Joshua Mattson - A Short Film About Disappointment

Zap.

I seemed to be speaking more coherently, as if I were guided by an entity disinterested in the outcome of the conversation but nevertheless munificent.

Dr. Lisa touched the small muscles on the side of my face, near my temple, then behind my ear. Minute electrical charges ran from her fingertip to shoot down my neck. It was only because she was focused on my face that I felt comfortable trying to be honest about cinema. I offered none of my plans for Altarpiece . To explain to her my ambition to make films would be creating between us an intimacy I was not prepared for, an intimacy in which she would reciprocate with an ambition of her own, to paint or to pilot slingshots or to steal jewelry.

She said, What do you say when you don’t like a film?

I said, I almost never like a film. I think of a different way to say I don’t like it.

She said, Try to freeze your face.

I said, Okay.

But I didn’t, because it did not look attractive to have one’s face paralyzed.

Under my jaw she dug in her finger.

She said, You never told me why you wanted to kill your friend.

I said, I never said I wanted to kill him. I instead explored the possibility that I might be happier if he were to die in a freak accident.

She said, When we see the film, you will have to tell me. You can think of an amusing way to tell the story. It will be part of your treatment.

I said, Yes, Dr. Lisa.

She said, You can call me Lisa.

Scads of critics gave up explaining for creating. Wendell Yarrow, a church mouse in his column, was a leopard in the Southwestern Ballet Company. Lauren Rolf thought herself a savage composer rather than the food columnist for Homey Slums . John Satmost wanted to be a musician but couldn’t play an instrument. Pavlos Cristoforos, of the Eastern Hub Authority Daily Post , was so disgusted with the offerings of the contemporary film industry, he made this astonishing film to show he could do it better. Nobody, as far as I know, can deduce how he fit those elephants into the Empire State Building. (My theory: he brought them up there as calves and hid them until the time was right.) Maria Maquerone took funds out of her mother’s Review of Contemporary Detention Architecture to build her mysterious huts. Ronald Leslie, Albertine Wu, Reginald Montola. There are many precedents. That most of them were failures doesn’t concern me. If anything, they failed because they didn’t go far enough.

The Central Hub Slaw ’s Autumn Affair was Friday. I declined the invitation ping. Wanted to see Flypaper that night. Jonson insisted I attend. Tired of having his reviews edited for length, he bought the company.

The old owners, three sweaty brothers who inherited it from their mom, were salivating to unload.

Jonson said, Phil Seel tipped me off that they owe some bad people money. Gambling on soccer matches they thought were fixed. I’ll flip it to an electronics conglomerate when our film comes out. It would be a conflict of interest to be in the media and in the arts. I had to reduce my liquidity for tax reasons. Steven, the old copy editor, butchered my review of Handsome Scoundrels in Middle Age . I spent hours working on that review, explaining why Marcy, the film’s antagonist, deserved the benefit of the doubt. I haven’t worked so hard in years. I skipped a lunch with Lucretia to finish it. After the purchase, I sent her a memo making my wishes clear.

Marcy did not deserve the benefit of the doubt. This was Jonson’s coffee talking.

Alaia, our editor. A person’s self-regard increases with the number of vowels in their name. I have been unable to determine if her efforts to raise our profile are cynical boosterism or a passion to let people know about the Market MicroOpera, the Peavey Place Puppeteers, and the Children’s Noh Collective. Those who took a liberal arts degree but also expect to make a living allow their public and private sides to grow together until the observer cannot distinguish if he is beholding a genuine cretin or a person whose faith in networking is akin to a religion.

Because there are fewer opportunities for trading favors and meeting potential employers in the review of films than there are in the rest of the sections, Alaia leaves Jonson and I alone. We do not go to the office except for pilferage missions and catered lunches.

It was I who was shortening Jonson’s reviews, including Flypaper , Maquilla’s crossover from tame pop to bland film, along with inserting belligerent asides, transposing character genders, and seeding minds with offensive slang I made up on the rail. I bribe the copy editor with leftover painkillers from my oral surgery. It is a public service I perform without expectation of reward.

Alaia has never read our reviews. I will prove this to you. She gets cash payments from the chairwoman of the Hub Authority Governance Committee to favorably cover her crooked administration. Restaurants comp her meals and send out bottles of Fauxrdeaux, mille-feuilles , vat-grown crudo. She has Becca or Rich give them a rave. The whole Slaw being her hustle. She touches every buck. Ad money goes in her pocket. The music writers are paid by entertainment conglomerates. It’s all noise. None of the writers mind, as long as they get the attention they seek.

When you click on my column tomorrow, you will see this review unaltered between the ads for the escorts and the pet psychics. Nobody at the aggregator reads the aggregator. It is my fantasy that all across the Hub, twice a week, theatergoers thumb down to my column in the Slaw with their morning protein goo and their coffee. I have been reluctant to ascertain my actual readership.

At the diner, the day before the party.

Jonson said, So why do you want to make a film about a painter? You hate period pieces.

I said, There’s a difference between a period piece and a film woven from the tapestry of the past. Big ideas need a grand, let’s say, canvas. My theme, the everlasting power of art and its physical existence on a superior plane of reality, would tear through the tissue of a film set in the unabsorbent present.

Jonson said, That reminds me, I had a big idea. It was for a service which would perform apologies for you. I called it Sorriest. A Sorriest rep would sit down with you, and you would delve into the real shit that you think about when you’re in bed late at night, like the time you stole Jeni Morales’s ice cream in elementary school, or if, in many moments of weakness, you strayed from your wife. The Sorriest rep would follow the hurt person around for a few weeks, observing their habits, and then they would perform a specially tailored Grand Apology as a surprise. For you, to give an example, the reps would rent out a theater, stock the bar with Choco Gongs, and screen Inquisitor . The Apologies will culminate in the customer entering in a cream caftan, arms spread for a hug, while a children’s choir sings “I Beg Your Forgiveness.” Maybe we could get a sponsorship thing going, and I could get this off the ground. How do you feel about Altarpiece : brought to you by Sorriest? Then the painter needs to apologize—

I said, No.

Jonson said, Well, you want to make this grand gesture, right? I could round up a lot of money for Sorriest. Cross-promotion does wonders. Haupt took Transit money for Omega .

Philistines always pick this fact about Haupt out of their pocket, where it lies with their grimy coins and ticket stubs for blood sport.