Noah — Buschel ((install))

Noah should have hung up. Instead, he heard himself say, “Who’s directing?”

Noah framed that review and hung it in his office. He never took another meeting about a car chase. He wrote three more small films, each one quieter than the last, each one about people sitting in rooms, trying and failing to say what they meant. He never made a profit. He never won an award. But on the nights when he couldn’t sleep, which were most nights, he would think about Frank and Dennis in that booth, listening to each other, and he would feel something he’d forgotten he was capable of feeling. noah buschel

He wrote the script in eleven days. It was called The Night Shift . Two men, both in their fifties, both carrying the weight of decisions they’d made in their twenties. One had stayed in their hometown, married his high school sweetheart, watched her die of cancer. The other had left for New York, become a moderately successful photographer, and realized too late that success was just a slower way of failing. They sat in a vinyl booth. They ordered pie they didn’t eat. They talked about the girl they’d both loved, the road trip they’d never taken, the version of themselves they’d promised to become. Noah should have hung up