Another Note About Victor's Treehouse

Establishing shot:

A tour of Victor's many disconnected rooms, scattered about the treetops.

A shot following Victrix (and perhaps Jack Coby), as she wanders from room to room.

"Victor? Victor! Where can he have gone this time? He was expecting you..."

Her voice should have a European rhythm, like Ingrid Bergman or Ursula Andress.

In each of the rooms, we see several things that give us a view into Victor's world.

His fascination: appearances. An obsession: trompe l'oeil still-lifes are everywhere.

Abandoned meals in every room: rotting fruit, forgotten fowl.

We see pitchers, trays, cups, plates, bowls, linen and silver.

Cutlery abounds: swords and sabers, saws and scalpels.

Knives, forks, daggers, dirks, stilletos, pen-knives, letter-openers, and sword-canes.

Another fascination: animals, hunting, and anatomy: Audubon meets Orion the Hunter.

Books lie in great heaps, thick folios, large references, ancient tomes, moldering scrolls.

Some volumes as if suddenly left face down and open to the page when the flash struck.

Hunting trophies are mixed with pinned-up papers as real tableau in imitation of art.

There's a sense of artifice, of stillness, of the representation of life, and yet life stifled.

We see various scientific instruments among the various rooms, wherever last used.

It's a seeming shambles, the work of an obsessive recluse, a scatterbrained addle-pate.

As we follow Victrix about, we should zoom in on the details of these vignettes.

We'll notice the flies hovering about the fruit.

We'll see the dust and mold on the ancient and rotting books.

We'll see the various game birds, hung up for a light lunch or another missed supper.

A half-eaten fish stares at us from its final resting place, a bit of slowly congealing gravy.

We see the rows of carefully mounted butterflies, and the cases of neatly arranged bones.

We see the worktables covered in drawings and bits of bone, shell, feather and sinew.

Behind the artful illusion, we see a bit of the reality, and a lot of the madness.

And then from somewhere, he appears, resplendent and charming, and sets down the skull.