struggling to adjust to his reined-in presence, but he also felt for the first time that the role was a natural extension of him rather than a mask he put on and took off. His drama professors were always talking about the “performance breakthroughs” that happened when “you got out of your own way.” Robin wondered if maybe he’d finally had one.
Calvin was teeming with praise, his opinions carrying loudly through the backstage dressing rooms. “You found the fault line between sorrow and rage,” he proclaimed. This was an embarrassing compliment to receive in front of the rest of the cast, some of whom clearly thought Robin’s changes had been disruptive. Even his mother had been more subdued.
Later, in the men’s room of the restaurant where they were having a celebratory dinner, Calvin cornered Robin at the urinal. He was working on a screenplay that he wanted Robin to see. He said it was inspired by Liquid Sky , a film that had opened a couple of years before and that was still playing at one Manhattan movie theater at midnight. Robin had seen this “new wave” film and found it unbearable. It reminded him of a certain kind of underground nightlife that always seemed out of reach on his trips downtown: arty fashion plates speaking in flat voices that seemed to signify detachment or irony or some other kind of superiority. But Robin agreed to look at whatever Calvin wrote.
For months now, Calvin had been leaving Robin biweekly answering machine messages saying, “It’s coming soon, I’m wildly inspired, I’m rewriting it with you in mind, it’s going to blow you away.” But when the screenplay arrived (the original copy, which made Robin take notice), Robin found that “Carter,” though clearly the hero, the last man standing, was anxious and full of himself and not particularly likable. If he’d been a muse to his sister’s boyfriend, what did this character say about him? And was the script any good? He couldn’t tell. It was certainly repetitious; there were three long phone conversations between Carter and his best friend, Bennett, during which Bennett snorts coke and rambles on about sex and disease, while Carter quietly masturbates (the notation in the script reading, “We don’t see but we are left with no doubt that Carter is pleasuring himself”). Carter is described, in one scene, as “hungry for something new.” In Calvin’s cover letter to Robin, he wrote, “Nudity is optional, but I want to test the limits. Feeling dangerous?” It was a dare, and also weirdly coy. Robin wondered if he should warn Ruby that her boyfriend had some of the telltale signs of a closet case.
He looks up from the script and his gaze lands on the movie poster he’s Fun-Taked to the wall: Brad Davis looking outrageously humpable as a French sailor in Querelle. A fantasy unwinds of Calvin’s film as a wild success: beautifully shot, smartly edited, a cool soundtrack laid on top. It gets picked up by a New York distribution company, gets a long theatrical run at the Bleecker Street Cinema, gets reviewed by J. Hoberman in the Village Voice. Robin gets written up in Variety as “Someone to Watch.”
Unlike some of his classmates, he wasn’t out hustling for an agent, didn’t go on a thousand auditions, hadn’t acted upon the conventional wisdom that said, “If you don’t get cast in a feature film by the time you’re twenty-one, you’ll never have a career.” Maybe he was lazy, just didn’t have the hustle in him. Or maybe he was wise, taking his time until he was sure of his own talent. When you’ve been told your whole life that you’re good looking, it’s easy to doubt that anyone values anything else about you. Good looks get attention, but not all attention is a good thing.
Peter first noticed him for his looks. Robin would catch him staring from the podium at the front of the lecture hall. Robin knew that stare. Men who wanted sex used it, dirty thoughts raging behind their eyes.
Calvin was teeming with praise, his opinions carrying loudly through the backstage dressing rooms. “You found the fault line between sorrow and rage,” he proclaimed. This was an embarrassing compliment to receive in front of the rest of the cast, some of whom clearly thought Robin’s changes had been disruptive. Even his mother had been more subdued.
Later, in the men’s room of the restaurant where they were having a celebratory dinner, Calvin cornered Robin at the urinal. He was working on a screenplay that he wanted Robin to see. He said it was inspired by Liquid Sky , a film that had opened a couple of years before and that was still playing at one Manhattan movie theater at midnight. Robin had seen this “new wave” film and found it unbearable. It reminded him of a certain kind of underground nightlife that always seemed out of reach on his trips downtown: arty fashion plates speaking in flat voices that seemed to signify detachment or irony or some other kind of superiority. But Robin agreed to look at whatever Calvin wrote.
For months now, Calvin had been leaving Robin biweekly answering machine messages saying, “It’s coming soon, I’m wildly inspired, I’m rewriting it with you in mind, it’s going to blow you away.” But when the screenplay arrived (the original copy, which made Robin take notice), Robin found that “Carter,” though clearly the hero, the last man standing, was anxious and full of himself and not particularly likable. If he’d been a muse to his sister’s boyfriend, what did this character say about him? And was the script any good? He couldn’t tell. It was certainly repetitious; there were three long phone conversations between Carter and his best friend, Bennett, during which Bennett snorts coke and rambles on about sex and disease, while Carter quietly masturbates (the notation in the script reading, “We don’t see but we are left with no doubt that Carter is pleasuring himself”). Carter is described, in one scene, as “hungry for something new.” In Calvin’s cover letter to Robin, he wrote, “Nudity is optional, but I want to test the limits. Feeling dangerous?” It was a dare, and also weirdly coy. Robin wondered if he should warn Ruby that her boyfriend had some of the telltale signs of a closet case.
He looks up from the script and his gaze lands on the movie poster he’s Fun-Taked to the wall: Brad Davis looking outrageously humpable as a French sailor in Querelle. A fantasy unwinds of Calvin’s film as a wild success: beautifully shot, smartly edited, a cool soundtrack laid on top. It gets picked up by a New York distribution company, gets a long theatrical run at the Bleecker Street Cinema, gets reviewed by J. Hoberman in the Village Voice. Robin gets written up in Variety as “Someone to Watch.”
Unlike some of his classmates, he wasn’t out hustling for an agent, didn’t go on a thousand auditions, hadn’t acted upon the conventional wisdom that said, “If you don’t get cast in a feature film by the time you’re twenty-one, you’ll never have a career.” Maybe he was lazy, just didn’t have the hustle in him. Or maybe he was wise, taking his time until he was sure of his own talent. When you’ve been told your whole life that you’re good looking, it’s easy to doubt that anyone values anything else about you. Good looks get attention, but not all attention is a good thing.
Peter first noticed him for his looks. Robin would catch him staring from the podium at the front of the lecture hall. Robin knew that stare. Men who wanted sex used it, dirty thoughts raging behind their eyes.
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