In Praise of Ted Mooney, Part 4: The Same River Twice

“A lot of times things were really normal, as if you were in a movie.” Easy Travel to Other Planets

“What is it people in America say, Paul, when they feel their lives are. . . lifted out of the ordinary into   something …momentarily grander?”   “They say, ‘It’s like a movie’.” Traffic and Laughter

In Ted Mooney’s most recent work, The Same River Twice, director Max Colby is at loose ends. He knows that in his next film he wants to use only natural lighting, but the star he was to use objects. So he starts filming his friends, Rachel and deGroot, as they restore a houseboat, turning them and others, including his wife and himself, into characters. He has no script, but he keeps filming, trusting his intuition, and what gradually emerges is a story that he’d  “kill to make” (112). He works intuitively, believing that  “his own receptivity, properly cultivated, would eventually reveal what he’d come to record” (326). The story of Max’s moviemaking ends with a night’s shooting when the full moon and fog come together as “the light of rapture and unforeseeable consequences” (321).

Those not involved in the film business as actors, directors, or editors may as well be. When Turner, an art dealer, tucks a gun into his belt, “He knew he was behaving like a character in a movie but so now was everyone else – all over the world, every waking hour, without even thinking about it” (323), except, perhaps, when they are playing the role of audience.