41.
is it the middle ages or something? this sadistic prince guy & this fucked-up masquerade ball going on inside the castle walls while everyone outside is dying
40.
guy w/ blood smeared all over him, hes just killed everyone to save this prostitute whos like my age, he looks kind of punk w/ mohawk & army jacket—
39.
this maze-like apt complex of the future where this private-eye wanders trying to find this dark woman, i don’t understand what language theyre speaking—
38.
THE MOST FUCKED UP ONE OF ALL & i remember all of it in vivid detail & DONT WANT TO REMEMBER ANY OF IT. this asian model goes to this art gallery showing these bondage photos shes posed for & sees this blind guy running his hands over this sculpture of her, she runs away feeling like his hands are actually on her & then goes to get this massage & hes the masseur & says I have eyes in my fingers & drugs & kidnaps her, takes her to this warehouse place full of huge sculptures of naked women, bodies, body parts & the model is trying to get away from this ASSHOLE, climbing up & down huge thighs, huge boobs, on the walls are eyes, noses, mouths, arms, legs. he sculpts a statue of her & she becomes blind too then she fucks him because shes trying to escape, then she becomes not just the model but the art itself & this fucker is cutting off her arms, I have eyes in my fingers he keeps saying, WHY AM I HAVING THIS DREAM
37.
i think i must be going insane
36.
Vikar goes downstairs to the house’s bottom level, into his film library with the moviola. He unpacks from the bags he bought at the small market on Sunset three quarts of Stoli and a quart of tonic, then begins pulling movies from his shelves. He doesn’t have them all. He doesn’t have Taxi Driver or Mosumura’s Môjuu, about the blind sculptor, and he doesn’t need Nightdreams or The Passion of Joan of Arc. But he does have Powell’s Black Narcissus, Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Welles’ Touch of Evil, Ray’s In a Lonely Place, Stahl’s Leave Her to Heaven, Rollin’s Fascination, Corman’s Masque of the Red Death, and Godard’s Alphaville, in which private-eye Eddie Constantine cries, “This isn’t Alphaville, this is Zeroville!”
35.
He no longer has to pore over the celluloid. Having found the frame in the same place in the silent film and the porn film, now he knows where to look. Now it doesn’t take more than half an hour to find the frames. After he’s gone over these movies he begins pulling out others, old and new, near and far-flung, celebrated and obscure.
34.
Sometimes from exhaustion Vikar collapses where he stands, waking himself when he hits the floor, pulling another reel from the shelves around him.
Where is Zazi? Has she fled, as she receives nocturnal bulletins from the subconscious of film, dreaming one scene after another from movies she’s never heard of, let alone seen? Did Vikar loom above her with an exacto-knife, sacrificing her to the pursuit of a divine secret? From the radio of her upstairs bedroom comes the soundtrack of a new Los Angeles noir, without hours or latitudes — Ornette Coleman’s “Virgin Beauty,” X’s “Unheard Music,” Duke Ellington’s “Transbluency,” strange female chants from Tuva, the movie scores of Soledad Palladin lesbian-vampire movies.
33.
Soon film unspools from one level of the house to the next. It’s fixed to the walls, draped in strips, hanging from the rafters like webs. Vikar viciously chops up film as though the frame he’s looking for is hidden not only from him but from the film itself, in its own flesh. Isn’t this flesh his to cut as he chooses? To flop right profiles with lefts as he chooses, and left profiles with rights, to reverse the utopian and anarchic ends of the boulevard? Down through the history of movies, what Auteur has invaded every movie ever made in order to leave him a sign, each of which grows closer and clearer with every extrication and every enlargement? Little pieces of black celluloid litter the floor like granite, up and down the stairs. He runs his hands along the trail of enlarged stills: I have eyes in my
32.
fingers, and in every film he examines he finds it, and from every film he extricates the single frame; though he doesn’t know it, he’s become the medium of Film Id. He enlarges the frames and assembles them until their own film is complete, an altogether different film that draws closer and
31.
closer to the horizontal rock, its open chasm, the white writing and the figure lying across the top, until he’s so close as to be able to reach out and
30.
touch her face.
29.
Oh, daughter.
28.
Zazi doesn’t return. I’ve become father to the sacrificial child. In his delirium, he has lapses; he finds himself riding a bus into Hollywood with no recollection of how long he’s been on it. There’s a song from a source he can’t identify or find
To the center of the city where all roads meet, waiting for you
To the depths of the ocean where all hopes sink,
searching for you
and at some point he’s in the Chinese Theatre. He has no idea if, outside, it’s day or night.
27.
An L.A. private eye of the future executes robots who believe they’re human because they remember. The movie takes place in a Los Angeles where everything is reset at zero. The future is reset at zero. Memory is reset at zero, prophecies are reset at zero. All latitudes and longitudes are reset at zero; everything that one believes about oneself is reset at zero. There’s no sunlight in this Los Angeles; every day is reset at zero. There’s no starchild in this movie because childhood has been reset at zero. In this Los Angeles, there is no Hollywood; in this movie, the Movies have been reset at zero …
26.
… and somewhere in this movie he knows he’s seen the frame of the sacrificial rock, he knows it’s there just like in all the movies
25.
and the lights in the theater rise and Vikar stirs. He wonders if he fell asleep; he’s now entered a fever where it’s impossible to know anymore. He sits up in his seat, watches the people file up the aisles. Then his heart rises to his throat.
Coming up the other aisle of the huge Chinese Theatre, he sees him.
24.
Vikar is frozen, trying to think. It can’t be him. I was sure he was dead, reset at zero like everything else; and what would he be doing here even if he were alive, all the way from Pennsylvania?
At first he can’t decide what to do, but then Vikar jumps from his seat and runs into the lobby, only to see him again in the distance through the theater doors, outside among the throngs milling around the concrete footprints of stars. Vikar pushes his way outside.
23.
Outside, Vikar stands in front of the Chinese Theatre. People run into him as his eyes search up and down Hollywood Boulevard.
It couldn’t have been him. Even if he were alive, is it possible he would have come to Los Angeles after all this time? Why would he have been in the theater? Did he know I was there? Vikar begins walking up and down the block until, to his astonishment, at the corner of Orange Avenue, he sees him crossing the street to the Roosevelt Hotel.