Waiting for Hockney Page #5

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It has to. It has to be that...

enormous.

Hi, this is Gordon Edes

of The Boston Globe...

Ah... imagine after

eighty-six years, The Red Sox

have finally done what a... a lot of

people had given up on them ever doing.

Well, as Curt Schilling said,

"The St. Louis Cardinals had

one shot at Pedro Martinez..."

"...and they missed."

Waiting and waiting.

Another few hours.

If he only knew what

he's putting me through.

How are you today, Billy?

Oh, I'm feeling just fine.

I slept a little. Dreamt a little.

It's Cookie.

Tell him I'm going to kill him

because he didn't call last night.

At 3 o'clock in the morning, I said,

"My God, Jim. How do I know

the plane didn't crash?"

How do I know blah, blah, blah?"

I know he's OK now because

we called the airport.

We're going over at eleven, so we're

going to leave about, I think, ten.

OK.

And, uh it'll be you, Gary, and

Brother Rene, and myself. Three of us.

And my 'wife' over here.

So, this is a huge crescendo

for you as a human being.

Yeah, it's huge.

And it's a chancy one, I mean,

Did he sleep well last night?

Does he have an appointment

at eleven forty-five?

Is he irritated by an

ingrown toenail, who knows?

Right, right. Because... I don't, I don't

know how hard he laughs, when he laughs.

I don't know how his voice

changes when he's excited.

But, but I'm hoping somehow, I can tell.

Good afternoon, TNS Health

Care. May I help you? Hi Jana.

Hold on. Tanisha. It's Lois.

We should have all been there.

That really is. We should

have all been there. Hold on.

Good afternoon. Hey...

Hello?

Lois, hold on.

Tanisha, what are you doing?

Hello? God bless you,

I almost hung up on you.

I tell you, my nerves...

this is not a good idea today.

This poor guy that works for

Pfizer, one of my biggest companies,

I've just hung up on him twice.

My mother is a nervous wreck.

She's praying for everybody twenty-four

hours a day and worrying and never sleeping.

That's basically the way she is.

Charming day, a charming

day... God help me.

If I could exist without

sleep the way my mother does,

I would have like three

of these finished by now.

Did you have some poppyseed cake?

Please, just... since it's in the back,

it's going to be more responsive

to bumps and twists and stuff,

so just try and drive...

drive like you're 80 years old please.

It's a beautiful day.

People wear sunglasses indoors... here.

I wonder if palm trees are indigenous

to LA or were they all planted?

There's a saying that

"No one in LA is from LA."

Anyone heard that?

Uh huh.

I just realized, I need dust

masks. I forgot them again.

That'll be my ice-breaker line. "Hi,

Mr. Hockney. Do you have dust masks?"

Good afternoon, TNS

Healthcare. May I help you?

Glory be to God. How are you?

My nerves are shot.

And let me clue you in.

Well, at least... Oh

shoot. He forgot the masks?

This is not... Alright,

I love you too. Goodbye.

Hello.

I'm gonna get fired on top of all this.

He did this really big, long

landscape painting called,

'On Mulholland Drive'.

And it really does, it really

does look like the painting.

It's very familiar.

Good afternoon TNS health

care. May I help you?

He's in there?

He went with Gary and 'What's his name'?

Hold on... hold on a second.

This is great.

Good afternoon, TNS

Healthcare. May I help you?

Dear Mr. Hockney,

It is a great honor for me to have

the opportunity to write to you.

Like yourself, I believe that a new

way of seeing is a new way of feeling.

And that the greatest art

reaches beyond the initiated.

I had always wanted to capture in

two dimensions, life's minutiae.

To me, it is the life itself.

So, with utter reverence for

my subjects, just as they are...

and my naive capacity to

love so much, so much...

I set out to draw such a portrait.

My portrait is of a human figure.

This portrait took eight years and five

months of full-time work to complete.

This length of time was not a therapeutic

or arbitrary path toward my goal...

...but requisite input.

Sticking with it was, at times,

excruciating and very debilitating.

But I figured that if I actually did it,

then no one could deny it.

I wanted to take a drawing where

Lindbergh took the airplane...

to take a drawing

completely out of bounds...

to give a portrait the

attention-commanding capability...

of a bombastic live performance.

It's a... an amazing

kind of thing to look at.

And part of the experience is, being

in the presence of the actual thing.

When he unveiled it, I mean, I'm

telling you, I broke out in a sweat.

I've never heard anybody describe this

thing in a way that made any sense to me.

I mean, you wanted to get

close to it, but you couldn't,

and then you had to.

And then you're like, you know,

you're covering your mouth.

And you've got this mask on

so you don't breathe on it.

You take out the magnifying

glass and the level of scrutiny...

is absolutely enthralling.

This thing was freakish, man.

I mean, you're looking at it and

the closer you look, the

more detailed it gets.

Like, he drew the

space around each hair.

Originally, we were talking

about three thousand DPI.

We think we've got

over ten thousand DPI.

I mean, you can see

inside pores. You can see,

you know, the peach

fuzz of her cheekbones.

You can see the little, minute

reflections of her eyeballs.

Nobody in Kyoto is

doing this in a basement.

Nobody in Berlin exhibited this in 1918.

It hasn't been done before.

It has acquired a kind of heroic,

almost mythical dimension.

This is not part of a

normal genre of achievement.

You spent how long on

this? And it's how fabulous?

I'm talking 'FABULOUS'

- all capital letters.

Exclamation point!

Respectfully yours,

Billy Pappas.

Has anybody called?

No.

Nobody's called?

Correct.

He's been in... Three hours!

Three hours... No. He's

been in four hours...

...and three minutes.

Wherever. But whatever is happening...

Oh. I left my coat at work.

Whatever's happening...

You left your coat at work?

It's unbelievable what's happening, Jim.

Uh huh. I'll tell ya...

It's, it's just... now

what's ever happening

I mean, just anticipation...

...now it's scary, well there's...

It can be nothing but

good. Uh huh. Yeah.

And now my whole feeling is that, you know,

I've was telling people about Billy a little bit.

And how... what... how good he is.

You know, just a good guy.

And something big must be happening,

and I find it a little scary.

And I also feel...

that...

he's been so good...

I know he's not a church-goer,

but I kind of feel I can see our Lord in

him, and our Lord must be giving him...

some kind of something saying,

"Keep doing good, Billy."

And he's going to be doing something.

OK.

You're obviously a wreck.

You're gonna need a drink.

Not really, I'm cold... You want a coat?

Yeah.

I mean, I'm gonna end

up going into shock

and Billy's going to say,

"What happened to my mother?"

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