“My film is not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam.”
— Francis Ford Coppola
Bruce is yelling about how good the sushi is, how it cost him $300 for the platter and how he can not believe the “shit” I’ve decided to pull right now.
I tell him it’s not shit. I tell him I’m fine with eating sushi, even a yucky eel roll, but that I can not eat it like he wants me to.
“Christ, Angie,” he says, then places his hand on top of his head. His eyes roll.
I breathe in deeply.
Bruce gets up from his director’s chair. He’s a pretty nondescript guy. Some days he’ll wear glasses. Today he’s got on contacts. His eyes are grayish and his hair is sandy brown. He’s in his late-thirties with a medium build. He looks so average, has such unremarkable, unmemorable features, that I often joke with him that he should rob a bank, be a full-time criminal because nobody could possibly remember what he looked like. What would they say to the sketch artist or the cops working the line-up? They’d say he was a white guy and not get much beyond that. Bruce is like electrical wiring. There but not seen. It’s hard to think anyone so “invisible” could be dangerous. Even now, as he’s picking up an M-16 whose barrel looks bigger and longer than I remember.
“What about this?” he says, holding it towards me. “You ready for this?”
And I reply in a voice calculated to be so nonchalant that it fools everyone, even myself:
“Yeah.” Read more…
