a movie...and a Book (9 page)
52.
Jim and Andy have gone back to the ocean. Jim is
somewhere out in the storm, fighting the waves with
his small boat. He seems lost.
53.
Andy, at a different place, speeds full of self-confidence toward the black clouds.
54.
There’s a black, flashlike cut. We see Jim in the
desert, walking toward the setting sun. If this were
an old Western movie, he would ride on a horse. But
it’s not, so he’s just walking. We hear a narrator’s
voice. This time it’s not the elderly guy from the
beginning
.
This time it’s Jim’s voice. He’s probably
looking at the scene with us.
“Rather than explaining it all now, I would prefer to say nothing at all. Have you ever sat silently on top of a big hill while the sun was slowly disappearing behind the horizon?”
The scene changes. We see Jim from far away, on top
of a hill, sitting in the filtered sunlight in the grass.
The grass is moving in the wind. Jim continues to
narrate.
“It would be great to do it that way. I bet if we were sitting on top of a big hill while the orange sun-ball hit the ocean, molding our shadows smoothly over the hills behind, this story wouldn’t need an extra explanation. We would just sit there, understanding.”
The scene changes to the first one, when we saw Jim
in the desert, walking toward the descending sun.
“Unfortunately, I can’t bring you to the hill. I’m almost forced to explain the whole thing.”
He takes another step toward the horizon.
“If you think I’m dead—in heaven, so to speak, looking back at my life—you’re wrong about that. I’m more alive than I’ve ever been.”
He lets us wait for a beat.
“Do you remember how that
senile
psychiatrist told me to write about my problems—saying that I should try to focus on the positive side while writing?
“And do you remember how my brother told me that those things that had been bugging me would be the perfect script?”
We see flashes of the movie. The first scene as Jim
angrily paints the wall. Then we float over the
cloudy ocean. Then we see Liz and Lou running into
the waves. Then we see Jim walking along the street
with Arnold. Then we see him on the train, then
together with his brother, then at the psychiatrist’s.
Then we see Jim in the desert again.
“They made a pretty good point. They really did. It’s funny, the things we need always come to us . . . and it’s funny, but sometimes we just don’t get it.
“The really crazy thing is that this psychiatrist—if he really was one—was right. If you start to write about yourself it’s like climbing a hill. You climb a hill until you’re almost able to look at yourself from a distance. And with this distance you can see things differently . . . You don’t take everything so goddamn personally anymore. That’s all.
“He was certainly a strange guy, though. This psychiatrist. In his crazy way, he not only told me that I should write about my problems, but he even gave me a story. I mean—do you think I was surprised when the psychiatrist told me that made-up stories usually start with a couple getting lost on an island? Of course not. I had no idea what he was talking about. It was way later that I understood he had given me the whole script in a nutshell.”
The sun has almost disappeared by now. We see Jim
as a small shape in front of the orange half. Some
background music gets a little louder, then gets
turned down, and we hear Jim’s voice again.
“First, it took a lot of guts to climb this hill, but then something wonderful happened when I was close to the summit. I got a glimpse of something wonderful.”
We cut to Jim on the hill again, sitting in the grass.
Now the sun appears on the other side.
“All of a sudden I realized that there is some real beauty in what I’ve been through. I was excited about it because in this new light my life seemed kind of cool. Strange and crazy, but cool. I remember exactly when I decided to write a book about it. It was a beautiful fall day and I was riding my bicycle through the leaves. I felt so good and free, thinking about my life. I remember I shivered a little and started to whistle an old tune, just riding through the leaves.”
After a rather long moment of silence, a flock of
birds enters the scene, and they fly through the
bright morning sun. It looks just a tiny bit too
cheesy.
“Look, I’m not trying to kid anyone. I’m a writer. This story was made up.
“But the crazy thing is, it’s true anyway.”
At this moment the scene cuts and we are floating
over the bright surface of the ocean. Smoothly flying
over it. The song “Edge of the World” by Faith No
More starts to play. For about a minute or two we
just hear the music while looking at the water. Then
the credits roll.
DANIEL WAGNER
a movie ... and a book
Daniel Wagner lives in Basel, Switzerland.
a movie . . . and a book
is his first novel.
FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, JULY 2005
Copyright © 2004 by Daniel Wagner
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks and Vintage
Contemporaries is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Wagner, Daniel, [date].
A movie—and a book / by Daniel Wagner.
p. cm.
1. Islands—Fiction. 2. Castaways—Fiction.
3. Authorship—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3623.A356M68 2004
813’.6—dc22 2004002584
eISBN: 978-0-307-42445-7
v3.0