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The Hat

It was to begin with a shot of horizontal tracks in the snow: two moving tracks filmed so closely that they would occupy the entire screen. Ned wanted to begin with the hat, but I told him to use the tracks. Save the hat for later, I said, the tracks are more evocative.

We were walking past the Laundromat when I said this. I can't remember who thought of the tracks, but it was my idea to begin this way. We would see the tracks and hear a dragging sound. Soon the boots would appear, probably from the right. This was Ned's idea—the progression from the tracks to the thing making the tracks—but I was the one who thought that the tracks should come first, before the hat.

It was much too cold for a walk, but Ned insisted. He told me in confidence that the film was about bleakness. He had tried to think of the bleakest thing he could, and this was what he had come up with. I didn't tell him what I really thought, which was that he was playing with some cool-seeming idea as opposed to having something to say. Still I liked the image of the tracks. That was what hooked me. I could see the camera pan up the body, which would be moving but appear to be still, or nearly still, because the camera would be moving at almost the same speed. The effect would be like looking out the window of a train as another train pulls up alongside you, so that it seems as though only the faster train is moving—and moving rather slowly at that; or even, at those moments when the two trains are moving the same speed, not moving at all.

I never believed the film would get made, Ned being Ned. Ned liked to talk, he had ideas, but he wasn't much on follow-through.

The camera would keep panning, as I saw it, until we see the corpse's face. The corpse's arms would be extended above its head, much like the arms of a diver entering water. Then cut to a long shot of a silhouetted figure in the distance, across a snowy field, dragging something. The business with the hat would come later, I thought, but Ned wasn't certain. He wanted to begin with a scene in which the man exchanges hats with the corpse. I liked this idea, but preferred the other beginning. I may have argued—I don't remember this, but I may have—that the dramatic question was stronger when one began with the tracks as opposed to the hat. The tracks introduce the dramatic question, I may have said, whereas the hat deepens it. Ned wasn't convinced, I think in large part because the hat was his idea.

I hadn't wanted to go for a walk and would have preferred to remain at Ned's apartment, but Ned insisted. The cold will inspire us, he said, but I for one could have done without this sort of inspiration.

Ned said that the premise was a manifestation of a certain feeling. This was how he worked, he said, he began from a certain feeling and asked himself how to produce that feeling. The feeling in this case was bleakness. I don't work this way myself, it feels backwards to me, but then this wasn't my film, it was Ned's.

Ned had his heart set on beginning with the scene in which the man switches hats with the corpse, but I said, No, begin with the dragging, begin with just a moving shot of just the tracks formed by the dead man's boots and this dragging sound, which in the beginning we don't understand for what it is. Then slowly pan over the corpse so that the dead man's boots enter from the right, followed by his legs and torso and so forth, until the corpse fills the entire frame.

Ned intended to drive to Albany to shoot the film with his Albany friends—an idea doomed to failure, I thought. He'd been in contact with his Albany friends, and each had a different idea about where the man was dragging the corpse and who the corpse was and who the man was—the whole thing. This is why Ned wanted to talk to me: he wanted me to solve the film for him and his Albany friends.

When we returned from our walk, Edie was in the kitchen making soup. Perhaps to side against Ned, she agreed with me about the hat. Begin with a question, she said.

I was a little bit in love with Edie, and she with me, I always thought. I didn't like feeling this way. I don't think Edie liked it either. We never talked about it or acknowledged it in any way. Edie has a large mole on her forearm, with hair growing out of it. Whenever I found myself liking her too much, I would think about that mole. This didn't really stop me from liking her, but it's all I could think of doing.

As Edie cut vegetables, the three of us tried to figure out what should happen next. Ned said that the man would come to a house and knock on the door. This would be the classic set-up in which a woman living alone answers the door to a stranger, who asks her where the nearest town is. My god you're freezing, she says, and invites him in, makes food for him—he's famished.

Edie hated this, for obvious reasons, but Ned said that we could always change it later. For now, he said, we need to keep moving forward. Edie make a face at this, but I don't think Ned saw it.

Ned, for his part, was fixated on the hat. For him the whole film revolved around the hat. He wondered if the woman recognized the hat as belonging to her husband. Perhaps this man has killed her husband, Ned said, and has dragged him here, knowing he lived here, or perhaps not knowing—both are possible.

I didn't so much care for this, but it gave me an idea for a shot. We would see the corpse outside the house, slumped against a wall. Directly above the corpse, framed by the kitchen window, would be the woman, looking out. She would be looking without really looking, because what could one possibly see out there? Behind her and to the side, sitting at the kitchen table, would be the man, the presumptive killer of her husband, eating.

It was a haunting shot, we all agreed it was haunting, but to what end?

Then Edie said that the man had been distant to the woman, that he had barely answered her questions, and that this was why she had moved to the window: she was tired of his evasions.

When Edie said this, I wondered if she was talking about Ned, about her relationship with Ned, I wondered if she was saying that she was tired of Ned's evasions. Probably I was reading too much into it. In any case, this was the first idea I really liked, aside from the tracks. The woman wants to connect with the man—perhaps she's intrigued by him or feels compassion for him, perhaps she's lonely or maybe he reminds her of someone; it could be anything—but he won't let her in.

I thought about the hat, and it struck me that maybe Ned was right, that maybe the hat was the key. Then I realized what happens. The woman asks about the hat; she wonders where the man got it—it's an unusual hat—and he's forced to lie to her. But he doesn't just lie. It's a lie told with feeling. And this lie, whatever it is, creates an opening between them.

Ned liked this, doubtless because of the way it used the hat. Edie liked it too, which meant more to me. Together we tried to figure out what this lie would be, but it wasn't so easy and we kept getting sidetracked. Eventually it got late and I had to go home.

In the film itself, the man doesn't lie to the woman. Instead he says, pretending to be joking, that it's not his hat, that he had just switched hats with a dead man. I didn't like this. I don't think Edie liked it either. At the opening, I looked over at her at this moment, and she seemed to shake her head slightly.

Edie was sitting next to Ned, who seemed pleased with himself this night, and for good reason: people loved the film. You can never tell how people are going to react to something.

The film began with the hat, of course.