We were standing along the east wall of the Fairview. It was a Thursday after 2 AM. There were people brushing past on either side.
“I was going to have it aborted, but it’s already got limbs and ears, and so I guess I probably – ”
“You’re sure?” I interjected.
“Yes,” Laurie insisted.
“You’re sure it’s mine?” I kept right at it. An insult. A cliché. And yet it beckoned me to wonder. Laurie and I shared a history leading back to the previous April. The first time we’d had sex, it had started on a beach, then found its way into a bathtub. The second time, Laurie had requested that I tie her up with nylon binds. Laurie had a clit ring. She’d gone to bed with several locals. Over the course of 13 months I’d come to view her as a stalwart – irretrievably disposed to getting off at any price.
“How are we gonna handle this?” Laurie asked me. I could feel her blonde split
ends beneath my eye.
“Well, the first thing we’re gonna do is put this beer down,” I said. I took the Miller Lite from Laurie’s hand. “The second thing we’re gonna do is figure out what makes good sense.”
My mind was racing, cataloging through a series of events that had taken place within three months. There was that episode over Memorial Day, a gruesome lay that failed to account for any growth of limbs or ears. There was that episode toward the end of April, a drunken tryst throughout which I had failed to maintain any significant erection. And then there was that bender over Easter – a 48-hour period during which all the appropriate pieces seemed to gather. “It’s OK; I can’t get pregnant,” a rum-soaked Laurie’d told me. And like a fool, I listened, digging in with corpusced thighs.
Laurie and I spoke at length, after which I left the bar alone. My legs had gone to jelly and the pulse of speakers filled my ears. I could not focus, and yet it occurred to me that Laurie’s story could’ve been for shit. Laurie had sound reason to feel spiteful. I had behaved like a chauvinist; enjoyed the spoils like a pig. And yet her level of complicity was such it begged the question of
dual fault.
All of these angles just kept orbiting, exploding in my consciousness at once: Would I be forced to stay in Wildwood? To secure year-round employment? Would I require benefits? A stroller? What would the costs be? Would there be any litigation? Would I love the child? Neglect it? Would I become a victim of postpartum? Would I wind up in a bar, passing around a picture, telling strangers, ‘She’s the greatest thing that ever happened to me’? How could I have been so fucking reckless? And Jesus-Lord, how could I make it stop?
I wandered back to the apartment, drank at the table until morning. It was the weekend now, which meant 14-hour shifts. I persevered, securing naps during my breaks. I’d told Laurie I would call her. Yet as the afternoons wore on, I put off looking for her number, completely cognizant of the notion once I phoned there’d be no turning back. I had only contacted Laurie once; had scrawled her number on the reverse side of a coaster. I employed that coaster as my alibi, maintaining I had little thought of where it might be found. In reality, I was 99% certain that it resided in a box stacked in my closet – Pandora’s chest among the ruins, the dirty secret in my room.
As passing days bled into weeks, there were only three people in whom I had confided. The first two were Lori and Joanna, and the third was a trusted coworker. I had told Lori and Joanna because they had found me in the kitchen several hours after I had abandoned them at The Fairview that first night. I had told the coworker because I wanted credit for my ability to keep my head amidst the rush.
Toward the end of June my state of mind began to sour. I went from home to work to home again, and almost nowhere in between. I avoided the bars for the same reason I avoided my closet. Lori and Joanna had spotted Laurie in the nightclubs several times. According to them Laurie was drinking, going out of her way to smoke cigarettes on the sly. I hated Laurie. I hated her for what she had come to represent. I would envision her with an exaggerated overbite; I’d replace her nostrils with a snout. I would demonize Laurie’s stonewash jeans and that stupid ruffled shirt she wore. I would demonize the nasal quality of her voice, the way her cheeks ran deep with blush whenever she felt called upon to comment. I hated Laurie for allowing me to defile her; for failing to complain after I had passed out cold one night, then pissed on her during our sleep. I hated Laurie for liking me, for not accepting that I had nothing suitable to offer. The very idea of her made me nauseous; convinced I could not do the least bit better than myself.
Throughout high school and early college I was decidedly pro-life, denouncing abortion as a mainstream failure of accountability. My position reflected a lack of empathy, a lack of experience, a lack of respect for what it meant to carry any entity full-term. My position reflected the fact that – up until the age of 18 – I was a virgin, lacking any relatable compassion for what it meant to be a woman. Confronted with a child I was in no way prepared to adore, I had adjusted my perspective, maturing into yet another asshole for whom there was no right or wrong … only the sanctifiable promotion of self-interests.
Working on the boardwalk, I would often see them – disgruntled parents who had transformed their summer dalliance into a choice. Most of these parents were single, overweight, poorly dressed or oddly formed. Their children appeared distant, apprehending the world via snarl and glare. Looking at them reinforced the notion paternity was not a role for which I would be suited. Paternity remained the purview of my father. My father? The news would come as a surprise to him, but not a shock. My mother would cry. My sisters would fret. In the meantime, I kept refusing to answer the phone, fearful of who – or what – might force me into any obligatory disclosures. I started sleeping on the sofa, wind-drifting off into a world full of ambient sound.
***
“Bob … Bobby.” The voice belonged to Joanna, but it could’ve just as easily belonged to
my mother.
I sat up, disoriented. I could feel the mist of dawn through sapphire blinds.
“I have to tell you something,” Joanna insisted. She was sitting along the edge of the couch. “I saw Laurie at The Fairview tonight. She was drinking a Miller Lite.”
“Oh, who cares?” I bristled. “I think we both know what Laurie’s been up to this entire time.”
“I said something to her,” Joanna interrupted.
“You said something to her about what?”
“I said something to her about this,” Joanna responded. She was circling the sofa with her arm. “I suppose that I thought it needed to be done. Anyway, I went up and I asked Laurie what the fuck her fucking problem was, and she looked at me as if I was insane. Only I kept at it, explaining you were sick to death over everything that was happening, and that it didn’t help that she was out enjoying her good time.”
“Why would you do that?” I stretched one hand across my temples. “Now she’s gonna show up at our door, assuming that I need her by my side.”
“No, she’s not,” Joanna lit a cigarette. “In the middle of our spat, Laurie started to cry.”
“To cry?”
“To bawl.”
“About what?”
“She claims she had a miscarriage.” Joanna told me. “She claims that it happened a couple of weeks ago; that she was afraid to tell you for fear of how you might respond.”
“And then what?” I muttered.
“And then she left,” Joanna told me. “Ran out before I could ask her anything more.”
I leaned my head against the armrest. “You think she’s full of shit?” I said.
“No,” Joanna paused. “Up until tonight I would’ve said the entire pregnancy was just a hoax. But if that display that Laurie put on over at The Fairview was any indication … well, I just figured that you’d want to know.”
“Yeah … no … I do. I appreciate it. Thank you,” I said.
Joanna disappeared into her room.
Later that evening, Joanna and Lori surprised me with a “Bitch-Ain’t-Pregnant” party – a mid-July gathering that neglected to account for, or even acknowledge, any truth regarding my cowardice. There were loose-leaf banners strewn across the walls. “No Baby for Bobby,” one read; “You’re Free to Go Fuck,” another one offered. My secret was out, assuming that it had ever been an actual secret at all. And who could complain, what with all the pressure of it resolved? Tomorrow I would go to work, and I would have no way of knowing whether to mourn or curse or celebrate. Or at least that’s what I’d tell people. In my mind it remained fairly certain that I would’ve abandoned Laurie. The sudden news of any miscarriage only meant there’d be no dealing with that chore.
“Painting is freedom. If you jump, you might fall on the wrong side of the rope. But if you’re not willing to take the risk of breaking your neck, what good is it? You don’t jump at all.You have to wake people up; to revolutionize their way of identifying things. You’ve got to create images they won’t accept; force them to understand that they’re living in a pretty queer world, a world that’s not reassuring, a world that’s not what they think it is.”
“For me when I read the script there was a lot about Los Angeles, particularly the topography of Los Angeles was fascinating, even in the screenplay. And the idea that at night these creatures come out, specifically, the creatures of the animal kingdom in Los Angeles are coyotes and other animals, but really, specifically, coyotes. And if you live in Los Angeles – and I happen to have grown up there – they’re all over the place, looking like they’re starving; looking like they’re hungry, and looking like they’re literally going to eat you when they stare you down. They’re fearless. They’re fearless creatures. There was something about the nature of this character that was very much like that, and somehow brought together this natural animal world, and then this metropolis of Los Angeles, in a way that I had never read before, and I don’t think had been done before. And it wasn’t like you were cutting away to footage of coyotes. You were literally watching the personification of a coyote. And that was fascinating to me. And that meant an exploration of myself physically and mentally that I had never really done before.”
So said Jake Gyllenhaal during a Q Interview promoting 2014’s Nightcrawler. Gyllenhaal’s statement, which became a running meme throughout that circuit, maintains a tendency toward the earnest. The rub here stems not so much from the rabid stench of pretension as the fact that 30 lbs. of weight loss might not have been the way to go. Ultimately, Gyllenhaal’s approach served as a distraction, implying he views low-lying members of the media to be pariahs, metaphorically sucking the blood out of each city. Gyllenhaal’s character – Louis Bloom – aspired toward some mix of Rupert Pupkin and Travis Bickle. Only his execution fell far short; a sparse attempt that missed the mark.
As a professional, Gyllenhaal’s goal is to evolve. But in doing so he risks losing the ongoing advocacy of an early base that admired him not only because he was pretty (he was), or because he reminded them of a boy scout (he did), but primarily because he could nail all of the nuances of a performance. Listening to a 33-year-old Jake Gyllenhaal prattle on about his “exploration” of a character begins to sound more like a regression. For Gyllenhaal is gambling upon the elasticity of persona. The further – and more frequently – he stretches, the more worn out that suit of fabric will become.
To wit: If one were to plot Gyllenhaal’s most recent career choices as chronological points on a graph – with the X axis representing his personal level of distortion and the Y axis representing an audience’s approximation of belief – the downward trend would make itself known. Almost every major film role (with the exception of Dastan from Prince of Persia) would score high – despite descending – on the Y axis, while sloping out along the X. That slope would indicate a correlation between Gyllenhaal’s “exploration” of each character and the dwindling appreciation of his niche. End of Watch, Prisoners, Enemy, Nightcrawler, Southpaw … these represent engaging concepts, despite Gyllenhaal’s inclusion continuing to feel increasingly bereft.
In the interest of parallel, consider Christian Bale. Bale, much like Gyllenhaal, started out as a child actor. Bale, much like Gyllenhaal, had always been a method guy. Bale, much like Gyllenhaal, was being courted for the role of Bruce Wayne in Christopher Nolan’s reboot of Batman. Bale – at 29 – had already pulled off Patrick Bateman; Gyllenhaal – at 22 – had already pulled off Donnie Darko. Bale was the initial choice of Christopher Nolan; Gyllenhaal was the initial choice of David Goyer. Bale would eventually win out, and this would prove to be a critical point.
There were – and are – tiny cracks when it comes to Gyllenhaal. In 2005, the actor hinted at his dissatisfaction over Brokeback Mountain Director Ang Lee’s tendency to disassociate once principal filming began. Fourteen months later, Gyllenhaal was quoted in the New York Timesas saying he was disgruntled with Zodiac Director David Fincher’s endless takes. This would seem to indicate a measure of pseudo-intellectualism that brilliant fillmmakers might seek to avoid. And yet for Gyllenhaal, that level of narcissism might prove inborn.
Gyllenhaal grew up a progeny of Hollywood. His mother was a screenwriter, his father, a director. Gyllenhaal’s godfather was – and is – a cinematographer. His godmother is Jamie Lee Curtis. Given the circumstances, it is reasonable to assume Gyllenhaal’s never had to scratch and claw to make his way or survive. And yet, he’s overcompensated by choosing roles that disavow not only his nepotism, but good looks. The fact that Gyllenhaal has eschewed a lot of Christian-Grey-type offers should mean something. And it does. But it doesn’t change the fact that Gyllenhaal’s most memorable forays (e.g.,Holden Worther in The Good Girl, Robert Graysmith in Zodiac, etc.), retain some air of that blue-eyed nerd from October Sky. One way or another, Jacob Gyllenhaal will always have to battle for legitimacy. It is the price somebody pays for jumping ahead at the front door.
(Jake Gyllenhaal stars in Southpaw, arriving in theaters nationwide on July 24th.)
I went to see Batman Begins alone in an empty theater that had a max cap of fewer than 300 seats. I knew nothing about movies and even less about directors. I made no connection between Christopher Nolan and the auteur vision that had accompanied Memento. I only knew that this was Batman, and that Batman – as a concept – had always riveted me.
The pre-publicity for Batman Begins seemed underwhelming, particularly given the big-budget push that had preceded every previous Batman effort. I could remember the 30-second teaser for Tim’s Burton’s original – that chest plate, it was everything, for the simple fact that it revealed nothing at all. As a teenager I had gone to see the original Batman during its opening weekend, at a midnight screening that ran elbow-to-elbow across every row. Cineplexes continued churning Burton’s film at 90-minute intervals throughout the end of June. Short of Titanic, it went on to become the box-office meteor of that era. Christopher Nolan’s reboot, by way of comparison, came bearing all the mingy earmarks of an undernourished dog.
Of course, no one was using the term “reboot” back in those days, which made it odder still that Warner Brothers might see fit to give some wunderkind control. This was 2005, a point when Spider Man was riding high and Superman had lost control. Revenge of the Sith was a runaway blockbuster. George Bush had just been re-elected, 18 months after declaring “Mission accomplished!” from the front deck of a boat.
Meanwhile, Christopher Nolan seemed to be approaching everything from a non-conformist style. His film was rumored to feature neither the Joker nor the Penguin. Bruce Wayne was being played by an actor who cut the tension with his jaw. Could this outsider – Christian Bale – actually take on the auspices of Batman? No one knew for sure. But his role in American Psycho guaranteed he had the billion-dollar-ethos thing down pat.
And so I bought my ticket. And what a decision that turned out to be. Batman Begins presented characters that were cerebral; a comic-book mythology, surreal. Christopher Nolan introduced a loaded rifle in Act One, then disappeared down such a hole one never thought to wonder when or if that loaded rifle might return. The movie’s twists and turns were jarring, like some well-oiled wooden coaster clattering down the tracks. And when at last the blinds were open, that rifle raised the ante by an even 10%.
Consider, by way of example, Batman Begins’ climactic sequence. On the surface, the caped crusader is confronting his mentor, Ra’s al Ghul, on the train car of a monorail. And yet, David Goyer’s screenplay has accomplished so much that the audience is already keenly aware: A) that Ra’s al Ghul represents one of three surrogate father figures to Bruce Wayne, B) that monorail was originally constructed by Thomas Wayne, C) that monorail is currently headed on a collision course toward Gotham’s water hub, D) Gotham’s water hub is located inside the center of Wayne Tower, and E) Wayne Industries manufactured the microwave emitter both men are grappling over. So on one level, the audience gets to enjoy a brilliantly-choreographed fight scene. On another, Bruce Wayne is struggling in defense of a blood oath he has sworn to uphold.
And yet, it goes much deeper than that, really. The audience is presented with an integral relationship between a teacher and his student. One uses fear as a deterrent, the other as an instrument of war. Both men are similar in style and discipline, yet separated by their mystique. Visually, these two men complement each other, Bruce Wayne appearing – at one point – in an open-mouth cowl just as Ra’s al Ghul goes strapping on a mask that covers the lower-center of his face. Bruce Wayne is the heir to a throne that has grown malignant in his absence. His family’s legacy is under attack; threatened by a company-built mechanism sent hurtling toward Gotham’s aorta like a spike meant for the heart. Meanwhile, that mechanism raises a question of ethical boundaries: Should any company secure its fortunes to a necessity for death?
Ten minutes after Nolan’s movie ended, it occurred to me Tim Burton’s original would never be the same. Nolan’s caped crusader felt vicious and forthright; the majority of his decisions felt pathologically impaired. Nolan’s sequencing moved quickly, any extraneous elements were spared. More importantly, there was no Batman during the initial 60 minutes (in the same way there was no Man of Steel during the initial 47 minutes of Superman). The story – by way of its characters – meant something. And Nolan’s ideas were executed with such precision that both Bruce Waynes explored a separate fallacy of man.
By the end of 2007, nobody gave a shit about Spider-Man anymore. Superman was on life support, and a legion of lesser-known origin stories were suddenly clamoring to be heard. The cinematic universe had shifted. And a Dark-Knight sequel featuring a $250-million budget was about to redefine the way super-hero sagas should be told.
We know now how that sequel ended. We know that Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker transformed Jack Nicholson’s iconic romp into a blurb. We know that all three films in the Dark Knight canon would include recurring metaphors and plot points; that Nolan and DC would continue to feed off of each other’s world. We know that Heath Ledger would go on to win the only Oscar ever awarded for any major role in a super-hero movie. We know that The Dark Knight would be nominated for eight Academy Awards (and that Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard would be nominated for a BAFTA Award for their score). We know that Ledger’s Joker would continue to receive all of the glory, despite Tom Hardy’s Bane eventually proving to be a much more quotable turn. We know that one decade removed, the rising swell of super-hero mania is all-but-bound to wash asunder, just as we know that Nolan’s trilogy is one of the few bodies of work that will endure.
We know that Christian Bale has gone on to A-List mega-stardom. We know that Gary Oldman’s Commissioner Gordon revitalized an under-appreciated career. We know that – after abandoning the Dark Knight franchise – Katie Holmes has stumbled along like a wounded deer. We know that Skyfall, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Star Trek: Into Darkness, The Fast & The Furious 7, The Amazing Spider Man, Iron Man 3, Man of Steeland Daredevil (among others) have all stolen from The Dark Knight to an embarrassing degree. We know that certain aspects of The Dark Knight pop up in everything from video games to TV. We know that Batman Begins set the wheels in motion for a pair of billion-dollar juggernauts. But most of all, we know that Batman Begins currently represents the second-greatest super-hero movie ever created, just as we know that The Dark Knight franchise represents the second-greatest trilogy ever made.
(Batman Begins was originally released on June 15th, 2005.)
Accused my father of saying something hurtful that he’d never said
