The order came as quickly as its messenger left me alone to figure it out: “Film all of my old movies with a 1/4 shutter and while you’re doing it, zoom in and out and wiggle the camera around to make everything trail. Thanks I have to go see something.” He didn’t have to go see something. I mean he did go, but didn’t have to. Da Boss saw An American Werewolf in London from 1981, by John Landis. I asked him how it was. “David Naughton and Griffin Dunne are the stars. They should’ve switched roles. Naughton is in most of the movie and sucks. He just does not have it. It would’ve been better, not a lot better, but better if Dunne had played the lead instead of the friend that got killed at the end and kept coming back for exposition. It had serious pacing problems, too, but the ending in Piccadilly Circus was incredible… so many people died.”
I asked him what he planned on watching next. “Screwballs, it’s a 1983 Canadian Porky’s rip-off produced in part by Roger Corman. It’s definitely better than Porky’s—I mean, it has to be. As long as the girls are naked and the guys aren’t hideous and rude.” Then I asked him when he was going to review the recent edits I’d made on the movie. He told me he was going to spur-claw me. I reminded him that this was impossible as he was a human being without claws, much less a spur claw, and if he were so inclined, he could simply grab me and rip my head off no problem. It’d take about three seconds. He didn’t like me speculating about his murdering me, said “You’re putting all of these horrible images in my head,” and then went and watched Screwballs. He emerged half an hour. “Those images were worse,” he said.
So is the montage coming along…? The dreaded question for both of us, hit with roadblocks and prior obligations leading up to a screening in fewer than six weeks. Da Boss insists pressure and deadlines will force something to crack, but when, what, I don’t know. It does feel like we have a beginning to the piece and Da Boss even crossed out “—Begin beginning of TWFNO” on one of his many index cards. The structure of the thing is there, at least skeletally: a quick break and a freeze, as if the projector froze, or the hard drive collapsed, and then a sudden “reversion” and a replay of the movie up to that point. Then into the shutter speed montages and then into the marimba against photos sequence, and finally the sound of an empty room and more photos, but held for longer, and then, FINALLY, a cello climax and a simple reprise of the movie’s leitmotif, a brief clip of the October 19, 1992 Presidential debate, and then roll credits to the song “Silver Sidearm.”
If it looks like I just “gave the plot away,” rest assured it will be wholly different and fully filled in by October 11…
—Follow Monica Quibbits on Twitter: @MonicaQuibbits