so that over and over again by the fictions of uncovered checks and uncashed allowances they manage to keep shooting off a firework of verisimilitude, of adventurously colorful and dynamic, lightly pulsating life; and with swindling promises and dishonest assurances they determine destinies (and not even necessarily for the worse) without ever being troubled by the law: for they do nothing but add more and more possibilities to the everlasting game of the exchange of fiction and reality . . .

•

For two decades now, I have been their partner in this game, their stooge and assistant, their officious servant and loyal stable boy. I know them and their keen instincts. I know how eagerly their little ears perk up to the whisper of movie ideas, wriggle with every flash and trash therein; and I know that this particular thought-trash would most blissfully tickle their little piglet ears.

It would be best to funnel it in through the telephone receiver early in the morning.

Special priority call, Paris–Munich: Hello? Intercosmic Art Films? Hi there. May I speak to Herr Wohlfahrt.—Ah, it’s you! I didn’t recognize your voice.—What? All night? Who with? hahaha!—Who’d’ve guessed!—What? What project? Man, you’re obsessed! But listen, I’ve got a new one for you. No, not a package, for now. But it would be a piece of cake making one out of it.—Anyway, that’ll be your problem.—What? Imagine, well just let it . . . by the way, you really put one over on me with the last contract.—You certainly did! But, okay, that’s water under the bridge. Listen: just picture it, right?—so, a middle-aged man—okay?—let’s say early to midforties, close to fifty—so precisely the generation that’s now stepping up to the plate.—What?—That’s right, our generation, right on the nose. It’d be ridiculous if it weren’t, right? Anyway, a man in his best years, something for the female audience, okay?—No, I really mean it. Something a woman can identify with. Her guy, right? Postwar reconstruction man, head of the family, divorced, with a kid and so on, irreproachable life so far, right? Well, one fine day, let’s say on a business trip abroad—quite by chance, you see, this man suddenly comes to realize HE IS REPRESSING GUILT! He has COMMITTED MURDER AND KNOWS IT! But he doesn’t know who the victim was. Or how it happened. And—Ne coupez-pas, mademoiselle! Ah, merde!!—Hello.—Intercosmic.—Hello! . . . ah, there you are. Did you get it all? Well: HE NO LONGER KNOWS when and how and where. Suspenseful, right? But that’s only the beginning. I mean, the opening situation.—What? No, no! You know me. I don’t like flashbacks either. You know that. No way! Anyhow, that’s just the basic idea. Now, the point is: do you want the rest of it to be a genuine German problem film?—What?—Well, so who cares? No, no, don’t just wave it off as old hat. The times are changing again. Back in 1958 I wrote down something that says:

Highway rest stop near Karlsruhe. At the next table, they’re overcoming the past: “Oh, you people are always saying Hitler did this wrong and that wrong and so on. But I say: just try to do it yourselves!”