Memphis Movie

by Corey Mesler

  Q:The Southern angle being the racism—

  A:No, no, now, don’t go off on a toot. Racism isn’t exclusive to the South. But for the character that Dan plays, this kind of racism, deeply ingrained in his family history, is like an anchor holding him back.

  Q:I see. Monster’s Ball—

  A:Crossed with The Reivers. I can see the campaign already.

  Q:The Hope Davis character. Is she based on anyone?

  A:Anyone out there—in the real world?

  Q:Yes.

  A:No.

  Q:Yet, she—

  A:I see where you’re going.

  Q:Well, the tabloids were full of stories about you and Ms. Davis. That you were seen nightclubbing—

  A:Is that really a verb?

  Q:For our purposes.

  A:The purposes being to make something salacious out of our casting Hope Davis. That Sandy would write her into our next movie as some perverse Hollywood sexual triangle thing.

  Q:No, I—

  A:Donald.

  Q:But you and Ms. Davis—

  A:I wish.

  Q:Do you?

  A:No, no, c’mon, Donald, be a go-with guy. I’m joking.

  Q:Oh, ok. So the Hope Davis character—

  A:Is based on dreamstuff, is pulled out of the same ether from which Scarlett O’Hara, Mick Kelly and Quentin Compson were pulled squalling from—

  Q:I don’t—

  A:Move on.

  Q:Right.

  A:So, how you been, Donald?

  Q:Fine. Fine. Oh, you’re looking for more questions . . .

  A:When you’re ready.

  Q:Ha. Ok. Um, there’s a moment in one of your earlier films. The main character, a filmmaker, has just been excoriated in the press for some of his more, uh, personal sexual content. It seems he has used his own life, his own sexual history for his films.

  A:Yes.

  Q:So, what would you say about this character? Is he you, an aspect of you?

  A:The question doesn’t interest me much. But, for you, for the sake of your audience, I’ll take a stab at answering. You’re referring to the film After You I Almost Disappeared. My second feature and the first film I made after moving to Hollywood. I was homesick. I was thinking about my past. My first film, Sunset Striptease, had its success, you know. It took me to California where I was given a lot of money and told to do whatever I wanted. It’s dangerous for an artist to be told, “Do whatever you want.” [Laughs.] So, I had all this cash and was told to make a wish list of actors, which I did, putting Hope Davis at the top, of course. And I set to writing a script that would be worthy of all this freedom.

  Q:Sandy didn’t write this one?

  A:Wait. This is a story. I am telling you a story.

  Q:Sorry.

  A:So, I set about writing this script and I thought, man, they’re eating up everything I dish out. I am king of the fucking moviemaking universe. This is what it felt like. Yet, underneath that there was this River Styx of regret and loneliness. I mean, I had left behind everything that was what I thought of as my identity. Memphis was gone gone. So this script was all about the past, all about my past, you dig? And I wrote scene after scene based on people I knew, people I loved, women whom I loved and lost, women whom I loved and left. You know? It’s such a seductive topic for a young artist, that rich soil of the past. So I turn the sucker in, I take it to the studio and say, “Here. Here’s my next film and here’s who I want to play each part.” It’s laughable now, my hubris. And Marty Sicowicz, at the studio, took this mess home with him. It took less than a day and I was called back in. He smiled a sad smile and handed me back my new masterpiece. “No,” he said, and sat back. That was it. I was dumbfounded. Just no. And that really sent me reeling. So to speak. I went home, well back to this amazing house I was renting in Brentwood, and wept like a child. I was really stung.

  Q:It hurt, even after all the success.

  A:Yes, I was hurt. But another 24 hours went by and I went back in to see Marty. “What do I do?” I asked him. He gave me Sandy’s number. And that was that.

  Q:That’s how you met Sandy?

  A:That’s it. And, it turned out, unbeknownst to me, she had been called in to doctor Sunset Striptease. So, when I say she wrote every one of my movies, I mean every damn one.

  Q:Huh.

  A:Yeah. And the finished product, the irony of the finished product is that the title is almost the only thing left from my self-indulgent script. Beverly was still there.

  Q:The Hope Davis character.

  A:Right, the character I wanted Hope Davis to play. Well, it’s funny now, but, really, what I wanted was to visualize Hope Davis in the role of my ex-lover, a woman who was as hot as a pepper sprout.

  Q:And Beverly is her name.

  A:

  Q:Or not. I see.

  A:Right.

  Q:Who ended up playing Beverly? I can’t recall—

  A:Jodie Foster.

  Q:That’s not a bad fantasy lover either.

  A:[Laughs.] You said it.

  Q:Huh. So . . . what was I getting at? Oh, yeah. This character, this filmmaker, then. He really is you.

  A:No. It’s fiction.

  Q:Yes, but—

  A:It becomes fiction. Everything becomes fiction. Leave it out on the counter long enough and it becomes fiction.

  Q:Ok.

  A:That’s the title of my next movie. Everything Becomes Fiction.

  Q:Really, that sounds—

  A:No, not really. I am pulling your leg.

  Q:Ah.

  A:Sorry.

  Q:Right. Do you have an idea for a movie after this, after Memphis Movie?

  A:I do.

  Q:Can you talk about it?

  A:I can.

  Q:Will you?

  A:Sorry. I will and now. But, with this caveat. I’ve been cut loose, so to speak. Hollywood has taken me off the teat, you know. So, I can’t really say there will be a next movie. The monies for this one, well, have come from private investors.

  Q:Folks who will get an associate producer’s credit.

  A:Ha! Yes. So, anyway, we are working already on our next project. Sandy has been working with a writer, a Memphis writer actually, on a screenplay based on his book.

  Q:A Memphis writer? Can you say who it is?

  A:I’d rather not at this point. It all could collapse like a dissolving palace of snow. But, the story concerns two middle-aged men and their private conversations. One of them, though happily married, is being tempted by a woman he has just met, tempted by the age-old demon-god, lust. He is contemplating having an affair, but a lot of the action of the story—and we’re still trying to make this happen visually—is made up of dialogue.

  Q:This sounds familiar.

  A:Well, the book, which had no success whatsoever, is written entirely in dialogue.

  Q:Ah.

  A:Yes, and though that sounds like it’s tailor-made for the movies, it has proven to be a sonofabitch to adapt.

  Q:Do you have a cast in mind?

  A:Yes, Hope Davis will be the wife . . .

  Q:Of course.

  A:Yes.

  Q:Lovely. Well, we’re about through here. Good luck on Memphis Movie and we’re happy to have you here filming.

  A:Thanks, Donald. I’m happy to be back.

  2.

  Eric Warberg always kept a copy of Malone Dies on his nightstand so that when he died people would say of him, “He died with Beckett on his nightstand.” This speaks of the director’s pretension but it also says something about perception, especially as it relates to the makers of movies, an art created of equal parts light and greasepaint and air-castle.

  Eric was dazed to find himself back in Memphis, his hometown, the place of his birth, childhood, loss of virginity, young adulthood and tangled love-lines and embarrassments. The first morning he woke up in a strange bed, in a house in Midtown Memphis, rented for him by his ex-roommate Jimbo Cole, he had a Twilight Zone moment.

  What am I doing here? he t
hought.

  The light coming in the window was Memphis light, a distillation he could recognize in a flash. The soft buzz in the air was Memphis buzz. The tang in his sinuses was Memphis pollen, a potent blend.

  Then he remembered. He had come home to make a movie. Hollywood was far away. It was on another planet, a planet he had once called home and would again. He tried not to picture himself with tail between legs. Instead, he wanted to manufacture a new self: the Returning Hero, come from foreign shores to bless his little backwater hometown with the tinsel and klieg lights of movie magic. That’s the ticket, he thought. A triumphant return.

  The space next to him in the bed was empty. It was emptier than a bed recently vacated.

  Eric thought perhaps that Sandy had stayed up writing on her laptop and he would find her dozing in the den, head on chest. That was a sweet thought and Eric tried to hang onto it.

  He stood up slowly. Time, recently, had been digging inside him with its cheap spoon. There were new aches in lower back and legs. He thought suddenly of his father, a man who was hale and hearty and seemingly indestructible until he dropped dead in his driveway while doing yard work at the age of 57. Eric had just crested 50 so the road ahead seemed suddenly dark to him, a country road. The one his father now walked toward Abraham’s bosom.

  After peeing and splashing his face with tepid water—Memphis water—he went in search of his lady love.

  There was no Sandy in the den, no laptop, no drowsy, tender, stirring scene. The den was particularly empty of Sandy, perhaps even more so than the bed had been. Was this because Sandy was not spending as many nights in the bed as formerly? A silly notion, Eric thought.

  In the kitchen he found the coffee, the coffeepot. He began the morning routine, the one he and Sandy had cobbled together over more than 20 years together. The coffee, which they had brought with them from the West Coast, was Organic Shade Grown Mexican, the only real coffee, as Sandy liked to say.

  Right as he was set to hoist the first cup he heard the key in the front door.

  Sandy met him in the foyer. She looked like she had been out all night.

  This was because, of course, she had been out all night.

  Hair hand-combed. Face made of old paint. Eyes like a college student cramming for a final. And her shirt was misbuttoned.

  “Jesus,” Eric said.

  “Good morning to you, too,” Sandy said back.

  Eric hesitated. He stood on the threshold of a scrap. Did he want to continue? He did not. It was the same fight they had had before but not for a few years. They had both strayed—Christ, it was Hollywood—and both had wept and confessed numerous times. Lately, there had been more amity, more nights together, if not sexually (they still managed to pull it off a few times a month) then physically.

  “I didn’t think you even knew Memphis,” he said after a pause.

  “I’m in the bathroom, I can’t hear you,” she called out.

  “I said, ‘There’s coffee,’” he called back.

  3.

  Eric’s ex-roommate, Jimbo Cole, had been hired by the production company to scout locations. Jimbo was a real estate agent in Memphis. It was his phone call that now jangled Eric back to sense and sensibility.

  “Jimbo,” Eric said. His voice needed a shave.

  “Hey, Buddy,” Jimbo said, a tad too loudly for this early. “What say?”

  Jimbo was given to these kinds of rhetorical questions. The problem was that he expected answers to them. If he greeted someone with “How are you?” he waited for the reply and assumed it would have something to do with general health and happiness.

  “I say, ‘It’s goddamned early.’ I say, ‘What am I doing in Memphis?’” Eric said.

  “Making a movie!” Jimbo fairly crowed.

  “Right.”

  “So, I’ve been up for, let’s see, about four hours now and I think I’ve got some homes for you to look at. Some homes that would serve as, let’s see, Faith Davis’s, where the big party scene will be shot.”

  “Hope.”

  “You hope?”

  “Hope Davis. Yes, never mind. Great. Great, Jimbo. Lemme get dressed here and—”

  “Hope Davis. Goddammit. Sorry, Eric.”

  Eric knew he had to make it ok.

  “Jimbo, that’s wonderful. You’re way ahead of the curve. Great job.”

  “Goddammit,” Jimbo said again.

  “Ok, lemme just get dressed.”

  “Ok, Buddy.” Some of the blaze in Jimbo’s voice came back.

  “Ok.”

  “Uh, listen.”

  “Yep.”

  “Can Aileen tag along?”

  Aileen. Jimbo’s wife. Jimbo had married Aileen Sour. Eric remembered this now. He hadn’t been able to come back for the wedding because he had been filming in Fiji. He thought it was Fiji. And Jimbo had been heartbroken, having promised his wife’s family that they would get to meet the director of After You I Almost Disappeared.

  “Of course,” Eric said.

  “Great!”

  “Pick me up in—let’s say a half hour.”

  “Ok. I’ll be there. We’ll be there.”

  Eric hung up.

  He could hear Sandy in the shower.

  Sandy. What to do?

  He waited for the water to stop running but it went on and on. He rapped lightly and then entered the bathroom.

  “Jimbo is picking me up in half an hour,” he said through the shower curtain.

  “Ok. Have a good day. Call me later and we’ll meet up at—where was it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Eric felt a little dizzy. Maybe it was just the humidity in the bathroom.

  “Ok,” Sandy said.

  “He wants Aileen to go with us,” Eric said with an ironic lilt.

  Silence.

  “I say, he wants Aileen to go with us.”

  “I have no idea who Aileen is.” Sandy spoke above the water.

  “Jimbo’s wife.”

  Silence.

  “I say, Jimbo’s wife.”

  “Ok.”

  Eric stood at the sink. In the mirror above the basin was Eric’s father’s face. Whiskered and lined. Sandy turned the shower off.

  Eric waited. She pulled back the curtain. Sandy’s body, never a model’s, had grown heavy around the thighs and waist, as if extra modeling clay had been applied, yet it stirred him still. Her tangle of pubic hair, now dripping with water, looked darker and more mysterious. He knew there was grey there.

  “Hand me a towel,” she said.

  “I—” Eric said.

  He handed her one of the thick towels brought in especially by the production company at Sandy’s insistence. Sandy, Eric thought, was a bit of a hedonist.

  “Guess I’ll get dressed,” Eric said.

  Sandy smiled at him. It was the sorriest excuse for a smile Eric had ever seen.

  4.

  Jimbo Cole was driving a rented car. He had chosen a bright red PT Cruiser. Apparently, the movie company had offered a rental and Jimbo had jumped at the chance.

  “Morning, Buddy,” he sang out when Eric opened the door.

  “Hey, Jimbo.”

  “You ready to go? I’ve found some great homes. I think you’re gonna be pleased.”

  “Right. Come on in a sec.”

  Jimbo swung his head around as if he were standing in the middle of a football field at the biggest bowl game of the year. He let out a low whistle in appreciation.

  “I knew this place would suit you,” he said.

  Eric didn’t correct him. This lavish suburban mid-century modern ranch house felt so artificial to Eric that he couldn’t relax in it. The furniture looked like Jungle Room rejects.

  “Want some coffee before we head out?”

  “Stoked on joe,” Jimbo said. “I told you, I been up for hours.”

  “Right.”

  “Take a shot of something, though.”

  “Uh, yeah, there’s a bar, I think.”


  “You bet there is,” Jimbo said. He located it quickly and just as quickly he was drinking something on the rocks.

  Sandy entered, her hair hanging in sopping curls, a bathroom towel cinched around her that showed her somewhat large thighs to good advantage.

  “Hey, Jimbo,” she said with no inflection.

  “Hey Sandy, you look great this morning.”

  Sandy walked past the men into the kitchen.

  “There food in here?” she said over her shoulder.

  “I don’t know,” Eric answered.

  “You bet there is,” Jimbo said. “At least, I told them to stock it good.”

  This was not really Jimbo’s job but he was trying to become the man-on-the-ground, the Memphis Player you could count on.

  Sandy bent to examine the refrigerator’s contents. Both men studied her ass, Eric with end-of-the-world melancholy and Jimbo in frank appreciation.

  “Great,” Sandy said and walked out of the kitchen, back through the living room and down the hall.

  “She’s practically macrobiotic,” Eric said.

  “See you tonight,” Jimbo called after her.

  The men left through the front door.

  “What’s tonight?” Eric asked as they got into the car.

  “Film Commission kickoff party.”

  “Fuck,” Eric said.

  5.

  “Where’s Aileen?” Eric asked as Jimbo piloted the car down Poplar Avenue.

  “We’re picking her up at Kimberly’s.”

  “Jesus Christ, Jimbo,” Eric said.

  Kimberly Winks was an ex-girlfriend of Eric’s. She was also an actress and had been given a small part in the film, against Eric’s express wishes. She knew someone who knew someone and had wrangled a bit part. Sandy was still writing and rewriting her few lines, trying in her way to undermine the starlet. Eric had been hoping to avoid Kimberly Winks at all costs. Their relationship, which she ended abruptly and without explanation, was still a sore spot in Eric’s past, a blur in the colored ink of his heart’s map. Because she had walked away from what Eric had thought was a good relationship—lots of laughs, lots of sex—and never said why and refused all communication for years, Eric hated her. He hated her just as hard as his ennui would allow.