LATEST NEWS:
I am a moving space.
Letters:
I’d like to apologize to the makers of the original Total Recall film.
FIGHT
SCENE.
Jack
Nicholson pushes Michael Ironside[1]
against the stacked garbage cans in his courtyard, slaps him repeatedly from
cheek-to-cheek, and places a pair of large sunglasses on his face. Projectile
spurts of saliva shoot from my mouth with bellicose commands. “Be me. Be me!”
The sunglasses almost fall off Ironside’s face, but I hammer them against the bridge
of his nose with a tough index finger. “Be me.”
I
smacked his face with the trashcan lid until no dental records could be
detected, and I waited for the plangent gong to fade away.
Is
this laughter? Am I laughing?
my own
figure coming toward me in a dress which I had never worn, - it was pike-gray,
with somewhat of gold. As soon as I shook myself out of this dream, the figure
had entirely disappeared. It is strange, however, that, 8 years afterward, I
found myself on the very road, to pay one more visit to F., in the dress of
which I had dreamed, and which I wore, not from choice, but by accident.
However, it may be with matters of this kind generally, this strange illusion
in some measure calmed me at the moment of parting. The pain of quitteing for
ever noble [Alsace], with all I had gained in it, was softened; and, having at
last escaped the excitement of a farewell, I, on a peaceful and quiet journey,
pretty well regained my self possession. [2]
A line I remember from an email I cannot find:
> psychiatric
unhealthy is just like a problem with your computer:
> it can either be
attributed to a software problem or a hardware problem.
For
the first time since buying the computer, Jack Nicholson picked up a pencil and
let each letter fall to the page like an angel.
Dear
Edith,
My
name is Michael Ironside. I was born February 12, 1950. I speak fluent Hebrew,
German and Russian. I used to pretend to have trouble reading the letters
during eye examinations because I wanted glasses. Somehow the eye doctor always
knew I was lying. Nowadays I teach drama at a Catholic school beside a park
where Jack Nicholson sometimes eats sandwiches.
Love
always,
Michael Ironside
Let’s start over: I am Michael Ironside. History might record me as not
Jack Nicholson. Let’s start over: I
am not famous in any way to anyone. I am a man who eats salami sandwiches. I am
an amputated father. I am a haunted uncle. I am a lonely hunter. Or, rather, I
am like an uncle. I am avuncular.
I am like an uncle once written by Chekhov. I am like Jack Nicholson. Let’s start over.
Interior. Jack Nicholson. If I could make my head explode. If I could
peel off my face… If I could take a reddish globule from my brain, pull it out
my nostril, and be rid of Michael Ironside, be rid of Jack Nicholson. If I
could swing a baseball bat against my own face, crack off my two front teeth,
lodge them down my throat – my teeth are already gone. I can see myself pecking
at a morsel of cheese, This isn’t me... This isn’t me... I am Jack Nicholson.
Exterior.
Something like watching myself on screen, but not. I can see my face – it is
the single visage of a crowd of cinemagoers walking out a movie theatre – a
liminal expression between worlds. Will the movie house vanish back into
non-existence after the 20th Century? Do you know who I am? Do
people read in the future? Do you know who I am? Are you there? Do you know who
I am? From the book of Holocaust
poetry: ‘he that I am forgives him that I was’.[3]
Let’s say I am an actor, immured in a role, and now I am ready to step out of
character. If I curl my fingers, he curls his; but I can’t get him up. I stand
too firm for this to be an out of body experience! He just sits there, waiting
for a stroke, waiting for sirens, waiting for his hair and fingernails to grow
beneath roses with neither destination nor direction.
NOTE (found written in red on screenplay):
In end, JN must confront
JN.
uncertainty if narrator is confronting double from
mirror OR if JN is confronting narrator.
All that remains are images collected
from my films, BUT those are just characters played.
