Newsgroup: it.arti.cinema
Titolo: [MEMENTO] "Memento Mori" di Jonathan Nolan (il racconto originale)

Sono finalmente riuscito a mettere le mani sul fantomatico racconto di
Jonathan Nolan su cui Cristopher Nolan ha basato la sceneggiatura di
"Memento". Lo posto qui, certo che interessera' a parecchi.
MEMENTO MORI
by
Jonathan Nolan
What like a bullet can undeceive!"
                          -Herman Melville 
Your wife always used to say you'd be late for your own funeral.
Remember that? Her little joke because you were such a slob -always
late, always forgetting stuff, even before the incident. 
Right about now you're probably wondering if you were late for hers. 
You were there, you can be sure of that. That's what the picture's for
-the one tacked to the wall by the door. It's not customary to take
pictures at a funeral, but somebody, your doctors, I guess, knew you
wouldn't remember. They had it blown up nice and big and stuck it right
there, next to the door, so you couldn't help but see it every time you
got up to find out where she was. 
The guy in the picture, the one with the flowers? That's you. And what
are you doing? You're reading the headstone, trying to figure out who's
funeral you're at, same as you're reading it now, trying to figure why
someone stuck that picture next to your door. But why bother reading
something that you won't remember? 
She's gone, gone for good, and you must be hurting right now, hearing
the news. Believe me, I know how you feel. You're probably a wreck. But
give it five minutes, maybe ten. Maybe you can even go a whole half hour
before you forget. 
But you will forget -I guarantee it. A few more minutes and you'll be
heading for the door, looking for her all over again, breaking down when
you find the picture. How many times do you have to hear the news before
some other part of your body, other than that busted brain of yours,
starts to remember? 
Never-ending grief, never-ending anger. Useless without direction. Maybe
you can't understand what's happened. Can't say I really understand,
either. Backwards amnesia. That's what the sign says. CRS disease. Your
guess is as good as mine. 
Maybe you can't understand what happened to you. But you do remember
what happened to HER, don't you? The doctors don't want to talk about
it. They won't answer my questions. They don't think it's right for a
man in your condition to hear about those things. But you remember
enough, don't you? You remember his face. 
This is why I'm writing to you. Futile, maybe. I don't know how many
times you'll have to read this before you listen to me. I don't even
know how long you've been locked up in this room already. Neither do
you. But your advantage in forgetting is that you'll forget to write
yourself off as a lost cause. 
Sooner or later you'll want to do something about it. And when you do,
you'll just have to trust me, because I'm the only one who can help you.
______________________________ 
EARL OPENS ONE EYE after another to a stretch of white ceiling tiles
interrupted by a hand-printed sign taped right above his head, large
enough for him to read from the bed. An alarm clock is ringing
somewhere. He reads the sign, blinks,reads it again, then takes a look
at the room. 
It's a white room, overwhelmingly white, from the walls and the curtains
to the institutional furniture and the bedspread. The alarm clock is
ringing from the white desk under the window with the white curtains. At
this point Earl probably notices that he is lying on top of his white
comforter. He is already wearing a dressing gown and slippers. 
He lies back and reads the sign taped to the ceiling again. It says, in
crude block capitals, THIS IS YOUR ROOM. THIS IS A ROOM IN A HOSPITAL.
THIS IS WHERE YOU LIVE NOW. 
Earl rises and takes a look around. The room is large for a hospital
-empty linoleum stretches out from the bed in three directions. Two
doors and a window. The view isn't very helpful, either -a close of
trees in the center of a carefully manicured piece of turf that
terminates in a sliver of two-lane blacktop. The trees, except for the
evergreens, are bare -early spring or late fall, one or the other. 
Every inch of the desk is covered with Post-it notes, legal pads, neatly
printed lists, psychological textbooks, framed pictures. On top of the
mess is a half-completed crossword puzzle. The alarm clock is riding a
pile of folded newspapers. Earl slaps the snooze button and takes a
cigarette from the pack taped to the sleeve of his dressing gown. He
pats the empty pockets of his pajamas for a light. He rifles the papers
on the desk, looks quickly through the drawers. Eventually he finds a
box of kitchen matches taped to the wall next to the window. Another
sign is taped just above the box. It says in loud yellow letters,
CIGARETTE? CHECK FOR LIT ONES FIRST, STUPID. 
Earl laughs at the sign, lights his cigarette, and takes a long draw.
Taped to the window in front of him is another piece of looseleaf paper
headed YOUR SCHEDULE. 
It charts off the hours, every hour, in blocks: 10:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m.
is labeled go BACK TO SLEEP. Earl consults the alarm clock: 8:15. Given
the light outside, it must be morning. He checks his watch: 10:30. He
presses the watch to his ear and listens. He gives the watch a wind or
two and sets it to match the alarm clock. 
According to the schedule, the entire block from 8:00 to 8:30 has been
labeled BRUSH YOUR TEETH. Earl laughs again and walks over to the
bathroom. 
The bathroom window is open. As he flaps his arms to keep warm, he
notices the ashtray on the windowsill. A cigarette is perched on the
ashtray, burning steadily through a long finger of ash. He frowns,
extinguishes the old butt, and replaces it with the new one. 
The toothbrush has already been treated to a smudge of white paste. The
tap is of the push-button variety -a dose of water with each nudge. Earl
pushes the brush into his cheek and fiddles it back and forth while he
opens the medicine cabinet. The shelves are stocked with single-serving
packages of vitamins, aspirin, antidiuretics. The mouthwash is also
single-serving, about a shot-glass-worth of blue liquid in a sealed
plastic bottle. Only the toothpaste is regular-sized. Earl spits the
paste out of his mouth and replaces it with the mouthwash. As he lays
the toothbrush next to the toothpaste, he notices a tiny wedge of paper
pinched between the glass shelf and the steel backing of the medicine
cabinet. He spits the frothy blue fluid into the sink and nudges for
some more water to rinse it down. He closes the medicine cabinet and
smiles at his reflection in the mirror. 
"Who needs half an hour to brush their teeth?" 
The paper has been folded down to a minuscule size with all the
precision of a sixth-grader's love note. Earl unfolds it and smooths it
against the mirror. It reads - 
IF YOU CAN STILL READ THIS, THEN YOU'RE A FUCKING COWARD. 
Earl stares blankly at the paper, then reads it again. He turns it over.
On the back it reads - 
P.S.: AFTER YOU'VE READ THIS, HIDE IT AGAIN. 
Earl reads both sides again, then folds the note back down to its
original size and tucks it underneath the toothpaste. 
Maybe then he notices the scar. It begins just beneath the ear, jagged
and thick, and disappears abruptly into his hairline. Earl turns his
head and stares out of the corner of his eye to follow the scar's
progress. He traces it with a fingertip, then looks back down at the
cigarette burning in the ashtray. A thought seizes him and he spins out
of the bathroom. 
He is caught at the door to his room, one hand on the knob. Two pictures
are taped to the wall by the door. Earl's attention is caught first by
the MRI, a shiny black frame for four windows into someone's skull. In
marker, the picture is labeled YOUR BRAIN. Earl stares at it. Concentric
circles in different colors. He can make out the big orbs of his eyes
and, behind these, the twin lobes of his brain. Smooth wrinkles,
circles, semicircles. But right there in the middle of his head, circled
in marker, tunneled in from the back of his neck like a maggot into an
apricot, is something different. Deformed, broken, but unmistakable. A
dark smudge, the shape of a flower, right there in the middle of his
brain. 
He bends to look at the other picture. It is a photograph of a man
holding flowers, standing over a fresh grave. The man is bent over,
reading the headstone. For a moment this looks like a hall of mirrors or
the beginnings of a sketch of infinity: the one man bent over, looking
at the smaller man, bent over, reading the headstone. Earl looks at the
picture for a long time. Maybe he begins to cry. Maybe he just stares
silently at the picture. Eventually, he makes his way back to the bed,
flops down, seals his eyes shut, tries to sleep.
The cigarette burns steadily away in the bathroom. A circuit in the
alarm clock counts down from ten, and it starts ringing again. 
Earl opens one eye after another to a stretch of white ceiling tiles,
interrupted by a hand-printed sign taped right above his head, large
enough for him to read from the bed.
______________________________ 
You can't have a normal life anymore. You must know that. How can you
have a girlfriend if you can't remember her name? Can't have kids, not
unless you want them to grow up with a dad who doesn't recognize them.
Sure as hell can't hold down a job. Not too many professions out there
that value forgetfulness. Prostitution, maybe. Politics, of course. 
No. Your life is over. You're a dead man.The only thing the doctors are
hoping to do is teach you to be less of a burden to the orderlies. And
they'll probably never let you go home, wherever that would be. 
So the question is not "to be or not to be," because you aren't. The
question is whether you want to do something about it. Whether revenge
matters to you. 
It does to most people. For a few weeks, they plot, they scheme, they
take measures to get even. But the passage of time is all it takes to
erode that initial impulse. Time is theft, isn't that what they say? And
time eventually convinces most of us that forgiveness is a virtue.
Conveniently, cowardice and forgiveness look identical at a certain
distance. Time steals your nerve. 
If time and fear aren't enough to dissuade people from their revenge,
then there's always authority, softly shaking its head and saying, We
understand, but you're the better man for letting it go. For rising
above it. For not sinking to their level. And besides, says authority,
if you try anything stupid, we'll lock you up in a little room. 
But they already put you in a little room, didn't they? Only they don't
really lock it or even guard it too carefully because you're a cripple.
A corpse. A vegetable who probably wouldn't remember to eat or take a
shit if someone wasn't there to remind you. 
And as for the passage of time, well, that doesn't really apply to you
anymore, does it? Just the same ten minutes, over and over again. So how
can you forgive if you can't remember to forget? 
You probably were the type to let it go, weren't you? Before. But you're
not the man you used to be. Not even half. You're a fraction; you're the
ten-minute man. 
Of course, weakness is strong. It's the primary impulse. You'd probably
prefer to sit in your little room and cry. Live in your finite
collection of memories, carefully polishing each one. Half a life set
behind glass and pinned to cardboard like a collection of exotic
insects. You'd like to live behind that glass, wouldn't you? Preserved
in aspic. 
You'd like to but you can't, can you? You can't because of the last
addition to your collection. The last thing you remember. His face. His
face and your wife, looking to you for help. 
And maybe this is where you can retire to when it's over. Your little
collection. They can lock you back up in another little room and you can
live the rest of your life in the past. But only if you've got a little
piece of paper in your hand that says you got him. 
You know I'm right. You know there's a lot of work to do. It may seem
impossible, but I'm sure if we all do our part, we'll figure something
out. But you don't have much time. You've only got about ten minutes, in
fact. Then it starts all over again. So do something with the time
you've got.
______________________________ 
EARL OPENS HIS EYES and blinks into the darkness. The alarm clock is
ringing. It says 3:20, and the moonlight streaming through the window
means it must be  he early morning. Earl fumbles for the lamp, almost
knocking it over in the process. Incandescent light fills the room,
painting the metal furniture yellow, the walls yellow, the bedspread,
too. He lies back and looks up at the stretch of yellow ceiling tiles
above him, interrupted by a handwritten sign taped to the ceiling. He
reads the sign two, maybe three times, then blinks at the room around
him. 
It is a bare room. Institutional, maybe. There is a desk over by the
window. The desk is bare except for the blaring alarm clock. Earl
probably notices, at this point, that he is fully clothed. He even has
his shoes on under the sheets. He extracts himself from the bed and
crosses to the desk. Nothing in the room would suggest that anyone lived
there, or ever had, except for the odd scrap of tape stuck here and
there to the wall. No pictures, no books, nothing. Through the window,
he can see a full moon shining on carefully manicured grass. 
Earl slaps the snooze button on the alarm clock and stares a moment at
the two keys taped to the back of his hand. He picks at the tape while
he searches through the empty drawers. In the left pocket of his jacket,
he finds a roll of hundred-dollar bills and a letter sealed in an
envelope. He checks the rest of the main room and the bathroom. Bits of
tape, cigarette butts. Nothing else. 
Earl absentmindedly plays with the lump of scar tissue on his neck and
moves back toward the bed. He lies back down and stares up at the
ceiling and the sign taped to it. The sign reads, GET UP, GET OUT RIGHT
NOW. THESE PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO KILL YOU. 
Earl closes his eyes.
_____________________________
They tried to teach you to make lists in grade school, remember? Back
when your day planner was the back of your hand. And if your assignments
came off in the shower, well, then they didn't get done. No direction,
they said. No discipline. So they tried to get you to write it all down
somewhere more permanent. 
Of course, your grade-school teachers would be laughing their pants wet
if they could see you now. Because you've become the exact product of
their organizational lessons. Because you can't even take a piss without
consulting one of your lists.
They were right. Lists are the only way out of this mess. 
Here's the truth: People, even regular people, are never just any one
person with one set of attributes. It's not that simple. We're all at
the mercy of the limbic system, clouds of electricity drifting through
the brain. Every man is broken into twenty-four-hour fractions, and then
again within those twenty-four hours. It's a daily pantomime, one man
yielding control to the next: a backstage crowded with old hacks
clamoring for their turn in the spotlight. Every week, every day. The
angry man hands the baton over to the sulking man, and in turn to the
sex addict, the introvert, the conversationalist. Every man is a mob, a
chain gang of idiots. 
This is the tragedy of life. Because for a few minutes of every day,
every man becomes a genius. Moments of clarity, insight, whatever you
want to call them. The clouds part, the planets get in a neat little
line, and everything becomes obvious. I should quit smoking, maybe, or
here's how I could make a fast million, or such and such is the key to
eternal happiness. That's the miserable truth. For a few moments, the
secrets of the universe are opened to us. Life is a cheap parlor trick.
But then the genius, the savant, has to hand over the controls to the
next guy down the pike, most likely the guy who just wants to eat potato
chips, and insight and brilliance and salvation are all entrusted to a
moron or a hedonist or a narcoleptic. 
The only way out of this mess, of course, is to take steps to ensure
that you control the idiots that you become. To take your chain gang,
hand in hand, and lead them. The best way to do this is with a list. 
It's like a letter you write to yourself. A master plan, drafted by the
guy who can see the light, made with steps simple enough for the rest of
the idiots to understand. Follow steps one through one hundred. Repeat
as necessary. 
Your problem is a little more acute, maybe, but fundamentally the same
thing. 
It's like that computer thing, the Chinese room. You remember that? One
guy sits in a little room, laying down cards with letters written on
them in a language he doesn't understand, laying them down one letter at
a time in a sequence according to someone else's instructions. The cards
are supposed to spell out a joke in Chinese. The guy doesn't speak
Chinese, of course. He just follows his instructions. 
There are some obvious differences in your situation, of course: You
broke out of the room they had you in, so the whole enterprise has to be
portable. And the guy giving the instructions -that's you, too, just an
earlier version of you. And the joke you're telling, well, it's got a
punch line. I just don't think anyone's going to find it very funny. 
So that's the idea. All you have to do is follow your instructions. Like
climbing a ladder or descending a staircase. One step at a time. Right
down the list. Simple. 
And the secret, of course, to any list is to keep it in a place where
you're bound to see it.
______________________________ 
HE CAN HEAR THE BUZZING through his eyelids. Insistent. He reaches out
for the alarm clock, but he can't move his arm. 
Earl opens his eyes to see a large man bent double over him. The man
looks up at him, annoyed, then resumes his work. Earl looks around him.
Too dark for a doctor's office. 
Then the pain floods his brain, blocking out the other questions. He
squirms gain, trying to yank his forearm away,  the one that feels like
it's burning. The arm doesn't move, but the man shoots him another
scowl. Earl adjusts himself in the chair to see over the top of the
man's head. 
The noise and the pain are both coming from a gun in the man's hand -a
gun with a needle where the barrel should be. The needle is digging into
the fleshy underside of Earl's forearm, leaving a trail of puffy letters
behind it. 
Earl tries to rearrange himself to get a better view, to read the
letters on his arm, but he can't. He lies back and stares at the
ceiling. 
Eventually the tattoo artist turns off the noise, wipes Earl's forearm
with a piece of gauze, and wanders over to the back to dig up a pamphlet
describing how to deal with a possible infection. Maybe later he'll tell
his wife about this guy and his little note. Maybe his wife will
convince him to call the police. 
Earl looks down at the arm. The letters are rising up from the skin,
weeping a little. They run from just behind the strap of Earl's watch
all the way to the inside of his elbow. Earl blinks at the message and
reads it again. It says, in careful little capitals, I RAPED AND KILLED
YOUR WIFE.
______________________________ 
It's your birthday today, so I got you a little present. I would have
just bought you a beer, but who knows where that would have ended? 
So instead, I got you a bell. I think I may have had to pawn your watch
to buy it, but what the hell did you need a watch for, anyway? 
You're probably asking yourself, Why a bell? In fact, I'm guessing
you're going to be asking yourself that question every time you find it
in your pocket. Too many of these letters now. Too many for you to dig
back into every time you want to know the answer to some little
question. 
It's a joke, actually. A practical joke. But think of it this way: I'm
not really laughing at you so much as with you. 
I'd like to think that every time you take it out of your pocket and
wonder, Why do I have this bell? a little part of you, a little piece of
your broken brain, will remember and laugh, like I'm laughing now. 
Besides, you do know the answer. It was something you learned before. So
if you think about it, you'll know. 
Back in the old days, people were obsessed with the fear of being buried
alive. You remember now? Medical science not being quite what it is
today, it wasn't uncommon for people to suddenly wake up in a casket. So
rich folks had their coffins outfitted with breathing tubes. Little
tubes running up to the mud above so that if someone woke up when they
weren't supposed to, they wouldn't run out of oxygen. Now, they must
have tested this out and realized that you could shout yourself hoarse
through the tube, but it was too narrow to carry much noise. Not enough
to attract attention, at least. So a string was run up the tube to a
little bell attached to the headstone. If a dead person came back to
life, all he had to do was ring his little bell till someone came and
dug him up again.
I'm laughing now, picturing you on a bus or maybe in a fast-food
restaurant, reaching into your pocket and finding your little bell and
wondering to yourself where it came from, why you have it. Maybe you'll
even ring it. 
Happy birthday, buddy. 
I don't know who figured out the solution to our mutual problem, so I
don't know whether to congratulate you or me. A bit of a lifestyle
change, admittedly, but an elegant solution, nonetheless. 
Look to yourself for the answer. 
That sounds like something out of a Hallmark card. I don't know when you
thought it up, but my hat's off to you. Not that you know what the hell
I'm talking about. But, honestly, a real brainstorm. After all,
everybody else needs mirrors to remind themselves who they are. You're
no different. 
______________________________
THE LITTLE MECHANICAL VOICE PAUSES, then repeats itself. It says, "The
time is 8:00 a.m. This is a courtesy call." Earl opens his eyes and
replaces the receiver. The phone is perched on a cheap veneer headboard
that stretches behind the bed, curves to meet the corner, and ends at
the minibar. The TV is still on, blobs of flesh color nattering away at
each other. Earl lies back down and is surprised to see himself, older
now, tanned, the hair pulling away from his head like solar flares. The
mirror on the ceiling is cracked, the silver fading increases. Earl
continues to stare at himself, astonished by what he sees. He is fully
dressed, but the clothes are old, threadbare in places. 
Earl feels the familiar spot on his left wrist for his watch, but it's
gone. He looks down from the mirror to his arm. It is bare and the skin
has changed to an even tan, as if he never owned a watch in the first
place. The skin is even in color except for the solid black arrow on the
inside of Earl's wrist, pointing up his shirtsleeve. He stares at the
arrow for a moment. Perhaps he doesn't try to rub it off anymore. He
rolls up his sleeve. 
The arrow points to a sentence tattooed along Earl's inner arm. Earl
reads the sentence once, maybe twice. Another arrow picks up at the
beginning of the sentence, points farther up Earl's arm, disappearing
under the rolled-up shirtsleeve. He unbuttons his shirt. 
Looking down on his chest, he can make out the shapes but cannot bring
them into focus, so he looks up at the mirror above him. 
The arrow leads up Earl's arm, crosses at the shoulder, and descends
onto his upper torso, terminating at a picture of a man's face that
occupies most of his chest. The face is that of a large man, balding,
with a mustache and a goatee. It is a particular face, but like a police
sketch it has a certain unreal quality. 
The rest of his upper torso is covered in words, phrases, bits of
information, and instructions, all of them written backward on Earl,
forward in the mirror. 
Eventually Earl sits up, buttons his shirt, and crosses to the desk. He
takes out a pen and a piece of notepaper from the desk drawer, sits, and
begins to write.
______________________________ 
 
I don't know where you'll be when you read this. I'm not even sure if
you'll bother to read this. I guess you don't need to. 
It's a shame, really, that you and I will never meet. But, like the song
says, "By the time you read this note, I'll be gone." 
We're so close now. That's the way it feels. So many pieces put
together, spelled out. I guess it's just a matter of time until you find
him. 
Who knows what we've done to get here? Must be a hell of a story, if
only you could remember any of it. I guess it's better that you can't. 
I had a thought just now. Maybe you'll find it useful. 
Everybody is waiting for the end to come, but what if it already passed
us by? What if the final joke of Judgment Day was that it had already
come and gone and we were none the wiser? Apocalypse arrives quietly;
the chosen are herded off to heaven, and the rest of us, the ones who
failed the test,  just keep on going, oblivious. Dead already,
wandering around long after the gods have stopped keeping score, still
optimistic about the future. 
I guess if that's true, then it doesn't matter what you do. No
expectations. If you can't find him, then it doesn't matter, because
nothing matters. And if you do find him, then you can kill him without
worrying about the consequences. Because there are no consequences. 
That's what I'm thinking about right now, in this scrappy little room.
Framed pictures of ships on the wall. I don't know, obviously, but if I
had to guess, I'd say we're somewhere up the coast. If you're wondering
why your left arm is five shades browner than your right, I don't know
what to tell you. I guess we must have been driving for a while. And,
no, I don't know what happened to your watch. 
And all these keys: I have no idea. Not a one that I recognize. Car keys
and house keys and the little fiddly keys for padlocks. What have we
been up to? 
I wonder if he'll feel stupid when you find him. Tracked down by the
ten-minute man.  Assassinated by a vegetable. 
I'll be gone in a moment. I'll put down the pen, close my eyes, and then
you can read this through if you want. 
I just wanted you to know that I'm proud of you. No one who matters is
left to say it. No one left is going to want to. 
EARL'S EYES ARE WIDE OPEN, staring through the window of the car.
Smiling eyes. Smiling through the window at the crowd gathering across
the street. The crowd gathering around the body in the doorway. The body
emptying slowly across the sidewalk and into the storm drain.
______________________________ 
A stocky guy, facedown, eyes open. Balding head, goatee. In death, as in
police sketches, faces tend to look the same. This is definitely
somebody in particular. But really, it could be anybody. 
Earl is still smiling at the body as the car pulls away from the curb.
The car? Who's to say? Maybe it's a police cruiser. Maybe it's just a
taxi. 
As the car is swallowed into traffic, Earl's eyes continue to shine out
into the night, watching the body until it disappears into a circle of
concerned pedestrians. He chuckles to himself as the car continues to
make distance between him and the growing crowd. 
Earl's smile fades a little. Something has occurred to him. He begins to
pat down his pockets; leisurely at first, like a man looking for his
keys, then a little more desperately. Maybe his progress is impeded by a
set of handcuffs. He begins to empty the contents of his pockets out
onto the seat next to him. Some money. A bunch of keys. Scraps of paper.
A round metal lump rolls out of his pocket and slides across the vinyl
seat.  Earl is frantic now. He hammers at the plastic divider between
him and the driver, begging the man for a pen. Perhaps the cabbie
doesn't speak much English. Perhaps the cop isn't in the habit of
talking to suspects. Either way, the divider between the man in front
and the man behind remains closed. A pen is not forthcoming. 
The car hits a pothole, and Earl blinks at his reflection in the
rearview mirror. He is calm now. The driver makes another corner, and
the metal lump slides back over to rest against Earl's leg with a little
jingle. He picks it up and looks at it,  curious now. It is a little
bell. A little metal bell. Inscribed on it are his name and a set of
dates. He recognizes the first one: the year in which he was born. But
the second date means nothing to him. Nothing at all. 
As he turns the bell over in his hands, he notices the empty space on
his wrist where his watch used to sit. There is a little arrow there,
pointing up his arm. Earl looks at the arrow, then begins to roll up his
sleeve.
_____________________________ 
"You'd be late for your own funeral," she'd say. Remember? The more I
think about it, the more trite that seems. What kind of idiot, after
all, is in any kind of rush to get to the end of his own story? 
And how would I know if I were late,  anyway? I don't have a watch
anymore. I don't know what we did with it. 
What the hell do you need a watch for,  anyway? It was an antique.
Deadweight tugging at your wrist. Symbol of the old you. The you that
believed in time. 
No. Scratch that. It's not so much that you've lost your faith in time
as that time has lost its faith in you. And who needs it,  anyway? Who
wants to be one of those saps living in the safety of the future, in the
safety of the moment after the moment in which they felt something
powerful? Living in the next moment, in which they feel nothing.
Crawling down the hands of the clock, away from the people who did
unspeakable things to them. Believing the lie that time will heal all
wounds -which is just a nice way of saying that time deadens us. 
But you're different. You're more perfect.  Time is three things for
most people, but for you, for us, just one. A singularity. One moment.
This moment. Like you're the center of the clock, the axis on which the
hands turn. Time moves about you but never moves you. It has lost its
ability to affect you. What is it they say? That time is theft? But not
for you. Close your eyes and you can start all over again. Conjure up
that necessary emotion, fresh as roses. 
Time is an absurdity. An abstraction. The only thing that matters is
this moment. This moment a million times over. You have to trust me. If
this moment is repeated enough, if you keep trying -and you have to keep
trying -eventually you will come across the next item on your list. 
End.


<Snip!>
Per favori mi posti il Carnacina versione aggiornata???
Luke

 "Memento". Lo posto qui, certo che interessera' a parecchi.
URCA!
ma dove l'hai trovato?? L'anno scorso avvicinai il buon Jonathan
chiedendogli se l'avrebbe pubblicato e mi disse che c'erano delle
trattative con uan casa americana.
:-))
Vale
-- 
n. 3, il larice

L'anno scorso avvicinai il buon Jonathan
Dove, su a Venezia? C'erano tutti e due? (Ma gia', quello fu un film che
allora mi ero perso e che ho recuperato solo quando e' uscito in sala).
Che tipi sono?
Credo che il racconto sia stato pubblicato da Faber&Faber insieme con la
sceneggiatura...

 sceneggiatura...
Evvai!
Ode a Faber&Faber.



Cioè hai chiesto il racconto a Jonathan Nolan e lui non te l'ha scritto con
il sangue sul momento su un qualsiasi pezzo di carta, conquistato dai tuoi
occhioni? Deve essere gay....
Ciao da Antonello

 Ode a Faber&Faber.
Sono anche gli editori del LoBrutto e di quella bio di Leone che dovrei
tradurre... :-)

 su Googlegroups: ho saputo su un ng di sceneggiatura che e' incluso
mi dici come si chiama questo ng?
-- 
A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know?
It has to constantly move forward or it dies.

 occhioni? Deve essere gay....
Oppure la Vale portava gli occhiali da sole.
-- 
http://www.cinemah.com
http://www.tevac.com

 mi dici come si chiama questo ng?
misc.writing.screenplays

 Oppure la Vale portava gli occhiali da sole.
sarebbe scortese parlare a degli sconosciuti indossando occhiali da
sole...
(suona ambigua come frase ma spero il senso arrivi)


 la famiglia Nolan mi ha definitivamente conquistata :-)
ok, fregherà a nessuno ;) ...
...ma in effetti Nolan è davvero un tipo simpatico, così
come il protagonista di Following Jeremy Theobald e Gillian El-Kadi, la
ragazza che interpreta la prima padrona di casa, quella che li becca mentre
stanno "rubando".
erano alla mia stessa università a londra, e li ho conosciuti alla Film
Society. a quel tempo credo che Nolan fosse già un post-graduate, ma
bazzicava spesso
da quelle parti ed insieme agli altri due faceva miliardi di cose: rassegne,
regie teatrali, corsi di regia, corti... ecc... (ovviamente con il supporto
di un'università organizzatissima...)
persone davvero in gamba, determinate e tenaci, tenuto conto anche del fatto
che studiavano
materie pesantucce (medicina, fisiologia...)...
moni... just to let you know :)
PS: da qualche altra parte si parlava di Following: vi segnalo un'intervista
interessante al sito 
http://www.projecta.net/nolan.htm
--
"Sono la regina di angeli in attesa di dolce risveglio tra le braccia
entriamo un pò respirando piano tra le braccia in attesa di giochi
senza memoria dove vendersi e svendersi e poi dimenticare.
Cosa d'alta magia non ferirsi mai."

 interessante al sito 
http://www.projecta.net/nolan.htm
Visto che il thread e' partito con un post ciccione, rinnovo postando
l'intervista per chi non riesce ad andare su web (io sono riuscito a
tirarla giu' da un altro computer). Molto interessante, in effetti,
grazie per la segnalazione.
Tom: The first thing that we were wondering about is the way you
financed this film. From what I understood you were working your day job
and shooting in the weekends? 
Christopher Nolan: That's right The way we made the film is.. we didn't
have any money, so we were all working full time jobs. We'd work during
the week and we shoot on saturdays. And we shot probably about twenty,
twenty-two full days and then odd little bits, but I paid for the film
from what I was earning with my day job. We spread the shoot out over
about a year. Whenever I would run out of money or people would go out
and do other things we would take a break for a month or something, earn
more money and come back and shoot some more. So that was the way it was
made and we managed to finish the film without owing any money to
anyone. 
Tom: Didn't you have real trouble with the continuity, shooting over a
one year period? 
Christopher: It was difficult from a continuity point of view, but I
knew that it would be. It was one of the reasons for the structure of
the script as well as I wanted to experiment with that kind of narrative
and tell the story that way. It makes it much easier from a continuity
point of view. Because what you're doing is showing a scene and then
changing the timeframe and showing a scene from a different time, so
when you come back to the time of the first scene, your continuity
doesn't have to be perfect, people will not notice so much. Also because
I was shooting the film myself and I was watching the rushes during the
week I pretty much had the film in mind and I could remember how things
had been and how to continue them. 
Joep: Wasn't it tough on Jeremy wearing long hair and then cutting it
again, or were those shoots split up in two periods? 
Christopher: It was split up, we shot all the long hair stuff to begin
with and then Jerry had to cut his hair for the Edinburgh festival
because he was in a play and it was in the summer so we had to finish
all that stuff and did all the short hair stuff after that. 
Tom: Was that a coincidence that you had to cut your hair anyway, or was
it in the script? 
Jeremy: No, I think I'm so vain that I don't look very good with long
hair. It was always in the script that I would cut my hair, it was just
timing. It gave us a deadline so we would finish all the long hair
stuff. 
Tom: Going back to the structure of the script, did you always plan to
make the film in this particular way or did it force itself upon the
premise of the script? 
Christopher: I think the premise in the way of the character who follows
people, lent itself to this structural idea I had for some time. Because
when this guy is following people you can see him follow three different
people. Then you have to connect them, but of course he is following
them at three different times. I had this structural idea in terms of
telling the story in an unchronological way using narrative as a
controlled release information. But that release of information is not
based on time. It is based on the way stories are released in the real
world. Which is that you get the complete picture building out of a sort
of skeleton version of what you're first given, the newspaper headline
version if you will. And then you see the story expand organically so
you're learning things about the entire story and that contributes to
the complete picture. 
Tom: So it's sort of like someone doing research on a certain case and
getting these bits and pieces of the puzzle? 
Christopher: Exactly. And that seems to me the way we get most of the
stories in real life anyway. 
Joep: Or even remembering stories. 
Christopher: Or even remembering them, exactly. Or if someone is telling
a story. People will never say: 'Okay I woke up this morning and then I
went to do this and then that.' 
Joep: But it seems this the only way to tell the story, because any
other way would give away the whole thing. 
Christopher: If you watch the film a second time and you know the ending
I think the structure becomes much clearer and why it is told this way
becomes much clearer. Because the film doesn't rest on the twists. The
twist at the end makes sense if you watch it again and it becomes quite
a different film the second time you watch it. 
Tom: It gives more meaning to all the things you see. 
Christopher: Even a different meaning as well. Not just more meaning.
But by watching these people and seeing who's doing what to whom and all
the rest, because you know what is going to happen. So you watch it more
from the point-of-view of the detail and how it forms the main
character's voyeurism and how that is played upon by the people around
him. 
Joep: As viewer you realise at the exact same time as the main character
what has happened to him. 
Christopher: I think it plays very well a second time. Maybe even people
that watch it the first time and don't like it will think it's better
the second time, because they will understand a bit better why I told
the story the way I have. It is not just a gimmick, it has a reason. 
Tom: I could also imagine that the scene where your character (Jeremy)
hooks up with the burglar, the first time round you wonder why the hell
he's inviting him. You know he's a bit of a wacko, but that still seems
kind of strange at first. In the end that becomes clear. 
Christopher: Exactly and you sort of think why didn't I realise that the
first time. It holds together pretty well the second time in terms of
the logic of the plot. People are always trying to poke holes into the
plot, so I had to answer most of the questions. I think I've found one
hole, but I'm not going to tell you what. 
Jeremy: It also helps us at the box office, because now people have to
go twice. 
Joep: Because everyone was such involved in making this film didn't
Jeremy sometimes help you in the creative process of shooting it? 
Christopher: I don't know. I'm pretty dictatorial actually, but when you
do your own camera work you're pretty much in power. 
Joep: How do you work with a person like that, Jeremy? 
Jeremy: He is not as dictatorial as he thinks and there are subtle ways
to get him to do what you want to do as opposed to what he wants to do.
Christopher: So he thinks. 
(everyone laughs) 
Christopher: Well to tell you the truth, in working with actors and
working with Jerry, I think actors need to concentrate on their acting
and play the character. It's not good if an actor is too camera
conscious. But it's good to work with a person like Jerry who knows how
a film is made, so technically he can be helpful. I think if you get too
far in that direction it kind of loses the sense of reality of the
character and you start playing too much for the camera, so it's a
balance. 
Tom: But you must have had some influence being the co-producer. 
Jeremy: Yeah, because of the way the film was made in terms of low
budget everybody did everything. But when we started first wanting to
make the film Chris and I were talking about how to do it. And I had a
bunch of friends who were actors and obviously I am one myself. Then
there were several people I knew who were running businesses in London
who I could count on and get favors from in terms of locations. So that
was my sort of production input into it, so I took Chris to all these
bars and restaurants and would suggest certain locations. I would ask
'what do you think?' and he would say 'maybe'. I asked many peoples I
had worked with before to be interviewed for the parts and we cast out
of my friends, so that was my input. 
Christopher: And I was really happy about the locations, because I think
we've used them all. We shot scenes at all of them, because they are all
great great places and they really affect the look of the film.
Especially the bars, because they are useful from a narrative point of
view with these funny doors, so it's very recognizable. We couldn't have
planned it like that. 
Tom: So a good co-operation then? 
Christopher: Yes. You need that when you have no money and when all you
have is each other and the people around you. So the concept of being
dictatorial is more in a sense of having the last word on things. If
you're trying to make the best film you have to be willing to listen to
what people are suggesting and then make a decision. That is what a
director is, a decision maker. 
Tom: I would imagine that for a film like this, which has such a complex
structure a lot of the decision making is in your head, because you know
how it is going to play. 
Christopher: I found when people were reading the script that they were
more confused by reading the script then they were by seeing the film.
Because a lot of it is visual and how you see thing and how you
emphasise things visually. But I think that is true in most films, that
it's always a peculiar balance of collaboration and single-mindedness.
Because there has to be a unifying vision, otherwise you would run into
all these problems in terms of evenness of tone and all the rest. Just
as the actor has to be the actor and has to be the judge of the way the
character fits into the story, in terms of emphasis and in terms of
saying things. Everyone has to take his responsibilities in making sure
that there's a certain consistency in the various elements. 
Tom: There's also lots of things that you can't put down in a script. 
Christopher: Yeah, the script is just a skeleton, really a framework you
put the film onto. 
Joep: With this film you have worked with very few people. If you're
going to do a new movie it's going to be a very different experience. 
Christopher: I don't think I'm ever going to make a film this way again.
And I think what is wonderful about this film is not having to answer to
anybody in creative terms except myself. But that doesn't mean I did
things exactly as I planned. You know there's this great collaboration
between all these people involved, but I was free to do this for all the
right reasons instead of having people tell me what to do. And I don't
think I will ever be able to do that again, to tell you the truth. The
next film I raise money for will be someone else's money and so
immediately you have a responsibility to somebody else. So in a way I
don't think I will ever have it this good again. But I will be able to
spend more money for what there is on screen. The next thing will be
partly in color and will be 35 millimeter and all that sort of thing. It
gives you technical advantages. I don't know, ask me again in a year. 
And then Jeremy and Christopher were off to the Tiger Awards ceremony in
which their film 'Following' competed with nine other films from all
over the world. All made by independent film companies and all debut
feature films by first time directors.
2nd part
Interviewing Christopher Nolan and Jeremy Theobald [part 2/2]
Surprisingly they do win, together with two other films. We met them
again right after the ceremony. 
Joep: Were you surprised? 
Christopher: Very surprised. I don't know, I have never really won
anything in my life so it's kind of weird. 
Joep: So what did you win? 
Christopher: Oh, the prize is distribution in this country and ten
thousand dollars as well. 
Joep: So you could make a film like this again. 
Christopher: It's more than we spent on the film to begin with actually.
I'm really surprised, really happy and I'm grateful to the festival.
It's been an excellent festival allround, so this was the icing on the
cake. 
Joep: Did you know about any of the others in the competition? 
Christopher: I wasn't really paying attention, I was so nervous. They
announced us in alphabetical order and we were last. 
Joep: What did they say about your film? 
Christopher: They said they were impressed with the unconventional
treatment of the genre, which sounds good. 
Joep: What genre? 
Christopher: Film noir I suppose. They didn't say. 
Joep: This is a film noir kind of film isn't it? 
Christopher: Yes I think so. 
Joep: So did you look back on the past when making it? 
Christopher: Definitely. I think for me film noir is an influence, but
not just in a visual sense. But more in the way film noir stories are
constructed and in drawing from crime fiction stories like Jim Thompson,
where very often you have a triangular relationship and the key to it
all is that you have to judge people by their actions, not by what they
say or the way they are portrayed or where the story dictates the
character. It's more about who does what to who that's important. 
Joep: The actors in this movie are kind of classical in that sense. The
girl (played by Lucy Russel) looks very much like Marilyn Monroe. 
Christopher: Well I think the black and white helped with that. Also as
we progressed making the film it became a more conscious effort to just
kind of embrace some of those elements of older films, especially from
the selection of props and costumes, the lighting, things like that. We
definitely worked further in that direction as we went along. 
Joep: The filmfestival guide mentioned that you started making films at
the age of eight. 
Christopher: Seven actually, the guide is wrong. 
Joep: So you must have made many films? 
Christopher: Oh yes, short films. This is my first long film that I
really finished and have been able to show people. I started making
films when I was seven or eight, back then I was making films with a
friend who also has a film here called 'Ghenghis Blues'. He and I were
so excited to be here, because we have been making films together since
we were only eight and these were our first films to get shown to a
large audience. 
Joep: And he's doing really well too. 
Christopher: Oh yeah, they are doing fantastic. They just won an award
at Sundance, the audience award there. And the screening here has been
good too. I hope we will do another festival together. 
Joep: Maybe you could even get together and make a film again. 
Christopher: Maybe, but they are doing documentaries at the moment. If
you compare these, they are two very different films, which is funny in
a way. 
Tom: How many festivals have you been to with Following? 
Christopher: This is our fifth. 
Tom: So did you show it in England? 
Christopher: No I haven't shown it in England at all actually. This is
the European premiere. It has only been seen in North America. 
Tom: How was it received there? 
Christopher: Really well. We got great screenings, great feedback in San
Fransisco, Toronto, Vancouver and at Slamdance we won a prize for black
and white filmmakers. Slamdance is this Sundance offshoot, they call it
a parasite. But Slamdance was a lot of fun, it's a bit bigger and they
got a lot of submissions this year and they had some sponsors, but it's
still by filmmakers for filmmakers. You actually have to lure people
into your screenings by handing out flyers. It's a very different
approach. It's very much in line with the way we made our film, very
appropriate. 
Tom: I can imagine your film being well received in America, because
film noir is very much an American genre. 
Christopher: Yes I think so. I think it's a distillation of very
American things. And I think also that the technical limitations aren't
such a problem in America, because many people are used to seeing a lot
of low budget films. There you can find an audience that will look past
those limitations. Which is something which is still lacking in the UK.
It would be interesting if we get to show it there, we are talking to a
distributor at the moment. 
Tom: So how about the next film you're working on? I hear you're now
based in America? 
Christopher: Yes I'm living in Los Angeles. 
Tom: Is it going to be mostly an American production? 
Christopher: We are working on two things at the moment. One is American
and the other even though it is for an American company it's an English
project and will be set in London. I don't know which of them is going
to happen first, but it's kind of good I'm doing them both. 
And on that note Christopher and Jeremy said goodbye to go to the dinner
party celebrating their prize. We hope to see them again. Perhaps at
next year's edition of the Rotterdam filmfestival.