A Short Film About Disappointment Read online

  PENGUIN PRESS

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  New York, New York 10014

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  Copyright © 2018 by Joshua Mattson

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  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Mattson, Joshua, author.

  Title: A Short Film About Disappointment / Joshua Mattson.

  Description: New York: Penguin Press, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018006202 (print) | LCCN 2018012672 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525522850 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525522843 (hardcover)

  Subjects: LCSH: Film critics—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Satire.

  Classification: LCC PS3613.A8665 (ebook) | LCC PS3613.A8665 S56 2018 (print) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018006202

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  FILMS CONSIDERED FOR

  THE CENTRAL HUB SLAW

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  1. HAVING, NOT HAVING, BEING, NOT BEING

  2. LORD TAKO

  3. WEREGILD

  4. THE NATHAN ROAD DEVILS

  5. CAMP CHOCOLATE

  6. THE TRIALS OF COUNT COZMA

  7. LOOSE LIPS

  8. MOONSTONE

  9. ORACLE

  10. UNSURFABLE

  11. FIVE HEARTS

  12. METAMORPHOSIS (BETWEEN CRITICISM AND ART)

  13. FLYPAPER

  14. DON’T BOTHER

  15. INQUISITOR

  16. THE FINAL SECRET // THEY’RE COMING FOR US!

  17. FLOWERS WHICH EAT MEN

  18. SECRETS OF SUMAC MOUNTAIN

  19. BRUJA

  20. THE MARTYRDOM OF POLYCARP OF SMYRNA

  21. HIS MOTHER’S BIRTHDAY

  22. LOVE UNDER THE HUB

  23. ISLAND PROMISES

  24. STONES’ BREATH

  25. OF LIGHT

  26. A SHORT FILM ABOUT DISAPPOINTMENT

  27. THE HAIRDRESSER RETURNS

  28. BUSINESS AND BLOOD

  29. DUST

  30. US, UNDERGROUND

  31. PHYSICIAN, HURT THYSELF

  32. MONOGAMOUS ANIMALS

  33. FUR BURGLARS

  34. THE TATTOOED FUGITIVE

  35. TOOLS

  36. OKAN

  37. THE ROYAL WE

  38. FRANKLIN’S REVENGE

  39. THE MERRY BAILIFF

  40. CHIPS OR CHAINS? // THE NEW NEW ORDER // IN YOUR HAND, IN YOUR MIND // WHO’S RUNNING THE COUNTRY?

  41. PRINCE OF IGUANAS

  42. TRIAL

  43. THE BALD ARCHAEOLOGIST

  44. HANNAH’S GAME

  45. THE DESERT SCREWHORN

  46. RATS IN THEIR SUNDAY CLOTHING

  47. SCALLOP

  48. BENSON’S PASSING

  49. NOTABLE CELIBATES

  50. THE WOMAN IN 702

  51. EQUIPMENT TEST I

  52. A NIGHT IN FOXTOWN

  53. LA MALINCHE

  54. SUCCESSFUL REBELLIONS

  55. CRUSADER’S CRUISE

  56. WOLF IN THE GARDEN

  57. FLAT EARTH

  58. HISTORICAL PUNISHMENTS FOR ADULTERY

  59. DRIPS OF GLORY

  60. LE VOL

  61. PRETENDERS AND USURPERS

  62. THE BAYOU DREAD

  63. GOOD QUEEN BESS

  64. COTTON’S GOLD

  65. YOURS FOR NOW

  66. TENDER FRONDS

  67. BARGAINING WITH MAROAT

  68. COMETH SOBEK

  69. PHOTOSENSITIVITY

  70. OFFERING

  71. CAPO

  72. NONPROFITS SUPPORTED BY THE JONSON FOUNDATION

  73. HANGING ISVALD

  74. LIGHT TEST IX

  75. THE FLOATING HOUSE

  76. THE REDUCERS

  77. ARK OF SUFFERING

  78. THE FOX AND THE BUTTERFLY

  79. DOWNTOWN SHOWDOWN

  80. A REPLICATE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  1.

  HAVING, NOT HAVING, BEING, NOT BEING

  DIR. HAMA NADAKIRTI

  111 MINUTES

  I saw Having, Not Having, Being, Not Being because I happened to duck into the Global, a theater I dislike, while running from a man trying to break my nose.

  The operators of the Global are self-congratulatory and condescending, as if showing foreign films in a prosperous native neighborhood is an act of mercy rather than a profitable indulgence. The programmer is a philistine who prefers to screen sententious documentaries, foreign splatter films, and slow-pitch comedies with the invariable moral that one ought to be nice to one’s parents before they die, if just once. Passing the box office, one sees patrons as resigned to their duty as plumbers.

  Not to mention that they charge twenty-three dollars a ticket, and if they get your Pinger ID, they will send you a message every hour until your death, demanding more money so they can continue their mission. The fund-raising is interminable. The pledge drive goes on five months. The director gets paid as much as twelve rail workers, has a brownstone in the Safe Zone, a daughter at private kindergarten.

  Patrons of the Global see buying a ticket as an expression of their socioeconomic position, an endorsement of their taste, a buttressing of their personality, and in many respects I found them more loathsome than the man who had been trying to break my nose with his fist, because there was not much unearned self-regard in his intentions, at least toward my nose.

  That said, I did not want my nose broken, so I ran inside.

  By the time the man, Rolf Millings, whom I’d had an exchange of views with at a party a few weeks previously, had thought to look in the Global for me, I had placed myself in a crouch in Row K, so I could see who was walking in when a crack of light dissipated the spell of the cinema.

  Having, Not Having, Being, Not Being does not shy from prefabricated set pieces lifted from other films, including the sullen newcomer who gains respect for the institution, the elderly monk with a teenage passion for rock and roll, merriment in silence, raking, rough-hewn bowls, the beauty of rocks, the pleasures of submission. There is nothing so different as to be interesting and there is nothing so familiar as to be comforting. Because we spend so much of our lives in institutions, I have never understood why anyone would want to spend their leisure time watching the operations of an institution.

  The tanned gentleman shoving through the doors appeared to be Millings. I couldn’t guarantee that I wasn’t the cause of his anger. From my vantage between the seats I watched him scan the audience, turn, walk out. He cut quite the figure in his suit, unperturbed by the large stains on his shirtfront, from the packet of rancid herring I had thrown on him, while he sat in a nearby plaza, enjoying the
afternoon, twenty minutes before.

  2.

  LORD TAKO

  DIR. ROGER WARAS

  88 MINUTES

  Playing tomorrow at the Conspicuous on two screens. See it in Theater Four. Six has bad seats.

  O’Rourke, a marine wrestler in the Pacific Northwest, is undefeated until an octopus of public record, Lord Tako, plucks out his left eye and pops it in his beak. As the octopus swims away, O’Rourke tears off one of Lord Tako’s tentacles. O’Rourke swears revenge. Chastened by fate, O’Rourke begins to drink to excess at the wrestlers’ bar, whose logo is an octopus with a mug of beer in each tentacle.

  O’Rourke’s little brother, Baby, wants to wrestle. Lord Tako takes all comers. Baby’s corpse washes up onshore. O’Rourke renews his vows of revenge. A training montage.

  Piggy Wilson, a mentor figure, thunders from the underbrush of exposition to counsel O’Rourke. Another satisfying montage. Piggy, who has not kept in shape since his halcyon grappling days, is slain by Lord Tako. The shot of Piggy’s severed head surfacing is in bad taste, which is probably why this superlative film is not shown in repertory. Osvald-in-me, the philistine, cheered when it breached. An ongoing discussion between us was never resolved concerning whether Lord Tako twisted or pulled it off.

  The scene where O’Rourke comes out of the surf holding Lord Tako, who has sucked out O’Rourke’s other eye in his throes, has all the pathos and beauty of a Nakamura masterpiece. I have never seen or heard it mentioned. Which begs the question: What beauty has disappeared through the ignorance of its stewards?

  3.

  WEREGILD

  DIR. OLAF JOSEPHSSON

  100 MINUTES

  On the day I thought of my film, I woke feeling ill. My Slaw review was due at five-thirty. Weregild screened at two. The Baxter Cinema calls this the hooky showing, but the senile matrons, narcotics-addled public servants, and preachers of Armageddon who pack the theater have nothing to skip out on. I prefer the sedentary regulars of the Conspicuous, a theater of quality.

  In my position as film critic for the Central Hub Slaw, the greatest content aggregator in this city, I am often compelled to review mounds of gaudy cardboard tugged with string masquerading as films. I expected today would be no different. Watch, leave, fume, pan.

  Out of my apartment, shivering, sweating. The mild day affronted my sense of infirmity. VR joggers, yoga nuts, and spandexed men on ancient steel bikes filled the streets. It is not enough for the world to be the circus, dump, sweatshop, brothel, and restaurant for the urban professional, it has to be their gymnasium as well.

  The Baxter was hot. An usher apologized. The air-conditioning was off because they overdrew their power budget. To fortify myself I had bought a bottle of cough syrup from the pharmacy kiosk on the way. A nimbus of insulin needles and nasal relaxers cordoned it off from the sidewalk.

  Many people entered the theater, found it to be the same temperature as outside, and left. The movie flickered by. Maybe I would expire of the flu. I imagined the mourners at my funeral. Held Saturday night, for maximum inconvenience. Closed casket. An organ to oppress the scant bereaved.

  Weregild takes place in a vague tribal past, when fur-clad illiterates slaughtered their neighbors over portents and boredom. The chief, Orectirix, kidnaps Geneov, the wife of Seisyll. Speeches are made, threats delivered. Weregild is a lie. The tribe’s teeth are better than ours. Do they have dental care in the Black Forest? On a diet of spelt, those biceps? That’s not possible. The tribe would have to loot protein powders from the warehouses they plunder. Weregild could have been funded by the Agriculture Authority. See how we lived before corn, and tremble. A man kills another man, and puts on his crude bronze crown. The end.

  Leaving the theater, my illness was taking the initiative. When I reached for my rail pass, I found that it lay in a marsh of pocket sweat. The sidewalk yawed outside my stop. I seemed to be having hallucinations. I was convinced pedestrians would dine on my liver if I lowered my guard. Back to Miniature Aleppo, my block. My bed, sagging, nonjudgmental. The shadows of oak limbs scraped the ceiling. Fever made fondue of color, sound, language.

  Here comes my idea. I must make a film.

  Western Europe, the Renaissance. I hate period pieces. Mine will be a period whole.

  My film will unfurl during a time when artists believed they were laboring in their god’s service. Our greatest artists were simpletons and cretins. Their talent was bent to reinforce the validity of a fable. Notions of reality in the Renaissance, at least as far as its art was concerned, were fixed. A god there, man here, plentiful devils to blame. But it seemed real, and seeming is like being, to our wretched species.

  Nothing’s real. Everything is printed: a copy of what came before. Load schematics into the fabricator. Human history is squirted, at will, from a reticulating nozzle. Press a button, and out rolls a Venus of Willendorf, a suitable doorstop. Turn the dial, and print a Calder for hanging your laundry. Dry your dishes with a Bayeux Tapestry.

  I shall call my film Altarpiece.

  A painter, Bellono, paints a triptych of Duke Giovanni, Duchess Andrea, and the duke’s brother, Baronet Enrico. It will hang adjacent to the altar in the ducal chapel.

  How will Bellono render Giovanni, Andrea, and Enrico? In shocking, lecherous color.

  I must make this film. My sense of beauty demands it. Pretending to care about the trash of the past, reporting on miniature controversies, and inventing grudges against directors I am indifferent to has rotted my spirit.

  Perhaps I feel competitive with my friend Osvald. He has been developing a treatment for a film about a sculptor who works on a massive scale. Alison, mayor of the Eastern Hub, commissions Billy Vang, of the Suppressionist school, to print a monumental piece about civic responsibility. Billy has other plans for the installation.

  Problems arise when Billy begins to suspect that he himself is printed. Everything in his apartment is carbon, so is he. It isn’t all that out there to suppose he is a programmed object, the science project of a fumbling far-off intelligence, swabbed on the petri dish of the planet to produce, after eons, himself.

  How can he protest the culture of replication, if he is a copy himself?

  That dilemma is, to Osvald, profound. He calls his film A Replicate. He tried to cast me as Billy to bully me around his kitschy sets. Osvald’s use of the periscope is not as profound as he thinks.

  No, the film I have in mind is quite different from Osvald’s.

  4.

  THE NATHAN ROAD DEVILS

  DIR. LI FANG

  101 MINUTES

  The Month of Broken Noses has returned to the Conspicuous, and although any of the kung fu conflagrations in the program are worth your time, The Nathan Road Devils is my preferred pageant of punishment.

  Li Fang was the product of the pinchpenny Yiang Brothers’ Celestial Blessings Studio, for whom he directed one hundred and eighteen features. Highlights include The Deadly Beggar, House of Iron Pajamas, Shek O Enforcer, The Resplendent Torturer, The Resplendent Torturer Returns, and Fall of the Resplendent Torturer.

  His last film stars Billy Lau, the Resplendent Torturer himself, in his first role since his release from Stanley Prison, where he did seven years for stabbing a guy with a fork in a gambling den, and Tony Zeng. Zeng plays Detective Lu, about to lose his job because he’s obese. After a pair of elderly stickup men escape him in a byzantine tracking shot through Jardine’s Crescent, Lu is put on administrative leave until he can lose a third of his body weight.

  Our detective spends his nights gorging on siu mei and lager at Joy Hing’s Roasted Meat. He overhears Triad boss Big Squid, played by Lau, order his stooges to off a guy who stood his daughter up. One yes-man asks, Is that not excessive? Big Squid jams his porcine pinkies into said yes-man’s ears. The resulting sound effect could have only sprung from the imagination of a very sick sound designer.

&
nbsp; Lu foils the thugs, starting a slapstick feud that ravages noodle shops, pizza parlors, teahouses, and a respected gelato cart. Zeng, whose bulk contains such pathos even the jiggling of his chins moves us, dignifies, through his soulful expressions, a role built around classic fat-guy gags like the Wicker Chair, the Narrow Door to Heaven, and the Mississippi Marriage Proposal.

  5.

  CAMP CHOCOLATE

  DIR. ALEJANDRA MARTILLO

  76 MINUTES

  Camp Chocolate, showing Wednesday afternoon at the Wicker Repertory. A malevolent force enters Miriam, the head counselor, convincing her to bludgeon the residents of Poison Oak Cabin with a vacuum cleaner. How do we know she isn’t plumb crazy? When, on a hike, she stands in a circle of obsidian chunks, the viewer understands she has become deprived of her mental health through supernatural means.

  Speaking of which. Osvald has possessed me. Maybe possessed is the wrong word. Possession implies evil, an agenda. My friend has occupied me. Yes. My body is a land in which the trains run on time, the factories are producing, but the people are tired, their clothes frayed. There is no butter in the restaurants, and children watch what they say in public. Over every table a strange portrait.

  After the screening, I went to my appointment with Dr. Lisa. She prodded my cheek. A ring in her left nostril. Doctors tend to indulge themselves with an eccentricity. A wacky tie, a morphine addiction. She smells of vetiver and mouthwash. Dr. Lisa was eating jade noodles when she examined me. Maybe she would like someone to eat with, and this is why she dines in the company of her patients. I imagine asking the same three questions must be tiring. What hurts? How long has it hurt? How bad does it hurt?

  She said, This was my nurse’s. He should not have left it lying around. Do you want a bite?

  I said, No. I had a sandwich on the way over.

  She said, What kind?

  I said, Well, it was more of a wrap.

  I’m not sure why I lied twice. I hadn’t had lunch. Sharing Dr. Lisa’s germs did not bother me. On the contrary, in fact.