Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

ALI: Have I used the right take?

JACK: They’re all about the same aren’t they?

ALI: Should I put in a long shot?

JACK: Maybe.

ALI: Or do you think a close-up would give more of an emotional impact….here?

JACK: Dunno.

ALI: You look tired. Can I get you some coffee?

JACK: Thanks.

ALI: What’s it for?

JACK: Dunno.

ALI: When you shot the scene, was it to advance the plot or add to the characterization?

JACK: I only filmed what was in the script. It’s your baby now. And I shouldn’t be interrupting your work.

ALI: No, I appreciate your time and opinion. What did the writer say the scene was for? …Did you ask him?

JACK: He couldn’t remember.

ALI: What sort of writer was he?

JACK: The usual.

ALI: How many pages was the first draft of the script?

JACK: Exactly one hundred… obeying the formula they give you at all the screenwriting courses.

ALI: So he could have put that scene in just to make up the right number of pages?

JACK: You’re probably right.

ALI: Let me put your jacket on a hanger. What is it? Paul Smith? …What’s that plastic band round your wrist?

JACK: Come to think of it he was the guy who tried to disprove the auteur theory.

ALI: What’s that?

JACK: Sorry. Before your time. The French Nouvelle Vague, sorry, the French New Wave said that it’s the director that really writes the film by putting his unique signature on it.

ALI: You’ve certainly made a good film here. I’ve been really looking forward to working with you. My friends are quite jealous – my first feature after film school –

JACK: Thanks.

ALI: So what did the writer do?

JACK: He gave Stanley Kubrick a script consisting of a hundred blank sheets of paper.

ALI: What happened?

JACK: Kubrick made the film anyway.

ALI: Really? I’d love to meet this writer.

JACK: You won’t.

ALI: How come?

JACK: He’s a serious novelist. So he always insists on complete anonymity as far as films are concerned. Have you ever seen him with a screen credit?

ALI: Who?

JACK: Exactly.

ALI: I’m worried about scene ninety seven …Here…it contradicts what we showed in scene fifty three.

JACK: Don’t worry. If you keep the action going fast enough, no one will notice. Or if they do notice, maybe they’ll pay to see the film again to try and understand.

ALI: Or buy the video.

JACK: Nice coffee, by the way …Good. You can run the credits over that sequence. May I look at the scene before the inciting incident?

ALI: This really is a rough cut. Hang on …pass me the log.. Why do you wear a hospital identity tag around your wrist?

JACK: It’s an old thing …You know the old joke about the actress who was so stupid that, in order to advance her career, she slept with the writer instead of the producer?

ALI: Yes?

JACK: Well, this writer, he destroyed that myth too.

ALI: No, no. Don’t tell me –

JACK: That’s right –

ALI: He was the one who wrote a starring part for a six foot seven gorgeous blonde with one leg who he was in love with –

JACK: That’s right. And it worked. She slept with him. Her career took off with all the great parts he wrote specifically for her.

ALI: So how did you get to meet him?

JACK: He was at the Uni with Kate.

ALI: Is she your partner?

JACK: Was.

ALI: Why the past tense? What happened?

JACK: I don’t know. I took her to Paris.

ALI: Sounds romantic. I wish –

JACK: I think that was my big mistake.

ALI: Why? …What did you do?

JACK: Nothing. I just shouldn’t have taken her.

ALI: Because? …Come on. Don’t try these mystification techniques on a creative film editor of all people.

JACK: I blew it. A girlfriend once told me you should give a woman what they need, not what they want. If you give them what they want, you lose their respect.

ALI: Not where I come from. If you don’t give us what we want, you lose us …period. Have you seen the latest Laconte?

JACK: Nah. All French films are the same. Marie fucks Armande because her husband Henri is fucking Odette. Then all four go off together for a long meal in a nice restaurant and have an even longer conversation.

ALI: Whereas all you need for a film is a beautiful woman and a camera?

JACK: No you need a girl and a gun.

ALI: Kiss, kiss, bang, bang?

JACK: Yeah. Whatever. Kiss, kiss, bang, bang, sex and violence, or conflict and romance. However you want to describe it.

ALI: You’re right. That’s the basis of all stories.

JACK: And there are only two plots in the world: someone goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town?

ALI: Even in French films?

JACK: They don’t believe in plot so they have sex and eating. How often do you see a Hollywood action hero sit down to a nice meal?

ALI: There’s boiled pet rabbit in Fatal Attraction.

JACK: Or a serial killer going to his freezer for some human body part.

ALI: Do you want to call it a day? I could cook you –

JACK: I took Kate on a journey …to France. And it became the last act of our story when it should have been part of the first.

ALI: Surely you’re not genuinely into that Hollywood three act structure. It’s so …last century.

JACK: Of course. Every story has a beginning, middle and end.

ALI: But not necessarily in that order.

JACK: That’s not original.

ALI: And I’ve heard your story before. Male meets female. Falls in love. Battles for her. Dies for her. Romeo and Juliet –

JACK: King Kong. It may be an old story but I still don’t understand why it went wrong.

ALI: Let me show you what I’ve done with the end of quote The Third Act unquote and see if you think it builds solidly to the climax …How close were you?

JACK: With Kate?

ALI: If you don’t mind being intimate with a stranger?

JACK: You’re editing my film for Chrissake. How much more intimate can you get?

ALI: Do you know what my biggest disillusionment in that department was since I saw my first movie?

JACK: Not in this film I hope?

ALI: Of course not. No. In When Harry Met Sally when Meg Ryan vocally demonstrates her fake orgasm –

JACK: The restaurant scene –

ALI: A Hollywood restaurant scene. Not a French one where they are all eating and looking as chic and cool as Catherine Deneuve.

JACK: And the woman at the next table says to the waitress ‘I’ll have what she’s having’ Yeah it was great. The best.

ALI: Did you know that woman was the director’s mother?

JACK: No. That’s disgusting.

ALI: Only in America.

JACK: Only in California.

ALI: Why shouldn’t all the crazies have their own state?

JACK: Because that’s where Nixon and Reagan came from. Stop. Can you go back a few seconds?

ALI: I know. The steadycam operator crossed the line. But it’s the only usable take. How much do you have left in the budget if you have to reshoot?

JACK: None. I’m badly over budget. That’s why we’ve only got a shot time here in this editing suite. I had to call in a favour.

ALI: But everyone was saying how you were bringing it in not only on time but under budget.

JACK: My father put in, as line producer, an accountant whose sole job was to save money.

ALI: And?

JACK: He did. He saved £60K.

ALI: That’s very good.

JACK: No. It was very bad. His salary came to £80K.

ALI: Sometimes I think we live in a world of make believe …What happened after Paris?

JACK: With Kate?

ALI: Is there a second heroine? Not a good idea to have two female protagonists.

JACK: No. Look what happened to Thelma and Louise. We had a blissful three weeks together. Whenever she wasn’t working we were with one another.

ALI: How did it start?

JACK: Wonderfully. We hit it off right from the beginning. It was sort of a blind date. I did the usual: dinner, theatre, drinks. Then we did it in the park – al fresco …

ALI: And?

JACK: Then we were in a club all night. Then breakfast al fresco. Well actually in the garden of the Royal Crescent Hotel and then back to my place …

ALI: And?

JACK: We did it again. God, she is so attractive. Sort of pre-Raphaelite: long curly red hair in sort of corkscrews. Great body – she plays a lot of squash.

ALI: Sounds like you make a perfect couple. Good looks and – don’t tell me – money as well?

JACK: That was the strange thing about her. Didn’t seem to have any interest in money. Hey, I like that transition.

ALI: Stole it from Antonioni.

JACK: I still love Blow Up.

ALI: I love the building being blown up in Zabriski Point.

JACK: Me too. It proves the point that every film made in America in the seventies was a metaphor for the Vietnam war.

ALI: It was made in nineteen sixty nine …If I’d edited that scene I could die a happy woman. And you’re killing me.

JACK: Sorry?

ALI: By not telling me about Kate.

JACK: There’s nothing more to tell. She suddenly stopped seeing me. And no explanation. No contact whatsoever.

ALI: Unbelievable. Was it something you did?

JACK: No. We were lovely together.

ALI: So it was something you said?

JACK: No. I was all sweetness and light.

ALI: I know.

JACK: What?

ALI: You said it, didn’t you?

JACK: Said what?

ALI: You did it.

JACK: What?

ALI: ….. You blinked first.

JACK: Blinked?

ALI: The first person to say it … the person who blinks first … has lost. Like a standoff between two gunfighters in Westerns … If you say it first, then the person you say it to has power over you for ever.

JACK: Say what? Why are you looking at me like that?

ALI: I love you.