Let Go and Go On and On. Tim Kinsella

grainy and obscure, he sees it.

      A man is behind the fence.

      He reconsiders the whole sequence of events slowly before making out exactly what he’s looking at: a gun in the man’s hand.

      He calls his agent first, certain and excited that just his mere presence with a camera that day has saved a life.

      But before he can explain this to his agent, he is disturbed again by someone else at the door.

      *

      It is the aspiring teenage models again, Jane Birkin and her friend.

      He commands them to make him a coffee, and they sneak off to try on some clothes.

      When he catches them topless, he pulls Jane Birkin’s hair and starts biting her until they are all three on top of the knocked over clothes racks and tearing the clothes all apart.

      Then they tear apart the big purple backdrop.

      The girls are both naked in the rumble of the giant purple paper, choking him with their green stockings, giggling and screaming.

      *

      The girls dress him.

      And waking up, shirt open and fresh from a three-way, David becomes distracted again by the blown up photos.

      Shooing the girls, he finally realizes that he has witnessed a murder.

      *

      It is night, and he drives back to the park alone to find the corpse.

      In the wet green grass, the body is a shadow under a tree; eyes wide open in the moonlight.

      But David has forgotten his camera.

      He is scared off by a twig snapping.

      *

      Returning home, David finds Sarah Miles under his friend The Abstract Expressionist, making love.

      He and she make eye contact, but he walks out without saying anything.

      Returning to his studio he finds that all the negatives and enlargements that show the murder have been stolen.

      His dark room is destroyed.

      One grainy print of the corpse was left behind, forgotten beside the sink.

      When Sarah Miles comes to find him in his studio, he calmly tells her that he saw a man get murdered this morning.

      Who was he?

      Someone.

      He shows her the print and says – That’s the body.

      She says it looks like one of The Abstract Expressionist’s paintings.

      *

      David heads off to pick up his agent, to show him the body, and he sees Vanessa in the street.

      He pulls over to chase her and ends up down dark alleys, and in a rock club where one hundred completely stoic and expressionless kids are watching The Yardbirds with Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page.

      Except for one biracial couple dancing, everyone is entirely catatonic.

      Jeff Beck has trouble with his amp, his cable shorting when he tries to solo.

      Frustrated, he bangs his guitar against his amp and destroys it and once he stomps on his guitar and throws it into the crowd, the audience gets excited and there’s a near-riot.

      The band continues to play through all of this.

      David catches the neck of the guitar and gets chased for it.

      Dropping it on the street, a kid picks it up, interested for a second, but not knowing that it’s Jeff Beck’s, the kid drops it.

      *

      David shows up at a party to track down his agent.

      It’s smoky and there’s lots of fringe, people in suits sitting on pillows.

      Beautiful young people with money are beautiful stoned.

      His agent is in a dark corner with some young girls.

      David turns down a puff of a joint.

      He wants the agent to go with him to take a photo of the corpse.

      But the agent is too stoned to understand anything that David tells him.

      *

      David wakes up in the party aftermath.

      It is silent, very early, bottles and garbage everywhere.

      He returns to the park to photograph the corpse.

      But the corpse is gone.

      The grass is not even flattened.

      The park is quiet enough that the wind through the trees is rustling.

      Everything is green.

      And also up early is the Jeep crammed full of screaming mimes, speeding through the park wildly, waving handkerchiefs and flailing.

      No one else is in the park to see it except David.

      The Jeep parks, and two of the mimes overtake the tennis court.

      The other mimes are all thrilled to press up against the fence and watch the mimed game of tennis.

      Turning their heads to follow the imaginary ball, they ignore David.

      With their eyes, they all follow the volley back and forth over the net.

      The players are lobbing it high and swinging big overhand.

      And then the imaginary ball goes over the fence.

      All the mimes look to David to return the imaginary ball.

      He trots off across the field and complies, hopping a few steps to get it high over the tall fence.

      His eyes follow the ball and the sound of the ball being played is heard.

      *

      A few years after its release, you saw this film when you were living in Manhattan.

      *

      PART 1

      Two-Lane Blacktop

      (1971)