At the time, you were one of the greatest avant-garde film directors in the world. Cinema was new and so, except for you and me, not many people knew yet. Anyway, at the premiere, with your stained raincoat and stringy hair, you looked more like a homeless person than a great artist. You couldn’t stop coughing, so I went to get you a glass of water and when I returned you had disappeared. You were supposed to introduce your film and the organizers were panicking. You had locked yourself in a stall in the men’s room and crammed yourself back between the toilet and the wall. I stood on an upturned trash receptacle, peering down, and you said, without looking at me, “I shall not speak to the audience after all. It would be wrong to say anything.”

&&Out in the theater, Hollywood’s secret societies had gathered—its bottom dwellers and academics, pornography addicts and artists, subversives and closeted industry types—and they were clearly getting restless. A low chanting and a muddy racket which became the stomping of feet was now an overwhelming din. There were dark circles around your eyes and your lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear what you were trying to say. I realize now that the whole point of cinema, at least for you, on that filthy bathroom floor, at that brief historical moment—before sound, before color—was about sight and not sound and so there really were no words.