Page 226 - Flaunt 171 - Summer of Our Discontent - St-John

EXCERPT:
OPPOSITE: SAMUEL VAN HOOGSTRATEN . “MAN LOOKING THROUGH A WINDOW” (1653). OIL ON CANVAS. 44” X 34”. COURTESY. KUNSTHISTORISCHES MUSEUM, VIENNA.
Anaïs had been expecting it for weeks and, in a sense, it
felt as though she had been forced to wear something grubby
and could now get rid of it. Dopalet had always been polite to
her, respectful to the point of magnanimity, and for a time, he
had made her his confidante. Just now, when he had started to scream, it had been like a nightmare. And no one on her floor had intervened to protest—they helped her pack her boxes and promised to promptly send them on; already, they could not bring themselves to look her in the eyes, she was a plague victim. She knew that she was not the first to suffer this fate. Which made it all the more humiliating.
No one had ever dismissed her like that. No one had ever addressed her in that tone. She had been thanked for her ser- vices—her contract was not renewed, she would be called into an office and told that they needed to make economies, there would be some mention of the financial crash, or the possibility that a young woman her age might get pregnant, or the curse of the thirty-five-hour week . . . She had always been let go with
a modicum of tact and courtesy. Not that this ever stopped her from being plunged into sheer panic, dreading the idea that
she might end up unemployed for six months straight. She has
a phobia of any unexplained gaps in her résumé that might make an employer suspicious, it comes from having been a model pupil, or perhaps from having parents who worked hard and inculcated in her the idea that merit demands constant effort. Her parents own the largest pharmacy in Tours. They had started out with nothing and this was their legacy: she never rests on her laurels, she knows that nothing can be taken for granted, that you cannot always assume that there is still plenty of time to prove yourself. But what, in her early years working, had seemed like a series of enriching experiences—she has been assistant to a food photographer, an intern in an advertising production department, a runner for a fashion house, a props manager in a theater—is beginning to make her résumé look like that of a flighty young woman.
She had hit rock bottom when she met Dopalet. She was writing news copy for a cable TV channel, the news anchor cordially loathed her, and, if she made the slightest mistake, he informed his bosses. She could not take it any longer, having to get up at 5:00 a.m. in order to cobble together stories from the AFP news ticker. The producer had come to meet with someone at the TV channel, had flirted with her over the coffee machine. She had pretended not to know what he was hinting at when he had invited her to lunch to “talk about young, experimental cin- ema,” a subject about which she knew a great deal. He had taken a liking to her. He had offered her a job, paying a little more than minimum wage. She had created her own role: internet talent scout. It was new to her. Previously, all her posts had been as
an intern. On her first few days in the office, she was dazzled by Dopalet. His charisma, his decisive- ness, his intuition, his spirit . . . He valued her. He showered her with compliments about her aptitude for the job, the perspicacity of her thinking, the breadth
of her culture . . . She knew that he was attracted to her, but he never made her feel that he had hired her to be a pretty piece of ass. He had never come on strong. And yet, all too quickly, she had become dis- illusioned: the guy makes most of his decisions based on the I Ching or the Tarot. If he drew a “Darkening of the Light,” he would cancel a meeting. If he turned over “The Tower,” he fired someone in accounts. “The Chariot” and he would hire
a new intern. This was probably how he had made the decision
to hire her—midway between pervy fantasies and the luck of the cards. He has no real interest in anything. Disturbingly super- ficial, he shoehorns the word “culture” into every sentence so
he can complain about the movies he is reduced to making and imply that he is working far below his potential. But he would never go to see anything other than box-office block- busters, never opens a book, never visits an exhibition, has no interest
in music, and the sum total of his knowledge of the internet is checking profiles on IMDb. The topics of conversation that most interest him are those that directly concern him. She has never heard him offer an interesting opinion about cinema. He insists on innovative ideas but only respects formulas that have already proved themselves. He finds it difficult to focus on anything for more than two minutes without texting someone, opening a door, or changing the subject—any meeting with him feels like running a marathon. Dopalet needs to make his interlocutor ill at ease.
He waxes lyrical about a project he will have forgotten within the hour, makes promises to anyone and everyone, then reneges on them. His only virtue is that he has surrounded himself with tal- ent. But the hierarchy changes from one day to the next—this is the only thing he has in common with Fassbinder: every morning, he likes to make it known who is in and who is out of favor.
Anaïs was supposed to unearth talent from “outside the box.” She quickly realized what this entailed: finding “the best” YouTube channels (translation: “channels with a million plus subscribers”) and persuading them to “pitch a project” (translation: “write for free”) that he found “high concept” (translation: “demonstrably commercial but shot by unpaid amateurs”). She thought she had understood the brief and had acted accordingly, but on the rare occasions she had managed to drag kids into the office, they had never sufficiently impressed the producer. Dopalet constantly par- roted the line “I don’t want people I run into at the César Awards every year,” yet he could not bear to be dragged from the “old boys’ network” he claimed to disdain. In his own world, he was a major player. He expected anyone working on the internet to fall over themselves with gratitude at the prospect of being “discovered.” But the adolescent stars of YouTube have an inflated sense of themselves and don’t give a flying fuck about the silver screen—the clash of egos did not go well.
For some time now, Anaïs has been feeling that she was in the hot seat. He is no longer dazzled by her. He is no longer counting on her to bring him an online Stanley Kubrick who can shoot a twenty-first-century A Clockwork Orange for three euros fifty.
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