& (A film in 13 scenes, scenes 4 & 5)

4.

It is a very comic scene involving the police and a criminal. It seems they have caught the criminal before the scene even started. In an iris-out from black the criminal is shown in medium-long shot toward the left part of the screen. The criminal is in front of a brick wall. On that wall someone has written SMOKE PIGS! in spraypaint.  It is not an ad for Pig Brand Cigarettes. It is possible that the criminal wrote those words. I say the criminal instead of he or she because you cannot see what the criminal looks like. This is because the criminal is wearing a ridiculous dog costume.  It has big plastic eyes as well a big tail that quivers every time the criminal moves.  The dog costume is slightly crushed.  A small amount of black liquid drips from the snout of the dog costume. It is the same color as the paint on the wall but it has a different consistency. It seems possible that the dog costume as well as the criminal inside it has been beaten because the police assumed that the word PIGS was referring to them. There is a handcuff attached to the criminal. Because the way that the shot is framed we cannot see what is attached to the other end of it. This kind of framing is very important for moments that are supposed to be funny or scary it's hard to tell what kind of moment this is & what happens next does not clarify that one bit

Then the shot pans to the left.  There is a fat policeman attached to the other end of the handcuff. It is true that he has a pig-like quality to him. He does not have trotters or a snout but there is a certain quality that is not entirely unlike a pig. It's understandable why he might consider the words to be a threat insofar as it's not an ad for PIG BRAND cigarettes. He has a handcuff on each wrist. One attaches to the criminal as we have already seen. The other one is attached to another police officer who we see when the shot pans further to the left. He does not have the same pig-like quality but he is smoking a cigarette.  He can't take it out of his mouth so he has to make his lips quiver to try to make the ash fall it isn't working & the ash gets longer & droopier.

The smoke gets up his nose, making him cough.  But he can't put down the cigarette because both of his hands are occupied. One is attached to the piggish cop next to him. On the other hand is another handcuff. We cannot see what it is attached to but this is not the kind of film where things go unexplained. It wants to make an effort to explain the things we see. It pans left. The handcuff is attached to the collar of a big dog sitting there and panting. On its collar is a second handcuff which is connected to another dog to its left which has a second handcuff on its collar connected to yet another dog. You can guess where this is going. The shot pans left there is dog after dog each connected to the one before by a handcuff. We lose count of just how many dogs but the shot moves left over dog after dog for three whole minutes. When we reach the last dog we hear a voice from far off-screen it says Hey Tom?  Don't look now.  Don't look now, but I think we might be in a spot of trouble....

The film cuts. There is just the two faces of the cops covered in sweat screaming OHHHH SHHIIIITTT  Their faces are bouncing all over the screen.  The shot pulls back.  They are running as fast as they can although they are not especially good at running. They are being chased by all of the dogs as well as the criminal in that big stupid dog costume.  They are sprinting through an empty street but because they are handcuffed to them they can't get away. It is like they are dragging along the very things they are trying to escape from. There is another film not this one but one I have been shown where a man pours paint on a police officer. There is a different film I saw where many people threw paint on the police. The police were covered in plastic they were in armor like insects. When the paint was thrown on them they could not see anymore they looked like blind paintings made by children or Americans. The dogs cannot be cut loose as the history of painting cannot be.  The very thing they chased is the thing that chases them.  They are screaming REQUESTING BACKUP!  COME IN!  SWEET JESUS, REQUESTING BACKUP!  This shot is also one that could belong to a film that is supposed to be funny or scary.  In this case it is very funny & not something of which we should be afraid

 

 

 

5.

 

Two blind persons are eating a meal, shown initially in medium long-shot at the exact height of the table top.  This shot distance is needed so that their heads do not break the top of the frame or rather are not cut off mid-way through the brain-pan. However their feet cannot be seen the shot not being far enough away to accommodate the entire body even if it is seated as it is at a table for a meal. The legs are truncated. They just end without the film giving hints as to whether or not they are full legs much as if it had involved a swift axe. But as the legs of the table are also cut off by the restriction of a frame it is more plausible to assume that the legs of both kinds are not actually severed by that axe especially as there has not been a prior axe anywhere in the film. No they must be continuous at least up to the point where they must touch a floor even if it is nowhere to be seen. The people eating are blind or at the very least they have eyes of milk as white as scar tissue or simply as milk. Some of the fat has been skimmed from the milk but not all enough remains to cloud the eyes whether or not they are truly blind. In all cases sight would have a difficult time making its way through the fat that remains. There is also fat on the table although of a different variety. It is first seen in a small slick of oil that creeps off the edge of the table. It hangs in thick drips viscous enough to not so much drip as hang. Perhaps it is not fresh it may have been there before the meal. Yet the natural sheen of oil gives it the appearance of new liquidity the same could be said of tar or of pitch which does not have to be new to gleam when light & eyes both touch upon it like paint

The camera moves toward them, while also rising slowly to pass in an arc over the table.  It’s a real feast that they are eating. The camera rises over them until we do not see the eyes as such but the top of the heads in which such eyes are set.  Time has scrubbed away some of the hair. The table is full not an obscene amount for two bodies to consume alone yet enough to be a more than solid feed for those bodies that look as hungry as these do. However if the quantity is ample the quality seems less certain. From this angle the teeth cannot be easily discerned except when the head in quiet laughter angles back on the pivot of the top of the spine. Even unseen the teeth are known to be sharp because of the nature of the objects that clutter the table the ones which they are slowly putting into their mouths. The word objects rather than the word food is accurate as it is hard to conceive of the objects as food. Even the word feast may be wrong yet the film is committed to preserve the sense of feast even while the contents of the feast are closer to the contents of a scrapyard if not the form. The teeth are known to be strong. There are windows which have been broken. If they remain partially whole the hammer on the table is used to make them into pieces that can be consumed. There are umbrellas from which long strips of fabric are torn careful to be chewed slow. There are orange peels. These may be related to food yet they have dried into shards requiring the patient application of saliva to bring them back into a form that can be not only placed in the mouth but also chewed in preparation for swallowing. There are other tables on this large table they have been broken down into their smaller constituent elements. Legs that are broken just as the legs of the large table had appeared broken by the limits of the frame. There are tangles of hair. There is part of a boat oar to which a rasp must be taken to produce small curling fibers as if the preparation of a nest also requiring the labor of rolling around the wet mouth. There is silverware. Although it seems impossible that objects such as a fork would exist on a table without being used to pick up other material these are just such forks. The density of the teeth is clearly superior to that of a fork so the sound is tremendous as bone shears metal. In addition there is also a pair of shears tenderized with raps by a hammer. Perhaps even the hammer will find its way into the belly although for the moment it serves a crucial task. Yet the very structure of the film so far has established the fact that hammers do not remain unbroken for long. There are newspapers their stories concern things that have broken down just as hammers can.  On them is written just the word FINALLY although it will be shredded into fine tatters to sprinkle as condiment on top of the guts of a printer. It is however not the printer that wrote those words it’s too small to have managed such a grand task of mass production. The camera has finished its arc but as it has moved it also has pivoted around until it looks at the height of the table as it had from the other side. The eyes of semi-skimmed fat are visible again. Fine clusters of wrinkles spider out from them. These are the type that have been produced by much clenching of the muscles of the upper face when there is laughter or anger. They crunch through all of this they chat casually about a number of things while doing so. Occasionally they speak about the objects they consume noting the particular hardness or sharpness of the scrap but this is not a complaint merely a pointing out. One of the blind persons points to an eyeball that she holds between her fingers raised to the height of the eyes filled with white. The squishy eye looks very similar to the eye of the pig-like cop who had been running from dogs in a previous scene. Two blind persons are eating a feast of trash. One holds up an eyeball & says to the other one Tell me does this look bad to you? & they both laugh really hard & frankly it does look really bad