Later, when they tried it, every time through was better. James and Sean had been lovers for a year, but they had big problems. What evolved when they got into the scene was a blistering candor and maliciousness that made you want to look away because you knew too much of this was the real acid in each face.
I filmed it all. When they were completely somewhere between their own real world together and the lives of the people they were portraying, the room crackled with a mixture of truth, love, and hurt that flew crazily through the air like Kansas heat lightning.
When it was over, I asked them not to tell anyone anything about what we were doing, including Wyatt. At home I looked at the tape and knew we'd been mistaken. It wasn't wonderful enough. I called them up and said that. Think about it and we'll start again tomorrow.
We showed Sasha my Midnight, and afterward Wyatt told her his idea about including scenes from my films in it. She loved that, and the two of them began screening my work to see what they thought should be used.
It felt as if we were all working on separate projects: Sean and James on their "scene," Wyatt and Sasha editing, me pulling it together and . . . adding.
I kept a video camera with me constantly. When I wasn't with the others, I was filming. The inside of a comic book store, two bums eating pizza on the curb – I followed a garbage truck one morning and filmed the men at a distance. Joggers, beautiful cars, women coming out of restaurants on Canon Drive in Beverly Hills: these bits and pieces were everywhere, shimmers of life like coins found on a sunny street. I wanted them despite having no firm idea of where they'd go in the final work.
It reminded me of my first day at the Budapest flea market, thrilled by what was for sale: old pocket watches, alligator briefcases, Nazi radios, and cigarette tins from Egypt with camels and pyramids painted on the lid. I wanted it all, and it was so cheap I could afford it. What I'd ever do with a brass ashtray from a coffee distributor in Trieste was beside the point.
The bicycle gang was doing tandem tricks now. Arms entwined, two of them rolled backward together, handlebars turned exactly in the same direction. One kid got on the shoulders of another and spread his arms like wings. An old man on a bench nearby clapped for them. The sound was small and alone in the bright blue openness. "You guys should be on TV!"
I was sleeping less and less, another old habit from my Hollywood years. The more excited I became about a project, the more it felt like a day was trying to cheat me out of interesting things if I let its night side push me toward sleep. Also, the more drained I was, the more unorthodox ideas came to me – usually about two-thirty in the morning with the televisions turned low and a pad full of notes in my lap. The agreeable part was I would awake charged and roaring to go the next morning.
Whether that energy would continue was another question. I was over forty. I wore glasses more often, and my once-five-mile-a-day walk had been cut to two. Growing older was all right, growing slower and less spry wasn't.
"Hey, mister! Hey, shoot me with your camera!"
A black boy swung out from the crowd of bike acrobats and rode over to me.
"How come?"
As I said this, a small child came running up to us, screaming and laughing. He went over to the kid on the bike and started hitting him.
"Cut it out, Walter."
Walter was seven or eight, and when he turned for a moment I saw he had the unmistakable face of a mongoloid.
"Take a movie of Walter and me." He hefted the smaller child onto his bike and rode off in a slow wobble. When the other boys saw him coming, they made a big circle around them.
Walter was having a great time, banging his hands down on the handlebars, shouting and whooping like a bird.
The others continued circling but did no more tricks. It was hard to tell whether they were being respectful or only waiting for the right moment to begin their next wheel dance.
"You should only take pictures of us!"
I waved and brought the camera up to film them. When the kids saw that, they broke their circle and began every show-off routine they knew. Half of them landed on their asses, but the ones who stayed up pulled off some moves that defied gravity. They jumped and bounced around like ponies.
"Check this gambado, man." The black kid with Walter still aboard did a jump turn in the air that should have won him a prize.
"What's a gambado?"
"You just saw it, sucker. You catch it on film?"
"Caught it."
"We gotta go now, but we'll be back. Come check us out again, but next time bring a real moviecam, dude, not that little Sony shit!" Leading the pack with hooting Walter, he pedaled off into the sunset.
The old man nearby got up. "They're here almost every day. I come just to see them. Fabulous, huh? They should be on television, those kids!"
At home, Sasha and Wyatt were gone but had left a note on the refrigerator.
Some papers have to be signed down at Fast Forward. Sasha's finally being called back to work. Look at the cassette we left in the first machine. I didn't want to tell the guy about it today because you have to see it first and give the big okay. Both of us think it is just right and good enough to do the trick.
Before I did that, I went and found a dictionary.
The boy had used the word "gambado." At first I thought it was a bastardized Latino word that just sounded good and tough – "Check this gambado, sucker." But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed real, and until I checked it'd drive me crazy with its light tickle.
Gambado: "The spring of a horse." How'd a ten-year-old kid know a word like that, much less use it in the proper context? I tried to remember what he looked like, then remembered I had him and his gang on film. After Wyatt and Sasha's Midnight Kills scenes, I'd have a second look.
I made a sandwich that needed horseradish. There was none. I got angry and seriously contemplated going to the store. How could you eat this sandwich without horseradish?
"Why don't you go watch their film?" I asked my procrastinating self. "Because what if it's bad and you have to tell them?"
One's own art should be added to the list of things friends shouldn't discuss without hanging a DANGER! sign over the door. Religion, politics, our art. Ninety percent of the time it leads to deep silences or oddly twisted feelings.
We're all black holes when it comes to compliments anyway – who can ever get enough? And those we do get feel good for too short a time. Black hole is an appropriate image. But then, when it comes to our creations, those delicate children we hatched from our own eggs with no one else's help, watch out!
I took the sandwich and a drink into the television room and turned the machine on.
On my first trip to Europe, years before, I spent some time in Dijon. Near my hotel was a small park that was jammed most of the day because it was the only green in the neighborhood. Besides, it was summer and parks are summer – lovers, dog walkers, babies crawling for the first time on the sweet July grass.
I discovered, though, that for some reason, even on the warmest, friendliest nights the place emptied by around ten. The only ones left, till almost midnight, were four women in black. They ranged in age from about thirty to seventy or eighty, one for each decade or so. I guess they were Arabs because they spoke in a loud, throat-clearing, held-l tongue that always sounded vaguely like singing or a call to prayer.
If they were dressed in black because they were widows, they were the merriest widows I ever saw. The four of them sat there nightly, telling each other stories. I watched as often as I could because they were irresistible.