Thank You for Sending Me an Angel
I literally fell out of my chair when I read the name in the news item. I had been leaning back, far back—something my mother had warned me about—and when I saw the name in the paper I had drifted off into astonishment and lost touch the with mental subdepartment in charge of balance and safety. I fell.
Luckily there was another chair directly behind me. After only a second of pinwheeling arms and flailing legs I was lying upside down in a soft black leather affair that I had found abandoned outside a college dormitory. I read the sentence again:
"Another famous face at the exhibition was Hollywood director Trent Tonhoe, best known for his films Man Cooking Kidneys and Divine Wind."
To call Trent Tonhoe a famous Hollywood director was being a little optimistic; he was aggressively indie, strictly art house, and if Hollywood knew of his existence it would only be because one of the trade unions had his name on a list of people to be beaten up. Among movie buffs, however, he is legendary; Divine Wind is truly one of the masterworks of narrative film, a new Thesaurus for film language itself, and a glorious and powerful emotional experience. It is also one of the most notoriously difficult films to actually see, as very few prints are currently in circulation and it has never been transferred to videotape. The only reason that I am familiar with it is that I was lucky enough to be free on the Tuesday afternoon when the Museum of Modern Art screened the picture as part of its "Visions of the Prairie" series. Actually, the film that was supposed to be shown was the 1936 documentary The Plow that Broke the Plains, but there was some mix-up in the archival department; when the film turned out to be DW the audience of film nerds squealed with glee and ran upstairs to barricade the projection booth.
The artist whose exhibition Tonhoe had visited was one LaPacia Flemmaria, a hyperrealist who paints swirling, explosive still lifes of radial saws and fax machines. I got her telephone number from the gallery (La Bon Phott) by passing myself off as a marketing executive from Hewlett Packard who wanted to commission her to paint a portrait of a switching router. I had then prepared a very large amount of hokum in order to get into the artist's confidence so that I could tease out whatever information she knew about Tonhoe, but when I actually connected to her on the phone I lost my nerve. Her voice was simple, musical, and pleasant; she seemed to be perfectly happy to speak to a stranger about whatever was on his mind, and for some reason all the lies drained out of me.
I told her, simply, my story. I was reading about her one-woman show and had seen the name Trent Tonhoe. I was a screenwriter in desperate need of a director, a real director. From one artist to another: could she help me? Did she know Tonhoe? Was he retired? Could I meet him?
Ms. Flemmaria, with a voice of sweet concern, told me that she had never met Trent Tonhoe before that day, but that he had mentioned in passing that he was currently living in New London, Connecticut.
This was all of substance that she knew about the mysterious director, but some reason the conversation lasted a further twenty minutes. By the end I had not only promised to visit La Bon Phott gallery in Switchhaven, but that I would also drop by her private studio to look at her latest canvases. I hung up the phone feeling like I had been brainwashed by an angel.
New London...?
Luckily there was another chair directly behind me. After only a second of pinwheeling arms and flailing legs I was lying upside down in a soft black leather affair that I had found abandoned outside a college dormitory. I read the sentence again:
"Another famous face at the exhibition was Hollywood director Trent Tonhoe, best known for his films Man Cooking Kidneys and Divine Wind."
To call Trent Tonhoe a famous Hollywood director was being a little optimistic; he was aggressively indie, strictly art house, and if Hollywood knew of his existence it would only be because one of the trade unions had his name on a list of people to be beaten up. Among movie buffs, however, he is legendary; Divine Wind is truly one of the masterworks of narrative film, a new Thesaurus for film language itself, and a glorious and powerful emotional experience. It is also one of the most notoriously difficult films to actually see, as very few prints are currently in circulation and it has never been transferred to videotape. The only reason that I am familiar with it is that I was lucky enough to be free on the Tuesday afternoon when the Museum of Modern Art screened the picture as part of its "Visions of the Prairie" series. Actually, the film that was supposed to be shown was the 1936 documentary The Plow that Broke the Plains, but there was some mix-up in the archival department; when the film turned out to be DW the audience of film nerds squealed with glee and ran upstairs to barricade the projection booth.
The artist whose exhibition Tonhoe had visited was one LaPacia Flemmaria, a hyperrealist who paints swirling, explosive still lifes of radial saws and fax machines. I got her telephone number from the gallery (La Bon Phott) by passing myself off as a marketing executive from Hewlett Packard who wanted to commission her to paint a portrait of a switching router. I had then prepared a very large amount of hokum in order to get into the artist's confidence so that I could tease out whatever information she knew about Tonhoe, but when I actually connected to her on the phone I lost my nerve. Her voice was simple, musical, and pleasant; she seemed to be perfectly happy to speak to a stranger about whatever was on his mind, and for some reason all the lies drained out of me.
I told her, simply, my story. I was reading about her one-woman show and had seen the name Trent Tonhoe. I was a screenwriter in desperate need of a director, a real director. From one artist to another: could she help me? Did she know Tonhoe? Was he retired? Could I meet him?
Ms. Flemmaria, with a voice of sweet concern, told me that she had never met Trent Tonhoe before that day, but that he had mentioned in passing that he was currently living in New London, Connecticut.
This was all of substance that she knew about the mysterious director, but some reason the conversation lasted a further twenty minutes. By the end I had not only promised to visit La Bon Phott gallery in Switchhaven, but that I would also drop by her private studio to look at her latest canvases. I hung up the phone feeling like I had been brainwashed by an angel.
New London...?
posted by Joe Gola at 9:21 PM
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