Radiance

SEVERIN’S jagged hair, and occasionally her chin, swing in and out of frame as she struggles with him. She turns over the boy’s hand, roughly, to show the camera what she has found there: tiny fronds growing from his skin, tendrils like ferns, seeking, wavering, wet with milk. The film jumps and shudders; the child’s hand vibrates, faster, faster. FILM DAMAGED FOOTAGE OVEREXPOSED SKIP AFFECTED AREA SKIPPING SKIPPING SKIPPING]

Production Meeting,

The Deep Blue Devil

The Man in the Malachite Mask

Doctor Callow’s Dream

 (Tranquillity Studios, 1960, dir. Percival Unck) 

Audio Recorded for Reference by Vincenza Mako

PERCIVAL UNCK: No, no, you’re wrong, Vince. It’s shit. It doesn’t sit right. He’s too unpleasant, too weak. He’s not likeable. And that curse isn’t adding anything but a stick up his arse. It just sags. Gothic stories will sprawl if you let them, like spilled wine. No writer should go anywhere near the Island of the Lotus-Eaters—you get stuck there. If Odysseus couldn’t get quit of that place, our boy has no hope. It’s got all the right pieces, but the end comes in the middle of the blasted thing. I hate it. I want to get out of my own movie. That can’t be good.

And, I just…I just can’t do it. I can’t give her an ice dragon and a vampire and smack her bottom and tell her to go play. I need something real to hold on to. She’s gone. If it were enough to imagine her killed by a mad magician on the American frontier, I could have done that in my head and not bothered with a script. No. No. It can’t be my story. It can’t be ours.

MAKO: But it can’t be hers, either. The thing about a mysterious disappearance is that it’s mysterious. There’s no answer that will be satisfying enough for the masses. There’s no documentary to be made, no scandal to be exposed.

UNCK: I don’t care. I made The Abduction of Proserpine already. I’m done with that. Christ, I was a young man when Proserpine wrapped. You can’t use the language of your youth to talk about your daughter. It doesn’t work. Maybe we should go back to noir. Or something else. Or fucking quit. It’s never taken us this long, Vince. We’re the king and queen of the quick turnaround. Why can’t I tell a simple story? She was born, she lived, she wanted things, she died. Yes, she died. I’m willing to admit that as a possibility. I can stage her death if that’s the right ending. I can do anything for the right ending. I staged her beginning, so I can place the marks for her end.

[long pause]

MAKO: Then let it be what it always was. What it must be. A child’s story. Not hers. Not ours. But his. Something terrible happened to a little boy in a beautiful place and it kept happening until a woman came from the sky to save him. Came sailing down like Isis with her arms full of roses. It’s a fairy tale. A children’s story. Not a funny or silly one, but one with blood and death and horror, because that’s fairy tales, too. A kid got swallowed by a whale. A little Pinocchio. A little Caliban. It’s all there.

And, you know, in a fairy tale, the maidens are never dead—not really. They’re just sleeping.

The Deep Blue Devil

The Man in the Malachite Mask

Doctor Callow’s Dream

The Land of Milk and Desire

Once upon a time, not so long ago at all, there lived a boy whose wishes never came true. The boy was born in the Land of Milk and Desire and had never known any other country. The Land of Milk and Desire had made him into himself, and he loved it the way some children love a velvet toy with a worn-out tail.