Der Satz ist ein Bild der Wirklichkeit (10/4/94)
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I have heard the story recently (though admittedly now I cannot tell you where) that the celebrated film producer Robert Evans got married a while ago, to some equally celebrated bimbo (pardon me if I’m sketchy on these details, but my subscription to
People magazine lapsed roughly with the Hapsburg empire), and in consequence felt compelled by whatever meager conscience he might possess to make a prenuptial bonfire of his immense collection of Polaroids — these, apparently, consisting for the most part of intimate studies of the vaginal apertures of every starlet he’d ever auditioned; many now famous. Thus, sighing mightily, he heaped them all up, poured on some charcoal lighter, and tossed in a match. Never having performed menial labor of this kind in his life, he had no idea that most of the Polaroids, only partially charred, would rise on the updraft from the unconfined blaze and scatter all over the neighborhood — adding, one gathers, to his already considerable legend. (And suggesting the possibility of a novel twist to the match-the-face-to-the-whatever sidebars so beloved in our celebrity literature.)
Yes, well: this appeared in print (somewhere), and didn’t seem to provoke a lawsuit. Perhaps it’s true. The curiosity, of course, is the startling similarity of this story to the one Campbell made up (or didn’t) in the LaLaLand novel, about the producer’s diary.
So: does life imitate art? does art imitate life? Or (my personal favorite) are they both imitating something else? — If so, will they tell us what?
____________An interview with Leonardo Garbonzo
