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Corwin Fitz relaxes at the Oxford hotspot,
The Jubilee Lounge
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Oxford Town Weekly Magazine
April 14, 2004
Lessons Learned in Dreamy Green
Pastures:
Or How to Get Your Movie Made in Oxford
By Oliver Bolden
Corwin Fitz walks into the Jubilee Lounge and
people rise as if he is one of the Divine, calling them to some hip
clergy. They feel the call of his ambition in their drunken souls. They
stretch out their palms for a handshake, some recognition.
But he's only here to pay the bar tab he skipped
out on, in a fit of spirits and inspiration, the previous night.
"You'd think he was Marty Scorsese, the way
these broke jackasses act," says the scowling bartender as Fitz
ambles out, a girl obscured on the sidewalk waiting to take his arm.
A self-taught, self-described genius, Fitz has
ruffled the oil-slicked feathers of too many turkeys in this town; he
has lured them away from the booze troughs toward the shade of his brilliance.
He claims to be making a movie, the one art form in which this town has
showed zero interest or promise.
Those who have sat with him, talked with him, read
with him say this will all change. They say his name is alive; his
word is truth. They say he is making a masterpiece, and they will follow
him.
Depending on who you ask, Fitz is "cool,"
"gifted," "rapacious," "talentless," "maladjusted,"
"sagacious," "twerpish," "indecent" or
"sanguine."
No matter the adjectives -- he is a verb.
"The people in this town need to realize one thing,"
Fitz says via email. "Slackdom is the leading
cause of atrophy. I've known people to literally melt away from
lack of ambition."
Yes, but aren't you a walking contradiction?
When Fitz first arrived in Oxford, he was cited
as a reversed heretic, touched by definite madness and rolling in nothing.
He claimed to have killed men and ravished women. He wailed in back
alleys, tussling with the curs and rodents for a patch of slimed asphalt
on which to sleep. Stories of his tom-peepery and open self-flagellation
continue to haunt his reputation.
"Fictions," he claims on my answering machine.
"Trifled amusements. But they're my business, so how can I
condemn them?"
To actually meet with Fitz and sit down for a
proper interview, you must first prove there is something in it for
him. As I had nothing tangible to offer, I disguised my voice and called
him, expressed my interest in helping him create his cinematic masterpiece,
and arranged a lunch date at Bottletree Bakery.
In the interim before the meeting, I spoke to several
vanquished souls who had already met with the auteur. How was it? I
asked. What did you learn about yourself?
One sad fleck with a bruised jaw was perched in a high
chair at the Jubilee. He told me that Fitz had challenged him to
a duel, an old-fashioned swapping of sabers, though instead of actual
swords they agreed to use pool cues from Purvis' Pool Hall. "He
had a bunch he was getting rid of," said the bar fool.
Why a duel? I inquired.
"I guess because my teeth weren't pearly
white enough to be in his pretty boy movie," the guy returned,
sounding as if he had a chaw of cotton wedged in his purpled cheek.
A witness later told me that the bar fool had forgotten
to attend an audition, and Fitz, after waiting several hours, found
the truant actor and berated the poor lush's existence in an eloquent
string of profane metaphors for nigh 30 minutes. Fitz then offered
his challenge and proceeded to drag the young scruff from his perch,
then into the alley where the pool cues were waiting. Hardly a minute
had passed before our friend Fitz had cracked the young man across
the face, demolishing the pool cue and creating such a racket that the
witness "heard the boy forget his own name." One final note:
Fitz picked up the loser's tab.
Another youngster, a pretty high school girl who aspired
to work as a production assistant on Fitz's film, was rushed
to the family's psychotherapist following the harsh tirade Fitz
delivered to her upon discovering that she had neither heard of nor
seen Apocalypse Now. Apparently, he convinced her that there
was no God, and that every individual becomes the devil, one day at a
time, over the course of their entire life.
I must admit, these stories of pain and prejudice tainted
my enthusiasm for our meeting at Bottletree. What mental or bodily harm
would come my way if Fitz found out I was a Mickey Rourke fan,
or that I'd never seen a Michelangelo Antonioni film?
The fateful hour arrived, and I assumed the identity
of an aggressive, wet-behind-the-ears dreamer. He arrived bundled in
logger's flannel, sawdust and Skittles in his beard; I refused
to let him pay for my latté, though I saw him gesture to the
waitress to put it on his check. He asked me what my interest in his
film was, and I told him I wanted to act. Miraculously, he saw through
my ruse and accused me of being "that reporter."
"It's okay," he said. "Better to
hear it from the horse's mouth, I suppose."
My secret self revealed, I was refused certain details
about the script, which he wrote while isolated in a log cabin, deep
in the county woods. The film is slated to be called Bacchanals'
Destruction, and in Fitz's words, "It's about
a cult whose members commit suicide of the spirit."
The events in the film "come from a part of me
where danger rests, someplace I thought I had left a long time ago,"
according to the director.
How will you pay for it all? I inquired.
"It's a sure-thing for investors. This film
will be celebrated far and wide, I assure you that. Only the finest
and most dedicated people in Oxford are working on this. Our collaboration,
and the terrific results, will be a testament to this town's potential."
I sighed, then asked him about his interest in film.
He professed the highest esteem for Errol Morris, Orson Welles, David
Lynch, Mike Leigh, William Eggleston, Akira Kurosawa, Nicholas Roeg,
Peter Greenaway, Samuel Fuller. He went on, but my memory did not.
"I love to wander the country roads and sit in
pastures," he confessed, my ears pricking up. "I study the
cows as they stand around, living their stationary lives. Their stasis
feeds my momentum."
Fitz is fantastically, nonsensically quotable.
But I don't buy it. I tell him this, part of me trying to incite
his renowned fury, part of me allowing the acrid espresso to purge my
own self-loathing.
He answered somewhat passively. "You know, sir,
there are a number of parasites like yourself in this world. I've
often encountered them when I walk through rain puddles with bare feet.
Whether you find me genuine or full of pissy steam makes no difference.
In the end, we all return to the feces of the earth. What lingering minerals
will you choose to deposit on your way down? What nutrients will you
use to sweeten the life of those you've left accountable?"
He stood up, gave a strange curtsy and walked out.
The jerk left me with the check.
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