thought Saul has maybe once a day—he should've married another Jew, someone with an
equally heavy Levantine face that aged with each passing second. Instead, he fell for a chicsa. —his mother's word—a boy toy goy. "It's not worth it," his wife told him.
"What?"
"Just come home."
"I will."
"Now."
He said, "At some point," and then he hung up, didn't really hang up—those days of cradle-slamming good-byes are over—no,
he just pushed the "end" button. Not very satisfying. Some irate people, like the studio chief, toss their cellulars across
the room, smashing them against the wall for effect. Shrapnel explodes; the oak paneling is given a half-moon nick. Saul had
recently watched this display and immediately tallied the expense, but he couldn't deny the power of that particular production
value. It certainly sent a fright through his spine. A real grabber. Maybe that's what you do with old cell phones and computers:
you wait for that right moment—say it's a meeting of scriptwriters and you think their script is complete crap—and you pick
up the moldy PC you've dragged out of the closet and you make a show of throwing it out the window. Bombs away! That'll get
the idea across. A nice little drama for those geeky wordsmiths.
"Daddy, I'm scared. Please come home," that's what his daughter was saying an hour ago. Saul is sure some rehearsal was involved.
He could imagine his wife coaching her, running lines back and forth until Missy had it down cold. She's a hammy kid, an atavist
of some forgotten vaudevillian Messer. Dance lessons: tap, jazz, ballet; voice lessons; something called poise, pronunciation,
and polish. If she sees a piano she'll insist on singing her signature song, "Memory." Even at a packed restaurant, she'll
beg and plead until you've got to give in. "This is a number that's dear to my heart," she'll tell her makeshift audience.
And the scary thing is that a lot of people think it's the most adorable thing. "We miss you terribly," she said amid the
bacon crackle of spotty coverage. "Really. We'll always love you the way you are. No matter." And it was almost enough to
make Saul slam on the brakes and turn the Porsche around. But he didn't. Like most stunts he admired the mastery, the pyrotechnics,
the precision, but within the explosions he always saw a thick bottom line of expenditure. Anna had probably promised Missy
something, maybe a suede jacket with frills, or possibly a dog. There's always incessant talk about a dog. I swear, you can
make a nine-year-old eat shit if you promise her a dog.
Saul downshifts the Porsche and kicks the RPM needle into the 5 x 1000 section of the tachometer. The car is speeding thirty
miles over the posted speed limit, but it's dark out, well into the middle of the night, and speed slips into the relative
ease of evening without the blur of things, of fields of suburbs turning into expanse of desert turning into mountains; instead,
there's only that crescent of lit blacktop. And when Saul finds himself on a long stretch of empty road, he steers into the
middle of the highway and pretends that this car is some great beast with glowing eyes and that the broken yellow lines are
helpless creatures trapped in the mailroom of the evolutionary chain.
I know this is terrible but this is the way Saul thinks about movie disasters: they're like Nazi death camps of World War
II and their names are enough to make your blood cold: Cleopatra . . . Dachau; Heaven's Gate . . . Auschwitz; Ishtar . . . Treblinka; Howard the Duck . . . Lublin; Hudson Hawk . . . Buchenwald. Whole studios nearly destroyed, careers forever lost, all because of one lousy picture, and a picture that
once looked so good, a picture people were banking on, a picture earmarked for a big summer release, a picture with can't-miss
stars, a real boffo. How can you live in a universe like that, where talent doesn't mean shit, where a five-million-dollar
movie
equally heavy Levantine face that aged with each passing second. Instead, he fell for a chicsa. —his mother's word—a boy toy goy. "It's not worth it," his wife told him.
"What?"
"Just come home."
"I will."
"Now."
He said, "At some point," and then he hung up, didn't really hang up—those days of cradle-slamming good-byes are over—no,
he just pushed the "end" button. Not very satisfying. Some irate people, like the studio chief, toss their cellulars across
the room, smashing them against the wall for effect. Shrapnel explodes; the oak paneling is given a half-moon nick. Saul had
recently watched this display and immediately tallied the expense, but he couldn't deny the power of that particular production
value. It certainly sent a fright through his spine. A real grabber. Maybe that's what you do with old cell phones and computers:
you wait for that right moment—say it's a meeting of scriptwriters and you think their script is complete crap—and you pick
up the moldy PC you've dragged out of the closet and you make a show of throwing it out the window. Bombs away! That'll get
the idea across. A nice little drama for those geeky wordsmiths.
"Daddy, I'm scared. Please come home," that's what his daughter was saying an hour ago. Saul is sure some rehearsal was involved.
He could imagine his wife coaching her, running lines back and forth until Missy had it down cold. She's a hammy kid, an atavist
of some forgotten vaudevillian Messer. Dance lessons: tap, jazz, ballet; voice lessons; something called poise, pronunciation,
and polish. If she sees a piano she'll insist on singing her signature song, "Memory." Even at a packed restaurant, she'll
beg and plead until you've got to give in. "This is a number that's dear to my heart," she'll tell her makeshift audience.
And the scary thing is that a lot of people think it's the most adorable thing. "We miss you terribly," she said amid the
bacon crackle of spotty coverage. "Really. We'll always love you the way you are. No matter." And it was almost enough to
make Saul slam on the brakes and turn the Porsche around. But he didn't. Like most stunts he admired the mastery, the pyrotechnics,
the precision, but within the explosions he always saw a thick bottom line of expenditure. Anna had probably promised Missy
something, maybe a suede jacket with frills, or possibly a dog. There's always incessant talk about a dog. I swear, you can
make a nine-year-old eat shit if you promise her a dog.
Saul downshifts the Porsche and kicks the RPM needle into the 5 x 1000 section of the tachometer. The car is speeding thirty
miles over the posted speed limit, but it's dark out, well into the middle of the night, and speed slips into the relative
ease of evening without the blur of things, of fields of suburbs turning into expanse of desert turning into mountains; instead,
there's only that crescent of lit blacktop. And when Saul finds himself on a long stretch of empty road, he steers into the
middle of the highway and pretends that this car is some great beast with glowing eyes and that the broken yellow lines are
helpless creatures trapped in the mailroom of the evolutionary chain.
I know this is terrible but this is the way Saul thinks about movie disasters: they're like Nazi death camps of World War
II and their names are enough to make your blood cold: Cleopatra . . . Dachau; Heaven's Gate . . . Auschwitz; Ishtar . . . Treblinka; Howard the Duck . . . Lublin; Hudson Hawk . . . Buchenwald. Whole studios nearly destroyed, careers forever lost, all because of one lousy picture, and a picture that
once looked so good, a picture people were banking on, a picture earmarked for a big summer release, a picture with can't-miss
stars, a real boffo. How can you live in a universe like that, where talent doesn't mean shit, where a five-million-dollar
movie
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