THE VERY FIRST IMAGE IN THE STORY OF HIS LIFE WAS OF A MAN watching his father die. In a hospital room twisted with tubes and wires and beeping machines, he leaned toward the paper-thin cheek and whispered, “I love you.”
The screenplay was about a father and son who have never communicated, because that was their personal definition of what it meant to be a man. Having lost touch with his father, who has always been overbearing and critical, the son comes home when his mother is killed in a car accident. He is now a well-traveled photojournalist; his father is what he has always been, a simple, uneducated Iowa corn farmer. The son sees immediately how little he has in common with his father, how old his father has become, how difficult it is to live in the same house when the woman who served as a buffer between them is gone.
For complicated reasons, the son begins to do a photo exposeóf his father versus the government, objectively portraying him as an independent farmer victimized by price ceilings and no longer able to survive on his crops. Flashbacks show the events that built up the wall between the father and son; the rest of the film follows the gradual tearing down of that wall, as the son lays down his camera and works at his father’s side in the fields, beginning to understand him firsthand, not just as an observer.
The climax of the screenplay involves a stunning scene between father and son. The son, who has repeatedly reached out to his father, has still been kept at arm’s length; in fact, the only times they’ve seemed to connect are when they move side by side through the rows of corn.
Rebuffed by his father’s criticism of what he’s grown up to be, he finally explodes. He yells that he’s given the old man every chance to see him for what he really is; that any other father would be proud of how far his son has come; that he’d never have had to run halfway around the world to find his place if he’d been accepted in his own home. The father shakes his head and walks away. When the old man isn’t standing before him, the son notices the view—a sweep of land that his family owns. And he realizes that when he was little, he’d stand there and see the rolling green of the fields only for their boundaries, only for what lay on the other side.
But he also realizes that the reason his father hurt him as a child was because it was easier for him to let his son view him as a strict, demanding tyrant, instead of seeing him for what he really was—a farmer who’d never made anything of himself. Even being cast as a bastard was better, in his mind, than being seen as a failure.
There is a quiet reconciliation in the film that takes place at the harvest without any words, because in the past words have only driven them apart. And then at the end of the screenplay, the son publishes the photo-essay, which he spreads over his father’s hospital bed: emotional images not of a victim or a failure, but of a hero. The direction calls for a fade to white, and then comes a final scene in which the father, decades younger, lifts a smiling infant in his arms. We have come back to the beginning. “I love you,” he says, and the screenplay ends.
I knew when I read the screenplay that Alex had to do it. I also knew that I was playing with fire. To act the role of the son would mean bringing even more anger to the surface. To work through the confrontational scenes would mean facing his own rage. And Alex would leave the set and come home and ease the new, raw pain by hitting me.
But I knew that he never meant to hurt me. And I knew that it all pointed back to the part of Alex that still believed he wasn’t good enough. If Alex was forced to look at that side of himself, maybe it would be exorcised forever.
I THOUGHT HE WAS GOING TO KILL ME. HE WAS STANDING OVER ME in the bathroom, kicking me again and again, his face shaking with fury. He pulled me up by my hair, and as I wondered what else he could possibly do, he threw me back against the toilet and stalked away.
Trembling, I stood up and splashed water over my face. This time he had backhanded me across the mouth, which was surprising—
bruises were hardest to hide on my face, and he didn’t usually lose control enough to strike me there. I pressed a wad of toilet paper against the blood at the corner of my lips and tried to recognize the woman who looked back at me from the mirror.
I didn’t know where Alex was going and I didn’t particularly care.
I had been expecting this. Alex had finished readingThe Story of His Lifetoday, and I knew he’d feel this way afterward. It was the first step he’d have to take to healing; the second step would be his commitment to making the film.
I pulled on a nightgown and slipped between the covers, turning away from Alex’s side of the bed. A while later he came soundlessly into the room and began to strip off his clothes. He got into bed, pulled me into his arms, and looked out the window at the same stars I was trying to put into patterns.
“I didn’t go to my father’s funeral,” Alex said, and I started a little at the timbre of his voice. True, there was no one else in the house at this time of night, but some things were better whispered. “Mymamancalled me up and told me he was a sorry son of a bitch but that it would be the Christian thing to do.”
I closed my eyes, picturing in my mind that scene from the screenplay that you are left with, of a father lifting his son into the air. I pictured Alex sitting beside his father’s hospital bed. I saw the cameras rolling as he got his second chance.
“Course, I figured since he was the devil himself, Christian charity didn’t quite apply to him. I’ve never even seen his goddamn grave.”
Alex’s hands ran up and down my ribs, over places he had hurt hours before. “I’m going to direct it and co-produce,” he said quietly. “This time around, I want to be the one in control.”
JACK GREEN SAT NEXT TO ME WHILE A MALE STAND-IN HIS APPROXimate size had cameras and lights arranged around him. He was a veteran actor who’d done everything from comedy in Marilyn Monroe vehicles to the dramatic portrayal of an alcoholic that had won him an Oscar in 1963. But he could also whistle “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” through his armpit and shuffle a deck of cards with more finesse than a Vegas dealer, and he knew how to shoot the heads off the cattails that grew in the tall Iowa grass. Next to Alex, he was my favorite person on the set.
He was playing the role of the father, largely due to Alex’s persuasion, since Jack hadn’t made a film since 1975. At first, it had been fun to watch the people scurrying around on the set, unsure whether they should kowtow first to Jack, the legend, or to Alex, the god. And no one could be sure how Jack would take to direction from Alex. But after seeing the first batch of dailies, Jack had stood up and turned to Alex. “Kid,” he had said, offering his hand, “by the time you get to my age, you may just be as good as me.”
Now Jack raised his eyebrows, asking me if I wanted another card.
We were playing blackjack, and he was the house. “Hit me,” I said, tapping the top of the book we were using as a lap table.
Jack overturned the ten of diamonds and grinned. “Blackjack,” he said. He shook his head appreciatively. “Cassie, you got more luck than a three-titted whore.”
I laughed and jumped off Alex’s chair. “Don’t you need to get ready or something?”
Jack lifted his head and scanned the flurry of activity. “Well,” he said, “I suppose I could try to earn my keep.” He smiled and tossed me his script, which to my knowledge he hadn’t cracked since he’d stepped on the set ten weeks ago, although he’d yet to miss a line. He moved off toward Alex, who was gesturing to the director of photography.
I hadn’t talked to Alex all day, although that wasn’t unusual. During the weeks he’d been filmingThe Story of His Lifein Iowa, Alex had been busier than I’d ever seen him. There was always a line of crew people waiting to ask his technical opinion about something; there were reporters trying to get advance press interviews; there were backers to meet with about financing. In a way, Alex thrived on the stress. His career was on the line: not only was he attempting a film in which he wouldn’t be seen as a traditional romantic lead, he was directing for the first time. But all the pressure seemed to take his mind off the fact that the movie he was making and the emotions he was calling forth in front of a camera were hitting very close to home.
Alex had insisted on filming the confrontational scene between the father and son last. He’d allowed two days of filming for it, today being the first, because he wanted to catch the scene during the gloaming, when the hills and the cornfields in the distance were purpled by the sun. I watched a makeup artist step up to Jack and dampen his back with artificial sweat, ring his neck with something that looked like dirt.
He looked up from her ministrations and gave me a wink.
“It’s a good thing he’s forty years older than you are,” Alex said from behind me, “or I’d be jealous as hell.”
