Dana Spiotta - Eat the Document

No, after I got home from Gage’s, I went to work on the Internet. I went to the site most likely to sell copies of the film: www.undergroundmedia.com, where a year earlier I had in fact purchased a very distant-generation bootleg DVD copy of Eat the Document (the notorious never-released documentary about Dylan’s ’66 gone-electric tour). They said the Lost Love Movie was not available. I kept trolling around until I finally found a site that listed the film. It was part of the neo-Luddite Web ring and only sold original-format items: Super 8 films, 16-millimeter film, reel-to-reel audio. They said they no longer had it. But they directed me to someone else who archived a site devoted to outlaws. I discovered the Lost Love Movie was made by Bobby Desoto, who made several underground films as part of a collective before they set off a series of bombs to protest the war and went underground in the early ’70s.

I started to feel physically ill, nauseated, but I couldn’t grasp it all yet.

Desoto is still at large, as well as others from his bombing and film-making collective, so naturally people are interested in him.

Now I was starting to fit it together. It all fit together.

The guy from the website finally agreed to sell me a copy of the Super 8 and 16-millimeter films made by the collective. But he said he was an Original Formatter and refused to transfer it to video on principle; in fact, he made me swear I would never transfer it to video, so I had to get that done somewhere else. I bought not only the Lost Love Movie but all the Bobby Desoto he had, three films. And when I finally had the transfer, all contained on a VHS tape with a blank label, I locked my door and settled in for a look.

Here’s exactly what I saw:

FILM 1:

A black screen. “Love” appears, in flowing, fat, cartoony script. This is Super 8. There is a sound track. No music, but people talking, out of sync with the images. Not slightly out of sync but deliberately off, not even close. There are scenes of an interview where you hear nothing but cars going by, then scenes in the park where you hear the interview. It was kind of cool, actually. And then a freeway scene, sort of cliché L.A. stuff, but there, briefly, is my mother. She has long, straight brown hair center-parted and pulled flat and smooth behind her ears. She wears those round, oversized John Lennon glasses. She is smiling and then seems to ask Lee some questions, but all you hear is music (the gorgeous opening riff from “Alone Again Or”—a song from ’67, not ’69, but never mind). Lee mouths an answer to her questions, and then there is a close-up of my mother’s face. She looks, well, playful. She laughs, then glances off camera — a shy, flirty move. She’s having fun. Then it cuts to the band playing, but now you hear the interview, and I hear my mother’s voice say, “What do you call it, your type of music?” And then Lee answers, “Love, baby, can’t you feel it?” and then the remarkable sound of my mother’s laugh. Then it ends. The credits list the names of the band members; Desoto’s art collective, Soft Art Film Elastic, or SAFE; and the interviewer, apparently my mother — Mary Whittaker.

FILM 2:

A stop-action animation film, silent, again Super 8, made with G.I. Joe dolls. And doctored Barbie dolls. Intercut with army films, recruiting films, corporate in-house films. Artifacts, found clips, stolen and recontextualized. I think I have heard of this film. A rather silly send-up of corporate militarism, but well made, and hey — the first, perhaps, of its kind?

FILM 3:

This film is noted as the last, 1972. It is 16 millimeter, I think. It is called “The Scientist.” It shows an old man being hounded obnoxiously by this dick one assumes must be Desoto. The film cuts to a speedy montage of some shots of corporate headquarters signs: Dow, Monsanto, General Dynamics, Westinghouse, Raytheon, Magnavox, Honeywell and Valence. Not the subtlest film I ever saw. Again, credited to the collective SAFE (but now it stood for Soft Art Film Efflux). And again, under the listed members of the collective: Mary Whittaker.

I don’t really know what to make of this. I have to find out more about the collective and Desoto. And Mary Whittaker.

NASH HEARD someone approach from behind as he locked up Prairie Fire. He turned cautiously. Miranda stood there, somewhat winded, hair loose around her shoulders. It was cold, and her breath made little mists in front of her open mouth. He smiled at her and pocketed his keys. She put her hand on his arm and looked up at him.

“What does Miranda want from me?” Nash said. He liked saying her name. She just stood there looking at him. Both of them waited, and then Nash leaned over and kissed her. She pulled herself closer to him and the kiss — harder than he expected, actually — until their lips slid apart and the one kiss became small, slow, breathy kisses on neck and ears. Slow, but urgent still. Nash breathed for a moment into her long hair; he held himself against the skin just below her ear and paused there. Miranda clutched at him. He couldn’t feel much of anything through his wool peacoat, but he pressed against her anyway. She then tried to pull back for a second full kiss, but he wanted to stay where he was, where he was breathing through her hair, his hands now on both sides of her head. She smelled, variously, of stale, all-night cigarettes; something citrus and dried; flowers also, or perfume oil. Something else too, a vegetal brightness, not decayed but living, a woman-skin musk, barely there.

She took his hand and walked him back to his house, no longer smiling, and then she stopped suddenly on the stairs leading up to his doorway. She didn’t turn around but stood there in front of him. He stepped up and pressed against her back and legs. She leaned back into him.

This is the best moment I will ever have, he thought, but it was already over, they were on their way up the stairs. She undressed quickly. It was cold, and she got under the covers, leaving just her panties on. Then she reached under the sheets and took those off and tossed them on her pants and blouse on the floor.

This is the best moment I will ever have.

This is great good luck.

Nash felt the same thing again as he sat by the window early the next morning and watched the sun come up. He looked at Miranda asleep in his bed. Her hair was in her face, and he could just see her lips and nose. He watched her stir, push the hair out of her closed eyes and then sink back into sleep. He sipped some water. The worn oak floor reflected light, the sky brightened from deep blue to light blue and Miranda finally pulled herself up on the bed, smiling.

Miranda had been at a bar in Belltown with Sissy. At ten o’clock she decided to take a walk up Pike Street, over the freeway, and up to Fifteenth Avenue. She made it there just as Nash was locking up. She thought of a funny thing to say, but when he turned around she just smiled. He seemed so surprised. Then almost resigned when she put her hand on his arm. She didn’t expect that he would kiss her, but as he did she realized why she was there. She held his head and kissed him again. She was cold, and she felt the warmth of his body. She decided they should continue indoors. Partially she was cold, and partially she couldn’t help thinking of Josh, or Josh’s friends, seeing them on the street.

She practically dragged him up the steps, so quickly was she moving; then she stopped abruptly near the top so Nash almost crashed into her. She didn’t turn around when she felt him behind her but leaned back, gently, into him. She liked this long body pause, the tease of it. Something you can barely stand to do.