The same thing happened to me a few hours later. I don't look at my films very often. If I do, I see only mistakes and missed chances. But Babyskin was my first "European" film and had all the glamour and excitement that goes with that phrase. I worked with a superb team; my life was heavenly.
That night I'd planned to look at all the Midnight films yet again (Finky Linky refused to do it anymore and Sasha fled to the other side of the house when she heard the first notes of the Steve Reich score), but it had been such a down day that I decided to put on Babyskin and watch that fortunate part of my history instead.
I couldn't have watched more than fifteen minutes before I saw something that made me jump up, eject the film, and slide in Midnight Always Comes in its place.
After searching, I found that clever scene where Bloodstone walks into the young couple's bedroom with a small tape recorder. Turning it on, we hear the very loud, unmistakable sound of people having a great time fucking.
"He took that from me!"
Out came the Strayhorn tape, in went the Gregston.
The night of the old woman's birthday. Her husband goes outside to piss, or so he tells her. He's given her no present that day and she's heartbroken. Suddenly from out there we hear very faintly the sound of Bix Beiderbecke's orchestra playing "That's My Secret Now." The woman, scared but curious, gets up and goes to the window. Her husband is outside on the lawn, kneeling next to the gramophone he's bought for her birthday.
"He took that from Babyskin! I'll be damned."
I put his film back in and watched the tape recorder scene again. Same blue and blinding white lighting, Paul Delvaux shadows, room set up exactly the same way. . . . It was the whole look and mood of my scene.
"I'll be damned."
What else had he snitched? Was that the right word, or was I only miffed at myself for not having realized it till now? Filmmakers steal from each other like pirates, but this rubbed me the wrong way somehow.
It was one in the morning. When Finky Linky came in at four, I was still watching Midnight movies and taking notes.
"Why didn't you tell me about your blood test?"
"Because I don't know what it means. I've had more remissions than Loretta Young's had face lifts."
"But you heard about Sasha's results?"
"Yes. I know there's probably a connection, Weber, but I didn't want to start thinking about it because it might be nothing and then I'll have gotten excited for nothing.
"Listen, I was with a friend tonight who has AIDS. You know what's most pathetic about him? His hope.
"He's heard they've found a cure in Czechoslovakia using carrots. Laetrile is back in if you have the money to go to Mexico for the quack treatments; he's considering it. And he has a friend who's considering getting injections of Interferon in his brain because he heard that's how they cure rabies sometimes. Can you imagine making that kind of insane connection?
"I don't want to be like this guy, crazy with hope and strange possibilities. I was like that when I first got cancer, but they're not good friends to have in this situation. That's what I've been telling Sasha: You can be optimistic, but don't be hopeful."
"What's the difference?"
"Optimists know they're going to die, but they look everywhere for a cure right up until the end. People who're hopeful are convinced there's a remedy; they just have to find it. That's why they're so bitter when they realize it isn't always true."
"You mean you're a realist?"
"Hell, no. A realist knows when he gets leukemia he's going to die."
I told him about the similarities between Phil's films and my own and showed him some samples. He was amused.
"So? He knew a good thing when he saw it."
Early the next morning Sasha woke me because there was an urgent phone call from the police. It was Dominic Scanlan asking if I'd seen Charlie Peet.
I might have slept two hours. "Dominic, who the fuck is Charlie Peet?"
"Blow Dry, asshole. That's his real name. Have you seen him?"
"No, why?"
"Because he didn't go home last night and didn't report for duty this morning. He doesn't do things like that."
"He was at rehearsal yesterday afternoon."
"We know, but that's the last anyone saw him. All right, Weber, I'll get back to you if anything comes up. Hey, how is he as an actor, anyway?"
"He's playing Bloodstone, you know. He'll probably be perfect."
"You ain't kidding! He's the real thing. Take it easy."
Trying to go back to sleep was impossible. I lay there thinking about the dead actor who'd gone around impersonating Strayhorn until he ended up looking like a French fry left in the microwave too long. Then I thought about the psychopath at the graveyard the day of Phil's funeral who got his fifteen minutes of fame doing Bloodstone with a blank pistol. Next came the kid in Florida who'd killed two kids a la Bloodstone in one of the films. Now the disappearance of Charlie Peet.
Can evil be created, or does it always grow alongside the road like some poisonous mushroom, waiting to be picked and eaten?
Had Phil created evil by inventing Bloodstone?
I got out of bed again and went back to the television room. The windows there faced onto the small backyard where a redwood picnic table and two benches sat under a palm tree. I heard quiet voices and recognized Sasha's and Wyatt's.
She was asking him why we were so concerned about finishing Midnight Kills. Wyatt said because all artists want their work completed, even if it's a horror film.
Even.
2
A strange yet sure sign that my work is going well is that I often forget to pray at night. Since childhood, I have always tried to say the Lord's Prayer, with a few postscripts added at the end. I pray every night but I don't ask for much. I just say thank you. Sometimes it's habitual, like having to get in a certain position before being able to fall asleep, but that's rare. I thank Him for giving me a good life and for keeping the animals at bay.
Whatever was happening with Strayhorn and Pinsleepe was only further proof to me that there are other "animals," yet life and death are the only domesticated ones we know and will touch.
It was about a week after we'd started filming that I realized I hadn't been saying my nightly thanks. It had happened before when I was working and I didn't like it; didn't like myself for being ungrateful.
But the neglect meant a blindness toward everything but the work. I'd be staggeringly hungry because of forgetting to eat, unusually grateful to sit down because I'd been standing for six hours.
When Blow Dry still didn't show up, I decided to try something else until he returned. Along with the cameraman for my other films, Wyatt and I went around shooting what I call "object scenes": the sun over an alley at six in the afternoon, an empty gas station at three in the morning. We were looking for a variety of moods – the open-air loneliness of a used car lot, the excitement of a woman taking three dresses with her into a try-on room in a department store.
We didn't specifically know where we'd use these shots when we were finished, only that some of them would be in our scenes and it was important to have them. Then, as we moved around town filming bus stops and gun stores or people passing out flyers for massage parlors on Hollywood Boulevard, the three of us fell into a kind of unspoken understanding and enthusiasm for what we were doing. Once while having lunch at a hotdog stand, Wyatt said "Griffith Park!" and we finished as fast as we could so we could get over to the park and start looking immediately.
When we weren't out filming, I was either working with the people who'd come from New York or looking through art books in the library, particularly photography of the 1930s.