by Barbara White

This essay is my submission for the Soaring Twenties Social Club’s Symposium. The STSC is a small, exclusive online speakeasy where a dauntless band of raconteurs, writers, artists, philosophers, flaneurs, musicians, idlers, and bohemians share ideas and companionship. Each month we create something around a set theme. This month, the theme was “risk.” Consider joining us.

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0:00. On the soundtrack, applause. Then the orchestra tuning. On screen the gears of a machine are turning, with titles superimposed.

[I create a blank document. Will I be able to finish by the time the film ends? I have one hour, thirty minutes, and fifteen seconds to write.]

Tom Selznick enters the theater. Although he is a gifted concert pianist, he carries a canvas backpack like a high school student. Earlier on, he was disappointed that his plane did not crash, so leery he is of his upcoming performance.

Some things do not add up. For example, Tom has gone straight from the airport to the concert hall, changing into his tuxedo in the limousine. At the same time, across town, movers are picking up the piano at a cavernous, reverberant mansion reminiscent of Xanadu. (We will hear the name “Charles Foster Kane” in a few minutes.) 

The piano arrives at the concert hall around the same time as Tom. There is a trio of “insurance guys” clustered around the instrument, but no sign of it being tuned.

Not only does the pianist not warm up; there is also no rehearsal with the orchestra. Tom is making a precarious comeback after a five-year sabbatical from performance, undertaken when he “choked” on “the unplayable piece” called La Cinquette. But he goes right from plane to piano without preparation. There is a long table of catered food, but no practice.

All of this is preposterous.

8:10. Tom’s wife, Emma, says to her friend, “It’s a classical concert, Ash. That means it’s better if Tom is not drunk.”

Ash has suggested they all go to a “pregame” happy hour. Poor, tacky Ash and her bumbling husband, Wayne, are the butt of some jokes here. They do not know how to behave at a classical concert! This will not end well. A cello bow and a jugular vein will be involved. And some disdainful looks and “shushes” from elite audience members.

But first, a stagehand approaches and hands Tom a folder, saying, “Sir, your chart.” Don’t these filmmakers know that classical musicians don’t say “chart”?! (Yes, they know.)

16:45. The conductor, Norman, tells Tom, “If you play a wrong note, they won’t know. They never do.”

More tuning from the orchestra, this time in the hall.

Norman—[his last name is unintelligible and I will not allow myself to rewind]—licks food from his fingers crudely before heading on stage in his tuxedo. Not what we expect from a prominent figure in the rarefied world of high art. Or is it? 

Tom is backstage, looking terrified. It is almost time to meet his public. 

Announcer (invisible, on speaker): “Ladies and gentlemen—”
Tom (to himself, backstage): “Shit!”
Announcer: “Tom Selznick.”

Tom is perched on a platform behind the orchestra. This is perversely unrealistic, but it has to be that way to accommodate the plot.

25:00. Tom sees a strange red arrow in his music. He turns the page and there is another marking:

He thinks it’s a prank played by mean-spirited musicians trying to spook him into another episode of stage fright—pettiness among musicians is something the film gets right—but no. Soon he will realize that the graffiti artist who defaced his music is training a red laser pointer on him. 

28:00 Another marking in red on Tom’s music: “AT THE REST GO TO YOUR DRESSING ROOM.”

Tom is able to comply, thanks to the strange positioning of the piano behind the orchestra. As he leaves the stage, the audience gasps. Is it stage fright? Is he “choking” again? In the dressing room, Tom receives a text directing him to an earpiece. He inserts it, and the villain Clem explains that the red laser light comes from a “Rochester 47 semi-automatic.” If Tom makes even a single error in his performance, Emma will be shot. Clem is a cinematic panopticon: he can see and hear all that Tom does, while Tom can only reply through the earpiece.

41:52. Tom positions his phone behind a page of his music and texts Wayne through the paper. 

How outlandish this scenario is! Talking between movements, cell phones ringing in the audience, a sniper talking through an earpiece, and even a pianist surreptitiously texting onstage. On a Blackberry! Through it all, the film repeatedly raises the ante, and poor Elijah Wood—I mean, Tom—remains wide-eyed and terrified. However, in between his brief excursions offstage choreographed by Clem, he continues to play the piano.

Later—[I have seen this movie before]—Clem will call Tom a “puppet.” But it’s not because he is bossing Tom around like a conductor or movie director or some other kind of tyrant. It’s because Tom only plays others’ music. “A genius puppet, but still a puppet.”

50:27. Intermission. (In, not of, the film.)

Somehow, so far, Tom has risen to the challenge and has played perfectly. It’s almost like the pressure is helpful.

[This reminds me of Edward W. Said’s essay, “Performance as an Extreme Occasion,” in Musical Elaborations, where he describes the musical performer as a figure exerting power over the audience. Maybe I can look that up if I have time before the film ends. In any case, Naomi Cumming had an intriguing response to this idea, recounting her experience as a young musician who was immobilized and unable to speak in the presence of her intimidating violin teacher. This is in her book The Sonic Self: Musical Subjectivity and Signification. She died so young, only 39!]

58:50. “Go to hell,” Tom tells Clem through his earpiece. 

Again, maybe the agitation is helpful. As we will see, Tom will get even more indignant a bit later.

[I’d better get on to what I find most enchanting about this film before it ends. I’ve only got about thirty minutes left.]

Time is a despot. To perform live is to be imprisoned in duration. If things go awry, there is no remedy. 

No edit. No rewind. No revision. No reset.

No chance of a second chance. 

1:04:05. “Shut. The fuck. Up,” Tom says to Clem, as he plays the “impossible” La Cinquette.

As the film lampoons classical music conventions, it unfolds in real time, or something close to it. Tom talks, texts, exits, and enters again, and all the while, time passes inexorably. The music goes on, as it must, and Tom races back to his bench repeatedly, as he must. Even as he breaks all the taboos of classical music (talking while playing, tapping his fingers on the piano frame, swearing at a sniper), Tom cannot pause or backpedal. Clem, the shooter in his roost, is simply a more literal and audible—[if not visual—we don’t yet know the voice is John Cusack’s]—manifestation of the threat a musician may feel onstage. Clem even advises Tom to think of him as the voice in his head that torments him during performance. 

The film itself, of course, is fixed. There is no danger. The right notes are already right, and the wrong notes are already wrong. It’s done. There can be no change.

It was about forty minutes ago that Clem threatened Tom, “PLAY ONE WRONG NOTE AND YOU DIE!” 

Poor Tom, literally under the gun! But what about the actor, Elijah Wood? What might the director, Eugenio Mira, have said to him during shooting? Maybe something like this: 

“PLAY ONE WRONG NOTE, AND . . . YOU . . . WILL HAVE TO . . . DO ANOTHER TAKE!”

1:18:10. Credits. The soundtrack is Doris Day in rehearsal, complete with an error. A canny reference for those who know too much. 

[Made it! Just in time. Even a few minutes left to proofread. I didn’t specifically use the word “risk,” but I think the idea comes across.]

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Yes, this was really written in real time—with a little post-production polishing. As Norman says, “they’ll never know.” The film is Grand Piano, directed by Eugenio Mira, 2013. Trailer can be found here.