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Once upon a tiht and one was dark One moved restlessly all day while the other never stirred One arhts One was cold and fixed in place by stones And when the sun went down each afternoon on Maxian to resemble Green Glades cemetery just across the hich was the city of the dead

As the lights went out and the motions stopped and the wind that blew around the corners of the studio buildings cooled, an incredibleall the way along through twilight avenues toward that high brick wall that separated the two cities within a city And suddenly the streets were filled with so one could speak of only as reone away, they left behind thehosts of incredible happenings

For indeed it was thecould happen and always did Ten thousand deaths had happened here, and when the deaths were done, the people got up, laughing, and strolled away Whole tenement blocks were set afire and did not burn Sirens shrieked and police cars careened around corners, only to have the officers peel off their blues, cold-creaalow court apart world

Dinosaurs prowled here, onefifty feet tall above half-clad virgins who screa their armor and stash their spears at Western Costuhth let drop some heads From here Dracula wandered as flesh to return as dust Here also were the Stations of the Cross and a trail of ever-replenished blood as screenwriters groaned by to Calvary carrying a backbreaking load of revisions, pursued by directors with scourges and film cutters with razor-sharp knives It was from these towers that the Muslim faithful were called to worship each day at sunset as the limousines whispered out with faceless powers behind each , and peasants averted their gaze, fearing to be struck blind

This being true, all the more reason to believe that when the sun vanished the old haunts rose up, so that the waran to reseht, in that strange peace caused by temperature and wind and the voice of some far church clock, the two cities were at last one And the night watch from India to France to prairie Kansas to brownstone New York to Piccadilly to the Spanish Steps, covering twenty thousand miles of territorial incredibility in twenty brief minutes Even as his counterpart across the wall punched the tiht on various Arctic angels, read naht tea with all that was left of so, the watchmen asleep, the two cities, folded and kept, waited for the sun to rise over withered flowers, eroded tombs, and elephant India ripe for overpopulation should God the Director decree and Central Casting deliver

And so it was on All Hallows Eve, 1954

Halloween

My favorite night in all the year

If it hadn’t been, I would not have run off to start this new Tale of Two Cities

How could I resist when a cold chisel hammered out an invitation?

How could I not kneel, take a deep breath, and bloay the marble dust?

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The first to arrive …

I had co

The last to leave …

It was alin the simple but incredible fact that at last I worked in a place where everything was clearly defined Here there were absolutely sharp beginnings, and ends that were neat and irreversible Outside, beyond the stages, I did not much trust life with its dreadful surprises and ra the alleys just at dawn or twilight, I could ied to me because I said it was so

So I paced out a territory that was half a es and ten outdoor sets, a victim of my own romance and infatuated madness over films that controlled life when it ran out of control beyond the Spanish wrought-iron front gates

It was late, but a lot of films had fixed their schedules to end on All Hallows Eve, so that the wrap parties, the farewell binges, would coincide on various sets Fro doors throide, cane corks, and singing Inside, reet

ed arb

I entered nowhere, content to sined the studio was er or leave as I wished

But even as I ain, I sensed a certain treone on too , who fell on me when I was thirteen; I had never escaped fro carcass