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The Crazy-Quilt

#1
Secular Sanity Offline
THE CRAZY-QUILT was based on a short story with a strange title, THE ILLUSIONLESS MAN AND THE VISIONARY MAID, written by a psychoanalyst, Dr. Allen Wheelis, known only in intellectual circles, and directed by John Korty, whose previous credit was for a short peace film, THE LANGUAGE OF FACES, about a Quaker vigil at the Pentagon.

This was three years before EASY RIDER and RAIN PEOPLE. In fact, Korty made two more low-budget films, FUNNYMAN and RIVERRUN, before those releases, still operating out of an old barn in a beach town of 300 people.

His bare-bones studio was visited by Lucas and Coppola in 1969 and immediately inspired them to move north. As soon as they set up American Zoetrope, one of the corner offices was reserved for John Korty, who finally moved into it in San Francisco.


https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/sa_XbVgRL1s

The Illusionless Man and the Visionary Maid

Once upon a time there was a man who had no illusions about anything. While still in the crib he had learned that his mother was not always kind; at two he had given up fairies; witches and hobgoblins disappeared from his world at three; at four he knew that rabbits at Easter lay no eggs; and at five on a cold night in December, with a bitter little smile, he said good-bye to Santa Claus. At six when he started school illusions flew from his life like feathers in a windstorm: he discovered that his father was not always brave or even honest, that presidents are little men, that the Queen of England goes to the bathroom like everybody else, and that his first-grade teacher, a pretty round-faced young woman with dimples, did not know everything, as he had thought, but thought only of men and did not in fact know much of anything. At eight he could read, and the printed word was a sorcerer at exorcising illusions-only he knew there were no sorcerers. The abyss of hell disappeared into the even larger abyss into which a clear vision was sweeping his beliefs. Happiness was of course a myth; love a fleeting attachment, a dream of enduring selflessness glued onto the instinct of a rabbit. At twelve he dispatched into the night sky his last unheard prayer. As a young man he realized that the most generous act is self-serving, the most disinterested inquiry serves interest; that lies are told by printed words, even by words carved in stone; that art begins with a small “a” like everything else, and that he could not escape the ruin of value by orchestrating a cry of despair into a song of lasting beauty; for beauty passes and deathless art is quite mortal. Of all those people who lose illusions he lost more than anyone else, taboo and prescription alike; and as everything became permitted nothing was left worthwhile.

He became a carpenter but could see a house begin to decay in the course of building-perfect pyramid of white sand spreading out irretrievably in the grass, bricks chipping, doors sticking, the first tone of gray appearing on white lumber, the first film of rust on bright nails, the first leaf falling in the shining gutter. He became then a termite inspector, spent his days crawling in darkness under old houses; he lived in a basement room and never raised the blinds, ate canned beans and frozen television dinners, let his hair grow and his beard. On Sundays he walked in the park, threw bread to the ducks-dry French bread, stone-hard, would stamp on it with his heel, gather up the pieces, and walk along the pond, throwing it out to the avid ducks paddling after him, thinking glumly that they would be just as hungry again tomorrow. His name was Henry.

One day in the park he met a girl who believed in everything. In the forest she still glimpsed fairies, heard them whisper; bunnies hopped for her at Easter, laid brilliant eggs; at Christmas hoofbeats shook the roof. She was disillusioned at times and would flounder, gasp desperately, like a fish in sand, but not for long; would quickly, sometimes instantly, find something new, and actually never gave up any illusion but would lay it aside when necessary, forget it, and whenever it was needed back it would come. Her name was Lorabelle, and when she saw a bearded young man in the park, alone among couples, stamping on the hard bread, tossing it irritably to the quacking ducks, she exploded into illusions about him like a Roman candle over a desert.

“You are a great and good man,” she said.
“I’m petty and self-absorbed,” he said.
“You’re terribly unhappy.”
“I’m morose. . . probably like it that way.”
“You have suffered a ‘great deal,” she said. “I see it in your face.”
“I’ve been diligent only in self-pity,” he said, “have turned away from everything difficult, and what you see is the scars of old acne shining through my beard; I could never give up chocolate and nuts.”
“You’re very wise,” she said.
“No, but intelligent.”
They talked about love, beauty, feeling, value, love, life, work, death-and always she came back to love. They argued about everything, differed on everything, agreed on nothing, and so she fell in love with him. “This partakes of the infinite,” she said.
But he, being an illusionless man, was only fond of her.
“It partaketh mainly,” he said, “of body chemistry,” and passed his hand over her roundest curve.
“We have a unique affinity,” she said. “You’re the only man in the world for me.”
“We fit quite nicely,” he said. “You are one of no more than five or six girls in the county for me.”
“It’s a miracle we met,” she said.
“I just happened to be feeding the ducks.”
“No, no, no, not chance; I couldn’t feel this way about anybody else.”
“If you’d come down the other side of the hill,” he said, “you’d be feeling this way right now about somebody else. And if I had fed squirrels instead of ducks I’d be playing with somebody else’s curves.”
“You’re my dearest darling squirrel,” she said, “and most of all you’re my silly fuzzy duck, and I don’t know why I bother to love you-
why are you such a fool? who dropped you on your head?–come to bed'” On such a note of logic, always, their arguments ended.
She wanted a wedding in church with a dress of white Alencson lace over cream satin, bridesmaids in pink, organ music, and lots of people to weep and be happy and throw rice. “You’ll be so handsome in a morning coat,” she said, brushing cobwebs from his shoulders, “oh and striped pants, too, and a gray silk cravat, and a white carnation. You’ll be divine.”
“I’d look a proper fool,” he said, “and I’m damned if I’ll do it.”
“Oh please I It’s only once.”
“Once a fool, voluntarily, is too often.”
“It’s a sacrament.”
“It’s a barbarism.”
“Symbols are important.”
“Then let’s stand by the Washington Monument,” he said, “and be honest about it.”
“You make fun,” she said, “but it’s a holy ceremony, a solemn exchange of vows before man and God.”

“God won’t be there, honey; the women will be weeping for their own lost youth and innocence, the men wanting to have you in bed; and the priest standing slightly above us will be looking down your cleavage as his mouth goes dry; and the whole thing will be a primitive and preposterous attempt to invest copulation with dignity and permanence, to enforce responsibility for children by the authority of a myth no longer credible even to a child.”

So . . . they were married in church: his hands were wet and his knees shook, he frowned and quaked; but looked divine, she said, in morning coat and striped pants; and she was serene and beautiful in Alencon lace; the organ pealed, weeping women watched with joy, vows were said, rice thrown, and then they were alone on the back seat of a taxi, her red lips seeking his, murmuring, “I’m so happy, darling, so terribly happy. Now we’ll be together always.”

“In our community,” he said, “and for our age and economic bracket, we have a 47.3% chance of staying together
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Suddenly, all at once, she looked at him with a level detached gaze and did not like what she saw. “You were right,” she said, “you are petty and self-absorbed. What’s worse, you have a legal mind, and there’s no poetry in you. You don’t give me anything, don’t even love me, you’re dull. You were stuck in a hole in the ground when I found you, and if I hadn’t pulled you out you’d be there still. There’s no life in you. I give you everything, and it’s not enough, doesn’t make any difference. You can’t wait to die, want to bury yourself now and me with you. Well I’m not ready yet, and I’m not going to put up with it any’ longer, and now I’m through with you, and I want a divorce.”

“You’ve lost your illusions about me,” he said, “but not the having of illusions. . .”
“While you,” she said, “have lost your illusions about everything and can’t get over being sore about it.”
“. . . they’ll focus on someone else . . .”
“Oh I hope sol” she said; “I can hardly wait.”
“. . . you waste experience.”
“And you waste life!”

He wouldn’t give her a divorce, but that didn’t matter; for she couldn’t bear the thought of his moving back to that basement, and anyway, she told herself, he had to have someone to look after him; so they lived together still, and she cooked for him when she was home and mended his clothes and darned his socks, and when he asked why, she said, with sweet revenge, “Because I’m fond of you, that’s all. Just fond.”
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“Give me some money,” he said tonelessly. “We haven’t any.”

He got up, walked unsteadily to the table where she was sitting, opened her purse and took out her wallet. A few coins fell to the table, rolled on the floor; there were no bills. He turned her handbag upside down: an astrology chart tumbled out, then a Christian Science booklet, a handbill from the Watchtower Society, “Palmistry in Six Easy Lessons,” dozens of old sweepstakes tickets and the three new ones, “Love and the Mystic Union,” fortunes from Chinese cookies (one of which, saying “He loves you,” she snatched away from him), a silver rosary, a daily discipline from the Rosicrucians, the announcement of a book titled Secret Power from the Unconscious through Hypnosis-but no money. He shook the bag furiously and threw it in a comer, surveyed the litter before him with unblinking bloodshot eyes, his face expressionless. “Stupid fool” he said thickly. “Purse full of illusions. . . suitcase full of illusions . . . whole god damned lousy life full of illusions . . .” He turned away, stumbled back to the table, put the empty gin bottle to his mouth, turned it over his head, broke it on the hearth.

“Oh, my dear,” Lorabelle cried, her eyes wet, “you keep waiting for the real thing, but this is all there is.” He turned ponderously, facing her, eyes like marble; she came to him. “These are the days . . . and nights . . . of our years and they’re passing-look at us! we’re getting old – and what else is there?”
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That night they slept in each other’s arms and the next day the windfall was gone: it had been a mistake, the officials were terribly sorry, it was another man with the same name and almost the same telephone number, who owned a candy store and had five children, weighed three hundred pounds, and was pictured in the newspaper with his family, seven round beaming faces. Lorabelle was in despair, but Henry was tranquil, still felt that lightness of heart. He comforted Lorabelle and stroked her finally to sleep in the evening, her wet face on his shoulder. It was an illusion, he thought, and for a while I believed it, and yet-curious thing-it has left some sweetness. Throughout the night he marveled about this-could it be that he had won something after am-and the next day, crawling under the rotting mansion of a long-dead actor, he looked a termite in the eye and decided to build a house.

He bought land by the sea and built on a cliff by a great madrona tree that grew out horizontally from the rock, a shimmering cloud of red and green; built with massive A-frames, bolted together, stressed, braced, anchored in concrete to withstand five-hundred-mile winds, a house in the best illusory style, he thought wryly-to last forever. But the cliff crumbled one night in a storm during a twentyfour foot tide; Lorabelle and Henry stood hand in hand in the rain and lightning, deafened by crashing surf and thunder, as the house fell slowly into the sea while the great madrona remained, anchored in nothing but dreams. They went on to live in an apartment, and Henry worked as a carpenter, built houses for other people, began planning another house of his own.
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One afternoon Lorabelle came home in a rapturous mood. “Oh, Henry, I’ve met the most wonderful man!”.
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Henry caught her at the door, turned her over his knee, applied the flat of his hand to the bottom of his delight; and it was perhaps that same night -for she did not go out-that Lorabelle got pregnant, and this time didn’t lose it: the baby was born on Christmas, blue eyes and golden hair, and they named her Noel.

Henry built a house of solid brick in a meadow of sage and thyme, and there Noel played with flowers and crickets and butterflies and field mice. Most of the time she was a joy to her parents, and some of the time-when she was sick or unkind-she was a sorrow. Lorabelle loved the brick house, painted walls, hung pictures, and polished floors; on hands and knees with a bonnet on her head she dug in the earth and planted flowers, looked up at Henry through a wisp of hair with a happy smile; “We’ll never move again,” she said. But one day the state sent them away and took over their house to build a freeway. The steel ball crashed through the brick walls, bulldozers sheared away the flower beds, the great shovels swung in, and the house was gone. Henry and Lorabelle and Noel moved back to the city, lived in a tiny flat under a water tank that dripped continuously on the roof and sounded like rain.

Henry and Lorabelle loved each other most of the time, tried to love each other all the time, to create a pure bond, but could not. It was marred by the viciousness, shocking to them, with which they hurt each other. Out of nothing they would create fights, would yell at each other, hate, withdraw finally in bitter silent armistice; then, after a few hours, or sometimes a few days, would come together again, with some final slashes and skirmishes, and try to work things out-to explain, protest, forgive, understand, forget, and above all to compromise. It was a terribly painful and always uncertain process; and even while it was underway Henry would think bleakly, It won’t last, will never last; we’ll get through this one maybe, probably, then all will be well for a while-a few hours, days, weeks if we’re lucky-then another fight over something-what? -not possible to know or predict, and certainly not to prevent, . . . and then all this to go through again; and beyond that still another fight looming in the mist ahead, coming closer, . . . and so on without end. But even while thinking these things he still would try to work through the current trouble because, as he would say, “There isn’t anything else.” And sometimes there occurred to him, uneasily, beyond all this gloomy reflection, an even more sinister thought: that their fights were not only unavoidable but also, perhaps, necessary; for their passages of greatest tenderness followed hard upon their times of greatest bitterness, as if love could be renewed only by gusts of destruction.

Nor could Henry ever build a house that would last forever, no more than anyone else; but he built one finally that lasted quite a while, a white house on a hill with lilac and laurel and three tall trees, a maple, a cedar, and a hemlock. It was an ordinary house of ordinary wood, and the termites caused some trouble, and always it needed painting or a new roof or a faucet dripped or something else needed fixing, and he grew old and gray and finally quite stopped doing these things, but that was all right, he knew, because there wasn’t anything else.
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Every morning Henry took his tools and went to his work of building houses-saw the pyramid of white sand spreading out in the grass, the bricks chipping, the doors beginning to stick, the first tone of gray appearing on white lumber, the first leaf falling in the bright gutter but kept on hammering and kept on sawing, joining boards and raising rafters; on weekends he swept the driveway and mowed the grass, in the evenings fixed the leaking faucets, tried to straighten out the disagreements with Lorabelle; and in all that he did he could see himself striving toward a condition of beauty or truth or goodness or love that did not exist, but whereas earlier in his life he had always said, “It’s an illusion,” and turned away, now he said, “There isn’t anything else,” and stayed with it; and though it cannot be said that they lived happily, exactly, and certainly not ever after, they did live. They lived-for a while-with ups and downs, good days and bad, and when it came time to die Lorabelle said, “Now we’ll never be parted,” and Henry smiled and kissed her and said to himself “There isn’t anything else,” and they died.

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#2
C C Offline
Quite a little gem.

I didn't realize that later, in the next decade, it was John Korty who directed The People. Maybe circa the time frame he orchestrated photography on *The Candidate* ("What do we do now?"). I should be surprised that I even had a vague memory to attach to that title ("The People"). Probably due to a bygone independent station that rarely seemed able to afford broadcast rights to any syndicated movies other than those either forgotten or forgettable made-for-TV ones of the '70s. (Actually some of them aren't so disremembered.)

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#3
Secular Sanity Offline
I ordered that DVD a long time ago because it included an interview with Allen Wheelis, and I'm a big fan, but it never showed up.  I thought that maybe John Korty had died or something.  I just got it in the mail today.  There’s a note from him saying sorry for the delay.  Software glitches and desktop clutter are responsible—plus my 80 year old brain.  Big Grin

It was pretty good. His daughter, Joan Wheelis played their daughter in the film.

In the interview, he said that he thought that it was just as silly to not believe in anything as it is to believe in everything.

The guy that was interviewing him said that if there was any controversy in this film that it’s probably in the last line, which was directly from your story.

"And so, Henry kept striving toward a condition of truth, or love, or beauty, which did not exist, but he stayed with it because he knew that there wasn’t anything else."

He said, that seems to me to be a very positive statement because when all of the illusions are gone, it’s still possible to long for and work for a condition of truth or beauty that you know is unattainable, and that you’re going to fail, but unless you try, what are you going to do—there isn’t anything else. And so you try and that seems to me to be a profoundly optimistic ending.
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