{"id":5157,"date":"2021-12-13T09:36:06","date_gmt":"2021-12-13T16:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/?p=5157"},"modified":"2021-12-30T22:08:03","modified_gmt":"2021-12-31T05:08:03","slug":"nude-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/archives\/5157","title":{"rendered":"Nude Movie"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Morris Green teaches Video Production, Film History, and Computer Graphics at Mercy High in Mercy, a small town on the far north coast of California. When he started teaching at the high school eighteen years ago, cell phones equipped with video cameras were not yet on the market and Internet platforms for sharing videos were just being established. Nowadays everyone who has a cell phone can shoot videos, and watching videos via the Internet is an integral part of virtually every American\u2019s life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A soft-spoken bespectacled man of medium height with\nwispy reddish brown hair, Morris began teaching at Mercy High when he was\ntwenty-five. He is now forty-three and married to his former student Melanie\nwho fell in love with Morris when she took Computer Graphics and Film History\nfrom him her senior year at Mercy High, which happened to be Morris\u2019s first\nyear on the job. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Melanie did not attempt to seduce Morris when he was\nher teacher, though several of her classmates tried without success, nor did\nshe initiate anything with Morris beyond friendly hugs when they would meet,\nseemingly by accident, around town during the summers between her years of\ncollege. But when she graduated from Sacramento State with a degree in Computer\nGraphics and moved back to Mercy to launch her Graphics business Please Identify Yourself<\/em>, she immediately\ninitiated seduction procedures which Morris was helpless to resist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now Morris and Melanie have a twelve-year-old son\nnamed Orson and an eleven-year-old daughter named Escher, both of whom are\nvideo-making computer graphics prodigies and zealous Frisbee golfers like their\nfather. Please<\/em> Identify Yourself<\/em> has seven employees and does a huge online\nidentity-package business, Melanie\u2019s clients ranging from individuals to large\ncompanies. Morris continues working at the high school, though much of what he\nteaches has become uninteresting to him because most of his students would\nrather interact with their phones than with him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even Film History has lost its luster for Morris, as\nthe films he considers of great importance are of little or no interest to the\nvast majority of his students for whom anything made more than a few years ago seems\nirrelevant to what matters to them today \u2013 and what that is, besides getting high\nand getting laid, Morris hasn\u2019t a clue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Enter Tuolumne and Tenaya Larkin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tenaya, eighteen, and Tuolumne, sixteen, were born\nand raised on a remote homestead ten miles inland from Mercy and homeschooled\nby their parents Donovan and Cass, whose folks were tree huggers who settled in\nthe Mercy watershed in the 1960s. Tenaya and Tuolumne never watched television\nor used a computer or a cell phone or even went to the movies until just a few\nmonths ago when they finally convinced their parents to let them go to Mercy\nHigh for a year before they venture forth to seek their fortunes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As is often the case with bright kids who have read\nhundreds of excellent books and plays while being homeschooled by smart parents\nand thoughtful grandparents and wise neighbors, Tenaya and Tuolumne find most\nof what Mercy High has to offer of little interest, but they both take to Video\nProduction and Film History like ducks to water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tenaya, a beguiling redhead, is hugely popular with\nlegions of young men at Mercy High, and Tuolumne, a dashing hunk with long\nbrown hair, is a big hit with myriad young women on campus. However, romance is\nof little interest to either of them compared to their burning passion for the\naforementioned subjects taught by the aforementioned Morris Green.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey\u2019re amazing,\u201d says Morris to Justin Oglethorpe in Big Goose<\/em> after school one day in late October, Justin the longtime bartender of the Goose<\/em> as that largest of Mercy\u2019s three pubs is known to locals. \u201cThey\u2019re like supernatural versions of some of the kids I had in my classes when I first started teaching here. Intellectually sophisticated, blazingly creative, and <\/em>they get my jokes, which none<\/em> of my previous students, even the smart ones, ever got. But Tuolumne and Tenaya do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know their folks,\u201d says Justin who is fifty-four,\nsix-feet-six, and has carrot red hair recently cut short for the start of the Mercy\nRec Center basketball league, the Big\nGoose<\/em> team always formidable with Justin, who was on the San Jose State\nbasketball team, playing point guard, and five-foot-seven Pablo \u2018Jumping Jack\u2018 Valdez\ndominating the paint. \u201cThey\u2019ve been bringing Tulo and Tenaya here once a month\nsince they were little kids to hear Ricardo play piano on Thursday evenings. Donovan\nis stupendously ironical and makes much-sought-after dulcimers, and Cass is the\nRock of Gibraltar with a fabulous sense of humor and a singing voice\nreminiscent of Joni Mitchell. She plays zither.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNow if I were to say Rock of Gibraltar<\/em> or Joni\nMitchell<\/em> or dulcimer <\/em>or zither<\/em> in any of my classes, no one\nwould know what I was talking about, except for Tuolumne and Tenaya.\u201d Morris gulps\nhis half-pint of Mercy porter. \u201cWhen I screened The<\/em> Maltese Falcon<\/em> a week\nago for my Film History classes and asked my students to write responses to the\nfilm, all of them, I\u2019m not kidding, fifty<\/em>\nstudents each wrote a few sentences, the gist of which was they found the film\nexcruciatingly dull, and several of them used the word excruciatingly<\/em>, which I\u2019m sure their writing software chose for\nthem, except <\/em>for Tuolumne and Tenaya.\nThey both wrote long gorgeous handwritten elegies to the movie, and I don\u2019t use\nthe words gorgeous<\/em> or elegies<\/em> lightly. Can I read you a couple\nexcerpts from their responses?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNothing would please me more,\u201d says Justin, who\nis also one of the owners of Big Goose<\/em>,\nwhich allows him to have Miguel take over behind the bar while he, Justin, takes\na break to hang with Morris and let the good man debrief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They sit at a small table away from the growing\nhubbub as five o\u2019clock approaches, and Morris reads first from Tenaya\u2019s\nresponse to The Maltese Falcon<\/em>, that\niconic template for a thousand subsequent murder mystery suspense thrillers,\nminus the horrific violence and moronic dialogue that eventually overwhelmed\nthe genre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u2018Bogart\u2019s face, oh his face,\u2019 reads Morris, passionately.\n\u201cThe sublime sorrow of a man shaped by his awareness of the falsity of hope. His\nsorrow is etched in his face from the corners of his eyes to the corners of his\nmouth, vestiges of tenderness only apparent when he smiles, and even those\nvestiges are tempered with bitterness. Whatever else the movie is about, Bogart\u2019s\nangry despair is the engine of this movie.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWow,\u201d says Justin, impressed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Morris nods. \u201cWow, indeed. Listen to this from\nTuolumne.\u201d He puts down Tenaya\u2019s seventeen-page opus and picks up Tuolumne\u2019s\nten-pager. \u201c\u2018Surely Beckett saw The\nMaltese Falcon<\/em>. He must have. And wouldn\u2019t Bogart have made a sublime\nVladimir and Lorre an incomparable Estragon in Waiting For Godot<\/em>? The profound absurdity of people for generations\nthrowing away their lives and the lives of others to possess an illusion left\nme breathless. Did Hammett know his book was homage to meaninglessness? Did\nHuston know<\/em> he was translating Hammett\u2019s\nallegory into visual shorthand of grief born of greed? Is this a meditation on\nthe fruits of deprivation? The movie is made with such care, such sincerity.\nIndeed, it is this unfettered sincerity that amplifies the absurdity into a\nmaelstrom of tension \u2013 about nothing!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWow again,\u201d says Justin, smiling at Morris. \u201cYou\nmust be thrilled.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m reborn,\u201d says Morris, gazing wide-eyed at\nJustin. \u201cI care about teaching again. I have a reason to go to work. I want to\nshare a thousand things with them every day. And glory of glories they seem to\nbe infecting the other kids, challenging them to think beyond the blur of their\nnumbing media to grok the miracles of the classics.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHallelujah,\u201d says Justin, clinking his coffee mug\nwith Morris\u2019s glass of porter. \u201cAll is not lost.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In November, Morris takes his two Video Production classes to the Fletcher Gallery in Mercy to see the latest show of local artist Bertram Hawley\u2019s life-sized and uncannily lifelike wooden sculptures of naked women and naked men. Bertram is eighty now. He used to show annually at the Fletcher Gallery, but has slowed down in his old age and this is his first show of seven new works in almost three years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Virtually everyone in Mercy goes to Bertram\u2019s shows,\nand most of the kids in Morris\u2019s Video Production classes have not only already\nseen this year\u2019s show, they grew up going to Bertram\u2019s shows with their parents\nand friends. Even Tuolumne and Tenaya have gone to these shows since they were\nlittle kids, their parents eager to expose them to excellent works of art and\nmusic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this show of Bertram\u2019s sculptures, five women\nand two men, has such a powerful impact on both Tenaya and Tuolumne, they\ndecide to contact Bertram and ask if they might film him speaking about his art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A slender agile man with snow white hair neither long nor short, Bertram was born in Los Angeles to British parents, moved to England as a teenager, and stayed in England until he was forty when he returned to America with his British wife Alison who is exactly his age. An actor of some success in England, Bertram gave up stage and screen for sculpting after surviving a terrible car accident that rendered him prone to severe anxiety and panic attacks, his emotional condition much improved since moving to Mercy where he and Alison have lived for thirty years now, Alison a psychotherapist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On a sunny Wednesday after school, armed with an excellent video camera and tripod and audio recorder on loan from Mercy High, Tuolumne and Tenaya arrive at Bertram\u2019s big airy studio adjacent to the house where Bertram and Alison live a mile inland from Mercy. They find Bertram having tea at his work table with Eliana, the lovely seven-year-old daughter of Bertram and Alison\u2019s good friends Zeke and Conchita, Zeke a gardener who works for Bertram and Alison once a week, Conchita a real estate agent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWelcome,\u201d says Bertram, coming to greet Tuolumne\nand Tenaya on the threshold of the studio. \u201cYou\u2019re just in time for tea. I am\nhaving black, Eliana is having mint. We just made a pot of each.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThank you,\u201d say Tuolumne, bowing graciously. \u2018We\u2019re\nhonored to meet you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTruly,\u201d says Tenaya, bowing, too. \u201cWe\u2019re in awe of\nyour art.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh don\u2019t be,\u201d says Bertram, laughing. \u201cThey\u2019re just\ngigantic wood carvings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey\u2019re so real,\u201d says Tenaya, gazing around the\nstudio \u2013 an as-yet-untouched pillar of oak, seven-feet-tall and nearly\nthree-feet-wide standing under the central skylight on the carpeted platform\nwhere Bertram does his sculpting. \u201cSo alive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA friend who owns a few of my pieces says he talks\nto them,\u201d says Bertram, leading them to the work table, \u201cand believes they listen\nand sympathize.\u201d He gestures for Tuolumne and Tenaya to sit. \u201cEliana this is\nTenaya and her brother Tuolumne.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know who you are,\u201d says Eliana, who is not\nBritish, but being a preternatural mimic has an impeccable British accent whenever\nshe spends time with Bertram and Alison, which is often. \u201cYou sometimes come to\nthe Goose<\/em> with your parents on\nThursday evenings to hear Ricardo play, and your father has pints of dark beer\nand your mother has glasses of red wine and you have lemonade.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tenaya sets up the tripod, mounts the camera\nthereon, frames her shot so the worktable and those around it are the center of\nattention, and activates the camera before sitting down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI thought you looked familiar,\u201d says Tuolumne,\nsmiling at Eliana, her long black hair in a ponytail. \u201cYou played a duet with\nRicardo the last time we went. You were fantastic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRicardo is my piano teacher,\u201d says Eliana, returning\nTuolumne\u2019s smile. \u201cHe sometimes humors me by letting me perform with him. I do\nlittle flourishes in the high notes while he does everything else. I\u2019m very\nlucky. He only has three students because teaching piano interferes with his\ncomposing and practicing. He earns his living as a waiter at Campeona<\/em> and occasionally gets residuals\nfrom a movie he played the music for. Isabella\nRemembers<\/em>. I\u2019m in the movie, too, and so is Bertram. I was only\nfour-years-old when they made the movie. You really should see it, and I\u2019m not\njust saying that because we\u2019re in it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll rent it immediately,\u201d says Tenaya, delighted\nby Eliana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo need,\u201d says Bertram, enchanted with Tenaya and\nTuolumne. \u201cI\u2019ll loan you my copy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRicardo,\u201d continues Eliana, looking at the camera and\narching her eyebrow, \u201cis composing a quartet for piano, cello, violin, and oboe\nthat is so<\/em> beautiful I can hardly believe\nit exists. He\u2019s such<\/em> a genius, and so\nis Bertram, though they both say they are merely well-practiced.\u201d She laughs a deep\nhearty laugh one might expect from an adult, not a seven-year-old. \u201cAren\u2019t\ngeniuses funny?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes, aren\u2019t we?\u201d says Bertram, winking at Tuolumne.\n\u201cSo tell me about yourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell,\u201d says Tuolumne, placing the audio recorder in\nthe center of the table, \u201cwe hope to interview you and shoot some footage for a\nschool project and\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all just a ruse to meet you,\u201d blurts Tenaya, gazing\nat Bertram as if seeing a miracle. \u201cI feel like I\u2019m in the presence of\u2026 I don\u2019t\nknow\u2026 Picasso.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh dear, no,\u201d says Bertram, emphatically shaking\nhis head. \u201cWe are told by multiple reliable sources that even at eighty Picasso\nwould have been chasing you around the studio intent on ravishing you, whereas\nI was never that sort, though you are<\/em>\nlovely. Don\u2019t get me wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou mean\u2026\u201d says Tenaya, frowning. \u201cPicasso was a\nwomanizer?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFamously so,\u201d says Bertram, tickled by Tenaya\u2019s innocent\ndismay. \u201cWhich just goes to prove that one\u2019s art isn\u2019t necessarily a reliable representation\nof one\u2019s persona. I, for instance, carve statues of naked people, yet I\u2019m\nterribly shy about letting anyone other than my wife see me naked, and even\nwith Alison I feel more comfortable with at least some<\/em> clothes on. Most of the time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen we were in the gallery with our class,\u201d says\nTuolumne, giving Bertram a mischievous smile, \u201cI couldn\u2019t help imagining all of\nus spontaneously taking off our clothes to be naked with your sculptures. They\nseem to want <\/em>us to be naked. Do you\nknow what I mean?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI do know what you mean,\u201d says Bertram, his eyes\ntwinkling. \u201cI think your vision would make a wonderful short film, and you have\nmy permission. I\u2019m sure we could arrange something with the gallery.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh no,\u201d says Tenaya, solemnly shaking her head.\n\u201cOur wonderful teacher Mr. Green would get in terrible trouble if we made a\nmovie with naked students.\u201d She sighs. \u201cThough it is a lovely idea.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat about this?\u201d says Eliana, holding out her arms\nto the camera. \u201cWe see a bunch of people going into the gallery wearing\nclothes, grown-up people, so wonderful Mr. Green won\u2019t get in trouble, and then\nwe see them walking around looking at the sculptures, and then a little while\nlater we see them coming out of the gallery naked except they\u2019re still wearing\nshoes and hats.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOr it could be a couple, a man and a woman,\u201d says\nBertram with a gleam in his eyes, \u201cwho come into the gallery and move silently\nabout, slowly disrobing, one item at a time, until they are both naked and cease\nto move and become wooden sculptures of themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOr,\u201d says Tenaya, her eyes wide with excitement, \u201ca\nlonely man and a lonely woman enter the gallery separately and are mesmerized\nby the sculptures, and after some suspenseful wandering around, they meet each\nother next to those two statues, the man and woman you\u2019ve posed together, and\nthey gaze at the two statues for a long time and then turn to each other and\nslowly disrobe and assume the poses of the statues and then we dissolve to them\nleaving the gallery together, wearing their clothes again and holding hands.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOr,\u201d says Tuolumne, too excited to stay sitting,\n\u201cit could<\/em> be a class of high school\nkids who come in being loud and joking and making childish sexual comments. But\nseeing the sculptures quiets them and we only hear occasional snickering until\neven that stops and they\u2019re all lost in wonder, and then each of them says\nsomething self-revealing and when they leave the gallery we can tell by the\nlooks on their faces they\u2019ve been changed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bertram looks at Tenaya and asks, \u201cDid you film us\nsaying all that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEvery bit of it,\u201d she says, nodding. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd I\u2019ve been recording audio since we walked in,\u201d\nsays Tuolumne, beaming at Bertram.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBrilliant,\u201d says Eliana, raising her teacup as if\nto make a toast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou know what I\u2019d like to do?\u201d says Tuolumne,\ncarrying his cup of tea to the pillar of wood in the center of the studio \u2013\nTenaya expertly tracking him with the camera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat would you like to do?\u201d asks Bertram, joining Tuolumne\nat the pillar and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him in a shaft of silver\nsunlight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019d like to film you carving your next nude from\nstart to finish,\u201d says Tuolumne, reaching out to touch the pillar of wood. \u201cWe\ncould stop by on our way home from school and shoot a few minutes every day,\nand when the sculpture is done we\u2019ll make a time lapse movie of your nude\ntaking form. With comments from you and a soundtrack of Ricardo\u2019s piano music.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI like the way you think,\u201d says Bertram, resting a\nhand on Tuolumne\u2019s shoulder and not<\/em>\ntelling him the future he has just foreseen \u2013 Tuolumne becoming his apprentice\nand working with him as far into the future as Bertram can see, which is at\nleast another few years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAren\u2019t they exquisite together?\u201d whispers Eliana to\nTenaya. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cExquisite,\u201d says Tenaya, loving her shot of the two\nmen, one young, one old, contemplating their futures together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

fin<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How Are You?<\/em> A 44-second movie starring Todd\u2019s hand<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Morris Green teaches Video Production, Film History, and Computer Graphics at Mercy High in Mercy, a small town on the far north coast of California. When he started teaching at the high school eighteen years ago, cell phones equipped with video cameras were not yet on the market and Internet platforms for sharing videos were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7131],"tags":[7188,7192,7194,7189,7186,7190,7184,7187,7193,7185,4305,7195],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5157"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5157"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5165,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5157\/revisions\/5165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}