166.
Vikar sees a movie about New York. The narrator talks about how it’s his city and always will be. To a crescendo of romantic music, fireworks explode above the park and the buildings that line it. Vikar doesn’t remember fireworks exploding over the park when he lived in New York, although he had a suite that overlooked the park for months. He doesn’t remember New York so gleaming or the contrasts of light and dark so beautiful. He remembers the city as shades of gray. This is a science-fiction New York, Vikar realizes, a fantasy New York of people who are not very practical about the real world, unlike Hollywood. Perhaps there’s a movie about Los Angeles where fireworks explode to a crescendo above the Hollywood Sign, but Vikar has never seen it.
165.
A week later, Vikar is still thinking about the New York movie at a pre-pro meeting in the Thalberg Building on the Columbia lot. Two worried-looking associate producers, a slightly pinched costume designer and several faceless production assistants, as well as a production designer with long hair who wears an open leather vest, sit around a conference table with Vikar and Molly Fairbanks. Mitch Rondell is not there. In these meetings, Vikar says nothing and Molly functions in Rondell’s place as a kind of production coordinator and translator of Vikar’s wishes, or what she supposes to be Vikar’s wishes.
164.
The conversation turns from one subject to the next. “The punk-club set looks great,” one of the production assistants flatters the production designer, “I don’t know if you’ve seen it,” not certain whether she should be saying this to Vikar or Molly.
“Is our D.P. here yet?” asks the production designer.
“Do we have a D.P. yet?” tentatively asks the other assistant.
“Robby Müller,” says Molly.
“Who’s Robby Müller?” the production designer says.
“He’s the best cinematographer to come out of Germany since Von Sternberg,” Molly says forcefully, “and he’s ready to fly in from Berlin when we’re ready for him. It would be nice,” she adds, “if that’s before he gets locked in on another Wim Wenders picture.”
“Who’s Wim Wenders?”
“Wasn’t,” asks an assistant, “Von Sternberg a director?”
“I meant whoever shot Von Sternberg’s pictures,” says Molly.
“We’ve got a small window in terms of Harvey’s schedule,” says the associate producer. “He’s got a Nic Roeg project on tap and Tony Richardson after that.”
“We’re not pay-or-play with him,” someone else says, “are we?” Vikar wonders how it is he can love the movies so much and still not understand anything anyone in Hollywood says.
“No,” Molly answers, “but that’s not to say he can’t decide to do something else if this takes too long.”
“Well,” says the production designer, “a completed script would be nice too. As long as we’re talking about things that would be nice.”
163.
“Not to get too ahead of ourselves,” says the associate producer, “but as long as we’re waiting anyway, should we be thinking in terms of who’s going to score, who’s going to edit …?”
“Vik is editing,” Molly answers, “it’s in the deal memo. As for the script, I spoke to Michel this morning. We’re almost there with the script.”
“Are you sure that’s what he said?” the production designer snorts. “He stutters.” All the Los Angeles movies, Vikar believes, still gazing at the commissary outside, are about fathers who have sex with their daughters and friends who betray friends and men and women strangling each other with phone cords. “Well,” the production designer continues, “the set is ready, so we can at least start, if need be, go ahead and shoot the club scenes, keep the continuity straight—”
“Fuck continuity,” says Vikar.
Silence falls over the meeting. This is the first thing that anyone in any meeting has heard Vikar say.
“The scenes of a movie,” Vikar says, “can be shot out of sequence not because it’s more convenient, but because all the scenes of a movie are really happening at the same time. No scene really leads to the next, all scenes lead to each other. No scene is really shot out of order. It’s a false concern that a scene must anticipate another scene that follows, even if it’s not been shot yet, or that a scene must reflect a scene that precedes it, even if it’s not been shot yet, because all scenes anticipate and reflect each other. Scenes reflect what has not yet happened, scenes anticipate what has already happened.” Vikar rises from his chair. Los Angeles is the City of the Real, whose stories are as old as time, where people go to hide from God, unlike the more hopeful, childlike people of New York. “Scenes that have not yet happened,” he explains to those around the table, “have.” New York makes sense to Vikar now — as he leaves the room, everyone staring after him — in a way it never did when he was there.
162.
The soundstage on the Columbia lot looks like a punk club as envisioned by somebody who’s never been in one. It glistens, an Asian fantasia like the bordello of Von Sternberg’s Shanghai Gesture, several slabs of wall replaced with mirrors. Lights and scaffolding line the walls; on the ground, two laid dolly tracks meet at a vortex. Grips, gaffers and various production personnel wander in and out.
“It’s very nice,” Vikar says to the production designer.
“Thank you,” answers the production designer with the long hair and leather vest.
“No,” Vikar says, “it’s very nice.” He tries not to be too vexing. The two men stand in the middle of the set looking at each other.
Comprehension visits the production designer. “You mean it’s too nice,” he says, seething. “What about all those places in Chinatown? Aren’t those punk clubs?”
“Have you ever been inside them?”
“I didn’t realize we’re into an authenticity thing here.”
“Please take out the mirrors.”
“The audience needs something to look at. A little dazzle.”
“Dazzle?” Vikar stares into one of the mirrors and has a notion that disappears from his mind before he can grasp it; but that night, at home, once again he’s staring out the windows of his living room, turning his head again and peering at his reflection in the glass, when again the notion flits across his brain. It returns as he stands before the bathroom mirror shaving, trying to negotiate the tattooed teardrop beneath his left eye, which always bleeds whenever he nicks it:
161.
that what he’s always believed was his left side in fact is his right, and that what he’s always believed was his right side is his left. That what he’s always believed was his true side in fact is his false. That what he’s believed was his good side in fact is his evil, what he’s believed was the Monty lobe of his tattooed brain in fact is the Liz.
160.
Molly is on the phone. “The strike is on,” she says wearily, “the actors have walked. This is what video has wrought. Everyone wants more money and the hell of it is they’re right, but the Mitch Rondells of the world won’t see it that way.” She says, “I wish I could tell you it will be over next week, but I have a feeling it may be more like two or three months.”
“It’s all right.”
“I must say you sound remarkably sanguine.”
“Yes, I’m sanguine.”
“I almost wish you were less so. Are you sure your head is in this?”
“No,” Vikar says, hanging up. On the cork bulletin board next to the telephone, he’s tacked the original copy of the ancient writing from his dream in Cannes. After he phones Professor Cohn to no answer, he walks down the long hill to Sunset and takes the bus back to UCLA.