A failure is someone who
Believes the successes of others
Are metaphysical more than factual; as such,
Michael Dutch,
Young director, bearing an aftertaste of film school
Has invented more successes than anyone. Cashed out
His savings to make his first feature length which fell apart
During editing. So he lays an agent, says “commercials”,
But instead something more substantial reaches
Through his resume to hand him
a quiet check in exchange for
His eye, but also his equipment. Three days
to film, two to
edit, five
hundred dollars. Not
Much but he says okay it’s L.A.. Won’t have
To travel far to continue starving.
2.
Over lunch, the producer, his name: Collingswood.
Corduroys and button down, a Tai spot
In Silverlake. On a legal pad sketches out
the film’s gist—
first
In a series of five, linked by theme: The Five Senses.
One will star deaf actors; another,
Anosmia,
will be cast
Without a sense of smell. Agensia, the third
installment,
No taste; the fourth featuring quadriplegics, if they
Can find enough. The first to be bankrolled though
And make casting calls will be sight (or the
bald, sensual
lack of it).
They’ve already finalized the principals: the female lead
a blind surfer,
The male, a guy who teaches yoga. “The deal, we
Issue you a script each morning,
in braille. Can’t
Read it? Good. And by the way, in case
They didn’t tell you: it’s a porno.”
3.
A success is someone who creates failure
by leaving it in his
Or her wake—the patch they cut cleaves
Lives that spread behind them inclusively
as opportunity. (You will be a
great man, or will be a useful one.) (Makers
Can’t be choosers.) At a
two floor bungalow
In Laurel Canyon, Michael
Unloads his camera and tripod; in the
living room overlooking
The back deck overlooking the fall of a
Hill into some lower neighborhood, he spots
Props already arranged around the room:
Dozens of wall-length mirrors. In the kitchen
Collingswood hands him the script and mentions
Furniture will be switched around by the crew
Between scenes, sometimes even during
Filming—so the cast, like mazed mice, will
Have to dig through strange acoustics to
Reach each other delivering their lines. At noon
They begin filming. A wide-hipped curly Latina
Assumes a calmly dignified bearing
as the actors work over her body. Something
Solemn, disjoined about
the look of them
kneading a human wad
tiny but shyly intricate
Through the viewfinder. Siamese mirages
of them from every angle
Wobbling around them. A spatially synchronized
Orgy. But the slowest, most atmospheric aspect
Was their mouths and how they moved and the
Manner of phrases that left them. Plotted
like
voiceover monologues in a Malik film,
But broken among the memories and instincts of
Many speakers. “Tomorrow”…”I’ll go”…“To the store”:
As mundane and awkwardly spaced as that.
After the first scene, Michael already knew
He was making himself useful
to a masterpiece.
4.
Hadn’t he seen it once before? When Tarkovsky
Plucked a few hairs from the Chin of the Tao
And glued them to the enormous transparent eyeball
Of Stalker? Some bit of barely hashed
natural wisdom—how, when young,
A creature or plant
is weak and pliable; when old, more
Sovereign and self-protected, strong and
Rigid. Brittle as such, it snaps or crumbles. Thus
The superiority of the vulnerable. To give
Where pressed, and adapt accordingly.
The next day Collingswood handed him
Another script—several sheets of braille—and
A fresh memory card for his camera.
The day before he had insisted on taking the old one.
Where yesterday they told him, against the norm
To use only a tripod, now
The instructions called for him to shoulder
The camera and walk the room barefoot. “No
Socks,” Collingswood said, looking down
His glasses at him, “We want all ten toes.”
But then, in the basement den, where they were
Filming, he noticed the actors still wearing
Shoes beneath their robes. Many held mirrors
during the shoot,
And wandered the room whispering, counting off
A numbered sequence of steps they’d memorized.
One-two, left. Five steps, right. A count of ten
Between each step. One moment even found
The main actress on her knees fellating her
own reflection.
As she finished, all four men in the room (and
Their reflections) seized up and
groaned, in concert, as if planned.
And surely it was, Michael, guessed
Since his fingers were illiterate to
The white plastic bumps he’d handed them.
After filming, Holand, the production assistant,
Waited for the memory card. Handing it
off, Michael asked
“That’s it? Whispered numbers?” “Whoever
Put up the money,” he said, tipping his Coke, “That’s
how they want it. And so do you.”
5.
The third day, no one showed up. The house, locked
And shiny as California in the windows.
On the doorstep, an envelope; in it, a note from Collingswood
Attached to a check two hundred higher
than promised. “Finished filming yesterday. For
confidentiality’s sake. Sure
You understand. Best wishes, C..” No word of good
Work or plans to borrow him from the future. Stiff
Envelope, out shook one other thing: a small white card
Pocked with nibs. Ran his fingers over it
But already (and how did he?) knew
what it was
and where it’d sit him: in two weeks,
At the Pink Castle, front row. All those bodies proliferating,
Mating in the glide and wink of mirrors, and every
odd angle or so
His
Own rapt with bewilderment—one eye alien wide, recording,
The other blinking as if it didn’t know where it was going.
