Rays of Debatable Intention

by David Zakss

Vidor's characters are in fake costumes like a concert by the rock band Kiss. The only way I am able to watch this fashion show is that I once enjoyed a Kiss concert when I was growing up. This was at the University of Toronto's Varsity Stadium, then I went on to study film at U of T. And now the past concert is the clue which allows me to endure this classic picture. Now I can read every medallion and pattern, though I know the metallic parts are probably wood painted with metallic paint. David Cronenberg once revealed that many of his devices look realistic when they're secretly made of wood.

Zombies eat human flesh. Helicopters fly over the zombies. I think I like the helicopters the best, because I was once impressed by one on a trip to the States when I was a kid. Helicopters playing blasting soundtracks were big in Viet Nam, according to Coppola. In film school, we were told the difference between music that's just meant to be in the soundtrack, and noise which exists in the actual world of the characters. Helicopters blasting their own theme music attack would cross the border into imaginary sound, just like passing over into Cambodia.

At the Toronto International Film Festival, Atom Egoyan is in front of the screen, introducing "EXOTICA". He picks me out of the crowd and focuses on me. I feel like people on stage are always staring at me. Is this the penalty for me looking at his creation, he gets to look at me? Do I have something in my bag I can shoot at him? I feel like he's watching me to defend himself. He's more successful than me, though, so it must be me having my soul sucked to feed the powers of his inroads into Hollywood. Why did my girlfriend ever start buying me passes to the film festival? My birthday happens to be around now. I don't like crowded theatres, though.

I have enjoyed some reactions I've overheard in screenings. When I went to see "ALIEN", I liked somebody cheering the black guy who took up a flamethrower to track down the creature. I didn't even think it must be a black spectator. It just made the character look like a hero. At one film there was something burning, and a friend made a hissing sound of derision. Coincidentally, his hissing sounded just like something on a frying pan. Before that, I didn't know audience sounds could be just like part of the story action. At a nasty Stephen King film, a fistfight broke out in the last row, loud not with shouting but with struggling limbs. Somebody got ejected and the other person was told to just relax and enjoy the film now. It made me, too, feel relaxed to hear the stranger's voice, soothing my guilt over seeing an antisocial horror picture.

Meanwhile, films go by, sequences of images intermingle across the days. The French New Wave turns into a No Wave, with bloodless films which offer very little. They must have used up all their ingenuity in their first burst. The internet offers something else to look at, threatening film distribution not only indirectly, but offering espionage reports on upcoming projects. These make it impossible for new films to come out without being pre-empted by second-rate quickies plundering the new ideas. Yet the image stream will continue one way or another. Narrative suggested these in the first place, like ghosts offering pictures which rise out of the primitive campfire. They keep rising, a manifestation which takes centuries and children of children to watch unfold, but the primitive fires are still at their stem, even if they look like UFOs firing rays of debatable intention.

David Zakss writes: "David took film at U of T because he didn't want to do a real subject. He enjoys investigating the designs of narrative in many media, starting with the millennial ritual of written language. David was once a denizen of the Danforth, for a number of vital years in his puny human lifespan."

THIS WORK IS COPYRIGHT OF THE AUTHOR.

THE DANFORTH REVIEW IS EDITED BY MICHAEL BRYSON.