From Moth Midnight. d. Barry Blight. Screenplay by Barry Blight. USA: Los Alamos Productions/Alliance Entertainment, 1958—

 

-Norma Needy, lab assistant, busty, "Doctor, is something wrong?"

-Dr. Fritz Fake, nuclear physicist/insect biologist, "In forty years, I've never seen such a thing. The moth's brainwaves have been entirely disrupted. It's as if it is working against the very desires given it by nature."

-Strong Dollar, janitor, "I don't understand."

-Dr. Fake, "Let me put it this way. A moth's natural instinct is to be attracted to—light—yes? It is drawn by the pull of the moon, the stars, your car's headlamp, the light on your porch—anything bright. All through history, moths have used the night illumination for direction. They use the moon like a hiker would a mountain or a big tree, as a marker. "

-Strong, "Yes, I remember that from school."

-Dr. Fake, "Good. Now, if I were to hold a powerful lamp up in front of a moth, what would it do?"

-Strong, "It would fly into the light."

-Dr. Fake, "Not quite! It would circle the lamp, keeping the 'marker' securely on one side, drawing ever closer, until finally—"

-Norma, "It flies right in!"

-Dr. Fake, "No moth ever expects he'll actually reach the moon! But, this one is different. Instead of being attracted to the light, this moth is repelled by it."

-Norma, "Do you think it's a result of the radiation poisoning?"

-Dr. Fake, "That's as good a theory as any, Norma. The lingering radiation from the explosion must have triggered a radical reversal of all its natural instincts. This is a moth that hates the light and longs for utter darkness!"

 

***

 

-Norma Needy, swimsuit, "Strong, do you think that moths could ever know love?"

-Strong Dollar, biceps, "I don't know what they could know, Norma, but I know it isn't human."

-Norma, "But, now that they've eaten Dr. Fake's brain—"

-Strong, "Don't talk about it, Norma!"

-Norma, "But I don't understand. He wasn't trying to hurt them, he was only trying to study them!"

-Strong, "Dr. Fake's work was intended to illuminate science for the future of humanity. And the moths want one thing: darkness. Of course they snuffed it out! What does it matter to them—darkness of the sky, darkness of the mind—Norma, no light can survive on this planet if the moths have their way!"

-Norma, closer, "Oh, Strong, I can't bear to think that the doctor died for nothing at all. If only his brainwaves could have passed on a little...humanity...to those—those monsters."

-Strong, supportive, "Shhh, Norma, quiet, the moths will hear you."

 

***

 

-Person, running, "AHHHHHHHH!"

-Person 2, running, "AHHHHHHHH!"

-Norma Needy, bullhorn, "Stop moving! Turn off all your cars! Turn off your radios and television sets!"

-Strong Dollar, sports car, sweaty, "Norma, it's not just the light! It's our thoughts! The moths can sense the electrical impulses in our brains"-open address-"Everybody—stop thinking! Put away your thoughts for the sake of your lives!"

-People, "AHHHHHHHH!"

-Norma, "Is it true, Strong?"

-Strong, "It's the last thing Dr. Fake wrote in his journal, before the moths ate his brain. Norma—they must have sensed he was thinking it, and they destroyed him for his knowledge."

-Norma, "Oh Strong, how terrible! What do we do?"

-Strong, "I couldn't tell you if I knew, Norma, because then they'd know, and they'd try to stop me. No, from now on we have to keep secrets from even ourselves if we want to survive."

-Norma, "You mean stop thinking?"

-Strong, "Don't you see, Norma, they hate the light! They despise it! It was light—the bomb—that made them freaks, and so they seek revenge on all light—but, Norma, we made the bomb! Humans! To despise Creation as much as they do—think of how much more they must hate the Creator!"

-Norma, "But they're only moths."

-Strong, "They're moths, but their instincts are all topsy-turvy! The natural inclination of all animals to life has been turned backwards in them. Don't you see? Utter darkness is a kind of death they try to reach while living...why, Norma, this is a species that has death built into its mind...and to a creature like that, anyone who loves life and the pursuit of knowledge and happiness is an abomination!"

-People, dying.

-Norma, pucker, "Strong, kiss me. If those moths can sense our brainwaves, maybe they'll sense our Love—and maybe that will be enough to, to, make them better people..."

 

in the perfect frame her eyes sweat me and her lips mouth me, her legs enwrap me tight like ribbon tied. the fear will ghost her face and i watch the slight hand shriek the cheek. the shriek is made in hand's shadow the way the tight blouse cups her breasts for me, because unframed they would be good as air. on the screen's edge the white man shimmers, not real. this shot will halve him soon (his wet face unstartled, he'll lose an arm before the rest recedes) and beyond the screen there is no man. he's only flicker, filmed but half-forgotten, a steady breath that the girl in her eruption soon forgets. meanwhile moths condense between the two and chasm the space they share. the girl holds terror hotly in her teeth and her meaty eyes edge with sweat (and mine do) and the screen extends around the real pain held in her heart for me, for me sweetly visible. they touch her soft like dirty rain, brown snow, and twinkle from shoulders that not unkindly melt them. this girl is inner-lit. aflame. moths in quiet agony tumble, delicately they corrupt the ground. their twittering wings melt to mass, a black accumulation, slow cancer. the screen itself is shrinking. moths have thickly flicked the edges black, the man now just breath at the edge, but she is centered, haloed-clean. her bright toes giddy kick them, clearing space to frame her fear delightfully, box her lovely horror for me to see. the film has flattened ecstasy, grained it cross her trembling eyesockets in grayscale, and i know it is the orgasm of vision that whites the sphere in which she screams. this pain. i look at my chest to see her passion's pierced me through, and this bloody pull harpoons and strings me through the screen. i look at my chest. my chair falls fatly under feet unfeeling. is she watching? i look down. sweatstained floor crumples my advance, my sootsoaked heels leaving muddy marks, or is it the floor that marks my muddy feet? is she watching? against the screen i feel the projection heat my back, white dust rising visible from my new-lit neck and shoulder. the screen, coldly flat planes silent at my ear. turn my head. can it? can i? in softly socks my feet are. is she watching is? wetly neck my cranes at fearful. her heart unbloody blacklywhite tingly me my bare back. blacklyback. no. back is white. my front it is that's brought the image back to black. decadence of moths constricts the screen for my shadow the frame to close it. looking straight it's only nothing made by moths and me. meltly we together gape the void. oh. but on my back-turned frame, my flicking-thick coat and square collar perfectly she must still be screaming.

 

 

 

I'll tell you where you can put that bomb

 

 

 

Buddy.

 

 

 

SHHH.

 

Listen:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

it's the music that moths make.

 

 

 

 

It's vintage Hollywood, of course, and Barry Blight can swell fantastic from behind his single camera, can kick his chair (stenciled BLIGHT across the back) over actors' heads, can jump and shriek enormous in His moment, sure, cause what this scene needs is—he pleads to them, prostrate on the edge of Fake Times Square, straddling the set's edge, left foot in L.A. but finger-laced fists and aching head thrust woozy into the false verticality of that counterfeit city—what this scene needs, plainly, is MORE ENERGY. He thwacks the head of Rita Noshow, script assistant, sending script and pencil-scratched production schedule whizzing into the painted plane of an imaginary shoe store. Poor Drew Daily (with this scene only boozily learned last night in the vague blank moments intersplicing romps with bitter tinseltown wouldbe's—easy finds on open sets) stoops at once to re-collect the pages. Barry chips the edge off Frank's Delicatessen and sucks it idly as the cast regroups. It's all obviously wrong. The terror zone exists convincingly, he admits, only in black and white; its gaudy paint and quick-jimmied front-pieces feebly joke against the naked eye. Plywood groceries creak in the breeze that blows steadily from some unclosed door, some unmonitored opening where, like as not, Daily's sullied starlets trickle in. Try as they might to erect this city in comforting vacuum, Los Angeles always invades.

He sneaks a cool glance at Bev Verivamp repackaging her generous chest atop the tincan car brought in this morning. Bullhorn limply held between legs: how would her lines sound from that sweet mouth, tee-hee. Barry sighs and tries to set the scene in his head. There is no fucking energy. To his right the moth-handlers busily ready their pets; it's just wishful thinking, though, they won't be needed for an hour at least. In the imaginary distance (perspective is malleable, Barry, remember: this is Hollywood's oldest trick) extras suck coffee from the bubbling percolators that line the left wall like an arsenal of rockets—ah, this is Red Scare Cinema, and everything extends the illusion. The garish matte skyline, oil-on-canvas, throws a sick glow on the actors, permanent fallout: but the orange excess looks good on film, like Verivamp's startling lipstick and blast-bright skirt. The celluloid will blunt these harsh hues, will frame the danger and wash the Scare; yes, when the score—which is stock B-movie reedy noodling, canned like the cars, packaged like Bev's breasts...Barry can hum it to you now, if you like—strikes up on this scene, the projector clicking the off-beats, and you and your girl are slouched in your seats (hey! she looks swell, and she digs you, Daddy, I can tell—take her hand here, you're supposed to), when the lovers on screen shout their well-scripted lines with believable passion, the extras tumbling in terror exquisitely timed and at moments gymnastic, moths wreaking delicate havoc on everyone, well, then it will only be Movie New York you see, familiar as a can of beans, and all of that terror will be yawningly commonplace—yeah, this apocalypse has been manufactured far in advance with you in mind, buddy, you in particular, and its horror been contoured inverse your own, like the fit of that pretty girl's fingers in the grooves of yours, to neutralize, zero, cancel out your more pressing worldly fears: you didn't know that's what this date was about, did yah—anesthetic? Whoo, boy! you'll leave the theater today with the sunshiny feeling of pleasant suppression, and isn't it nice? Maybe you'll go have a malt or if you're lucky (c'mon, it's real love, that's obvious) she'll come up to your room to hear you spin the new one by Danny & the Juniors and you'll peck her on the cheek, you dog. But love ain't so simple, Sonny, and fear, like moths, cannot ever be trained. Sadly, not even cinema can darken all the edges of experience, or whiten its lies. Example: what is that breeze that blows through Norma Needy's bleach-shiny hair? Why, that isn't a New York gust! Damn draft [thinks Barry Blight, back on set]: all that hot air blowin' in from Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, he broods, will always invade to crap the best shot. But you have to wonder, now that your girl is gone and the record spins silent at the single's inner groove—At the Hop out-Bop'd at last—you have to wonder, which illusion was traded in? The simple coastal lie, New York at nightfall for L.A.'s morning breeze? Or was it something more weighty—your very malted-over and matinee-muddied 1950s fears? Oh. Oh. That wasn't the Hollywood breeze ruffling Norma's blonde mane, was it? Why, under the comforting frame of this film's easy apocalypse, against the canned, corny heroic sacrifice and syrup-sweetened last scene, God, wasn't that an atomic wind blowing over L.A.? It couldn't be, could it? Naw. Could it?

 

 

 

 

THE MUSIC THAT MOTHS MAKE

 

is well below the threshold of human hearing.1

 

 

 

 

 

 

(hey)

(hey)

(hey)

Yeah You.

 

 

There are one or two

IMPORTANT FACTS

 

You should know before continuing.

(it's about to get pretty

weird)

 

 

1. October 12th, 1958. 18:33.50 GMT. Buenos Aires, Argentina. Partial eclipse of the sun. Eclipse lasts approximately 1hr 04min, until sunset.

 

2. October 12th, 1958. 07.53.04 GMT. Novaya Zemlya, USSR. Detonation of a nuclear weapon of megaton explosive-force. 17th of 79 bombs tested at Novaya Zemlya between 20 September 1957 and 25 December 1962. Bombs variously dropped by airplanes, shot as missiles from submarines or land bases, and launched from central Asia to be shot down and detonated by Anti-Ballistic Missiles (ABMs).

 

3. October 12th, 1958. 16:14.25 GMT. Hollywood, USA. On-set at "Moth Midnight." The Director gets pissed.

 

 

Thank you.

 

 

 

-Dr. Fritz Fake, journal, voiceover, "The resistance of the moths to light appears to be less schematic than my initial hypothesis would indicate. I can no longer support my claim that the radiation poisoning effected a simple inversion of the insect's natural instincts. Repeated tests with lamps (of varying magnitude) and exposure to direct sunlight yield two alternative reactions from the mutants: 1) marked repulsion, and 2) display of aggressive behavior toward the source of light—resulting in death. Attempts to isolate a behavioral/environmental trigger for the aggressive response have been inconclusive, but each new generation shows dramatic increase in the proportion of aggressive subjects. At the present rate—given that the larval and pupal stages of the atom-moth appear to be four times faster than that of the average specimen—the aggressive moths will far outnumber their passive counterparts within a period of a few days. It remains to be seen whether further testing may support a more complete analysis.

(back a ways)

I don' t know. On on

on on (I'm checking)

 

 

PAGES 4-5.

 

That creep.

 

Was that...

You??

"PERSONAL NOTE: I must confess that for the past several nights I have harbored the silliest juvenile fears, all too reminiscent of the empty schoolboy fantasies of my childhood. I suppose it is only the giddiness of my recent cohabitation with such unusual creatures...and so many now. Still, in my dreams (are they dreams? I'm so tired, here alone...), they display a cunning that is almost—human. You can see it in the way that they attack the light. Not dumbly, the way that normal moths will spiral into lamps they mistake for moons. But intensely...almost calculated hate. And watching me perform the tests (They do watch me! ...Eyes black and hard like small bullets) the way they look at me, as if I were a glow ten times more hateful than any sun. And, oh my, the teeth. Whoever heard of moths with teeth?"

 

 

Times Square is just a pile of plywood to be reused for a Western filming here next month (an unlikely musical-comedic romp pairing Jerry Lewis and a young Elvis Presley; a guns 'n' guitars affair, which, we suspect, will never make national release). Barry hovers—clucking his tongue, winking, emitting strange, low-frequency sounds from some indeterminate orifice—over the camera crew as they set angles for the getaway scene. Yeah, real suave this: 1958 AC Ace Roadster—cherried-out, top down, of course—set bolted in front of a 9x12 luminous canvas screen, on which the car's motion will be projected. Sure, it's a movie of a movie, but that's Studio logic for you, and the only way to keep Verivamp's landscaped hair from jungling haphazard across the shot's careful scenery. Barry sweeps his eyes across the gathered cast and crew, whistling this scene's jaunty theme song from head to head to mood them. He trills at length against Bev Verivamp's shiny-clean cheek, to magnificent effect: immediately she dives to the Roadster, erupts in a passenger-side fit that pounds his poor heart and thrills his willy (embarrassing moment, use camera for coverage). It's all in fun, so Drew Daily joins in, mock-acting his part, steering the sportscar, aping his lines to the best of his woozy ability; and even the sound- and cameramen get into the act—Snuff steadying the boom (difficult work, as he's laughing so hard that the handle keeps slipping his fingers) while Wally mimes the old-time camera cranking—real clown, Wally! Barry, busting fit to mash a moth, completes the charade, inserting Action! and Cut! at appropriate moments. However, his hysterics allow just a thin wheeze that collapses in the laughing howl (even Dean Martin's wandered over from Lot B to have a look, bringing Jerry Lewis with him to scope next month's set—and boy, when Jerry starts guffawing, begins to shuffle upstage cross-eyed and primate [can't say no to a camera, Jerry, even imaginary], and reaches ape-fingered up toward Verivamp's propped, powdered endowment, well, the studio loses it: a chortle that blows back shirtcollars and singes skin...sends script-pages whirling...the moth-handlers cover their cages to muffle the din...Buddy the grip—young kid, witty—reaches for his heart in mock-agony, while fellas around him enact elaborate failures of vital organs and paraphernalia...Dino breaks the straight-guy routine and fake-vomits all over Barry's lovely assistant, and nearly everyone instantly dies of delight...it's a regular fallout, alright, apocalyptic...and dammit, the film's not even rolling)—so they just carry on directionless until Barry, sobering at loss of power, intrudes and re-sets the scene.

             "Good energy, everyone," he encourages [but is he acting still? or is this real?]. "Now let's get one for the people at home." Modest applause. Cheshire grin, he ends with his tagline: "America's aching—let's give 'em Hell."

             Verivamp and Daily sit tight in their stationary transport, running lines, ready. Moth-handlers flutter about to shush Jerry and Dino, at work on their act. Wally jerks camera to-place while Barry himself mans the projector, machines side-to-side before the prop-auto.

Have you

 

Hold on.

 

Have you considered that this arrangement only hints at the greater perfection to be attained? It wants a direct relay from camera to projector to screen, and back to camera, closed-circuit, so that the caricature—cinema's wink—can be instantaneous, completely mechanical. Its eye fixed on what it's just seen, refilming its most recent vision, the camera is current to the second: consistently cutting-edge art. Such a machine would exist independent of actors, sets, and screenplays. Human interference will only dull the bite of its perpetual self-consumption.

 

 

Of course, things as they are, with no escape scene set to film, the camera will see just its own empty projection, a wall of white light.

 

The explosion at Novaya Zemlya takes place in the early morning, a routine experiment. Andrei Sakharov opposes, claiming that repeated testing of megaton-caliber nuclear weaponry yields no useful scientific data. Khrushchev carries on, mechanically, for habit's sake.

The eclipse that evening in Argentina, a lower-hemisphere phenomenon, is invisible to Soviets and Studio heads. But even South Americans greet it with slim wonder, little reverence. Not fool enough to prostrate themselves in religious terror, to howl and moan and beg forgiveness, these civilized peoples pass over cosmic anomaly as predictable nuisance, easily charted—at most a canned delight.

And nobody makes the poetic connection. Morning atomic flash in the map's north-east met by solar blackout in the far south-west, just before sunset. A little too cute perhaps, and contrived—God winks, stacking the deck. Maybe. And add to this the players' cool apathy: the human willingness to assimilate this bomb-brightening day and eclipse-shaded evening, this heightened contrast (which looks swell on film), as mere extension of the un-awed regular habits of everyday life. Even a poetic mind like Barry Blight's will fail to appreciate the aesthetic balance. To him it's only drama as usual, and what isn't, anyway? Well. You might be onto something, Barr. Too much hyperbole and we'll reset our screens to accommodate horror as the natural course. Blackening blacks and whitening whites, we'll get the extremes, but lose the delectable terror of sensing on the small-scale. Right? Neat. But, hey, Barry, if life's all so Hollywood, then what are you doing on your little set, manning your small machine? What are you trying to prove, anyway, by projecting our fears on the big screen, soundtracking our lies, erecting cities in miniature to map our American fictions—when real people are faking just fine right outside the set. Isn't that one flash too bright for this show-business world?2

 

 

 

It's a great moment, scripted. Strong Dollar will lean over and say to Norma Needy (she post-panic, relaxed at last on the side-seat, her flushed and floured eyelids fluttering like wings), will say "Norma, Honey, I Think We Just Saved The World," in a meaty tone he has practiced all morning, voice hollowed-sexy by drink. Norma, nipples perking—no, no, Barry, this is unrated cinema, watch it—will scoot in her seat, foxy, and kiss his strongboned cheek, quipping, "Terrific. I'm beat, let's go catch a film." Wonderfully circular, in the last frame the lovers lovingly enter the theater as end titles spiral up over them; the camera blinks across worlds, our cave to theirs, straddling fictions.

But first this damn car scene must be set, filmed and printed. Daily, irate, wants a break to go take a piss, while Verivamp splotches from some questionable breakfast this morning, her hived throat bouncing rubbery over her lines. Irene Treaties-English, the make-up girl, hovers her face to powder the rashes, a fledgling impressionist, apparently: that deathwhite dotting doesn't...quite match the contours of her face, Irene, but no matter; the reel tape itself is bound to dirty almost immediately, and real dust from the case will soon fill in Treaties-English's more offsetting errors.

Barry and Wally converse by the screen. Wally wants to try some fancy zooms he's picked out of Corman's latest, but Barry's set against it—it's a sweet scene after all, the horror's behind them. "Sure thing, Doc," Wally says, "but the guys at the Cameraman's Diner all agree it'd be swell—I mean, real crazy wild—if we got one or a few hep close-ups of Bev there (you know, lighting permitting), an' it'd be a pretty freaky ending, too, we think, if we end just zooming like jailbreak back and forth on Drew's face there. Dig?" Well, Barry's a wet rag for spoiling it, but Wally agrees to film steady, letting the actors do the work, and Barry does promise a real get-out zoom that he'll splice into the first scene, of a lone moth at rest atop a streetlight (too shaded to kill it, too bright for escape).

Through that still-open door, fuck it, somewhere on-set, creep the faint round touristy sounds of morning hustle beginning on Sunset, padded and hushed by plywood layers of struck, stacked cities; costumes; period drapes; loose press-on nails; idle, anonymous script pages from interchangeable films; a soiled pink slipper; business cards; limp contraceptives; stale fries and a crusty malt, as well as throwaway pits from countless catered olives and apricots, enjoyed by whole generations of rodentia that have rattled these walls—masked these cameras and boomed the mics; unrooted screws; wallets; a prop noose used by Herb Godawful in "The Executives" to hang his mistress on film and then crunch his own appled neck in his off-camera trailer—found later puffed-red and fragrant (bile had risen from his belly to drown him drily before the rope could finish its fatal lasso of air)—and which filmmakers here morbidly treasure as testament to their art's measurable impress; de-lensed glasses for well-sighted actor-scientists; buffalo nickels; half a hairdo left lifeless behind by a rising Hollywood vixen, dispensing with wigs and dyeing instead; enough cigarettes to asphyxiate Boston; red ball noses and grease paint for the Studio's official clown / sleight-of-handist, Brand-o the Impossible; lightbulbs; unclaimed petroleum jelly; an inexplicable desert monk who diets on wood chips and paintbrush bristles; extra aces; your letterman's jacket, Sport (right corner, by the bust of Plato; it'll be snatched up if you don't come quickly); pencil shavings; stock catastrophe music; vitamins; wool; lacquer for Barry's high-elevation locks; a Fats Waller record; strange geography; the smell of bad hay; Elvis (Jerry Lewis tipped him off that there's a real gone scene goin' on in Lot A, man, it's hot-rod over there, ape-wild); many dead Pirate's parrots; and, of course, moths—all the tossed husks of the Hollywood lies, junking the soundstage, obscuring the rumble of L.A. morning that revs outside: spent evidence that illusion's as messy as real existence; however nicely it's packaged, the sweet scene will leave residue unpleasantly physical—and this Lot's tight walls and sturdy doors (not usually ajar) take part in the business of making magic only as much as they also keep hidden that magic's embarrassing excretions, much like Irene Treaties-English now busies herself to dot over Bev Verivamp's rash omelette intolerance.

But, boom in place, they're going to film anyway. It's a ten dollar a minute day, so time's a limited commodity. Wally steadies the cam while Barry fingers the projector, warming the red button before triggering the scene. Elvis, jelly-hipped and greased ready, expecting a party, hound dogs along the back wall, pouting—it's just business as usual here, after all; screw Jerry. Sweating visibly, Barry makes sure everything's ready, pulls back at once and motions for someone to pat Daily on the shoulder: old Strong has apparently taken this break to catch a catnap, drooling, in the front of the getaway car. Elvis, seeing that no one's responding, flares his lip and saunters up to the roadster. Immensely disappointed with the whole affair, and vowing never again to take party tips from comedians, The King tackles Daily rudely into consciousness, and then breezily exits the room. "Hey man, don't be cruel," Daily jokes badly, and too late. "Wise up a bit," Barry gruffs, "Then let's get going. Goddamn."

Camera runs: tick-tick-tick. Great. Barry hits the button and the canvas alights, bringing Bev and Drew to character in front of it, as if the flicker behind them was all they needed to kindle belief in the fiction. "Norma, Honey," Strong starts, beefy-voiced. But suddenly

HOLD ON, Barry screams, twitching, hard-fisting around the room as if throwing fireballs tiny from his knuckles. "WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT??!!" pointing at the screen. Where the road should be falling 40 mph behind the auto's imagined speed, where New York should be receding mothridden in the tight, filmed distance, where leaves should scatter smoothly and small animals chitter, enthralled at the curb, mugging the shot—there are only explosions: soundless gray clouds billowing graceful from the bright unseen core. Cast and crew stop, silenced. It's dirty energy on screen, alright: in the hollow of the projected frame you can't tell whether flecks flying at you are just dust on the film or else real soil: human, or animal matter pulled helpless from gravity's hold in blast's white death. Drew Daily stutters obliquely, as Bev Verivamp touches and retouches her eyelids, cold fingers bloodless-numb. "Who put this up?" Barry, voice killed, shrunk to a whisper. The image is badly unfocused—military stock, blast after blast, angles and distances set by the nearest clear shelter, with a quality as frank and undetermined as amateur footage of a school play or party. Sorta sweet. Except: how do we know whose explosions these are if we don't know the reel's author? Is it US or Soviet? And if we don't know who loaded it here, how do we read it? These bomb tests—should we celebrate or strike back? Is this one more win for the good guys, or Soviet sabotage, commie mindcontrol meant to disarm us of confidence—or can't we call it either, them being mere tests? And why is this here, anyway?—in the Studio. We were just making a movie, some good clean escapism. This was all just a special effect. What's the big idea with this war footage when we were trying to shoot a getaway?

Hey, Jack.

 

YOU didn't rig this prank, didja?

This is a family film.

 

Whatchoo trying to pull, huh?

I'll tell you this much.

 

 

 

 

 

Nobody's laughing.

 

 

WE'RE ALL SCARED Shitless.

 

was that your intention?

 

In the absence of motion's illusion, the actors look helplessly trapped. The bombshots, lacking any continuity, jump the car from test site to test site, without a respite, detonations unending which the honeys must moon through the rearview, no break, no...death, even. Just these unguided excursions caged safely against a spectacle of destruction, framed for them: bloated fireworks. The cloud-grayness, perhaps, a gesture expressing for poets (if there are any) this Limbo: neither killed nor let free, Strong and Norma must idle in terror beside blast after blast that obscures itself—the explosion's dark killing will lid its white open-wide eye (this is God's wink?), its own tremble will dull it limbic to grayscale.

In any case, Barry's pissed. He quivers full-bodied from person to person, mouth open soundless in outraged unbelief—unable to scream; as if the sound itself of his own angry explosion would betray him, adding soundtrack to scene, heightening the film's uncanny illusion. Wally chuckles vaguely while Snuff the sound guy smokes silent at the camera's edge, headphones off, avoiding the drama—focused completely on the whisper of inhaled breath and the small, unsubstanced crackle, tobacco on fire. Rita Noshow keeps flipping her script to find some easy line with which to cue order: where, exactly, did this scene leave its storyboard sense, comprehensible formula? Can she remind them, now, of the track they were on?—the sure arc of movies' predictable narrative physics, or have they risen too far into some other story's unnatural gravity?

The moth-handlers, best intentions in mind, have been trying to pry Strong and Norma from seats inescapable, each handler grabbing an arm of the terrorized couple, yanking gently as possible so as not to cause pain. "Ow! My arm!" screams Strong, regardless, "Stop it! You'll rip it out of its socket!"—but this is not, as we might hope, a return to reality; instead only product of the fantasies of destruction that now grip the lovers, attempts to push whatever is happening into more knowable zones of despair. The whole thing threatens to defy understanding—both for us and the actors involved—and is certainly not written in Hollywood's unchallenging alphabet.

But suddenly, mid-jerk, Barry unbends: "Hey everyone—hold on for one second. What the fuck are we doing here? It's only a mov—" before he can finish, though, something happens that shocks the shellac right out of his hair: from the unguarded quiet of the cages' dark corner, fly all of the unhandled moths; black wings whispering air, blowing poor Norma's eyelashes aslant, twittering Strong's collar and tie. Hazed thick with insects, vision falters. Screaming grips and prop-people crash headlong into each other in the twilight of fluttering wings. Wally tries vainly to chop them in half with the scene-cue (yelling Action! and, especially, Cut! with incredible humor) while Snuff bats them off with the boom. To Strong and Norma, caught silently parked, this just completes their imagined apocalypse, and they smile warmly at this elaboration of their death's well-plotted spectacle. The moth-handler's try to recapture their pets, but, really, they are mere show after all; hired actors all along, it turns out, to give the film's crew the comforting idea of reign over creatures that can't actually ever be trained. Barry rattles and tremors, incredibly outraged, clapping moths between hands, leaping-hopscotch to smoosh their dead bodies: liquification his unconscious attempt to reduce the innumerable swarm to cool singularity, streaked cross the floor. "Die, Fuckers!" he screams childlike as he rolls them with fingers, powdering palms. The moths, unpolitical, are less difficult enemies than that ambiguous film, and he relishes the simplified love of their easy destruction. He strikes one down on the carhood, a cable, the screen; wherever he can catch them unwary in his hatred's glittering gleam. He smashes one down on a script page, dialogue moth-bloodied. Catches one perched on Noshow's sizeable nose (eradicate now, apologize later). He jumps to the bust of Plato and slams hand and then body down on three moths at rest on your jacket, buddy, still unreclaimed. Wily with tireless glee, Barry tracks one from wall's outlet along cord, maneuvering deftly cross props and spent filmcases, to, to...oh Lordy...the camera's still running! This isn't the scene he was trying to film! All of this unplanned emotion, caught helpless in the camera's uncaring gaze? Barry shrinks, dumb, at the thought of the dailies; Studio heads sitting aghast in the theater watching with horror the film they have funded unravel. Freeze a second. What... There is only one way to erase this. Forgetting the moth, he springs backward on his cord-winding path, toward the wall, reaching for the large plastic nub that hooks the machine to its power. He grasps at the plug, but finds it bolted to-wall, to prevent unwanted power-down in the middle of filming.

            "Someone!" he screams, "Kill the camera! It's recording us!" Everyone stops, shocked in moth-darkness. "Don't think, just do it!" Irene Treaties-English, dropping her makeup sponges, is the only one in the end able to unhinge her mind enough to perform the mechanical act. She shuffles over, gropes briefly over simple controls, and without any flare or theatric, she throws the switch.

 

The camera's shut eye lingers deadblackly over peace now unseen, a terror rescaled to human-sized hum; denouement unspectactular. A few moths still glitter the screen, drawn by the glow of projected explosions, but most have escaped—seeking fresh air that has filtered through the door open to Sunset. Forget they're nocturnal, and it's Hollywood's morning. They can twinkle the streets as starlike in darkness or daylight—whenever they want—resisting science's hard categories. You saw them, perhaps, on your stroll past the studio, happily jacketless on this sunbrightened day. Maybe one fluttered unnoticed or was mistaken (this is Hollywood's easiest trick, remember: falsified beauty to meet your flimsy and seasonal tastes) for a butterfly—Monarch maybe, newly emerged from cocoon—as briefly it flecked your view. Tonight, as tomorrow, and the after, they will shelter simply under leaves or bushes: sweet, passionless sex and unworried egg-laying discreetly, where necessary as they go.

 

But, hey. Don't get too sappy.

 

What happened to Barry, and the crew?

 

Not to mention the movie.

Are you just going to leave them

warred and unlooked at

tired

eclipsed in the darkening of camera's unpowered eye?

 

I mean

when you think about it this film is impossible without that damn batfood you're

schmaltzing about.

 

 

So, Johnny, I'm just saying.

 

Don't get too sentimental.

 

There's real people in there.

 

And without a guide or a light or at least a record of the confusion they're caught in,

 

(where's the film?)

(they destroyed it, probably) (probably)

 

 

(but who can tell?)

(now, thanks to your interference

(I am assuming you did it)

(buddy)

(all-american, sure)

thanks to your interference,

 

It's All Just Conjecture

 

without measure of proof

 

is that what you wanted?)

 

Just Guesswork?

 

Cause that's not too comforting.

I mean

it doesn't leave the rest of us,

wanting conclusion,

 

a nice wrap-up,

Ends Tied,

 

it doesn't leave us feeling very,

very,

very,

very,