<Paul Verhoeven's Cameo>

Paul Verhoeven's Cameo

A man--a dry, crumbling, slightly shaking, old man--is standing in the corner of a movie set made up to look like a kitchen, and has been standing there since the rest of the crew left for lunch about twenty minutes ago. He is Paul Verhoeven and he has just lost his mind.

The director of a handful of brilliant, ballsy Dutch films early in his career, and another handful of slightly inferior works later on in America, Paul Verhoeven made a clean break from the industry in late 2008, after his attempts to get Arnold Schwarzenegger to eat feces in Total Recall 2 failed. Something can be both explicit and necessary to the plot, Paul argued, but his producers weren't having it, and so he left them. And he left their town.

That was nearly a decade ago. In the time since, Paul hasn't watched more than a dozen movies, tops, opting instead to devote his time and energy to motocross, a sport he always wanted to try, but never had the time.

Then, yesterday, a call came. It came from Phil Gelatt, the latest flash in Hollywood's pan, fresh off the wildy successful Labor Days: The MOVIE and a trilogy of documentaries about serial killers he went to high school with. Phil was a big fan of Paul, citing the aged auteur's body of work as one of his primary inspirations, and he would be honored, Phil told Paul, if Paul would swing by the set of his latest movie, an as-of-yet untitled dramedy about vampire cowboys, and perhaps lend a cameo role. Phil used the word "honored" twelve times in their five-minute conversation. He was very polite, very convincing.

"Well, ehm, just this once, I s'pose," Paul told him. "As a favor to a fan."

Paul got to the studio around eleven o'clock this morning. The scene they were shooting was one in which the college-aged vampire cowboy finds out that both his dad and uncle are also vampire cowboys, and have been since they were in college. Ron Howard's daughter, Bryce Dallas, was playing the role of the son; occupying the role of the father was a stuffed dummy over which a computer-generated Roman Polanski will later be added; and Paul was playing the uncle. Rounding out the scene were three horses, a pile of dead rabbits, and the annoying neighbor character, played by Phil's old roommate, the well-meaning but somewhat misguided Tom Bayne.

It's a short scene. Only a few key bits of information need to get across. The kid finds out that his dad and uncle are vampires, that's basically it. But just as things were about to reach their emotional cusp, the lessons Tom learned in the method acting class he took at the School of Visual Arts grabbed hold of him, and off he went on a tangent about turning everyone in the town into vampires as a way of ending the humans versus vampires war.

"Like that scene in Flesh + Blood with the bubonic plague dog!" was the line that did Paul Verhoeven in. Unscripted, and wholly irrelevant to the original goal of the scene, it was delivered by Tom after he tossed a dead rabbit out the fake kitchen window (a move that was also unscripted).

Like Phil, Tom too was a fan of Paul's work, and he thought it would be funny to reference one of the director's films in the scene. The line was weak, the minute Tom said it he wished he hadn't, and it will most likely be cut from the final film. No, it will definitely be cut. But, nevertheless, the line got Paul thinking about multiple universes.

He fell silent. He fell out of the scene. "Here I am," he thought to himself, "in a kitchen in a world in which my movies exist, and so it can be assumed that I exist as well, but I am not me. I am Uncle Hellion."

His face drooped, his eyes widened. He looked off into space.

"Who is portraying me?" he wondered. "And have I survived?"

"Flesh + Blood was a great movie!" shouted Paul-as-Uncle Hellion, interrupting Bryce Dallas-as-Johnny's best efforts to control the crazy neighbor. "Does anyone know whatever happened to its director, Paul Verhoeven?! Did he survive the recent vampire rebellion? Did he join the insurgency? Did he kill and eat the bastards at Artisan?! Bed their wives, perhaps?"

It was at that point that everyone came out of character. The scene had been taken too far. It had broke, and with it so had Paul.

"Are you okay, Mr. Verhoeven?" asked Phil. "Maybe we should take a break?"

"I'm, ehm, as you say, okay," Paul told him, but he clearly wasn't. And he appeared to be getting worse. Shaking more, turning grayer.

Phil suggested that the crew use this time to take their lunch break. "We'll try again in a half hour," he told them.

He then went and consoled Paul. He patted him on the back, but got no response.

"Are you sure you're alright, Mr. Verhoeven?"

Nothing.

Nothing aside from some mumbling that suggested a lot going on inside Paul's head.

Phil wasn't sure what to do. He thanked Paul for the opportunity to work with him and he told him he would understand if he wanted to go home. Then he went to lunch with the rest of the crew.

On his way out of the studio Phil was met by Tom, who apologized for ruining the scene, and for being such a terrible actor. But Phil would let no one take the blame but himself. It was he who googled Paul's daughter's name and found that she was a teacher in Brooklyn. And it was he who exaggerated the professionalism of a film festival he organized years ago in her father's honor, in order to get his phone number from her. And it was he who made the fateful call, begging Paul to make an appearance in his movie.

Phil imagined that the events of this afternoon would weigh heavily on his conscience for the rest of his life.

They did.

Now twenty five minutes have passed since the crew went to lunch, and Paul Verhoeven has yet to snap out of it. Standing right where he was when this train of thought left the station, staring into the empty face of Roman Polanski's lifeless, harmless dummy stand-in, he just cannot get his head around multiple universes.

Has every movie ever made, every book ever written, every story ever told, every song ever sung been part of their own universe?!

Why they must have been, else they'd do nothing but contradict one another! There are, for instance, universes out there in which vampire comboys don't take over small towns! Just as there are universes out there in which Starship Troopers wasn't misunderstood!

All this thinking leads Paul Verhoeven to the obvious conclusion that he is a god. Possibly even the God. And if God wants Arnold Schwarzenegger to eat Martian shit, then so be it, a computer-generated Arnold Schwarzenegger will eat Martian shit!

And with that, Paul-as-God grabs the dummy stand-in, and jumps out the fake kitchen window.