John Domini: Movieola!

For the opening we go with The Arrival of the Hit Men. That’s the way to make a trailer, a hundred seconds or so of grabber screentime: start with killers in an airport. No need to be crass about it. No need for any kind of race thing, religion thing, politics thing. Pure fear, that’s what we want, the lowdown cello throb like someone’s pulling a bow right across the spinal column. And what are you watching? A couple of adorable kids holding hands, waiting at the metal detector, and some clean-cut Homeland Security gunman giving them a worry-free smile (works best if the kids are white, the soldier black)…but meanwhile, behind them, in just-perceptible slo-mo, two guys whose getup screams Made . Made men and vain about it, in their long, pomade-heavy hair, their knee-length closet-creased black leather coats (belt, no zipper; no faggy excess). Of course they’ve got their sunglasses on too, even as they emerge from the ramp into JFK or O’Hare.

The arrival of the hit men, the first six seconds, seven seconds, and just like that, everyone in the theater’s into some madness they can never make sense of. The story hook’s sunk so deep even Ebert himself couldn’t spit it out. One of the killers has acne scars, a pocked and webbed jawline to suggest his soul’s compromises, and to give his victim a good scare to go on—the last face you’ll see. Let’s get their reflections too. Let’s use that floor-to-ceiling security partition, a wan Plexiglas mirror that catches the darker glimmer of their twinned Ray-Bans. See them looming behind a couple scotch-for-lunch businessmen in sloppy lowhung slacks. A foxy young mom wouldn’t hurt either, cooing over her baby while she’s wearing nightclub lipstick. Yes, that’s Hook Number One: a shadow of the shadow-bringers.

Number Two, we can’t make this trailer without the Aging Rock Star Recording with a Gospel Choir. Nothing will do except a beer-faced forty- or fifty-something, his small pale hand disappearing inside the darker paws of the choir leader for Something-or-Other Baptist Church. Yes, what a grip on that choir leader! He’s got both hands into his greeting, and his paired fists are as humped and black as a gun bulging under a leather jacket. We’ll need maybe five seconds just for that handshake, that shared smile; let the cameras wheel around both men. The rocker’s smile isn’t quite there yet, a grimace as shapeless as windblown cocaine, no way to connect the dots. But not many people can claim teeth and cheekbones like his new fig-brown friend, the kind of smile that made him a natural to play “Choir Leader.” A Satchmo smile, box-framed by a strong Ashanti face. It fills the screen while the actual leader hides behind the organ in her bifocals and dentures, her early-Aretha process.

Hey, we know what a choir leader’s supposed to look like. The man we picked, what’s so great about his high-intensity beaming is the way it’s set off by all that’s out of focus behind him, the actual leader plus the rest of the singers. Their faces lurk like brown outgrowths (though don’t forget the lipstick) atop their purple robes. Everyone glitters obscurely under the halogen lamps. More shadow, see? In the airport or behind the smile, we always give our audience that smear of the dark.

Hold the handshake till whitey’s own grinning improves. Because it does improve; he’s thinking of a comeback. In fact the star’s earlier Top Forty number might work for us, a few bars anyway, a few low strokes of the cello sketching out an old prom ballad. We’ll get the guys in Music on it, some weeper as sloppy as the adult-fit slacks the rock star has to wear these days. So then as the shot culminates with the so-called choir leader, the so-called star will go all twinkle, twinkle again, thinking what kind of advance the company might be good for. He needs a good-sized chunk of change to pay off Rat the Scumbag. And he’s heard that Rat the Scumbag has run out of patience and called in a couple of bad guys.

From there it’s straight to the chorus of the new number, the so-called singer-songwriter out front with his guitar (a big full-bodied thing to hide his gut), while behind him we keep that hint of blur working, the choir out of focus. Everyone’s into the tune of course, swaying and clapping. We can’t go so soft-focus that we don’t see the leader and his Satchmo smile again as some key phrase rises, a couple of words like “I know,” or rather ahuhyiii-yiiii nyuh-nyuh-ohhh . Then we catch the star really smiling. Really, he’s smiling, and not just because he’s thinking of something new for the Top Forty, something “with a bullet.” It’s like a fresh a-yi-yi out of the warrior brave you thought was killed during some previous fight choreography; it’s a moment when the guy’s heart, more than half-pickled and way over-pampered, has been restored to its proper exercise and joy. There’s a better climax coming after all. Anything’s possible.

Though the singer out front never casts a glance behind him. No. That’s not possible. Nobody cares about the choir and their undulations. We’ll leave that ripple and eddy soft-focus: the shipwreck behind us.

Plus, what kind of a flick would this be without the Happy Lesbian Couple at Home? Got to get that in here, a pair of slender late risers around the kitchen counter, bantering and kissyface, in great lipstick. Two blondes work best, two shades of blonde, one the dark of a tinted window, the other glimmering like silk under a lamp. That second girl, Glimmer-Hair, styles hers hetero, a housewife cut, but she’s also got one of those macho scoop-&-strap undershirts. The sort of undershirt a hit man would wear. Our movie’s not too PG to prevent the girlfriend, Tint-Hair, from taking advantage of that undershirt a little, yanking on the scoop to reveal, over the heart, the blossom of some long-stemmed tattoo. Now if the blossom’s over the heart, then the root must be…. But there’s no need to be crass about it. Just the opposite; this is the sympathy moment. We’ve got to catch just the right beat of the dialogue too. Got to make sure that everybody out there watching knows that everybody who made this movie knows that, whenever these two take a break from sucking on each other’s cunts, they’re just the same as the rest of us.

So the bright Formica, the glitter of banter, the hefty Starbucksware. When the darker blonde starts stretching for her run, her slit shorts are as pretty as the eggs and fruit. Out in the seats everyone gets a tick or two of comfort, in the sunshine that glides over the flimsy fabric that glides over those taut…those pert…. Everyone gets a moment for this slick-&-happy, and they can take it as far as they’d like, maybe even beyond the sex. Anything’s possible. Somebody might even go beyond these bodies in their packaging and get to a hint of happiness itself. Happiness, that undetectable fetus which kicks and stretches inside the sex.

Whatever. It’s only a beat, and then we spring the next stinger: these girls are taking revenge on their ex-boyfriend. Their ex the aging rock star, the man who first got this twosome together for a threesome.

Takes no more than a mention of the threebie, the least snip of a word and a glance. With that we go right for the craw: these girls are getting their former third party back but good. They’ve got him in the hole to Rat the Scumbag. We don’t need details, connect the dots. All we need, for the folks out in the seats, we gave them already. We gave them that first glimpse of the rock star’s face. That powder-strewn vacancy, I like to watch .