The Last Days of Video (6 page)

Jeff: giddy with gratitude.

“—but you have a ton to learn. I'll give you the same lesson that Waring gave me, and the lesson that my boyfriend fell asleep during.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Pierce thinks Cassavetes is overrated. Not visually stimulating.”

“I just think his stories are, I don't know, boring.”

Alaura shook her head. “They're not boring. They're different. First off, his dialogue.”

“But I mean . . . I didn't like the dialogue.”

“Watch.”

On screen, two men walked on a beach, Peter Falk and some other guy, and a few young children ran around them. Jeff had watched this particular Cassavetes movie a few days ago,
A Woman Under the Influence.
But he could not remember this scene, must have dozed off or zoned out.

            
OTHER GUY
: What a day, Nick. I haven't been to the beach without my wife in years. We used to live in the water when I was a kid. “Fish,” they called me. I was thin, see. Lips all blue. Shakin'. I was always lookin' for girls. My kids, they're all grown up now. My brother, Marco, he's a college graduate. Communist. Couldn't keep a job. Too many big ideas. Reads too much. I say let the girls read. They love to read. You know what I mean?

            
FALK
(angry): Okay! Let's enjoy ourselves, okay?

            
OTHER GUY
: Okay.

Alaura pressed pause, and the VCR whizzed to a stop. “Nick's in a bad mood,” she explained.

“Which one's Nick?”

“Columbo.”

“Oh, right.”

“His wife is crazy, and he accidentally injured this guy at work. He's had a really, really shitty day. So, what do you think?”

“Of what?”

“Of the scene, silly.”

Alaura smiled beautifully.

Jeff chuckled nervously. “It doesn't make sense what the other guy is saying.”

“What doesn't make sense?”

Jeff looked at the TV screen, static trembling now over a frozen long shot of Falk, running on the beach after his daughter.

“Let me watch again,” he said.

Alaura rewound the videocassette, paused it expertly at exactly the right moment, and played the scene again.

After, Jeff said, “I mean, his sentences don't fit together. Talking about fish. His brother the Communist? ‘I say let the girls read.' What does that mean?”

“Have you ever read a transcript of a real conversation?” Alaura asked. “No one talks like they talk in movies or books or television. In real life, we constantly make mistakes. Speak in fragments. Self-edit. Go back to the middle of a sentence and start again. Follow a new train of thought.”

“Okay?”

“That's what Cassavetes does. He writes more like people talk. All those pauses and random observations are intricately scripted. That other guy, Peter Falk's friend, he's yammering, trying to fill space, because Falk's in a terrible mood. Falk just injured a guy by accident, so his friend is nervous, saying whatever comes to mind. Cassavetes doesn't write Hollywood dialogue. No one actually sounds like Aaron Sorkin writes, you know?”

Who's Aaron Sorkin? Jeff thought. “What's wrong with Hollywood?” he said, suddenly a bit defensive, though he had no idea why.

Alaura's body quaked in silent laughter—one of her many disarming expressions. “Nothing's wrong with Hollywood, Jeff. But that's just one way to do things. It depends on the movie.”

“Oh.”

“Let's watch it one more time.”

They watched the scene one more time.

“The other thing is the actors,” she continued. “Cassavetes didn't direct his actors at all. Never gave them advice, even if they begged for it.”

“So?”

“So if Peter Falk said, ‘What's going on in this scene, John Cassavetes?' then Cassavetes would answer, ‘You're standing here, and she's standing there,' and he would stare into Peter Falk's eyes, like this.”

Alaura stared intensely into Jeff's eyes.

Jeff's diaphragm wrenched in terror, and he looked off at the floor.

“Nondirective directing,” Alaura explained. “That's what it's called. That's how Cassavetes got those strange, realistic performances.”

“Oh.”

“Didn't you watch the commentary on
Chinese Bookie?
Or at least Google it?”

“No.”

Alaura shook her head like a disappointed parent. “Watch it with the commentary. And find a book. There's tons at the Ape U library.”

“Okay.”

“But don't get
too
into film theory. Because, to put it politely, those guys sometimes miss the fucking point. Still, with good movies, you have to put in effort.”

She ejected the videocassette, then inserted a DVD into the store's other player. It was the early-2000s indie thriller
Losers.
But instead of selecting a scene, she played one of the special features—Match Anderson, the young director of the film and, as Jeff had learned, a North Carolina native, was being interviewed on stage at some film festival. Anderson wore a wrinkled brown jacket, and he had dark Steve Buscemi circles under both eyes. The no-name, nonunion actors from the film sat to Anderson's right, and a bodiless voice asked them questions.

“Listen to what he says about movies,” Alaura whispered. “He really gets it.”

“Who?”

“Match. Match Anderson.”

Jeff looked at her strangely, then back at the screen. Match Anderson, in response to a question that Jeff had not heard, said:

“I've lived in movies since I was a kid. For me it was television. The movies on late-night television and the sitcoms and everything all the way down to the micro-narratives of commercials. I wrote out the plots. Seriously, when I was kid. I wrote out what happened scene by scene in
M*A*S*H
and
Married . . . with Children
and music videos and fucking bubblegum commercials. They all tell stories.”

Reaction shots of the actors. Jeff glanced at Alaura—she was smiling at the television.

“We all lived
Losers
, okay?” Match Anderson continued. “This movie nearly killed a few of us, and I think everyone appreciated the toll it took on me. It's so much work, making a movie. Maybe that's a useless platitude, but it's so much fucking work, it's hell, and you don't know if in the end what you're doing is any good. Though this felt good, didn't it?” Sincere nods from the actors. “It felt right during shooting. And maybe that's all you ever have. That's all I had. I had a lot of work and a
feeling
that we were doing something good.”

Reaction shots of the audience: snooty, cerebral approval.

“Watch,” Alaura whispered.

“But that's not what I'm trying to say,” Match Anderson muttered. He frowned and rubbed his temples with his thumbs, apparently distraught, it seemed to Jeff, to his emotional core. “That doesn't answer your question. Shit. What am I trying to say? Why are you listening to me? I can't talk about movies. No, I can't. Here's what I'm saying. What I'm saying . . . there isn't enough time in life, enough room in the artist's life, to get everything out. To film even 5 percent of what it is to be human. Because there's so much variance, so much drama and absurdity. So many shades of meaning, so many versions
of emotion, and so many moments . . .” Match Anderson leaned forward, gripped the arms of his plastic chair. His eyes watered. “The amazing moments! Moments upon moments. There's no time, no words, no images to describe, to capture, even to summarize what it is to live, what reality
is.
No matter what, we fall short. All artists fall short. Filmmakers especially. No matter what, our attempts fail. Only briefly, very briefly, do movies succeed. I mean, sometimes you have to question this entire filmmaking enterprise, don't you? Your first principles as an artist? And at best, if you're really looking at it closely, if you're really being honest with yourself, an entire movie might intersect once or twice with what I'm talking about. With reality. Or with truth. And it's futile, isn't it? Our brains are too small. And if we don't have a clue how to live, how can we make movies about life?” His voice cracked into a whisper. “The answer is we do the best we fucking can. The best we fucking can.”

The audience erupted in applause.

Match Anderson looked at them, wide-eyed in surprise.

Then he stood and left the stage.

The screen went black, and Jeff felt an indescribable ache in his chest—he did not understand the crazy speech, nor why Alaura had played it for him, nor her obvious fascination with this particular director. He turned to ask for an explanation.

But she was already ejecting the DVD and starting another movie.

This moment of silence, he realized, might be the perfect opportunity to tell her about the bicycle gang. How he had intervened and rescued Waring, even if he'd also chickened out and gotten punched in the face like a coward. But it would be simple—just tell her. There was no reason to lie. He could ask her to keep it a secret. He knew she would agree. Alaura was cool like that. Waring would never now.

But then he noticed that, for some reason, Alaura's expression had turned soft and distant, like she was about to cry.

He wanted to talk to her, but he had no idea how.

WHY FIDELITY

Pierce, Alaura's boyfriend of
two months, began gathering and packing his possessions while she slept. He removed his toothbrush from the bathroom, his CDs from the stereo case, a quarter bag of barbeque chips from the kitchen cabinets, and he slipped it all into an orange duffel bag.

Awoken by the whistle of a zipper, Alaura climbed out of bed. She wiggled into a long E.T. and Michael Jackson tee shirt (an original) and walked into her living room.

“I need caffeine,” she said. “How much did we drink?”

“Um?”

She looked at Pierce—he stood by the couch, fully dressed, and stared at the duffel bag at his feet.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Packing.”

“Looks like you're already packed.”

“I guess so.”

“Why?”

“School started, like, three weeks ago,” he said.

“So?”

“So I've got portrait studio this week.”

“So?”

“So I have to go.”

“You have to go?” she said.

“I
need
to go.”

Alaura walked into the kitchen space of her small apartment and found a diet green tea in the refrigerator. Three quick sips. Then she flipped the “On” button on the Mr. Coffee, turned back to Pierce.

He stood there, not saying anything, in her tiny and shabbily furnished living room. At twenty-nine years old, she knew she should have a nicer place. One with a porch or at least bigger windows, one without undergrads living above, below, and on either side of her. She should have a larger television, and a better computer, and window blinds that weren't plastic and warped and cracked. Her movie posters should at least be framed rather that hung with that blue adhesive gunk on that cheap 1970s wood paneling. There was a reason she brought very few men back to her apartment—Pierce had been one of the only exceptions.

“What do you mean you need to go?” she finally managed.

“I mean, I think it's time—”

“Wait,” she said, and she raised her palms as if signaling a car to stop.

“I'm sorry, Alaura.”

Her eyes began to burn. She let her arms drop and said, “Are you trying to break up with me, Pierce?”

“I'm sorry.”

“You're sorry?”

“Yes.”

She saw that his face was calm—beautiful tan skin taut over square jaws. His hands were jutted in the pockets of his wrinkled, paint-covered pants, and a sandaled foot nudged against the duffel bag.

She walked toward him, placed her hands on his cheeks.

“No,” she whispered.

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't, Pierce.”

“This isn't working,” he said.

“What?”

“Because I'm not happy.” He eased away from her. “We've only been together a few months, and we're arguing.”

“But we're not arguing,” she said.

“Yes, we are.”

“No, we're not.”

“Yes, we
are
.”

She stepped toward him again, pressed her hands to his chest, guided him onto the couch. She sat on his lap, laid her arms over his shoulders.

“Wait, Pierce. This doesn't make sense . . . talk to me . . .”