Radiance

Production Meeting

The Deep Blue Devil

The Man in the Malachite Mask

Doctor Callow’s Dream

And If She’s Not Gone, She Lives There Still

(Tranquillity Studios, 1961, dir. Percival Unck)

Audio Recorded for Reference by Vincenza Mako

PERCIVAL UNCK: I don’t know how to end it. All this time and I still don’t know. I can’t change Rin’s story. But I thought … I thought I could give him a better story. One where he had the means to search and find his fate, the way heroes do. One where he got saved. But answers are all that saves anyone, and I don’t have any. I set the place for the ending, turned down the bed, lit the candles, and the bitch stayed out in the cold to spite me.

MAKO: But it wasn’t ever going to be a real ending. Remember? It was going to be better than the real world. That was the whole point. That was the gift we wanted to make for her. It was going to have weight. It was going to rhyme with the beginning in some ineffable way that real endings never do. We never set out to tell a true story, only a mostly true one. The ending we planned is elegant, if you follow the logic, and “elegant” is more important than “real.” That’s always been our motto, really.

UNCK: The fairy tale thing was never going to work. It’s beautiful, but it can only come at the story obliquely. It can only tell how it felt. It can’t say anything like: “Severin Unck died by electrocution.” It can’t say she didn’t. The language is all wrong. We have all the ambiguity we can eat already; we don’t need more. And anyway, it’s not a child’s story. Or an adult’s. It’s not Anchises or Severin or anyone else, but all of them together, stuck in a room with no idea how to get out.

MAKO: There’s a thought. A locked-room mystery?

UNCK: Huh. Maybe. We started him off as a detective. Maybe we can end it that way, too. Let him detect a little. But what room? We’d need a cell, a vault, perhaps a ship? We tried the grand estate already.

MAKO: Don’t be so literal. Venus is the locked room.

UNCK: Things do tend to come out when there’s nowhere to go.

MAKO: Let the mystery stay, but take the angry noir brooder out. Give it a bit of the old Victorian dash. A lashing of lace and leather. A room full of suspects, a brilliant genius with a flair for the dramatic. And why stick to people who really lived? Give it the shine of magic, a surreal spit-and-polish. Not too much—everyone hates the avant-garde, deep down. But enough to go out with a bang.

UNCK: But, Vince … I’ve got experience with this one. I know the song too well. It’s been sung at me at top volume. I don’t know if I can go through it again, even at the typewriter. That ghastly, desperate night, Mary staring at me like I’d become a hellhound before her eyes …

MAKO: Let’s not talk about that right now. It’s long over.

UNCK: I should have told Severin. Secrets seem so important until there’s no one left to spill them to. I would have told her eventually. I would have found the right time. I remember she asked me once about endings. I told her you could have a story that was nothing but beginnings, but I didn’t know if you could have one that was only endings. If she loved me, she’d have given me an ending I could use. If she’d loved me at all. [long pause] I was a terrible father.

MAKO: You weren’t. Eccentric. Not terrible.

UNCK: I abandoned her. It’s the one capital crime of fatherhood. Mothers can fail a thousand ways. A father’s only job is: do not abandon this child. And what did I do? I let her run wild and never called her back in for supper when the sun got low.

MAKO: Percy … you don’t have to finish this. You can just stop. Severin wouldn’t be disappointed if you didn’t finish. She’d understand. She left her movie unfinished, too.

UNCK: Oh, Vince, no. If I leave it like this … if I leave it, it looks just like her. A poor abandoned creature without an end. If I do that … she’ll think I didn’t love her. I can’t let her think that. I let her think many wicked things about me, but not that. This is how I loved her. She knows it, recognizes it. And I promise you, if she’s anywhere, she hates herself for leaving Radiant Car undone.

MAKO: Mystery on the Pink Planet, then?

UNCK: If you have a “Mystery” title, you’re promising answers. If you’re going to put your cards on the table, there’d better be something on them. Besides, that’s just dreadful on the face of it. “Pink Planet.” You’re fired, Vince. I mean it this time.

MAKO: We have some answers. The rest … we guess. We lay down our best hand. Maybe it’s not a royal flush, but it’s enough to beat the house. And you never know. We could get it right. Stranger things have happened.

UNCK: [whispers] If I say she’s dead, she will be.

MAKO: Then don’t.

UNCK: I want to go back and start it all over again. From the first shot. In the thunderstorm. With the silver basket. I’ll get it right this time. I can do it better. Just one more take.