Summer Sickness
At The Movies: A Holy Pilgrimage
by Everett Stillwell
Summer is a very bad time for me because as a culture we are now in a portion of history I refer to as, Post-Impact. During the Impact years, summer was fine, stable. Films came out that were big and high concept, that had… Impact. But, nothing in this complicated world is ever allowed to last forever, and so it comes as no surprise that the last several years have brought us to a time when Impact is no more. Where did it go? Why did it go? These are not questions that even I, the great projection prophet, cannot begin to answer. All that we can currently be sure of is that Impact was tremendously important to each individual’s spiritual foundation. We are once again in the Dark Ages, and summer only exacerbates the problem by loudly, in digital sound, reminding us of the Great Lack.
Being the great projection prophet makes me even more sensitive than the average film goer. It is no wonder that during the hot season I’ve been succumbing to derangement.
This year was far from an exception. It started with Lost in Space. Halfway through the film, worms somehow invaded my guts and began to churn, nipping away with little sharp teeth, causing me to writhe uncontrollably in my seat and start compulsively massaging the shoulders of the man sitting in front of me. This led to a violent beating, which I can’t say was unjustified, and actually ended up being very cathartic, temporarily getting the film and the worms out of my system.
Very soon after that, they were back with a vengeance. Also now, I was bleeding regularly from both ears and having such bad muscle spasms I could barely hold a drink, operate a remote, or even control my bowels. Without Impact, there was now what appeared to be the sickness being projected, and clearly, just passively sitting around where I was, in upstate rural Maine, would only make it worse.
So, I ceremonially set fire to my cabin and loaded my car with cheap wine, amateur Japanese pornography, and a large African machete, in case things got really serious. Took to the road with fury and hedonism, not knowing where I was headed, only hoping that where ever it was, I might somehow outrun the terrible sickness.
The first place I went to was New York City, because already I was low on funds. Parked next to Washington Square Park and repeatedly mugged NYU students until the nine-o-five screening of Hal Hartley’s latest, Henry Fool, at the Angelika.
The worms! The worms! Henry Fool was like Abel Ferrara doing American playhouse. Three-forths of the way through, I shit all over my seat and bolted for the exit.
Outside, I nearly ran over a young couple who were fighting. Wanting some fast pain to distract me from the sickness, I escorted the young man into the alley and picked a fight. Ironically, I ended up kicking the shit out of him. How was I supposed to know the little bastard was Ethan Hawke and that he fights like a girl with kitten paws?
The young lady turned out be Uma Thurman, who then forced me to escort her to a nearby bar since her “husband,” as she called him, was temporarily immobile and vomiting on his car coat. Over vodka sours, she got me to explain my quest, and then offered a sexual rendezvous in her penthouse. I told her I only fool around with film and video. She laughed, though her eyes betrayed confusion.
Then the blood started spraying out of my ears. Uma offered some all-natural tampons, but I declined, the sickness cannot be plugged!
The money I’d made off of NYU students took me down to Florida, except somehow I ended up in Detroit instead; probably due to my recent disinterest in eating or sleeping and growing distrust of road signs. For hours, I staggered around downtown, ragged and feverish. The sky was gray and the ground was dry and hot. Later, I found myself watching Out Of Sight. Cringing, the worms excitedly mangled my colon. It was all I could do not to tear apart my seat. Over-directing, over-editing. Soderbergh completely killed the suspense and reduced the one sex scene (with sure-thing-hotrod George Clooney and the beautiful big assed Jennifer Lopez) into a Certs commercial.
I ran away from the theater with foam dripping from my mouth. Ran and ran until I was at the doorstep of Elmore Leonard’s retreat. In my own pitiful way, all I wanted was someone to commiserate with. Wasn’t even looking for answers. He opened the door and told me that was how the game was played, then offered me a Zima. Knowing that at that moment it would do no good to argue, I accepted the Zima and eventually dinner. I was even able to sell the bulk of my yellow porn to his wife, who explained that Detroit product lacks intrinsic bite. I didn’t doubt it.Through the night I drove. Having not slept in thirty-five hours, I kept myself juiced on Surge and Jolt (only sissies drink coffee on the road), switching back and forth because I thought this might be more even-tempered on my system. Lightning, there were streaks of yellow green electricity that dogged my periphery and snapped through the sky like a finely-braided bullwhip. It was the sickness fucking with me. Hoping I’d lose my shit and spin out into a ditch, another dead nameless asshole who couldn’t find good entertainment.
…Woke up and it was still night. I was parked at a rest stop somewhere on the western edge of Kansas. Total amnesia. All the wine was gone. There was a thin beard covering my face. The only part of my body that wasn’t shaking was my left arm, which was completely covered in a layer of clear jelly. My fist was tightly clenched around something. Using a screwdriver from the glove compartment, I pried the fucker open and found the stub of a theater ticket. It was for a showing of The X-Files from three days before. “Give me a break,” I muttered to myself, looking for something to wipe the ooze off.
A few seconds later it all came back.
Even after bingeing out on my wine, the film has still started sucking ass after the first reel. Scully is going to get kidnapped. No one will ever believe Mulder. Things are exactly back to where they were before. Big deal. Not even any skin. The sickness! The sickness!
Afterwards, angry, depressed, and mildly psychotic, I’d wandered over to the local convenience store and bought out their entire supply of Vienna sausages. I can’t remember if smearing the jelly was supposed to be camouflage or part of some cleansing ritual. At this point it matters little.
Took Route 70 all the way to Denver where, at Dr. Dolittle, I started shitting up so much partially-digested Vienna sausages (some of those little bastards just won’t break down!) that the theater had to be evacuated. If I had had more of my facilities present, I would have immediately sent a postcard to Eddie and begged him never to play the straight-man again.
As it was, I gunned my ride through the mountains, and then found a motel in Utah that offered cable, in hopes that it would calm my loose bowels and frail nerves. Checked out some show on HBO that had Sarah Jessica Parker and her friends talking about anal sex. Went across the street to a Denny’s where I tried to get the waitress’s opinion on whether she thought TV was getting better sex, or whether it’s just that movies are getting so uninspiring, so sick… that it only makes TV look juicier. She never gave me a direct answer, but she did make me wait forty minutes for my Slim Slam breakfast in that ghost town of a dining room. It occurred to me later that she might have been Mormon.
Not long after that, I ended up in Vegas. Somehow I arrived on the fourth of July, which was odd since I was sure I’d left Maine in the middle of August. Despite this, my spirits were good. Utah had been barren enough to cause some sort of transient epiphany. The extreme emptiness of the place had been so horrifying as to make horror become suddenly banal and even slightly humorous. Probably a lot like watching Walker, Texas Ranger with a moderate case of malaria. Which is not to say it had been an easy ride. There were frequent occasions where I was forced to pull over, take off my clothes, and run amongst the cacti, loudly humming the theme from Song of The South to keep the rattlesnakes at bay. Immediately after this, I would have to find some cheap motel where I would feverishly masturbate, usually to Rosie O’Donnell and whatever was playing on HBO (almost always Speed 2). I do not endorse these tonics. For me, I had to give up and embrace the sickness in order to at last gain power over it. To get to the other side.
Viva Los Vegas.
Checked out Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas.
Depp was so in character as to be incoherent and uninteresting. But it was Gilliam who really deserved the blame. He not only managed to over-direct all the material as well as over-moralize it, but also, for some bonehead reason, stick almost religiously to the structure of the book without even comprehending that material lifted from literature cannot possibly make the transition from page to screen without becoming horribly flat.
But now, instead of blood or worms or spasms, all I felt was a dry disdain. Instead of projection prophet victim, my experienced had mutated me into projection prophet warrior!
The next day I drove to L.A., where it’s summer all year round. Looking back, I see this final move as inevitable. The darkness of post-Impact still surrounded humanity like a wet fur coat – the sickness was and is everywhere. So then, the only way to do proper battle with the mother was to be at its epicenter. Now it was up to me to find the truth as I saw it and throw that information out into the rest of the world where hopefully it might save some souls.
After all, this is a holy war. And who knows, maybe I am an angel. Who knows?…
To be Continued…
[LW4 “review” omitted because who needs a 2,000 word essay about Renee Russo’s fine ass and Everett’s Oedipal Complex? – ed.]
