For a while today I spent time on a dark stage. I thought
about The Empty Space; I thought
about Bartleby. I thought about The
Hunger, The Addiction, Immortality, Cronos, and all the vampire films whose scope went beyond the usual
blood bath. I thought about the vampire as a mobile signifier (but let’s not
get too technical here). I thought about loneliness, perhaps not in the usual
way, but loneliness as freedom from the others; I thought about the quiet of
that dark room and how my thoughts always come together in such places. And
then I thought about the vampire’s paradox (dilemma?) as a creature doomed to a
life of seclusion, yet dependent on countless, insignificant encounters. (Seclusion,
solitude, sequestration, withdrawal, privacy, peace…It’s interesting that we
begin with isolation and end with tranquility, as if, as the list of synonyms
progresses, we move away from all the negative connotations into an endless
calm). I suppose this is why I love the desert: the bottomless intensity of
that expanse of space reads as tranquility to me.
There is something in the self-imposed exile of Mr. S. Night
that reminds me of the vampire’s old soul, not because all vampires are gentlemen,
but because Night turns every gesture into an act of gentlemanship. And since
today seems to be a good day to get lost in the library, Night also reminds me
of Aloysius Pendergast, Lincoln and Child’s character, who is the perfect
combination of everything I’ve ever loved in fictional men: Holmes’
intelligence and wit; the vampire’s ageless wisdom, the soft spoken voice of a
man who knows the dangers of haste, a touch of Bartleby’s pallor and
forlornness and, above all, the perfectly tailored black suit, accompanied by
the crisp white shirt and skinny black tie. There aren’t many men around
(fictional or otherwise) who can dress like that and not look like
underpaid maîtres d’.
So: the vampire (quick flashback to my first years in the
States: “You’re from Transylvania? Oh, how exciting! Does it really exit?” Or,
my personal favorite, a random encounter - at a party- with a man who, on
hearing of my birthplace, became so terrified, that he ran out of the room
backwards. Good times). And yet: the
vampire. How awful it must be to see people drift in and out of your life, mean
something for a second and then leave, or die, or lose too much blood or find
fascination elsewhere. What happens when one’s isolation is completely
penetrated? What happens when one’s barriers no longer hold? And why is it that
in these sad, sad vampire movies (no teenage hysteria vamps for me, please) I
can never identify with the victim? Stoker.
Watch Stoker. It has nothing to do
with vampires and everything to do with “bad blood” and yet it has the rhythm
of a noir vampire movie. Not many directors can do that: tell one story in the
shape of another.
Is this what I’m doing in Noir (and have I just paid myself an enormous compliment? Let me
reread that last sentence…Yep. I did). Am I taking a noir story and making it
supernatural because normal love affairs (what the hell is a normal love
affair, anyway?) are no longer enough? And why exactly did I stand in the
middle of the dark stage in Fletcher (while S. did all the work, plugging in lanterns and
lamps) and contemplated bloodletting? Ah. That is the question. Am I prepared
to answer it now? No…
Allow me my stream of consciousness moment as I look at the
dark of the stage and think about Night, and his self-sufficient movements, and
how his face is going to look under a translucent paper lantern that casts a
benign, yet slightly mortuary blue light, and how the femme fatale’s noisy
entrance and Audrey sunglasses are going to other her the moment she steps into
Night’s world. And how Night falls, falls, is falling in love with the Angel of
Death (“Do you want to go someplace dark?"), and how much he wishes he
could save the girl and live happily ever after. Perhaps the secret is that
Night dislikes being happy. Perhaps happiness doesn’t match his impeccable
black suit or the space he has carved out for himself of this irresponsible and
hasty world that assassinates him with kindness. “We’re all out of happiness.”
What chance does Night have after that?
And as S. turns on all the lights and I realize, for the
first time, that this stupid, crazy idea we had to bring lamps and lanterns on
the stage might just work, and as I talk to her about the space, and bluish
lights and lampshades, my mind races to the vampire, to Bartleby, to
Pendergast, to Night, and I see, for a fragment of a second, all my three
characters standing against those globes of light looking nocturnal. And I
think we might have a chance.
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