Trapped Ashes Page #4

back in New York.

A real brainy type.

She dragged me to a screening

at the Museum of Modern Art.

I was just hoping

to get some p*ssy, you know?

My idea of cinema

was anything with Alan Ladd.

Then the lights went down,

and the movie started.

It was a French film

by a guy I'd never heard of,

Jean Vigo.

And within five minutes,

the world changed forever.

The shot of a young woman

in her wedding dress

walking along the barge.

I'd never seen anything

so unbelievably beautiful.

I was at that screening, too.

I don't know how long

we played that first time.

We talked about everything

under the sun:

Movies, women,

18th century literature and warfare,

Dr. Joseph Goebbels,

the Irish Republican Army.

Stanley knew everything

about everything.

After that, we started

to play chess together twice,

- sometimes three times a week at his house.

- Check.

Hey, Stanley!

Sorry I'm late, buddy.

Traffic was hell coming over the hill

from Ultra.

Hi, I'm Nina.

You must be Leo.

Stanley said you'd be coming over.

What'd you bring us?

I have been starving all day.

It's like an oven in here.

Stanley!

If you're such a famous director,

why don't you have air conditioning?

Sweltering heat's good for you.

It opens your pores,

frees the inhibitions.

If my inhibitions were any freer...

For some reason,

I never thought of Stanley

as a ladies man.

Yet there he was,

kissing one of the most incredible women

I had ever seen.

He never said where he met her...

and I never asked him.

I have a 90-page script.

They want me to cut

another seven pages.

It'll end up being a trailer

and not a feature.

Thank you.

This obsession with length

is killing creativity

in American movies.

I have a secret idea, though.

I wanna make a film...

that's 24 hours long.

One entire day of celluloid.

I don't know.

You mean you follow

somebody around

with a camera for a whole day,

shoot them while they're peeing,

sleeping, f***ing?

No, that's, uh...

That's not exactly what I had in mind.

I'm not sure that simply turning a camera

on some daily, mundane behavior

is necessarily worthwhile cinema.

I disagree.

I think Leo's idea is kind of brilliant.

Imagine if you filmed

someone dreaming...

really dreaming...

instead of just pretending.

You could actually capture

the essence of their dreams

on film...

like a firefly in a bottle.

Wouldn't that be wonderful?

Yeah, we could try it out on you.

But I don't sleep, Stanley.

You know that.

I just take little catnaps.

Well, that's impossible. Everyone has to sleep.

Not me.

I'm a dedicated insomniac.

Why don't you sleep over sometime

- and see for yourself?

- What?

You mean like a...

Mnage trois?

Come on, you're a man of the world.

Real lady-killer.

You must know about these things.

Nina.

What are you doing?

Look at poor Leo.

He doesn't...

He doesn't know that you're teasing him.

Come here. Come here.

I have to keep an eye on you.

You sure you wanna make that move?

I should have known then

that something was wrong.

Stanley never made

a sloppy chess move in his life.

After that, I didn't hear from Stanley

for almost a month.

Troubling rumors started

to go around...

that he turned in a half-assed draft

of a script to Dore Schary,

that he wasn't returning phone calls.

It seemed like he wasn't even leaving

his house anymore.

Stanley!

Stanley's not here...

but you're more than welcome

to hang out.

He's not here?

He called and told me

to meet him this afternoon.

I'm sorry.

He had to fly to New York

to meet on some World War I project.

Well, that's just weird.

I don't see him for a month,

then he asks me

to come over and disappears.

Uh, I guess I should take off.

No.

Please stay.

We can have our own party.

You could teach me how to play chess.

You're kidding me.

You're with Stanley,

and you don't know how to play chess?

We miss seeing you.

Stanley said you were

too busy to come over.

Well, that's odd.

I thought you guys

were too busy to see me.

Well, to tell the truth,

we barely left the apartment.

I was pretty surprised

when Stanley told me

he was going out of town.

You know, this is the first time

we've been alone together.

I was just thinking

the same thing myself.

So, tell me, teacher...

what is the most important rule

about playing chess?

Well...

I guess it's to...

trust your gut instincts.

But also...

to control your emotions.

Well, that sounds like

a contradiction in terms.

I suppose it is.

The winner is the one

to make the next-to-last mistake.

You go first.

I give up.

I didn't care that Stanley

was my best friend.

I didn't care that it was his house,

his bed...

his girlfriend.

I just wanted to f*** her

more than I'd wanted anything in my life.

And I knew nothing could ever,

ever come between us.

I lost track of the days.

At first I told the studio I was sick.

Then I said I had family problems.

Finally, I stopped making up lies...

and told them they could

rewrite my movie

any way they wanted.

It's from Stanley. You wanna read it?

No.

He says the movie's going well.

He thinks Adolphe Menjou

is a commie-hating psychopath,

which makes him just right for the role.

He doesn't mention anything about us.

Why should he?

Because I wrote to him and told him

we were sleeping together.

What?

Are you crazy?

Why would you tell him that?

Because it's the truth.

Stanley's never lied to me,

and I don't intend to start lying to him.

I can't believe you'd just

blurt that out to him.

"The weather's fine

and, oh, by the way, I'm f***ing Leo"?

He's gonna hate my guts.

Well, if he does,

he doesn't mention it here.

He just says once the movie's finished,

he's planning on staying in Europe

permanently.

At some point, Nina vanished.

I don't know when she left.

I just know that

one day she was gone.

I realized that I didn't

know anything about her.

My only contact with her was Stanley,

and he was in Germany

never to return.

I knew then that I'd lost them both...

forever.

Somehow I managed to pull it together

and write a few more movies.

People called them minor classics

of anguish and despair.

They don't know the half of it.

But I know I never forgot about Nina...

or Stanley.

I hadn't spoken to Stanley

in almost 45 years,

but I still felt like

I had lost my best friend.

I was almost as shocked

when I got a phone call

from someone at the studio

a few weeks later.

He left very specific instructions

that you and only you

should be shown this after his death.

He also left this for you.

Projectionist will start the reel

and return when it's finished.

This is my inner sanctum.

I spent much of the last

40 years in these rooms.

Some people said

I was hiding from the world.

It wasn't the world I was hiding from.

There's only two things

I regret in my life.

One is Napoleon.

I realize now that I'll never live

to make my movie of his life.

The other thing I regret is you.

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