—I didn’t know you could do that, I said. —Do what? said Ford. —The voices, I said.—The music and that. It was three months after I’d met him. We were out of the desert, and in Los Angeles, somewhere, in a dark room. There was a movie projector clacking behind our heads, and we were watching one of his old ones, a thing called The Informer. —Well Christ, he said.—What was the last picture you saw? —The Gaucho, I told him. I’d seen it with my daughter in Oak Park, just after her mother had found me. He was staring at me. He had to shout; the projector was right behind him. —That was, when? he said.—1927, ’28. You like it? —Yeah. —See any of my pictures back then? —I don’t know, I said.—Was your man, Douglas Fairbanks, in any of them? —Nope. —Then probably not. —The Iron Horse, he said.—I made that picture. —No. —You didn’t see that one? —No, I said.—Or if I did I don’t remember. —Fairbanks is dead, he said.—They’re called talkies.
