William Gaddis - A Folic Of His Own

— Oscar try to calm down. Here it is, Harry can read it I'm just going to look for that woman, I mean you know it's quite rude of you to call her that don't you, I'm sure she has a name and Harry? that bag of groceries?

— In the kitchen, on the floor by the sink, no look Oscar. The whole point of the…

— That ad yes. Based on a true story, did you see it?

— That's what I'm talking about, that's the…

— And the review there it is yes, there it is read it. Read it.

— Do you want the credits and all the…

— No no no later, no just read it.

— PATRIOTIC GORE IN NINETY MILLION DOLLAR SPECTACULAR. The full fury of what remains our nation's most searing rite of passage, the American Civil War, bursts from the screen in the epic proportions of this three hour, ninety million dollar saga of historical artifice and grisly reality, The Blood in the Red White and Blue, produced and directed by Hollywood's reigning wunderkind Constantine Kiester. Unlike the big budget pictures which followed Mister Kiester's initial gory box office triumph, the Africa extravaganza Urubu…

— Do you believe it? He made a big movie about Africa with these special effects that made you throw up so they give him ninety million '

dollars to make a Civil War movie with battle scenes that make you throw up, Constantine Kiester. Do you believe it? Nobody's named that. If you were named that you'd change it no but go on, read it. Go on.

— Unlike the big budget pictures which followed Mister Kiester's initial gory box office triumph, the Africa extravaganza Uruburu, both the Vietnam comedy Armageddon Blueplate Special and his 'twenties gangster satire The Rotten Club appeared to have been filmed unfettered by the restraints of a script, with a story patched together as an afterthought, whereas here he is fortunate in dealing from the start with a story line strong enough to accommodate even the severely limited talents of Robert Bredford in the leading role, that of a young man who resolves his divided loyalties in the country torn asunder by Civil War by sending up substitutes to fight in his place in both the Union and Confederate armies, where both are killed in the bloodiest…

— At Antietam isn't it! Isn't it?

— in the bloodiest single day of the war, September seventeenth eighteen sixty two, at the Antietam creek in…

— There, I told you! It's the same story it's exactly the same, they stole it. It's that simple, they stole it.

— You'd have to prove they stole it, Oscar.

— Well of course they did, it's my grandfather isn't it? the play I wrote about my own grandfather, it says it right there in their ad. Based on a true story, they…

— What I'm trying to tell you Oscar, don't you see? That can put it right out in the public domain where they can claim fair use, where anybody can use it, it's even been in some of the papers down there hasn't it? This trash they're printing about madness in your family? Trying to use these stories about your grandfather to get at your father over this Szyrk case they'll dig up anything they can, if you…

— Do you think they haven't called here? One of these, these mush-mouths from something called the South Georgia Pilot and how familiar was I with my grandfather's voting record on the Holmes Court back in the 'twenties pretty far over to the left he thought, maybe a little tainted with a breath of antiSemitism? antiniggra? That my great grandfather was in the diplomatic corps over there in France when the communists were acting up back in the eighteen forties and maybe I could tell him a little about my grandfather's second marriage? Ask him what the hell business that is of his and he says not his, no, the public, that it's history, it's the public's right to know, that the…

— What I'm trying to tell you Oscar. If they dig up things like this in the public domain they've got their First Amendment rights to publish pretty much whatever they…

— But why! Just to, talk about Father smoking three packages a day he didn't even start smoking cigarettes till he was seventy five whose business is that, just a good thing they never caught him on a spree examining his false teeth in the glass to see whether he'd had dinner the night before.

— Look just be patient, the village has appealed his decision and all this trash is just to build up pressure on the circuit court appointment, frankly I think he's going to be reversed and then he's out of the picture and the whole thing…

— Fine he's out of the picture fine, what about me? What about this movie they stole that's what this is really all about isn't it? What else does it say, go on.

— While his boyish charm is wearing rather thin, under Mister Kiester's energetic direction Mister Bredford manages the part of young Randal with enough brio and costume changes to bolster a sagging career, plunging into the early battle scenes with commendable bloodthirsty zeal, and handling himself convincingly enough in those steamily explicit sexual encounters where all eyes are, in any event, on the voluptuous attributes of the tempestuous daughter of the neighboring plantation, played with an abandon obscuring any notions of her own acting ability by the stunning Nordic-Eurasian discovery Anga Frika in her first American starring role, had enough?

— Yes. Go on.

— The crisis precipitating Randal's abrupt…

— The most ridiculous rubbish I've ever heard, there's nothing voluptuous about Giulielma at all that's the whole point. She's a shy lonely girl, she's not even supposed to be particularly pretty just, go on no, go on.

— The crisis precipitating Randal's abrupt departure from the Confederacy, following his heroic showing in the blood drenched battle sequence at Ball's Bluff, attested upon his return by a raw scar on his cheek which will lend him the credential of a dueling scar through the rest of the picture, is the threat of confiscation by the Federal government to extensive coal mining properties he inherits from an uncle in Pennsylvania where his cry for…

— No wait, stop. Stop! Did you hear that? that, that scar? on his cheek? Harry that's mine, that's in my play right at the start the same thing, the same battle Ball's Bluff the same battle he comes back with that scar on his cheek it's mine, it's right there in my play, Christina? Where is she, she's got to find it where is she, yes and then what. And then what.

— Pennsylvania, where his cry for justice, demanding…

— Yes in Pennsylvania, the uncle who dies in Pennsylvania and the coal mines yes and then what.

— demanding only what is his, echoes beyond the bugle's battlefield summons to the fatal confrontation between the Southerner's fierce love of the warm and fruitful land, and the cold hard cash to be blindly torn from the black depths of the Northern mines.

— Yes that's exactly what I…

— In more responsive hands, the characters of the two substitutes might have reflected the deeper opposing dualism of man's nature, but Mister Kiester has no time for such subtleties. The Northern substitute is no more than a brutalized excrescence of blind industrial slavery, while the South is personified by Ziff Davis, acclaimed for his portrayal of the sadistic pederast in Sick City, who seems to have wandered into the wrong picture from some subdivision of God's Little Acre in his depiction of sly depravity with all the…

— Yes listen to that! you see? That's exactly what he's not, what William in the play is not, he's a sensitive intelligent wait, Christina? Where have you been, listen…

— Her name is Use, Oscar. She was down in the laundry, she…

— Have you heard any of this? Listen you've got to find it, my play you have to find it, it's…

— In a black pebbled binder, I'll look for it after lunch. She's putting it on the table, now…