We're All Dying, Aren't We? (1)

Desert Hearts

What do you think of this?
A motion picture, wrought
in a wilderness, about a woman
loved by Gay, Guido, Arthur, Perce,
a woman who draws men
as thoughtlessly as breathing,
but whose beauty is her curse.

And what of three wranglers,
in the drum of the washing machine,
who live for chasing mustangs -
the dwindling mustangs,
whose fate is to be slaughtered
as food for dogs,
and whose destruction
draws nearer each time
they are chased?

Come with me to Reno,
the town with no water,
the zone of single strangers.
Meet five doomed characters,
moving through a slow gavotte
one deadly summer,
dancing on the spot
finding out anew what
they've really always known: how
to have and have not.

 

 

 

Author's Note

(1) A motion picture: “The Misfits” was filmed in the Nevada desert in the summer of 1960. Its unmistakable atmosphere of doom, and the uncanny way in which the fictional characters intertwined with the actors who played them, made it a unique work of art.
(2) about a woman: Roslyn Tabor, the character portrayed by Marilyn Monroe, now seems the very embodiment of the actress herself. Monroe never completed another film, and died less than two years later.
(3) Gay, Guido, Arthur, Perce: “Gay” is the name of Clark Gable’s character, and Eli Wallach plays “Guido”. Arthur Miller conceived the project (and continued working on the screenplay, even during filming) as a great and desperate love-letter to his disaffected wife (Marilyn Monroe). Clift, pursued by his own demons, plays “Perce”.
(4) In the drum of the washing-machine: This is the epoc when technology gripped the imagination of the West. Vacuum cleaners and refrigerators intrude on the lives of these human dinosaurs, but they cannot see that their world has already passed away.
(5) Reno: “The divorce capital of the world” has drawn Roslyn Tabor, who wants a quickie. Every character in the film is, in some sense, divorced and alone.
(6) Photo: In an unhappy parody of the film’s sexy dance sequence, Arthur Miller boogies ingratiatingly with the wife who no longer wants him (Marilyn is in costume as “Roslyn”).