The Cutting Room: Dark Reflections of the Silver Screen (24 page)

IV

On 29th May 1453, the Ottoman Turks broke through the walls of Constantinople. Their troops numbered some one hundred thousand to the Byzantines’ seven thousand. The Turkish flag was flown from the battlements, and many of the Christian defenders lost heart. Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos himself declared, “The city is fallen and I am still alive,” and he tore off his purple cloak of majesty and entered the fray as a common soldier. His body was never found. The Byzantine people fought bravely, but with a certain dispassion perhaps, a certain defeatism.

The talkie movies had not been a success.

Matthew Tozer had been experimenting with sound for a little while now. He would have the orchestra time their drum beats to the exact moment an explosion appeared on screen, to give the impression that the bang had come from the movie itself. It was witty, but it was a gimmick, and the audience enjoyed it as a gimmick. When at the end of May Tozer announced the premiere of the first proper talking picture, with full dialogue and a prerecorded score, the people were incredulous, then doubtful, then baffled.

Some extracts survive. As film historians it is impossible not to appreciate what Tozer is attempting. But in practice, as casual viewers, we would have to judge it doesn’t work. Tozer has not found a way to make the sound sync accurately to the image; it is rarely more than a second or two out, but that jarring second makes everything seem imprecise and unreal, even eerie. And the voices of the actors are not what we might expect. We see the tramp again. In the silent movies he demonstrates a charm that is both winning and humane. In the sound rushes, he reveals he has a high-pitched voice like a strangled dolphin. The charm is gone. So, too, is the illusion.

As the Turks invade, so Tozer’s picture house is burned to the ground. It is not clear whether the Turks or the Byzantines are to blame.

V

Matthew Tozer’s fate is unknown. Many people fled the city, and there is every chance that he too might have escaped. But if he did, there is no record of his attempting to make any more films. Either Tozer becomes like Emperor Constantine, one of those anonymous casualties who were lost in the battle—or he survives, in exile, disillusioned, thinking himself a failure and his art form a failure, rejecting his talents and never returning to them for as long as he lives.

Is it wrong to hope that he was butchered by Turks? Is it wrong to wish for him that one little mercy?

Historical opinion has turned against Tozer in recent years. The argument is that without his interference the population would not have been distracted, and would have been better prepared to repel the Ottoman conquest. Professor Kettering has even published his theories that Tozer was a Turkish spy, deliberately undermining the morale of the Byzantines from within with his dreadful movies; it is a theory that I find at once both absurd and heinous, though nothing Kettering says any more should surprise me.

What is harder to dispute is Tozer’s legacy. Sadly, it is negligible. The footage of Tozer’s movies was only discovered in a basement in Ankara in the 1920s. By the time Tozer’s advances came to light, the motion picture industry was already in full swing. The great filmmakers of the 1890s, Lumière, Michon, Méliès, all reinvented cinema without ever realising Matthew Tozer had been there first. Mack Sennett produced his movies without Tozer’s influence; David O. Selznick, head of production at RKO Pictures, famously viewed the recovered prints of Tozer’s films, shrugged, and asked what all the fuss was about: “It’s already been done.”

And yet surely we cannot write off Matthew Tozer as a failure. We must not.

When we see the history of the world put before us, it’s easy to think it’s just a catalogue of wars and genocidal atrocities. Of peoples conquering peoples, and then getting conquered in turn. That the development of mankind has been nothing more than an exercise in studying new acts of brutality to be turned against still larger sizes of population. That, in effect, all Mankind’s inspirations are directed towards evil.

But what then of Matthew Tozer? What then of that spark to
create
, to produce art for art’s sake, if only because it wasn’t in existence before? To take a population and want not to decimate it or enslave it, but instead crowd it together, into one room, into the dark, and make it laugh? And maybe with Matthew Tozer the spark didn’t die. Maybe the spark lasted out the centuries, just waiting for the right conditions in which to take fire. Maybe, in spite of all, Matthew Tozer and the better impulse will win out.

We can speculate. And, oh, we can speculate, we can imagine, we can dream. Sometimes I think that’s the true gift Matthew Tozer left us.

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

—
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
, William Shakespeare

FROM A JOURNAL FOUND in a New Jersey storage unit, entry date unknown:

Somewhere, out beyond the too-often-unmapped intersection of known and forgotten, there’s a hole through which the dead crawl back up to this world: A crack, a crevasse, a deep, dark cave. It splits the earth’s crust like a canker, sore lips thrust wide to divulge some even sorer mouth beneath—tongueless, toothless, depthless.

The hole gapes, always open. It has no proper sense of proportion. It is rude and rough, rank and raw. When it breathes out it exhales nothing but poison, pure decay, so bad that people can smell it for miles around, even in their dreams.

Especially there.

Through this hole, the dead come out face-first and -down, crawling like worms. They grind their mouths into cold dirt, forcing a lifetime’s unsaid words back inside again. As though the one thing their long, arduous journey home has taught them is that they have nothing left worth saying, after all.

Because the dead come up naked, they are always cold. Because they come up empty, they are always hungry. Because they come up lost, they are always angry. Because they come up blind, eyes shut tight against the light that hurts them so, they are difficult to see, unless sought by those who—for one reason, or another—already have a fairly good idea where to start looking.

To do so is a mistake, though, always—no matter how “good” our reasons, or intentions. It never leads to anything worth having. The dead are not meant to be seen or found, spoken with, or for. The dead are meant to be buried and forgotten, and everybody knows it—or should, if they think about it for more than a minute. If they’re not some sort of Holy Fool marked from birth for sacrifice for the greater good of all around them, fore-doomed to grease entropy’s wheels with their happy, clueless hearts’ blood.

Everybody should, so everybody does, though nobody ever talks about it. Nobody. Everybody. Everybody . . .

. . . but them.

(The dead)

July 26/2009

FEATURE ARTICLE: COMING SOON TO A DVD NEAR YOU?

“BACKGROUND MAN” JUMPS FROM ’NET TO . . . EVERYWHERE

By Guillaume Lescroat, strangerthings.net/media

Moviegoers worldwide are still in an uproar over
Mother of Serpents
, Angelina Jolie’s latest blockbuster, being pulled from theatres after only four days in wide release due to “unspecified technical problems.” According to confidential studio sources, however, the real problem isn’t “unspecified” at all—this megabudget Hollywood flick has apparently become the Internet-spawned “Background Man” hoax’s latest victim.

For over a year now, urban legend has claimed that, with the aid of careful frame-by-frame searches, an unclothed Caucasian male (often said to be wearing a red necklace) can be spotted in the background of crowd scenes in various obscure films, usually partially concealed by distance, picture blur, or the body parts of other extras. Despite a proliferation of websites dedicated to tracking Background Man (over thirty at last count), most serious film buffs dismissed the legend as a snipe-hunt joke for newbies, or a challenge for bored and talented Photoshoppers.

But all that changed when the Living Rejects video “Plastic Heart” hit MTV in September last year, only to be yanked from the airwaves in a storm of FCC charges after thousands of viewers confirmed a “full-frontally naked” man “wearing a red necklace” was clearly visible in the concert audience . . . a man that everybody, from the band members to the director, would later testify under oath hadn’t been there when the video was shot.

“You know the worst thing about looking for Background Man? While you’re waiting for him, you gotta sit through the crappiest movies on the planet! C’mon, guy, pick an Oscar contender for once, wouldja?!”

—Conan O’Brien,
Late Night with Conan O’Brien
, November 18, 2008

Background Man has since appeared in supporting web material for several TV shows (
House
,
Friday Night Lights
, and
The Bill Engvall Show
have all been victims) and has been found in a number of direct-to-DVD releases as well, prompting even Conan O’Brien to work him into a monologue (see above).
Mother of Serpents
may not be the first major theatrical release to be affected, either; at least three other films this summer have pushed back their release dates already, though their studios remain cagey about the reasons. The current consensus is that Background Man is a prank by a gifted, highly placed team of post-production professionals.

This theory, however, has problems, as producer Kevin Weir attests. “Anybody involved who got caught, their career, their entire life would be wrecked,” says Weir. “Besides the fines and the criminal charges, it’s just totally f–ing unprofessional—nobody I know who could do this would do it; it’s like pissing all over your colleagues.” Film editor Samantha Perry agrees, and notes another problem: “I’ve reviewed at least three different appearances, and I couldn’t figure out how any of them were done, short of taking apart the raw footage. These guys have got tricks or machines I’ve never heard of.”

Hoax or hysteria, the Background Man shows no signs of disappearing. However, our own investigation may have yielded some insights into the mysterious figure’s origin—an origin intimately connected with the collapse last year of the Toronto-based “Wall of Love” film collective’s
Kerato-Oblation/Cadavre Exquis
project, brainchild of experimental filmmakers Soraya Mousch and Max Holborn. . . .

From: Soraya Mousch [email protected]

Date: Friday, June 20, 2008, 7:08 PM

To: Max Holborn [email protected]

Subject: FUNDRAISING PITCH DOC: “KERATO-OBLATION” (DRAFT 1)

To Whom it May Concern
—

My name is Soraya Mousch, and I am an experimental filmmaker. Since 1999, when Max Holborn and I founded Toronto’s Wall of Love Experimental Film Collective, it has been my very great pleasure both to collaborate on and present a series of not-for-profit projects specifically designed to push—or even, potentially, demolish—the accepted boundaries of visual storytelling as art.

Unfortunately, given that film remains the single most expensive artistic medium, this sort of thing continues to cost money . . . indeed, with each year we practice it, it seems to cost more and more. Thus the necessity, once government grants and personal finances run out, of fundraising.

- - - - - - -

(mhb):

- - - - - - -

To this end, Mr Holborn and I have registered an internet domain and web-site (kerato-oblation.org), through which we intend to compile, edit and host our next collaborative project, with the help of filmmakers from every country which currently has ISP access (ie, all of them). The structure of this project will be an exquisite corpse game applied to the web-based cultural scene as a whole, one that anybody can play (and every participant will “win”)
.

WHY KERATO-OBLATION?

Kerato-oblation: Physical reshaping of the cornea via scraping or cutting
. With our own version—the aforementioned domain—how we plan to “reshape” our audience’s perspectives would be by applying the exquisite corpse game to an experimental feature film assembled from entries filed over the internet, with absolutely no boundaries set as to content or intent.

WHAT IS AN EXQUISITE CORPSE?

An exquisite corpse (
cadavre exquis
, in French) is a method by which a collection of words or images are assembled by many different people working at once alone, and in tandem. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule (e.g. “The adjective noun adverb verb the adjective noun”) or by being allowed to see, and either elaborate on or depart from, the end of what the previous person contributed. The technique was invented by Surrealists in 1925; the name is derived from a phrase that resulted when the game was first played (“Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau.”/“The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine.”). It is similar to an old parlour game called Consequences in which players write in turn on a sheet of paper, fold it to conceal part of the writing, then pass it to the next player for a further contribution.

Later, the game was adapted to drawing and collage, producing a result similar to classic “mix-and-match” children’s books whose pages are cut into thirds, allowing children to assemble new chimeras from a selection of tripartite animals. It has also been played by mailing a drawing or collage— in progressive stages of completion—from one player to the next; this variation is known as “mail art.” Other applications of the game have since included computer graphics, theatrical performance, musical composition, object assembly, even architectural design.

- - - - - - -

(mhb):

- - - - - - -

Earlier experiments in applying the exquisite corpse to film include
Mysterious Object at Noon
, an experimental 2000 Thai feature directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul which was shot on 16 mm over three years in various locations, and
Cadavre Exquis
, Première Edition, done for the
2006 Montreal World Film Festival, in which a group of ten film directors, scriptwriters and professional musicians fused filmmaking and song-writing to produce a musical based loosely on the legend of Faust.

- - - - - - -

(mhb):

For your convenience, we’ve attached a PDF form outlining several support options, with recommended donation levels included. Standard non-profit release waivers ensure that all contributors consent to submit their material for credit only, not financial recompense. By funnelling profits in excess of industry-standard salaries for ourselves back into the festival, we qualify for various tax deductions under current Canadian law and can provide charitable receipts for any and all financial donations made. Copies of the relevant paperwork are also attached, as a separate PDF.

For more information, or to discuss other ways of getting involved, either reply to this e-mail or contact us directly at (416)-[REDACTED]. We look forward to discussing mutual opportunities.

With best regards,

Soraya Mousch and Maxim Holborn

The Wall of Love Toronto Film Collective

- - - - - - -

(mhb):

8/23/08 1847HRS

TRANSCRIPT SUSPECT INTERVIEW 51 DIVISION CASEFILE #332

PRESIDING OFFICERS D. SUSAN CORREA 156232, D. ERIC VALENS 324820

SUBJECT MAXIM HOLBORN

D.VALENS: All right. So you had this footage for what, better than six weeks—footage apparently showing somebody committing suicide—and you didn’t ever think that maybe you should let the police know?

HOLBORN: People send us stuff like this all the time, man! The collective’s been going since ’98. . . . Most of it’s fake, half of it has a fake ID and half of the rest doesn’t have any ID at all.

D.VALENS: Yeah, that’s awful lucky for you, isn’t it?

D.CORREA: Eric, any chance you could get us some coffee?

HOLBORN: I don’t want coffee.

(D.VALENS LEFT INTERROGATION ROOM AT 1852 HRS)

D.CORREA: Max, I’m only telling you this because I really do think you don’t know shit about this, but you need to do one of two things right now. You need to get yourself a lawyer, or you need to talk to us.

HOLBORN: What the fuck am I going to tell a lawyer that I didn’t already tell you guys? What else do you want me to say?

D.CORREA: Max, you’re our only connection to a dead body. This is not a good place to be. And your lawyer’s going to tell you the same thing: the more you work with us, the better this is going to turn out for everyone.