That I was six years old and in the company of my father, whose inapproachability was increased by certain spatial proximities such as that which our weekly drive to the old-age home involved, with me seated next to him, silently counting the telephone poles flitting by my hand-cranked window, from whose glass I was all crew cut, forehead, and conveyant eyes which, due to a congenital neuromuscular defect, bulged unnaturally, making me appear as if I were in a continuous state of shock about what- or whomever I was looking at, which expression my father described as endemic to a category of individuals linked by a mutuality of affliction whom he referred to as social misfits, saying it in a way that caused the tendons in his neck to become pronounced, that I was six years old and in the company of my father, whose inapproachability was increased by certain spatial proximities, made it easier for me to participate in the fraudulence which our weekly visits to the old-age home became. Visiting hours were rigidly circumscribed in accordance with a schedule that appeared to accommodate the old-age home’s personnel more than its residents, and, by extension, its residents’ families, by which I mean to invoke my father and myself. My father worked in an office building whose tinted glass windows I imagined lent its interior a corresponding darkness which necessitated the use of flashlights, headlamps, glow sticks, and other illuminatory devices; the sound of him in our utility closet each morning as he opened and closed the drawers of a plastic storage cabinet filled with Duracell-brand batteries I supposed he used to power his illuminatory device only reinforced that image. That my father was in a foul mood when he picked me up after school each Wednesday on the way to the old-age home accordingly surprised me since the mid-afternoon visits allowed him a respite from the darkness I believed enveloped his workday, a darkness that had a corollary in the inclement state of his health, of which his foul mood, neck’s pronounced tendons, and inapproachability were evidence. I didn’t know what my father did for a living other than that it involved the use of a large number of pens, which he always spent a quiet few seconds emptying his trouser, shirt, and suit jacket pockets of upon returning home from work each evening; his was an undeviating choreography I often found myself miming in front of the bathroom mirror when I was not otherwise occupied with such time-consumptive things as homework, chores, and TV. They were the kind of pen, popularized by Bic, whose clear plastic construction allowed you to see how much ink was left in the ink reservoir tube, which I always regarded as a sly move on the part of the pen manufacturer considering that, by revealing the ink level, the person using the pen would theoretically be more inclined to replace the pen before it ran out of ink than if the ink level were unknown, and, in so doing, would wind up using, and buying, more pens than he or she otherwise would. I admit that I’m basing my theory on a number of assumptions about human nature for which I haven’t provided any proof; still, I think it’s a good one. My father would put the pens in the junk drawer by our telephone, which was also where we kept our pencils, rubber erasers, letter openers, rulers, scissors, and writing pads, so that each time someone called for him when he wasn’t home, I would use one to take a message; that my pulse quickened whenever the telephone rang was a function less of the telephone’s ringing than of my anticipatory use of something connected with the person of my father. Given that my accompanying my father to the old-age home appeared not to please him, or, more accurately, that my presence failed to temper his mood, I suspected, in his inclusion of me in his weekly visits, an ulteriority which I believed would reveal itself during the course of our trips to and from the facility, despite my father’s parsimony of conversation, and my disinclination to test the limits of his reservedness. My father was a thin man of medium height whose slightness of build and fine hair suggested a subtraction, or deprivation, which his economy of movement, both gestural and transportive, helped convey; impulsivity, in its broadest, most far-flung application, had no associations with his person. My mother, insofar as I could tell in the photographs I found in a shoebox emblazoned with the trademark and name of a sports company whose connection with my discovery prompted my ambivalence towards its brand of athletic product, and towards sports in general, was a pretty woman whose attractiveness was enhanced by her occupying the narrative center of each photograph; her running away with my father’s accountant, whose industriousness my father regarded as an asset in the context of his finances without ever suspecting that the compulsivity which fueled the industriousness he so valued, and willingly paid a premium for, would be incapable of resisting the allure of an altogether different kind of challenge, precipitated my lifelong distrust of brunettes, to which my own dye job attests. They were a couple, my father and mother, whose tensive gesturology, in those photographs, bespoke fracture. My father’s statement one Wednesday as I opened the car door and crinkled my nose in response to the smell emitted by a new air freshener from his favorite car wash, whose service he valued not for its prettification of his car but for what he believed his paying someone to wash it said about him, that the old-age home’s personnel were troubled by my unnaturally bulging eyes struck me as odd; given all the sensorially assaultive things I envisioned the personnel being subjected to on a daily basis, the effect my eyes had on them had to have been negligible at most. I mean, in the brevity of each of our visits, at least one resident would do something whose shock quotient would redouble my resolve to halt my maturation into adulthood. On the other hand, it explained the staff’s reticence to engage us in conversation, or even make eye contact. The old-age home was located about ten minutes by car from Pomelo Drive Elementary by way of a minimally exertive route sequentially composed of Highlander Road, Platt Avenue, and Vanowen Street, with most of the driving taking place on Vanowen, a sweeping arterial road whose compact single-story homes harked back to a more modest, and practical-minded, period in the San Fernando Valley’s evolution. I highlight the logistical simplicity of our route so as to convey an absence of what would have otherwise usurped my father’s attention, as our driver, and deprived us of an opportunity for conversation; that our drive required but a minimal degree of mechanical, and cognitive, application and yet was shrouded in a dense silence said things which required roads longer than those which took us to and from the old-age home to sort through. That said, I viewed our silence as appropriate, and even natural, in the context of the solemnity of our weekly visits. By my saying that, I don’t mean to suggest that our visiting the old-age home was disagreeable. While it wasn’t the most joyous of places, there were worse ones, like my school’s study hall and detention room, as well as the principal’s office. Also, I saw our visits through a prism that did not allow for the hypothecation of my not going; that scenario simply did not occur to me. Getting back to the silence part, my point is that I didn’t think it had anything to do with me. I was an unself-reflective six-year-old with a simplicity of outlook whose motivating influence was a hallowed trinity composed of a TV tray, a bowl of Fruity Pebbles, and a homework-free afternoon of The Flintstones, The Jetsons, and Tom and Jerry. Right after my father told me that my eyes troubled the old-age home’s personnel, he reached under his seat and produced a small lidded box which he then handed to me, nodding in a way that was his invitation for me to open it. My excitement was tempered only by my attempt to control, and thus prolong, my joy over my father’s thoughtful whimsy. As I removed the lid and looked inside, my initial reaction was not to associate the goggles with what my father told me about the old-age home’s personnel, but to view them within the parameters established by the physical componentry of the goggles themselves. Their unorthodox design consisted of a strap which ran, longitudinally, from between the goggles’ lenses to the main strap, to which it attached, at the back of the wearer’s head, and another one that ran under the wearer’s jaw. The goggles’ architecture was such that it kept them uncompromisingly in place, over the wearer’s eyes, while disallowing their speedy removal. As for the lenses, their opaqueness reduced the wearer’s vision to a negligibility approximating blindness; the goggles’ utility as a safety device was evidently secondary to their functionality as a blindfold. My father explained that the decision was mine as to whether to wear them inside the old-age home, but he added that my not doing so would upset him considering all the trouble he went to in acquiring them, and also given the ameliorative effect he was convinced my wearing them would have on our relations with the old-age home’s personnel. But I needed no coaxing and, in fact, had them on by the time he stopped talking and turned towards me. The distortion to which my vision was subject prevented me from discerning my father’s expression, though I suspected it was a softened one given the calm attentiveness with which he applied himself to securing the jaw strap. I wore the goggles during each of our successive visits, obligingly, cognizant of the effect they had on my father’s mood. And, also, of their role in enabling the fraudulence which our visits became after grandmother passed, the woman assigned to her room greeting us, each week, with little-girl giggles, her skin smelling of chamomile and milk, and my father addressing her as Mother, his face, from the distortive perspective of my goggles, evincing something I could not definitively say was sincerity, as I endured our visits, uncomplainingly, determined to resolve still greater mysteries.

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Salvatore Zoida’s fiction has appeared in Rutgers University’sWriters’ Bloc, Ravenna Press’s The Anemone Sidecar, The Catalonian Review, Foundling Review, Wigleaf, and Prick of the Spindle. In 2011, the San Francisco Litquake Literary Festival named him as an up-and-coming Bay Area author. He recently finished writing my first novel, Bucolic Apologia. Tonight’s story, “Photographed in Drag” was published in Writers’ Bloc.

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This piece was read as part of a production of “Action Fiction!”, sponsored by Omnibucket, Fiction365, and the San Francisco Writers Community

Read more stories from Action Fiction! productions.

I can picture the faces of the executives as the film begins.  It’s the first time they’ve seen it, the first time the director’s let anyone with money, or marketing savvy, or a neck-tie enter the screening room.  The director’s taken precious care with this cut, with this sound mix.  He personally supervised yesterday’s dry run to make sure every seat in the house is comfortable and free of squeaks, that every line of dialog is audible and every low tone rumbles the house (but doesn’t blow the speakers.)  The projector has been calibrated, the lens cleaned, the bulb (or Blu-Ray laser) tuned to perfection.

But, despite this, what’s up there on the screen… is… well… odd.  At least to the suits.  Maybe they weren’t at every meeting.  Maybe they didn’t pay attention during principal photography.  Oh, sure, they read the script.  Well, a couple of them did.  Most just read the coverage, watched a few dailies, maybe drooled over the publicity photos of the leading lady, and, of course, the fiscal ledgers from the director’s previous film.  They knew what they were getting.  Sorta.  They knew it would be a “tough sell.”  Probably.  But the real question comes at the final frame: did we just make an arty picture? 

The executives narrow their gazes, exchange glances.  A few cough.  Who will speak first?  Who?  Doesn’t matter.  It comes out something like this:

“This movie (2001) (Repo Man) (After Hours) (The Big Lebowski) (Blue Velvet) (Rocky Horror) (Donnie Darko) (Rushmore) (Brazil) (Pink Flamingos) (Shock Corridor) (Re-Animator) (Freaks) (Shivers) (Shakes the Clown) will get someone fired.  Probably me.  We’re in trouble, boys.  Not because the film is bad.  It’s actually pretty good.  It’s obviously a personal vision well executed.  But we’ll never say that.  Or, if we do say it, we’ll say it so damn loud the whole world will just have to go along with us.  To change it is impossible/too late/too costly.  It is what it is.  What we have here, boys, is a cult movie.”

Cult (n. kuhlt): a group of people bound together by devotion to an object, a rite, a set of rituals, symbols, ideals, a person, etc.  Or, some fucking movie.

Enter Don Thacker, writer and director of a movie that’s not even out yet.  It’s called Motivational Growth – a one-location story with less than a half-dozen characters split into ten “episodes” and made on a budget of less than a quarter million dollars.

Don’s an affable kid with a dream – to make you like the unlikeable.  It’s hard to declare his new horror (?) comedy (?) the feel-good movie of 2013, but something makes we want to say just that.  Sure, it has blood and dismemberment, and vomit (lots of green vomit,) a talking patch of mold (more on that later,) and is about a suicidal shut-in named Ian who, when we meet him, has rice in his Iron & Wine beard and hasn’t bathed or cleaned his apartment in a very, very long time.

But, despite this, you really like Ian.  You feel for his circumstance, even though we are never told the reason for his isolation.  Ian is who we all would be if we were stranded on a desert island.  On purpose.  With a television.  That breaks.  In the first scene.  And leads us into Ian’s story as strongly as ‘an arrival’ or a ‘meet cute.’

Recently, Motivational Growth had a private screening at one of the big ol’ movie houses in Chicago.  Sponsored by the filmmakers, it was an invitation-only affair. Not a premiere, more like a rewarding social experiment.  In some ways, it was not too different from the executive screenings of previous cult classics, except that in this case the movie and the moment were low-budget, low-risk, and high-reward. 

After being taken in by the film and its qualities, I stayed for the obligatory Q & A where Thacker revealed that he hadn’t intended to make a horror movie.  When I cornered him later, he added, “I have been calling it a dark comedy, but I feel that a story with the sole purpose of getting you thinking has a hard time being labeled with a genre.  I'm not saying it's a ‘genre defying mind bender’ or anything.  In fact, locking a genre would really help me get it sold, so I'm not trying to be arty.  I ask what genre people think it is.  I've gotten everything.  I can tell you, though, that it seems to resonate most with horror and sci-fi fans.”

Adding to that connection is the casting of two actors with strong genre pedigrees.

Rising horror starlet, Danielle Doetsch is certainly eye-candy, but also delivers a genuine and charming performance.  In the films Under the Table, Bikini Girls on Ice, Weapon, and The Catastrophe at Catalina, she is, in the most literal sense, a scream queen, having screamed her way through all of these films with operatic perfection.  In Motivational Growth, Doetsch plays Leah, the love interest.  Producer Alexis Nordling once declared, “The film would not work without Danielle’s performance.  She’s the ideal, all-American, girl-next-door – someone Ian can fall in love with at first sight and still be considered attainable.  When she arrives at his door, there had to be chemistry and with Danielle and Adrian (DiGiovanni, who plays Ian) it was definite.  We looked a long time for an actor like Danielle and she was perfection.” 

And then there is The Mold.  Yes, that’s the character’s actual name.  And it’s actually mold – the gross kind (well, not to be all behind-the-scenes, but essentially a sophisticated puppet that resembles a talking patch of mold.)  Having trouble picturing?  Does it help to know that The Mold is voiced by Jeffrey Combs, the legendary character actor, star of the Re-Animator films, as well as From Beyond and Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners?  Combs brings big choices to such parts.  And, boy, does he bring ‘em here.  I won’t spoil it for you, but if you could Oscar campaign for mold, there’s a good case to be made for his performance in Motivational Growth.

So – you’re getting the picture, right?  Vomit, blood, talking mold, a pretty girl with a good scream, a guy with rice in his beard… This is where the executives start to sweat.  But I’m here to say, they shouldn’t.  This movie aims to entertain and succeeds.  People will talk about it, recommend it, find it.  Cult, yeah, sure – but that Rocky Horror cult sure racked up some dough.  It’ll play at midnight screenings, but could as easily be a prime-time ick-fest choice or even shown with the sound down at a college party.  It’ll definitely get a reaction.  It’ll definitely be remembers.  And there’ll be the gossip.  For a film like this, there’s always gossip.  There’s plenty to see here, folks.  Plenty to see.

In fact, buzz has already started about the film for 2013.  Director Patrick Rea (Nailbiter) has said, "Motivational Growth is a zany and twisted tale that is well-crafted and entertaining."  Nationally-known horrorhound columnist Dr. AC (Horror 101) raves, “A terrific exception to micro-budget filmmaking, one that requires no forgiveness for technical shortcomings (i.e. there are none) despite its ambitious scope and vision.”

But how gross is gross?

“The trash, the set design, the blood and the goo, the vomit, The Mold – these are things that I wrote, sure,” says Thacker. “When I hired my department heads, though, I did so after examining who would best lift my ideas beyond my own ability to execute them.  I provided a huge amount of artistic freedom to the Art, SFX/Creature and Makeup teams and that paid off on a colossal scale. I relied on the professional artists I'd hired to make professional art. Achieving ‘just the right amount of gross’ is where I step in.  My responsibility is the through-line. I say, ‘needs more blood’ or ‘wow, I just threw up a little in my mouth, maybe pull the puss back a bit,’ or whatever.”

Despite these tactile elements, you still like Ian and his story.  Actor Adrian DiGiovanni is in every scene, up against some great character actors such as Pete Giovagnoli, Ken Brown, Hannah Stevenson, and others.  Physically demanding, the role of Ian was not an easy one to cast or to play, but DiGiovanni is certainly a talent to watch, as he carries a ninety minute movie on his shoulders with great skill.  Thacker adds, “There is a certain amount of lethargy built into the experience, especially at the front of the piece.  It's a film about an agoraphobic slob and I needed to express that.  I want the audience to be the slightest bit annoyed to be stuck with this guy for the opening fifteen minutes before everything starts to go bonkers.”

With one bonkers film under his belt, what’s next for Don Thacker and his fledgling film company, Imagos Films?  “I am most excited about this twisted little mind-break sci-fi thriller,” he says.  “It’s about a group of pink-slipped particle physicists with access to a mothballed super-collider who, in an attempt to make themselves relevant again, fold reality in half.  I've been working with Fermilab and the folks at the Tevatron site in Batavia, IL, on and off for a year now on the story.  I want to tell a human story wrapped in hard science fact.”

Motivational Growth will be released to festivals in 2013 and wider distribution thereafter.  You heard it here first (or maybe second or third), people.  Consider yourself part of a cult.

Motivational Growth trailer can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToRhJWIBZrE

Imagos Films Corporation Website:
http://www.imagosfilms.com/

Darren Callahan has written drama for the BBC, SyFy Channel, National Public Radio, and Radio Pacifica New York.  As the author of several successful stage plays, including The White Airplane and Horror Academy, both published by Polarity Books, he is highly involved in theatre as a writer and a director.  Novels include The Audrey Green Chronicles and City of Human Remains.  Screenplays include Documentia, Nerves and Summer of Ghosts.  He is writer, director, and composer of the films Under the Table and Children of the Invisible Man.  He is also a musician and has released many records, including film soundtracks, on various labels.  His website is darrencallahan.com.

Denise kicked me out of our apartment two weeks before my 30th birthday, and Roy said I’d always have a place to crash with him, no problem.  But my habit of working late into the night, of getting phone calls when he was trying to soak his feet, and the fact that I’m a terrible wing-man all added up fast.  A week later I was going to a conference, and he offered to drive me to the airport, and Roy told me, on the way, that he’d be changing the locks while I was gone and giving my stuff to Shane to hold on to.  I was leaving Chicago a homeless man.

“You’re just impossible,” he said, right before pulling up to the United terminal.

I flew to Missouri, for the 9th annual Midwest Regional Philosophy Symposium.   I forgot to bring toothpaste.  The room at the University of Missouri campus was nice and there was a manmade lake with swans.  The food was good, and included in the package.  But the campus store sold tooth paste at a ridiculous $5 mark-up, and I decided I couldn’t afford it.

I went to the opening seminar on the state of philosophy in America, and heard that the future is in experimentation:  not thinking great thoughts, but thoughts that are provable under laboratory conditions.  At the reception afterwards, a blonde woman from Oberlin was the first to notice that my nametag didn’t have a university affiliation.  “I’m not a philosopher,” I said.  “It’s just a hobby.  I’m more of an amateur intellectual historian.”

She said “that’s charming,” in a way that made me realize I wasn’t going to make any friends.

“You pricks,” I wanted to say after a half-hour.  “Aren’t I the public you want to be reaching?”

I walked outside and over to the lake.  With no moon it looked like it went on forever, merging with the ground on the other side … and yet somehow there were still dark hills over the horizon.  I stared at this for a long time, trying to square that odd image in my mind:  an infinite lake, and hills beyond it.

The next morning seminar was on using computers in analytic philosophy.  It was my birthday.  After lunch it was using MRI scans in philosophy of language.  A department chair from Purdue said that all real thinking happens at the level of the neuron.  It was my birthday.  By dinner it had hit me that I might never talk with Denise again, and that I didn’t have any friends left in Chicago.  There was no one left who I could crash with.  I should be doing something about this.  Instead I went the evening keynote on statistical analysis.  It was my 30th birthday.

And it was wrong. All wrong.

During the Q&A I went up to the microphone.  I waited in line.  I could see the people I’d met the night before staring at me, wondering.  “I’m sorry,” I said when it was my turn.  “I’m so sorry.  But it seems to me that the most interesting, important, thoughts are the ones that only happen outside of the laboratory.  Shouldn’t we be thinking those thoughts?”

“Where do you teach?” the speaker asked.

I walked out.  I walked back to the lake.  To the infinite lake and the dark mountain.  This time, the swans were sitting quietly under the new moon.  This time, there was a paddle boat sitting at the dock.

I got in.  I paddled with my feet and did my best to steer.  I glided out into what might have been the center of the lake.  All alone, even more alone than when I’d been tossed out of two homes in two weeks, I stared up at the stars and cried.

Eventually I asked “What am I going to do?”

I stayed there until morning, and had no good ideas.  I watched the sun come up, and paddled back to the dock.

I went back to my room.  I passed a group of people from the symposium on their way to breakfast, two old men, one young guy … younger than me … and two attractive women.

“Hey,” said the old man.

“Hey!” he said again, to get my attention.  I turned, bleary eyed.  I stared.  “Yes?”

They gathered around me.  The old man shook my hand.  One of the women put her hand on my shoulder.

“Thank you,” the old man said.  “Thank you for having the courage to say that!”

“Somebody had to,” said the young guy.

“You’re a hero,” said one of the women.

It was the first time anyone ever told me that.

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