After the laughter dies down, we start to wonder if this is no accident.
#23 BEGINS WITH
the host sitting forward on a brown leather sofa. On the wall behind him hangs a mirror. There is reflection of neither camera nor crew, a crack in logic that disturbs us.
“But
how
was it done? An F/X program? How much money was spent on this, really?”
This is what Don always wants to know. The strangeness worries him greatly.
Hush, we tell Don. He sighs, sits back, sighs again, frustrated.
In the clip, the host leans over a clear glass coffee table set upon iron claw feet.
On one side of the table is an enormous mound of walnuts, still in shell.
The host pilfers the pile. Eventually he thumbs a single nut into his palm, shuts his eyes, and squeezes. The cracking of the shell is audible. He opens his eyes, his palm, and reaches in for the meat, which he sets on the opposite side of the table. The shell bits he wipes to the floor.
The voice-over says,
The host cracks walnuts just like the Godfather or more to the point, Brando. He never tells anyone of this ability though it is a source of great pride. He cherishes the strength of his hands. It makes him feel of the land. Self-reliant. He could have been an arm-wrestler, he thinks sometimes, and is surprised at his regret in not having been an arm-wrestler.
The host is wincing, eyes squeezed, two hands around a nut.
He looks at his palm, frowning, and suddenly throws the shelled nut across the room.
He is six feet, four inches, strong as most any man, even at sixty, and when his cameraman of eighteen years (whom he still calls “cameraman”) cuts off his feet or hair in close shots, the host cries, “Least you got my guns, cameraman!” flexing his biceps.
The host, reaching over, begins cracking walnuts again, one nut at a time.
From the start we recognized the host, of course. We have all lived in this state longer than expectedâsome of us born hereâand so we all know the public television show, the ebullient host interviewing this person and that, exploring the magnificent wonders of California. The first clip, marked #2, we thought mailed mistakenly: it shows the host washing his hands in an anonymous white bathroom. The clip is shot through a stall in the bathroom. It is barely twenty seconds long. We watched it and wondered what it meant, ignored it, laughed.
Two days and the second clip, #3, arrived: the host in a Ralphs grocery store, considering maple syrups, seemingly unaware of the camera, again the clip short, a minute at most.
Then the third, the fourth, and so on. Sometimes two, even three, four in a week.
We don't yet know what they mean.
After each ends, we go outside and it is cool, even in summer, the ocean breeze only half warmed by the breath of millions between us and the seas; we sip the harder drinks we've moved on to, the gins and scotches, or those of us still driving home our simple glasses of tap water. The kids sigh in sleep through screen windows. We stand barefoot in grass. Something like stars resound above the city skies. Wonderings about the host. Does he know? Is he part of it all? The more modern of us imagine that the clips have been found by an enterprising PBS intern, a film student with a taste for the avant-garde, amused by the potential in these odd and casual outtakes.
This is our early innocent theory, when all the clips seem that way, innocent.
“What if he
doesn't
know?” Don says. He always worries. “What if it's a threat?”
We laugh Don offâcertainly the clips are a prank by someone's distant cousin at the public television station. A joke with us. It's all simple fun, and one of these early nights, when we're drunk, enjoying ourselves, someone brightens and suggests, “Let's call him! See what he knows!” We applaud the concept. Quick research is done and we find an extension at the television station attributed to the host. Maybe he's in! It is decided we'll use a pay phoneâDon insists, no cell phones, no home numbers. We think this very hip, very noir. Cynthia, our only smoker, recalls once using a pay phone at a nearby convenience mart. Being a water drinker, I'm sent as driver.
We don't speak on the drive, not at first, those balmy winds blowing through my window.
I have the air-conditioning on but she doesn't seem to care.
Finally I ask if she's lived in California long, if she's from Los Angeles.
“No one's from here, everyone knows that.” She seems bored. Smokes without asking.
I ask if she's excited about making the call.
She shrugs.
I stay in the car while she puts in quarters, dials the number. She speaks into the phone. I lean forward to eavesdrop. She cups the mouthpiece and turns away. Her face, first smiling, shifts to alarmâand I, so late in the night, so excited, imagine that she's paled in fear. I step from the car, worried, but she's hanging up, saying into the phone, “Good-bye,” almost breathlessly.
She looks at me steadily. “Wrong number,” she says. She tells everyone else the same.
I'm too nervous to contradict her story, to describe the faces she made.
We all go home disheartened. All week I worry, what has happened, what it means.
Late Thursday the call comes. Another clip. We must gather.
We sit with unusual anxiety, sundown, curtained windows, breath held. We lean forward as the lights dim.
This clip doesn't show the host. It's me. I'm in my car, staring anxiously from a window.
A female voice-over says,
He doesn't know what to do with all his learning, is paralyzed by education, by the choices before him. Does he go to her? Does he sit quietly? Does heâ?
I gape, confused, worried. What will happen next? What will happen to me?
Then I realize everyone in the living room is watching me, holding in laughs, exploding.
It's a pretty good prank, I agree, but it upsets me all the same.
That's the night, you'll remember, we go home early and I refuse to speak to you.
S
OME OF US
think clip #27 has been unjustly overlooked. It is the briefest of all, a photograph of the host pinned to corkboard. The camera trembles as it zooms in. In the photograph he wears a tuxedo and holds a microphone, addressing an audience we cannot see. One arm swings wide in storytelling grandeur. The voice-over tells us,
At gatherings he says, “How about ol' Marlon Brando? Cracking those walnuts? Ever seen anything so amazing?”
No one has seen anything so amazing.
He feels overjoyed by this.
A
ND THEN SOMETIMES
you call, which must cost you effort, pride. I appreciate that, I do.
“We haven't seen you,” you say. “They miss you.”
Sometimes the patience in your voice irritates me.
“I haven't been by,” I agree. “You're very perceptive. You should be a private detective.”
“You've been drinking.” You always sound more tired than angry.
“I don't have to be drunk to be angry,” I say.
“Are you ever going to explain it all to me?” Now your voice is sad.
“I saw her in Whole Foods today,” you say. Sadder.
Maybe I should explain it all, the
her
, the
they
, the
you
, the
me
. But does any of it matter anymore? All that remains from these stupid pronouns is your voice and its many shades, sad, angry, distant, forlorn, calm, pensive, brusque, bitter, small, and hurt. And hurt.
#9 CONFIRMS OUR
unspoken suspicions. No more can we pretend it's all simply a prank.
The clip begins with the host inside a ranch-style homeâcertainly in the foothills, we agree, above Pasadena, we can tell by the plant life, the yard, the architecture, the curve of earth, sun. The host sits at a kitchen island. Newspaper spread before him. The wet-suited coffee mug.
This time the camera is outside the house, looking in.
Inside, a phone rings very lightly, muted. The host picks it up, we hear and read his lips as he gives a (muted) booming “Hello.”
Hello!
cries the voice-over.
We see the host's lips repeat, “Hello!” We see his mouth form the words, “Who's this?”
The host!
says the voice.
In his kitchen, the host frowns, pushes a button, sets the phone down. He looks annoyed.
The phone rings again. He checks the number, sets it back down. Now he is worried.
After a moment, though, he answers it.
Hello?
whispers the voice-over.
Hello? Hello? Hello?
And we can see, quite clearly, the speaker's breath against the kitchen window.
T
HEN WE STAND
out on the porch, itchy, it is summer, allergies, invisible pollens swell the air.
“We having fun yet?” Cynthia says to no one, to everyone, lit cigarette wanding the air.
#15 IS ONE
of the longest and most unsettling clips. It begins with a black screen and that ever-present voice-over:
The host has always felt restless, he is a jittery man, he understands that all his life he's been waiting for a grand moment. That most people bore him is the great irony of his work. All he wants is what all of us want, a shift, an opportunity to prove himself.
The screen lights up, is blurry, comes slowly into focus. The host and his cameraman sit in a booth in a diner. Plates of half-eaten eggs and toast. A jar of dark syrup that looks black. Glasses of either milk or orange juice. The two men eat without speaking.
The voice-over explains,
Today they film an Indian and his old oak tree.
“They don't smile!” the host says suddenly. “They totally creep me out, cameraman!”
The host quietly distrusts Indians
, explains the voice-over.
The cameraman looks worried. “You can't say that!” he whispers. “People will hear!”
The host waves at the empty diner. “Hello, everyone! I'm racist!”
The camera pulls away from the men and zooms in on the front door. After a moment a shadow appears. The door opens. (Did the camera know this would happen? It seems so.) A man in brown uniform walks to the table. “Sir?” he says to the host. He holds out a sealed envelope. The host takes the envelope, and tosses it aside. The man walks away.
The cameraman watches this all but says nothing.
The host pokes at the liquid yolk with a crust but does not eat.
The clip goes darkâbut after a moment it is light again, we've moved outdoors, time has passed. The host and another man stand beneath what the camera reveals to be a remarkable oak tree, a canopy almost fifty yards in diameter and so thick with branches that it is nearly pitch-black beneath. “Remarkable!” exclaims the host. “What significance has this for your people?”
The Native American is wearing jeans, an ironed polo shirt. His hair is combed neatly.
The voice-over says,
The host can see that this man before him has crazy eyes
.
The Native American talks a little about how his people were persecuted and some even hanged here beneath this sacred ancestral tree, and the host mumbles sadly. The Native American says, “There will be a turning point, of this we are certain. A day of reckoning in this land. There is too much history of violence. Old angers are bone-deep. All the blood has not yet bled.”
The voice-over says,
The host is worried. Does this madman think this will make an actual episode? Does he care? This is a wasted trip, the host thinks. But let the man keep talking.
The Native American calms down and speaks more about the tree, the host asking questions, smiling. Their voices are muted as the voice-over says,
Think about his words, host. A day of reckoning. Interesting, isn't it? After all your hands are strong, you'd be fine, if the world tilted crazy couldn't you lead us into alpine valleys where we will thrive in the climates as once we were meant to in peace and harmony? Couldn't you be the one to save us all?
In the clip the two men walk away from the tree. The camera-man follows.
The image lingers on the tree. Slowly it zooms to the base of the oak.
We see a torn envelopeâone we all agree is the same delivered in the diner.
Beside it, a sheet of paper. The camera zooms in and we read in block letters,
I NEED YOUR HELP. I WILL CALL WITH INSTRUCTIONS
.
W
E SIT ON
the porch in the cool air. Was the man in the delivery uniform part of the plot?
Every time we watch the clip his face is lowered, obscured by the bill of a cap.
How could the host, the cameraman,
not
know they were being watched?
How could they
not
see a second camera filming their every step?
Why the talk of destruction? Of blood?
It's a treasure hunt. We're Hansels and Gretels picking crumbs off the forest floor.
That's what Cynthia says, softly, before she leaves.
She means it lightly but her words don't reassure.
Y
OU SEEM DISTRACTED.
Somewhere else.
Where am I? I'm on a cell phone. You don't know where I am.
You say that as if you're angry, like you need to win a fight.
You
hurt
me
, remember?
No, that's not it at all. You think I did the damage but it's always the other way around. Don't you know that when a person is angry it's only because they were hurt first? Who in this world gets angry without being hurt first? No one. No one. Certainly not me. I'm not crazy.
You don't make sense anymore.
Nothing does and it never did. Who thinks it should? Who came up with such a theory?
Certainly not a person with open eyes. Living in this world. Not him. Not her.
#24 BEGINS IN
a darkened house, a camera stepping through fluttering curtains and an open sliding door. The footsteps of the invisible cameraman are barely audible, a faint shuffling on wood floors. The camera enters a room and there's a lump shape in a bed.