Like a bridge over troubled water
I will ease your mind….
Water…I thought of Dune, of the most precious commodity on the planet—water—and the saying of the people when a person passed away. The water of my mother’s life was gone.
With the music still playing, I watched Dad walk back up a tire-tracked area of the grass. As he reached the edge of his landscaped yard, a huge wave hit the rocks behind him, just beyond the kamani tree, sending white spray high in the air. It was spectacularly beautiful, this place my mother had chosen. I understood why she wanted to die here, refusing to go to a hospital.
After scattering the ashes, Dad remained alone under the deck somewhere—undoubtedly crying and trying to compose himself. I never saw him cry that day, although he looked near it a number of times. That evening he was in a pretty good mood considering the circumstances, undoubtedly relieved at getting the service behind him.
At a luau the next evening, I spent a lot of time talking with one of Dad’s contractors. He was a likable fellow, with dark skin and a quick smile. Beneath the charming exterior I detected glimpses of a tough businessman, and I let him know that I could be just as tough in negotiating the final tasks to be done on Dad’s property, a responsibility that had been given to me.
The following day I had a lunch appointment with Bill Ransom. He telephoned late in the morning and moved the time back, to 1:30. When I subsequently met him at the Hana Ranch Coffee Shop, he said Dad showed up that morning at his door at the Aloha Cottage in Hana, saying he wanted to “talk story,” and that this was the only time he could do it. After they talked for a while, Dad dragged Bill off to lunch, and Bill ate lightly, saving room for a second lunch with me.
Bill spoke of a number of contractual matters on the books he and Dad had written together, and about the newest project. At my father’s instruction, the contract for the latest collaboration had been drawn up under the title, The Swimmers. Upon seeing this, Peter Israel, president of G.P. Putnam’s Sons, called Bill to say he didn’t like the title at all. Bill agreed, and offered a better one that ultimately was accepted by all concerned, The Ascension Factor.
Our table overlooked the Hana Road and a sweeping stretch of pasture that extended to the sea. Bill expressed gratitude toward Frank Herbert for the opportunities given to him. He also told me of fond feelings he held for my mother, and of his compassion for her. When he stayed at Kawaloa for four months in 1982, he would jog along the road and then come back to the house, perspiring. On one such occasion, Mom said to him, “I hate you when you run.” Thereafter, Bill did his running elsewhere. Her remark hit him hard, and he felt it reflected her terrible frustration at her own weakened body.
That afternoon I worked in the office at Kawaloa. An hour before we were scheduled to go to Mary Moore’s for dinner, Dad came upstairs and stood in the doorway between my office and his study. On the wall beside him was a massive built-in bookcase filled with his titles, many of them rare first editions. But now this phenomenal man did not speak about matters of great note, about philosophy or religion or history or science or any of the other wondrous things he knew. He simply said, in an irritated tone, “Would you help me keep the pantry door closed? They just left it open again.”
“I’ve already spoken with them,” I said, seething. I slammed my pen down on the ledger, tried every method I knew to calm down. But this was the proverbial last straw, and I blew. The door of Mom’s office was open, and Dr. and Mrs. Scheyer (from Port Townsend) were sitting just below us in the living room, waiting to go to dinner. Penny and Ron were with them. At the top of my voice, I told my father I was sick of the nit-picking, and that I had tried to help him with everything he wanted. “You want the dishwasher loaded just so. The forks have to be tines down, the spoons can’t be together, the closet doors have to be left shut at all times, and the pantry door has to be kept shut. Well, the pantry door is set to stay open when pushed all the way open, by the hinges on it. Change the hinges! All of us are mourning Mom, not just you. Can’t you understand that?”
In a sense I had been egged on, because almost everyone in the family had been complaining to me about his nit-picking, about his moods. But I was unkind, I’m afraid, and my father looked crushed. Without a word he went into his study and closed the door softly behind him. Presently, Penny came up and called through the door, telling him it was time to leave for dinner. Dad said he wasn’t going. I felt angry and dejected, and told Penny I was in no mood to go, either. I asked Jan to stay, too, to mediate in case I got into another argument with Dad.
Shortly after the others left, Jan and I heard Dad sobbing. I was still angry, and closed down my office to go outside and sit on the deck. Jan pleaded with me to go upstairs and make up with him. She said his tears were his way of apologizing, that he wasn’t a man who could say he was sorry in so many words. “I can’t go up there for you,” she said. “It wouldn’t be the same. Please, Brian. I can’t stand to hear him crying.”
I took a deep breath, went inside and climbed the circular staircase to the second floor. The sobbing coming from the other side of the door was unbearable, and I hurried into his study. Dad was lying on his back on the futon cot we had set up for him. He had a blanket pulled up to his waist and wore no shirt, revealing blond hairs on his chest. He held one arm over his eyes and forehead.
“Dad,” I said, “I’m sorry.”
He wiped his eyes and looked at me in the saddest, most doleful manner. His head was propped up by a small pillow.
All my anger washed away. I told him I loved him and that he was a wonderful, sensitive man. He looked more pitiful than anyone I had ever seen in my life, with tears all over his face and pained, red-streaked eyes. I knelt on the hardwood floor by him, and he said he loved me, too. I hugged him and he held me tightly, while still crying. The skin and hair on his chest were moist with perspiration, and his face was wet against mine, from tears and from the heat of the hottest room in the house.
“I didn’t mean to nit-pick,” he said, in a voice choked with emotion. Then he said something that devastated me. “I built this house for your mother. I was just trying to maintain it the way she would have wanted.”
He put on a fresh Hawaiian shirt and came down to join Jan and me for white wine and a light meal.
It had surprised me how readily my father, this once powerful and aggressive man, had folded in the face of my onslaught. I worried about his vulnerability. It had been a year since my mother’s death, but he didn’t seem to be getting over it, didn’t seem to be coping well, as she had so desperately wanted him to do. It had been the essence of her plan.
My dispute with Dad came only hours after a less vociferous argument he’d had with Penny. She and Ron had rented a car for the week, and he virtually commandeered it that day, without telling her where he was or when the car would be returned.
When Jan checked Dad’s horoscope, she discovered that he was forecast to have trouble with his children, but not until Sunday, the next day. His trouble came a few hours early.
Chapter 43
Ho-Hum, Another Day in Paradise
IN THE four additional months we spent in Hawaii after my mother’s services, Jan placed fresh flowers under the kamani tree each time she jogged or took long walks.
One afternoon I gathered mango and passion fruit that lay on the ground, then went for a jog along the rut-filled Hana Road. The air was moist from a recent rain. After coming down Drummond Hill on the way back, my approach flushed a ring-necked pheasant out of nearby bushes. It flew hurriedly across my path, giving off a rattling, loose-throated cry. Reaching the boundary of Kawaloa, I turned right onto the gravel driveway used by fishermen to reach the shore and ran downhill past the caretaker’s vegetable garden and the apartments, nearly to the kamani tree. A gust of wind swirled around the base of the tree, carrying particles from the ground into the air and out over the waves of the sea.
I stood, transfixed by the scene before me. Some o
f the flowers Jan had left for Mom lofted on the wind and were carried out to sea. A childhood memory flickered back to me, from the time I was four or five, of a plaintive, beautiful song my mother used to sing for me—Redwing—a song that always made me cry. In that song, an Indian brave who has died in battle lies beneath a tree in a distant land.
While living at Kawaloa, I began work on a new novel, Prisoners of Arionn. Following my thirteen months of work on Man of Two Worlds, Dad was working on it in California. He telephoned me regularly with questions and comments to tell me how it was going, but I wasn’t left with enough writing to do. Hence, a new project.
Prisoners of Arionn was to be about an eleven-year-old girl whose mother was generally thought to be psychotic and dangerous. The girl would refuse to believe this, seeing wonderful things in her mother that no one else seemed able to see. It would be set against a highly unusual science fiction backdrop, but the story would in reality be mainstream. I realized this was a big risk, since the story didn’t hinge upon any aspect of science, which traditionally was a requirement of science fiction. In my story, the characters would be the main focus.
In one of my conversations with Dad about Man of Two Worlds, he reported, “It’s going well. I’ve got Prosik in deep fecal matter.”*
“It sounds like you’re having an immensely good time,” I said.
“I’m enjoying it,” he said.
Reports on Dune movie revenues in the United States were coming in, and were not good. Facts began to filter in, some of which were provided by Harlan Ellison in his Fantasy & Science Fiction articles. During the production of the movie, Universal Studios underwent a change in management. After the new president saw the film for the first time at a private screening, he stood up and said the movie was a dog and was going to bomb.
Shock waves went out. Advance screenings had been scheduled for the fall of 1984 with movie reviewers all over the country, and most were now canceled. Only reviewers the company thought would write favorably about the film were permitted to see it. This built a large pool of resentment in those who had been excluded, as might be expected.
In early November 1984, a story surfaced in Variety that Dino De Laurentiis was offering a large portion of the movie to investors through a securities dealer in New York City. Was this to spread his risk? Had he lost faith in the film? There were no clear answers.
Initially Dino De Laurentiis promised a movie to compare with Gone with the Wind. In the midst of production it was said to be the most expensive film ever produced. It had the most elaborate and costly special effects ever attempted, and was one of the most heavily promoted films in history, with secrecy about the cast and a variety of attendant merchandising schemes. Now, with everyone running scared, people began to wonder if it would be the biggest flop in Hollywood history.
After all the hype, the over-merchandising, the manipulation and secrecy, and now the canceling of advance showings, many American reviewers were ready to pick the movie apart the moment they saw it. A film critic for The New York Times said the actors in desert stillsuits resembled Groucho Marx, while another said the sets in the movie were suggestive of the “interior of the old Roxy theater.” Another reviewer said the movie had “the feel of a seventh-grade science project run amok.” Roger Ebert said the sandworms looked “as if they came out of the same factory that produced Kermit the Frog,” having “the same mouths.” The movie was called “a total mess,” “a failed attempt,” “a gigantic turkey,” “ponderous,” “tedious,” “confusing,” “incomprehensible,” “witless” and “overblown.”
Like carrion, they piled on, and many of the criticisms were unfair to David Lynch, a man who had attempted to film a faithful interpretation of the book.* His effort resulted, unfortunately, in a film that was nearly five hours long. Too long for commercial success, movie moguls thought. They began cutting it up, paring it down to barely more than 40 percent of Lynch’s work—a little over two hours. As a result, too many scenes from the book were missing, left lying on the cutting-room floor. On screen, some of the characters and events came out of nowhere, without proper background. But even with the cuts, the movie was not nearly as bad as U.S. reviewers wanted the public to believe.
People who had not even seen the movie began talking about how awful it was, and how dismally it compared with the book. They saw no point in actually going to see the film and forming their own opinions. A pack mentality set in, and anger surged through the science fiction community over what Hollywood had done to the book they all treasured, Dune.
There were excellent reviews, but only a few, not nearly enough to turn the tide. The Washington Post, Newsweek and USA Today gave it rave notices. The Seattle Times called it “spellbinding” and a “miraculous transformation of a difficult classic.” Comparisons were drawn between the work of David Lynch and Federico Fellini. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer said it was “the single most audacious space extravaganza to come along since Kubrick’s 2001.
Dune received only one Academy Award nomination, for Best Sound Recording, but lost to Amadeus. The lack of recognition from the Academy was a great disappointment to my father and to the filmmakers. When I discussed it with Dad in late March 1985, he said he felt that as a very minimum the picture should have won Best Sound, as well as Best Visual Effects, and perhaps Best Costumes.* It should have been nominated for Best Picture, he said. But he added quickly, “Don’t worry about it. The movie’s doing beautifully in Europe.” He said that U.S. and worldwide revenues were around eighty million dollars so far, and that Dino De Laurentiis was considering a sequel. We heard that the film was breaking box office records in Europe, Japan, Australia, South Africa and Indonesia. In the United States, it was showing in more than seven hundred theaters.
There was a lot of confusion about how much revenue the film was generating, and about how much it needed to make before it would show a profit. Since Dad’s future share, if any, was based upon a percentage of profit, this was of prime concern to him. At one point he said the film needed to generate forty-five million dollars in revenues to show a profit. Another time he thought it needed eight-five million dollars.
After completing its theater run in the United States, the film did become one of the top U.S. video rentals. This was not enough, and the producers disseminated earnings statements to us showing a wash of red ink.
Based upon early rough cuts my father saw (with more scenes than were included in the finished product), he had spoken of how much he liked the film, of how it was a “visual feast,” and a testament to David Lynch’s genius. Now he joined the grumblers, and spoke angrily about the cuts that had been made, including the missing “banquet scene,” and about the missing character developments on Stilgar and others. “They cut the hell out of it,” Dad said. He also disputed the characterization of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, who was depicted in a somewhat laughable, cartoonish fashion, when he should have been a terrifying presence.
The ending disturbed him as well. He had never given the protagonist Paul-Muad’Dib the omnipotent power to make rain, as depicted in the end of the movie. The conclusion of the book was much better, he thought, leaving Paul with less godlike, more human qualities. In the book, the emphasis was on Jessica’s last line, reflecting human, female concerns: “While we, Chani, we who carry the name of concubine—history will call us wives.”
Living at Kawaloa for five months allowed me to understand what my parents had experienced there. I found a sameness to life on this side of Maui. Weeks and days flowed by, meshing into one long moment. The surf pounded against the shore incessantly and timelessly, to the point where I often didn’t notice it. And I remembered something my father used to say about Mexico, when we lived there: “Days blend softly casual into one another.” It was very similar here.
Each morning Jan looked out upon the incredible beauty of Kawaloa and said, in a bemused tone, “Ho-hum, another day in paradise.”
The native Hawaiians were deeply superstitious
, in constant fear of incurring the anger of malevolent spirits. When this belief system was combined with Christianity, the resulting amalgam produced interesting practices, such as one described for us by Dad’s friends Ed and Jeannie Pechin. Shortly after the construction of their house in the early 1970s, a native Hawaiian man and a Catholic priest came by to perform a ceremony that would rid the home of bad spirits. The Hawaiian uttered a traditional blessing, and in a merging of religious ceremonies, the priest sprinkled holy water in every room. Ed asked the good father where he got his holy water, and received this response: “Oh, I just get it out of the creek. Then I boil the hell out of it.”
During a time of reflection I felt like a tiny cell in an infinitely larger cosmic scheme. The rocky shoreline was being worn away by the surf, melting island fragments into the sea, making the land one with the water. I thought of the erosion of the island, of its entropy as it merged with the ocean, and of the entropy of cells within my own body. The amniotic fluid in which I spent my initial months on this planet had the approximate chemical composition of sea water.
I heard the surf now, a sudden roar. It filled my mind, washing away all thoughts.
One afternoon while reading in a corner of the living room, I heard the wind picking up in intensity. The pole house creaked and popped around me. A stand of banana fronds outside the dining room moved to the left in unison, curling their leafy fingers away from the wind-force that came from the sea. Suddenly, in a powerful blast of air, the fronds went all the way over, flat against the hillside. Rain began pattering on the roof.
“Here it comes,” I said to Jan. I hadn’t been in a tropical downpour since my last trip to the interior of Mexico, in 1968, but I knew the signs.
The rain intensified, jackhammering the roof and slanting from right to left across my line of sight. I felt the house move beneath me and shudder, as from a moderate earthquake. Then the rain and wind subsided, as quickly as they had appeared. This weather was of a hard-edged variety, with definition to it. It didn’t tiptoe around. It shouted at you, demanded your attention.
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