10
UNLIKE OTHER FILM FESTIVAL PRESENTATIONS, DIFFERENT was being shown almost secretively in a small theater, appropriately underground. The fabled hairdresser was there; so were the anointed model girls and actors, the legendary photographer, and a restaurateur and tailor, both of whom were ex-directory. The Star Maker, recuperating from yet another operation and skin graft, was rumored to be watching in Casablanca, on a closed circuit via Telstar.
This was clearly the “in” set, Mortimer thought, looking around, pointedly unimpressed. London’s celebrated swingers. Ordinarily he and Joyce would never have been included in such a charmed circle, but Ziggy Spicehandler who had directed this, the first Film of Fact, had written to the festival committee from Ibiza, and they had been sent tickets. This was uncharacteristically thoughtful of Ziggy, Mortimer thought, even middle-class, but only fair considering that he had lent him the money to buy his first hand-held camera and had, well, starred in his first film. The usual home-movie stuff. Mortimer mowing the lawn, throwing Doug in the air, clowning at the barbecue, washing the car, clowning with Joyce, etc. etc.
Several years in the making, Different was, Mortimer had been led to believe, the most daring new-wave film yet to be made in England, but as a matter of fact it opened conventionally enough.
EXT. DAY. VATICAN CITY. ST. PETER’S SQUARE.
As the POPE is carried out among the faithful we see thousands upon thousands of them falling on their knees.
EXT. DAY. A FIELD
Working-class wheat bending obsequiously in the middle-class wind.
RESUME ST. PETER’S SQUARE. LONG SHOT.
In the far, far distance, a black-suited figure stands erect, the only one in thousands not on his knees.
ZOOM IN ON STANDING FIGURE.
A greasy, bearded Jew with a hooked nose looms over the faithful, chewing a sour pickle, the juice trickling down his chin.
Now faces were flashed on the screen. OSCAR WILDE. ISADORA DUNCAN. JOHN PROFUMO. HIMMLER. DYLAN. SAMMY DAVIS WEARING A SKULL CAP AND EATING GEFÜLLTE FISH. STEPHEN WARD. TROTSKY. MARILYN MONROE. RASPUTIN. DUKE OF WINDSOR. JUDAS. CATHERINE THE GREAT. LEE OSWALD. GIRODIAS. CASTRO. SENATOR JOSEPH MCCARTHY. BERTRAND RUSSELL. JAMES DEAN.
Then, inexplicably, the film cut to:
CU WALL-CAN OPENER
Hand opening an unlabeled can. As the can, ostensibly empty, is inverted over a bowl, LAUGHTER pours out. Mad, zany laughter fills the screen. SUPERIMPOSE laughter over a barefoot NEGRO BOY walking down a country road. Pursued by laughter he begins to run, run and run. But as the NEGRO BOY runs forward, the reactionary American landscape moves backward, leaving him in the same place.
As the swingers around Mortimer burst into applause, the screen went blank.
Silence. Nothing.
Finally Ziggy Spicehandler himself appeared on screen and wrote on a blackboard:
Presenting
A LIFE IN THE DAY OF JOHN JOHN JOHN
EXT. DAY.HAMPSTEAD GARDEN SUBURB. LONG TERRACE OF HOUSES.
Pan down a row of similar doors as they open and similar-looking husbands emerge, kiss similar-looking pretty wives goodbye and walk away whistling similar tunes to their similar cars …HOLD last door, last house.
EXT. DAY. HAMPSTEAD GARDEN SUBURB. LAST HOUSE. LAST GARDEN.
A DOG frolics on the grass.
ZOOM in on DOG’S EYE
Reflected in PUPIL is last door, last house, as
JOHN JOHN JOHN kisses his pretty wife.
The film then stayed with John John John as he went about his humdrum tasks in an office building that was clearly impersonal. Finally, his work done, John John John phoned to say he would be working late, and then off he drove.
SLOW DISSOLVE TO:
CU LOUIS XV CHANDELIER
MUSIC: Adam Faith sings “I Could Have Danced All Night.”
TRACKING down to reveal
we are at a Drag Ball. PANNING over liberated, merrymaking couples, finally
TRACKING IN on
CU JOHN JOHN JOHN
Dancing cheek to cheek with another MAN
FREEZE FRAME
COMMENTATOR (Voice Over)
Yes. John John John is different. He is a square peg in a round hole, an outsider, and in this square society … that’s asking for trouble.
Rocking his head in his hands. Terror-struck. Sweaty.
The film then flash-cut to and fro from John John John to abusive, twisted faces shouting, “Fag!”
“Pouf!”
“Homo!”
“Queer!”
“Brown-noser!”
“Ladybird!”
“Sodomist!”
Mortimer sat cringing guiltily in his seat because the abusive, twisted faces were all nice clean-cut faces. Protestant faces. Handsome faces. Faces like his own.
ZOOMING IN ON JOHN JOHN JOHN’S EYEBALLS
Bloodshot. Trapped. As abusive voices quicken, become gibberish.
COMMENTATIOR (Voice Over)
In a time of ticky-tacky conformists, there is a price to pay for being different.
EXT. DAY. DACHAU
The crematoria chimneys seen through a fog.
APPLAUDING HANDS
H-BOMB EXPLOSION
NAPALM BOMBS FALLING ON VIET CONG
STILL MORE APPLAUDING HANDS
TWO MEN FRENCH-KISSING
CU POLICE WHISTLE
DISSOLVE TO:
INT. DAY. BLACKBOARD
A moving hand (ZIGGY SPICEHANDLER’s) writes:
“MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR.”
After Make Love, Not War had been flashed at the audience in fourteen different languages, Different continued with still more episodes from homosexual life, alarming statistics, and examples of heterosexual atrocities. Then, suddenly, the scene shifted to Canada, Mortimer’s native land, at the end of a National League hockey game at the Forum. A famous ALL-STAR DEFENSEMAN, one who was never without his helmet, was named first star of the game and skated round the rink to resounding cheers.
INT. FORUM. GANGWAY
As the PLAYERS make their way to the dressing room, rabid fans are still shouting the DEFENSEMAN’S name. FATHERS hold up their SONS to see him, GIRLS blow kisses.
The ALL-STAR DEFENSEMAN slumps exhausted on the bench before his locker, drinking beer out of a can. As other players enter they slap him on the back or give him the thumbs-up sign.
ANOTHER ANGLE
ALL-STAR DEFENSEMAN kicks his locker open, revealing Playboy magazine pin-ups and a mirror on inside of door.
TRACK IN ON MOTTLED MIRROR
Broken, not of a piece, as is the case in the lives of some human beings.
MIRROR (POV ALL-STAR DEFENSEMAN)
His boisterous teammates light cigars, indulge in horseplay, spit, guzzle beer, pick their toes, scratch their groins … as they undress, removing pad after protective pad, strap after strap … gradually dispersing to showers.
ANOTHER ANGLE
ALL-STAR DEFENSEMAN now sits alone in dimly lit dressing room. Slowly, wearily, he rises and begins to get out of his pads and straps. As he sits down again, we are bound to notice that one set of straps remains.
ZOOM IN ON ALL-STAR DEFENSEMAN
They would appear to be brassiere straps!
ANOTHER ANGLE
As ALL-STAR DEFENSEMAN stands up and removes his helmet, we see a lovely sweep of golden hair, now inadequately concealed. This is the head of a YOUNG WOMAN in her prime.
PANNING down.
Her BODY, that of a fabulously vital animal, is one of those which clothes cover without hiding. The ALL-STAR DEFENSEMAN sighs … sighs again … her lovely body seemingly flooded with sudden longing …
Still smiling, blinking his eyes
Over the pure white ice steps the driven figure of the Still smiling, blinking his eyes her sensuality seemingly bound in a conformist’s gray flannel suit and Presbyterian fedora. But is it?
Still smiling, blinking his eyes Soft strains of “Swan Lake.”
And here (suddenly, miraculously), where only an hour ago the Still smiling, blinking his eyes handed out murderous bodychecks, giving as good as she got … Still smiling, blinking his eyes now glides with balletic grace over the pure disinterested white ice, when:
FLASH-CUT TO LOUDSPEAKERS OVERHEAD
“DIFFERENT! DIFFERENT! DIFFERENT!”
RESUME LONG OVERHEAD SHOT
As ALL-STAR DEFENSEWOMAN flees.
Mortimer had hardly recovered from this shock when much of what he had seen earlier was now rerun at frantic speed, but intercut with a shot of a nice, well-adjusted man frolicking about his house and garden. So, from the beautiful but agonized young man mainlining heroin into his arm, the scene now shifted directly to the well-adjusted fellow mowing his lawn, singing. From the chimneys of Dachau the film cut to the same man pulling funny faces, crossing his eyes, as he washed his car. Next the camera zoomed in on two men french-kissing and zoomed out again on the well-adjusted man peeling a banana.
That well-adjusted man, that villain, was Mortimer.
Finally Mortimer was held in a frozen frame, winking, licking an ice cream. This frame was superimposed over an H-Bomb explosion, and scrawled in blood over Mortimer’s face was one word:
WASP
As the audience rose to give Different a standing ovation, as all around Mortimer there were cries of “Bravo,” he seized Joyce by the arm and fled the cinema, just making it outside before the lights came up. “That ungrateful son of a bitch,” he said.
Joyce had to laugh. “Why, Mortimer, you amaze me. I thought Ziggy could do no wrong in your eyes.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Joyce, he sensed, was pleased, enormously pleased. Mortimer took a deep breath and explained that had he been used so badly by anyone else but Ziggy, he would sue.
“But,” Joyce said, delighted to finish what he had left unsaid, “as you have explained so many times before, this sort of dirty trick coming from Ziggy cannot be interpreted as an outrage. It –”
“It is but another of Ziggy’s sardonic, but meaningful, jokes. Or is that not the case when the joke is so obviously directed at you?”
“I said I don’t wish to discuss it.”
“He’s made a fool out of you.”
“He has not. He most certainly has not. He has merely used my face for his own artistic purposes.”
Ziggy had not even attended his own world premiere; he had had his name removed from the credits. In a statement distributed by students in the cinema foyer he explained that his film had been emasculated by the producers for commercial reasons. Some of his most finely wrought scenes had been excised from the finished print.
“All the same,” a reporter asked, telephoning Ziggy the next morning, “don’t you feel you’re better off here than in Russia?”
“Not bloody likely,” Ziggy said.
At least, the reporter went on to say, he was not being put on trial for his artistic beliefs. Unlike Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, he had not been sentenced to hard labor.
Mortimer’s indignation was not mollified, but Joyce was more than somewhat pleased by Ziggy’s astute retort to this typical bit of red-baiting.
“While I do not approve the recent sentences imposed on Sinyavsky and Daniel, it is a measure of just how seriously art and artists are taken in the Soviet Union.”
Then Ziggy returned to the censorship question in the so-called freedom-loving West, where artists were considered jokers. He summed up the problem succinctly by saying so long as you couldn’t pull your cock on TV his artistic freedom was impaired.