—That review in the Times? It was . . .
—No the movie! the movie! Isn’t that what I asked you? if you’d just go see the movie? They steal the whole, how many, two years? three years I worked on that play? They step in and steal the whole thing and you can’t even take three hours to go see what they . . .
—Oscar it’s not that simple. You know Harry’s up to his eyes in work and you don’t really know what they’ve done after all, I mean you haven’t actually seen the movie yourself yet and . . .
—Yes I know I haven’t actually seen the movie myself yet! I haven’t actually been out playing baseball myself yet either! if that’s what you, why I asked you to go see it I can’t even read about it where is it, that review will you look over there? on the sideboard there? unless she’s burned it, all I could read was that headline. And that ad. Did you see that Harry? that full page ad? Based on a true story with the picture of that idiot Christina wait, where are you going.
—I’m just going to look for . . .
—I just told you I can’t read it didn’t I? without my glasses? If neither one of you can bother to go to the movie can you at least take a whole minute and a half to read me the review?
—Oscar try to calm down. Here it is, Harry can read it I’m just going to look for that woman, I mean you know it’s quite rude of you to call her that don’t you, I’m sure she has a name and Harry? that bag of groceries?
—In the kitchen, on the floor by the sink, no look Oscar. The whole point of the . . .
—That ad yes. Based on a true story, did you see it?
—That’s what I’m talking about, that’s the . . .
—And the review there it is yes, there it is read it. Read it.
—Do you want the credits and all the . . .
—No no no later, no just read it.
—PATRIOTIC GORE IN NINETY MILLION DOLLAR SPECTACULAR. The full fury of what remains our nation’s most searing rite of passage, the American Civil War, bursts from the screen in the epic proportions of this three hour, ninety million dollar saga of historical artifice and grisly reality, The Blood in the Red White and Blue, produced and directed by Hollywood’s reigning wunderkind Constantine Kiester. Unlike the big budget pictures which followed Mister Kiester’s initial gory box office triumph, the Africa extravaganza Urubu . . .
—Do you believe it? He made a big movie about Africa with these special effects that made you throw up so they give him ninety million dollars to make a Civil War movie with battle scenes that make you throw up, Constantine Kiester. Do you believe it? Nobody’s named that. If you were named that you’d change it no but go on, read it. Go on.
—Unlike the big budget pictures which followed Mister Kiester’s initial gory box office triumph, the Africa extravaganza Uruburu, both the Vietnam comedy Armageddon Blueplate Special and his ‘twenties gangster satire The Rotten Club appeared to have been filmed unfettered by the restraints of a script, with a story patched together as an afterthought, whereas here he is fortunate in dealing from the start with a story line strong enough to accommodate even the severely limited talents of Robert Bredford in the leading role, that of a young man who resolves his divided loyalties in the country torn asunder by Civil War by sending up substitutes to fight in his place in both the Union and Confederate armies, where both are killed in the bloodiest . . .
—At Antietam isn’t it! Isn’t it?
—in the bloodiest single day of the war, September seventeenth eighteen sixty two, at the Antietam creek in . . .
—There, I told you! It’s the same story it’s exactly the same, they stole it. It’s that simple, they stole it.
—You’d have to prove they stole it, Oscar.
—Well of course they did, it’s my grandfather isn’t it? the play I wrote about my own grandfather, it says it right there in their ad. Based on a true story, they . . .
—What I’m trying to tell you Oscar, don’t you see? That can put it right out in the public domain where they can claim fair use, where anybody can use it, it’s even been in some of the papers down there hasn’t it? This trash they’re printing about madness in your family? Trying to use these stories about your grandfather to get at your father over this Szyrk case they’ll dig up anything they can, if you . . .
—Do you think they haven’t called here? One of these, these mush-mouths from something called the South Georgia Pilot and how familiar was I with my grandfather’s voting record on the Holmes Court back in the twenties pretty far over to the left he thought, maybe a little tainted with a breath of antiSemitism? antiniggra? That my great grandfather was in the diplomatic corps over there in France when the communists were acting up back in the eighteen forties and maybe I could tell him a little about my grandfather’s second marriage? Ask him what the hell business that is of his and he says not his, no, the public, that it’s history, it’s the public’s right to know, that the . . .
—What I’m trying to tell you Oscar. If they dig up things like this in the public domain they’ve got their First Amendment rights to publish pretty much whatever they . . .
—But why! Just to, talk about Father smoking three packages a day he didn’t even start smoking cigarettes till he was seventy five whose business is that, just a good thing they never caught him on a spree examining his false teeth in the glass to see whether he’d had dinner the night before.
—Look just be patient, the village has appealed his decision and all this trash is just to build up pressure on the circuit court appointment, frankly I think he’s going to be reversed and then he’s out of the picture and the whole thing . . .
—Fine he’s out of the picture fine, what about me? What about this movie they stole that’s what this is really all about isn’t it? What else does it say, go on.
—While his boyish charm is wearing rather thin, under Mister Kiester’s energetic direction Mister Bredford manages the part of young Randal with enough brio and costume changes to bolster a sagging career, plunging into the early battle scenes with commendable bloodthirsty zeal, and handling himself convincingly enough in those steamily explicit sexual encounters where all eyes are, in any event, on the voluptuous attributes of the tempestuous daughter of the neighboring plantation, played with an abandon obscuring any notions of her own acting ability by the stunning Nordic-Eurasian discovery Anga Frika in her first American starring role, had enough?
—Yes. Go on.
—The crisis precipitating Randal’s abrupt . . .
—The most ridiculous rubbish I’ve ever heard, there’s nothing voluptuous about Giulielma at all that’s the whole point. She’s a shy lonely girl, she’s not even supposed to be particularly pretty just, go on no, go on.
—The crisis precipitating Randal’s abrupt departure from the Confederacy, following his heroic showing in the blood drenched battle sequence at Ball’s Bluff, attested upon his return by a raw scar on his cheek which will lend him the credential of a dueling scar through the rest of the picture, is the threat of confiscation by the Federal government to extensive coal mining properties he inherits from an uncle in Pennsylvania where his cry for . . .
—No wait, stop. Stop! Did you hear that? that, that scar? on his cheek? Harry that’s mine, that’s in my play right at the start the same thing, the same battle Ball’s Bluff the same battle he comes back with that scar on his cheek it’s mine, it’s right there in my play, Christina? Where is she, she’s got to find it where is she, yes and then what. And then what.
—Pennsylvania, where his cry for justice, demanding . . .
—Yes in Pennsylvania, the uncle who dies in Pennsylvania and the coal mines yes and then what.
—demanding only what is his, echoes beyond the bugle’s battlefield summons to the fatal confrontation between the Southerner’s fierce love of the warm and fruitful land, and the cold hard cash to be blindly torn from the black depths of the Northern mines.
—Yes that’s exactly what I . . .
—In more responsive
hands, the characters of the two substitutes might have reflected the deeper opposing dualism of man’s nature, but Mister Kiester has no time for such subtleties. The Northern substitute is no more than a brutalized excrescence of blind industrial slavery, while the South is personified by Ziff Davis, acclaimed for his portrayal of the sadistic pederast in Sick City, who seems to have wandered into the wrong picture from some subdivision of God’s Little Acre in his depiction of sly depravity with all the . . .
—Yes listen to that! you see? That’s exactly what he’s not, what William in the play is not, he’s a sensitive intelligent wait, Christina? Where have you been, listen . . .
—Her name is Ilse, Oscar. She was down in the laundry, she . . .
—Have you heard any of this? Listen you’ve got to find it, my play you have to find it, it’s . . .
—In a black pebbled binder, I’ll look for it after lunch. She’s putting it on the table, now . . .
—No but wait, that’s not all, Harry? Go on, that’s not all is it?
—In the part of the father of the bride, as grossly overplayed by aging exstar Clint Westwood in his first role since A Hatful of Sh*t, the Confederate Major is the archetypal cigar chewing duplicitous Southern planter with a taste for drink and an unsavoury eye for the fatal charms of his own daughter, all of which blossoms in what will undoubtedly be the most widely discussed mass rape scene in screen history.
—Well that’s just, of all the revolting nonsense there’s nothing like that anywhere, it’s . . .
—Well my God Oscar what’s the problem then. You’re furious because they’ve stolen your play and then you’re furious because there’s nothing like it in the movie anywhere, how do you expect anybody to take you seriously if you . . .
—Well ask Harry! What he’s just read to me that’s in the movie right down to the same battles and this scar on his cheek if he takes me seriously ask him, did you hear that? about the scar?
—You’d hardly notice it, I told you that the minute I walked in didn’t I?
—That’s not what we’re talking about! This is the movie, he comes home from the war with a raw scar on his cheek where he’s been wounded it’s right out of my play, and in the same battle, do you think that’s an accident? A detail like that, do you think that’s just a coincidence?
—I think a lot of people to hear you carrying on about this little scar on your cheek from a play you wrote a hundred years ago would wonder about a coincidence, let’s go in to lunch.
—No wait, stop. He’s not finished, are you Harry? Would anybody believe that’s just a coincidence?
—As the bloodiest single day of the entire Civil War, the battle of the Antietam was the ideal vehicle for the real stars of The Blood in the Red White and Blue, the special effects technicians whose grisly spectacles under Mister Kiester’s direction established his reputation at the box office with his original extravaganza Uruburu. Billed at the time as not for the squeamish, that epic of modern Africa broke all bounds not only for screen violence but, as in the notorious sledgehammer scene, good taste, obliging him to seek dubious refuge in the First Amendment, and perhaps as a result the more excruciating excesses of the earlier film are somewhat modified in his latest epic. This is not to say that those who thirst for blood and hunger for patriotic gore will go away unrewarded. From the massing of the Union troops of Hooker’s I Corps in the early morning mists for his opening attack on Jackson’s two divisions spanning the Hagerstown turnpike at five thirty in the morning of that fateful day dawning over the Antietam creek, the carnage of war fills the screen for an unprecedented twenty four minute sequence in which, as a measure of the degree to which Mister Kiester’s audiences have become inured to the agonies of their fellow men, the real terror reaches us in the flaming uncomprehending eyes, the violent throes of death, the hoof thrust heavenward of the suddenly rigid corpse of the horse in the din of battle.
—Harry? I said lunch is . . .
—Wait, there’s only this. In other hands . . .
—Just bring it with you then!
—In other hands, The Blood in the Red White and Blue might have offered a vivid, once in a lifetime opportunity to explore the more profound implications at the heart of its story in the dramatic portrayal of man the microcosm of his nation’s history, of man against himself, of self delusion and self betrayal, of the very expediency at the expense of principle we see blindly laying waste to our hopes and our future today, of the urgings of destiny, and the unswerving punctuality of chance. What we have instead, is a ninety million dollar glorification of the horrors of war, an inspired, lavishly illustrated text for those of our reigning political patriots who will never cease to extol the spilling of blood so long as it is not their own or who, pray, would there be left to extol it?
—Yes wait, wait that whole last part read it again, that’s what it’s about, my play that’s exactly what it’s about justice, self betrayal, destiny that’s what it’s all really about read it again, you’ve got to find it for me Christina you’ve . . .
—Harry don’t you dare read it again, we’re going in to lunch Oscar if you think you can drive that thing without Harry wait, just get hold of it he can’t see where he’s going, steer him this way through the no, this way, so he can sit up at the end of the table and look out! My God, another case of vehicular homicide we’ll all be in court, will you just sit up Oscar?
—I can’t.
—Well you’re not going to just loll there like some Roman emperor spilling tortellini down your front and drinking wine through a bent straw are you?
—I thought you might help me. What’s this.
—It’s your old tricycle horn, I found it in the cellar. Just hook it onto your pram there and Ilse will come running the next time you’re left out in the rain, really you’ve got to get something done about the driveway. Anyone coming to look at the place after a day like this it’s like fording the Amazon with those limbs dangling over your head, have you paid those tree people yet?
—You don’t expect to show the house with me here in this condition do you?
—It’s not a very appetizing prospect no, but I don’t think they’ll think you come with the house, when you’re back on your feet . . .
—And nobody’s asked about that course, have you, when I’m back on my feet? Because it’s if, it’s not when it’s if I’ll walk again that’s what they’re saying, this sciatic nerve if it’s as badly damaged as these doctors think I might not, that maybe I’ll never walk again.
—Well that’s the most, did they actually say that?
—Maybe not exactly but that’s what they think, the therapist’s coming tomorrow and the driveway, I called about the driveway and the tree people no, I haven’t paid them yet, I thought we might save some money if . . .
—Maybe if you’d just stop thinking about how to save money and start thinking about how to make some, your sleeve is in the broth there can’t you use your spoon?
—It’s cold anyway, she didn’t . . .
—It got cold while you were entertaining Harry in there with your battle scar, unless she’s planning a whole new career for you just going around and suing people?
—She who, what do you . . .
—Well who else Oscar! You said this ambulance chaser she’s got for her divorce wants to sue your insurance company for a million dollars damages?
—I never said a million dollars Christina. She says that Kevin said if my basic economic loss is limited to fifty thousand dollars under No Fault including all these medical and hospital expenses and lost earnings up to a thousand dollars a month for up to three years, that we . . .
—Has the school stopped paying you?
—Well no but we don’t know what’s going to happen do we? because I don’t have tenure? and the reason I still don’t have tenure is because I don’t hand out As and Bs to these kids who won’t learn and don’t want to learn the first thing about American history. Talk about the Civil War they think Lon
gstreet is an address in New Jersey and you can imagine the ribald fun they have with Hooker, so she says Kevin thinks we should file a claim to assert my rights to the, my common law rights to a regular trial and . . .
—Why don’t you ask Harry if that makes any sense, wheeling you into the courtroom in this getup . . .
—Not my field Oscar but it might be risky, your insurance company probably move to dismiss your claim based on their alleged immunity under the No Fault laws and then where are you, can’t collect damages for noneconomic loss that’s what your No Fault is for isn’t it?
—No but pain and suffering Harry, if they . . .
—I think you’ve really got to establish serious injury, lose an arm or a leg or some real disfigurement to start an action for . . .
—Well look at me! I still can’t move this leg if I try to turn this way or sit up straight it’s like a hot pitchfork right through here, I was on the critical list in there wasn’t I? in the hospital? Isn’t that enough to convince somebody that I . . .
—If it’s not Harry, he can tell them about his little visitor in the black suit coming to take him to the other side like Dante and . . .
—No stop it Christina, that wasn’t it at all and you know it. If you think it wasn’t serious do you know they even came in and asked if I wanted a summary of what was going to happen on If the World Turns and the rest of these idiotic soap operas, will kindly old Apple Annie die of a brain tumor? will Gary the star halfback test positive for AIDS? They have those, they provide them confidentially to terminal patients who don’t want to leave without knowing whether friendly Frank really stole that money or if beautiful Jessica will have that abortion, if that’s the . . .