Free Remote Feed by David Gilbert

four duds in a row, and now, with this newest release, all signs prophesize a big disaster. The endless
     test screenings pointed to elements too large to fix: The bad teeth are distracting! Such fake snow! Does it have to be so depressing? Why would I ever pay money to sit through this?! I guess when you get down to it, a movie about the Donner Party isn't such a hot idea. Flesh-eating only works in horror flicks.
     And these days everyone is cynical about earnestness. (There was laughter in one screening when an exiled John Reed proclaimed
     to his family, "We will be together, I promise you. We will be together someday. Please remember that.") But the director
     was A-list, the screenwriter first-rate, the actors well-respected (one of them a teen idol searching for legitimacy), and
     Saul had secured a healthy budget from the studio. Problem was the budget didn't take into effect a freakishly warm winter,
     a broken leg, union troubles, Native American protests, an addicted director of photography, and the crews' proximity to Reno.
     The budget swelled the same way a cartoon snowball rolling down a hill swells into a deadly boulder sucking up everything
     in its path. But right now a possible triumph might be snatched from the jaws of bad buzz, cinematic fate determined by a
     thumbs-up or a thumbs-down from these emperors of public taste.
    With a push of a button the fat one and the thin one jerk from fast forward into real time. "Here we go," the assistant says.
    11:57 A.M. Thursday.
    They hated it. Two thumbs down, way down, to China down, the China Syndrome of bad movies, down, down, down until clear through
     to the other side of awful. The fat one actually called it "How the West Was Eaten." That's a bit harsh, isn't it? You can
     have an opinion but you don't have to be nasty about it. But do you know what really hurts? It's that Saul's just as gawky
     as these two film nerds: balding in an undignified manner, bad skin, an inability to catch or throw or hit. In high school
     he probably would've been friends with these guys, skipping class to go to movies, sitting toward the front so as not to see
     the couples making out during Spartacus. So this seems a betrayal of the worst kind, the brotherhood of awkward men destroyed for showbiz's sake. Why the abuse? Are
     we not mensches? Saul, never much of a student of the Torah, just quick with a Yiddish word or phrase, sits there and remembers
     celebrating Yom Kippur with his family, back in Canarsie, on Remsen Ave. He'd have to accept the apologies of the stronger
     boys who tormented him throughout the year, his father forcing forgiveness with a full heart, and twenty-five hours later,
     after the single note of the shofar, the regularly scheduled abuse would begin all over again. And then there was the fasting
     between the bookends of sundown, Saul sneaking food in the bathroom, Ziplocked cookies hidden in the toilet tank while the
     stories of the oral tradition were told. The sacrificing of the goats comes to mind: the one goat offered at the altar, the
     other goat released into the wilderness: "And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over
     him all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins; and he shall put them upon the
     head of the goat, and send him away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness." Funny what can pop into
     your head, thoughts with long beards and awful smells, draped in black, Hasidic simplicity now garbed in Hollywood cool.
    The assistant stops the tape. The TV screen skips onto the color of a clear video sky. "Well," she says, drumming the remote
     against her thigh. "That doesn't really mean a thing. Look down the list of yearly top tens and you'll see thumbs down on
     more than half
    Saul nods.
    "It'll open big."
    And before she leaves, pausing at the door, her body half in and half out, hand flicking the doorknob so that the latch