"What's important and interesting is not what evil is, Phil, it's what we do with it. Bosch took it and painted those incredible pictures. Stalin took it and wiped out a third of his population.
"That reminds me – I saw something on TV the other night that fits this. They were showing old documentary films about life in Russia in the twenties and thirties. One scene was of all these hot air balloons at a celebration for something. You don't know what's going on, except for all these beautiful balloons lifting off the ground and pretty girls cheering. As they rise, you see they've got strings attached and are pulling something up with them. What is it? A giant poster of Stalin! How about that? Balloons, pretty girls, celebrations, Stalin! That monster. The same thing with good as with evil. It's not what it is –"
I took some potato chips. "'It's what we do with it. 'How many more years will I live, Venasque?"
"More than me. Don't ask that question. It doesn't do any good to know. If I said twenty years you'd say 'Phew.' If I said twenty minutes you'd shit. Either way of thinking doesn't get you any farther toward where you need to go. One's too relaxed and the other's desperate. Find out about evil and write your movie."
"Is that what's going to make me famous?"
"Yes."
So you see, I already knew. I trusted Venasque so implicitly by then that if he had said I'd become famous as the coach of the Burmese Ping-Pong team I would have believed him.
That was the most intensely enjoyable time of my life. I was full of energy, sure of what I was doing, and so enthusiastically critical of every word I wrote that I drove myself crazy, but loving it, loving it. Venasque gave me five thousand dollars and told me to write and give him back six when I became famous. I took it without hesitation, knowing I'd give him seven: knowing I would soon have seven. I wrote, read, walked with Venasque and the animals, and thought about what man does with good and evil.
The only part of Midnight that is not wholly my own creation is the scene with Bloodstone, the child, and the magnifying glass. That was something Weber had said in passing many years before in a completely different context and which miraculously came to mind when I was writing the script. He never remembered or even realized it was his but, both ironically and innocently, always contended it was the most effective and appalling scene in the film. In any of my films. Great minds think alike, eh?
It was so galling because everyone talked about that scene. When I asked Venasque about it he shrugged it off like nothing important, but it was damned important to me. Horror film though it was, I wanted Midnight to be mine, but here was this little brilliant bit of not-mine on the screen attracting everyone's attention. And even before it got to the screen, it was the flash that caught Matthew Portland's attention when I was just another putz in Hollywood with his first screenplay and a well-known friend trying to push him.
Weber didn't mention, either, that when we were filming he came up on three separate occasions to help the director. I remember him pulling into that little mill town at three in the morning in his silver Corvette, looking fresh and alive yet vaguely funny with his curly red hair that never stayed brushed and green eyes that were so smart and serious you couldn't look away from them without feeling something like regret. Was he the model for Mr. Fiddlehead? No, Weber was too real to be anyone's dream friend. Weber was too real to . . .
He never mentioned winning an Oscar, did he? He also won a MacArthur Award (the genius award, for those unfamiliar with it), a Golden Globe, New York Film Critics, and the Golden Palm at Cannes.
Some people look good in clothes. Whatever they wear, they effortlessly give it a look and originality that is like a beautiful signature. The same is true with achievement. As long as I've known him, Weber Gregston has worn his accomplishments with style and modesty. When The New Yorker accepted one of his poems our junior year in college, he was genuinely shocked they'd taken it. At the Oscar ceremony, he took his statue from the famous star presenter and said, "The real reason I came up here was so I could meet Jack Nicholson."
As he became more and more famous, the only thing that changed in him was a new, understandable guardedness in his manner that grew out of the demands Lost Angles (as he called it) made on him. He enjoyed the goodies fame gave him, but like most decent people who make it big, he felt guilty and uncomfortable.
When he wasn't working on a film, he was somewhere helping. A course in directing at Los Angeles Community College, ads for Amnesty International, work with the terminally ill at Veterans Hospital. Always free, always voluntarily. The only thing he asked was that there be no publicity.
Once when they were both over at my house, Venasque looked at Weber and said, "You got too many different kinds of fruits on your tree. It's time to cut 'em all off and just grow the oranges."
Later, when I asked the old man what he meant, he told me doing a lot well didn't always mean you were doing yourself a favor.
"You guys were raised thinking you've got to know how to play a solo on every instrument in the band. But you ever see one of those one-man-band characters standing on the street? He's got cymbals between his knees and a harmonica wrapped around his head. . . . You know what I'm talking about Looks silly as hell, and the music stinks."
"Weber's music is pretty good, Venasque."
"Yeah? You want to trade places with him?"
"I don't know. I never thought about it."
"Think about it. I'm going to the toilet."
The scene must be set here because of what happened next. The two of us were sitting outside. It was twilight. The air was full of the heavy perfume of flowers and the high dynamo sounds of insects. It was warm enough to have my shirt off. As I reached for a Coke I had under the seat, the question of whether I wanted to be Weber moved through my mind.
In an instant, less, I answered out loud, "I don't want to be anybody else. I'm all right."
Almost as soon as I said it, I felt something like sticks on my back. Lots of little sticks moving on me. Half straightening, half turning, I came face to face with a small black bird that was just standing on my shoulder. It was such a shock that I lurched and the bird flicked off and flew away. The direction I'd turned was facing the door, and when I calmed a bit, I realized Venasque had been standing there with his hands in his pockets.
"Hey, did you see that? The bird on my back?"
"Did you see your tattoo? Take a look."
It was gone, of course. My tattoo had flown away.
"Weber's still got his, Phil, in case you're interested."
"What does it mean?"
"It means you know who you are. You just said it – you're all right."
If only it had been that simple.
Time passed. Midnight was a hit. Weber met and fell in love with Cullen fames. She said no. He dreamt of Rondua. She still said no. He came back to California to prepare Wonderful but couldn't stop talking about this woman. When I met her she was very nice and in some ways special, but not the end of the rainbow. I liked her tall husband and child more.
Venasque died during the filming of Wonderful. A stroke in a motel room outside Santa Barbara. The last time I saw him we'd watched Miami Vice on television, his favorite show, and then taken the animals for a long walk. I already knew he was going away for a week of training with one of his students. He had no school and never taught classes as such, but there were students, and I assumed they learned from him the same way I did.
"Are you going to the ocean?"