Steve Erickson - Zeroville

“You want to make a movie of your father,” says Vikar, looking at the little old man on the set, “and Viking Man’s movie and old documentaries and the movie with the naked Dutch actress?”

“You keep saying this viking.”

Vikar says, “I don’t believe I can make this movie you want.”

Cooper Léon’s face goes cold. “This has been a civil conversation, has it not?”

“I’m very busy with the other movie.”

“It has been a pleasant conversation, no?”

“All right.”

“Let us not be uncivil. Let us not be unpleasant. You will do this.”

Vikar looks at the.45 on the table and at the stage behind Cooper Léon.

“Pablo,” Cooper Léon calls. One of the other men raises a handheld camera.

“Viking Man’s movie,” Vikar nods at the cans of film on the editing table, “is about long ago. It’s about the desert and people who ride horses and wear robes and have swords. I don’t believe,” he says, “your movie is going to make sense.”

Cooper Léon smiles, having anticipated this objection. “Señor,” he says, “do you know of Buñuel?”

“Yes.”

“He is known in your country?”

“People who know about movies know about him.”

“He is considered a good director?”

“Yes.”

“Your great American novelist Henry Miller said, ‘They call Buñuel many things but they do not call him a lunatic.’ Señor Vicar, have you seen a film by Buñuel that makes sense?”

“No. I believe the movie of Catherine Deneuve getting splattered with mud is a very good movie.”

“That is my favorite as well,” Cooper Léon nods. “The mud splattering especially.”

153.

Vikar says, “Do you know Buñuel yourself?”

“This is what I have just said.”

“I mean, do you know Buñuel?”

“You mean Buñuel the man?”

“Yes.”

“Buñuel has not been in Spain a long time.”

“Do you know his daughter?”

“I know of no daughter. I know he has sons.”

“No daughter?”

“If Buñuel had a daughter, would he not acknowledge it?”

“You would be surprised,” says Vikar, “what fathers do to their children.”

154.

The car returns Vikar to his hotel where he sleeps three hours, then rises to find the car waiting to take him to the cutting room where he edits Viking Man’s movie. Every night the car picks up Vikar from the cutting room; three or four other men are always in the car, where Vikar is blindfolded but his hands are no longer bound. By night Vikar “directs” the death of the Generalissimo, starring Cooper Léon’s papa. By day he cuts Viking Man’s Barbary pirate movie.

155.

As the Generalissimo’s death is filmed, one of the Soldiers of Viridiana cooks what the men call the “Basque Breakfast”—although it’s the middle of the night — a hash of fried eggs, potatoes, onions and chopped tomatoes. It becomes the one thing Vikar looks forward to, eating it out of the skillet with the other men and drinking it down with Spanish red wine.

Pablo with the handheld camera shoots the Generalissimo’s death scene from every angle. For the “lights” on the makeshift soundstage, three stainless-steel standing floor lamps that twist into shapes appear to have been liberated from a gynecologist’s office. Cooper Léon’s papa is lit and shot in every position that might conceivably suggest a dictator on the verge of death. Vikar shoots and shoots night after night because, first of all, he has heard that when a director has no idea what he’s doing, he should shoot as much film as possible, and because, second, he’s trying to prolong the filming so that he might finish Viking Man’s movie first and slip out of the country.

“Perhaps you should moan,” Vikar suggests to Cooper Léon’s papa during filming. For a “soundstage,” the set is remarkably absent of any kind of sound equipment — perhaps, Vikar believes, because it’s the style of European filmmaking to dub in the sound later. Nonetheless Vikar also believes Cooper Léon’s papa should moan even if no one can hear it; the camera will hear it. These directions are translated to Cooper Léon’s papa and he moans. I don’t believe it’s a very good moan, Vikar thinks. But perhaps this is the way they moan in Spain when they’re dying. “Perhaps,” Vikar says to the translator, reconsidering, “he should not moan,” and Cooper Léon’s papa stops moaning.

156.

Two weeks pass. Cutting Viking Man’s movie by day and the movie for the Soldiers of Viridiana by night, Vikar feels not only his eyes going but whatever distinctions onto which he’s been able to hold. In Cooper Léon’s movie, Vikar intercuts footage of Cooper Léon’s papa in bed with the old documentary footage of the Generalissimo and left-over shards of Viking Man’s movie, to show the Generalissimo flooded by memories and strange dreams as he dies. Bits of the sequence in Viking Man’s movie where the Berber chieftain chops off the thief’s head become a dream in which the Generalissimo as a child has his own head chopped off by his father, dressed in the black robes of death.

Vikar believes perhaps the movie doesn’t look so much like Buñuel. He’s also not certain how Viking Man would feel about some of his movie making its way into a movie by the Soldiers of Viridiana. Cooper Léon insists that a bit of the French movie with the naked Dutch actress should be included, preferably some stray moment from the film’s “most superb scene” where the young bride is raped in an opium den. At the same time, Cooper Léon doesn’t want his print of the French movie too violated; Vikar decides to surgically remove a single frame from the opium den scene and drop it into the Generalissimo movie. He feels a bit like God doing this, sending a clandestine message to anyone who sees the movie. “But no one will see only a single frame,” Cooper Léon protests.

“They will not see it but they will,” says Vikar.

Cooper Léon’s eyes narrow. “They will not see it but they will,” he repeats slowly, then again, “ they will not see it but they will! It is like a secret weapon, then, that explodes in the imagination of the viewer!”

“Yes.”

Cooper Léon looks at Vikar and his eyes glisten. “You are a man of vision,” he declares quietly.

“Uh.”

“Spain is fortunate you were sent in this trying hour.”

157.

Editing the death of the Generalissimo, Vikar notices that in scenes shot from one side Cooper Léon’s papa is not ominous in the least, but that in scenes shot from the other side, a menace presents itself that was unseen either on the stage or in the camera’s lens. It’s as though one profile of the old man is possessed in a way that only film captures. He uses all the footage from the menacing profile and rejects the rest.

158.

One night, after sleepless nights and days of Vikar working on both movies, the car that always waits for him isn’t there.

Vikar gets a taxi back to his hotel. The next morning at the hotel, the car still isn’t there, nor that night, nor the next morning and night. It never appears again. The driver never returns, and no one brings Vikar lunch.

Sitting at the window of his hotel room one night, Vikar notes out of the corner of his eye the mirror over the bathroom sink, and in it his reflection.

159.

Looking at his reflection in the mirror, Vikar thinks about the scenes of Cooper Léon’s papa and how by cutting to someone’s right or left profile in the editing, he can expose something. He can expose the side of the person that’s true and the side that’s false. He can expose the side that’s good and the side that’s evil.