As we approached thirty together, my wife Sayer was writing her first feature-length film. We were both filmmakers, so I read versions of the script from time to time and gave my feedback. In the story, a woman in her late twenties was married to a decent, but self-absorbed, man in his late twenties. The protagonist, despite the fact that she loved the man, began to question the value of a heterosexual relationship and, more specifically, the limitations of maleness, which was characterized as emotionally primitive and inarticulate. The woman ultimately left the man to experiment with romantic intimacy between women. As the screenplay developed, I asked Sayer, “Is this about us? Are you planning to leave me for a woman?” She answered that, of course, she was drawing on elements from our life as material, but her writing was just creative exploration for character development in the movie.
The script was finished, the film was cast and when the shooting began I was sometimes present on the set, documenting the production behind the scenes with a video camera. Sayer’s sister had traveled to China shortly before this time and had bought me a pair of silk pajamas as a gift. During the scene in which the protagonist tells her partner that she is leaving him, the actor, ostensibly playing me, was wearing my silk pajamas. That night I again expressed my uneasiness with the resemblance between the film and our life and Sayer again reassured me that I had no need to feel threatened. But at the end of the shoot in early October, 1992, Sayer packed a suitcase and told me she was relocating with our dog to New Orleans for a while; she had fallen in love with the lead actress, who was essentially playin g her in the film, and said that I should find my own apartment by the end of October when she returned. Sayer had written and directed the end of our marriage, just as I had feared, and we were merely actors in the scenario.
The day after Sayer left I went for a walk on a rainy fall afternoon, feeling out of control, searching in my mind for some meaning that might radiate outward through all of the apparently unrelated details, something I could use to revise the story. I wanted to change the headline from “man dumped” to “man’s remarkable transformation gives him second chance.” But nothing emerged and I concluded that, though we think we’re writing the story of our own lives, we’re actually blindly stumbling through our predetermines roles, generally at the mercy of someone else’s intentions. Actually, I don’t know if I thought that. I’m adding that now, looking back from the vantage of 25 years remove. All I probably thought at the time was that my life was ruined and I felt really bad.
I walked past a General Cinema theater and saw that a movie called “Waterland” was scheduled to start in ten minutes. I bought a ticket and took a seat in the semi-darkness with one other man. In an empty theater, I inexplicably chose to sit in the same row with this man, leaving five or six seats between us; he took notice of me and indicated discomfort. The details of the movie have faded from my memory. What I presently remember most clearly from the screening is the General Cinema preshow film, which I’d seen dozens of times in this early 1990’s form. Against a starry background, a calming, baritone voice said, (actual voice from the trailer) “Welcome to General Cinema where we bring you the finest in motion picture entertainment.” Then candy and popcorn floated forward accompanied by carnival-like music. The General Cinema logos had always generated a grinning, Pavlovian, good cheer in me.
In my state of emotional exhaustion, however, this euphoria quickly induced a catastrophic mental chaos and I began to sob convulsively. I felt as if I were a primitive man, unprepared for the revelation of cinema, sent forward in time to witness the miraculous opening of a giant window, and that this experience of the large window opening into another life, or deeper into this life, was overwhelmingly beautiful on its own terms. The specific content of any movie was irrelevant in the face of this fundamental recognition.
I turned to my companion, the only other person in the theater, sitting six seats to my right. He glanced at me nervously because I was now crying quite audibly. I beckoned to the stranger in the flickering light of the General Cinema preshow trailer and I felt an immense connectedness with him. We belonged here together. I loved him. Between sobs, I gasped with great conviction, “We’re all in this together!” He smiled and nodded as if to say, “That’s absolutely true” and, to his credit, remained in that seat throughout the film.