Three Moments of an Explosion (40 page)

A guide was in the middle of a spiel. “We’ll come back in the morning, when it’s finished laying,” she said. “You can bring your cameras then—no danger then if you forgot to turn your flash off.” People laughed.

“What’s wrong?” Dughan whispered.

“Do you think it’s true what he said?” the girl whispered. “About the dog? That’s horrible.” She made a face. He stared not at the twitching Petrobras P-36 with its concrete in the mere, not at its drill ovipositor injecting slippy black rig eggs into England, but at the sea. “Maybe he was lying to scare us,” the girl said.

Dughan turned and took in the length of Covehithe Beach. They were out of sight, but he looked in the direction of the graveyard, and of St. Andrew’s stubby hall where services continued within the medieval carapace, remains of a grander church fallen apart to time and the civil war and to economics, fallen ultimately with permission.

THE JUNKET

Daniel Cane left his gym at 2:45 p.m. on a Thursday in early August. He stopped at a grocery store on Avalon Street, near the turnoff to Preston Avenue. The clerk remembers him picking up some juice and peanut butter. He left at 2:57 p.m. and started in the direction of the apartment he’d lived in for the past seven months.

It was a twenty-minute walk. He’d done it many times. But Daniel Cane, hippest, most controversial screenwriter on the West Coast, never made it home.

You know all this. You know every detail of Cane’s disappearance by now. Who doesn’t? And you know what comes next too. That’s why you’re reading this, right? To get to that stuff?

It’s coming.

She’s one of the five most photographed women in the world this year, but when she appears, it still takes a few seconds to realize that we’re looking at Abi Hempel.

It’s only been a few weeks since the release of the film that hurled her onto the A-list. In that time, no matter what she’s rocking—Alexander Wang, Rodarte, Westwood, or vintage—she’s rarely been seen without her dark brown hair styled in the look
Vogue
called “demure-fierce.” Almost frumpy, but really not. Parted on the left, shoulder-length. A shout-out to the character who’s made her so very famous and whom, despite the nearly ten years she has on her, with her large, deep-set eyes, unruly brows, pale skin, and crooked smile, Hempel bears an astounding resemblance.

But the young woman who mounts the stage is barely recognizable. Our expectant hush becomes astonishment. What’s this dark gray pantsuit? Is that a tan? What’s with the
bob
?

Maybe somebody’s tired of the sell.

Abi peers at us through severe glasses. She’s studying philosophy at the Sorbonne, and she looks the part, even if she doesn’t sound it.

“When I read the script I thought, ‘Wow,’ ” she says. We scribble as if this kind of horseshit is epiphany. “It was really smart, really funny and kind of dark. And respectful.”

There it is. Me and a few buddies—stand down, guys, I’m not going to name names—glance at each other and put little marks on our checklists. Twenty-dollar ante each. We’re playing bingo.

Did she do her own stunts? She flexes a bicep so we all laugh.

“God no,” she says. “John wanted to be really sparing with CGI. Like, the scene where my character jumps from the roof of the museum? That’s a brilliant stuntwoman called Gabrielle Bing, and she’s really doing that. I saw her training and I was like, ‘Uh, no.’

“I did what I could. I have a gymnastics background, and we had an awesome Krav Maga instructor. I wanted to do as much of the fight scenes as I could. I did get to punch Tommy in the face.” We all laugh again, dutifully.

Did she consider how controversial the subject matter might be?

“Honestly, no. We were surprised. I totally respect anyone who doesn’t like what we’ve done, but you know, it was never our intention to offend anybody.” Buzzzz: there’s another one. “For us this was really an
homage
.”

Can I get double points for that? She’s polite and sincere-sounding and it’s almost plausible.

How was it working with Daniel Cane?

We all knew that was coming. She moves in her seat.

“I didn’t work closely with him,” she says. “He was on-set, he did a few rewrites. We had dinner a couple of times. He was a sweet guy. What happened was an absolute tragedy and all my sympathies are with his family.”

What would you say to the protestors?

“I’d say, Don’t come see the movie.”

At this point I’m going to risk your wrath and my job by telling you that your ever-loving correspondent was one of the lucky few scheduled for a brief one-to-one with Hempel. And that I didn’t take it. Gave the slot to someone else. (You’re welcome,
Schlockwaves
readers!)

Stay with me. I had work to do, calls to make. Authorities to badger, people on the phone to charm. I’d got to the “Officially there’s nothing I can do, but let me speak to someone and call you back” stage.

Daniel’s friends raised the alarm after he failed to turn up to two meetings in two days. The cops weren’t particularly concerned. Young rich dude goes AWOL in a party town? The choppers stayed grounded.

Three days after that an anonymous and untraceable call was made to Nikki Finke. The woman said she was speaking “for Daniel Cane’s victims,” that “his crimes would not be forgotten,” that “justice had been done.”

The cops looked harder after that.

We’re driven across town. Johnny D is giving his interviews in a different hotel. There are rumors of “creative differences.”

“Come on,” says Johnny. “Abi’s great. You’ve seen it, right? You saw what a great job she did.” He looks like a man who wants a cigarette. “Look, on a project like this, sure there are going to be arguments, but—”

Can he comment on the claims about the canal scene?

“Oh right, I’ve heard this one. I forced her to stay in the water the whole night while we did a hundred takes and she got pneumonia, right? I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”

We’ve been briefed. Daniel Cane is off-limits.

What’s the collective noun for journalists at a publicity event? A schmooze? A mouthpiece? A funnel?

But even the most compliant crowd has a certain collective cunning. You could almost believe we’d cooked this up between us, we divvy it up so well. First a few softballs—influences, best moments, funny stories, blah blah. Then come questions about the protestors. The woman from
Cinéma
asks about the statement Yad Vashem put out.

Johnny knows how to bad-boy swagger without saying anything overtly offensive. Not that “offensive” is something he’s always anxious to avoid: hey, this is the man who cut his teeth at the notorious NoLuck Studio; whose first film,
Rob my Grave,
was denounced in the British Parliament. This is the brain behind the
Stereotype Man and Dumb Broad
.

Right now, though, he’s cautious. It’s all “great deal of respect for the sensitivities involved” this—we must’ve gotten drunker or bolder because that merits a few laughs—“careful to consider the ramifications” that, and—“sacred texts” the other.

Boom. Several of us checked our phones at that point: a group text. One word:
BINGO!

I won’t tell you who won. It wasn’t me.

Eventually someone asks. It was inevitable, off-limits or not. And this wasn’t me, either, but it would’ve been if no one else had stepped up.

What about Daniel Cane?

Johnny waves away the PR guy who’s mounting the stage.

“Daniel was my brother,” Johnny says. There’ll be some good pictures of this moment: he seems genuinely furious.

“He was like my brother. He came to me with this idea almost eight years ago and I told him if you ever do this with anyone else, I will never forgive you. So tell me, friend, what’s your question? Are you asking me whether I regret doing this movie? Fuck no. This is Daniel’s movie. Would Daniel regret doing it? Fuck no. Do I regret that he died? Fuck yes. Did he ask for it? Is that what you’re saying, my friend? Because fuck you. You got that? You need me to spell it? No he did not.

“Who do you represent, man?
I-net
? OK, out of Tel Aviv, right? Well, let me tell you this: Daniel was a proud Jew. He wrote this out of
love
. He wrote this out of passion, and sincerity, and no sick crazy bastard can take away from that one bit.”

The way he says it, you could almost forget that he’s selling an action flick. You could be forgiven for forgetting the merchandise, action figures, video game.

The journalist mutters something.

“Excuse me?” Johnny shouts.

“Half,” the guy says.

The fight that follows looks pretty real to most of us.

I don’t know who pulled in what favor but the cops who turn up go away again. This little
contretemps
has screwed the schedule, which, see above, is no skin off my shin: I spend the afternoon watching Cane-iana on YouTube. The
FangQuarterly
interview where he moons the photographer; the time he threw a slushie at a pap on a bike (the guy wasn’t there for him—Cane had been out with the winner of
All-Real American Starlet
); the interview with the Goth kid in the graveyard.

“It used to be just us, man,” the white-faced boy says, looking down. “Now every asshole wants a piece of him. Assholes coming here at like midnight so no one can see and taking everything and shit. They shouldn’t do that. Now they got like drones and cameras and shit watching us.”

The
I-net
guy’s a douche. It’s Daniel Cane’s mom who’s Jewish, so he’s Jewish too. This unedifying ping-pong was already in play when he was killed. His family were totally secular
vs.
he was bar-mitzvahed. He had no interest in Judaica
vs.
he used Yiddish all the time. His mom’s Jewish
vs.
only his mom’s Jewish. Stay classy, haters.

There’s viral video of a drunk, playful Daniel denouncing his younger brother Jacob in a colorful stream, a few years back: “You’re a fucking
tshonde,
bro,” he shouts, as waiters try to calm him and his brother folds over in laughter. “I’m, I’m
plotzing
here. You’re
meshuggeneh
!”

Almost as well known is the op-ed response in the
New York Opinion,
published a week before Cane’s death. Its title: “The Smirking Gun.”

“Will you look at this guy?” it reads. “Sure he knows the words. But watch and listen. See how he wracks his brain to think of more. He’s not using this out of
yiddishkeit
(ask your bubbe). You know who else loves rolling these words round their mouths? Mocking? Sneering?

“Bigots. That’s who. Homeboy’s an anti-Semite. Whatever his ma says.”

A junket is a machine. Distributor ships in hungry journos. We get put up schmancy (ooh!); we get victuals way out of our usual range (aah!); we get to touch stardust (eeh!). The better to make us grateful. We’re supposed to shake hands, press record, get the quotes, dutifully receive a nugget of bullshit “inside” information or two, repeat the odd, thoroughly vetted “secret” rumor.

Hey, it’s not dignified, but it’s not arms trading. And as a guy who normally kicks off the day with bad coffee and Pop-Tarts, I’m grateful for the buffet and mimosas. Really. Please don’t rip me out of the Rolodexes just because I went a little rogue.

But if the choice was between grooming my Deep Throat in municipal works (bear with me), or hearing another hot young thing tell us how supercool it was to work with blah and blah, it was an easy call.

Although to be honest I’d started hitting walls. Maybe I should have gone to the cocktail party.

Two-thirds of the way through the movie there’s a scene in which gunmen are closing in while Sam Denham’s character, the scholar Mr. Henk, denounces his assistant. “You’re a
tshonde,
” he says. “You’re
meshuggeneh
.”

“You see how long Daniel had been working on this?” says Carl Boyer. “The film wasn’t even close to being greenlit when that video of him and his brother was recorded, but he’d obviously written it already. He was trying to remember his own lines. He was quoting his own script. He was inhabiting the narrative tradition. With total respect for the words and the story. Anyone who uses that as evidence that Cane was ‘self-hating’ is a fucking tool. That’s a technical term.” He raises an eyebrow.

Boyer teaches cultural anthropology at UC Santa Cruz. He’s the author of
Reading Signs in your Timeline
and
Whoops! Subversion
. The walls of his office are festooned with movie posters.
Casablanca;
Last House on the Left;
what I think is a Nigerian remake of
Blood Beach
.

Boyer leans across his desk and taps the recorder.

“Now look at what that speech ushers in,” he says. “What Jewishness invokes.

“It’s a masterpiece of the violent sublime.” I feel like I’m in a lecture hall. “It ranks with the
Matrix
vestibule scene, the hospital sequence in
Hard Boiled, Crouching Tiger
’s restaurant. Fuck it, it surpasses them. Even if the rest of the film sucked—which it does not—it would still be a classic just for these few seconds.”

He presses play on his laptop and we watch.

Mr. Henk finishes shouting. And when he has spoken, as the armed men come closer, silence stretches for a long time. It’s easily long enough for the audience to get uncomfortable. “A strange scoop of Tarkovski in the popcorn,”
Empire
’s review said.

The window above Henk’s head explodes in very slow motion, still without the slightest noise. A figure encased completely in fire, burning in agony, somersaults into the ruins of the warehouse, lands in front of the two old men, and in the last few seconds of his life, dispatches five heavily armed gray-clad enemies in an exquisite balletic fight scene.

You don’t have to be an aficionado of the cinematic brutal to see Boyer’s point. Even the film’s many critics acknowledge this.

“Check it out,” Boyer says. “He’s using the very flames that are killing him to kill his enemies, and to ignite the fuse to the explosives. To save the day. If that doesn’t strike you as an incredibly poignant comment, an incredibly
humane
comment, then I’ve got nothing.”