyway. Or at least you got my number, figuratively speaking.”
-“What seems to be the reason or reasons for calling today, Erik?”
-“I want to know why I keep finding these cards for your hotline.”
-“I’m, well, um, I’m sorry, I don’t handle those things, you’ll have to speak with our marketing department and—”
-“Transfer me over, will ya?”
-“Well, um, wait, yeah, wait, I mean, is there anything you’d like to talk about, anything that has been making you sad lately?”
-“Um, let’ see, I’m sad because, let’s see, I’m sad because I keep finding your fucking business cards everywhere I go! Transfer me to the goddamn marketing department!”
-“Watch your language, Erik.”
-“What?”
-“From the tone of your voice, it sounds like you have a lot of anger stewing in the cavernous recesses of your being. Let me help you.”
-“Who the, what the, who the fuck are you? And what the fuck does that mean?”
-“Language. Erik. It means that you should utilize this opportunity because you’re here and there’s nothing to be ashamed about.”
-“If I say something, will you transfer me over to marketing?”
-“Yes.”
-“Two days ago, I was at the library. I was taking out a book Hart Crane’s poetry, the new Library of America collection with all the letters and stuff. When I got to the check-out counter, there was this girl, beautiful, with short, cropped black hair, absolutely gorgeous, but not in any obvious way. She had on pink lipstick and, as she watched me approach, she smiled, which looked really cute, I guess. She was reading a book of Adrienne Rich’s poetry. When I laid the book down on the counter, she asked me a few questions about Crane. I think I said something funny because she laughed. There was a moment. I swear, despite everything she probably says, there was a moment. Anyway after pretending to leave, I snuck around to the other entrance, went to the book stacks, and grabbed a copy of some other collection of Rich’s. I went upstairs, a little confident, I think, and what do you think she does? She just stares at me like I’m some freak. She shakes her head and laughs. Well, I didn’t fucking stay around for that shit. I turned around and booked it out of there. And whatever, it’s whatever, but you know, it just sucks. It makes me feel like shit because that shit, what she doing, was completely unnecessary. It makes me feel—”
-“…”
-“Hello?”
-“Um, how does that make you feel to tell that to someone?”
-“If I answer that, will you transfer me over to marketing?”
-“Yes.”
-“Thank god. It makes me feel not so bad anymore. Happy?”
-“Yes. Yes I am. Quite happy. Hold on while I get someone in marketing.”
•…•…•
A Metaphor for the Cinematic Experience No. 4
After five black & tans, half a cosmopolitan, a glass of scotch, two glasses of cheap wine, and a loaf of a garlic bread, the critic finally said something about the film. His two colleagues believed their coercion had worked, though the critic knew that they thought this and knew this was not the case. He could only explain it as something suddenly springing forth. From where, to where, he did not ask. “I’ll compare the film to two shy lovers living in the same apartment complex, on separate floors, one right above the other. They never see each other, the two lovers. But they love. The one lover at the top of every hour from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. throws a half-smoked cigarette down onto the other lover’s patio. While licking off the upstairs lover’s ruby lipstick, the downstairs lover shares the smoke, and perhaps, being slightly maudlin about the whole situation but not really giving a damn, the lover feels an overwhelming connection with the lover, whom the lover has never seen and vice versa. Instead, they communicate through letters. Yes, they send these letters out like any other letter. No, they do not think using email would be better, whatever that means. On most days, these letters contain instructions on how to experience the beauty of what the other person is feeling, a scavenger hunt for love, if you will. One lover directs the other to a children’s hospital with a high remissions rate. One lover directs the other to a fake Picasso that still brings visitors to their knees and just as often, to tears. And they love. Each takes turns recording dinner conversations onto a tape recorder for the other to take to a café to eat with. ‘How long will this last?’ the more eager lover asks every now and then. The more sagacious lover does not answer. So they love. As the years skip by, each is asked with increasing frequency, how this works, how they are lovers. There are many variations to what the lovers’ body language conveys at the time of their answer, but invariably they respond, ‘I don’t know, do not know.’ This answer never satisfies but they love and never explain nor do they ask to be understood.”
It has been a long time since the critic has enjoyed a movie this much.
•…•…•
A Metaphor for the Cinematic Experience No. 5
There’s a red kickball bouncing autonomously around your apartment. You just got home, from the bar, which you went to right after A Cold Night Jazz, which you thought was amazing and wondered why no one else joined in when you began clapping, and what the fuck, there’s this red kickball bouncing autonomously around your apartment, as if some mad scientist had discovered the key to perpetual motion and had set this key upon this red kickball, why a red kickball is beyond your comprehension, and had planted it in your apartment, to cause perpetual misery, even though you have done nothing to deserve this.
This is not true, technically. What were you doing yesterday evening? Go back to yesterday evening:
You’re at your best friend Eliza’s apartment. She is trying on that red strapless Dolce dress that she saved up for all semester. Tonight is her last sorority invite ever. As she reminded you several times already, you are here for moral support, so get that murky frown off your face and get with the mother effen program, man. She is buoyant. You get caught up watching her motions, watching her practice an elegant—a connotation you’ve described lately as “demurely beautiful”—strut in her new sandals, watching her craft her eyelashes with an assassin’s care, you agree with yourself that she looks like this great curving, serpentine shape, like the tubular arc of wine spinning from the bottle’s spout and splashing into an unadulterated glass.
You notice that she has to suck in her stomach to fit into her size-four dress. Other than this, you think Eliza looks beautiful and is handling herself magnificently. Her short, boyish, dark brown hair looks exquisite, particularly because it is not in a bun, which you bear a strong aversion to. She wears a quietly paralyzing pair of diamond earrings, which you compare to two perfectly formed, identical icicles hanging effortlessly on both sides of an outdoor mistletoe. You call her silver slippers cosmic ice skates, and she laughs and you, evaluating what has just come out of your mouth, laugh too.
But then you ask her how long she’s going to hold in her stomach and if she thinks she’ll be able to hold it in all night. Worry trickles from her brow, down her nose, and onto her lips, which quiver. Slipping through her quivering lips, comes the question you do not want to face. She exhales and begins to breathe abnormally loud, loud enough so that you can hear her breathing so that you know that now is the time to use your analytical faculties to determine the qualitative state of her stomach in a state of relative normalcy. Tell the truth, she says.
And you told the truth.
And now you have a red kickball bouncing autonomously around your apartment. You think this may be the price you pay for telling the truth. A red kickball. Over and over and over, it makes the sound that people make when they’re punched in the stomach, phoof and phoof and phoof. You wonder what will happen if you wait for the red kickball to bounce autonomously into your living room where there is a large window. You wonder what kind of sound the ball will make when you kick it out of the goddamn window. Like the scream of a person falling off a cliff, you hope. You contemplate this and you realize that problems are generally not solved this easily and that you sense a set of even worse consequences in store for you, worse than even two red kickballs bouncing autonomously around your apartment, if you vanquish the ball from your apartment in such a manner. It’s a symbol, you think. Your actions and their consequences do not stop influencing once you cease to think about them. Truth or not, you half-heartedly muse.
In the moment before you imagine your new red-kickball-less apartment, which admittedly isn’t shaping up realistically, you think, quite simply, that you do not deserve this.