Eisenstein in Guanajuato Page #5

so you were perhaps telling me the truth.

- Don't worry.

- (GRUNTS)

Small, broken, injured capillaries

in the sensitive anal interior sphincter.

Recovery almost immediate.

- Bleeding makes me vulnerable.

- It does.

But you have no reason to feel concerned.

Unless you are a haemophiliac. (CHUCKLES)

You are not a member

of the Russian royal family,

are you?

Are you a Romanov?

Europe gave Mxico many things.

And perhaps Mxico

gave only one thing back,

syphilis.

It was known for a time

as the "Mexican disease."

Then as the "Spanish disease."

The Spanish gave it to Italians

in southern Italy.

The French army of Francis I

caught it from the Italians.

Then it was the "French Disease."

The French soldiers took it back to France.

And then it was everybody's. (CHUCKLES)

The Mexicans had a natural immunity?

Is that really true?

The Old World, the New World.

You are the Old World. I am the New World.

(CHUCKLES)

But we have it all the wrong way round.

Mxico,

pre-Columbian Middle America,

is the Old World.

Where you come from is the New World.

And you tell me all these things

while your prick is in my arse?

Could be the reason.

Could be an excuse.

Could be a justification

to remind you about subjugation.

But it could be none of those things at all.

And it isn't.

And you are not entirely unwilling.

(CHUCKLES)

Curiously, neither were the Aztecs.

The European invasion had been prophesied.

They were God-fearing, superstitious people.

They did not resist.

The new New World should learn from the old.

They say all Americans, north and south,

originally came across

the Bering Straits to Alaska

and then all the way down

to Tierra del Fuego.

(GRUNTS)

If the original Americans came that way,

they must have travelled

originally from Siberia,

which means all Americans,

and that also means all Mexicans,

- were once upon a time Russians.

- (BREATHING HEAVILY)

And now, Sergei,

I want to enjoy your virginal Russian arse.

(GRUNTING)

(BREATHING HEAVILY)

(GRUNTING)

At 2:
00,

on the 26th of October, 1917,

the Russian Revolution was over.

The Winter Palace had been taken.

I was 19.

Congratulations, Eisenstein, on a revolution.

14 years ago, Russia lost its virginity.

I was 14 years too late.

(ORCHESTRA PLAYING BOMBASTIC MUSIC)

(THUNDER RUMBLING)

(MOANING)

(CHUCKLES)

(THUNDER CRACKING)

(BOTH SCREAMING)

(PROJECTOR RATTLING)

Sergei, there has been a mudslide

to the south of the city,

the heavy rains last night.

There are many dead, many injured.

We should go there

and film a natural Mexican disaster.

Is there such a thing?

Aren't all disasters natural?

Hey, come on, get your clothes on.

It's not time for idle philosophy.

Hey, come and help.

Come and tell us how we should film it.

No, you do it. You know what to do.

I'm not so good with reality.

I'm going back to bed.

TISSE:
We have the car outside.

We can be there in 20 minutes

if the roads are not washed away.

The local people will not like

you seeing them distressed.

You are vultures. You will not be popular.

Sergei, we can record it,

show what happened.

You go, I'll come later.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

(THUNDER RUMBLING)

(PEOPLE CRYING)

(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKING)

(SPEAKING SPANISH)

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

Having children of my own

has just not occurred to me as a possibility.

Is that strange?

No.

It seems to be so very, very far

from what I have ever thought.

You really do have to have

the thought in your head,

and I never have.

You need to find the desire.

And the desire needs to be consummated.

We stake a claim to be human

by continuing the inexorable chain

on and on and on,

generation after generation,

father, son, and grandson,

which means we simply are

in a hopeless relay race,

permitted to hold the baton

for a few yards of hectic running,

with me thinking and feeling all the time

that I will default,

that I will drop the baton

and disgrace myself

and the team of an extended family

and, not least, betray the woman

who is bearing the child

at my request

and who is far more exhausted than me.

So better not to enter the race,

humiliate myself,

and embarrass all around me.

- (THUNDER CRACKS)

- PALOMINO:
No, no fotos.

Caedo? Caedo, help me!

This baby is bleeding.

I thought she was peeing down

my leg, but it's blood.

Look! Help me.

I could not face a child

bleeding to death in my lap.

I only... I only construct death in the cinema.

I don't make it, cause it. Get the mother.

Where is the mother of this child?

I came to Mexico

a virgin.

And I leave it debauched.

My body was a stranger.

And now it becomes familiar in its...

...sheer vulnerability.

Come with me to Moscow.

Impossible.

I brush away my tears.

Am I weeping for that child?

For you?

For myself?

(THUNDER RUMBLES)

You are a hero!

Mercedes.

Are you not disturbed

by the Russian film-director's nakedness?

Not at all. He is not interested in women.

Besides, his photograph is in the papers.

He does not have long to live now.

Unless he has a great deal of money.

And unless he is very lucky.

(THUNDER RUMBLES)

Some papers say you are a hero.

This paper says you are responsible

for a child's death.

This one says

you and your wife have just had a row

about her mother, your mother-in-law.

And this paper offers you condolences

on the death of your daughter.

It's amazing how you have suddenly acquired

a Mexican family,

and the Camorristas don't normally like

to get their hair wet.

But they can get nothing out of me.

(THUNDER RUMBLES)

There are two people downstairs

waiting to talk to you.

Shall I ask them to come up?

Mrs Upton Sinclair and her brother.

Upton Sinclair is famous in Russia.

All his books have been translated.

One hundred thousand available

Upton Sinclair books in Moscow.

(CHUCKLES)

Read largely by literature snobs.

Well, when they chopped

my Hollywood contract,

I couldn't go back to Moscow empty-handed.

And I'd met the film-director Flaherty,

who made Nanook Of The North,

and he got me interested in going to Mexico,

which I must admit wasn't difficult.

Well, Flaherty makes films

with people who are not actors, like me.

And he convinced me

I could make a film independently in Mexico

without actors.

And when I was in Hollywood,

and I was lonely,

and miserable,

and homesick,

I spent a great deal of time

in the Hollywood bookstore

and practically bought up

their entire stock of books

on Mexico.

The owner of the bookstore,

who had fought in the Mexican Civil War,

said I could make a film in Mexico for $25,000.

And I talked to Chaplin,

and he agreed it was a good idea.

Mexico is fashionable amongst

all Chaplin's left-wing friends

in California.

They all have second homes here.

And Upton Sinclair

was one of these left-wing,

fashionable friends.

He and his horse-riding,

name-dropping,

faded Southern belle wife were very excited

that they could assist a Russian filmmaker

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