Only Child (32 page)

• • •

"M
y inspiration," he said, leaning back, "my original inspiration was seeing one of those convenience-store holdups on videotape— not a re-enactment, the actual robbery— on one of those surveillance cameras they keep in those stores? I was struck by the . . .
immediacy
of it."
He leaned forward to light another cigarette, then leaned back again for the first drag, keeping the interviewer on "Pause," just as he'd rehearsed it in front of his mirror a thousand times.
Rejji came over, removed his near-empty tumbler, and deftly replaced it with a fresh drink, giving him a little extra wiggle, now that it was clear he was a VIP for real.
"There's a power to that kind of . . . performance," he intoned. "An impact never duplicated in conventional cinema. I became a kind of connoisseur of the entire . . . genre, if you will. There was something about those tapes that was absolutely special. Unique. So I decided to deconstruct the tapes as a totality. Not in the formal sense, of course," he said, breezily, "more in the way of disassembling the mechanism . . . isolating the elements to understand the gestalt.
"From that work came my vision," he said, in the solemnly portentous tone a pop star uses when explaining that global warming isn't a cool thing.
"And your name," I said, saluting him with an upraised glass.
"That wasn't until later," he corrected me. "Those surveillance tapes, the closest label you could put on them, artistically, would be a kind of
cinéma vérité
. But they're not actually
creations;
they're not even documentaries. Why? Because there's no
control
— the filmmaker isn't
directing;
it's nothing more than the camera itself. Now, for some, that
is
the goal . . . to make the director disappear, so that the audience 'sees' directly into the life. But without control, there is no art. You might capture something fantastic on tape, but that's just a question of being in the right place at the right time. That's not art. It's not even skill. Just dumb luck. The Zapruder film is world-famous, right? A piece of history. But nobody ever talks about his . . . gift. Or his art. And," he said, in a tone of finality, "he never made anything else."
"But you can't direct real life," I said, gently fanning the flame.
"No?" he said complacently.
"Well, how could you?" I asked. "I mean, if you direct it, then it's . . . acting."
"That's what I thought, too," he said, his voice getting tumescent with confidence. He segued into full lecture mode. "I remember watching that robbery tape. Over and over. Thinking how much better it could have been if they'd positioned themselves differently. Or said different words. Because just because something's real doesn't mean it's even interesting. Much less art. That's when I began scripting. Before that, all my work was just . . .
filming
. Without any real . . . vision," he said, chuckling at himself. He shifted his shoulders, positioning himself to deliver another dose of insight. "For a while, I did straight
vérité
. Have you ever seen a dogfight?"
"No," I said. "I've
heard
about them, but . . . they're . . . I mean, only hillbillies do them, isn't that true? Like cockfights being a Hispanic thing?"
"No . . ." He was starting to educate me, then caught himself before the topic veered too far from his favorite one. "Anyway, I filmed one. It was
incredible
. I filmed other things, too. Things you'd probably never see on tape in your life. But I couldn't
control
any of it. So what I had was a lot of amazing footage, but none of it— even
all
of it together— would add up to a movie.
"It all . . . evolved," he said. "It took a long time. Years. My next stage was when I used actors to 'be' real. I'd put them in situations, and whatever happened, happened. Kind of
vérité
cranked up. And what I saw was that I had a
lot
of control but it cost me the realism. Like, have you ever seen a trial on Court TV?"
"OJ," I replied. "And when Frank Dux sued Jean-Claude Van Damme." A safe Hollywood answer.
"Do you think
any
of them would have behaved the same way if they hadn't
known
the cameras were on them every second? The lawyers, the witnesses, even the judge? And those 'reality' TV shows.
Survivor
? Right!
Big Brother
? Sure! That Jenny Jones thing, where the guy thought he was going to meet someone who had a secret crush on him, and it turned out to be another guy? But on camera, what happens? Not so much. Off camera? He fucking
kills
the queer. Blows him away. You see what I mean? What if I'd had
that
?"
I nodded, unwilling to interrupt the flow of something so important with speech.
"Don't you
see
?" he said. "Even if all I did was set the . . . boundaries, like, it
still
wasn't real. Because, if they knew the camera was rolling, that changed everything. I threw most of that crap out. You know what I called it, finally?
Faux vérité!
"
"Wow," I said softly, overawed.
"Everybody's a screenwriter," he said caustically. "They want to write 'realism' and call it their 'creation.' But they don't
get
it. If you
create
the realism, it isn't real!"
"That is heavy," I said.
CV for
cinéma vérité;
FV for
faux vérité.
And NV . . . ?
"That's when it came to me," he said. "Can I show you something?"
Without waiting for a response, he opened the flap on his shoulder bag and took out a cassette. I felt Michelle freeze next to me.
"You've got a VCR here . . . ?"
"Of
course,
" Michelle assured him. She stood up and took the cassette from him, walked over to the console, turned it on, inserted the tape. She came back and handed the remote to Vision.
"Thanks," he said. Without further preamble, he pointed the remote at the console and kicked the tape into life.
Darkness.
The camera's eye picked up a synagogue.
"Jews!" a harsh, off-camera whisper. "Fucking Jews."
Figures running across an expanse of lawn.
Heavy breathing.
Swastikas springing from spray cans.
"Heil Hitler!"
"The white man is coming, kike bastards!" A different voice.
Fade to black, deeper than darkness.
In the silence, I said, "How did you know they'd be—"
"What you've just seen," he interrupted, "is a very early example of what I call
noir vérité
."
"I
love
that name!" Michelle.
He bowed slightly, taking his due, but not finished opening our eyes. "With
cinéma vérité,
I had realism but not control," he said. "With
faux vérité,
I had control but not realism. But with
noir vérité,
I finally had
both
."
"How is that . . . I mean, how is what we just saw . . . both?" I asked him, my tone a study in confused admiration.
"How many actors did you see?"
"Uh . . . four, I think, right?"
"No," he said. Waited a beat. "You saw
one
. One of them knew this was a movie. The other three, they thought they were going on an 'action.' "
"You mean they were set up to . . . ?"
"Not set up! They
wanted
to do exactly what they did. It was the actor's assignment to get them to do it
when
they did it, and
where
they did it, that's all. For the actor, this was a role. But for the others . . ."
"I think I under—"
"That was just the beginning," he said. "The first step."

• • •

"N
ow, who was acting in
that
one?" he asked, eyes on Rejji, who he'd spotted sneaking peeks at the screen.
"It can't have been the one
doing
the paddling," I said. "Why would the others have just gone along and—?"
"This is the final stage," he said. "Or
nearly
it, anyway. Because they were
all
acting. But only one of them knew the script."
"I don't . . ."
"Okay, look," he said, leaning forward, intense. "They all
thought
they were acting. In a movie. The script was this sorority thing . . . like you saw for yourself. But the girl
doing
the paddling, she was told that this was a
different
movie. And the plot of
that
movie was a girl who wants to get even with another girl, so she makes up this whole 'movie' thing."
"Unreal!" I said.
"
Completely
real," he corrected. "The concept is that everyone knows they're on camera, but only
some
of them know that the script isn't really the script. But even the ones who
think
they know, they don't understand that their role is
another
role. One that only the director knows. And when it all comes together,
at that perfect moment,
it's totally real. And totally under my direction."
"Oh my God!" Michelle said.
"Noir vérité,"
he said proudly. "That's why it's always done with a single camera. The last thing I want is a
Rashomon
effect. Here, each of the actors has his or her own reality, but the only truth is what goes
into
the camera. And there can be only one truth. That," he said, pausing, the way he'd rehearsed this moment before his mirror so many times, "was my vision."
"That's . . . amazing," I said. "So, in each movie you make, the star—"
"The catalyst," he said. "Not the star. In
noir vérité,
there are no stars. Because there are no limits, do you see?"
"Not . . . really."
"The ultimate control is the director's. In
noir vérité,
the director
directs
. Not just the lines, or the sets. He directs reality. The catalyst— there can be more than one— their job is to create the opportunity for conduct. But the conduct itself is real."
"So if you let the . . . person
think
they're the catalyst, but they're really playing the
role
of catalyst . . . ?"
"Exactly," he said.
"Everything I heard about you was gospel," I told him, admiringly. "This
is
a new concept. Nobody's got this one. And it truly has no limits. You could do . . . anything with it."
"No limits," he agreed.
"Couldn't it ever get . . . I don't know, out of hand?"
"Even if it did," he said, shrugging his shoulders, "whatever happened, it wouldn't be real. It would be something else entirely. My creation.
Noir vérité
."

• • •

B
efore he left, he inked the deal memo Michelle handed him.
"I'll just sign it 'Vision,' if that's all right," he said. "It's the name I'll be known by."
"Oh, you already are," I promised him. "We just need your Social Security number for the accounting department. You know, the tax boys. You better get used to a
lot
of attention from them, Vision."
He put his copy of the contract into his briefcase, as Michelle tapped a single digit on her cellular.
"Please bring the car around," she said. "You are to take our guest wherever he directs."
"Better ring Fong, too," I told her. "A little security wouldn't hurt, considering . . ."
"Considering what?" The Vision asked me.
"Considering your signing bonus isn't a check," I told him. "Alana . . ."
Michelle handed me a Gucci bag of soft blue leather. I unzipped it, so Vision could see the banded stacks of bills. Then handed the bag to him.
He took it in both hands, torn. Then he made his decision and zipped it closed without counting. All class. Or maybe he wanted to keep the bag.
I'd expected a man so driven, he'd be almost vibrating with barely contained power. A psychopath, radiating evil
ki
. Not this. Not this lethal little cliché.
We shook hands.
Michelle took him downstairs, to the waiting limo.