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,
(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
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
[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 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.