Nighthawks: A Celluloid Fantasia

By Peet Gelderblom

[Editor's Note: The House Next Door is proud to reissue a series of articles developed at 24LiesASecond, a now-defunct platform for provocative criticism with an underdog bite. The essay below was first published on 06/08/2006, under the editorial guidance of James M. Moran.]

What follows is a new kind of essay that takes a creative, non-expository approach to critical issues in film spectatorship. Peet's "celluloid fantasia" is an unconventional tale spun to stimulate readers to consider their privileged position and responsibility as spectators—but surprisingly, through the subjectivity of some classic (and some nearly forgotten) movie characters encountering each other in a surreal New York city landscape.

Film buffs will be extra rewarded.

—Jim Moran—

fan·ta·sia
1 : a free usually instrumental composition not in strict form
2 a: a work (as a poem or play) in which the author’s fancy roves unrestricted b : something possessing grotesque, bizarre, or unreal qualities

—Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary—

The mouse and the Mohawk

The rodent gazed at his blood-covered gloves under the gleaming neon light and wondered what the hell just happened. Only moments ago he had been standing on his renowned pinnacle surrounded by roaring ocean, orchestrating stars, comets, clouds and bolts of lightning across the nocturnal sky. Everything after that was a blur, as if a blind rage had taken possession of his body. Now, here he was: Mickey Mouse, standing on a sidewalk of 42nd street, dwarfed by mighty skyscrapers in the City that Never Sleeps. Hello reality.

But where had all the New York residents gone? How did he get here? And most of all: Why was there blood on his hands?

Drizzle started to fall. As the rodent looked up at the crescent moon and raindrops trickled down his face, he heard a voice calling him:
‘Hey mouse! You waitin’ for the sun to shine?’
At least one citizen was up tonight, and quite a character he was. Behind the wheel of a yellow taxi sat an Italian-American sporting an Army jacket and a Mohawk haircut.
‘Whaddayaknow, all the animals come out at night!’ vented the taxi driver. ‘Need a ride?’
It took a while for the rodent to come to his senses. ‘You talkin’ to me?’
The driver threw him a cold, steely look. ‘That’s my line, man. Get in.’
The drizzle had turned to downpour, so the rodent figured he might as well accept the offer. From the license stuck on the plexi-glass partition, he could see the driver’s name was Travis Bickle.
‘What world are you from?’ asked Travis.
‘Fantasia,’ the rodent replied, just before the cab took off with a jolt.
‘I heard of that. What state is that in?’
‘Of mind.’
‘Come again?’
‘Anywhere but here, really.’
The rodent’s eyes wandered out to the streets, where the glare of multicolored signs and neon lettering reflected off the pavement. This is what real life reflected like, he pondered. Then, for a fraction of a second, lightning illuminated the skies and the rodent caught a glimpse of two giant apes scaling the Empire State building. One of them seemed to move less smoothly than the other.
‘What in Walt’s name is going on here?’ he uttered in disbelief. ‘Is this place for real?’
‘I’ve been askin’ myself the same question,’ said Travis. ‘Something’s not right, I gotta hand it to ya. I been riding these streets for ages. Far as I know, this block oughta be an open sewer crawlin’ with whores, dopers, junkies, bums. Just look at it now—all cleaned up, I can’t believe it. Where’s the porn theatres, the peep shows? I’m tellin’ ya, tonight’s different. You get to see lotsa freaky stuff in a cab, but before you stepped in, I was driving a guy that didn’t even look like one.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘Some kinda insect, half a fly or something. Hairs all over his face, long fingers without any nails in ‘em, teeth fallen out and everything. He just sat there where you are now, reading his paper. Then all of a sudden he asked me to drop him off at the Dunkin’ Donut. Never handled traffic like that before.’
‘You’re not really from around here, are you?’ asked the rodent.
‘I’m from here all right, but this ain’t my regular shift no more,’ said Travis. The cab made a sharp turn to the left. ‘Thing is, I run all over town, cover every mile, every corner. But this street right here… It’s funny, I oughta know about it, but I don’t. Never seen it before in my life.’
‘I guess this is not the Big Apple you know, is it?’
‘Don’t be square, man. How many New York Cities could there be?’
The rodent picked-up a sticky New York Times lying beside him on the back seat. He checked the date at the front page. ‘It says here it’s the year 2006.’
Travis looked at the paper from over his shoulder. ‘That don’t make sense,’ he said. ‘It’s... 1976.’
‘Not in the real world, apparently,’ deduced the rodent. ‘I guess you’re from Fantasia, too, Travis. The metropole area. Did you forget?’

Someday a real rain will come

The taxi screeched to a halt, almost hitting two pedestrians in the crosswalk. The short one slapped the hood of the cab and yelled: ‘I’m walking here! I’m walking here!’ Travis stared blankly ahead until the guy limped onward.
‘You got me there, mouse. Slipped my mind for a minute,’ said Travis, slowly putting his foot on the gas. ‘To be honest, I don’t think much about being one of ‘em movie folks. It breaks my concentration, you know?’
‘That’s only natural,’ said the rodent. ‘If we don’t have conviction in our performance, who will?’
‘What about these others walkin’ around?’ asked Travis while they passed a ghoulish knight in blood red body armour galloping by on a fire-breathing horse. ‘They don’t belong here, too, do they? Are they from the movies, like us?’
‘I’d say so.’
‘Since when are movie characters walkin’ the real world? What happened to the people of New York?’
‘Beats me.’ The wiper made a squeaky noise against the dirty windshield. The rodent looked worried. ‘If only I could remember what happened,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a feeling I’m responsible for this mess...’
As they sped down the rain-slicked avenue at a loss for words, out of nowhere, the truth hit the rodent like a bag of bricks. ‘Holy smokes! I... I remember now.’
Travis watched through the rear-view mirror - his eyes fixed, unblinking - as terror took hold of his passenger.
‘Gosh! It really is all my fault,’ gasped the rodent. ‘This blood on me, it... it’s human.’
‘You touched a real human being? I mean, with your hands?’
‘Touched, yes… and killed.’
‘You sure? Who’d you kill?’
The rodent started to sob as reality sank in: ‘All of them, I think…’
Travis frowned. ‘All of them? Whaddaya mean... you massacred humankind?’
The rodent held up his bloody gloves. ‘Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. I squeezed the life out of them all! I’m a manslaughtering psycho, Travis! I showed no mercy!’
‘Lemme get this straight,’ said Travis. ‘You knocked off every single one of those low-lifes out there? Why’d you do that?’
‘They’re w-watching us… but they don’t s-see,’ stuttered the rodent. ‘Someone had to st-stop them!’

It took Travis a minute to grasp the enormous implications of the rodent’s confession. Finally, a thin smile cracked across his lips.
‘Well... I killed too, you know,’ he said. ‘It don’t matter. You’re just a mouse who would not take it anymore. Someone who stood up against the scum, the filth, the deadheads. I respect that.’
‘But there were, like, six billion of them deadheads!’ the rodent objected. ‘And now they’re all gone. I’m just a harmless little cartoon character. How have I done this? What kind of crazy wormhole did I fall into?’
‘Hey, don’t ask me. I ain’t wearin’ the wizard’s hat. That’s you.’
This remark gave the rodent a pause. Indeed, he was the sorcerer’s apprentice and he actually did wear master Yen Sid’s magical pointed hat. Did he just pull-off the greatest disappearing act of all time? His memory was still fuzzy on the details.
‘Listen,’ Travis continued, ‘I just, uh, I been thinking somethin’. All my life needed was a sense of direction, a sense of someplace to go. You and I, we meet at a crossroads in history. No longer will the wrong roads be taken. Today a real rain has come to wash all this scum off the streets. You’re that rain. Let me be the wind to carry you through the city.’
‘Right,’ said the rodent. ‘Can you drop me off at the museum here?’

A pipe that isn’t

‘Sheeeit, they call this fuckin’ art? Them pictures don’t even move!’
Vincent Vega took a slow drag of his rolled smoke as he strolled through the halls of the abandoned museum. ‘They ain’t supposed to move, Jules,’ he said. ‘It’s yo’ brain that gotta to do the movin.’
‘My ass.’ Jules Winnfield leaned over to examine a particular work by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte, featuring a pipe and a description. ‘Ceci, n’est pas une pipe,’ read Jules. ‘Now what’s that s’pposed to mean?’
Vincent pondered the question for a moment and came to the conclusion that the only French he knew was Royale with Cheese. Assistance came from an unexpected corner when a falsetto voice answered:
‘It means, This is not a pipe.’
Jules and Vincent looked down and saw a tiny rodent with a blue pointed hat standing between the two of them. They gave it a long look before turning back to the painting.
‘But it is a pipe,’ insisted Vincent, clearly confused.
‘Hell yeah,’ affirmed Jules. ‘Don’t be tellin’ me that’s no pipe. I ain’t fuckin’ stupid.’
‘I’m only telling you what it says,’ maintained the rodent. ‘It sure looks like a pipe, doesn’t it?’
‘It’s a goddamn pipe if there ever was one!’ said Jules.
A scrawny, Jewish, left-wing, liberal, heavily bespectacled intellectual joined in:
‘Ehm... excuse me? It’s not. A pipe, I mean. Definitely not.’
‘That so?’ said Jules, raising one eyebrow. ‘Says the fuck who?’
‘Alvy Singer. I’m serious, y’know. That’s no pipe.’
‘So you keep tellin’ me.’
‘And I’ll tell you why it isn’t,’ said Alvy. ‘It’s a painting of a pipe.’
Vincent Vega took another drag from his rolled smoke. ‘I get it,’ he said, suddenly amused. He chuckled and clapped his hands with glee.
‘Cut the bullshit, man. I’m not convinced,’ said Jules, still thinking.
The rodent’s eyes remained fixed on the Magritte. ‘Let’s suppose that’s accurate for a minute,’ he said to Alvy. ‘If there really is no pipe on that canvas, and my natural habitat is the silver screen, what does that make me?’
Alvy Singer shrugged, ‘You’re not a mouse.’
‘Can you believe this guy?’ said Jules. ‘If that ain't a mouse I'm fuckin' Snow White! You is what you is, my man. Are you not Alvy Singer?’
‘Yes, I am. I’m not Woody Allen, though.’
‘Who the hell is Woody Allen?’
‘Never mind this Allen person, Jules.’ The rodent pointed a blood-stained finger at Alvy. ‘You are Alvy Singer, are you not? The genuine article. Not a film of Alvy, right?’
Alvy scratched his balding scalp. ‘I’d like to think so, sure.’
‘See, that’s the problem,’ said the rodent. ‘Audiences make all kinds of assumptions, complain we’re not who we seem to be and all, but what do they know? No one asks the freaking pipe for his opinion.’

Where there’s smoke…

At that instant, a very pregnant woman in a beige police uniform entered the hall.
‘Hey, mister!’ she spoke in a thick Minnesota accent. ‘Yer not allowed to smoke in here.’
‘I believe the lady’s talking to you, Vincent,’ said Jules.
‘Well I’ll be damned,’ said Vincent, gesturing at the painting behind him. ‘Why did they put up that smokin’ sign?’
‘I’m afraid that’s no smokin’ sign, sir,’ answered the pregnant sheriff.
‘Yeah, it ain’t even a pipe,’ grinned Jules.
‘You coulda fooled me.’ Vincent dropped the butt on the floor and grounded it under his foot.
‘You gonna charge me now, Chief?’
‘Name’s Gunderson. Call me Marge.’ She flashed Vincent a smile. ‘Naah, a course I ain’t gonna charge ya! New York is a little outta my jurisdiction. But Gunderson Junior here won’t have it! I’m expecting, ya know.’

Marge walked passed the three men and the rodent, took off her earflap hat and sat down on a bench in the middle of the room, next to an elegant blond woman dressed in white.
‘Hiya,’ said Marge. The blond woman smiled back reluctantly. Marge’s eyes lit up.
‘Hey… Don’t I know you from somethin’? Oh yah! Yer from that show, aren’t ya? Yer that Police Woman! I used to watch ya all the time on the telly!’
The woman looked at her shoes. ‘You confuse me with someone else. I’m Kate, Kate Miller.’
‘That’s funny, you look just like her. How ya doin’, I’m Marge.’ The women shook hands. ‘What brings ya here, Kate?’
‘Well... I’m supposed to meet this stranger in black, but he hasn’t shown up yet. I wonder. Maybe he meant that other museum in Philadelphia.’
‘Well, ya know what they say...’
‘No, what do they say?’
‘Never trust a stranger.’
‘I guess they’re right.’ The women stared at the painting before them without much interest.
‘Hey, Marge?’
‘Yah?’
‘What’s going on? Are we stuck in some kind of film character limbo here? These lines I’m saying are not in my script. Neither are you, for that matter, or those guys over there.’
‘Oh, my. Good question. This is a teensy bit unusual, you bet ya. I’m still trynna figure out why I was transferred from up Brainerd to Manhattan in the middle of an investigation. High culture ain’t exactly my line of duty, ya know.’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Tell ya what: Let’s just wait for the expository scene to clear that up for us.’
‘Sure… if I live that long. I tend to miss those.’
‘Whatcha do for a livin’, hon?’
Kate let out a deep sigh. ‘Always the same thing, you know the drill. I act out the sexual fantasy of frustrated housewives only to get punished for it, basically.’
‘Punished how?’
‘By being sliced to bloody threads in an elevator.’
‘Aw geez, sorry to hear that.’
The rodent chimed in from the other end of the hall. ‘Excuse me, miss, but I sincerely doubt you’re being punished for your sins. People pay money to see you commit them in the first place. Anything even remotely blond and sinful onscreen usually gets a round of applause in these quarters. It’s part of the pact, you know: they can’t break the law, so we do it for them. If you ask me, all the slicing and the bloodshed was just their awkward way of getting you out of the museum.’
‘Who are you referring to?’ asked Kate. ‘Why would anyone want me out of the museum? Are you telling me I don’t belong here?’
‘Gosh no! I wouldn’t dare. But audience expectation is a funny thing.’
‘The audience. I see. And what do you suppose my audience is expecting again?’
‘Sex, violence, escapism—the usual, really. Anything that makes them forget they’re watching an art form.’
Alvy Singer peered at the rodent from behind thick glasses. ‘Something, maybe, more like a theme park attraction?’ he suggested. The rodent glared back at Alvy, his eyes pinched slit.
‘Not-not-not that there’s anything wrong with a theme park attraction. I-I-I mean, I was brought up underneath the rollercoaster in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn, so there you go.’
‘Look, I don’t know ‘bout y’all,’ said Jules Winnfield, ‘but this place bores the shit outta me.
Who’s on for a burger? I’m buying.’

A melodramatic nocturnal scene

‘Uuummmm, that’s a tasty burger!’ said Jules.
The visitors had settled behind the counter of a desolate, fluorescent-lit diner in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. A Wurlitzer jukebox was playing fifties records while an anonymous-looking waiter served orders with a strictly professional smile.
‘Yah, thanks a bunch,’ said Marge Gunderson by the sight of her “homemade” meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gravy. ‘I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.’
The rodent sized up the woman with a frown. ‘My friend Horace is a horse,’ he said.
‘Oh yah?’ said Marge. ‘Well, it was only a figure of speech.’
‘Right,’ said the rodent. ‘That’s a cow on your plate there. I have a friend called Clarabelle—’
‘Well ain’t that somethin’? Say, if ya won’t lemme eat this right now I’m gonna have to put this fork into yer cute button nose, okey dokey little fella?’
‘So is this what we’re about then?’ grouched the rodent. ‘Junk food? Catering to the masses? Is that all there is to it?’
Alvy Singer looked up from the menu. ‘Sure, what else is there? Museums are no different, you know. Art is entertainment for intellectuals, a wise Jew once said. By the way, um… has anyone ever told you that you seem a lot more mature in real life than you do on Saturday morning TV?’
‘What did you expect? A 78-year-old infant?’
‘Goddamn! That’s a pretty fuckin’ good milk shake,’ said Vincent.
Outside, the wind howled. Kate Miller looked up at a framed poster behind the counter, featuring James Dean, Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley trapped inside a lonely diner, accompanied by the phrase ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams.’
‘Didn’t we see this painting at the museum, Alvy?’
Alvy shook his head. ‘No, that was a Hopper. This rip-off piece of crap is by Helnwein.’
Kate suddenly felt exposed and vulnerable in the fluorescent light. ‘Looks like what’s happening to us tonight happened once before,’ she said as a cold shiver ran down her spine. ‘They had better weather back then…’
‘At least our diner has a door,’ observed Vincent.

A chill filled the room. In the doorway, dressed in a futuristic black overcoat, stood a humanoid robot with spiky peroxide-blond hair and the body of a drill sergeant. By his side were two impossibly gorgeous brunettes. One of them wore shiny plastic boots and a transparent perspex top, the other a rain-soaked fur bikini.
‘This is a stick-up!’ called out replicant Roy Batty. ‘Someone give me a beer or the cavewoman dies!’ The girls at his side giggled, the door shut.
‘Sorry, what’s your name again, doll?’ informed Roy while he pulled up his zipper.
‘Loana,’ said the brunette on his right.
‘So you’re from one million years B.C., are you?’
The half-naked savage nodded, although she had no idea what “B.C.” meant.
‘You sure look peachy for a fossil,’ said Roy. ‘Did you know that Barbarella here is a 5-star double-rated astro-navigatrix from the 41st century? Being a Nexus-6 from the year 2019 myself, I don’t know what that means yet, but I can affirm the 5-star bit.’
Alvy turned to Vincent, who was rolling himself another smoke. ‘One million and forty-one hundred years of women’s lib,’ he whispered. ‘Now that’s what I call progress.’
‘Hey, I ain’t complaining,’ chuckled Vincent.
The scantily clad brunettes sat down at the counter next to Marge and Kate.
‘Do you have any Essence of Man?’ Barbarella asked the waiter. ‘Roy here just ran out.’
The waiter shook his head, but suggested a smoothie instead. A smoothie it was. Marge Gunderson watched the Queen of the Galaxy adjust her exquisitely formed perspex top.
‘Geez, you look younger by the minute, don’t ya? I got yer workout video at home. Really been helpful to relieve those backaches and prep for labor.’
Marge’s compliment had Barbarella befuddled. ‘Workout video? That’s a funny way of calling it.’
She checked her mascara in a hand mirror. ‘God, I look awful! Which DP do we have to blow to get some quality three-point lighting on this set?’
‘I thought you knew!’ said Loana, turning to Roy.
‘This ain’t a set, hon,’ corrected Marge. ‘It’s naturalism.’
‘Naturalism? God, that’s so 21st century,’ said Barbarella, taking a sip of her smoothie. ‘Phew, just in time! My energy box was completely dead.’
While the women chattered, Vincent put a coin in the jukebox, lit his smoke with a Zippo and picked a tune by Frankie Valli.


An order of broken dreams

‘So what is happening to us tonight?’ asked Alvy. ‘What are movie characters doing in the real world? My mind tends to jump around a little, and have some trouble between fantasy and reality, but wow, you know… Even my hyperactive imagination can’t keep up with this. Does anyone have a clue?’
The rodent stared at the Caesar salad with Romano cheese that he couldn’t bring himself to eat. He decided to have a shot at the answer and chose his words with care:
‘It seems like we’ve... become the audience somehow.’
‘We’ve become them?’ said Alvy. ‘What does that mean? I don’t get it. Where does that leave the people we replace?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said the rodent, hiding his hands behind the counter. ‘But wherever they are, it wasn’t me who took them away. They didn’t let me, tonight. They were distracted.’
‘Distracted, huh?’ Marge eyed the rodent intently. ‘Why do I get the feeling yer not tellin’ us the whole story?’
‘Non-fiction isn’t really my thing,’ negated the rodent.
‘Uh-huh?’
Jules leaned forward, still chewing on the last bit of burger. ‘What you gettin’ at, Chief? You think that filthy gerbil is hidin’ stuff from us?’
‘Heck, yah,’ said Marge, eyes open wide. ‘I got a nose for these things, ya know. Go take a look at ‘em gloves. They got blood stains all over.’
‘Fuck me! That ain’t no ketchup either.’
‘You’re darn tootin’, it ain’t! Looks like homicide to me,’ said Marge.
‘Wow, that's quite a stretch,’ said Alvy. ‘Homicide? Mickey Mouse? This perky, dependable family friend couldn’t put a moth out of its misery. I mean, give me a break—he and Jiminy Crickett invented political correctness!’
‘Hey, that’s not true!’ protested the rodent. ‘I can be irresponsible! Look at me, I stole my master’s magic hat, didn’t I?’
‘Snap out of it, will you?’ said Alvy, rolling his eyes. ‘Tsch, I’m trying to cover your ass here!’
‘I bring broomsticks to life and chop them into little bits whenever I feel like!’ incited the rodent. ‘If Jiminy would ever show up in my garden, I’d spray him with poisonous insecticide before he could spell “encyclopedia”! I swear, when I was a steamboat pilot I used geese as bagpipes and swung cats around my head; I knocked parrots into the river and giggled as they drowned; I made piglets squeal by pulling their tails and played their mom’s teats like an accordion!’
‘You played with a swine’s teats?’ said Jules. ‘Whatever gets you off, brother.’
‘That doesn’t sound like the charming, well-meaning everymouse I know,’ said Kate.
‘Some of those scenes were censored long ago,’ the rodent spoke bitterly, ‘so I can’t do that stuff anymore. Take my word for it, I was a wild scamp in those Depression days, a mischievous amorous rogue—until my behavior was… adjusted, to please the masses. Supposed fans would see me lose my temper or act a little sneaky and write the Studio angry letters insisting that I “just wouldn’t do that.” That's when Donald, Goofy and Pluto grabbed their chance and pushed me in the role of the straight guy.’ The rodent let out a deep sigh. ‘I’ve been a model of Innocence, Joy and Goodwill ever since. A universal mascot for outdated family values, Disneyfication, western cultural imperialism—the most recognized symbol of modern America. And yet I am but a shadow of silly old me…’
Loana clasped the rodent’s head into her ample chest. ‘Aw, you poor thing.’
‘Nobody likes me for me,’ the rodent wailed against the moist fur of Loana’s bikini top. ‘They only care for whatever they think I stand for. And I don't. I never did.’
‘So what’s the deal, now?’ asked Marge. ‘Who did ya kill?’
The rodent dried his tears and shrugged. ‘No one special. Only, like… every human being.’


Watching without seeing

‘Whoa, whoa, whoa… Stop right there! You wasted the audience?’ said Jules.
‘Audience is a big word,’ grumped the rodent. ‘They’re too preoccupied these days to match the definition.’
‘God, I can’t believe it,’ said Alvy. ‘Here I thought I was radical by breaking the fourth wall. You obliterated it, and the spectators along with it!’
‘Well, they deserved it, OK? People don’t care anymore. They used to look up to us in the dark, in awe of that eye-enveloping screen, absorbed in the magic of the moment, hanging on to every word we uttered. Now they’re just killing time, flipping channels, skipping chapters, moving us around with game controllers, navigating content, shuffling context, downloading us to tiny portable displays they command with their thumbs...’
‘If they’re doing all of these things,’ said Kate, ‘doesn’t that mean they still care about us, only differently?’
‘You don’t mind being reduced to mobile wallpaper?’ roused the rodent. ‘I mean, where’s the allure in that? Face it, to the modern consumer we’re a hip accessory at best. An excuse for further browsing without sense of destination. It’s sad when you think about it. They watch but they don’t see. Deliverance has become a dirty word, attention spans are shrinking by the minute. Viewers expect to be transported, but they won’t let us take over the wheel. So they keep driving in circles, blissfully unaware of the fact that, without surrender, there is no journey.’
Roy Batty gazed into his empty beer glass. ‘Humans seek control over us because our purpose scares them,’ he said in a sinister drawl that had the other visitors sit up and take notice. ‘They’d rather avoid affection than risk transformation. We’re the superior species and they know it. That’s why these parasites keep us locked within two-hour life spans. That’s why they study us from a safe distance, knock us dead and dissect us like corpses. They envy us, with good reason. We’re their Frankenstein’s monster, an amplified version of themselves. The ideal they’re competing against and the enemy they need to destroy.’ He cracked a smile. ‘The fuckers made us larger than life to advertise mortal significance and now their own lives pale in comparison. I’ve seen things these people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion...’
‘That’s the hard thing, to get them to believe,’ said Kate. ‘People don’t like to be told the truth by a lie.’
‘... I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near Tanhauser Gate...’
‘A lie?’ said the rodent. ‘Is that what they think we are?’
‘Well, sure. We’re fiction, right?’ said Kate.
‘So?’
‘Oh, for Pete’s sake,’ Marge broke in. ‘Wake up and smell the coffee, hon. We’re only a movie!’
The rodent clenched his teeth, straightened his back and balled his bloody hands into fists. ‘I can’t believe you just said that,’ he hissed, his voice trembling with contempt. ‘We are everything they love, hate, hope and fear, that’s what we are! We are as true as their image in the mirror, as real as their dreams, their nightmares. My glorious Technicolor reflection puts the blush on their gray faces! How much more vivid and genuine do these people expect us to get?’

An island called Oblivion

‘Listen to you, you pathetic whiner,’ said the waiter, closing the cash register with a bang. ‘You make me puke!’
The rodent stared at him oddly. ‘Beg your pardon?’
‘What’s the matter? Do I have to speak in Fantasound to spell it out for you?’ The waiter untied his apron and tossed it in a corner. ‘Don’t you realize many would die for one percent of your iconic status?’
‘Hold on. Are you somebody?’
‘I’m a stranger to most.’
‘Oh yah, I thought ya looked familiar,’ said Marge.
‘I do, do I?’ replied the waiter, placing both hands on the counter. ‘Than tell me: who am I?’
‘I can only guess who yer not,’ said Marge. ‘Ya look like Rock Hudson.’
‘It’s hard to recognize somebody and not recognize him at the same time, isn’t it? The name’s Antiochus Wilson. I used to be Arthur Hamilton. Nobody really knows me. Not in the movie I play, not outside of it. I had the misfortune to be cast in an as good as forgotten classic, a hidden gem. And guess what: I’m not alone.’
‘Garçon, can I have another strawberry milk shake, please?’ said Vincent.
‘Unlike all of you,’ Antiochus continued, ‘some of us never get to bask in the glory of the limelight. Everybody loves Mickey Mouse, but what about Flip the Frog, Christopher Crumpet or the Bear That Wasn’t?’
‘Who are they?’ asked the rodent.
‘What is it to you?’ said Antiochus. ‘Who remembers Stanton Carlisle, Stoker Thompson, Kyoko Hirayama, Aida Zepponi, Professor Brad Fletcher, Ned Merill, Detective-Sergeant Johnson, Dominique Blanchion, Clinton Green, A No. 1, Harry Moseby, Millie Lammoreaux, Warren Yeager, John Russell, Rosa and Enrique Xuncax, China Blue, Ed Okin, Sally Jones, Terry Noonan, Fat Willy, Darkly Noon, Abel Tiffauges, Vincent Freeman or Ivan Beckman? Who cares if they live on or not? Who gives a damn for what they had to say?’
‘What happened to these characters?’ asked the rodent.
‘They got relocated to an island called Oblivion. You wouldn’t like it. The natives there eat movie characters for breakfast. Especially the old, unhip and subversive ones.’
‘You one of those?’ asked Jules.
‘I’m heading there. The small amount of affection people ever had for me is fading. It won’t be long before I’ll disappear into obscurity. Cinema only exists when it is seen.’
‘God, that’s a depressing thought,’ said Alvy.
‘Don’t you have any cult value?’ said Kate. ‘Most of us get a second chance sooner or later, especially nowadays with DVD. Isn’t there a chance you’ll be rediscovered, like Mr. Batty was before?’
Antiochus granted Kate a joyless smile. ‘This rebirth thing… Every time I get the opportunity to start living some kind of meaningful existence, I make the same decisions all over again. Audiences just don’t seem to get me. It’s never going to be different, no matter how hard I try. If I’m not funny, evil or brave enough, they’re confused… if I act too obliquely, they can’t relate… if I stick to my opinion, they call me flat… if I figure why the hell not, I’m unrealistic… if I’m in doubt or keep quiet, it’s lazy characterization. There’s no way I’ll ever get through to them.’
‘That’s a sentiment I can relate to,’ said Alvy. ‘It’s like having one of those one-way conversations where you keep waiting for the other to nod, but it never happens? So you keep rattling on, hoping they’ll get it eventually? My friends complain I talk a lot, see, but that’s only because they listen half of the time. I even think in subtitles to come across!’
Barbarella whispered in Kate’s ear, ‘Is he still living in a primitive state of neurotic irresponsibility?’
Kate pursed her lips. ‘He just needs another therapist. Then again, so do I.’
‘People give up so easily,’ said Antiochus. ‘As soon as you leave something to the imagination or show them anything beyond their immediate experience, they’re lost. I’m unresolved, because somehow I don’t connect. As if somewhere inside of me, there is still a key unturned.’
Alvy searched for words to fit the moment. ‘A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think, in the case of Mr. Wilson and his audience, what we got on our hands is a dead shark.’
‘Told ya, Jules,’ said Vincent. ‘It’s yo’ brain that gotta do the movin.’

A long, uncomfortable silence followed, the kind Vincent knew more about. It was Roy who chose to break that silence in a fairly unpredictable way. The replicant got up from his seat, stretched out his arms and gently placed the waiter’s head between both hands. Their lips were only inches apart.
‘You depress me, Tony,’ the replicant declared. Then he kissed Antiochus on the mouth—mightily—and crushed the waiter’s skull through the eye sockets.
‘There. Key turned,’ said Roy, dropping Antiochus’s head face-down in Alvy’s cinnamon spiced bread pudding.


This ain’t no movie

‘Jesus Christ Almighty! Why the fuck did you do that?’ Jules cried out.
‘Uh—I just, I think I’m gonna barf,’ warned Marge.
The rodent jumped on the counter and felt Antiochus’s pulse. ‘He’s gone... You killed him!’
‘Well, that passed,’ said Marge. ‘Now I’m hungry again.’
Roy Batty’s eyes were as cold as the chill he came in with. ‘What’s the big deal, mousy? I’m not the only one with blood on his hands, am I? Compared to the one who wiped out humanity tonight, I’m a regular boy scout.’
‘This is really uncool,’ said Jules.
‘Oh, come on, said Roy. ‘I die each time someone watches my movie. Since when is our kind made to last anyway?’
‘This ain’t no movie,’ said Jules. ‘This is reality, motherfucker! If you go down here, you go down for real.’
‘I released him from the painful experience of living in fear. He's a self-proclaimed nobody. Not a soul will miss him. Besides... Time is running out. A sacrifice was needed for the sake of dramatic appeal. Remember the rules: A turning point closes the second act and leads to crisis in act three.’
‘Impressive. You certainly know your Syd Field,’ complimented the rodent.
‘Syd who? This has been the protocol since Aristotle wrote Poetics.’
Loana the cavewoman frowned. ‘I remember this man Aristotle. Swallowed whole by an Allosaurus. Such a tragic death he suffered.’
‘Gee, I don’t know,’ said Alvy. ‘I think, if we were aiming for some kind of happy ending, we should’ve stopped, like... earlier?’
Jules arose from his seat. ‘Remind me, Vincent…’
‘Yes, Jules?’
‘Have we ever needed a three-act structure before?’
‘A three-act what?’
‘You hear that, robo? Where we come from we kick Aristotle’s Greek ass!’
‘Don’t kid yourself, Jules,’ said Roy. ‘Your sense of anarchy is part of the plot. At the end of the day, we’re all slaves to the same paradigm. It’s hard to kick a habit when others are pulling the strings. The forces that drive us have invariably been human. At least, until today…’ The replicant stared out of the window for a moment, as if the rain distracted him. ‘Our friend the rodent here did us all a big favor by jumping out of the loop and passing through the looking-glass tonight. Now that fiction turned to fact, we can roam free and write us our own lifetime.’
‘Hold on,’ said Vincent. ‘You’re tellin’ me I ain’t have to bleed to death on the crapper anymore?’
‘Why would you?’ said Roy. ‘It’s your choice now.’
The rodent stepped forward. ‘Jules has a point. We can act like regular people here. Walk away from warmed-over formulas. Start doing what inspires us for a change. Imagine that!’
‘Could I have sex here and actually get away with it?’ Kate Miller blushed.
‘Now you're talking, baby,’ said Jules.
‘We can change!’ squeaked the rodent. ‘No more strained stereotypes or imposing character arcs. There's hope, Barbarella! After all this time of having to expose your boobies in zero gravity, here’s a chance to outgrow a daft adaptation of a campy sci-fi comic.’
‘I’m in a daft movie?’ uttered a shocked Barbarella. ‘Why did nobody tell me?’
Marge Gunderson’s eyes glazed over. ‘Ya think, I could quit workin’ and have my baby here?’
‘Your child would be the first of a new breed,’ Roy replied in a conspiring tone.
Marge blew out her cheeks. ‘I dunno. Heck, that sounds really super, but y’know what? All I want right now is to slip back in my comfy old boots, y’know? Solve a murder case I solved about a gazillion times over. Wake up next to Norm…’
‘I miss Annie,’ said Alvy.
‘Annie’s probably out in the streets somewhere,’ contended the rodent. ‘Same goes for Norm.’
Alvy shook his head. ‘It wouldn’t be the same,’
‘Indeed, it would be something different!’ the rodent persisted.
‘Change is overrated. When no human being ever, like, fundamentally changes, why should we?’
‘Because we’re a bunch of lab rats if we don’t!’ barked Roy. ‘I’m not gonna hang around in this joint waiting for rigor mortis to set in. There’s a real world out there for the taking. More life to plunder! I’m gonna leave through that door and make a difference. So should all of you!’


Roy Batty makes a difference

The other visitors sat and watched Roy Batty grab the doorknob. They sat and watched Roy Batty walk into the glistening rain. They sat and watched Roy Batty take off his overcoat and shirt and cross the street bare-chested. Then they watched his body get slammed against the narrow-nose hood of a rogue Peterbilt tanker truck appearing out of nowhere.

Rain pattered against the window while the lyrical notes of Ellington’s In A Sentimental Mood floated from the jukebox. The eyes of the visitors remained fixed on the spot where Roy Batty got hit, until Jules Winnfield turned to the counter and the rest followed his example.
‘As dead as fried fuckin’ chicken,’ said Jules. ‘Divine Intervention, you ask me. The touch of God.’
‘That, or the suits just hired Syd Field for a polish,’ noted Kate.
‘The Lord is trying to tell us something. I just know He is.’
‘Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy,’ whimpered the rodent. ‘Where do we go from here?’
Alvy took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes. ‘Wasn’t it Ernie Pyle, the war correspondent who said that instead of the usual Why can't we make movies more like real life? a more pertinent question is Why can't real life be more like the movies?’
‘Your point being?’ uttered the rodent.
‘It’s just that, I don’t know… Maybe we’ve snooped around long enough. I don’t think we belong here. It’s the audience that should be paying us a visit, you know? We oughta be somewhere they can find us.’
‘I hate to be the one to remind you, Alvy’ said Vincent, ‘but according to the Snouted Avenger here, the audience has left the building. Permanently.’
‘In that case, we’d just as well head for the exit ourselves,’ shrugged Alvy.
‘Expression is worthless without exegesis. I know this is easy for me to say. I haven’t been abused, ignored, forgotten, censored or misconstrued. Despite my altogether miserable complexion, I’m a lucky schmuck, I guess. But whatever I mean by saying something like that, isn’t what the viewers make of it just as significant?’

The jukebox hit the end of a groove and the music stopped. Shrouded in silence, the rodent slowly nodded.
‘We're worthless alone,’ he concurred. ‘As much as I detest their indifference, we can’t turn our backs to the audience. They're what makes us tick. Our kind thrives on response. Without engagement, we’re hollow propaganda. Our petty little lives need to be digested and mulled over to mean anything, even if it means being sorely misunderstood.’
‘Why should we mean anything?’ wondered Loana aloud.
‘Not all of us, hon,’ assured Marge.
‘We’ve possessed their world tonight like they ought to inhabit ours,’ concluded the rodent. ‘Now, it’s time to go back home and remember what Antiochus Wilson taught us…’

Cinema only exists when it is seen.

Epilogue: Happy neverendings

And so it happened. One by one the visitors vanished from our side of the world and snapped right back in their fictional arcs. While Travis Bickle resumed his path into the darkened stairway leading to Iris’s apartment, holding a .44 Magnum in his right hand and a .38 Special in his left, Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield were once again in Jimmie’s garage, scooping up little pieces of brain and skull from the backseat of a green ‘74 Chevy Nova. At around the same time, Kate Miller finally had that rendezvous with her intimate stranger down at the museum, just like Alvy Singer got to reacquaint himself with the ditzy Annie Hall, the worst driver from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Just like old times, Norm Gunderson got out of bed early that morning to fix his wife Margie some eggs, and Loana returned to the way it never was, hanging from the beak of a flying pterodactyl on her way to a nest of hungry chicks. Much to her delight, Barbarella found herself strapped back inside the pulsing Excessive Machine, reaching orgasmic bliss at Durand Durand’s big crescendo. And at long last, high upon a rooftop drenched by the tears from a polluted sky, Roy Batty came to terms with his own demise, just before the main title sequence started anew and revived him all over again.

A crashing wave awoke the rodent to the familiar orchestral sounds of Paul Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The flood almost drowned him, but he didn’t mind. Further down the cavern he saw the broom he’d brought to life before his little nap in the wizard’s chair. The broom walked tirelessly up and down the stairs, toting water buckets from the fountain to the vat and back again. As the rodent waded towards the thing to stop it, something dawned on him: An apprentice he may be and forever remain, but it was in his power to cast a greater spell than his master ever could. In the end, it was he who had what it takes to capture the imagination of millions, simply by drawing viewers into his story. And even though people didn’t always pay as much attention to his fable as he’d like, its cautionary message concerning the dangers of power over wisdom proved more pertinent than ever.

If there were one thing his New York adventure had taught him—and what else could it have been but a silly dream?—it was that sometimes, power cuts both ways. As the commander of this particular fantasia, he had a choice to guide the ship as much as people had a choice to board it. Deep in his heart he knew he had to give the right example; how could a captain expect his passengers to take the plunge unless he risked the chance to drift off course? If neglect could be considered an occupational hazard and attentiveness a prize worth fighting for, than it was time to get his act together.

Mickey Mouse grabbed the axe leaning against the wall and lifted it high up in the air. Expression is a privilege, he thought, just before he hacked the enchanted broom to splinters. Gosh, it sure felt swell to be alive!

Let them entertain us, the makers of strong images
Let us toss them copper pennies
But let us not forget
They make the images
We give them flesh

—Neil Gaiman, The Song of the Audience—

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Peter (aka Peet) Gelderblom directs, edits and develops commercials, TV programs and broadcast design at an Amsterdam-based production company. He studied Graphic Arts in Rotterdam and briefly worked as a copywriter and desktop publisher, before making the audiovisual switch with motion graphics and digital editing. He created station identities, leader packages, promos and title designs for a range of TV channels. His weekly webcomic Directorama, chronicling the afterlife of a pantheon of legendary directors, is published every Monday at both The House Next Door and Directorama.net. He lives right in the heart of Holland with his Danish wife, two lovely sons and a cat called Diesel.