Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself (24 page)

[Just keeps tossing on the modifiers, loping them on]

He disliked the film so much that when it’s shown on TV, he’s taken off the director’s credit … The way the guild works, credit goes to Alan Smithee, who’s apparently directing a lot of films …

I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that.

… that’s the director on that movie … On TV, directed by someone Smithee
.

It’s interesting too, ’cause thinking of ’86, right about that same time,
Brazil
came out. Which was another thing that used
dreams
in a really powerful, sort of coherent way. And I think one of my—I mean, I’d always used sort of dreamy stuff. But I had never as a young writer realized that you still had an obligation to make a kind of narrative. That really the goals of realism and the goals of surrealism are exactly the same. And they’re indescribable. But they’re two completely different highways that have the same destination. And I’d never snapped to that before.

David Lynch,
Blue Velvet
coming along when it did, I think saved me from droppin’ out of school. And saved me maybe even from quittin’ as a writer. ’Cause I’d always—if I could have made a movie, right at that time?
That
would have been it. I mean, I vibrated on every frequency.

Including
the fact that it was absolutely horrifying. That that’s not a movie about a kid discovering horror in a town. It’s about a kid discovering that he—that there are parts of himself that are just like Frank Booth. [Not afraid of cliché; the
only
way to deliver this, at this late date, would be to be ironic.] And it’s a weird movie, ’cause the
climax
comes at the end of act two, when Frank turns around in the car, and looks at Jeffrey and says, “You’re like me.” But it’s the one—except for the voyeurism scene—it’s the one shot that’s out of Jeffrey’s eyes. And it’s all
very—

I thought that was a stagey moment, though, a tiny bit, because that was the point of the movie
.

Yeah. But so many critics missed that that was the point of the movie. So many of the critics missed that it was a coming-of-age movie. And thought it was a, you know, “Gee-whiz kid discovers corruption underneath.” You know? You have the surface of the super-saturant colors, and waving firemen, and then underneath—they utterly missed it. I mean I had to
read
all that stuff for this essay, it was like very few critics
got
what was going on—

Pauline didn’t
.

Yeah, but her review is like a page and a half. And
she’s
more interested in the fact of how disingenuous it is. Her big line is there’s very little art between you and Lynch’s psyche in this. You know, that it’s really like watching somebody’s id get projected onto the screen.

So what kind of stuff were you writing before that movie came out?

Let’s see, I can remember exactly.
Tch tcho tcho tcho thch tcho
. I had written—I was taking Old English, and I’d written a story about a village in England, that was all in Old English. And I’d written a long novella that actually ended up coming out in a magazine, about a WASP who passes himself off as Jewish. Even with his wife—and
is exposed when his wife gets terminal cancer. But both things were basically vehicles for me to show off in various technical ways. Like to do really good, a kind of really good kitschy Jewish voice and dialogue. And it was more like that’s what I want to do, now how can I structure a story so that I can?

I mean, it was all—and I was
so
arrogant. I would have this defense, that when the professors would say they didn’t like the stuff, I would think it was that they didn’t understand the grand conceptual schemes I’d laid on it. But I was not willing to realize that I’d laid the grand conceptual schemes on a substructure that was essentially, “How will this enable me to show off in way X?” “How will this enable me to show off in way Y?” And it’s something that I see in, for example, Leyner. Who I think is
very
gifted. But he’s somebody whose vibe I always get: The point of this is that Mark Leyner is smart and funny. The point of this is that Mark Leyner is smart and funny. And it’s fine. And he earns every cent he gets.

But it’s like, you’re loppin’ off 30 percent—the intangible thing in art that can make the stuff, you know, worth not watching TV for.

Is
it worth not watching TV for?

Good—I think the good stuff is. But also, I mean art requires you to
work
. And we’re not equipped to work all the time. And there’s times when, for instance for me, commercial fiction or television is perfectly appropriate. Given the resources I’ve got and what I want to spend. The problem is, when I’m trying to derive all my spiritual and emotional and artistic calories from that stuff, it’s like living on a diet of candy. And I know I’m repeating that over and over. I can find very few analogies that work well.

It’s in the book …

It’s in the book but it’s about little kids—whether the parents are going to keep little kids from eating candy. Yeah. And I also—it’s another thing that I have. Is, you’ve watched me eat a lot of sugar on
this tour? I’m hypoglycemic. If I eat sugar, I get a headache and feel shitty, and I shouldn’t do it. But once I eat a little bit, I get a craving for more and more and more and more and more. [I nod: another one.] Yeah, interesting.

Something you learned from Blue Velvet and from Brazil is that the details matter, even in something that’s not realistic
.

Yeah. That whatever the project of surrealism is works
way
better if 99.9 percent of it is absolutely real. And that you can’t just—you know. And that’s something … I wouldn’t even be able to put it that clearly if I didn’t
teach
. Where I see my students, you know—“not enough of this is
real
, you know?” “But it’s
supposed
to be surreal.” “Yeah, but you don’t
get
it.” Surrealism doesn’t work. I mean, most of the word surrealism is
realism
, you know? It’s
extra-realism
, it’s something on top of realism. It’s that one thing in a Lynch frame that’s off. That if everything else weren’t picture-perfect and totally structured, wouldn’t hit. Wouldn’t punch the viewer in the stomach the way that it does.

Why don’t you have a TV?

’Cause I’ll watch it all the time. Having to go over to friends’ houses to watch TV
works
. It’s very much like taking an Anabuse or something. I mean, it just lowers the amount that I can watch.

So you’ll just call friends, “Clear out, here I come.” Or will you watch it with them?

I’ll make plans. I’ll say, you know, “Are you guys going to watch some TV?” If it’s something I want to watch, I’ll come over.

Otherwise, you would watch it all the time?

Yeah, I don’t even know if I would
watch
it. It would be like what it
is with you, it would be on all the time—it would be my version of a fireplace. It would be a source of warmth and light in the corner, that I would occasionally get sucked into.

[Break]

[Dave, as check is gliding toward us: “Is Jann paying for this?” Serial question. Also again, to waitress, “We’re traveling platonically,” or “We’re not together, etc. etc., not that way.” I mean, a standard gag of his.]

David thinks that Kevin Spacey and Anthony Hopkins are in an arm-wrestle for best psycho of the last four or five years. Where does Christopher Walken fit into that?

Which Christopher Walken?

King of New York. Comfort of Strangers
.

Yeah, that seemed like, didn’t see that. I thought he was
great
in
True Romance
. Just in that little, “the Pantomime.” “Men have seventeen, women’s got twenty-one.”

[He does a not-bad Walken. Gifted mimic.]

Ha
.

“My father was the heavyweight champ-ion of Sicilian liars.”

That great scene: he’s got to tell where Slater and Patricia Arquette are hiding—

Or that they’re gonna torture it out of him. And so, knowing that he’s got to get him mad enough to kill him … I mean, Tarantino is such a
schmuck
90 percent of the time. But ten percent of the time, I’ve seen genius shining off the guy.

But that scene: It’s convincing heroism, in a way that almost never comes through in movies
.

But then the weird touch of having the name on the refrigerator the whole time. (Smiles) That’s so—

Did you see The Last Boy Scout?

Is that Bruce Willis? Is that where he does the jig at the end? Huh. I don’t—I didn’t watch it paying much attention. I think I saw it on a VCR at somebody’s house.

I really like Bruce Willis. Ever since
Moonlighting
he just had me in the palm of his hand, I really liked him in
Pulp Fiction
.

D
AVE:
(Complains) I’m so fucking passive.

D
RUNKEN GUY AT PUMPS:
You guys weren’t at the game by any chance, were you? Hinsdale?

Missed it.

[And then we leave the gas cap sitting on top of the pump. Which the National Rent-A-Car people aren’t tremendously understanding about.]

[I ask David to drive.]

Satisfy my curiosity. During that big bewildering party you had for the book at Tenth Street Lounge, when you went to the bathroom, you were looking in the mirror, right? That’s what you went for?

When?

When you went to the bathroom. We were talking, and you went to the bathroom. The kind ofthing where you would touch one side of your hair, push it back a little bit, and just look in the mirror. I guess I was wrong?

I went to the bathroom to take my tobacco out. As a matter of fact, I think I made it a project
not
to look in the mirror during that party. Because I knew that a lot of other people were looking at me, and if I thought about what I looked like, I was going to go crazy.

But it must have been a bewildering … I mean, you didn’t even interact with anybody at that party …

(Testy) Sure I did. I didn’t—I spent half that party in the office up above, with first Charis and then Mark Costello. And there was a great little like
nook
. Where we could look out at everybody talking, it was an enormous amount of fun.

[At wheel] This is nice, I get to drive a car with more than one operable cylinder. A good road-trip car.

[Break]

Michael—I’m not going to pronounce his name correctly—and it’s not Michael, it’s the Asian tennis player at Enfield …

Pemulis
. He’s not Asian.

No, not Pemulis
.

Oh, oh, oh. LaMont Chu.

Why I brought the book into Denny’s, although we didn’t get around to it. The character, LaMont Chu
, he
has a complex response to fame. Which he goes to Lyle about
.

Heh heh heah.

[He’s pleased. He’s been waiting for
someone
to do this.]

Tell me about that. You know why I’m asking the question, that’s why you’re laughing. So tell me
.

Sure. Nah, it’s just this whole, um—yeah, that’s a lot about what it’s like to be kind of a young, grad-student writer. Who really reveres certain older ones. You suffer from a delusion that, for all the pain of your envy, there’s this inverse, satisfied feeling. Which is the pleasure of
being
envied by you. And that that—and then I can remember bein’ a tennis player. And havin’ exactly the same feeling about older, successful tennis players, and it’s just …

But now you’re in the inverse spot, actually
.

Mmmmm. Really?

Yes
.

Well, then I can tell you, from authoritative firsthand experience that there’s nothing like—there’s no
keen
, exquisite pleasure that corresponds with the keen exquisite pain of envying somebody older. Who’s written something, or won some tournament, that you particularly admire.

Let’s talk about the simple brute thing …

Just tell me where the rear window defogger is here.

Um, as I was reading it, and marking it, and knowing it had to come from your reading of other people, while you were having trouble doing your own work
.

Heh heh heh heh. (Dark, exposed laugh, with the pleasure of being discovered)

It’s like, only a writer under, like, thirty would have known that that was … That it came out of
bitter
truths. That’s actually—that’s a scene that was
much
cut down by Michael. ’Cause it went on and on and on, with a whole lot of fame theory, and delusions about it, and stuff like that.

You were talking about guys who found black gold while they were out shooting game, right? And you were talking about writers who’d found that, I thought?

Oh, you mean like younger writers our age or something? It was more like the older—like that there was a feeling that went along with having your picture in a magazine. You’re right—there’s some delicious ironies to this whole process that I haven’t even … This is one reason why I need to go home and
quiver
. Is ’cause I haven’t thought about any of this stuff.

I’m going to begin reading to you now. I’ve gotta find the interior lights in here. So I can begin reading to you some quotes …

Let me just … Oh, “South,” “Joliet …”

That’s the prison, right?

That’s one of its charms.

Blues Brothers?

Yeah. It’s also the setting of the first part of
The Sting
.

George Roy Hill … great director … that great comedy about hockey
.

Hockey—Oh,
Slap Shot?
Yeah, that was pretty good.

… I love the Hanson brothers
.

Yeah. Yeah, “You better watch out for the kid, he’s going to have somebody’s dick in his mouth before you can say Jack Robinson.”