A long time ago, nearly as long ago as when the New York Times actually ran a headline about Todd Haynes’ and Christine Vachon’s "Poison" as ham-fisted as “Gay Film Wins at Sundance,” Village Voice critic Amy Taubin attended a screening of a movie I was working on. This was in New York in the early '90s. I was in my early 20s and just starting to get my own little projects.
As per norm, the day after the screening I called her on the telephone to ask what she thought. Taubin spat it over the line at me. I don’t remember anything else about the conversation, only that at some point she said, “There’s just so much death.”
It’s one of those lines you never forget.
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She wasn’t talking about the film. She was talking about her friends, people she knew. I was out of my league. I only knew her as a smart writer I was lucky to have at that screening and that the teacher of a filmmaking and theory class I’d taken not long before at Sarah Lawrence had pointed her out as the star (if you can call it that) of Michael Snow’s masterpiece "Wavelength," the entire action (if you can call it that) of which, come to think of it, entails Amy Taubin answering a telephone.
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As I drove last Thursday afternoon across the Inland Empire’s nubly 210 freeway and on towards I-15 and Vegas, the top story on KNX1070 News Radio relayed the discovery of a pair of severed human feet to join the previously discovered severed hands and head of a man, between 40 and 60 years old, all in the hills just below the Hollywood sign.
Well past Vegas and 10 miles before hitting Mesquite and the Arizona state line, I pulled off the interstate and drove a quarter mile into the desert as a purple sunset turned the mountains black. I got out of the car and simultaneously took a long piss and smoked a thin joint.
As I finished I heard tires coming around the bend behind me. I ground the roach into the Nevada sand and made a big show of zipping up my pants as I returned to the driver’s side and got into the car. On approach: an old white SUV bearing the insignia of a park ranger. It passed my car slowly and pulled off to the side of the road a hundred yards ahead. I made a U turn and headed back to the interstate.
At the top of the hour, the CBS News Radio Roundup -- KNX can be heard all the way into St. George -- reported the death of Sarah Burke, a 29-year-old freestyle skier, a report I vividly remember pointing to a head injury sustained during a practice run as the cause of death but did not name the location at which it occurred.
