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YOKNAPATAWPHA COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT
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Investigating Officer(s): Det. S. Murphy, Det. T. Armstrong
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Incident No.: 002221-15H-2004
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Case Description: Corwin Fitz Homicide
The victim's film journal was found in a box of script pages in the
editing room/office (Evidence # 002221-13). The following excerpt from
the week of June 2-7, 2004 seems
to show a critical turn in Fitz's mood and perspective on the
filming of Bacchanals' Destruction. Prior entries, which are too dense
for publication at this time, show a calmer, more technical and
focused Fitz, while these entries begin to paint a different picture
of the victim.
Caution: Rough language and situations.
June 2
Katrina is so Cheyn it's a shame she's not Helen or a shame Helen
is not Cheyn is not Katrina. That would not do for it's too perfect
and true, untrue as life, thus true. I'm spoiled by her unspoiledness;
plain dumb doom and glee, that's me. If I could shoot
either one of them, shoot them in their truest death, I would make
something of this which I have been unable to make. But if it clicks
and comes close to a close, and the clicks is the trick, the trick
to come closing a curtain, the closer I come to closing myself. Once
opened by the world, you are a scorched soul. If they look at you
with eyes of affection and awe, you die, el fin. You could never
become what the come had contained, the come that became you.
Because their eyes have contained you, their words have explained
you. And that is all, nothing and everything.
June 3
I feel like a con-artist, a scolder of children today. We've been
filming the scene on the pier with Raldler and Miguel. Dave can't
get it right. It's his only time to speak out, but I was thinking of
resurrecting Johnny to give him the part. And then it hit me, to
play on his own fascination with himself. So I blocked it out and we
ran though a few improvs, and Dave, when it came down to being
himself, was suddenly reluctant to turn inward. So I jammed him in
there. I made all the guys stand around him as he sat like a
mushroom in the grass, and we swung our d**** at him and moved in a
circle, giving a low chant. At first he was laughing and joking,
embarrassed as expected, and then it started to weird him out. It weirded
the others out as well -- some of them anyway -- but I
insisted they keep up with the exercise. (NOTE: It's amazing what
kind of response you can get out of guys by calling them "pussies.")
Finally, it did the trick. Dave didn't have anywhere to turn except
inside himself, what with all the man-threatening male hanging
around in his head space. After all that, we shot quite a different
conversation between Dave and Brett, a conversation about hiding
behind props. I couldn't call it good magic, but I call it a seed, a
seed spawned from the primal instinct, the subconscious flame. Call
it a dictatorship of the silent cerebrum. I have to stick it in my
head and bang against the walls. This is becoming a lot harder than
I expected.
June 4
Is it cruelty that rules our nature, or is it that which we must
overcome? Is man ruled by love or hate? These are the issues brought
up on the set today. Katrina is getting all high-minded on me.
There's a time and expanse of place, and outside of it your opinions
count for s***. They MUST know this! On the stage, in the spotlight,
in that spiral arena, you must dislodge your real breath. You have
to shed that person, leave them behind, and give life to someone
new. Someone who is not you, someone you are scared of. And then you
realize you're scared of everyone, and that you can only be
yourself. And the acting begins. It is so embossed with your own
natural fears that it becomes something of its own, something wholly
real and illogical. OhGODAMMITALL! What difference does it make? I
look at this script and it falls apart in my hand, like tattered
rags. What once made sense to me now reads like it was written by a
stranger. Can it be that I've learned so much from these people,
after being so long without human contact, that I've actually
improved? I don't think so. I've actually become more confused and
uncertain. Do we breed this amongst ourselves, in cold groups? I
love people! I love everyone! I kill what I love! Katrina hides
behind these things she has to decide. Her mind has been turned on,
and now there is no letting up from the pedal. She will drive and
drive until she drives herself insane. I know this because I've
known it every day of my grown-up life, all the days lapping at the
stars and the wet edges of the earth. I can only dunk my head in the
pond and tell Dave to take off his clothes, go for a dive and never
come up.
June 5
I've become someone quite unlike myself. Or maybe, as I once
learned, more like myself than I ever knew I could be. More
frightening and strange, like I've become one of the other people.
Such that human deceit runs so deep that you come to a point where
you can't even trust yourself. I woke up from a dream brought back
from Biloxi. A night on the beach with Hel because we'd lost our
money by stealing it away from each other time and time and time and
again until it had all slipped through our thieving fingers. I
remembered the cool rush of the surf, a perpetual din that rocked me
to sleep as if I had crawled inside an enormous, sandy womb. And as
the waves rocked me to sleep, Hel called out to me, already stripped
and glistening in the moon's mirrored waters. Calling me to swim
with the porpoises, a school of them, all bearded and wearing
glasses. I acquiesced and joined her in the nipping surf. A playful
struggle ensued, and it was a patient dream of childhood
recreation, tossing and giggling in the boiling waves. And soon it
became treacherous, the riptides recalling their collective
strengths, and we wrestled to cling to a tottering buoy. It was
small, only an armful, and only one of us could get it. She
karate-chopped me in the head, and I was sucked down by a swirling,
magnificent whirlpool. A blender actually. I was sucked away into a
frozen strawberry purgatory, and just beyond the blades I heard that
resounding cackle, the sound of satisfaction for having outscored
another sap.
This is how the day began, at 4:30 a.m. I was up restoring the
equipment and readying the scenes for the day. Having my morning
stomp about down the driveway. Rousing the birds and the first
light. The whole day surged through me, and I was waiting to
explode. The others had barely been to sleep, up drunken and angry.
All of them are so frightening, with their dreary interests. Up at
dawn and creating the world! Or snoring in a bed of vomit!
I screamed and pleaded with them all day. It was a day of high
emotions, and they've all been drained of them. Perhaps what we need
is a few days of rest. I can get the story back into shape, and I
can give them time away from it. I'll let them go home for a couple
of days, and let them get back to that part of themselves that knows
these characters. Let them touch base and be disturbed by
themselves.
June 6
Today I watched a ghost descend on my home and my people.
Helen, you rogue b****! -- I cried.
She just danced and twirled in her mimicking parade, showing them
exactly what they wanted to see. It's because she is such an
excellent performer that she lures people to her web. She came to
take my set away. She is angry because I left her. The lies and
trickery and all the assumed death was getting too much, so I let
myself disappear. I died essentially, took my life by my own hand,
and receded into the tide. I thought she would never miss me, that
she'd move on to her next wallet and trouser folly. She deserves a
ticker tape parade of adjectives, but I have none to give. She spent
me already, and here back now? I shot her and shot her and shot her
as much as I could to make her get the message. And like those
dreams at night where I keep hearing her laugh, I could hear it
echoing in the trees, amid the gun cracks and crunching gravel, as I
chased her down the lane.
It's some goddamn conundrum... here I go home to gasp on the suck
pipe. Whether it's steam or stale gas or a hot-fired hunk of metal
glossing my skull with a fine red sheen, I'll be the cause. I am the
god of my own destiny and will never let a hamburger harlot and
fish's knave take me. I'll throw everyone in before I jump. I'll use
their foul, floating bodies as my island earth, and I'll pitch a
tent and sail my own paradise homestead to wherever I please. I'll
dip my toes in their terror-filled eyes and dive for jewels,
snatching pearls from their snapped-shut oyster hearts.
June 7
F***ITALL!!!! It's not even 4 pm and we've stopped for the day. Not
even pink in the sky and we're done. The pussies can't act, they
can't live, they can't walk around without imagining that someone
has stepped on their precious toes. I got rough with one today. He
was mocking my character in the Raldler-Cheyn death-watch scene. So
I slammed him over the head with my body and pummeled him to such an
extent that everyone was highly upset and agitated, just where I
wanted them. And they all refused to go on. I chased them with my
camera, and the lot of them folded. The lot that mattered anyway.
Dave will stay and shoot for days, but he's periphery. Flamé has a
black and blue face, and Macy won't put the make-up on him. I should
kill them all now, put their shameful death masks on my camera, and
make my movie guerrilla style. Bacchanals' Destruction! Those
weak-jawed animals who call themselves persons.
Continue to part two -->
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