I moved off alone, in the dark. I was running out of places to go, places to search. Now I headed toward one place on the lot I had never been. Other days were there. Arbuthnots film ghost hid there and perhaps myself, as a boy, wandering the studio territories at noon.
I walked.
And suddenly wished I hadnt left what remained of Constance Rattigans laughter behind.
Late at night a motion picture studio talks to itself. If you move along the dark alleys past the buildings where the editing rooms on the top floors whisper and bray and roar and snack-chatter until two or three or four in the morning, you hear chariots rushing by in the air, or sand blowing across Beau Gestes ghost-haunted desert, or traffic coursing the Champs-Elyseés all French horns and derogatory cries, or Niagara pouring itself down the studio towers into the film vaults, or Barney Oldfield, on his last run, gunning his racer around Indianapolis to the shout of faceless mobs, while further on as you walk in darkness someone lets loose the dogs of war and you hear Caesars wounds open like rosebuds in his cloak, or Churchill bulldogging the airwaves as the Hound bays over the moors and the night people keep working these shadowed hours because they prefer the company of Moviolas and flicker-moth screens and closeup lovers to the people stranded at noonday, stunned by reality outside the walls.
It is a long-after-midnight collision of buried voices and lost musics caught in a time cloud between buildings, released from high open doors or windows while the shadows of the cutter-editors loom on the pale ceilings bent over enchantments.
Only at dawn do the voices still and the musics die as the smilers-with-the-knives head home to avoid the first traffic of realists arriving at 6 A.M. Only at sunset will the voices start again and the musics rise in tender strokes or tumults, as the firefly light from the Moviola screens wash over the watchers faces, igniting their eyes and prompting razors in their lifted fingers.
It was down an alley of such buildings, sounds, and musics that I ran now, pursued by nothing, gazing up, as Hitler raved from the east, and a Russian army sang across the soft high night winds west.
I jolted to a stop and stared up at Maggie Botwins editing room. The door stood wide.
I yelled. Maggie! Silence.
I moved up the stairs toward the flickering firefly light and the stuttering chatter of the Moviola as the shadows blinked on her high ceiling.
I stood for a long moment in the night, gazing in at the one place in all this world where life was sliced, assembled, then torn apart again. Where you kept doing life over until you got it right. Peering down at the small Moviola screen, you turn on the outboard motor and speed along with a fierce clacking clap as the film slots through, freezes, delineates, and rushes on.
After staring into the Moviola for half a day, in a subterranean gloom, you almost believe that when you step outside life itself will reassemble, give up its moron inconsistencies, and promise to behave. Running a Moviola for a few hours encourages optimism, for you can rerun your stupidities and cut off their legs. But the temptation, after a time, is to never step out in daylight again.
And now at Maggie Borwins door, with the night behind me and her cool cave waiting, I watched this amazing woman bent to her machine like a seamstress sewing patchwork lights and shades while the film sluiced through her thin fingers.
I scratched at her screen door.
Maggie glanced up from her bright wishing well, scowled, trying to see through the mesh, then gave a glad cry.
Ill be damned! This is the first time in forty years a writer ever showed up here. Youd think the damn fools would be curious about how I cut their hair or shorten their inseams. Wait!
She unlocked the screen and pulled me in. Like a sleepwalker I stepped to the Moviola and blinked down.
Maggie tested me. Remember him?
Erich Von Stroheim, I gasped. The film made here in 21. Lost. I found it!
Does the studio know?
Those s.o.b.s? No! Never appreciated what they had! You got the whole film?
Yep! The Museum of Modern Art gets it when I drop dead. Look! Maggie Botwin touched a projector fixed to her Moviola so it threw
images on the wall. Von Stroheim strutted and weather-cocked along the wainscot.
Maggie cut Von Stroheim and made ready to put on another reel.
As she moved, I suddenly leaned forward. I saw a small bright green film can, different from the rest, lying on the counter amongst two dozen other cans.
There was no printed label, only an ink-stick drawing on the front of a very small dinosaur.
Maggie caught my look. What? How long have you had that film?
You want it? Thats the test your pal Roy dropped by three days ago for developing.
Did you look at it?
Havent you? The studios nuts to fire him. What was the story on that? Nobodys said. Only thirty seconds in that can. But its the best half minute Ive ever seen. Tops Dracula or Frankenstein. But, hell, what do I know?
My pulse beat, rattling the film can as I shoved it in my coat pocket. Sweet man, that Roy. Maggie threaded new film into her Moviola. Give
me a brush, Id shine his shoes. Now. Want to see the only existing intact copy of Broken Blossoms? The missing outtakes on The Circus? The censored reel from Harold Lloyds Welcome Danger? Hell, theres lots more. I
Maggie Botwin stopped, drunk on her cinema past and my full attention. Yeah, I think you can be trusted. And she stopped. Here I am, rattling
on. You didnt come here to listen to an old hen lay forty-year-old eggs. How come youre the only writer ever came up those stairs?
Arbuthnot, Clarence, Roy, and the Beast, I thought, but could not say. Cat got your tongue? Ill wait. Where was I? Oh!
Maggie Botwin slid back a huge cupboard door. There were at least forty cans of film stashed in five shelves, with titles painted on the rims.
She shoved one tin into my hands. I looked at some huge lettering, which read: Crazy Youths.
No, look at the small print typed on the tiny label on the flat side, said Maggie.
Intolerance!
My own, uncut version, Maggie Botwin said, laughing. I helped Griffith. Some great stuff was cut. Alone, I printed back what was missing. This is the
only complete version of Intolerance extant! And here!
Chortling like a girl at a birthday party, Maggie yanked down and laid out: Orphans of the Storm and London After Midnight.
I assisted on these films, or was called for pickup work. Late nights I printed the outtakes just for me! Ready? Here!
She thrust a tin marked Greed into my hands.
Even Von Stroheim doesnt own this twenty-hour version! Why didnt other editors think to do this?
Because theyre chickens and Im cuckoo, crowed Maggie Botwin. Next year, Ill ship these out to the museum, with a letter deeding them over. The studios will sue, sure. But the films will be safe forty years from now.
I sat in the dark and was stunned as reel after reel shuttled by. God, I kept saying, how did you outwit all the sons-of-bitches? Easy! said Maggie, with the crisp honesty that was like a general
leveling with his troops. They screwed directors, writers, everyone. But they had to have one person with a pooper-scooper to clean up after they lifted their legs on prime stuff. So they never laid a glove on me while they junked everyones dreams. They just thought love was enough. And, God, they did love. Mayer, the Warners, Goldfish/Goldwyn ate and slept film. It wasnt enough. I reasoned with them; argued, fought, slammed the door. They ran after, knowing I loved more than they could. I lost as many fights as I won, so I decided Id win em all.
One by one, I saved the lost scenes. Not everything. Most pictures should get catbox awards. But five or six times a year, a writer would write or a Lubitsch add his touch, and Id hide that. So, over the years I
Saved masterpieces!
Maggie laughed. Cut the hyperbole. Just decent films, some funny, some tear jerkers. And theyre all here tonight. Youre surrounded by them, Maggie
said, quietly.
I let their presence soak in, felt their ghosts and swallowed hard. Run the Moviola, I said. I never want to go home.
Okay. Maggie swept back more sliding doors above her head. Hungry? Eat!
I looked and saw:
The March of Time, June 21st, 1933. The March of Time, June 20th, 1930. The March of Time, July 4th, 1930. No, I said.
Maggie stopped in mid-gesture.
There was no March of Time in 1930, I said. Bulls-eye! The boys an expert!
Those are not Time reels, I added. Its a cover. For what?
My own home movies, shot with my eight-millimeter camera, blown up to thirty-five millimeters, and hid behind March of Time titles.
I tried not to lean forward too quickly. You got a whole film history of this studio then?
In 1923, 1927, 1930, name it! F. Scott Fitzgerald, drunk in the commissary. G. B. Shaw the day he commandeered the place. Lon Chancy in the makeup building the night he showed the Westmore brothers how to change faces! Dead a month later. Wonderful warm man. William Faulkner, a drunk but polite sad screenwriter, poors.o.b. Old films. Old history. Pick!
My eyes roved and stopped. I heard the air jet from my nostrils. October 15,
