The Monolith

A friend asks, what's the meaning of the black rock in "2001 Space Odyssey". There's devilish intent in her question, she insists I answer. Perhaps I'll see if my thoughts are insanely stupid or short sighted, after I re-read them in a number of years:

One pernicious myth, perhaps just hubris, is that humans are the apex consciousness on our planet, even our galaxy. Never mind that we still do not understand consciousness, we believe, as children believe, we are the best at it. Wander through the Museum of Natural History to get the picture. Human evolution is the supreme act, the pinnacle story of life Earth, look there go the giant dinosaurs, inferior because they died out.

Call it the standard model. Sense a certain house-proud disregard for the other more primitive beasts. Witness our evolution, up from the apes. Dioramas of early human societies, displayed in the same manner as collected bison, and creatures from Africa and South America.

Astronomers have more or less proven, by means of mathematical probability, that other life forms not only exist, but actually are very prevalent in the universe, simply because the universe is so large and the abundance of other solar systems and planets so great.

It is also a mathematical certainty that life forms exist which surpass us in age, history, technological and intellectual might. They may not even be carbon or water based life forms! Those that are confident of the existence of extraterrestrial life know this in their guts. Others know it from first hand experience, claiming to have been contacted directly, or abducted. For Stanley Kubrick and Arthur Clarke in the late 1960's these were ground-breaking ideas.

What would contact with a higher level of consciousness feel like? How would we describe it? What would we see? Would the visitor leave signs, or a token that it had visited? I'll second what many before me have written and say the black monolith stands as a reminder left by a superior consciousness, that man has arrived at some stage of evolution, be it tool-making or space-travel . . . or life outside of time and space.

One might consider this notion another way. If the monolith is a sign of the passing presence of a superior intelligence, are we simply noticing it when we are ready to? In other words is the monolith put there for us to notice then, or now? On another axis, what evidence of superior life forms are we currently oblivious of, simply because our minds cannot recognize them as living?

And what if that alien consciousness does not live within three dimensions, like us, but rather exists in multiple dimensions? They would not be visible to us at all, unless, either intentionally or as a side effect of their presence, they left some sort of sign, like a crystal.

Hence that perfect black rock.

Godard

Tuesday December 20, 1983

Talks with PA on the phone about Jean-Luc Godard, and his recent film "Passion". Godard refuses to let any thought, character, location, even synchronization of soundtrack with picture, become certitude, as if anything established or accepted in conventional film language were death itself. Instead his language evolves into a new kind of 'anti-fabric', of film syntax. He enjoys flirting with norms and conventions, then disrupting, corrupting, overwhelming in obsessive and destructive bouts.

It's a film about activities, about a filmset, about fornications in a nearby hotel, about the hirings and firings at a local manufacturer, all mishmashed together, with all the connecting tissue somehow implied, never explained, always glimpsed with pieces missing, so much missing that the story ultimately, if one could say there was a story, has to be imagined.

It's a film about flux, flux as in solder, flowing hot sputtering always at the verge of congealing and becoming hard, but by constantly applying the hot iron Godard keeps the flows of energy moving forward, abandoning the present for something more present, more of the 'now' never quite getting behind enough to call it 'past', a film whose dialogue can never quite be annealed together into anything that could be labelled a logical statement. The film makes no statement, it is anti-statement, and insists that over and over again by leading the viewer to expect some sort of logical clue or tidbit of storyline logic ala the normal expository manner of directing and writing, instead Godard revels in disappointment of this faculty. What is left over but film itself, the images, and the soundtrack which do nothing to explain each other, yet somehow dance. He has taken the rucksack of modern cinema and emptied it out onto the table, cut it up, added perturbed visions, macerations, and dislocutions and dislocations. This becomes then a dizzying ride, an emptying out of the barrel, an expurgation of the clotted nonsense and all that linear time-flow exposition has become.

"Here is what I don't mean!" he shouts at his viewer, or, "It means nothing here either!" . . ."What you are seeing is imaginary!", . . . "This happened on a set!" . . . "I contrived this".

His vignettes, are insets of bit of drama which pretend to be his actor/models 'true' orientations or preferences . .  and then once viewed, we realize these too have been contrived.

What Godard has cut OUT of "Passion", are all the elements around which all other feature films seem to be constructed. He's abandoned the very elements which most filmmakers deem essential, story, consistency of character, logic, cause and effect. He introduces no characters, establishes nothing, neither time-line, space or character. The order of events, the normal dramatic 'glue' is not to be found. Not the tiniest element fastened to anything else. And by so defeating the natural lignin holding the film corpus together, he defeats memory itself. The whole structure collapses into the bowels of the subconscious, split seconds after viewing each shot.

Meaning derives from association, not connection or direction. He fears we'll know or learn too much about his formula, which after all is anti-formula, or his characters which are anti-character, or his locations which are anti-location. It seems to be Godard's task as director to prevent us from sating our curious minds to finish whatever he starts in ways that we are used to, conscious that those leaps of imagination are the real film, and that bits of celluloid are merely the inconsequential head and tail of the mind-shot, the identifying slates to a never recorded mental-work, a black spot or abyss whose mystery would disappear if ever a light were made to shine upon it. So we constantly circle and touch with our eyes closed but never invade with the film medium, only with the film possibility. That possibility is of the thing we imagine, an assembly of starts and stops with the centers missing, the center he knows lies fully crafted within our psyche.

-:-

Talks with Michael at Cafe Dante over cafe amarettos. Mike's full of thoughts, responses to my updates on Merchant-Ivory developments. Mostly we spoke about Ismail, the need to see scripts developed, a little like the tending of a good seed bed, a nursery of ideas. This Ismail does not see the value of. I think I said something like the direction of Merchant Ivory is being decided by what Ismail reads before going to bed.

All Day at Work

Thursday December 15, 1983

All day at work in the editing room, with Jim, Cathy and Ruth, forming a new strategy for re-cutting "The Bostonians". 

Jim and Ruth and I sat around the Steenbeck today on stools, with Cathy keeping careful notes, and having a lot of very good ideas. We made excellent progress.

Ruth as usual was very strong minded,"Jim, you MUST get rid of that. Horrible. Cut it out!"

Ruth has fire.

Cornered by his writer, Jim fights for each of his scenes like a loyal promoter. They're hard to let go, but the film's in danger of becoming too long. We have the luxury of being able to cut aggressively.

Christopher Reeve and Vanessa Redgrave carry the drama. Madeleine Potter played the femme fatale, Verena Tarrant. Alas, Chris never felt fire for her. I wish he had, it'd be an easier edit. Testosterone pulls through a cut like nothing else.

Ruth insisted we play up the tension between Chris and Vanessa. We came up with a plan:

I'm to recut the film from the beginning. Cathy will resume editing where J____ left off. This means she'll work with virgin rushes, untouched by an editor's knife, whereas my footage will be riddled with splices and pieces of tape. I'll see all the areas J______ struggled over. However I'm to work at the Steenbeck, and Cathy, who has experience cutting on a Moviola, will use that. A Moviola has the tendency to chew up film, especially footage that's been heavily worked on. The Steenbeck is wonderfully gentle. The Moviola, in the hands of a pro is marvelous. I love it for track-work, but not for editing picture.

We've crammed our assistants, Jim and the film into a room at 1619 Broadway that's way too small for such a beehive of activity. Cathy runs the Moviola back and forth. I can tell by the way she runs it that her cuts are based on soundtrack. Not my style, but it works. I prefer to use picture to drive through the cuts, movement on the incoming frame or finding movements from the outgoing to bring in the new shot.

Image vs. Sound. It's a duality, but image came first, lodged first in the psyche, flickered first on the screen. One might say it carries the day. It is the film. Without the image we'd be cutting tracks for radio. Once an editor begins a project and whets his observations to dialogue, and takes cues from the soundtrack, in a sublet way the audience adjusts. They begin to follow the track more than what they see. However if the editor's knife looks carefully at every frame, even if it is endless 'dialogue scenes', noticing eye-blinks, reactions, twitches of the face, steely jaws, coldness, a warmth in the eyes, and cuts to those phenomena, then the audience will notice with their eyes these things as well. The sound will then be where I believe it should stay in film, back slightly, towards the subconscious.

Over the years working with Humphrey I've learned quite a few of these sound-based tricks. One of my favorites involves cutting picture during the hiss of the letter 's'. The white-noise sibilance of the letter carries the eye over almost any visual difficulty. Not to be overused! Other useful syllables to cut on, "P" and "B" for incoming dialogue.

Again, I prefer cutting on the visiuals, on movement to bring in each new shot, or . . . . dead stillness. . . . . as a moment of reflection. If I'm in doubt about a cut I turn the volume off, and run it as a silent picture.

One must allow the mind to slow down in film. A tightly edited picture often forgets this.

At six o'clock I excused myself and ran off to the Museum of Modern Art to see Jim's film "Autobiography of a Princess". I'm glad he insisted I leave work to see it. It is the first picture Humphrey ever edited, and one of Jim's very best. I was quite taken back by it, shocked actually by how good it was.

James Mason, Madhur Jaffrey in: "Autobiography of a Princess" 

dir. James Ivory, 1975, edited by Humphrey Dixon

It is undeniably, a very sophisticated picture, with a lot to say. Parts of it are clumsily filmed, but they succeed. Images don't leave the head. I rode a subway home, cashed a check at the Grand Union, got rained on, then caught a late showing of "Claire's Knee" at the Bleecker.

It's hard to put feelings for these two films into words. They are similar, in many ways:

Erich Rhoemer's work is masterfully composed, filmed, with tightly controlled performances. The brilliant countryside around green Lake Geneva, the lush colors of summer, the bright prow of the protagonists red motorboat interplay with the doubts and fears of the cast. The careful use of color  is not similar - "Autobiography" could never aspire to any particular 'look' as it's composed of archival Indian footage mixed with acted roles, that are performed almost as if on a small theater set.

But compositionally, as a film, it's every bit as controlled as Rhoemer's masterpiece.

What's similar are the consistencies of character, The sentiments that emanate from the different beings beam forth throughout each picture, from the beginning right through to the end.

What else is character, but that which cannot change?  It spills out of the screen, enough to enchant, enough to excite one's curiosity, please the mind, and yes . . . to heal.

"Dersu Uzala" does this. "Seven Samurai", "Modern Times", "Andrei Rublev" all do this. Buster Keaton did this. Also Bergman, Ray, Fellini, Antonioni, Rossellini. So many.

Is that what makes great cinema great?

When it leaves some part of the soul healed and at peace?

The First Five Reels

Wednesday December 14, 1983

Yesterday we viewed the first rough-cut reels of "The Bostonians" at MovieLab, on the West Side by 12th Avenue. Ruth Jhabvala, Jim Ivory, Ismail Merchant, the whole editing crew including J____ and Cathy Wenning, as well as myself, were present.

At the end of the screening words were kept to a minimum. You could hear the seats creak. We disbanded, heads low, into different cabs, Assistant editors Joe, and Lori with  J_____ in one cab with the boxes of film to go back to the editing room, Ruth and Jim in another to talk alone. A single pretty woman came out of building so we let her take the third taxi. In the shuffle, Ismail and myself were left by ourselves. He was cracking his fingers nervously. A heavy rain was falling, and there being no more taxis nearby, we walked back to the office on foot, getting ourselves thoroughly soaked.

I understood from Ismail's spangled gait how things were going to play out. Gesture for him was absolute communication. The cutting on the film was so bad that the resolve to fire J_____ had strengthened. I would be hired as editor, along with Cathy, who presumably would be made chief and that my days of writing, reading and contemplation would soon be at an end.

Late this morning Jim and Ismail both called at the same time, and we had a three way conversation about a plan to finish the film. Jim said I would share an editor credit with Cathy. J_____ was being let go today. When salary came up Jim said, "This is where I get off." Ismail and I agreed on a price of eight hundred and fifty dollars a week. That's more than I've ever been paid, though actually is less than what J_____  was earning, and far less than experienced union editors that work on fully budgeted Hollywood pictures. Anyway, I am happy, happy that at least once I am getting the chance to show my mettle in the cutting room before retiring from this racket. I'm happy also that my relationship with both Jim and Ismail has elevated me in one giant bound to a new level of trust.

Humphrey called to hear all the news and gave me all the tips he could think of about making cuts and overlaps. "It's the return of the prodigal son," he said chuckling. I know I have Humphrey to thank for this - he recommended they take the leap and hire his old assistant, as an editor.

In the space of a month my outlook changed.. By October end I assigned a different destiny for myself, away from film towards some other occupation that would support me and my vagabond musings. Film has come to be the thing that will give me work. I see writing, but only after learning better discipline, and more experiences. Literary loves will be indulged during the small morning hours, and at night after long days on film. Written work will have to wait, maybe years.

Three jobs await, picture edit of "The Bostonians", completion of the soundtrack and music in London, then production on "The Deceivers".

My sights and designs are way ahead, while my energies are free to focus on the moment.

"Remember the Empire Hotel!"

Humphrey Dixon flies into town. Jim and Ismail are seeking his advice on what to do with "The Bostonians." We meet for a meal, he tells me about his life in LA, and we have quite a time reminiscing about some of our common experiences working for Ismail and Jim.

On one of their pictures, Humprey arrived in New York, late at night. I believe it was to edit Dick Robbins' little film about street musicians. Anyway keys were left for him somewhere to some friend's apartment. An hour after he picked up the keys he got to the place which was at the other end of Manhattan, and naturally the keys didn't fit. He spent the whole night wandering midtown looking for a room. The President was in town or something. Finally he found a ground floor windowless cubicle in the Empire hotel. He took it and paid cash.

"I was afraid of getting mugged in the lobby! And the mice in the room, not to mention the MOLES! Yes Moles!"

"Weren't they rats?"

"No." Humphrey said. "They were moles. I know moles when I see them. They have the little frilly pink noses. And there were a lot of them. I think there was a hole in the floor below the bed that led to bare ground."

"Too bad they're not putting you up in the Empire now! It's been acquired by some big company. They're going to make into a luxury hotel. Restore it to former grandeur!"

"Luxury my ass!"

We had a good laugh. Merchant-Ivory somehow always got us into the places that are cheap, but interesting. If a carpet-bagger with wads of cash had followed us buying up the real estate they'd have made millions.

Now Humphrey's got a high paying job in L.A. editing a film for a big production company. After he signed the contract the producer gave him a Lincoln Continental. All their editors got a car, a villa with pool and a tennis court, free meals, and plane tickets. He can't quite believe it all.

"None of this was in my contract with them. They gave it all to me later. They said, 'Give us the receipt for that, we'll pay it!' "

Yet between all this talk of striking it rich in Hollywood, I sensed Humphrey's longing for the underpaid work he did for Merchant-Ivory.

In later years, a man wants to touch his roots. No mention of what's to happen with me on "Bostonians", though I sense Humphrey is routing for his star assistant.

On the way home I remembered the crash courses Humphrey gave me in editing room procedures, protocol and techniques. He's old school, a Brit, dour as they come, given to flashes of gentle smiles and laughter, but sanguine on most topics. This is what made him such a brilliant editor on his first editing job, "Autobiography of a Princess", undoubtedly one of Jim's very best films.

-:-

I received a great letter from Barney, written so well I am touched with envy. He writes the way any person does when they write at their best. How long has it been since words have flowed that way for me? When the words sit happily, form an image, bulge with humor, laughter, confidence. Images one can call up and remember later. The letter arrived after his short trip to India with Zakiya to do publicity for one of Shashi Kapoor's films. He wrote me in his letter that he regrets having made the trip:

"A week of preparation, a week of traveling and a week to recover afterwards

"Bombay is still a slum, always will be," he added.

On this point I know he is so wrong, but the way he wrote it was so funny that I let it slide by. This disconsolate note led me to think he doesn't quite understand the sources of strength in his own work. Our trip to India challenged Barney, made him stretch, he felt himself put out, his privacy invaded, his senses bombarded, his tastes insulted, but after recoiling from this his writing became stronger. He dwells on these bits of ire with a sense of humor. A writer must constantly laugh at himself, must never become absolutely certain that he himself isn't a fool of fools.

At the urging of Ismail, I'm reading "The Stranglers" by George Bruce, a scholarly book based on the experiences and work of Major William Sleeman, putting an end to Indian Thugs, or the 'Thuggee'. These were professional assassins, that travelled India performing ritual murders, usually in very remote places. They were almost entirely unknown until the 19th Century when their practices were uncovered and their followers brought to justice by Sleeman, who learned that the "Thugs", hence the origin of the word, were worshippers of Kali, that murdered religious pilgrims for their gold and silver, and covered up their crimes by disemboweling and de-limbing their victim's bodies, then burying the pieces in pre-dug graves.

John Master's "The Deceivers", about the same subject, lacks the truthfulness that this volume makes up for tenfold. The script for Merchant-Ivory's version of "The Deceivers", should be based on truth, on the facts of the Thuggee in India, and not on John Master's purple-prosed, and watered down version of it.

I bought the book at considerable cost from a collector, at Ismail's behest. No mention on refunding my cost on that - he knows I want the editing job on  'The Bostonian's'. No word yet but in any event they want me to work on "The Perfect Murder", and if that doesn't get funded, "The Deceivers" as well.

I pack for India.

Solace

Sunday January 15, 1984

Solace.

On Saturday morning, the second weekend of the new year I make a trip up by taxi in the wet squelching snow to the office of Charles Gomez, my accountant. Once a year I do this.

He's moved office a number of times in recent years, now works in a building opposite one of those giant hanger-like structures built by the army, for the National Guard. A year ago Gomez's office was opposite a giant air-inflated tennis court.

Gomez himself is tall, always taller than I remember. He has very black skin, but short curly grey hair. This Saturday, as if noting the snowy conditions outside, he wore a red-checked wool flannel shirt.

It's a ritual we go through. How are you Mark. Fine Charles. Thank-you for your Christmas card. I think you were the only one to send me one this year. Can you hang on a moment, and I'll be right with you.

This is all part of it. I make use of his Xerox machine to copy my tax notes. This year I am organized. Everything Charles will need is typewritten onto one piece of clean white paper. In past years I've had to sit at an empty desk in his office for an hour, adding long lists of numbers.

This year I talk with his secretary about Weight Watchers. She lost twenty pounds, a lifetime member.

Come on in Mark, I'll just get your file.

-:-

Outside, Lexington Avenue is quiet. People walk carefully in the snow. Vehicles move cautiously along. I turn down toward Gramercy Park, and pass by the entrance of the old hotel. Ruth and I were there once. We went up to check the room that her parents had reserved and were going to stay in. We put some flowers and magazines on the bedside table. She took her underwear off and we made love for a little while. Then we locked up the room and took the key back down to the front desk.

Another time I sat in the Park sifting gravel through my hands, lying in the the sun with Sean. She lived at the Woman's Evangelical Residence on Gramercy Park. It was a home for good girls and single women, run by the Salvation Army. A tall building, many floors, it resembled a hotel. Men were excluded. An imposing woman with a white uniform sat at a desk near the front and stopped me and called up. I met Sean's father in the waiting room. We sat and talked, then he went on his way. Her parents were divorced.

One Sunday morning Sean and I went up to an empty lounge in the Residence, and recorded dialogue and sound effects for Jim's film "Jane Austen in Manhattan". I had a Nagra tape recorder and a long boom microphone. When I asked her to do footsteps I kept picking up the sound of her bluejeans rubbing together. So she very nicely took them off. She was naked. I was very nervous the matron would come up and see her and kick her out of the Residence. We were just recording sound.

We went a couple of times to the movies, and almost became good friends. I was madly infatuated with her, though, and she knew it. I must have also been impatient. We stopped seeing each other. I left messages for her but she never returned them.

Slowly down through the snow and puddles of slush to Fourteenth Street. Hey man want some sesamia? What's that? Smoke man, smoke!

No, I don't want any smoke.

Snow. Peace. Time. A yearly event. Gomez's gravelly voice was filled with that ease that comes after a winter's rest. Each year his office is littered with construction equipment, never ending improvements. He stopped bugging me about the projector he wanted me to buy. I wonder if he sold it.

Last night Barney came down to Mott Street, and shouted outside my window. On his way to Paris again. We ate a quick dinner at the Milon Indian Restaurant on 1st Avenue and just made a showing of Hitchcock's "Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt". We were the last ones they sold tickets to. The theater was jammed, but we found a great spot against the wall. The girl who played the part of Charlie, and was almost murdered by her uncle, was beautiful. We wondered who she was.

Red Bar. Got talking with the waitress there. When we came in she said "Rolling Rock or Becks?" I figure she's said it about a million times. "Hey that's an Austrian hat isn't it?" she said to Barney. "How'd ya know?" he asked her. "I've been to Austria once, with my mother." She told us all about her two week trip through Europe. In all she was only three days in Vienna. Her powers of observation must have been tremendous. She told us about her parents, hoarding things. Boxes filled with shoes, floor to ceiling. Her brother's about to become a priest, he's studied in Rome since he was fourteen. In a bus in Rome she said, "Mama, that man's rubbing himself against me, I swear." Italian ladies brought them food when they learned they were a mother and daughter travelling together.

Chris came in. We'd arranged to meet him. Barney and he started making drawings of paintings by Diebenkorn. Our waitress friend supplied them with some index cards to draw on.

Barney and I left to go check out the Pyramid Club. Freezing night, people standing in line to get in. A girl emerges from the club, high standing blonde hair, leather cycle jeans cut away at the back, leather cycle jacket, see-through lace panty hose, nothing else. Image of her luscious ass on that freezing night, with everyone else shivering in the snow.

First Day of Friction

Friday December 30, 1983

First day of friction in the editing room.

Cathy attacked my cut of the first reel, and I responded badly. She was probably right.

Nevertheless, in order for "The Bostonians" to succeed, it is essential that we get along. Two editors, one of lesser experience (myself) working with a woman of greater experience. Quite the reverse of the film and novel which depicts a man of years and accomplishment courting a young woman. I find it interesting, to watch my reactions take a position within the greater scheme of Henry James' project, which all of us, Jim Ivory, Ismail Merchant the whole team, writer,, camera people crew and editors, are finishing.

James's story is split into two competing roles, an Southern gentleman with old fashioned ideas about a woman's place and his alter ego in the form of Vanessa Redgrave who plays the feminist Bostonian firebrand, Olive Chancellor. Together they compete for the affections of young Verena Tarrant, an impressionable idealist, who in my opinion, was badly cast. Christopher Reve, though just off Superman, is a talented actor - he plays the role marvelously. However nature makes him less convincing in scenes where he is required to fake attraction for Verena Tarrant, played by Madeleine Potter (no relation).

"The Bostonians", as an effort to express James, is beginning to flag in it's attempt to illustrate the workings of the male and female principle, and the deterioration of that attraction has acquired a load of hostility. It may have been what James meant all along, but Cathy and I may have been a little too successful at mirroring the story into our cutting room 'relations', especially where the task of editing reflects the male and female in equal parts, virtually at war with each other.

It is disappointing that warmth and affection, of a fatherly sort, which Chris is supposed to feel for Verena, does not succeed as well as his portrayal of rivalry with Olive Chancellor. Instead the male/female violence bred into the novel feels more a sort of repressed attraction for an older woman on the part of Superman, ala Stendhal or Flaubert. That is the aspect of the film we have stressed the most, men and women at odds, rather than in sympathy. The idea for the film as a tiny seed, which  develops at every stage of its growth, to work, must find female and male principles equally matched through to the final cut.

Cathy and I will have to be equally matched. I must get my cutting up to a level where she envies my work.