Straight Cut Read Online Free PDF Page B

roused. The view of the city was magnificent from the old fort; also, I had certain associations. Harvey had done a more tolerable job than usual on a long slow pan over the city. He seemed to be using a tripod for once, or maybe he’d braced his arms on the wall. The city moved slowly through the frame from right to left. At around a hundred eighty degrees the shot flicked briefly over a knot of people who must have been up on the Belvedere with Harvey, so close they were out of focus. Harvey panned around to San Miniato on the hill behind and zoomed in on the façade.
    “Wait a second,” I said. “Can we run that back?” Ten thousand hours of editing gives you a certain responsiveness to the subliminal.
    “You like that one?” Harvey said. He was rewinding the film.
    “It’s worth seeing twice,” I said. There, I’d squeezed out another compliment. Here came the pan again. Ninety degrees. One twenty. One seventy. I leaned forward.
    There. Extreme close-up, a hair too close for the depth of field. Lauren. On screen for possibly a third of a second, and gone. Two degrees to the right and in slightly better focus: Kevin.
    On to San Miniato. I sat back in my chair.
    “Would have been a nice one if those people hadn’t walked through it,” Harvey said.
    “Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said.
    “Huh?” Ray said.
    “It’s an interesting effect, “I said. Utter foolishness, but since I was supposed to be the expert I could get away with it. The effect on me personally was certainly interesting enough. The next hour of film clips was absolutely meaningless. I had regressed to the point where I couldn’t read the image, couldn’t resolve the lines and shadows on the screen into representations of anything at all.
    Around midnight they ran out of film and put the lights back on. I looked at my watch, faked surprise and dismay at the time, and said good-bye, not too abruptly I hoped. When I got back to the street I was stone cold sober, which had been part of the plan. Otherwise, the scheme of cooling out with Harvey and Ray might fairly be said to have backfired.
    That being the case, I decided to walk to Brooklyn. It was a straight shot east to the bridge, and at that time of night I had an even chance of beating the train. I hitched up my bag and started across Prince Street. At West Broadway I crossed down to Spring.
    Most immediately on my mind was the infamous chicken theory of the cinema. Marshall McLuhan thought it up, and it goes more or less like this: Some anthropologists go to the jungle with their movie cameras and wander until they find an appropriately pristine tribe of natives. They make friends and spend weeks filming the normal activities and special ceremonies of this tribe. All goes well.
    The anthropologists depart to process, cut and print their film; then they return to show it. With native helpers they construct a special hut for the screening. Night falls, the tribe assembles, and the show begins. And ends.
    The natives are singularly unimpressed. In fact, they seem quite bored.
    “Well, how did you like the movie?” say the anthropologists, or words to that effect.
    “What are you referring to?” the natives inquire.
    “Why, you,” the anthropologists say. “Your daily lives, hunting, farming, dancing, and so forth. Yourselves, up there on the screen.”
    “The august visitors must be crazy,” the natives say. “There was nothing on the screen but lights and shadows.”
    At this point the anthropologists become annoyed. They barricade the hut and announce their intention to run the film again and again, until someone sees something.
    Which they do. The film is run and rerun many times.
    At last a perspicacious native raises his hand. The anthropologists stop the film and ask with some excitement what he has seen.
    “I saw a chicken,” the native says.
    The anthropologists are now, if possible, even more perplexed and annoyed than before. So far as they know, there are no