Month: August 2004

Fear is Elias Merhige’s business, as you’ll know from his earlier films like the avant-garde creeper Begotten and the 2000 arthouse hit Shadow of the Vampire, with its witty premise that the villain in the great 1922 silent film Nosferatu had been played by a real vampire. His new film Suspect Zero stars Aaron Eckhart and Carrie-Anne Moss as FBI detectives on the trail of a killer (Ben Kingsley, in another of the great performances he’s been turning in lately) who appears to have psychic powers. Merhige talked to us recently about the film.

RAKE: Before you got on board as director, Zero was a more traditional cop thriller, and you rewrote the script to make it stranger and more psychologically driven. Tell us about that.

MERHIGE: The story needed to be taken out of the police procedural into the subjective. The stories that interest me the most are the ones that are psychological. There’s nothing more terrifying than the mind. When you want to get into investigating true fear and true horror, the mind is a great playground.

It was more like Seven in the early drafts, right?

Yes and no. But it was different enough from Seven, because I’d never want to do another film that’s already been done. So I told the producers that I would want to take this thing down a very different path. I realized that in order to make this a truly significant work, stories can no longer be told where you have this dualistic idea of good and evil. There’s just a big fat grey area right now where good and evil commingle with one another, and walk hand in hand with one another. We see it now in the war against terrorism, in our attempt to bring in “the bad guys.” Another thing I wanted to express in this film is how the ordinary world is terrorizing us. Airplanes, trains, and trucks—even something as innocent as opening your mail has consequences. The idea in Suspect Zero is that this serial killer is someone who’s just ordinary, and that true evil is completely ordinary.

What attracts you to making movies about violence and fear?

It’s the role of art to explore darkness. The darkness within us, the darkness at the void of the universe. It’s the only way to understand the light and what true redemption is. By understanding the darkness, it no longer becomes monstrous.

Do you see yourself as a genre filmmaker?

Not at all. Genres eat directors. I like challenges. I like to stand beneath the mountain and wait for the avalanche, and then try to outrun it. That’s what excites me about a genre, is to turn it on its head and take it off-road in a completely different direction. I don’t think Suspect Zero is a genre film. It’s several different kinds of storytelling and several different genres. There’s a science-fiction element. It’s more a psychological thriller than a serial-killer film. There is a serial killer, but that’s not really what the movie’s about. It’s about contemplating the nature of justice and redemption in our post-9/11 world.

Shadow of the Vampire had a strong streak of black comedy, but Suspect Zero is much more serious, even somber.

There’s a great deal of humor in Shadow. Somebody as deadly serious as [John Malkovich’s character] Murnau, someone who is obsessed, is very funny. I think there’s great humor in deep seriousness. But in Suspect Zero I didn’t want to be funny because there are so many delicate, important issues that are raised. I didn’t want it to feel exploitative or insensitive. I think the sadness and the melancholy in Suspect Zero is something we all feel as a country. I just felt that was the right and truthful note to end the film on.

If you were born after, say, 1955, chances are you think clowns are scary. Whether your fear is rooted in pedophilic scandal, horror flicks, or a bad audience-participation experience, for you a bulbous red nose and size-100 shoes can turn a perfectly pleasant parade into a cavalcade of unease. “They don’t look all that friendly,” said Luverne Seifert, a good clown who lives in Minneapolis. “I mean, they have this macabre white make-up on… they’re not all that appealing.”

Lori Hurley, a good clown who lives in St. Paul and who was trained in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, has another theory about the younger generation’s deep-seated fear. “You never see a movie with a good clown in it,” she said, citing Killer Klowns from Outer Space and Stephen King’s It as examples.

Despite the bad reputation, both clowns take their discipline seriously, describing it in almost religious terms. “Once it’s a part of you, it is used in every aspect of your life,” said Hurley. “The art of clowning is really getting in touch with a different sense of self. It’s about being fully present in life, whatever you’re doing.”

The usually coltish Seifert became earnest when he described the difficult exercise of “finding your personal clown.” It was, he said, a humiliating process he underwent with his mentor, Pierre Byland. (Byland is best known around these parts for training the folks at Theatre de la Jeune Lune in clowning.) “You have to put yourself in the shit,” said Seifert. “First you find that state of tragedy, that state of humility. The next thing you do is work on a walk. Maybe your butt sticks out a little bit—you accentuate that. Or maybe you’re pigeon-toed; you find a way to increase that.”

If that sounds terribly degrading and sad, consider this other nagging stereotype: Clowns are lonely. Given their relative scarcity, they certainly cannot hang out in squads or workgroups, each finding solace in the others’ self-deprecating foolery. Even if clowns are rare, their popularity does appear to be building, at least in some circles. A few mainstream theater companies, like Children’s Theatre Company, are incorporating more clown work into productions. In August, the population of theater clowns in the Twin Cities nearly doubled after a group of young actors returned to Minnesota after studying in Switzerland.

There are several distinct clown genres, each with its own culture and look. Although Hurley traces her roots to the greatest show on Earth, these days she makes her living as a “close-up clown” (for hire at birthday parties and other special occasions). To some, it may seem she has finally landed in “the shit” with this career move, but she does not see it that way. “I left the circus because I was missing an intimate connection with an audience,” she said. With close-up clowning “you can look into their eyes and know if you are reaching them.”

While Hurley performs wearing traditional clown garb, Seifert prefers a more individualistic approach. This has, perhaps, a more European aesthetic, where personal characteristics and flaws define each clown’s costume. Seifert sees not a lot in common between his and Hurley’s work. “For me, the circus clown tends to find a trick,” he said. “It’s not so much about the persona. It’s not so much about the character.”

Hurley laments clown-certificate programs, fast courses designed to crank out clowns for companies that provide them for birthdays, rodeos, and so forth. “That lowers the standard for the real clowns who have invested in their training.” Of course, anyone can buy a rainbow-afro wig and a water-squirting boutonniere. Are real clowns offended by uncertified imposters? Seifert does not care. Hurley said, “If they are not dishonoring the profession, I say fine. Maybe they’ll one day catch the spirit of clowning.” —Christy DeSmith

That afternoon, I remember, I’d attempted to perform back surgery on a dwarf who had gotten so stooped and hump-shouldered that she could barely walk. Neighborhood children had been throwing rocks at her for years. She was brilliant and very funny, but struggled with a terrible speech impediment, and was also cursed with a disastrous fashion sense that would have been merely amusing if the overall effect had not been so tragic. She would shrug the burden that was her shoulders and say, it is like trying to find clothing for a box, do you see?

I had learned to converse with this woman, but only with great difficulty. Her original language was Portuguese, and she spoke the local tongue with a clipped, husky accent, embellished with a stutter. I’d been playing chess with her at the local café for years before I became her physician, and we had a shared passion for jazz and American rhythm and blues. She had, without a doubt, the best record collection in the entire town, and the only decent library of books in English.

I was in a dark mood that day, as I made my way home through the tight and crowded streets. It was insufferably hot, and the rain was already moving in. The fat sun was sinking through dark clouds building in the western sky. The surgery hadn’t gone well; my skills in that arena are poor, and truth be told I am no great shakes as a doctor. Pity is a dangerous and useless quality in a physician, and I was troubled by my foolish involvement in an unnecessary procedure.

Even with a capable young doctor from another city assisting, at my expense, the surgery had been a terrible failure. I had made arrangements to use a surgical theater in a local clinic, and these facilities were barely adequate. This is a bad case, the other surgeon, a Frenchman, had said. He kept repeating it, mumbling through his mask. Oh my, this is a very bad case. It is too risky.

It was a very bad case indeed. It became apparent that there was nothing we could do to help the poor little woman, and I felt terrible surveying the mess we had made. Even our relatively simple exploratory operation would result in a long and painful recovery and rehabilitation. Medical facilities in that part of the country were primitive, and I knew that the patient’s only hope would involve a long and arduous trip to another city in the south, where there would be a better hospital and more capable physicians, a trip that I knew full well she could not afford and would never undertake.

All that day I’d been looking forward to going home to my apartment and listening to jazz. A friend in the U.S. had recently sent me a couple of new Cecil Taylor reissues on CD, and I had planned to spend the evening sitting in my big green chair and drinking beer while I listened to them. I once spent a month alone in a friend’s cabin in upstate New York, and the entire time I did nothing but listen to six Lee Morgan records from his prime years on Blue Note. I played those records every day, over and over. It was all, really and honestly, I did. I sat on the couch and listened to Lee Morgan. I had made a careful study of the progression from Fats Navarro to Clifford Brown to Lee Morgan, and that month was the end of that particular road.

Now, suddenly, I no longer felt like listening to Cecil Taylor. I needed something that required less concentration. I had a vision—a memory, really—of the humpbacked woman dancing awkwardly in her cluttered little apartment to a Wilson Pickett record.

The next morning I had the unpleasant task of delivering the bad news to my little friend. Although saddened, she was expert in the art of resignation. I long ago accepted that I would never be beautiful, she said. I suppose I can accept that I will never walk upright.

She asked if I would bring to the clinic her portable phonograph player and some records. That day’s mail brought me a live Sam Cooke record from the States, and I took it with me when I paid her a visit in the afternoon. I set up her phonograph and instructed the young nurse attendant in its use. I cued up the Sam Cooke record and handed the jacket to the poor woman. She was lying on her side, huddled beneath the terrible eminence at the top of her spine. She held the record jacket in her right hand, which was dangling from the bed, and she had to peer over the edge of the mattress toward the floor to scrutinize it. There was a lengthy Peter Guralnick essay on the reverse side, and she had to pull the jacket close to her face to make out the tiny print. I watched as she did this, as Sam Cooke and his band launched into “Chain Gang.” She was engrossed in the words on the record jacket, and I could see her toes wiggling beneath the bed sheet.

I wish there were a way I could show you myself in that moment. I was standing there, helpless, a stranger even to myself. I no longer had any clear idea what it was that had brought me to that part of the world, the odd conflation of desperation and restlessness that had torn me—so long ago now—from all my old notions of what my life would be. I was stunned by the sad realization that this poor woman, lumped like a broken-down seal beneath the sheets, probably understood me better than anyone else on the planet. I felt as if my heart were breaking.

I announced that I would be going. With a great effort my friend turned her head to find me standing at the foot of the bed, and she stuttered her thanks through an immense smile that was both painful and wondrous to behold.

Brad Zellar lives in Minneapolis and writes the weblog Open All Night.

We were a little disturbed by the explosion. All around the city, there was a sudden, violent eruption of elegant apartments, lofts, row-houses, and condominiums. And it wasn’t just along the Mississippi or in the Warehouse District. It was where a gas station had stood at Fiftieth Street in Linden Hills. It was where something unremarkable had failed at Lake and Bryant. It was in a liquor-store parking lot at Nicollet and Franklin. It was even cropping up on lackluster strips in first-ring suburbs like St. Louis Park and Richfield. What were the developers smoking? When was the population of the Twin Cities overrun by turtlenecked young executives with seven-figure checking accounts and an aversion to mowing the lawn?

They say the real-estate industry is recession-proof, but this felt like a powerful case of denial. The economy had soured, employment figures took a dive, higher interest rates thundered on the horizon, coffins trickled out of Iraq, and the country threatened to come apart along the red-blue seam. Meanwhile, Twin Cities contractors built ten thousand new “units.”

Sometimes our best impulses and our worst converge, and the result is happy. This colonization of the cool may seem wasteful and excessive and unneeded and vainglorious. It may even be morally suspicious; certainly this is not the low-income, affordable housing we’ve been promised for years now? But we should count our blessings and try not to be so disagreeable.

We find that the same sour people (in other words, we ourselves) who are complaining about “urban sprawl” and the loss of “green space” are the ones who feel uneasy about the urban building boom. But when we do our exercises to eliminate our affliction with jerky knees, we realize this is precisely what is needed. If we are serious about putting a lid on the tract mansions of Farmington, and about bringing beautiful people back to the city, then we will have to find some sugar to take with this medicine. These developments are creating what city planners call “density.” That is, more people living in a smaller amount of space. It is what distinguishes a city from a town or a village or a suburb. It is not necessarily a bad thing.

It is probably true that native Minnesotans are constitutionally turned off by population density. We are essentially a rural people—many of whom have freshly left the farm for the city (but not too much city, if you please). It could be that we are basically misanthropes who prefer to be alone. After all, some have interpreted Minnesota Nice as an icy-smiled predisposition to hate the stranger and the strange.

Still, let’s not forget that we do have a grand tradition of communitarian spirit. Officially, we care about each other, and we do our best to respond to neighbors in need, and there are times when personal gain does take a rear seat to civic pride—whether it’s light rail or the St. Paul Saints or a web-link to Canadian pharmacies.

In the last census, the Twin Cities ranked twenty-second among large American cities in population density. Minneapolis contains about seven thousand people per square mile. St. Paul, our narcoleptic capital city, has a bit more elbow room, with around five and a half thousand people per square mile. But with high-density housing “units” springing up like mushrooms all over the Twin Cities, we can be sure that there are more of us fitting into the same space. Perhaps we’ll learn how to get along more earnestly and take care of each other better—and the land given over to Farmington McMansions can be plowed into green meadows once again. Living among irritatingly rich, chic, lawnless people is a small price to pay for the greater good.