Winds batter the country: gold leaves fly across the green grass and stone pavements. Amid classical columns I meet my editor. I never did write a column. In a quiet auditorium we wait for our man to arrive and share his fantastical world. He stands at the front of the stage, seeming to tower over us: starts the experiment, the performance, disavows being a film critic. In his accent Joan Didion meets Peter Osgood. Words fly, a whisper to a dream. How his reviews closed down magazines he wrote for; how he likes writing about films he hasn�t seen; how Pauline Kael could write the review during the film. � Remarkable capacity � and she was a remarkable woman... a bit of a witch, but a remarkable woman. What film does in our heads. - Now, I�m going to stop being that figure, lecturing at the front of the stage. He sits down in a director�s chair. � I�m tired... didn�t realize how tired I was... Gosh, I think: this is �fiction�. - But sometimes when you�re tired, unexpected memories can come through... I remember my mother, talking to me about going to the cinema when I was a teenager... she didn�t mind this passion I had.... parents want that kind of engine to come and propel kids out of the teenage years... She said: - Maybe you want to be an actor? � But I said, no, I don�t think so: I think what I�d really like to be is a character. Walker Percy�s The Moviegoer is out of print. William Holden walks a New Orleans street, seeking a light. Presences. - Bill, meet Phil. Phil, this is Bill Holden. - See, you get film this afternoon, too! Fernando Rey walks from one screen, one country, to another. On the subway he steps in and out of a train, jams and opens doors. At a party 20 years ago he�d told barrel-chested Mitchum he knew him. Did he? Beatty had dithered over banning that book: - Wow, that book... - Yes. - Wow: that book. - I know. - Wow - that book! Nicole Kidman walks on. Nicky D, you should have been here. We should be so lucky. I reckon our man wrote her script on the back of an airline napkin. Now, he says, I�m going to stop being that figure in the chair, and come back to the front of the stage. My editor pops the question. The instant reply is � You�re my kind of guy. Time freezes a second, or warms up. My editor and I drink overpriced, over-strong beer at a table near the new dictionaries. We meet his editor. Wow, I think: his editor. She asks my editor about his fiction plans. They sound impressive. Our man asks my editor about his name. Discoloured bleeps start to emerge in the background: to smudge my already fragile consciousness of what�s happening. I ask our man about songwriters: like, why Berlin and Porter aren�t in the book. - That�s a very good criticism, he says; and: - I would like to write lyrics for songs. I won�t tell you what else he said. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search new jobs daily now http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+