Boys of Life (20 page)

af: Hence the distressing of the actual film quality itself.

reichart: Precisely. I wanted to suggest an ancient film, or fragment of film found, say, in a canister dug up from the ruins of one of our cities, pieced back together but heavily damaged, much of it beyond repair.

af: One thinks of the Soviet reconstruction of Eisenstein's Beuzhin Meadow after the war.

reichart: That hadn't occurred to me, but yes. An example closer to home would be the stills from von Stroheim's Greed that survive.

af: Even though in certain ways Gomorrah 15 a comic film, it's als>> very sad.

reichart: That's a personal impression. I agree it's not I funny, it makes you think more than laugh. But when it was put on in Montreal a month ago the audiences laughed a lot. I should this tOO—Gomorrah U CUSO about the end of a certain kind of film-making, I think. It's about the end of realism as a kind of limbo, and it evokes the ghost of realism, particularly in the beginning about two characters living life without thinking about it— humble humdrum and unaware. All the first part is an echo of realism, though naturally an idealized realism.

□ PAULRUSSELL

af: Which brings in the whole question of Hollywood. reichart: I've never paid any attention to Hollywood, one

way or the other. The main point is that in Gomorrah my love for reality is philosophical and reverent, but it is not necessarily naturalistic.

af: How did you find Tony Blair"

reichart: J met him by chance while doing Ur— he was there with some other boys watching us make the film and I noticed him at once. When I thought of doing Gomorrah / thought of him and Sammy Finkelstein without the slightest hesitation.

af: And you had worked with Finkelstein before:

reichart: Again, he dates back to the street theater. We were in Washington Square, I think it was right after Cambodia. the incursions, and Sammy walked up to me at the end of a performance—I remember we were all dressed up m these extravagant costumes, we were supposed to be mythological birds or something, it was very inagical—and he pointed right at me, poking me in the chest with his finger, and he said, "I'm with you,** I tin>k that to mean he was against the war too, but it didn't— n meant hi lommg The Company whether we wanted him or not,

af: That's a funny story. And thai son oj feistiness comes ns m his character m Gomorrah.

reichart: Well, I hope. I took something oj a chance*, since there's always something iffy m asking someone who may be neon

death himself to OCX his own death

af: / reme mb er the stories Satyajii Ray tells about the old village woman who played the grandmother m Pathei Panchali.

reichart: Well, especially in that culture Bui m on) cul tw own death is a serious thing Noi just the (km

sibiluy oj yow own death but the thing itself, Which (bi me is montage Deads, I mean ( mce life is finished it acquires a v up to that point us sense is suspended and tfi tmbiguous

fhoujh to be sincere I also haw to say thai fbi me death is rm poitiint only if it's not justified and rationalized by mason

In

B O Y S O F L I F E □

my films are supposed r<> have a finished sense. They always end with a question—I intend them to remain suspended,

af: And the title' Clearly there's the implication oj diaspora, the Holocaust . . .

reichart: Oh. exactly, but here it's combined with a vision

of Jerusalem that, even if you finally manage to achieve it, or rediscover a since it's reaUy a kind of lost Eden, it's going to be ruined, it's going to disappear out from underneath you the instant

you find it.

af: So is New York Gomorrah?

reichart: Is New York Gomorrah? I like that.

B O Y S O F L I F E D

I couldn't go to sleep and BO I Started to do those mind exercises Carlos had told me about that very first day, about thinking back to things and trying to be there all over again. It occurred to me—maybe every time 1 did that I was changing something about what really happened,

and SO it 1 thought back to it enough it'd be like rubbing your finger on something that'> painted and wearing the paint away. It bothered me that Carlos was remembering something completely different, and I wondered it th.u was maybe because he didn't think back to it as much and so he hadn't rubbed as much away.

You probablv know by now how I tend to get caught up thinking about one thing and I worry and worry it till it starts driving me crazy. I guess starting right that minute on the sidewalk, this one thing became the newest thing to drive me crazy. Trying to think—could I really not remember the way it was, in which case I was crazy, or was it Carlos who didn't remember, and then he was the crazy one. 7 And how was I going to know one way or the other about it, since only the two o\ us were there and nobody else 7

! was sure I was right. I had to be. That laundromat was something important tor me to think back to a lot. It was the one instant where everything in my life changed, though I didn't know it at the time. I thought I was still living my same old life, but I wasn't. That life had stopped being there the instant Carlos walked in the door: I was already in some crazy new life without even knowing it.

It bothered me that Carlos could remember all that so completely differently. Unless he had some reason for not telling it the way it happened, in which case what was that reason? To keep it just between the two o{ us. 7 Or because there were other things that got in the way of telling it straight that he knew about and I didn't. 7 And so there I'd go off in another direction, worrying it out to the threadbare end and still not getting anywhere.

A few days after that interview, I happened to be alone with Seth. He was in the apartment going through some boxes of stuff Carlos stored tor him there. I think he was kind of pissed off at not being able to find what he was looking for—which meant it probably wasn't exactly the best time in the world to try to have a conversation, but I went ahead and had one anyway.

"Seth," I said.

He didn't look around at me, he just kind ot grunted and kept tuff our of the box onto the floor.

"You remember that first time you met me, when I came to where

□ PAUL RUSSELL

you all were shooting, with Verbena and the pickup truck and everything . 7 "

He emptied a box of tools out on the floor.

I told him how I remembered that day one way, with me being the only kid there, and Carlos remembered it completely different, and anyway that wasn't even the first time Carlos ever met me.

Seth must've found what he was looking for, because he stood up and turned around and looked at me. He was holding some camera-piece.

"Look, Tony," he said, and this is exactly what he said— "you are really pretty amazingly dumb."

It wasn't what I was expecting him to say. I just looked at him back.

"I don't understand," I said. And really, when 1 look back at it all, I guess he was right—I really was pretty amazingly dumb. But then, how was I supposed to know anything?

"You weren't exactly the first kid to come nosing around Carlos," Seth said like he was mad at me personally tor that tact, "and you sure as hell aren't the last. So don't get any ideas. 11

All at once I completely knew what he WM talking about. It came in a sort ot rush right at me, and I'd never even thought about it before.

"Oh that," I said—like I knew what he meant all along.

Maybe Seth waa pissed ofl at Carloa foi some reason that <\^ and

that's why he told me, or maybe he would'vc told me the lame thing , untune I'd .isked him about it, but 1 hadn't CVCI .isked before.

"See,*" he laid, "I jUSt think people have got a light to know

^ ert.nn tl the} COT in.ike their own dec isions, it you know what

m. But to do th.u they've not t>> know what's what.' 1 "And you're tell me what'i wh.it," 1 laid.

he else seems tO WUi\ tol Ve.ih Nirc. I ike I'm the And like yen didn't know Carlos h.is this lex thin kids. I im • ItUpid."

I stupid." I said, though ot course you might s. ( \ I've

■ en ItUpid. I his v. we ihould'vC been hi

.\ long Hi:

■ < ih ihrugged. " I hej | md."

anl'" "I [| iid " I I

you through life, I nj Whatevei tal hell and ba<

B O Y S O F L I F E D

in Owen?" Ir was like 1 was hearing myself do the calking but 1 wasn't really (here.

"Who remembers Owen.'" Seth waved his hand like Owen, Kentucky, bored him to death. It wouldn't exactly have been the hrst tune in the world somebody had that reaction. "Owen was just some little

town where we were making a movie."

"J was m Owen," I said, th laughed. "Yeah," he said, "von were in Owen." He shook

his head like he thought it was all too runny. "You wouldn't smoke mv goddamned pot in Owen," he said. Like it was still some sore spot with him. "Sure there was some other kid in Owen. That's why we were in rucking Owen in the first place, some kid Carlos saw in the grocery

store And he liked the looks of SO that's where we were going to shoot

the last part of the him. All so he can drive up and down the god*

damned street looking tor this kid, which I hate to say it, hut it wasn't

i' you.

"Who then?"

"How do I know who. 7 I don't think Carlos ever found him. He wanted to write this script tor him. He had it all worked out. This kid was going to be the star of his next movie. He always wanted to do a movie with a kid in it, and he never had."

Ir sort of made me light-headed, hearing all this for the first time. Like I probably should have sat down in a chair before he told it to me. "Look," Seth said, "I'm not saying you should do anything different, just because maybe now you know some things you didn't know before. But I'm betting you probably knew them. I'm right about that, aren't I.' That you knew them."

It was odd—because suddenly it seemed like I did know them all along, I just never sat down and said them to myself.

"I guess I knew," I told him. "Yeah, I guess I guessed it."

He just nodded. He had these big eyes that made him look tunny

sometimes, and sometimes they made him look sad, and this time he

looked sad. I thought how he wasn't a bad guy, Seth—just he had a

terrible temper And was always at least a little bit stoned, so you never

what he was going to do next.

"You've had some kind ot time, haven't you?" he said, sort ot out • >t the blue.

I knew he meant Sammy, and the way Carlos cooped me up with him to see if we'd break—bur we didn't, so Carlos went ahead and made the movie.

□ PAUL RUSSELL

"Yeah," I said. "It's been some kind of rime."

"But you're not sorry."

I shook my head. "Why should I be sorry. 1 It's not over yet. Things are just starting up."

"You really think that?"

"I really do," I told him. I wasn't sure whether I did or not, but it seemed like the thing to say. Because the whole time We were talking my brain was racing ahead about five hundred miles an hour to all the things I never thought about till now. And now I had to say to myself Carlos was fucking around with other kids than me and what does that mean. 7 And what my brain was saying was, Not much. Here I had the whisky and the sex and a bed to sleep in, and a movie I starred in and what more was I supposed to want than that? We had some kind of time together, me and Carlos—that was enough tor me to say.

"So you'll be staying around?" Seth asked. He was using his grufl . e on me, which meant he was trying to be nice to me without being too nice. "No matter what?" he said—like he was anxious about it.

"Probably I will," I told him. "You can't get rid ot me just like that." I smiled at him, the way I do when I'm being mean. "I'm going to be a star," I told him. "You just watch me."

"I'm watching you all the time," he laid. "I'm the camera lens." We stood there looking at each other, me this kid who'd lust turned

eighteen about ,t week before and Seth, who must've been forty, with his big belly and his beard and him holding that stupid camera piece

fh.it, now th.it he'd found it. he didn't exacth know what to A^ with

anymore. Which 1 guess put the two ot us m the exact same situation

th wh.it u w.is we'd just found.

It was some kind ot understanding between US right then. I know he thought I w.is stupid and all, but 1 don't re.ilU our I huigl won Lin't

'\w\ did it ie'd been .m\ othei w.n between

md I flunk we both proh.ihly knew tli.it, e\en .it th.it mst.int we

re lookii h othei Because foi .» stupid kid I

th knew fh.it.

till ( .ulos you told me," I -iid "You can tell him I'm

00 tin OWn, it that w.is Hue Hue ulul-

m\ plai e it you'i I Ike

he was aA IF myself or something all bet suae <■ alios

BOYSOFLIFE D

"I'm tine." 1 cold him. "You'll sec how fine 1 am."

He sort of grumbled at that and then he was gone, and 1 was standing there in die middle of the apartment with the sun coming in through the windows and lighting up all the dust specks in the air so you couldn't believe you were always walking around breathing air that dirty, ,md the whole weight of it sort of hit me. 1 thought hack to that night I tried to run away and then came hack because 1 found out I couldn't run away, or I didn't want to—and I thought, I'd have gone completely insane if I found out about all this back then. But now it Was just something that was happening and it wasn't going to be the end of the world. It was just part of me and Carlos, and I almost had to laugh, thinking about Carlos chasing that kid around Owen and coming up with me instead.