Joshua Mattson - A Short Film About Disappointment

I was proud of my friends. The joy of creation is the only reliable joy, in my experience.

Not only was I proud, I was content, because I knew I could do much better.

The ending, sawn off Altarpiece . Mayor Alison looks on Billy’s sculpture, declares it to be a masterpiece, and has Billy jailed on trumped-up charges so he cannot top it. She does not recognize that Billy’s intentions were criminal.

Billy’s nanoprinters do not work.

What he thought would smother the Eastern Hub in filaments were actually minuscule dry-cleaning robots, meant to be released in one’s closet. Mayor Alison’s couture looks especially glamorous and wrinkle-free in the last five minutes of the film, after the release of the drybots.

Billy dies in the Eastern Hub Penitentiary, having said nothing since the unveiling of the sculpture. Silences are the wages of effort. In Altarpiece , Bellono is ordered to be hanged by Duke Giovanni for the same reason. Bellono chuckles on the gallows.

Bellono says, You can look at my painting, but you will never know it.

Final shot, his feet swinging.

On the third viewing, I slept.

More knocking at my door. I no longer had to go into the world to be disappointed. It was courteous enough to call at my apartment.

Dr. Lisa, white smock, black eye.

I said, What happened?

Dr. Lisa said, I was standing on a chair, hanging my touch-me-nots. The planter had an attitude.

I said, Would you like me to run out for an anti-inflammatory patch?

She said, I’m a doctor. Do you think I need your help performing perfunctory first aid?

I said, Need, no. Want, maybe.

She said, You haven’t been making your appointments with the doctor I transferred you to.

I said, Osvald’s gone. He was jealous of my friendship with Jonson. He pinged Jonson that I was keeping a secret from him, to break up our partnership for Altarpiece . Isn’t that funny? He steals my wife, and he doesn’t want me to have other friends?

She said, No more episodes? No more loss of bodily functions?

I said, No.

She said, That’s good. I’m happy for you.

I said, Sit, please.

She said, There’s slime on your chairs.

I said, Slime is a matter of opinion. The bed?

She said, It’s full of crumbs.

I said, The floor, then.

We sat.

She said, Are you going to apologize?

I said, No.

She said, Will you try to justify your actions?

I said, No.

She said, Will you tell me you miss me or otherwise appeal to my emotions?

I said, What makes you think I miss you?

She pointed to the small picture of her face hanging on my wall.

I said, I hardly ever look at that wall. I prefer this wall. That wall is the wall of the past. This empty wall is the future.

She said, What do you see on the empty wall?

I said, Bugs and mildew. Will you act in my film? Millings is going to fund me.

She said, I think it’s time to retire the painter.

I said, The thing I have in mind is an improvisation. Let’s forget the vanities of control.

She said, Control is impossible.

I said, We could work with mistakes. I was dreaming of it before you woke me up. A man and a woman hate cinema. They go around the Hub wrecking projectors, tearing down posters, and roughing up critics. The possibilities for slapstick, for social commentary, for spectacle, are limited only by our imaginations.

Dr. Lisa said, I’ve never acted.

I said, Anyone who has lived has acted.

That was the genesis of Rubber Paradise , our collaboration. Osvald’s crippled performance in A Replicate proved that I ought to stay behind the camera. I can’t act. Millings, unusually photogenic, agreed to play Dr. Lisa’s lover.

We filmed for two months during the magic hour, when the buttery light spreads well. Rolf and Dr. Lisa improvised the scenes. I couldn’t resist a cameo. The pair flee from the smoking ruins of the Conspicuous to their getaway dinghy. Jogging to their blue doom, they pass a man, no longer young, watching the sun slip under the blushing crepe of the horizon. In his hands, a camera. All that’s left to say is he is still dreaming his dream.

Joshua Mattson is a novelist from Northern Minnesota. He works in the service industry and A Short Film About Disappointment is his debut. He currently lives in Los Angeles.

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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.

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