‘I can feel the old tensions returning, Joey. And they’re telling you to fight it. They’re telling you not to surrender.’
He knew she was right. She was speaking the truth. He felt ashamed of his resistance, trifling as it was, compared to what it would, without a doubt, have been in the past. Before he’d learnt — from Jacy, and from Steppenwolf.
‘You’ve got to show courage,’ she insisted. ‘It’s essential for the journey. For the truth, the essence. Bring your head up further. Go on. Bring it up further, Joey. There’s a good boy. Don’t be shy.’
For a number of glorious seconds he vertiginously bobbed upon that lapping ocean. He swayed, lightheaded, far out in the blue. Then felt her stiffening sharply as he choked: ‘No, Jacy.’ But she didn’t hear him as all of a sudden the peninsula prongs closed. The winking of the lights seemed an anxious semaphore now. In her voice was the same rigidity that had invaded her body.
‘Tell me what she called you, Joey,’ she said.
Her rigid legs locked around his neck. He could feel the white cotton material bunching up in her lap. One of her shoes had fallen off.
‘I said, tell me what she called you, Joey.’
‘Jacy, you’re hurting me! I can’t breathe —!’
For a split second, he felt certain he’d blacked out completely. Once, as a child, he’d put a plastic bag —
‘What did she call you, baby?’
A flaring meteor of hot ash coursed a perilous trajectory across the sky.
‘Did she call you “baby”? Is that what she called you, Joey?’
A spume of lava like a deadly orchid mockingly, lyrically fanned its petals then, unexpectedly, swooped to devour an entire temple.
‘That’s it, darling,’ said Jacy. ‘Tell me! Tell Jacy how you like to put your head up between girls’ legs! Tell us, Joey! Tell the world! Let’s share your secret! What is it you want? What have you always wanted?’
The sky shone saffron. A giant wave reared silently, then fell, devastating everything in its path.
‘I want to be reborn!’
‘You want to live again!’
‘I wanted to live life over!’
‘You wanted to climb inside Mona!’
‘I wanted to climb inside Mona!’
‘You wanted to be her baby!’
‘I wanted to be her —! Tthht!’
‘That’s it, Joey! That’s it, Joey! Suck it! Suck that thumb!’
‘Tthht!’
‘You’re safe in the Karma Cave now, Joey!’
‘Safe and home with Jacy!’
‘With her you’ll be safe in this precious harbour!’
‘Safe for ever in this precious harbour!’
She relaxed her grip, and he knew the ‘precious moment’ was at hand. He could feel it approaching with almost every fibre of his being. The precious moment he’d for so long craved.
‘Safe for ever, you twisted fucking bastard!’
Huge blocks of steaming pumice bounced lethally down the volcano’s side. The entire island shuddered in the wake of another explosion. The crimson lava streamed into his eye. A column of red ash swirled out of it as she raked her nails along his cheek. He heard her scream and, blurred, watched her falling towards the door. The door swung open before her and she tumbled out into the night. The mountain cracked and the zig-zag fissure that ran down its front almost discreetly parted to reveal a core’ of light, but not the one he’d been expecting. There were cries of panic coming from all over the island. The floodlights were beaming directly at him. ‘Jacy!’ he called, and struggled to his feet. He shouted after her again as the cabin door slammed behind him.
There were one, two, three, four marksmen all in firing position with their rifles trained. But he couldn’t see them properly because of the hot fire. ‘Don’t fucking move, you cunt!’ the detective barked as he placed his coat around her. Then turned on him: ‘Don’t even think about it, Tallon, you fucker!’ he hissed.
He tried to locate her to explain. But she was gone. Instead, Boyle Henry was there, close by the yellow Datsun, smiling. Smiling directly at him, as if to say: ‘You see? You understand now, don’t you, Joey? No matter what you do, I’ll win!’
He brushed away the sparks — some of them had gotten into his mouth. He was still trying to poke the remainder of the joint out of the blinded hollow of his eye — there was ash all down his front — when he saw Boyle Henry giving him a cheeky little wave before climbing into the car, as a voice just beside him said: ‘Can you look this way, Mr Tallon, I’m from RTE!’
A Psychobilly Version?
Even though I knew that a lot of it was still too personal and would have to be fictionalized and modified at some point, there can be no doubt that I was absolutely over the moon next morning having finished the script. On my way to work I thought about Johnston and how he’d been telling us one night about this guy Balzac, who, at last having discovered how his novel was going to pan out, threw open the window of his bedroom and shouted: ‘He’s dead! He’s dead! Listen, everyone — the old fucker is dead!’
Although obviously he didn’t say ‘fucker’. It’s just that I couldn’t remember the character’s name.
The great thing — not just having honed it down and getting to the essential truth, although that was exciting too — was the way the style was beginning to emerge — already I could see it all inside my head. What it needed, more than anything, was that psychobilly touch. Which would be in keeping with the milieu in which it was set, a trashy and sinister country-and-western Ireland of murder, paranoia and sentiment — a sort of rough and ready treatment of the original idea, not unlike The Mohawks’ music. Unadorned, no bullshit. Blam! Just get in there and do it, no frills, no fucking around. A movie that could be put together not only pretty fast but relatively cheaply as well. By the time I reached the college, I had decided that was the way to go. I could see it all so clearly, frame by frame. And how it ought to be directed.
For a start, I was going to use amateur actors, there being no doubt in my mind after the workshops I’d been doing with the kids that almost anyone could hack it as an actor. Of course they could! If someone could pick up a guitar and start belting out psychobilly tunes, not to mention storm the arenas of the world shouting about Martin Luther King, the way that Bono and co. seemed to be able to do, then I didn’t really see what the problem was with acting. It would be, in the words of Chico, a piece of piss.
‘People have been acting since the day they were born,’ I said to myself as I came striding in the college gates. Even guys like Mangan would be able to do it, I reckoned, regardless of what they thought themselves. And, having bought him a doll, I figured he owed me a favour or two. So I’d probably be calling on his services. For the part of one of the ‘old boys’.
old boy 1 — Mangan, I thought, and laughed.
Unlocking my office, I thought, Yes, guys like Mangan would be as good as anyone, educated or fucking well not! Once they were given the confidence they’d be more than able to cut the mustard.
After my first two seminars — which went terrifically well, I have to say! — I made a start on the production script and blocked out the first six scenes during lunch that day.
The Set-up Scene
The very first scene I felt was pretty much well worked out. First of all we would see the tinker camp, with broken prams, car wrecks, dogs howling and the various beat-up old caravans, as the fire dies in the wee small hours, and then — wham! — one of Boo Boo’s songs comes blasting right over the soundtrack as we zoom in straight away on her inflatable face.
What we would have to get — essential, I reckoned — was the sheer unfathomable depth of helplessness in the doll figure’s eyes as he pushed himself deep inside her (the camera zooming in on the lettering Not a cardboard imitation! Not an undersized toy! Genuine life-size inflatable with three workable openings!). Then, perhaps, a bold black psychobilly logo:
Ireland, 1976! The Gypsy Camp!
/> On second thoughts, no, we wouldn’t bother with that, I reflected, and scribbled it out. Instead we’d go straight away into the scene, with the camera holding on the eyes all the way through as he kisses her face and runs his hands through her hair saying, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’ There would be a torn old sofa. A tatty slipper. He is kissing her belly button and his trousers are around his knees. But we don’t see his face — Mangan would never agree to it if that was the arrangement. Then all we hear is an almighty, unearthly squeal — I could do that voice-over myself- as he reaches his climax, and the coruscating guitars go squealing ahead, until they’re spinning almost out of control …
Then we hear another scream and the camera, having remained static all the way through, out of nowhere goes vroom! and careers wildly across the screen. Straightaway back to the doll with her pink, plump cheeks and the oval red mouth that never makes any sound. I banged down my new scene title and, having considered it for a bit, was more or less happy with it. It read:
SCENE 1: ‘The Lakelands’ Saddest Fuck’
Swinging through the double doors on my way back to class after lunch, having got the rest of the scene finished to my satisfaction, I was positively exhilarated. I knew in my gut it was going to be a powerful opener: the camera ever so slowly pulling away, with the doll’s button eyes just staring at the ceiling. It would be hard for Mangan to execute, of course, and I knew the old fucker would probably protest, even if we were just going to see his warty old back. But a crate of beer ought to sort out that, I thought — no, knew!
Plus the prospect of having other assorted items purchased for him in the backstreet sex shops of the capital.
Her Ladyship
Which was exactly what transpired, Mangan, already out of it after all the beer we’d drunk, practically tearing the camera out of my hands, in fact, as I outlined the project to him. Stumbling around the place pointing it like he’s fucking Bergman or Bertolucci, framing me in the viewfinder with this great big leer on his face, going: ‘Don’t be thinking you’ll blame it all on me! I seen you at it plenty of times! Talking away to her and everything, like she was your wife, haw haw!’
He swung the camera towards her, as she lay there beside the bed with her head flopped on to her chest.
‘I heard you! Mona this! Mona that! You were at it the whole time and don’t deny it! Don’t start saying different, Mr Film Man! Hee hee!’
Which I had to admit was true. I didn’t see any point in denying it any longer, especially not to him, seeing as he was capable of far worse activities in that department himself. For I’d heard him! Anyway, I was completely shit-faced that night, not only because of the beer but also from the sheer excitement of his having agreed so readily to come on board with the project. I mean, he was the very first actor I’d asked!
Drunk as I was, just lying there on the floor of his caravan, I had this great feeling about the movie. That there was this kind of weird light around it, you know? That no matter what you did, somehow you just couldn’t lose.
The only thing that went wrong that night was when I woke up back in my own bed, bathed in sweat and with Mona’s pale face looking at me from behind the curtain of black hair as she trembled and said: ‘He didn’t really see us, did he? Tell me he didn’t hear us, Joseph!’
Meaning, of course, that Mangan hadn’t been aware of our … relationship, if you could call it that.
‘No,’ I told her, ‘he didn’t!’, instinctively turning from those penetrating dead doll eyes. I still lay with her sometimes, whenever the depressions would come on. They could be troubling, those eyes. They were eyes that said: ‘I’m neutral. It’s nothing to do with me. None of it. It’s all the one to me, Joseph.’
I didn’t get to sleep for an hour or two after that. But the next morning I felt fine again, and why wouldn’t I when I was about to embark on the project of a lifetime? The real truth about 1976 in an ordinary old backwoods country ‘n’ Irish town. A hillbilly, rockabilly backwater full of shady politicos, sex movies, female wrestlers and dead detectives.
Not to mention activists for peace getting blown to kingdom come!
I figured I had all bases pretty much covered, because if I was prepared to tell the truth about my own life — with the names subtly changed, of course — it wouldn’t seem that I was being unfair to anyone else. No one would be able to say: ‘You steal our story but you won’t tell your own! That’s not playing the game, Joey boy!’
No, that wouldn’t come into it because it wasn’t that kind of project. Truth and … verisimilitude — is that the word? — well, truth anyway would be of the essence.
I’d just sit there in my office, thinking, whenever the kids had gone for their lunch: Yes! Here he is! Scotsfield’s own Andy Warhol! The John Cassavetes of the lakelands!, with everybody clapping as they presented me with some award, don’t ask me what.
I had seen all of Cassavetes’ work by now — they had a stack of his movies in the new information technology section of the library. I liked the way he shot his pictures and — I was quite prepared to admit it —would definitely be stealing some of his tricks. Lots of hand-held camera movements, in what they called on the back of the case ‘cinema verité style’, as well as extreme close-ups and lots of rough-shod camerawork. I was still without a title, though. I had gone off The Plan, for it had begun to seem kind of … ordinary. As though it were just about me and Jacy and what had happened between us ‘that fateful night’, to employ a phrase of Johnston Farrell’s, when, in fact, it had begun to open out now in all sorts of directions and encompass much more than that. I came up with about fifty possibilities, but none of them proved to be satisfactory.
However, it didn’t worry me. I knew it would come in time.
(The proposed titles are extensively listed in the back of the ‘Community College Ledger’, along with all sorts of doodles and sketchy plot ideas. There is even a drawing of the principal with a shoal of arrows raining down on her and me storming off with my camera going: ‘Fume!’ as this raincloud of rage gathers over my head!)
The Movie — Yeah!
(Early p. m. — we got the half day off)
The more I’ve been thinking about the movie, the more I keep thinking, The more fucking realistic the better. A real, in your face, yeah-this-is-the-way-it-was-my-friend-type approach. With lots of fuzz guitar and heavy reverb. (note: must talk to Boo Boo in detail about the soundtrack), and actual newsreels of those turbulent times intercut with our improvised, videotaped footage. Some of it will be documentary-style, in other places hard-hitting drama. I can’t wait to get started pitching it to some people, and if I wasn’t having such trouble with Mrs Carmody — she called me into her office again today — I’d get on a bus and head straight on up to the smoke.
Wait till I tell you! I couldn’t believe it when I was rummaging through the paper this morning, waiting for the kids to arrive, and who did I come on? Only Johnston Farrell! ‘Well, what do you know,’ I said to myself, hardly able to believe what I was reading! Turns out his ‘border-country thriller’ (that’s what they’re calling it) has, apparently, had offers not from one but three major publishers. And not just in Ireland either, where they’re known for paying buttons, but across the water in London, where they say the money is big.
I didn’t know what to think when I saw his photo. Part of me felt kinda queasy and, I suppose, in another way — if I’m honest — kinda jealous. But then I thought: That’s just fucking stupid, Joey! Smalltown petty envy, that’s all it is, and it’s kind of beneath you, my friend, Joey Tallon! So I knuckled myself on the forehead a bit and thought that the next time I happened to be up in Dublin I’d poke around a bit and search him out. I thought that was a pretty good idea, all right. Talk about old times and shit. I smiled and said to myself: ‘Well, how about that! Good man, Johnston!’
But even after thinking some more about how stupid it had been to be jealous, I couldn’t put this other thought out of my head, and as
the kids filed in couldn’t stop myself from wondering. I’d keep seeing his face as we sat there in Austie’s way back then during the long winter nights. ‘Yes, Joey, tell me more!’ I’d hear him saying — he was always writing things down — ‘Was there a bed in the cabin? At what point did she cry?’ He even asked me where she had gone to the toilet, for fuck’s sake! Mad! And I began to feel a twinge of resentment. I did, and I won’t deny it!
But after a while I decided I was just being paranoid, and the session with the kids that day turned out to be so good that all I could think as I handed around the sheets — ‘The Films of Cassavetes’, which I’d photocopied from a film book entitled: Movies of the Great Directors — was when would I get a chance to jump on a bus and hit the city. To rap with Johnston, my good old buddy, whatever disagreements we might once have had now consigned at last to the dustbin of history.
The Community College Ledger (Film Production Notes — dateless)
Withdrawn from the Scholarship of Hope!
All I can say is if not being able to figure out scenes in your script or having difficulty with what they call in the actors’ manuals the ‘motivation’ of a character is like walking around with a stone in your shoe, well, let me tell you there are plenty of other kinds of problem too. Chief among them being people who one minute are clambering all over you telling you how great you are, and the next are clicking their heels and going past as they give you this look … all I can say is it would freeze the fucking desert! Not only that, but now they’ve informed me they’ve withdrawn me from the Scholarship of Hope competition …
The worst part of it is not knowing what you’ve done wrong. For at least if you knew that …
I don’t know, it’s fucking bothering me, that’s all I know!