Henry Ryan flips through the script in 1947 while he is thinking of a boy in 1925, he clears his throat again so that the director has to look up at him. Miller does, finally, look up. Talk through this with me, would you? Ryan says. If he is being ‘vibrated’ with such tremendous force wouldn’t he just die? Ryan asks with sincerity. A thing like that, it wouldn’t send you back in time. It would just scramble you into fluffy eggs, would it not? He sees Miller sigh but knows Miller is going to answer because Ryan is the studio’s golden boy. Even after the long nights drinking, waking up in stranger’s homes, the studio knows Henry Ryan is a box office draw. Conceptually, yes. Miller agrees. But not in this picture.
In 1925 under a hard sun that beats on the boy and the dirt football field equally without shadow, the boy has a choice to make. Coach Drew, a long-gaunt man with snow-white eyebrows is telling him that he has been accepted on a full ride to Brown for the way he runs plays, for his leadership, and dedication to the sport. And the news makes his father proud; a rough man like Drew, who works a bad delivery job on days when there’s anything for him to deliver.
Miller is not like Drew or his father, he would never guess that Ryan could throw a perfect spiral at one point, or run countless yards without getting tired. He is talking about concepts, naming names like Einstein, and Picasso, but none of it clicks for Ryan. And then Miller puts out his fist straight out in front of him. Elbow locked. Okay Ryan, draw me a perfect picture of that fist. And Ryan gets hot because he thinks it’s a gag. I aint been drinking, if that’s what you mean, Ryan says. But Miller shakes his head. If you really drew a picture of my hand it would not be accurate. Because you can only draw it from your point in space. And I can only draw it from mine. To render this smooth hand perfectly, you would have to do it from every possible perspective, yours mine, that page over there by the water cooler. It would look disarranged, and messy. Maybe even spiky. Because we exist from many countless perspectives. This is a picture about that, Ryan. All the alternate possibilities accessed through vibrations. Do you get my meaning?
In 1947, Ryan is awake in the early morning, thinking of the choice he made as a boy. His hips are bad and it pains him to get between bus stops to campus. He lives modestly and coaches football, though he has never really loved the sport the way some who followed his career expect that he might have. Out on the field that has green grass now and chalk lines on its endzones, Ryan thinks of how proud his old man was for choosing the way he did. There was a man who believed in putting selfish things aside and doing what was most practical. After the school day is out, and Ryan has some time to himself, he goes to a picture show. In the dark, he allows himself to dream fantastically about time and choices.
FDM.
El Golpe Avisa 