The Death of a Monkey

We went to a movie about things that ought not to be. The hook was that in this movie these things were very real. Disturbingly real, I mean, really high production value. All the actors really did their best pretending they were scared by the things that happened, even though they had never experienced anything like it in their lives. Probably the worst any of them had ever experienced was maybe a little domestic abuse or possibly a car wreck. But since many of the actors were the sons and daughters of other very successful actors or were just really ridiculously beautiful or both, the worst things that ever happened to them was probably that their super famous actor dad wasn’t around all that much, or that they never really knew if people only liked them because their dad was a super famous actor or if people only liked them because they were jaw-droppingly handsome or both. I imagine it was the worst for them when it was both, but it was probably even worse for the people who just wanted to hang out with a goddamn beautiful celebrity’s kid, you know, constantly having to make up stuff about their great personality and always being sure to drop hints that they didn’t think that money could ever buy real happiness, all the while knowing in their heart that they really couldn’t afford to pay for the gourmet sushi lunch they had just eaten with the aforementioned celebrity kid off some quiet lady’s quivering naked body in the VIP room.

So it was really a pretty amazing experience to see what people who had never wanted for anything thought it was like to actually be horribly murdered. They seemed to think it was a pretty big deal. One of them even wept at the thought of it, either thinking about a childhood pet that died or by using some special eye drops or something so they wouldn’t have to be reminded about their childhood pet and have to pop an extra Xanax in the evening to get to sleep. Over the course of the whole movie it was practically like watching a dozen old dogs and cats being put down. There were also a few parrots and monkeys in there somewhere, since celebrity kids can have crazy exotic pets, but it’s hard to tell the species just by the gently welling tears in someone’s eyes. I felt kind of bad for the ones who had had to remember their old dead monkeys, because even if you’re a dog or a cat person, you have to admit that the death of a monkey is really of an altogether different magnitude. “Darling,” I can almost hear their mega famous celebrity mom saying over her bluetooth headset, “Zippy didn’t survive his bypass surgery, but he didn’t suffer... they did all they could, but his little body was just too frail.” You can practically hear them dropping their tiny espresso cups in stunned silence, trying to keep it together while they remember when they first shook that tiny baby monkey’s hand with their little finger out on the patio overlooking the city below. And a monkey doesn’t care if your parents are super famous actors or if you’re unspeakably hot. A monkey wouldn’t even mention it.

So we watch, blown up to tremendous size, the contorted facial expressions that denote the practiced methods of expensive acting schools, the carefully imagined signs of suffering reproduced via absurd exercises. People screaming into pillows until they finally feel something real, you know, something that really puts the asses in the seats, something that makes you look at that incredibly bred perfectly symmetrical blemish free face and think, “I really feel her pain.” And if you have really ever felt that way, you, of course, have been duped into feeling an emotion that never existed and never did exist until the advent of the blockbuster. But every once in a while, an actor or actress will dig deep, deeper than the bizarre circus of pantomimed feeling that is the modern acting class, and will find a real emotion waiting to come out, the memory of which has not quite been wiped out by all the benzodiazipines and antidepressants, and the contortions of his or her face will not be totally based upon the inbreeding of countless simulacra, but instead based rather poignantly upon the death of a monkey, whom we all might have known and loved, if only our parents had been incredibly rich and famous.