Boys of Life (14 page)

Not at first, though. "So this is the movie I'm supposed to be the star of?" I asked Carlos. Because I couldn't make a thing out of what I was looking at.

"You bet."

"But I don't get it. What'm I supposed to do?"

Because in the so-called script there would just be a number and then something like: 57: Sammy becomes a seagull on the rooftop, or 81: Tony as a principle of unconscious motion. There were about two hundred of these, no lines for us to learn or anything, just Tony this or Sammy that and we didn't even have names except our own names.

My heart sort o{ sank when I realized it was basically just me this and Sammy that through the whole movie. Like what I needed just now was more of Sammy.

Also, I was afraid there was something in this script I wasn't getting.

"Nope, no secret," Carlos said. "The secret is, you make up the secret as you go along."

And that's exactly what we did. I never would've believed it, but we made a whole movie that way—which I guess just proves that Carlos

crazy and a genius like people said he was.

Making that movie turned out to be both harder and easier than I thought. Most of it was just standing around waiting to do something, and then you'd do it, and then maybe do it again a couple more times. Then you'd stand around waiting tor the next thing to do. It was pretty boring. And also freezing, since it was February and snowing, and when it wasn't snowing it was even colder than when it was.

□ PAUL RUSSELL

Since Sammy and I were supposed to be these sort of street people, basically the whole thing was outdoors shots. Being so old and trail, Sammy really suffered. He'd stamp his feet and rub his hands together to try to keep warm, but you could tell it didn't help. In between feeling mv ears and nose to see how I couldn't feel anything in them anymore, I was always trying to find places in the neighborhood where we could go get a cup of coffee and warm up—which on the farther alphabets there weren't a whole lot of back in 1980.

Sammy never really complained much about the cold, just about everything else—mainly me, and how I wasn't doing things right. As far as I could tell, there wasn't much of a right or a wrong, there wafl just whatever we happened to be doing at the moment. All bundled up, Sammy was like some rag doll you could pick up and toss around if you wanted, and sometimes I almost did—except then I'd look at bun and think about all that stuff he'd told me about Poland and the war. It you thought about it, nothing made any sense—him going through all that and how could he have ever known back then he'd still be alive in 1980 and making this crazy movie in New York City in America with some kid from Kentucky.'

Sometimes he was really enjoying himseli with it. though -doing

things thai it I did them he'd be all over me tor mining the movie, but

thought anything Sammy did was great so sometimes Sammj

jUSt CUt loose. 1 remember ^nc morning he showed Up with this amp

meter, the kind von test circuits with. 1 don't know where he got it, but he explained with a itraight race bow it was ins invention to mea mimal magnetism.

"\X 1 mal magnetism?' 1 I asked bun.

Carlos and Seth were getting it all down on camera. 1 oti ol times it like that we'd be making flu movie before 1 even had time to realise making It, whk h completer) threw me till I got used to it

in I have worked "n tins machine," Satnm) told me. "It is n. hievenu Iking along Avenue ( and

the manhole nd when we'd

nn it was warm like Into •• bathroom

1 the i st.in railing that went up nimal magnetism," lu- said, like snimal n

He i II folio*

BOYSOFLIFE D

supposed to do? Seth was walking backward ahead o( us with the cam-eta, and Carlos was making sure he didn't hack into anything by accident. He tilted a garbage can out of Seth's way, and when Sammy came to the garbage can he stopped and touched the meter to it.

animal magnetism," he said. "Garbage cans exhibit no animal magnetism."

I was desperately trying to think o\ something to say to all that, because usually Sammy was the one to think things up and I couldn't think oi a thing, ,\n<.\ after a while Carlos would hold up his tinkers, which meant I was supposed to say whatever numbers came into my head arid he'd figure out something to dub in there later.

"Four thirteen seventy-two thirty-three," I said in my most convincing Vi

"I have raised a brilliant son," said Sammy.

Just up ahead there was this guy lying asleep on the sidewalk, with about five wine bottles sitting around him and a cardboard sign propped up against the wall beside him that said needed i million $ for vinol-ogical research. Before you knew it, there was Sammy bending over him and touching the wires to the wino's shoulder where he was rolled over on his side.

"Animal magnetism," he said, nodding his head and looking very proud ot himself. "I have proved animal magnetism."

But then a few days later Sammy got sick, being out in the cold every single day like that, and he started this hacking cough that once ir started would go on tor five minutes till you thought he was going to choke. Carlos didn't even seem to notice, or if he did it was like he didn't care—it was just one more thing that was getting in the way of everythmL: else.

I collared him with it one afternoon when Sammy was shivering and these violent coughs kept racking him. "So how're you planning on finishing youi movie when Sammy ups and dies?" I asked him. T.irrlv it freezing to death too, but also I was worried

Sammy really V to do something like die if we kept this up.

Carlos made a face, like rh.it was something he really didn't want to hear right then. "Well. I <_'iiess U e could always do a death scene,"

he said.

"Fuck you,' 1 I told him.

"It's not up to me to dy^ anything," he said. Then he did what he never did—he turned his kick on me and walked away to where Seth and a guy th.it helped Seth were setting up some lights tor the next shot we

Z PAULRUSSELL

were supposed to do. I couldn't believe it. I didn't even like Sammy all that much. He was supposed to be Catlos's friend, and Seth's and NV but none of them seemed even worried he might be dying of pneumonia.

During my little argument with Carlos, Sammy'd gone over and sat down on this pile of bricks in an empty lot next to where we were filming. He hunched over in another of his coughing fits, this old man alone out there in all that rubble, and suddenly I thought—it's the way animals in the forest go off in a corner somewhere to die. The wind was really sharp that day, these stinging gusts that cut right through you. Suddenly I had this idea. Over in the corner of that lot, chucked next to the side of a building, was one of those big cardboard packing boxes, the kind refrigerators come in. I dragged the box over to where Sammy was, and without saying anything to anybody I took out mv pocketknife and cut a sort of door in it, and a window in the door so he could see out. Ted and I used to make these forts out of sawhorses and old packing boxes when we were kids, and putting this shelter together for Sammy made me remember Ted, and when I was a kid, and I guess I was really getting into fixing that shelter up becai. didn't even realize Seth was getting the whole thing on film. Carlos was loving it. When I'd finished that box and helped Sammy irv and out of the wind, he threw his arms around me in this great bear hug and whispered in my ear, "I always had faith, Tony—always." And maybe it was just a gust of wind blowing something in i but 1

teared up right when he said that to me.

So that's the story of that scene in the movu I build a

cardboard shelter for Sammy to die in. Like I said before, thai

i could hate him for it. bill w it

-ked.

Another thing I rem iboul

my age, mavhe a little older, and ever rhile calling out, "Yo, fagg

I guew, <

■ • imutes of those two gu\s vellii : I thought he was going to tcl

eacl »* the

i ii 11

BOYS C

or auitlmg. The? didn't nut to worn. Carlos told

dut's how Rate and Nackr got m the aaorie. And

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able to tell it rust watching the aaovie.

I leaDr sort of liked Rale and Nick*, onl? titer had so i

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□ PAUL RUSSELL

I remember thinking, I bet Carlos is feeling sorry right now he can't get this on film too, like everything else—but he wasn't supposed to be in the movie and Seth couldn't shoot me without shooting Carlos so for once we were safe. I wasn't changing the plot for the hundredth time by opening my mouth or doing something I never planned to do. Anyway, Carlos was terrified of anybody ever taking a picture or him, let alone with a movie camera—which I always thought was strange from somebody who spent their life making movies.

"Aren't we all just getting our kicks?" Carlos asked. He seemed really surprised by it all.

"Getting felt up by some wino's not my idea of kicks," I said, with the wino standing right there where he could hear everything since we'd raised our voices and with this completely sad look on his face. 1 felt sorry for him, since it was Carlos who asked him to feel me up in the first place, and if he got his kicks out of it, it wasn't his fault.

"Maybe feeling you up's his kind of kicks. Maybe being in a movie's your kind o( kicks. How about that.'"

Oi course it was a point, the way Carlos always made points.

"Anyway," Carlos went on, "anything tor art. Right?' 1

"I thought it was anything tor a drink," 1 told him.

"I always forget," he said. "You're the future ,\n<.\ I'm JUS! the past." Which meant things sort of ended there, with us doing B retake and th

way completely. Thai waa how things always ended up and I guess you

could say hou \V\t Veen m Gomorrah got made. Thai being the name

rring Tons- Blair and Sammy Finkelsztajn, him as the

old Jew from the ghetto m Poland, like he W83 in real lite, and me his

Hid ,i lew tOO, which d course I'm not in real lite but like 1 told

it, I'd become a |ew on purpose it they evei started doing the concentration camp thing again.

I gu i only a long time after we finished making that movie

u .ill history thai I started to see how much ( arlos was fooling ind with me. I'm not sun- how to explain it. I low he was fiddling with my brain in .ill sorts oi ways I didn't have any hope oi understand ing ai the time whai he could gel out oi me fbi the mo

.ill that, ii w " "i> the ,

jusi the way thin I by 'hen I pretty

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□ PAUL RUSSELL

every time after that, when I heard that sound, I still liked it, and I wondered if Sammy lay in bed at night listening to Carlos and me and it it sounded just the same. I was sure, even if his ears were just an old man's ears, he still could hear us through those curtains that were the only walls in the apartment. I wondered if somehow the sound o\ us slurping away at each other was as comforting to him as the sound of him eating his tomatoes was to me.

It never seemed to bother Sammy too much, what me and Carlos were doing. I remember sometimes our room could get to looking pretty rough after we'd been at it for a night. Carlos would always be gone by the time I woke up, and I'd lie around in bed till noon or so—I never knew what time it was in those days. I liked the sweaty body smell of the sheets. We used to go for weeks without changing the sheets, maybe because the laundromat was ten blocks away and as you probably already know I hated laundromats, I'd do anything to stay away From them, but maybe because we both liked lying in there with our smell all over the place. Just to remind us.