Dream Factories and Radio Pictures

by Howard Waldrop

  I’m not that person, and neither are you; OR there has to be some other answer. One, or the other, but not both; and not neither.

  I don’t know what to do anymore; whatever it is, it’s not this. It’s quit being fun. It’s quit being something I do aside from life as we know it. It is my life, and yours, and it’s all I’ve got.

  I know what Mr. Goober was trying to tell us, and there was more, but the sound was off.

  I’m tired. I’ll write you next week when I can call my life my own again.

  Your Sis

  * * *

  Cops called from Irene’s town the next week.

  After the funeral, and the stay at his mother’s, and the inevitable fights, with his stepfather trying to stay out of it, he came home and found one more letter, postmarked the same day as the police had called him.

  Dear Eldon—

  Remember this, and don’t think less of me: What we saw was real.

  Evidently, too real for me.

  Find out what we saw.

  Love always,

  Irene

  * * *

  So you’ll be sitting in the bar, there’ll be the low hum and thump of noise as the band sets up, and over in the corner, two people will be talking. You’ll hear the word “Lucy,” which could be many things—a girlfriend, a TV show, a late President’s daughter, a two-million-year-old ape-child. Then you’ll hear “M-Squad” or “Untouchables” and there’ll be more talk, and you’ll hear distinctly, during a noise-level drop, “ . . . and I don’t mean Johnny-fucking-Jupiter either . . .”

  And in a few minutes he’ll leave, because the band will have started, and conversation, except at the 100-decibel level, is over for the night.

  But he’ll be back tomorrow night. And the night after.

  And all the star-filled nights that follow that one.

  Introduction: Major Spacer in the 21st Century

  THIS IS THE OTHER ORIGINAL in this here ebook.

  * * *

  The history of television was full of starts, stops, fights, backstabs, and the FCC coming down like a ton of bricks on people, even more than radio had been.

  It was ready to go in the late ’30s (it broadcast the opening of the 1939 World’s Fair; NHK in Japan was going to broadcast the 1940 Olympics in Tokyo to department stores and theaters so the Japanese would leave the stadium to the gai-jin; there was a small worldwide unpleasantness that canceled them both; the BBC TV service was up and running in 1936 and shut down for the duration September 3, 1939, while showing a Mickey Mouse cartoon . . .). Experimental American television went off the air on December 8, 1941, and only started up again in 1946.

  There were punchouts over airwaves, over channels and content; the big fight was over formats. There was the fight over color: When it started, the FCC was going to make everybody junk their TVs again (after just junking the prewar shortwave/FM sets mentioned last story)—easy to do when there were 10,000 sets, like in 1946; not so easy when there were ten million of them in 1950. In the middle of The Freeze from 1948-1952, when the FCC issued no new TV licenses, it was going to make everybody go back to an incompatible mechanical color TV system (I’m not making this up). Cooler heads (and those with NBC stock) prevailed, and held out for color-compatible broadcasting, and so on and so forth. Sound—HDTV—familiar?

  Meanwhile, those who’d gotten a pre-1948 license pioneered on, showing old Brit and independent American movies—all the major studios held out from leasing movies to TV and made fun of it, and then tried everything—3-D, wide-screen, stereo, Aromarama and Smell-0-Vision, and blipverts—to get the audience back.

  Sure, some of it was very bad (“radio with pictures”), comparable to the first couple of years of sound in the movies. But here and there, good stuff got done. There’s Kovacs over there. Some of the best writing ever done in this country was for the early Box.

  Take a look at the TV work of Serling, Chayevsky, Vidal, Howard Rodman; all that Golden Age of Television stuff you always hear about—some of it was really good. The local stuff: There’s Zacherly in Philadelphia (and Bill Camfield in Ft. Worth—see “Occam’s Ducks”)—hundreds of people out there, figuring it out, what works, what doesn’t, what you could do live; wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could only record it some way? (Kinescopes—films of the TV monitors—always looked like they were made by your Uncle Norris fifteen minutes after getting his first Bell & Howell. . . .)

  It was a new world; they soon found it wasn’t Radio with Pictures at all, or like anything else. It was Television. And they were it.

  * * *

  This story shows what happens when you get a way swell idea, way late. It came to me in April of 1999, when everybody was waiting for Y2K (remember?). I wanted a story about the year 2000, but not about Y2K. Just set there.

  I wrote it for a reading I was doing at the University Bookstore (University of Washington), with lots of hand props and primitive visual aids.

  There was about one editor who could get it into print pronto, i.e., before 2000 A.D. I sent it to him. He wanted a few changes. I was so torqued (and I mean that in the original, good way) on the story that instead of doing a lot of changes to a novelette, I wrote him a whole other new short story (“London, Paris, Banana . . .”) for the rent that month. I sent this to another editor; there were revisions (short pause here while (1) the World SF Convention in Australia interferes, and (2) the USPS takes fifteen days to deliver a two-day Priority Mail manuscript); I sent it to a third editor whose venue dropped dead two days before the manuscript got there. We are now in December 1999. Since it was written for the April 1999 rent, and we are now almost in 2000, I said “Screw this, I don’t need the aggravation.”

  What I merely wanted to do was show a major societal change, and how media-dependent we had become, and media-conscious we were since the early days of television broadcasting.

  And I wanted to show it mostly through the life of one person; there at the beginning, maybe there at the end, too.

  Major Spacer in the 21st Century

  June 1950

  “LOOK,” SAID BILL, “I’ll see if I can go down and do a deposition this Thursday or Friday. Get ahold of Zachary Glass, see if he can fill in as . . . what’s his name . . . ?”

  “Lt. Marrs,” said Sam Shorts.

  “ . . . Lt. Marrs. We’ll move that part of the story up. I’ll record my lines. We can put it up over the spacephone, and Marrs and Neptuna can have the dialogue during the pursuit near the Moon we were gonna do week after next . . .”

  “Yeah, sure!” said Sam. “We can have you over the phone, and them talking back and forth while his ship’s closing in on hers, and your voice—yeah, that’ll work fine.”

  “But you’ll have to rewrite the science part I was gonna do, and give it yourself, as Cadet Sam. Man, it’s just too bad there’s no way to record this stuff ahead of time.”

  “Phil said they’re working on it at the Bing Crosby Labs, trying to get some kind of tape to take a visual image; they can do it but they gotta shoot eight feet of tape a second by the recording head. It takes a mile of tape to do a ten-minute show,” said Sam.

  “And we can’t do it on film, kids hate that.”

  “Funny,” said Sam Shorts. “They pay fifteen cents for Gene Autry on film every Saturday afternoon, but they won’t sit still for it on television . . .”

  Philip walked in. “Morgan wants to see you about the Congress thing.”

  “Of course,” said Bill.

  “Run-through in . . .” Phil looked at his watch, and the studio clock “ . . . eleven minutes. Seen Elizabeth?”

  “Of course not,” said Bill, on the way down the hall in his spacesuit, with his helmet under his arm.

  * * *

  That night, in his apartment, Bill typed on a script.

  MAJOR SPACER: LOOKS LIKE SOMEONE LEFT IN A HURRY.

  Bill looked up. Super Circus was on. Two of the clowns, Nicky and Scampy, squirted seltzer in ringmaster Claude Kirchne
r’s face.

  He never got to watch Big Top, the other circus show. It was on opposite his show.

  * * *

  Next morning, a young guy with glasses slouched out of a drugstore.

  “Well, hey Bill!” he said.

  “Jimmy!” said Bill, stopping, shifting his cheap cardboard portfolio to his other arm. He shook hands.

  “Hey, I talked to Zooey,” said Jimmy. “You in trouble with the Feds?”

  “Not that I know of. I think they’re bringing in everybody in the city with a kid’s TV show.”

  He and Jimmy had been in a flop play together early in the year, before Bill started the show.

  “How’s it going otherwise?” asked Jimmy.

  “It’s about to kill all of us. We’ll see if we make twenty weeks, much less a year. We’re only four to five days ahead on the script. You available?”

  “I’ll have to look,” said Jimmy. “I got two Lamps Unto My Feet next month, three-day rehearsals each, I think. I’m reading a couple plays, but that’ll take a month before anybody gets off their butt. Let me know’f you need someone quick some afternoon. If I can, I’ll jump in.”

  “Sure thing. And on top of everything else, looks like we’ll have to move for next week; network’s coming in and taking our space; trade-out with CBS. I’ll be real damn glad when this Station Freeze is over, and there’s more than ten damn places in this city that can do a network feed.”

  “I hear that could take a couple more years,” said Jimmy, in his quiet Indiana voice.

  “Yeah, well . . . hey, don’t be such a stranger. Come on with me, I gotta get these over to the mimeograph room; we can talk on the way.”

  “Nah, nah,” said Jimmy. “I, you know, gotta meet some people. I’m late already. See ya ’round, Bill.”

  “Well, okay.”

  Jimmy turned around thirty feet away. “Don’t let the Feds get your jock strap in a knot!” he said, waved, and walked away.

  People stared at both of them.

  Damn, thought Bill. I don’t get to see anyone anymore; I don’t have a life except for the show. This is killing me. I’m still young.

  * * *

  “And what the hell are we supposed to do in this grange hall?” asked Bill.

  “It’s only a week,” said Morgan. “Sure, it’s seen better days, the Ziegfeld Roof, but they got a camera ramp so Harry and Fred can actually move in and out on a shot; you can play up and back, not just sideways like a crab, like usual.”

  Bill looked at the long wooden platform built out into what used to be the center aisle when it was a theater.

  “Phil says he can shoot here . . .”

  “Phil can do a show in a bathtub, he’s so good, and Harry and Fred can work in a teacup, they’re so good. That doesn’t mean they have to,” said Bill.

  A stagehand walked in and raised the curtain while they stood there.

  “Who’s that?” asked Bill.

  “Well, this is a rehearsal hall,” said Morgan. “We’re lucky to get it on such short notice.”

  When the curtain was full up there were the usual chalk marks on the stage boards, and scene flats lined up and stacked in twenty cradles at the rear of the stage.

  “We’ll be using that corner there,” said Morgan, pointing. “Bring our sets in, wheel ’em, roll ’em in and out—ship, command center, planet surface.”

  Some of the flats for the other show looked familiar.

  “The other group rehearses 10:00–2:00. They all gotta be out by 2:15. We rehearse, do the run-through at 5:30, do the show at 6:30.”

  Another stagehand came in with the outline of the tail end of a gigantic cow and put it into the scene cradle.

  “What the hell are they rehearsing?” asked Bill.

  “Oh. It’s a musical based on the paintings of Grant Wood, you know, the Iowa artist?”

  “You mean the Washington and the Cherry Tree, the DAR guy?”

  “Yeah, him.”

  “That’ll be a hit,” said Bill. “What’s it called?”

  “I think they’re calling it In Tall Corn. Well, what do you think?”

  “I think it’s a terrible idea. I can see the closing notices now.”

  “No, no. I mean the place. For the show,” said Morgan.

  Bill looked around. “Do I have any choice in the matter?”

  “Of course not,” said Morgan. “Everything else in town that’s wired up is taken. I just wanted you to see it before you were dumped in it.”

  “Dumped is right,” said Bill. He was looking at the camera ramp. It was the only saving grace. Maybe something could be done with it. . . .

  “Harry and Fred seen it?”

  “No, Phil’s word is good enough for them. And, like you said, they can shoot in a coffee cup . . .”

  Bill sighed. “Okay. Let’s call a Sunday rehearsal day, this Sunday, do two blockings and rehearsals, do the run-through of Monday’s show, let everybody get used to the place. Then they can come back just for the show Monday. Me and Sam’ll see if we can do something in the scripts. Phil got the specs?”

  “You know he has,” said Morgan.

  “Well, I guess one barn’s as good as another,” said Bill.

  And as he said it, three stagehands brought on a barn and a silo and a windmill.

  * * *

  Even with both window fans on, it was hot as hell in the apartment. Bill slammed the carriage over on the Remington Noiseless Portable and hit the margin set and typed:

  MAJOR SPACER: CAREFUL. SOMETIMES THE SURFACE OF MARS CAN LOOK AS ORDINARY AS A DESERT IN ARIZONA.

  He got up and went to the kitchen table, picked up the bottle of Old Harper, poured some in a coffee cup and knocked it back.

  There. That was better.

  On TV, Haystacks Calhoun and Duke Kehanamuka were both working over Gorgeous George, while Gorilla Monsoon argued with the referee, whose back was to the action. Every time one of them twisted George’s arm or leg, the announcer, Dennis James, snapped a chicken bone next to the mike.

  * * *

  “Look at this,” said Morgan, the next morning.

  It was a handwritten note.

  I know your show is full of commies. My brother-in-law told me you have commie actors. Thank God for people like Senator McCarthy who will run you rats out of this land of Liberty and Freedom.

  Signed,

  A Real American

  “Put it in the circular file,” said Bill.

  “I’ll keep it,” said Morgan. “Who are they talking about?”

  “You tell me. I’m not old enough to be a communist.”

  “Could it be true?” asked Morgan.

  “Don’t tell me you’re listening to all that crap, too?”

  “There’s been a couple of newsletters coming around, with names of people on it. I know some of them; they give money to the NAACP and ACLU. Otherwise they live in big houses and drive big cars and order their servants around like Daddy Warbucks. But then, I don’t know all the names on the lists.”

  “Is anybody we ever hired on any of the lists?”

  “Not as such,” said Morgan.

  “Well, then?”

  “Well, then,” said Morgan, and picked up a production schedule. “Well, then, nothing, I guess, Bill.”

  “Good,” said Bill. He picked up the letter from Morgan’s desk, wadded it into a ball, and drop-kicked it into the wastebasket.

  * * *

  The hungover Montgomery Clift reeled by on his way to the Friday performance of the disaster of a play he was in. Bill waved, but Clift didn’t notice; his eyes were fixed on some far distant promontory fifty miles up the Hudson, if they were working at all. Clift had been one intense, conflicted, messed-up individual when Bill had first met him. Then he had gone off to Hollywood and discovered sex and booze and drugs and brought them with him back to Broadway.

  Ahead of Bill was the hotel where the congressmen and lawyers waited.

  * * *

  Counsel (Mr. Eclep
t): Now that you have taken the oath, give your full name and age for the record.

  S: Major William Spacer. I’m twenty-one years old.

  E: No, sir. Not your stage name.

  S: Major William Spacer. That’s my real name.

  Congressman Beenz: You mean Major Spacer isn’t just the show name?

  S: Well, sir, it is and it isn’t . . . Most people just think we gave me a promotion over Captain Video.

  Congressman Rice: How was it you were named Major?

  S: You would have had to have asked my parents that; unfortunately they’re deceased. I have an aunt in Kansas who might be able to shed some light . . .

  * * *

  S: That’s not the way it’s done, Congressman.

  B: You mean you just can’t fly out to the Big Dipper, once you’re in space?

  S: Well, you can, but they’re . . . they’re light years apart. They . . . they appear to us as The Big Dipper because we’re looking at them from Earth.

  R: I’m not sure I understand, either.

  S: It . . . it’s like that place in . . . Vermont, New Hampshire, one of those. North of here, anyway. You come around that turn in Rt 9A or whatever, and there’s Abraham Lincoln, the head, the hair, the beard. It’s so real you stop. Then you drive down the road a couple hundred yards, and the beard’s a plum thicket on a meadow, and the hair’s pine trees on a hill, and the nose is on one mountain, but the rest of the face is on another. It only looks like Lincoln from that one spot in the road. That’s why the Big Dipper looks that way from Earth.

  B: I do not know how we got off on this . . .

  S: I’m trying to answer your questions here, sir.

  E: Perhaps we should get to the substantive matters here . . .

  * * *

  S: All I’ve noticed, counsel, is that all the people who turn up as witnesses and accusers at these things seem to have names out of old W. C. Fields’ movies, names like R. Waldo Chubb and F. Clement Bozo.

  E: I believe you’re referring to Mr. Clubb and Mr. Bozell?