Which is a real shame, because this is one hell of a movie with a great cast, razor-keen writing, an excellent score, and stylish, smart direction.
The Salton Sea stars Val Kilmer as a widowed jazz trumpet player who adopts the persona of death punker Danny Parker in an undercover attempt to discover his wife's murderers in the seedy world of methamphetamine addicts and dealers.
Kilmer's got a bad reputation in the movie world as being one of the worst prima donnas in the business, and as a result directors have been reluctant to work with him. After seeing his performance as Danny Parker/Tom Van Allen and after seeing his interviews in the supplementary material on the DVD, I wondered if Kilmer hasn't turned over a new leaf. His acting here is some of the best work he's ever done. He seemed subdued and careful in his interviews—perhaps he's realized the effect his bad behavior has on his career. Perhaps we'll be seeing him in more and better roles from now on. Or maybe this is just wishful thinking on my part.
Vincent D'Onofrio turns in another of his trademark wonderful performances as Pooh-Bear, a methamphetamine cook who snorted so much crank that his nose rotted off. Pooh-Bear is a redneck surfer dude psycho, ridiculous and frightening in the same scene. D'Onofrio went to great lengths to prepare for the role, gaining forty-five pounds and getting a bad farmer tan and bleaching his hair. The director reported that he didn't even recognize D'Onofrio when he showed up for the first day of rehearsals.
D'Onofrio's part is comparatively small, but his scenes are riveting. When we are introduced to Pooh-Bear's character, he's directing a home movie recreating the Kennedy assassination—with pigeons strapped into a remote-controlled toy jeep and his buddies with rifles. That scene was some of the blackest comedy I've seen in a while. Another amazing scene is when Parker comes by to do a drug deal. Pooh-Bear, suspecting Parker's an informant, tries to torture the truth out of him. I won't go into details, but Pooh-Bear's unique brand of “encouragement” involves Parker's pink bits and a very angry, starving badger.
A big surprise for me was the director, D.J. Caruso. His name wasn't familiar to me, but The Salton Sea is so expertly directed I figured he'd done lots of other features. Not so—up ‘til now, he's mainly done made-for-TV movies. This is a young director I hope we'll be seeing more of. He apparently made an effort to combine the best of the script and the best improvisation his actors could offer—he would evidently film certain scenes in radically different ways to see what worked best.
While his technique is perhaps debatable, his results are brilliant. The movie constantly surprises you. The first part of the film—which details Parker's wry observations on the world of the tweaker—leads you to believe that this is going to be a darkly comic Trainspotting with meth addicts. But it gets darker and darker, and suddenly it's squarely in film noir territory.
This was one of the best films I've seen this year. If you enjoyed films like the original Get Carter and The Limey, this should be just your speed.
* * * *
The Salton Sea (R); 103 minutes; Director: C.J. Caruso; Writer: Tony Gayton.
* * * *
[Back to Table of Contents]
The Magnificent Dachshund
Geoffrey H. Goodwin
Tortellina adored her adventures with the Magnificent Dachshund.
At age five, her hair still curly and strawberry-white, like a dream the Magnificent Dachshund magically appeared and carried her off into the cricket-chirpy night. They zoomed out her bedroom window, down to the lower forty acres, past where the wildflowers became thickets.
She was never scratched by the brambles on the one night a month, either the seventeenth or the eighteenth, when the Magnificent Dachshund would fly her down to the river. The nights never seemed chilly, yet Tortellina could always feel the cold moss between her toes.
They would stare up at the scattered stars in the sky and discuss one of the eighty-eight constellations officially recognized by the International Astronomical Union, or theoretical astrophysics, or the attributes of various galaxies.
Eventually, after a few years of once-a-month visits, Tortellina asked the Magnificent Dachshund what he did after he deposited her back in her lavender-canopied bed and lightly starched sheets.
"Well, my dear, after you're snug, I look after the things on the other side of the river."
And Tortellina tugged at the hem of her nightgown and demanded to know what was on the other side of the river.
But the Magnificent Dachshund would not tell. Instead, this time for the first time, the stately dog offered to zip across the soundlessly bubbling water and fetch Tortellina whatever in the world she desired.
In the blink of one eye, the Magnificent Dachshund brought Tortellina a box of Sugar-coated Oaty-Os and chilled soymilk. She carried her treasures in her arms and the sleek hound transported her back up the hill, home to her bedroom. If she'd thought it all the way through, she would've also asked for a bowl and a spoon—so she wouldn't have had to tip-toe downstairs and slurp her cereal extremely quietly, afraid her parents might ask where the bowl of Oaty-Os came from.
In time, Tortellina told everyone she knew about the Magnificent Dachshund. She explained and explained how one night a month the tofu-sausage-shaped doggie would retrieve her from her dreams and take her down to the mossy riverside. Few believed her, but some did, perhaps enchanted by her wonder-filled green eyes. Her mother might have believed her most of all. With a look of mild concern, her mother fastened the lock on Tortellina's second-story window a bit more tightly—but the Magnificent Dachshund still found his way in.
And Tortellina grew older and became interested in daytime television and boys who rode motorcycles, but even when she journeyed to Ithaca to study astronomy, Tortellina found excuses to spend the night at her parents’ house, snug in her bed, on the seventeenth or the eighteenth of every month.
The Magnificent Dachshund always brought whatever she asked for, but if it was too heavy for her to carry while she rode home on his back, then she could never find it at the riverside the next morning. This was most saddening when she first learned the lesson, when she asked him to fetch her a wild pony that had traveled to the New World on a Spanish galleon, just like Misty of Chincoteague. Tortellina spent most of the next twenty-nine days wandering the shore hoping her little horse was okay, before the Magnificent Dachshund returned and made it clear that the pony had merely been too big to carry, and was healthy and safe in a magical place called the Great Repository.
Her parents never asked how her room slowly filled with stickers of exotic butterflies, photographs of boys from daytime television on motorcycles, silvery sculptures, telescopes, books about everything—even romance novels that told the truth, and other near-priceless treasures.
As it went on and on, Tortellina cared less and less for the lavishly illustrated atlases, finely worked earrings or even the pawfuls of money that the Magnificent Dachshund would bring. She longed, more than anything, to know what was so important on the other side of the river.
She did, of course, once she'd grown old enough, borrow her parents’ car and drive to the other side, even walking the moonlit shore on nights that were not the seventeenth or eighteenth. And she discovered nothing. She needed the Magnificent Dachshund's help to show her the secret place where he could go.
And the Magnificent Dachshund would offer to get her a book of challenging crossword puzzles or the long-lost mate for a lonely sock she really liked, and once she chose, in the blink of one eye, as long as she could carry it home, it was hers.
Finally, after hundreds of nights spent sitting on the cold moss of the riverside—she'd driven several hours from the research laboratory where she worked at counting the stars—Tortellina said, “All I want is to know where you go on the other side of the river."
"That is not something you want to know, but I can bring back anything you'd like."
Tortellina dipped her toe in the river and kicked.
"I guess I'd like a soy cappuccino."
The Magnificent Dachshund reappeared, balancing the environmentally friendly reusable plastic cup on the bridge of his dignified nose. It always seemed like less than an instant. The foam was exquisite and the cappuccino was exactly the right temperature, not burnt but charmingly hot.
They talked until just before sunrise, discussing M-97: the Owl Nebula in Ursa Major.
A month later, her hair so much darker than when it all began, with a gray strand or two she wouldn't admit, Tortellina sang:
* * * *
"Ooo-oh, Magnificent Dachshund,
where do you go?
When you leave me snug in my bed,
and zip to guard the things on the other
(Ooo-oh) side of the river?
Does the water still flow or has it stopped
long ago?"
* * * *
And the Magnificent Dachshund began to relent.
"Since you have sung the magical song, I will let you come with me, but, believe me, you do not want to go."
And Tortellina bit her upper lip, then bit her bottom lip, and finally said, “I'll sing again if I have to."
So the Magnificent Dachshund carried her across to the other side of the river, to the infinitely large secret cave of the Great Repository.
Everything ever was there. The Great Repository contained every gift Tortellina should've asked for. A heart monitor for her Aunt Bernice. A dewdrop-shaped compass that pointed in the direction of one's true love. A special bracelet that helped find empty parking spaces. Enough bottle caps to earn free computers for everyone she'd gone to school with.
Every cat that had ever been lost. Reference books with all the answers to the questions that most people were too terrified to ask.
Seeing everything stored, shiny-new in the Great Repository, Tortellina realized that her simple selfish wants had been so meager, so shallow, compared to the great big magnificence of the treasures of everything ever.
She could have done much more good in the world.
The Dachshund turned its sleek, tofu-sausage-shaped body toward her, shed a long thin tear, and said he would never return to take Tortellina to sit in the cold moss or talk by the riverside. With a half-waddle and a leap, the Magnificent Dachshund vanished.
The air was quiet and still as she walked through the lower forty and then through the upper forty, brambles catching her hair, catching her nightgown, and scratching her ankles.
And Tortellina changed her name to Bernice, went back to school, became a tight-lipped reference librarian with a secretive smile, and never told anyone else about the Magnificent Dachshund. But she was always very helpful to people who needed answers to questions.
* * * *
[Back to Table of Contents]
Mama's Special Rice Tin
K.Z. Perry
"Don't want the dead left in the rain forest,” whispers Mama B.
After spitting twice into the crackling fire, she pours a handful of rice into a hot skillet, and waits. Kat squats on a flat stone and tries to look uninterested, but it is the first time she has been allowed to witness Mama B's ceremony.
"Ghost can't just appear. They need to tell me how to find them."
Kat nods and hands her Zuna's tongue. It is pink and hard, so unlike the tongue that once kissed her. In secret she flicks her own tongue against it to see. Though only hours old it tastes strong, like goat meat left to bake in the sun.
Carefully, Mama B places the tongue on the cooking rice. She shakes her soft braids until they dangle like fishing lures down her wide forehead. While her black eyes roll up behind her eyelids, her face turns to greet the darkness. “He's lost his way, looking for his family."
"Bones in mud.” Kat pats her cheek, refusing to admit that she loved Zuna. No temporary wife ever does. She's only worth the two kilos of the mineral coltan paid for her to share a bed, cook food and haul water for as long as her “husband” digs the black mud from the earth.
Eventually all miners leave the camp. Lucky ones walk out of the jungle and they never take Kat with them, although she asks. When they return to their families their new-found riches can buy a radio, cooking pots, dishes, clothes, or a bicycle. Their new money makes them forget their temporary wives. Unlucky miners are bones in mud, like Zuna. Before the mud-sickness claimed him, he paid Mama B a tomato tin of coltan to have his spirit stored in a grain of rice, in the hopes of one day having a proper village burial, outside the forest.
Kat refuses to cry.
Instead, she stares hard and for a moment she thinks she sees the sky in the pan. She glances quickly at Mama B to see if she notices, but Mama B's still working her trance. The black pan holds rice the color of the moon. The glow is blue.
A creeping chill tickles along her neck. Kat raises up on her haunches, anticipating the warning shriek of a monkey. The night is full of muffled whispers. The wind breathes heavily through the roof canopy of sticks and leaves. In the shadows it moves like rippling water.
"Maybe this is death, glowing blue when it gets too close,” thinks Kat. She doesn't speak, fearing Mama B would chase her away. “Or maybe it's Zuna's spirit, fighting to enter the rice."
The thought partly satisfies Kat and she moves closer to the pan, letting the warmth soothe her.
She's heard many times from Mama B that greed, hardship, and mud-sickness own this mining camp. With each passing day Mama B's special rice tin grows full of grains. Wrapped in banana leaves and waterproof eko bark, the tin is stored in the boot left behind by a soldier from the North. Lately the tin is opened and shut almost as frequently as the heavy mists that lace the trees, shielding the workers from the judgment of the sun.
"Rice is ready,” says Mama B, abruptly. All of the grains have huddled against the edges of the pan except for one which is browned and curls slightly at its edges.
Kat can't pick it up. It is Zuna, but not him, and she can't bring herself to pinch the grain between her fingers, and not somehow feel him. And it still glows blue.
It doesn't matter. Mama B doesn't need to hear Kat speak her pain because she knows; she has also lost a man. The difference is, Mama B's heart has had time to harden.
Using her long, dirty nails that are crusted with dried mud, Mama B reaches into the pan, as if she is plucking lice from a child's head. Slowly she closes the tin and walks away, the musk of overripe melons lingering in her wake.
Kat is alone with the tin and the rice. She shakes the tin and it chatters like old teeth.
* * * *
What Kat Sees
"Time to bake bread.” Kat shakes Mama B gently. Her arm feels hot and clammy.
Mama B arches her back, stretching like a cat, and drags a rag across her stomach to wipe the wetness from beneath her sagging breasts. Grunting, she lifts a ten-pound flour bag, once carried on her head with ease, takes a few steps, before lowering it to sit and rest.
Kat's afraid to look because she knows she'll see what Mama B hasn't told her.
Mama B is losing heat. She has the same sickness as Zuna and everything about her is fading: the song-bird in her trembling voice, the red-orchid glow in her cheeks. When Kat's real mother died nine years ago, Kat had felt the shiver of a rain storm in the stillness of her skin. Kat's afraid that the heat around Mama B will also fade until there's nothing except cold. Blue.
"Two new miners came into camp last night for beer and cigarettes. Jean and Gregoire.” Mama B clears her throat and chokes on her words.
Kat waits until Mama B finishes her cough. “Hasn't been a new miner in nearly a month,” says Kat.
"If they're coming for quick fortune, they should have come six months ago. Now the work is longer, the digging harder. The buyers don't come around every day. When they do, the price keeps getting lower. Soon it's going to take two days digging to earn a meal. Most men are leaving, one way or another."
"What then for us?"
"We won't starve because Jean and Gregoire are here now.” Mama B shrugs. “Wear your shi
ny lipstick and red dress."
For as long as she can recall Kat has belonged to somebody. First her family who sent her far away to hide the shame of her rape, next to Mama B. After that, to a series of miners—Mouko, Kako, Thony and Zuna.
"Will they need a washtub?” asks Kat.
"Tell them a spoon of coltan for a loaf of bread."
Mama B calls coltan the mineral of the gods. Men chop down the forest, dig holes in stream beds, and slosh the mud in a washtub until the coltan settles to a glittering stain on the bottom. She says men ship it around the world to turn it into a powder used to make—what? The best Kat can imagine is a monster that listens to voices and sees visions—it's still unclear.
Kat watches a cluster of men, carrying picks and shovels, head off the well-trodden mud trail connecting the camp to the digging, and into the dank greenery of the trees. Their movement sends a parrot fluttering into the top of a strangler fig tree. At one point nearly four hundred men lived in the camp. Now that number has been cut in half.
A man approaches. The lines on his face are sharply defined, with a jagged scar etching a disfigured path across his cheek, crossing his left eye. His brown hair is shaved closed to his head, and his serious brown eyes are shaped like almonds.
"Jean, where's your friend?” asks Mama B.
"Gone,” he says. “A soldier shot him for his boots."
Mama B nods, saying nothing.
Jean sizes up Kat, inspecting her for marks. His large hands grip her shoulders when he spins her around. Mama B steps between them to wrap her arm protectively around Kat's waist.
"One eye's the color of a mandrill, the other of grass,” says Jean.
"She's sweet as sugar cane and brings a digger luck.” Mama B's tone is boastful, the way Kat's father once was when he had proudly introduced her to prospective husbands. Kat lowers her eyelids, remembering, and smiles.
"What kind of luck?"
"Won't know until you pay to own her.” Mama B covers her mouth and hacks into her hands. “She's two kilos of coltan because she's still young and pretty. If you don't like her, pay a second fee and swap her for another."
Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 13 Page 12
