Seven Moments of Ross

Photo & Text CC 2012 by MJ Vilardi, Creative Commons – 
May be shared with attribution

 5. Hipster Heaven

by MJ Vilardi

            The scene at Ross's 15th Street place was always wild. Sometimes you'd find him loudly banging out ideas on an old typewriter. Other times he'd be loudly banging one of his girlfriends. He wasn't very tidy, so the kitchen was normally in dirty pot/pan gridlock. But then he'd get energized and spend the day cleaning. He invited me to share a chicken that had been in the fridge for some time. I passed. Ross tore into it like Henry VIII, but soon became violently ill. This actually happened a lot, and I used to wonder if the fridge was functioning properly, especially in the warmer weather.

            During DC's scorching summers the place became a brick oven. An overhead fan pushed the heat around, but days were almost unbearable. We took advantage of the slightly less hellish evenings by filming a loopy tribute to the first scene of 

"Apocalypse Now."

            HIGH SHOT looking down on Ross, soaked with sweat on a messy bed, lost in a fever dream, madly muttering: 
"Everyone gets everything he wants..." 

            CUT TO: CLOSE ON Ross's half closed eyes. They are dead eyes, under murky water. The Drowned Man in a Bathtub. Beat. Another beat. He's not coming up. He's gone.

            WIDER: Suddenly he bursts forth gasping for air, foul coffee colored bathwater (colored with old coffee) sprays everywhere 
(all over the lens dammit). 

THE SOUND OF A MILLION CICADAS BUZZING. 

Ross blinks, unsure. 

Am I dreaming or am I dead? 

FADE OUT.

            This sequence became part of "Roach Palace II," an indy short we made, using gritty nighttime urban scenes to create a mood of paranoia and desperation. The soundtrack was hiphop junkyard percussion, performed by a group of kids called The Northwest Young'uns, beating the hell out of upside down plastic drums.

 "Roach Palace II" was shown at a DC film festival, and the artsy audience loved it!      

As an independent filmmaker, Ross became popular, and acquired a following of down-on-their-luck writers, barflies, coke dealers, and aspiring actors. His shabby apartment became something of a salon. Evenings would always start out with great creative potential: 

a brilliant idea, and you could do this part and I could arrange for that and... But inevitably, like Coleridge's vision of Xanadu, it would disappear in a puff of fairy dust.