At the Movies with Governor Tom: Synecdoche, New York

I should admit off the bat that I have mixed feelings about Synecdoche, New York, which I caught tonight at the ArcLight Hollywood. But I'm going to go ahead and write a post about it because at least I was rewarded afterward with an in-person appearance by Charlie Kaufman, the screenwriter extraordinaire behind Being John Malkovich, Human Nature, Adaptation, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. He was Oscar-nominated for Malkovich and Adaptation and finally scored a trophy for Eternal Sunshine. I wasn't too crazy about Human Nature, but I love all the other stuff he wrote. So when I saw he was conducting a Q&A following tonight's screening, I couldn't pass up the opportunity. I'd actually seen him at the ArcLight before. Back in 2004, around the time Eternal Sunshine came out, he did a three-night Q&A at the Arclight for Eternal Sunshine, Malkovich, and Adaptation. The Eternal Sunshine screening sold out before I could get to it, but I did make it to the other two. What I remember taking away was that Charlie didn't want to be there at all. He never got loud or hostile. He's a shy guy, very soft spoken, but irritability is impossible to hide. Tonight, I'm pleased to say, he was much more affable and engaging with the audience. Now if only the movie were better. Oh, and by the way, Charlie also directed it. This was his debut behind the camera.

Let me give the rundown on the story as best I can. I won't give away too much, but I don't think I could if I wanted to. This isn't the easiest flick to wrap your brain around. Now sometimes that can be a good thing. 2001: A Space Odyssey is a puzzle, especially toward the end, but it's undoubtedly a masterpiece. Not so here. Synecdoche, New York becomes too puzzling for its own good. It sort of strains to be a masterpiece....and then folds in on itself like a soggy pretzel. Really, if it weren't for the terrific cast, I don't think I would've enjoyed this at all.

Okay here's the scoop. The always-awesome Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Caden Cotard, a theater director in the New York suburb of Schenectady. When the film starts, he's putting on a production of Death of a Salesman. It goes over well enough that he scores a grant to write a new play for the Great White Way.

While his professional life's going okay, his personal life is a disaster zone. His wife Adele (Catherine Keener) is a painter who specializes in these still-lifes so tiny that people viewing her exhibitions have to wear these little magnifying glasses. Just as her career takes off, she up and leaves Caden for Berlin, taking their daughter Olive with her. Over the course of the film we see the occasional art magazine cover with Adele on it. Her European career thrives. At one point, twenty years or so later, Caden pays a visit to Berlin to find that Olive is a tattoo-covered stripper who only speaks German. They may as well be strangers, having lived worlds apart for so long. It's actually one of the more affecting parts of the film.

Meanwhile Caden's health slowly deteriorates via one mysterious malady after another. From the very first time we see him, when he's young and still with Adele and Olive, these weird symptoms start manifesting themselves, like lime-green shit or what have you. Seriously, lime-green shit.

Caden uses the grant to put on a full-blown monster-sized production of...well...let's see. It's basically a play involving a cast of literally thousands inside this ginormous warehouse where Caden does his darnedest to build a life-sized replica of Manhattan. He doles out instructions to the cast with little Post-Its. "You just found out your wife's cheating." "You just found out you have cancer. Should you tell your family?" He even casts someone to play himself. And it's not just anyone. It's this guy Sammy (Tom Noonan) who's been stalking Caden for years. During auditions when Caden's trying to find someone to play himself, Sammy comes in and says something like, "If you want to see how you really are, cast me."

The production stretches on for decades and only gets bigger. Time is very fluid in the film, so it's tough to say exactly how much time we're covering here. But Caden's a pretty old fart at the end, so I'd guess he works on this opus for close to half a century. During this time he continues having one complication after the next with the various women in his life. He marries an actress named Claire (Michelle Williams), and they eventually have a daughter. But he also rekindles a fling with his former box office assistant Hazel (Samantha Morton). The weird thing about Hazel is that her house is always on fire. There's only two or three scenes there throughout the picture, one toward the beginning, when Caden's still married to Adele and Hazel has just bought the place. It has these little fires in the wall 'n shit. Pretty weird. And then decades later, when they're in their golden years and are sort of reviving their feelings for each other, Caden goes back to her place. Sure enough, these same little fires are smoldering all over the place.

A few other terrific actresses show up. During his trip to Germany, Caden meets a friend of Adele and Olive's named Maria, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh. Back in New York, the actress he casts to play Hazel is played by Emily Watson of all people, looking particularly fetching. She actually accompanies Caden to his father's funeral, another one of those affecting scenes that stands out because of its humanity in an otherwise tough-to-relate-to story. Hope Davis plays his shrink. The great Dianne Wiest shows up in the second half of the film as another actress in the production. She and Caden form this touching little bond that keeps him going in an otherwise bleak life.

And he gets older. Time jumps ahead really fast in this film. The only indication you have is how much makeup Philip Seymour is wearing in this scene compared to the last scene. And of course his health sinks into the shitter (pardon the pun). The production gets pretty meta. You have Sammy playing Caden in the production. And then there's a scene where Sammy is casting "actors" to play "himself" in a life-sized production about New York. And then those actors cast actors to put on a production. The freakin' thing becomes an onion.

The title, by the way, is sort of a play on words. It sounds like you're saying Schenectady, New York. But the word synecdoche, as I only found out a few days ago, means a part that is representative of a whole. Ostensibly that would refer to the production Caden puts on. But the film itself, how it jumps through time to afford us glimpses of Caden at various stages of his life, could be a synecdoche not only of Caden's life, but of life in general. I think. That is, if you buy into Charlie Kaufman's mercilessly bleak point of view. Me? I tend to be an optimist, yet one more reason why this flick rubs me the wrong way.

The Q&A was moderated by this chap called Whipp, Glenn Whipp, film critic for the Daily News. The first thing he asked Charlie was how in Christ he came up with this story. That's when Charlie, who looks young at fifty, told us about how Sony Pictures mogul Amy Pascale tried to get him and Spike Jonze to work together on a horror flick. Charlie was game, but Spike was busy directing one music video after the next before signing on to adapt Where the Wild Things Are. Apparently that's been delayed quite a bit due to some pretty terrible test screenings. Anyway, Charlie stuck with Sony and eventually got them to let him direct the proposed horror picture. He never did say what the plot of that horror film was supposed to be, only that it eventually mutated into the Russian doll we got to see tonight. Of course, from a certain point of view, Synecdoche, New York is a horror film. As Charlie said tonight, aging and mortality and living alone and lying sick in a hospital are pretty freakin' scary.

As someone with all that added responsibility, Charlie's schedule during the 45-day shoot was fairly rigorous, but he also said that since he has insomnia anyway, trying to catch enough Zs was never really an issue. He only averages about four hours of interrupted sleep per night, so directing a feature film, by all accounts a brutal and thankless job, would seem to suit him just fine. What made making this film a bit extra hairy was that it had upwards of two hundred scenes, far and above the average. Back during film school I took this one class where they made us pick any film we wanted to do a scene-by-scene breakdown. You know, we'd watch a scene, pause it, and then write a brief description of it, numbering the scenes as we went along. I did the original Star Wars. I'm sorry, I mean Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope. Anyway, it clocked in at something like seventy or eighty scenes. And just about everyone else had a scene count in the sixty to eighty range. Recently I did a similar scene breakdown for both Dave and The American President as part of research into a Presidential comedy of my own, and both of those films were somewhere in the sixties. Synecdoche, New York, meanwhile? Two hundred. That might be yet one more reason why audiences probably won't warm to it. It's not like anyone besides a film geek would think about the number of scenes. Still, like bad editing, audiences might detect it on a subconscious level. Props to Charlie, though, right? Dude was able to film four scenes per day on average. That's extremely fast.

That's why, in response to someone asking if the film was as weird to make as it was to watch, Charlie said it wasn't weird at all. Because of the practical demands of the schedule, the film production was very grounded in reality. He'd show up and put in a good eighteen hours a day, every day, and was very down to earth with his cast. I believe it because he was very down to earth during the Q&A. His normalcy is noteworthy because of how unique his films are. Maybe he channels all of his eccentricity into his art or something so that he himself can stay normal. He did add that while the first ten hours of the day usually went well, during the next eight hours he'd have to go give the producers a what-for now and again for trying to make him change something. Anyway, one touching little tidbit he shared with us was that his dad lived with him during the production. Charlie's fifty, so I can only imagine that his dad's pretty up there in years. Apparently he was in the audience tonight, but Charlie spared him the spotlight so I'm not sure where he was sitting. Anyway, during the production he moved in with his boy and provided moral support. Dad said that even if the production didn't pan out, it wouldn't negate the huge accomplishment of writing it and at least trying to mount it.

The main thing Charlie wanted to get at with this film was the fluidity of time, which is pretty apparent when you watch this thing, and how it leaps ahead years from scene to scene. Charlie says it amazes him how ten years can go by in a blink. You can remember something that happened ten years ago as if it were yesterday, but you have a tough time trying to remember all the stuff that happened in the intervening years. The person you are at age fifty isn't so different from the person you were at twenty.

Both he and Philip Seymour Hoffman had an interesting temporal experience on the film that may reflect how caught up in the story they got. It took Catherine Keener the first two weeks of shooting to do all of her scenes. And then that was a wrap for her. Even though the film only had one more month to shoot, it seemed a lot longer. A couple weeks after Catherine left, during which time they'd filmed over fifty more scenes, it felt to Charlie and Philip that she hadn't been gone for two weeks but two years. Philip told Charlie that it really did feel like entire gobs of his life were whizzing by at light speed. Man, if two weeks seemed so long to them, can you imagine how much of an eternity the entire six-week shoot must have seemed like? By the way, when you watch this thing, it's impossible not to notice the sheer number of clocks and watches. Seriously, in almost every scene there's a clock visible somewhere.

It was inevitable that someone would ask Charlie about Samantha Morton's perpetually burning house. But he wouldn't give it up! Obviously it's a metaphor for something, but for what? He did have an answer but said it was only one person's opinion. At screenings for this thing he's had people come up to him and offer their own opinion of what the burning house means. He's heard so many compelling interpretations that he's given up saying what he thinks. Whatever you the viewer take away from the burning house is no less valid. Seriously, the whole friggin' film could be looked at as a metaphor. I think if you go in prepared not to take what you see literally, you might have an easier go of it. Sort of. So what do I think of the burning house? Well, toward the end, when Samantha Morton's already very elderly, her character dies of smoke inhalation. Mind you, she'd been living in this burning house for decades, and she only just then dies of the smoke. That might help you figure out the meaning, but it hasn't helped me yet.

It's funny. A good share of Charlie's stories have plots that fold in on themselves and become sort of meta. He swears he doesn't set out to do that every time he sits down to kick off a brand new script. Another thing he doesn't think about is how commercial his story is. He just sits at his computer and goes with it. Lucky bastard. Unfortunately, though, while that may have worked when he was collaborating with talented directors, it may not work this time around. Time will tell, of course, but no matter how much he screams from the rooftops that this film is an allegory or a metaphor, it probably won't fair very well.

Speaking of which, one thing that got him all primed to direct was his collaborating with those other directors. I suppose I'm speaking of the films he wrote which were directed by either Spike Jonze or Michel Gondry. On all of those, Spike and Michel were good about involving him in the production. Once again, he's very lucky to have had those opportunities, as most screenwriters are pretty much shut out of the process once the cameras are rolling. That only happened to him once, with Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. That was George Clooney's directorial debut. Once he bought that off Charlie, he took it and ran with it and didn't involve Charlie at all. Apparently a lot was made of that at the time, like there was some sort of drama between George and Charlie. When Glenn asked him about that tonight, Charlie swears that got blown out of proportion. And it probably was. It sounds like what happened on Confessions was what happens to most screenwriters once they've sold their baby. Charlie's a big believer in compromise. It's impossible to work on a production with all those egos and creative types and not have your script change in some way, shape, or form. He even went so far as to say it would be bad if the script didn't change at all during the production. Which, of course, is true. I mean shit, if that happened, it would call into question what the director's doing there if they're not exercising at least a little bit of their own creative vision.

And finally someone asked him about the directors who've inspired him. Among the names he threw out were Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, a couple of Englishmen who are among the least commercial directors you'll ever come across. Like Charlie, they've somehow managed to make films that ultimately do make money because of good critical word of mouth. Mike Leigh is one of my favorites too. I've always marveled at how he essentially "writes" his stuff through six or so months of improv with his cast. Charlie said he's also a fan of stuff by Tom Noonan, who played the actor playing Philip Seymour Hoffman in the film. Tom Noonan's primarily an actor but does write and direct his own little microbudget films now and then. In particular Charlie said he's fan of this flick Tom made about ten years ago called Wang Dang. It's about an aging washed-up director who comes to a school to impart some wisdom onto a new generation of storytellers but somehow manages to screw even that up.

Musclemen and Demon Knights

(Governor Tom's Note: This is one of many short pieces I wrote while at SC. Enjoy!)
________________

i

The violence was neat. The way the musclemen and demon knights ran around the pale landscape and fired their cannon-guns at each other in their seemingly insatiable desire for mutual assured destruction was neat.

Lawrence was playing one of his console games in the family room when Mr. Roseman, the next-door neighbor, paid a visit one cloudy and cool Saturday afternoon. He’d been out in his garden watering his little flowerbeds when Lawrence’s dad got home from the grocery store and started talking to him about something Lawrence didn’t understand. He wasn’t really paying attention when they came into the house. After getting drinks, the two came into the family room, their voices drowning out the explosions and gunfire from Lawrence’s game.

"Larry, turn off the game and talk to Mr. Roseman."

Lawrence’s mom came down, dressed in a turquoise dress. She and his dad would be leaving soon.

Lawrence stared at his console, the little cartridge protruding from the top of it. He paid attention to nothing any of them said for the first few minutes of the conversation. That was when his dad addressed him.

"Larry, tell Mr. Roseman about your science project."

Lawrence moved his eyes to Mr. Roseman without turning his head. Mr. Roseman was flashing a wide, ivory smile. "What did you do for your science project, Lare?" The smile didn’t go away. Mr. Roseman was able to speak without hurting his smile.

"He got third place out of all the fifth graders," his mom said.

"Really!"

He couldn’t help but look at the smile.

"Well, what was it, Lare?"

"Tell him about it, sweety."

"It was the planets. All of the planets in our solar system."

"He made a model of the solar system."

"Excellent!"

"A pretty impressive one too. I’ll show it to you sometime, Nat."

Mr. Roseman’s hand stroked the gray-fuzzed tip of his chin. The smile never faded. "I’d like to see it now."

"It’s still at school, right, guy?"

"Yeah."

"Let me know when you bring it home so I can show it to Mr. Roseman, okay?"

"Okay, Dad."

His mom, dad, and Mr. Roseman continued their conversation without Lawrence. While he said things to his mom and dad, Mr. Roseman never looked away and never stopped smiling, as if his face had become stone.

Lawrence noticed his mom recrossing her legs every five minutes. She scratched the side of her thigh, moving the hem up a little. She was wearing clear panty hose.

"We really should get going, Hank."

They all got up and said a few more things. Mr. Roseman left just before his parents left for the opera, but he also stayed sitting in the family room, his smile fixed on Lawrence. His hand played with the gray stubble a little more, then went down to his neck, where a few gray chest hairs played peekaboo.

"Can I see one of your video games?"

ii

"You’re being such a good boy, Larry. You’re always a good boy."

He closed his eyes and pictured the musclemen and demon knights chasing each other around the pale landscape with their cannon-guns.

iii

"Why don’t you sit down, sweety?"

His mom had changed into her T-shirt and sweats and was watching a funny show on TV. His dad was upstairs in his study with the door shut. Walking by, he’d heard a lot of clicking which meant his dad was on the Internet.

"Why?"

"Don’t you want to watch TV?"

"I am."

"Well, don’t you want to sit down?"

The audience’s laughter erupted from the TV. He looked at the screen and saw Mr. Roseman smiling at him. The gray stubble had grown significantly. The whites of his eyes had a pink tint to them.

He lay on his stomach, resting his head on his mom’s thigh. "Can’t I just lie on your lap, Mommy?" He didn’t want to tell her his bottom hurt too much to sit on. She could probably tell he was trying to hide something.

"Of course you can," she laughed, stroking his hair. "But I know in five minutes you’ll fall asleep."

The TV laughed.

He looked away. He wanted to play his pale landscape game, but he was too tired. After looking down at his mom’s knee for a few minutes while her cool fingers stroked his scalp, his eyes became heavy.

The laughter grew louder.

He opened his eyes. The smile was there, and the beard was bigger. While his mom’s hand continued massaging, he could feel the pair of thick, rough hands continue their explorations as well.

"Stop it!"

"I knew you’d fall asleep."

iv

In his bedroom he kept the door cracked open. The hallway fed his room a bar of light which divided it in half. Lying in bed on his stomach, he looked across the room at his chest where his action figures and their vehicles overflowed. Then he looked at his desk, on top of which his monitor stared back at him with an empty screen.

Wind blew through his window. The bar of light thinned. He closed his eyes. The high-pitched howls and the tapping of the branches against the siding calmed him. He could hear his mom yelling at his dad in his dad’s study down the hall. Walking by a few minutes before, he had still been able to hear clicking. His mom had obviously heard enough of it. He tried not to hear her right now and instead tried to focus on the howls and the tapping. It helped him fall asleep.

When he opened his eyes, the bar of light was shining directly on him. Lifting his head, he felt the imprint of the carpet on his cheek. His parents were louder. He stood up and stumbled half asleep to the window. The wind soothed his bare body. As he listened to the howling, he thought he could hear someone behind it, someone talking to him. He strained his ears but couldn’t make sense of it.

But the wind was very comforting. He closed his eyes again.

v

"Sweety, why are you sleeping on the floor?"

"What’s he doing?"

"He slept on the floor."

"Whatchya doin’ down there, guy?"

"Sweety?"

He opened his eyes. Armed with their cannon-guns, two of his musclemen figures were grinning at him with their square-jawed, perfectly white plastic grins. One had an eye patch and a flattop and a tatoo of a swan on his bare mountainous chest. The other was very round, bald with a long brown beard, an inverted dunce cap, his cannon-gun bigger and more advanced looking. They were pointing their cannon-guns at him. "I’m on your side!"

"What is it, sweety?"

"Come on, Lare, get off the floor."

He pushed himself off the floor and turned around to sit. His bottom didn’t hurt as much as the night before. Mr. Roseman was sitting cross-legged on his bed, wearing only a pair of jeans. He had a tatoo of a swan buried under the gray forest. His beard was full, his hair a flattop, and he was shouldering a cannon-gun of his own. Only this one wasn’t metal. It was just flesh and cartilage. He was still smiling, the smile never wavering when he spoke.

"I’m on your side, Larry."

"You want to go to the gardens with Daddy and me?"

"When?"

"As soon as you’re up and ready, guy."

"Come on, sweety. You should get dressed, okay?"

As he stood up, Mr. Roseman got off the bed and approached him, the flesh-gun dangling on his shoulder. "Can I go to the gardens, too?"

"No."

"No what, sweety?"

"Get dressed, guy. We’ll leave in a half-hour."

"What do you want for breakfast?"

"Nothing."

"You’ve got to have something."

He looked back at Flattop and Round. They’d moved since he last saw them. They were now facing the window, and it was as if they’d moved toward it a little.

vi

His parents talked most of the time at the gardens. He didn’t listen to anything they said. Every few minutes he’d look behind him to make sure Flattop and Round were still there, keeping a lookout for any of their enemy demon knights who would most likely be waiting to ambush.

He was the first to spot one, sitting high up in one of the trees. The demon knight had a gray head and chest and was about to launch his flesh-spear. "Fire!" he shouted, pointing up. Flattop and Round fired, but the demon knight got away.

"You want a hot dog?"

vii

He could lie on his back now without any serious discomfort.

"Sweet dreams."

She left the door cracked again. He traced the bar of light with his eyes until he was forced to turn over to finish its path in the opposite corner of the room near the chest. He could make out the figures pointing their cannon-guns at each other.

There was movement by the computer.

He looked over at Mr. Roseman sitting at his desk. His arms were much longer, but in the dark it was difficult to see why.

"Hi, Larry."

He got out of bed and walked over to the opposite corner near the chest. Putting his hands against the wall on the bar of light, he tried to move the light around the room so it would fall on Mr. Roseman. It took a lot of effort. His face grew hot with the strain, but he eventually managed to pull the bar over to the desk, working carefully to make it fall directly across Mr. Roseman’s nose. He wanted to get it just right.

Mr. Roseman wasn’t there anymore.

"I don’t like the light, Larry. Come over to the dark." The voice was behind him. Even though it was filled with anxiety, he could tell Mr. Roseman was still smiling.

"I don’t like the dark. That’s why I like to leave the door open. I need to get the light on you."

"But I don’t like the light. Why do you want the light on me?"

"Maybe you’ll go away."

There was movement on the bed. "I don’t want to go away."

He sat down at his computer and turned it on. The bar of light was dividing him now. The hard drive humming to life drowned out Mr. Roseman’s pleas. "I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you!" The screen lit up. He wanted to play solitaire.

The hard drive quieted after booting up.

"Get away from that computer."

"Leave if you don’t like it."

"Where’s your solar system?"

"Leave."

"No."

He clicked a few times to open the game.

"Play a game with me. Try to get the light on me and I’ll leave. Think you can do it?"

He hopped off the chair and grabbed the bar of light. It was easy now. It didn’t take long before he had it over by his bed. The faces of the musclemen on his sheets laughed at him because Mr. Roseman wasn’t there. He was back at the computer. One muscleman in particular, whose face was half-fire, laughed the loudest.

"You’re losing, Larry."

He dragged the bar of light back to the computer.

"You’re still losing."

The cards were dealt. He decided to stay there with the light.

"What’s the matter?"

"I don’t want to play anymore."

"Can I talk to these guys on your bed?"

viii

The throw-up chunks had an orange-red tint to them. The bubbly acid was a thick yellow. He watched the chunks spiral to the bottom, holding one hand to his sore stomach. He threw up two more times, and then he couldn’t see the water anymore.

He flushed.

Spit strings dangled from his lower lip. He tried looking down at them to see how far they stretched. It hurt his eyes too much. He stood up and stared at himself in the mirror. The strings broke and fell to his feet.

For some reason his bottom was sore again.

ix

"Sweety, are you okay?"

"What happened?"

"You fell asleep in the bathroom."

"I threw up."

"What happened?"

"He’s sick."

"Can I stay home?"

"I’ll call the school."

"You should get back into bed, sweety."

His musclemen figures were grouped in front of his chest, each armed with a cannon-gun and ready to charge.

His mom helped him get into bed. He didn’t want to lie on his stomach because it was still sore and felt like it could rebel again at any time. But the pain in his bottom continued to flare, so he tried lying on his side. It wasn’t the most comfortable position since one of his arms was being crushed, but it was easier this way to avoid lying on top of Fireface.

"Why don’t you lie on your back, sweety?"

"I like this better."

"Does your stomach still hurt?"

"Yes."

"You’ve probably got a bug or something. Just take it easy today and hopefully you’ll be better tomorrow. You want Mommy or Daddy to stay home with you?"

"That’s okay. I’ll just sleep a lot."

"All right. But if you need anything, call. Okay? Our work numbers are in the kitchen."

x

He was controlling Fireface during the game so Fireface wouldn’t get mad at him because of a poor performance. He had almost killed all of the demon knights for this particular level when there was a knock on the door.

"Hi, Larry."

Mr. Roseman looked like one of the demon knights: His entire body was covered with black armor. Centipedes and spiders and scorpions made their homes inside the suit, but occasionally one would scurry out of one crack and disappear into another. And now he could see why his arms were so long. Mr. Roseman’s arms had become a pair of flesh-spears. Covered with barbed armor, they would be even more powerful.

"I didn’t see you leave this morning. Are you okay?"

"You’re infested."

"What?"

"I’m sick."

"Oh I’m sorry to hear that, buddy. Are you getting any better?" He stepped in.

"Sort of." A worm slithered through the bars protecting Mr. Roseman’s eyes and fell to the ground.

"What’s wrong? You’re looking at me funny."

"My mom and dad aren’t here right now."

"I just wanted to see if you were okay. We’re friends, right? I worry about you." He shut the door. "What were you doing?"

"Killing your friends."

Mr. Roseman laughed. "My friends?"

"The demon knights. Your friends."

"Is that one of your games? Ohhhh. Does that mean you have to kill me too?" he chuckled.

xi

He could picture the musclemen in his room running across the carpet at full charge. Fireface was the most eager, leading them.

xii

"Oh my God! What happened! Jesus Christ! What happened! What happened! What happened!"

"What did he do?"

"I don’t know! I don’t know what happened!"

"Call the police!"

"Oh Jesus!"

"Call the police, God damn it!"

His stomach had calmed, and the soreness in his bottom had cooled.

xiii

"Would you like some ice cream?"

"Okay."

The nurse left. The white hurt his eyes. Everything was white, the padded walls, the bed, the clothes on the nurses and doctors, the TV, even the bars on the windows. By getting rid of the nurse, that would be one less white object to look at.

It didn’t have to be this bright, though. He could think about the musclemen doing battle with the demon knights. The wall opposite the bed could be the large screen. It was already pale, so he didn’t have to think too hard about the wintry landscape. He just had to imagine the men and their vehicles and cannon-guns, and how they would scour the terrain in relentless pursuit of the demon knights, who would fight back hard with their own cannon-guns and spears.

He was smiling now.

The violence was neat. The way the musclemen and demon knights ran around the pale landscape and fired their cannon-guns at each other in their seemingly insatiable desire of mutual assured destruction was neat.

On a Hillside in Eger

(Governor Tom's Note: This is one of the poems I wrote for a four-week poetry workshop in Prague in May and June of 1999. It was part of the masters of creative writing program at USC, from which I graduated that December. After the third week of classes, a classmate and I took a weekend jaunt to Hungary. We spent Friday and Saturday in Budapest. On Sunday [June 13] we took a two-hour train ride eastward to a small town called Eger. On the west end of town is a small valley called the Valley of the Beautiful Women. Built into the hillsides along both sides of the valley are wine cellars, about two dozen in all. As luck would have it, Sunday is the day when they have free wine tastings. So my classmate and I sampled some of the wares. Feeling awesome in no time, we bought a jug of the juice at one of the cellars before traipsing up the hillside and parking ourselves in the grass to get totally wasted. What I could remember of the occasion inspired me to compose the below ditty, which I included in my final poetry collection for the class the following week.)
________________

I'm sitting on a hillside in Eger,
Listening to the breeze hum softly and sway the stems
Of the towering grass against my stubbled cheeks.

The setting sun turns the clouds
Into pink-lined quilts that I long
To rest on.

The cup of Chardonnay in my hand
Reminds me of apple juice,
One of the addictions of my youth.
When I sip it, I let the liquid linger
On my tongue, blooming its buds with excitement.

I fight my mind's slackness
So I can focus on the chess game.
On the other side of the board,
My friend slouches on her elbow,
Also losing her concentration occasionally
To the chorus of bugs, the buzzing of birds, and the creaking
Of the bent tree against the push of the wind.

Without warning, we laugh.
At first, we don't know why,
But then we realize it was the tickle
Of the amber horizon against the calm sea
Water of our eyes.

Jellwagger - Episode 10: Attack of the Killer Chesticles

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