“I’m not sure about the suitability of this role for you,” Dr. García had forewarned Jack. “A crippled male model who hasn’t found his audience. Isn’t that coming a little close to home?” Nor, in Dr. García’s opinion, was the length of his separation from her advisable. “I don’t do house calls as far away as New York, Jack—although I could stand to do a little shopping.”
Why don’t your children, if that’s who they are, grow older? he’d wanted to ask her. The photographs in Dr. García’s office were an irreplaceable, seemingly permanent collection. The older husband—or her father, if that’s who he was—was fixed in time. All of them seemed fixed in time, like bugs preserved in amber. But Jack didn’t ask her about it.
He just went to New York and made the movie. “Work is work, Dr. García,” he’d said defensively. “A part is just a part. I’m not Harry Mocco, nor am I in danger of becoming him. I’m not anybody.”
“That’s part of your problem, Jack,” she had reminded him.
The whole movie had a fifty-two-day shooting schedule. For the Harry Mocco part, including rehearsals, Jack had to be in New York a couple of months.
He was in the habit of seeing Dr. García twice a week—two months without seeing her would necessitate a certain number of phone calls. He couldn’t tell her his life story over the phone; in an emergency, he could talk to her, but the chronological-order part would have to wait.
In Dr. García’s view, the chronological-order part was what determined how Jack was doing. It was one thing to babble out loud about an emotionally or psychologically disturbing moment; it was quite another obstacle to organize the story and tell it (exactly as it had happened) to an actual person. In this respect, the chronological-order part was like acting; in Dr. García’s view, if Jack couldn’t tell the story in an orderly fashion, that meant that he couldn’t handle it psychologically and emotionally.
Jack Burns put everything he had into Harry Mocco. He remembered how Mrs. Malcolm had tyrannized the classroom, her head-on crashing into desks—her racing up and down the aisles in the St. Hilda’s chapel, skinning her knuckles on the pews. He remembered how Bonnie Hamilton could climb into her wheelchair, or extricate herself from it, the second his head was turned. He never saw her slip or fall, but he noticed the bruises—the evidence that she wasn’t perfect.
Jack not only did wheelchair tricks on the set of The Love Poet; he insisted on using the wheelchair when he was off the set, too. He pretended he was crippled. Jack wheeled around the hotel like a psycho invalid; he made them load him into limos, and unload him. He practiced falling, too. He did a fantastic, head-over-heels wheelie in the lobby of the Trump International on Central Park West—the startled bellman and concierge running to assist him.
They had a great gym at the Trump. Jack went there in his wheelchair; he would get on the treadmill and run for half an hour with the wheelchair parked alongside, as if it were for another person.
When Harry Mocco has wheelchair accidents in The Love Poet, the voice-over is heavy on Robert Graves. (A little of Graves goes a long way. “Love is a universal migraine,” for example.)
Or:
Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girls
Married impossible men?
Simple self-sacrifice may be ruled out,
And missionary endeavour, nine times out of ten.
When Jack-as-Harry is crawling on all fours from the bed to the bathroom, the girl who’s just slept with him is watching him—repulsed. The voice-over is Harry’s, reciting e. e. cummings.
i like my body when it is with your
body.
Jack-as-Harry tries to win over the pierced-lip girl with a love poem by Ted Hughes, but a little of Hughes goes a long way, too. The girl is out the door before he can finish the first stanza.
We sit late, watching the dark slowly unfold:
No clock counts this.
Harry’s more self-pitying moments—repeatedly banging his head on a bathtub drain, unable to climb out of the slippery tub—are pure pathos. (The voice-over to the bathtub scene is Harry’s recitation of George Wither.)
Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman’s fair?
The Love Poet is a noir love story—more noir than love story for three quarters of the film, more love story than noir at the end. Jack-as-Harry meets a recently crippled young woman in his gym. She is wheelchair-bound, too. Harry can tell it’s her first public outing in her new but permanent condition; she’s tentative. She’s being introduced to various weight machines and exercises by a blowhard personal trainer whom Harry despises. The girl is what wheelchair veterans like Harry call a “newborn.”
“Leave the newborn to me,” Jack-as-Harry tells the trainer.
Harry then proceeds to demonstrate every weight machine and exercise in slapstick; he drops things, he stages spectacular falls.
“See? This is easy!” he tells the newborn, imitating the hearty bullshit of the personal trainer. Jack-as-Harry hurls himself out of his wheelchair as awkwardly as possible, demonstrating to the recently crippled young woman that nothing is going to be easy for her.
When they fall in love, the voice-over is Harry’s; he’s reciting A. E. Housman. (In a gym, of all places.)
Oh, when I was in love with you,
Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave.
Shame on Jack Burns—that month in New York, he was not as well behaved as Harry Mocco. He met a transvestite dancer at a downtown club. Jack was distracted by her strong-looking hands and her prominent Adam’s apple. He knew she was a man. Still, he went along with the seduction-in-progress—up to a point. Jack let her wheel him through the lobby of the Trump, and into the hotel’s bar. She sat in his lap in the wheelchair and they sang a Beatles song together, the bar crowd joining in.
When I get older losing my hair,
Many years from now.
Will you still be sending me a Valentine,
Birthday greetings bottle of wine?
Jack tried to say good night to the transvestite dancer at the elevator, but she insisted on coming to his room with him. All the way up on the elevator, they kept singing. (She sat in his lap in the elevator, too.)
If I’d been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door,
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty-four?
The transvestite wheeled him down the hall to his hotel room. At the door, Jack tried again to say good night to her.
“Don’t be silly, Jack,” she said, wheeling him inside the room.
“I’m not going to have sex with you,” Jack told her.
“Yes, you are,” the pretty dancer said.
Jack soon had a fight on his hands. When a transvestite wants to have sex, she feels as strongly about it as a guy—because she is a guy! Jack had a battle on his hands. The room got trashed a little—one lamp, especially. Yes, Jack was aroused—but even he knew the difference between wanting to have sex and actually having it. Not even he would submit to every desire.