Rudolph Wurlitzer - Slow Fade

“I’m happy for you,” she said as they both turned and looked out their separate windows.

The driver let them out in front of a run-down five-story loft building in lower Manhattan. Wesley, who had thought they were going to NBC, asked the driver if he had made a mistake.

“It’s a cable station,” the driver said. “It’s where they told me to take you.”

They walked up four flights to the top floor and were greeted by a thin young man in wire-rimmed glasses who carried a large manila envelope which he dropped as he shook Wesley’s hand. Staring up from the floor were old publicity stills of Wesley kissing some of the stars he had directed.

“I’m hysterical,” the young man said, bending down to pick up the stills. “I’m also your TV Host or interviewer or whatever.”

They followed him into the studio, a small rectangular room with two swivel armchairs facing each other on a low stage against a background of false brick. In front of the stage two dozen film aficionados waited for Wesley’s arrival. Among them A.D. and Sidney, with Sidney filming Wesley and Evelyn coming through the door.

Wesley put up his hands, experiencing real terror.

Sidney reacted by swinging around and shooting Evelyn and then panning the audience.

“Have you heard from your son and heir?” A.D. asked Wesley, holding a microphone in front of him.

“I read the latest pages.”

“How do they play?”

Wesley didn’t answer, watching Evelyn as she walked away to stand alone behind the audience.

But A.D. pressed on: “I can tell you one thing, the pages from Walker might be flat but your footage plays. When you’re at your worst it plays better than when you’re at your best, everything you do in front of the lens is magic, Wesley. . ”

Wesley didn’t listen to the rest of it, walking over to the stage to sit down in front of the TV Host, who quickly introduced him:

“My next guest needs no introduction to a New York audience, having been much in the news lately with two separate lawsuits against M-G-M as well as several controversial public statements about the state of the film business in general and many of its more notorious participants in particular. He is also, of course, one of this country’s finest and most successful directors, having made thirty-seven films. Among film buffs he’s mentioned in the same breath with such legendary figures as John Ford, Howard Hawks, and Sam Peckinpah. He’s also a man who has recently stated that the less said about the process of making films the better. . Wesley Hardin, I’m honored that you’re here.”

When Wesley didn’t respond, the TV Host went on anyway.

“Given your aversion for interviews, do you find it a contradiction to find yourself here?”

“Where am I exactly?”

“Cable Television. Notes Along the Celluloid Trail .”

“I thought this was NBC.”

“Would that make a difference?”

Wesley didn’t hear the question, his attention drawn toward Sidney, who was standing at the back filming the interview. The idea of being manipulated inside someone else’s film made Wesley suddenly thoughtful, as if for the first time he was actually considering the possibilities. The TV Host broke the silence with another question.

“When most of your contemporaries have either passed away or have retired, it seems remarkable that you should keep on making films.”

“Not remarkable,” Wesley said finally. “Sad, maybe, and boring.”

“Even so, you must still manage to find satisfaction in the process. Otherwise why proceed, especially when faced with such obstacles as those you’ve suffered recently from M-G-M?”

“Bad habits. If I’m not on the trail of a story or a project, I’m anguished and full of rage. I’m convinced I’m going to die.”

“In that case let’s hope you’re on the trail of a story.”

“I am. It’s at a very sloppy and intuitive stage, involving members of my family fooling around in a foreign locale. The producer is sitting right over there. He can tell it better than I can.”

The Host feigned surprise and enthusiasm. “I see that he’s also filming you. Is that part of the project?”

“I have no idea. You’d have to ask him.”

“Speaking of your family, is it true that your daughter was named after John Ford’s My Darling Clementine ?”

“No. But I admire the pace and scale of that film. No one does work like that any more. He was secure in his beliefs, I suppose. You don’t have a real drink, do you? Something that will get me through this?”

“I don’t think we’re allowed.”

Wesley nodded as if he had heard something profound. He stood up, saying he would be back in a moment, but then changed his mind and called on A.D. to come up and talk about what they were working on. “I don’t want to leave you in the lurch,” he told the Host, introducing A.D. and then walking back to talk to Evelyn, who was putting on her coat. The camera stayed with A.D. and the Host, who was drawing laughs with his deadpan confusion.

“I take it you are the producer of this project?” the Host began.

A.D. was trying to relax and present a contained and authoritative image, but he wasn’t succeeding. His eye kept darting over toward Wesley, who was standing against the far wall talking to Evelyn. At one point Sidney came in for a close-up and Wesley said something that made him turn and walk out of the studio.

“. . and so, how did all this come about?” the Host was asking.

A.D. paused, as if gathering himself together, then smiled directly into the camera.

“I’ve always been a fan, you know? I’ve seen all the great films. And when I had a chance to put together a deal with Wesley Hardin, I jumped. Wesley wants to work with his family and I respect that. It’s altogether a new process for both of us. A departure film. You won’t have seen this kind of a story before from Wesley Hardin. I shouldn’t say this with him over there, but it’s so rare to work with a man his age who still hasn’t lost it. I’ve learned a lot from him. I didn’t know anything about film before I met him. I thought I did, but I didn’t. To be able to put together a deal around him, well, it makes you think about yourself in a different way. . ”

A.D. looked over to see how Wesley was receiving all this. He was sitting alone in the back, Evelyn having disappeared.

“We don’t mean to exclude you,” the Host called out to Wesley. “Please, come on back, Wesley Hardin. We love you.”

The crowd laughed and cheered, and when A.D. stood up to applaud Wesley as he stepped up onto the podium, they applauded as well.

ON LEAVING the studio, Evelyn hailed a cab and went directly back to the Sherry Netherland. After she had poured herself a drink she noticed Walker’s manila envelope lying on the coffee table in the living room. The image of Walker out there on the road coming closer and closer made her finally open the envelope and read the enclosed pages, if only to learn when he might arrive.

EXTERIOR. NEW DELHI — DAWN. . Jim and Lacey are ready to roll, the Chrysler piled high with water containers, canned goods, camping equipment, suitcases, cameras, tape decks, and even a lightweight table and two folding director’s chairs. . They drive through the parched desolate countryside, through town after town jammed with an endless stream of people and the usual slow choked images of water buffaloes, cows, beggars, broken-down buses, etc. The tape deck plays Rod Stewart’s “Standing in the Shadows of Love,” and they sit back within the safe air-conditioned cocoon of the huge car, sightseers, voyeurs of a world they cannot touch, feel, or hear. . They slow to pass a funeral, the body carried on a freshly cut bamboo stretcher, wrapped in a grass mat and covered with flowers. Behind the body walk the mourners. For a brief moment they surge around the car, blinking at the strange apparitions inside. Lacey turns down Rod Stewart and they can hear the chanting: “Hare nam satya hai, Ram Nam satya hai.” “God is truth.”. . But then the car passes through and the moment is just another image on the road. .