I promised myself that never send an idea to a manufacturer again. Just a finished script: which he approved or rejected ipso facto. But luck, so elusive in satisfying our desires, is omnipresent in avoiding our promises. At that vernissage, while I was telling the draft of the plot to a friend, another of the group members introduced himself as a producer. Actually, I had heard of him once, he lived in Miami, was passing through Buenos Aires on a wine deal.
He told me, to my surprise, that they would contact me shortly. I didn’t take it seriously.
However, a few days later I received a phone call: the general director of content of the producer in question summoned me to his farm, in a privileged corner of the Buenos Aires plain, to participate in a “brainstorming” around my project. Part of the party were the director, a screenwriter with a thin moustache, and Ña Chacha, the hostess, who served us mate, ice water and high-quality salami.
They started by asking me to tell my story.
“It’s a horror movie,” I explained. From some esoteric reading, from some profane text, that disturbing night can be deduced the murdered will rise from their graves and be able to take revenge. They only have one life that night and they can lose it in the action. The option lasts twelve hours. Then they will return to dust anyway.
The assassins learn about the coven in different ways and at different levels, and the vast majority are afraid. Among the people killed there are obviously also the wicked. And it could happen that among those resurrected from the underworld they killed each other for the right to kill their common murderer. In general, this is the idea. For everything else you have to think and write.
I paused and added:
– Work.
The screenwriter looked at me skeptically. For some reason, in that expression his mustache highlighted his condescension. The producer asked:
– And why were they resurrected?
The question baffled me. I said the truth:
– Just because. Just like we die.
“I don’t understand,” the producer insisted.
“I mean,” I insisted in turn, “that no one explains to us why we die.” Likewise, in the film, a profane, apocryphal or demonic text, or the spell of a miracle worker, announces the redemption of the murdered. In fact this thing about the resurrected is a little more explained than our deaths in general.
– What he wants to ask you – the screenwriter translated in vain, setting aside my explanation like a fly with a wave of his hand – is the practical reason why they were resurrected. A nuclear accident, a toxic rain, a seismic effect?
I pretended to think about it and repeated:
– No, nothing like that. They resurrect just because. There are some movies, I can barely remember a hundred of them, but there are thousands of them, with zombies. I don’t know if you’ve heard of them. Zombies appear, just because. Nobody explains anything. It’s not because of anything they ate. Nor because of climate change. They are simply zombies.
I remember an episode of The Twilight Zone in which two con men made the inhabitants of several cities in the American Midwest believe that they were capable of resurrecting the dead. The relatives paid to have the miracle performed. But when they were told that the dead had indeed arrived, most mourners, as in Jacobs’s The Monkey’s Paw, preferred that the deceased remain in their graves. Then the swindlers ran away with the proceeds, like the tailors of the emperor’s clothes. Until in one city the dead got tired of the lie and really came back to life. And they put a stop to the scammers, if I remember correctly. Excellent chapter.
What I’m looking for is that When the dead actually rise from the dead, they do so because they are exhausted., not by some kind of scientific explanation. Not at least a realistic scientific explanation.
Then we have the case of the film The fly, where there is some kind of scientific explanation, but nothing really serious. I do not think that Jeff Goldblum he could be nominated for the Nobel Prize in that field. It’s more for the Oscar.
Anyway: In my film the murdered dead rise again just because, just one night, to take revenge on the murderers. You might also ask me: and why don’t they talk to the murderers instead of taking revenge? Why don’t they propose life imprisonment instead of an eye for an eye? But that would be another film: perhaps a black comedy. This is more of a horror film like the North American ones where during one night you can legally go out and kill. After all, it’s an ordinary evening on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, not far from here.
The producer and the screenwriter observed me, turning their heads at the same time in a negative wave – themselves like zombies -, light, subtle… and definitive. Ña Chacha served me a glass of ginger lemonade, as if she knew me. A delicacy.
And as I tasted the elixir, suddenly he spoke:
– God wouldn’t allow it.
I answered:
– This is a valid objection. This is why the prophecy appears in a pagan text: a power that came from beyond the grave, but not divine.
Ña Chacha considered it as if she approved of my answer.
– We are in the 21st century – the screenwriter informs me -.
“And it’s three in the afternoon,” I added, pointing to the clock on the wall.
The producer stood up to greet us. The screenwriter put his hands on his chest like an executioner.
– We are in contact – the producer told me -.
Ña Chacha led me sulkily to the gate, where the truck was waiting for me.
“My dead come to visit me several times a year,” Ña Chacha confessed, as if he were talking about the weather. There’s one I’m afraid of. He is not dead as is known. I pray to God you didn’t give him any ideas.
He left me at the exit without anger, but with apprehension. As I watched her drive away from the car window, I felt that the journey had been worth it.
Source: Clarin
