Joshua Mattson - A Short Film About Disappointment

I said, I have never been cool. I consider these labels not applicable to my experience. Because of how information is now available, it is easy for any person to find a group within which they belong and a group they consider worthy of attack. There has not been a consensus on hipness or fitting in for many decades now, if ever, and I’m not sure why these ideas persist.

He said, That’s convenient. You ever been in a fistfight?

I said, Yes.

He said, I doubt that. You don’t look like the type.

I said, Is fighting cool?

Millings said, No, it isn’t. I’m never looking for a fight. There seems to be a connection between the passive, brainy approach to cinema and those types of living, and the more action-oriented, Broder-style type of living. Marrying thought to action. Like, I have my beliefs, and you better believe I’m going to back them up if I have to. What will you do, write an essay?

Guests checked their Pingers, looked away from us.

I said, What beliefs? I’m not sure which I have that would be worth fighting over beyond the standard, boring, universal ones. A belief, as I understand it, is flexible. It never needs to be fought for if it is self-evident. For instance, common conceptions of morality. The only worthwhile beliefs are small and not to be mentioned to others.

Millings said, Beliefs never need to be fought over? What about freedom! What about what we have done for our guests? We went and died so they could come here and live in safety.

I said, We, the people at this table, did not do anything. Other people died in an unfortunate geopolitical maneuver. They will continue to do so until the end of nation-states and sects and identities or until the last person has died.

Millings said, We saved those guests from the chaos of their home countries.

Richer guests nodded, poorer smirked.

I said, Who created that chaos? When our guests come here, they are virtual slaves for five years. How is that freedom? Would you pick tomatoes for five years, for a room in a firetrap sixteen nodes away from the Safe Zone, where you have to be worried about being raped if you are a woman and lynched or arrested if you are a man?

Wine gulped. Angry that I was forced into this position, to make a statement, to use words to prove what I didn’t care to prove.

Millings said, It’s not like that here. We have peace and order.

I said, At a cost that’s difficult for us to bear. I live in a guest neighborhood, I know what their lives are like.

Millings said, You don’t look like a guest. You look like you grew up a hundred miles from the node and never wanted for anything.

I said, I never made a claim to speak for them.

He said, Broder speaks for them. He speaks to universal experiences. When I go see a Broder film, I see guests in the audience, because they’re dreamers, Broder is a dreamer, and together we are all dreaming a special dream.

I said, Broder makes films for teenage boys. Enthusiasm for the man’s work is longing for a return to sugary breakfast cereal, a mother’s servitude, maniacal self-abuse in one’s bunk bed. What is there to like in Plunder ? The expensive jackets of the heist crew? Their cars? The deforming surgeries performed on the female lead? The fascism of his set designs? The implication that the Seed Bank, a thing built in Europe, with European money, with European diligence, staffed responsibly by Europeans for decades, ought to be given to American agencies and corporations so they can fuck with what they didn’t have the foresight to save for the good of the world? Plunder was subsidized by the government. That isn’t rumor, that is a documented truth. It is propaganda as much as entertainment.

Millings said, It doesn’t matter where money comes from. I’ve made a lot of it. It all spends the same. There are no clean dollars. Broder is a visionary. We’re talking of epic cinema. Epic cinema requires money. Anything worth doing requires money. You wouldn’t understand that, though. We’re talking about the greater good.

I said, Epic is a word used by idiots to apply to excessive and insulting spectacles. He’s repackaging old blockbusters with updated effects. In twenty years his films will look dated and bloated.

He said, I’ve never seen anything like it.

A little slur. I neveh see anhthing like it. Biting off the end of his sentence like it was a piece of jerky.

I said, That doesn’t make it special.

He said, Every era has a Michelangelo. Broder’s ours. There’s talent and there’s people like you who have none. All you do is comment. You’re making content for people to read while they take the rail, so they don’t have to make eye contact with the person across from them. Nobody will remember who you’re watching.

I said, Someone has to bring attention to the world’s underappreciated filmmakers. That’s why I do what I do. Your toilet will advise you to go see the new Broder every time you shit. Who is going to tell you about Weide or Haupt? Who will announce these people have something to offer the human spirit?

Millings said, Let them disappear. Cinema is a meritocracy. The best films get seen by the most people.

A noise as if I were being tortured escaped me.

I said, Without the dignity of our artistic process, the Underunited States is the narcotized, militarized ghetto the rest of the world assumes us to be.

Millings said, Listen, buddy. You better watch your mouth. You might get slapped, huh? I know a few people in the Transit Authority. You won’t see shit if you get your papers yanked. I suggest you apologize for that remark immediately.

I opened my mouth but my Pinger went off, an emergency ping, loud enough to startle the whole table.

Jonson pinged, i forbid you to fight this guy over a Broder flick / please make excuse and leave / sorry / will make it up to you

I said, I have to go. I would rather staple my penis to my leg than listen to you speak.

He said, Give Broder another shot, will you? You might see something new. We have to be willing to look. Tell you what, I’ll get your Pinger from Jonson, we’ll go together this week. I’ll get one of those private theaters down off the Drive. We’ll have a little marathon.

Generous in victory, as his type tended to be. I felt his smile all the way down the elevator.

Walking out. A motorcycle. Was that a brand-new solar cell? It was. I rolled it over to the sunken plaza, shoved. A series of discrete, satisfying crunching noises. Somewhere, I didn’t doubt, a camera caught it, but I was confident Jonson would pay the fine and the bill. How would they get it out of there?

Jonson pinged, sorry / we buy out the conspicuous next weekend / you yell at the screen all nite / millings sez sorry / too much to drink

I pinged, you got a deal / apology accepted / good bolinhos / maybe a little more salt next time / tell lucretia thanks

Osvald’s birthday today. Facts should be discarded when they no longer have use. Distances, measurements, Pinger IDs. Sounds and particular sentences that were formed for one’s hearing. On memories spreads pain’s mildew.

I wonder what Isabel bought him.

About a decade ago, for his birthday, we threw a party. There was no food. We were too young to know the manners of good hosting. Osvald arrived late to our living room, as was the style. The bargain liquor insulted one’s organs. Within an hour he was sick on the staircase. Though they were no longer dating, Karolina brought Osvald home to soil her room. She was a generous woman. She stocked the kiosks at Bast as her student job, and she would let Osvald and me loot the storeroom. I wonder what happened to her. I was saddened at Osvald’s failure to enjoy his party. These people assembled for him, sort of. He didn’t get to enjoy their affection, their kind words, their jokes. Osvald wasn’t the locus of attention. That woman that he liked with the piercings showed up two hours after he was dragged off.