Read The Cutting Room: Dark Reflections of the Silver Screen Online
Authors: Ellen Datlow
The Cutting Room: Dark Reflections of the Silver Screen (2 page)
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank Micaela Morrissette, Anna Tambour, Adam Nevill, and Stefan Dziemianowicz for their generous recommendations.
Also, thanks to Russell Farr, Jeremy Byrne, and Deborah Layne for ferreting out an electronic file of Howard Waldrop’s story.
And thanks to Genevieve Valentine for her introduction and for her input regarding my preface.
Finally, thanks to Jacob Weisman and Jill Roberts at Tachyon.
HORROR ALWAYS BENEFITS FROM a certain kind of light. When Mary Shelley wrote
Frankenstein
, it was oil lamps. These days, it’s the flickering dark of a movie theater. What is it that an audience of horror lovers craves?
Look no further than the camera.
Since the first nickelodeons, the development of motion pictures created a unique and influential visual language, a shorthand that has since played on film so often and for so long it’s a dictionary of its own. Through the camera’s eye, visual tropes became as eloquent as the inter-titles of dialogue. To iris in on a kissing couple meant their happiness was assured, but to linger on an open doorway was to invite trouble.
By now, the default state of the frame is suspense: show us a shot of an empty room, and we’re already waiting for something to happen.
It’s a long-established trick that horror directors figured out remarkably early. The first horror movie, the extremely short and incredibly goofy
Haunted Castle
, was made by director Georges Méliès before the turn of the twentieth century. (Setting a trend for horror flicks in the decades to come, it was almost immediately remade.)
Horror literature, designed to build dread on the page, developed its lexicon hand in hand with the emerging narrative technology of the movies. On both sides, the vocabulary of suspense changed and expanded in structure, imagery, and purpose.
And cinema’s ability to translate fear on screen has created a stylistic feedback loop within horror, across all mediums. Any significant canon within a genre creates its own tropes, which increasingly enter the public discourse until they eventually become parodies of themselves. For a genre peopled with characters remarkably unaware of the dangers of splitting up in an abandoned castle, horror cinema is notoriously self-referential, from recreating individual camera shots to mocking tropes at work: one of the highest-grossing slasher flicks of all time is the semi-satirical
Scream
.
And in turn, the movies have become a fixture of horror literature itself. With a medium so inherently suspenseful, made through a fabulous alchemy into a series of atmospheric angles and special effects, horror writing could make good use of cinema’s visual vocabulary and the beautiful artifice that modern readers can parse nearly as easily on the page as on the screen. (Scary stories about film itself were going to be inevitable.)
Horror literature skirts definition: varied in tone and subject, the horror aspect often as much a mood as it is a chronicle of suspicious thumps. Still, it’s interesting to trace signposts of the genre after movies swept the collective imagination. The visual lexicon of the movies helped contribute to a sea change in the consideration of brevity as literary merit; while Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King are clearly from the same twisted branch of a single family tree, the effect of cinematic pacing and dialogue on their shared style of horror is evident in King’s work.
And of course it has worked in the reverse, as works of horror are adapted to film by the dozen. Sometimes a film can even make the case for viewing a story as genre. Daphne Du Maurier isn’t a writer traditionally thought of for writing horror, but when Alfred Hitchcock embraced the true scare potential of her story “The Birds,” his film cemented the story as an iconic work of horror and reframed Du Maurier to later readers as a master of suspense.
Interestingly, for all their simpatico, the adaptation of horror to film is at times a tenuous proposition. Taking horror page to film is neither a foolproof formula nor an easy translation; horror literature is as open to interpretation as any other kind, and the same shorthand that makes film such an efficient conductor of narrative can trample some of the nuance that lives best in the written word. (In an ironic and ready example, the thematic and psychological complexity of the first horror novel—
Frankenstein
—has yet to be fully transported to the screen . . . unless one were to combine individual elements from several different films.)
Sometimes, it turns out, only the written word will do. But with suspense as an essential shared component of both dark cinema and dark literature, and with the process of filmmaking being only a hairbreadth from the supernatural, dark fiction can be a genre particularly suited for the silver screen.
When it comes to horror, whether film is the medium or the subject, there’s always something sinister waiting just outside the frame.
EVERYBODY LOVES THE MOVIES. From the first moving picture publicly shown—a train running into the audience—the medium has maintained its hold on society’s imagination. Writers have a complicated relationship with movies and moviemaking. Some write directly for the screen, others have had their work adapted for it, with mixed results. There have been many memoirs by screenwriters and other movie creators about their experiences in the industry, some positive, many negative. This might be primarily because while writing prose is generally a solo enterprise, writing for and working on movies is always a collaborative process, one during which compromises are made over and over again, often to the extent that the original piece of text that inspired the movie is unrecognizable to its author.
Surprisingly, there have been only a few major anthologies featuring movie horror and dark fantasy: the most prominent are David J. Schow’s
Silver Scream
;
Midnight Premiere
, edited by Tom Piccirilli;
It Came from the Drive-In!
, edited by Norman Partridge and Martin H. Greenberg; and
The Hollywood Nightmare
, edited by Peter Haining.
Not only do I enjoy classic horror movies, but I’ve come to love stories about movies of all kinds, especially dark stories about the medium. The stories herein aren’t about horror movies per se, although some of the classic horror movies and some imaginary horror movies do show up.
The Cutting Room
is more an exploration of the dark side of movies and moviemaking, with views from both sides of the lens. As I was reading for this anthology, I became aware of several subgenres of movie stories:
The real life celebrity: What really happened to Marilyn Monroe or James Dean—were they murdered? Did they survive their supposed deaths?
Tales about actual, existing horror movies: The making of
King Kong
— with a sub-sub-genre about the fictional character Ann Darrow.
Protagonists or other characters who become part of a movie (by their own agency or not).
The effect of movies or a specific movie on the protagonist.
About the making of a movie (only sometimes of horror movies).
Protagonists obsessed with movies that may or may not exist.
In addition to the twenty-one reprinted stories and two poems that I finally chose, I read more than 115 stories that were quite good, but just didn't make it into the mix. One story, “Tenderizer,” by Stephen Graham Jones appears for the first time.
Now, on with the show.
Ellen Datlow
November 7, 2013
MY MEMORY IS STILL intact. I remember the scene as well as I can recall any other episode from my childhood. The year was 1951 and I was six years old.
I was right there with the men—the scientists and the soldiers—as they cautiously crept through the dark, close tunnels of the Arctic base. The steady metronome of the Geiger counter clicked ever faster, eventually crackling into a ripping-canvas sound as the probe neared the metal storage locker.
Capt. Hendry paused a moment. The scientists, Carrington and Stern, exchanged glances. The tall, storklike newspaperman, Scotty, didn’t look happy at all. The other men leveled their guns at the cabinet. There was something in there. Something from another world. It was ravenous for human blood, and it had already killed.
Capt. Hendry nodded. The man called Bob gingerly reached forward and flipped the door-catch. The locker opened as the music crashed to a climax and I jumped.
The frozen carcass of a sled dog rolled out and thudded to the floor. I stared. So did the men.
Dr. Stern looked disappointed. Dr. Carrington, I couldn’t tell. Capt. Hendry smiled grimly and shrugged. Crossing to the other side of the room, he motioned for the rest of us to follow.
We were right behind him when he twisted the knob on the door to the next passageway. The door swung open without warning to reveal the creature standing on the other side. It raised its clawed hands and swiped at Capt. Hendry.
I wet my pants.
As I said before, it was 1951 and I was six. I hadn’t read the publicity and hadn’t heard Phil Harris sing about “The Thing” on the radio. I had never heard of John W. Campbell’s story. I didn’t care whether Christian Nyby or Howard Hawks had really directed.
All I knew was I had lived through a scene up on the flickering screen that had branded itself in my brain far deeper than anything that was to come until a few years later, when I sat in the same theater and watched Janet Leigh’s dark blood swirl down the drain in
Psycho
.
Twenty years after I first saw it, I watched
The Thing
at a science fiction film festival in Los Angeles. I sat there as entranced as the first time, but now I didn’t wet my pants. There was not even the temptation. The absolutely shocking scene I’d remembered wasn’t there. Sure, there were the components—the dog falling out of the locker and the part where Kenneth Tobey’s character opened the door to the greenhouse and there was the Thing waiting for him. But the juxtaposition that had left me with nightmares for months just wasn’t there. I told a friend about it, but he laughed and reminded me that the human mind does that frequently with books and movies, not to mention the whole rest of human experience. We edit in our heads. We change things from reality. After a while, we accept the altered memories as gospel. It’s a human thing.
Yeah. Right. What I didn’t tell my friend was that I knew for a fact that I had once watched the scene I’d remembered. Frame for frame. I didn’t tell him, but I’d known the man who’d re-edited the movie. Little had Hawks—or Nyby, for that matter—known. I used to work for that man. The cutter.
I had been there the final days. And worse, that last night.
“Well, Robby Valdez,” said Mr. Carrigan. “You’re early again.” He paused and smiled. “You are always early.”
I never knew what I was supposed to say, so I said nothing and simply stared down at my sneakers.
“So how’s your family?” said Mr. Carrigan. My dad was still down in Cheyenne drooling over the new Ford Thunderbird he’d never be able to afford in a million years. He was supposed to be looking for work. I knew my mother was cleaning up after supper and thinking how much money she could win if she could just get on
The $64,000 Question
. My sister would be in her room listening to her Elvis Presley records and skipping her homework, humming through her cleft palate and dreaming of someone who would never want her. I had homework I needed to do, but I knew I’d rather be down here at the Ramona Theater helping out Mr. Carrigan. How was my sad family? Don’t exaggerate, my mom would have cautioned me.
“Fine,” I said.
Mr. Carrigan wasn’t listening, not really. He was staring over my head and I guessed he was looking at the black crepe he’d draped over the posters for
East of Eden
and
Rebel Without a Cause
, bracketing the signed studio still of James Dean. “So senseless,” he said softly. “Such a terrible waste.”
“Did you ever do any work on those two movies?” I said, meaning the Dean pictures.
Mr. Carrigan looked mildly alarmed and darted quick looks around the lobby, but of course, there was no one here this early. The box office wasn’t even open. The high school girl who ran the concession counter was probably still putting on her uniform and fixing her hair.
“Say nothing of that, Robby. It’s our secret.”
“Right,” I said. I knew very well I was supposed to tell no one of Mr. Carrigan’s genius for changing things. I never confided in anyone. Not even later, after the thing with Barbara Curtwood. After all, what good would it have done then?
“All right,” said Mr. Carrigan. “Let’s get to work. You get the fresh candy out of the storeroom and restock the counter. I’ve got things to do in the projection room.” He smiled. “Oh, and I like the coonskin cap very much,” he said.
“Davy Crockett,” I said. “My aunt and uncle gave it to me. It’s early Christmas.”
“In September.” Mr. Carrigan stopped smiling. “Thanks for reminding me. Barbara’s birthday is soon. I should get her something nice.”
I said nothing. I knew he was talking about Barbara Curtwood. He was in love with her. My mom talked about that. But then so did most of the people in town. Not about Mr. Carrigan and Barbara Curtwood, but about just her and how she ran around. She worked at the dress shop and spent—so my mom said to my dad—her nights either at the bars or somewhere else. I didn’t know what the somewhere else was, because my mother’s voice always dropped lower then and my father would laugh.
It hurt me to think about Mr. Carrigan and Miss Curtwood. Even at ten, I knew how much he loved her and how little she thought of him. About the only thing they had in common was the movies. She came to just about every show at the Ramona. Usually she came with a date. Every week or two, the man she came with would be someone brand new.
Even as young as I was, I had some idea that Mr. Carrigan was about the only man Miss Curtwood would have nothing to do with, and it pained him a lot. But he kept on. Sometimes he’d talk to me about it.
“Think she’d want a Davy Crockett cap?” I said. “I don’t think she came to see
King of the Wild Frontier
.”
Mr. Carrigan looked at me in a funny way. “I don’t think so. Something a bit . . . more grown-up, perhaps.” His mouth got a little pinched. “
King of the Wild Frontier
. Now
there
is a film I could have done something with.”
“You didn’t change it?”
He shook his head. “I was working on another project. A new thriller called
Tarantula
. I had to move the Disney film right along the circuit. But the monster movie, I was able to get my friend at the distributor’s to send me a print early. I’ve been working on it.”
“Oh boy,” I said. “That’s super. I’ve seen the ads for
Tarantula
in the
Rocky Mountain News
. I know it’ll be good.”
“It was good,” said Mr. Carrigan. He looked down modestly. “Now it will be great.”
“I’m sorry I can’t think of anything right for Miss Curtwood,” I said seriously.
“I’ll come up with something.” He went through the door to the projection room. I hauled a carton of stale Guess Whats over to the candy case.
It wasn’t until I was an adult and moved away from my tiny hometown that I realized what a genius Mr. Carrigan must have been. Who else could have taken movies, including some really bad ones, and re-cut them into stranger, more ambitious forms? The score was sometimes a little choppy, but we were a small town and we didn’t really notice or care. We were just there to be entertained. Little did we understand the novelty, the singularity of what we were seeing.
Nobody but me knew what Mr. Carrigan did. And nobody but me knew how he reversed all that work, re-editing the movies into their original form, painfully chopping and splicing the film back into the way it had been, more-or-less, and sending it on the bus to its next stop on the Wyoming small-town circuit.
I guess if he’d stayed in Hollywood, he could have become a star. I mean as a film editor. A cutter, he called it. But something had happened—I never knew what—and he’d come out here and started a whole new life. I always wanted to live in a small town, he’d told me. I’d grown up in one. I thought he was crazy for saying that. But he convinced me he was searching for the best of all possible worlds.
One thing about Mr. Carrigan, he was an optimist. That’s what he called himself.
“Robby,” he said to me many, many times. “You can alter reality. If you don’t like the way things are, you can change them.”
I remember I wanted to believe him. I wanted to change things, right enough. I wanted my dad not just to get a good job, but to keep it. I wanted my mom to get on a quiz show and win more than anybody. I thought, sometimes when I wasn’t hating her, that I’d like my sister to be able to see Elvis on
The Ed Sullivan Show
. I mean
all
of Elvis, not just from the waist up like the camera showed. But I knew from a year of working after school and on weekends for Mr. Carrigan that it isn’t often a person can really change things. And when you can edit something, sometimes the price is way too high.
We were showing a double feature of
Creature with the Atom Brain
and
It Came from Beneath the Sea
that Friday night. After Polly, the high school junior who was selling popcorn and candy, showed up and Mr. Carrigan turned on the marquee lights and people started lining up to get tickets, I stood off to the side in the lobby and just watched. I was supposed to be an usher if some of the older patrons needed help finding their seats. I didn’t think this double feature would bring in a lot of old people.
There were some parents and a number of grown-ups who weren’t here with kids at all. They were mostly talking about “Ike.” I knew vaguely that President Eisenhower had suffered a heart attack and was in a hospital down in Denver. It made me feel sort of strange to know that the president of the whole United States was just a hundred and seventy miles south of me.
Tonight people were wearing jackets. This September was more like autumn than Indian summer.
I noticed that the man with Barbara Curtwood had on a leather jacket that must have come off two or three calves. He was a big man and it was a large jacket. I didn’t recognize him, which was a surprise since just about everybody in this town knew everybody else. Anyhow, he bought the tickets, escorted Miss Curtwood to the line at the concession counter, and then went into the men’s room.
I realized Mr. Carrigan was standing right beside me. “Tell Polly to give Miss Curtwood her candy for free. Her soda too. Whatever she wants.”
I stared up at him.
“Now. Do it.”
I did it.
Miss Curtwood got a large Coke, a giant popcorn, and a roll of Necco Wafers. She didn’t even blink when Polly told her it was a present from Mr. Carrigan. She turned from the counter, walking right by him, saying absolutely nothing.
“Barbara,” Mr. Carrigan said.
She stopped dead still.
“Your birthday is coming up.”
“So?” she said, staring down at him. She shook her hair back. Miss Curtwood was a funny kind of blonde. My mom said it came out of a bottle. She was tall and had what my friends later in junior high called “big tits.” Tonight she was dressed in a checkered skirt with a white blouse and pink sweater. Some people though she was pretty. Me, I wasn’t so sure. There was something about her that made me want to run. She reminded me of the cruel witch in
Snow White
. The hair color was wrong, but maybe if the witch had bleached it—
Mr. Carrigan smiled at her. “I thought maybe—if you weren’t doing anything—well, perhaps on your birthday we might have supper at the Dew Drop Inn.”