Prologue
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| evidence file doc 08 |
Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul to waste[i]
(a few months
earlier)
My Name is Harold Lory. You may or
may not know me by my business name: Harry Long. My friends call me Handsome
Harry, although I’m not necessarily fond of that handle. I'm a writer, and a
filmmaker—specifically a director. You may or may not have seen some of my
films: "Poolside With Clare," "Lolicka," "Master Bates
Shuns the Blues," "The Box Installer," just to name a few. I
make porn; adult entertainment if you will (or at least I did) and right now,
because of the rather large dead woman on the floor of my living room, I'm
considering a move: a career change perhaps.
People often asked why I do it. If you've seen my work you already know that
there is always a love story involved; maybe that has something to do with it.
It seems to me most people think, or want to hear it is because I can live
vicariously through the characters I invent. The reality is; or at the least my
reality, I do it because it is what I was meant to be. You see we all have a calling. We are a part
of something bigger. The universe if you
will. It drives us. It motivates us. It forms our being. Most people spend their entire lives trying
to figure out their purpose; their reason for existence. I am one of the
fortunate ones. I found mine at an early age . . . I just didn't know it.
So that is where we should probably
begin. It's always best to start from the
beginning and, in this case, it will be no different.
I was born on November 22, 1963, at
Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas. Some of you may recall this day as
the one; Lee Harvey Oswald shot John F. Kennedy. My mother witnessed the shooting from the
hood of a car parked near the Texas School Book Depository. Six hours later I
was born. My mother would remark,
"As one great man passes on, another is born,” whereas my dad would say,
"The only good thing Kennedy ever did for this country was get shot.”
From what I can remember my dad
always seemed to be angry, and I always felt that if he had the opportunity he
would have shot the President himself. As a child, I often heard him remark
about Oswald being some kind of hero for this country. Dad, like Oswald, also
had a love for guns. He expected my mother and me to love them just as much as
he did and taught me how to use them at an early age while often taking me
hunting. We’d hunt deer or turkey or hog—rarely ever killing anything. But dad would
still want to fire those guns. If we didn’t shoot any game, he'd shoot trees or
try to shoot squirrels or birds—anything that moved—or didn't. Signs were one of his favorites—especially
STOP signs. I saw him slaughter a STOP sign once with his ten gauge shotgun.
His first shot ricocheted a number of pellets off the sign and hit the pick-up
truck we were in. It pissed him off pretty bad. He backed the truck up and then
unloaded every last bit of ammo we had on that sign. There wasn't much left of
it when he was done. Didn't say a word afterward either; just got back in the
truck and drove away. I got the impression he didn’t like anyone, or anything
telling him what to do.
My mother was a good woman that
always wanted the best for me. I believe she often protected me from my dad as
well as from his past. In the early days, she would often allude to the war in
Korea, and how it affected him. But she was never too specific about it.
Whenever an issue came up concerning his temper, she'd just say, "Your dad
had a rough time over there. We'll try to forgive him." Her protecting him
would change over time.
I only knew my parents for a short
period of my life—having left home at the age of fifteen. Around when I was ten, the fighting started,
and they fought a lot. Money was always an issue, and we were constantly
moving—looking for the "American Dream," my mom would say—until
landing in South Florida when I was in the sixth grade.
My parents eventually separated when
I was fourteen. After they split up, my
father kept coming around, until my mother eventually shot him with a gun he
had given her for protection. I don't
think my mother really wanted to kill dad, and she didn't. It just paralyzed
the bastard. Mom felt it was the best way to keep him out of our lives—shooting
him that is—but, Mom went to jail, and I had no reason to hang around.
Maybe my experience with guns has
something to do with the dead woman lying on the floor at the base of the
coffee table. Maybe it wouldn't have happened if I hadn’t kept a gun around for
years . . . Maybe if I hadn’t pulled it on Gloria in the first place she
wouldn't be dead, and smelling up the house. Maybe if I hadn’t tried getting
off my meds. Maybe. Who knows? But I think her death mostly had to do with her
negativity, especially towards a dear friend of mine. But we’ll get to that
later.
I’ve learned over the years I have
something called hyperosmia—basically a heightened sense of smell—so the stench
of the corpse has become a distraction to my work. It's amazing how a dead body
can smell after a few days. I should
have taken it some place. Maybe buried
it, or burned it perhaps, but I was so close to finishing the film and hadn't
the time to deal with a murder charge.
"Convent Virgins" is my best
film so far, and possibly my last. I needed to get the edit done before Friday,
or my backers would move on; and the distributors, Penilux International, will
miss their opening dates. They want to
have it on the web and in some theaters for its first simultaneous
release. There was a rumor someone else
had a similar film and was shooting for a similar release date. So there is no time for Ms. Thebolt,
considering I'm down to the pivotal moment where Sister Ophelia discovers the
other sisters have a secret (another common thread in my films, I’ve been
told). The sequence is enormously
important to her character development and to the climatic events that will
follow.
Distractions, such as the dead Ms. Thebolt,
and her attempt at ruining the reputation of a dear friend have kept me from
completing the film. You may or may not know of Ms. Gloria Thebolt—yes, that's
her. Some of you may recognize the name of the famous . . . former critic.
I'm sure her friends won’t miss her for a while—if she had any. As for family, she probably doesn't have any
of them either—that are human. As I
picture it, at least from a writer-directors POV, she's a mutation: a
propagation of a rhinoceros and some banshee incarnate created during a full
moon. In recent years, her criticism
focused on the adult entertainment business. She seemed to have an ulterior
motive and I’m not really sure why she was so vindictive. My thoughts were
perhaps she was just jealous—she could never make it as a porn-star so instead
she wrote about them as if she was an expert.
I've never understood the need for these types of experts—critics if you
will. Why do these people's opinions keep people from seeing my films or
anybody else's for that matter? Did not
Hedda Hopper write Citizen Kane had corny writing and old fashion photography?
(Give me a fucking break, lady!) Did not
Siskell and Ebert’s opinion malign Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner when first
reviewed? Did not Bunuel feel the need to show up at the screening of his film
Un Chien andalou with his pockets filled with rocks in case a fight broke out?
Why can't they just let John or Suzy Q Public discover for themselves what they
like or dislike? Are these critics afraid somebody will waste their money? I seriously doubt Gloria gave a rat's ass
about some poor sap spending his money on a film; or the conclusion he comes to
after sitting through it. Critics! I loathed them . . . fear them . . . and
need them.
"I'm glad
you're not with us any more, Gloria! The world is one step
closer to being a better place and you are now in a better position to let
intelligent or not so intelligent people form their own fucking opinion on what
they like or dislike!"
But I digress. It’s an anger
issue. First things first.
Why is the filmmaker, Harry Long, in
such a predicament? And my story is not about my years in the porn business—I
neither wish to bore nor bother you with that part of my life. A shrink once
told me everything relates to our childhood. Something I believe, but of course
there is more. I like to think my life is in the epilogue of a three-act
play. My beginning: my formative childhood—especially 1976 . . . A middle: my
homeless transitional period around 1988 . . . And an end: which is the
present—me trying to find a resolution to the completion of a film, dispose of
a large lady critic that lies lifeless on a white Persian rug given to me by a
dear friend, and possibly dealing with murder charges, prosecution,
persecution, lawyers, judges, juries . . . Enough of that for now. . .
I've told you of my birth, as well my parents. Perhaps we should begin with my education, or lack of; maybe when I left home . . . or perhaps my first love . . . Yeah, Rita. That's a good place to start . . . when she was fifteen, and I was thirteen . . .
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