Joshua Mattson - A Short Film About Disappointment

The theatergoer adopts a pet auteur, a fringe artist to advocate for, to buttress his or her individuality. Salzblatt was Isabel’s. Her favorite Salzblatt was Christmas , which she saw on our catastrophic and embarrassing second date. Her popcorn forgotten. The dentist’s scene that was condemned by the mayor of the Eastern Hub.

Isabel who was my wife. I don’t see her well anymore. Her face is like the face on a coin. The mold deforms as years of minting pass. Singing in her low voice as she brushed her hair. The curtains in our apartment were white, aspirational, billowing in the wind from ceiling to floor. Coming home, throwing her purse, a boot; next, her earrings, dress, bracelets, tights, bobby pins. Coming home, finding her naked, slumped over her Pinger, her shoulders folded in, her nose greasing the screen. A nest of wrappers marking her personal space.

Maybe she will find Altarpiece to be not as good as Salzblatt’s best work, but better than most of her early and midperiod films.

Altarpiece will be made. During the previews to Bruja , Jonson agreed to finance Altarpiece up to three-point-six million dollars below the line and postproduction, with costs above the line to be negotiated as options manifest.

After the movie, we sat on the curb outside the Runaway Seven. From within his coat, Jonson produced for each of us a cinnabar banana. Jonson, Jonson, Jonson. Today’s locus of my affection. Who needs a person? I have my friend, my financier, the father-to-be of Altarpiece .

He plucked at his trousers. My legs kept drifting apart and slamming together. I find underwear to be an affectation. It is his habit to suggest a drink after twenty minutes of conversation. At the sidewalk tables, men dawdled over pale ales wondering if they had what it takes to fly hydrogen blimps. Mothers presented babies with soft objects to gnaw. Farther on, couples were entangled in the riverbank’s permissive murk.

Jonson wore a straw boater. I did not mock it, because of the financing he offered. It might be nice to char the brim. To mail it back as scraps.

His demands include an executive producer credit, creative input, assistant director. His name would feature prominently in the opening titles. But there will be neither opening titles nor credits. Jonson made this money, hidden from Lucretia, investing in AlmostPeople.

He said, I’m going to surprise her with the film. She’ll be thrilled. We keep talking about how we need to get serious about our cultural engagement. She wants us to donate a wing to the Facsimile Museum, but that’s too safe. Wings are stuffy. We’re young, adventurous. Wings are for people with gout and hearing loss. We didn’t even make it to the gala this year. Why spend money on the floor, on the light fixtures, when we can make something to project on the wall?

AlmostPeople are animatronic life-size dolls, in a variety of body types, programmed to listen intently to their user’s problems and affirm them with up to twenty thousand programmed phrases, such as, That’s so true, Who does he/she think he/she is?, Don’t let yourself be treated that way, You’re better than that, and so on.

It turns out that to have the appearance of authenticity, the listener must appear to be somewhat distracted.

AlmostPeople can be programmed along a spectrum of attention. Presets include the Successful Friend, the Penitent Husband, the Public Servant, the Therapist (Sober), the Therapist (Under the Influence), the First Date, the Second Date, the Second Date (Alternately). Cocktails at the pitch brunch made Jonson playful. He insisted the company manufacture a model of his body, but his first name, Harris, did not test well, so the model is the Lawrence, which was determined by focus group to be a trustworthy name. The muscles are exaggerated. Jonson shipped me a Lawrence, who stands in my kitchen, modeling scarves.

Lawrence says, Pour out the cup of rage.

He says, The past is a pile of rotting carpets.

He says, Climb the mountain of your anxieties.

In addition to being a sympathetic ear, he is something of a philosopher.

Lawrence said, Do you think free will is an illusion?

I said, There’s no way we are so lucky.

My money. We think we do not need the stuff until we get some of our own. When Jonson and I see a film, we flip a coin. The loser reviews; for instance, in this review.

Which reminds me. You can see Bruja at the Runaway Seven, but you shouldn’t.

Jonson couldn’t make the coin out in the dark. I have a double-sided quarter from a novelty shop. We flip for lunch, for socks, for ownership of trees we both admire. We flipped for financing, after I’d irritated him enough. One hopes his mind was made up already. Even for Jonson, it is a lot of money.

He says, You have great luck. You ought to try investing.

Back to Bruja . Mariposa, a swamp witch, has a drawer of stolen voices. Maite is jealous of a couple in her village. In return for Maite’s fertility, Mariposa agrees to steal the voices of Florencia and Agustin. For Maite’s sense of smell, Mariposa offers Maite the ability to speak from their mouths. Maite has a talent for mimicry. Surprised, angered by what they’ve said, seeing, through the callous act of speaking, the truth of their words, the pair begin to hurt each other even without Maite’s intervention.

Florencia walks off a cliff. Agustin starves himself to dust.

How Maite sobs. It is difficult to have nobody to resent.

Mariposa allows the voices of the deceased to flap from her drawer. Unable to find their owners, they roost in Maite. The voice has no connection to the soul. The voice is air, not to be trusted. Words cannot be. Noises to get this or that. Maite gains regional distinction as a singer of tragedies and an augur of weather. She finds her own happiness, with a farmer, as intense as that of Florencia and Agustin. There is no punishment for what she has done. Though we pretend otherwise, the lack of judgment from the universe we inhabit is the joy of our lives. Maybe there will be a day when we all sit up and point our fingers at each other, a final adjudication at the end of death, but it is not today, and it is not likely to be tomorrow.

Ahead of ourselves in the street. We spoke of Bruja with the weariness of veteran auteurs, who had given up on commercial success in favor of the ineffable but were amused by the efforts of middlebrow directors to get recognition.

Under the streetlight we pronounced.

Jonson said, Great film must offer no mimetic pleasure.

He said, Cinema conceals itself from the viewer.

I said, One will find one’s film in the place where one has thought oneself barren.

He said, The rhythms of cinema are polyphonic.

The sounds of neighborhood vice were absorbed by the vegetation in bloom, our laughter was free and derisory, and neither of us crossed the threshold of our homes sorry for ourselves.

Notes on my filmmaking technique.

ON DIALOGUE

Bellono in Altarpiece is not one for conversation. Intentions wither in speech. Dialogue is superfluous. I will allow myself, say, ten lines. Fifteen. And it will not run over eighty-four minutes. It will be a fling that doesn’t drag on too long, and when it’s finished, one will leave without resentment about the abuse of their time.

ON INTERTITLES

I have experimented with intertitles, as in The Martyrdom of Polycarp of Smyrna , a film I admire. I could not say if I admire it for sadomasochistic Polycarp—with his lachrymose terrorist’s eyes, whose god is so inflexible he won’t forgive a white lie to save Polycarp from burning alive—or because it documents the grotesque politics of ranking clergy, or because, as a critic, I am expected to adore a film adored by other critics. See it tonight at the Central Hub Film Institute and decide for yourself.