The shot endures for a Warholesque
duration, stretching barren seconds until it becomes philosophical
in its emptiness, the quake of room
tone
tidal
on the audio track.
Every
edit
abrupt, knocks the viewer out
of the story
With the force of the stage punches
that never
connect
In the saloon riots of his westerns.
His framings oblong, zooms searching to a
sandstorm
of grain, lighting clerical
as a mugshot. Like porn without the
sex, home
movies broadcast for the whole
town
to see,
these are the loose
ends
never meant
to make it
to television.
I wanna make bad
movies again
I wanna make em like
Walt Peterson
I interviewed him for the high school
newspaper,
asking questions from The Proust
Questionnaire,
a survey I’d found in in the back of
Vanity Fair
typically used by actors or writers to
muse philosophically.
They were famous. It mattered what they
thought about Life.
I’d often fantasized about answering
the questions myself.
“What do you consider the most
overrated virtue?”
“When and where were you happiest?”
”If you were to die and come back as a
person or a thing, what would it be?”
It was like he’d never though about
these things before.
Walt talked mostly about his faith. God
was the answer.
He was a kind man, unpretentious, accountant
by day, TV star on Sunday afternoon,
One week a secret agent, the
next a cowboy,
Moses on Easter Sunday.
Hair the calm snowbank white and gray
of television static,
Eyebrows thick and black as videotape,
Walt had the comforting vacuity of the
old cowboy stars,
the ones you never hear about any more:
Roy Rogers, Chill Wills, Audie Murphy,
Eyes like rusty wells
maybe something in'em
maybe not.
As Ace Diamond he had all the swagger
of the best singer at a bowling alley
karaoke,
more Barney than Andy,
timid, polyester, narcissistic without cause,
but with such good manners and earnestness
that he was
watchable.
I wanna make bad
movies again
I wanna make em like
Walt Peterson
How many mortals get to play Moses?
How many cast themselves in the part?
His Commandments left-overs from
Halloween,
Two styrofoam graves carved with
Sharpie,
His Red Sea parted of Play-doh and nail
polish.
Walt Peterson affixing scripture to
magnetic tape
In the back of a barn in Grove City,
Ohio.
I wanna make bad
movies again
I wanna make em like
Walt Peterson
Let this accountant fire his Remington
and ride his Trigger
across the muddy Re-enactment Villages
of Central Ohio!
Let this man of Pataskala seduce and murder his way
through an entire Cold War of Supervillains!
Let this man who keeps a Superman
costume in the trunk of his Buick
bring down the Word for all to hear!
On Channel 21! Local public access
television!
