Hello, My Name Is (What?)
“Hello, Moto. Hello, Apple. Hello, onion ring. Hello operator, get me Roto-Router.” My Sensei is stimming, he can’t help himself from singing jingles that haven’t been on television in 50 years. “Gotta get my Kodachrome,” he says. Okay, well, they don’t make that anymore. In fact, they almost stopped making film altogether. You were around for that, I tell him. It was a whole scene: Christopher Nolan, Roland Emmerich, J.J. Abrams, Martin Scorsese, and, of all people, Judd Apatow. You couldn’t believe the mishegoss in that room, the tsuris. This was in 2012, 2013, 2014, around there, when the movies really started changing for the worse. What was the last good movie, even? Nightcrawler? Never mind, I didn’t see. But Jake Gyllenhaal is the kind of real-ass actor freak that this country doesn’t produce anymore. They all come from the United Kingdom and they’re taking all the American roles from the Americans. Not that I mind—I belong to no nation, no God except He who rules in the Valley of Elah. I’m religious now. It’s coming back in a big way.
Things have been quiet lately. My Sensei has been in the editing room, once again at Mr. Fincher’s side as he was throughout the production of The Continuing Adventures of Cliff Booth (out this August only in theaters and probably the financier’s streaming platform). “I keep telling him to hurry the fuck up, which feels really weird since usually I’m the one who people are rushing. But I don’t feel bad. David obsesses—and that’s really the right word, he’s obsessed, and it’s unhealthy—he obsesses over the most insignificant details. You know, you’ll have a perfectly composed shot, and he’s futzing with it because ‘the upper left is half a stop too dark.’ I can’t believe it. I always get it on the day.”
He’s on a roll. I can’t stop him. “You know, except when I had to erase the C-stands from the House of Blue Leaves scene in Kill Bill, I mean Bob Richardson wasn’t going to compromise his lighting just so I can avoid the Avid. But David takes it way, way too far, and while I knew that going in, and I’m sure he’s going to come up with a great movie, it’s exhausting, boring, and worst of all, not fun, and making movies should be fun. That’s why I make a big point about only doing a movie when I have to. I’m not under contract. I only make movies when I want to, and I try and live the movie as much as I can. I can’t do it as much as I could 25 years ago, but when I make my last movie, I’m going to be having a ball shooting takes for the sake of it, drinking with the crew, partying with the actors. I love it. David doesn’t do any of that. I just sort of don’t see the point, for me at least, anymore, not at my age. I’m too old and I’m too rich to make movies just to make movies.”
I’m not sure he remembers that my cousin and his wife are coming over next week. Does he still care? I hope not. I keep asking him about Mr. Fincher, as if I were asking him for another take, another take, another take, yet another take. “But there’s one thing that still kills him,” he says. “Nicole Kidman was the star of Panic Room before Jodie Foster; she had to drop out after hurting her leg. They changed most of the set to suit Jodie, who’s much shorter, but they forgot one thing.”
He leaves me hanging. I beg the answer.
“The doors. All of the doors in that movie are way too tall.”
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