An Edge in My Voice

by Harlan Ellison

  Is he speakable!?! No, you chimpanzee, he’s unspeakable!

  What slithers toward us is the miasma of semantic pollution that creeps in on little cat feet, takes a shit, and creeps on. The context is the film / tv industry. The language is ever increasingly more oppressive obscurantism, euphemisms, buzzwords, jingoism and looney tune psychobabble.

  God (or Whoever’s in charge) knows it’s hard enough carrying on an intelligible conversation with producers, studio executives, agents, network vice-presidents and those who call themselves “packagers” (whatever the hell that means) when, for the most part, and despite their cloak of arrogance, they haven’t the vaguest idea what they’re talking about. Add to the unassailable perception that far too many of these paladins of power have the intellectual capacity of an artichoke, and their determination to speak in a tongue best described as Functional Imbecilic…and you find yourself in a world of verbiage that would stun even Lenny, the slow-wit of Steinbeck’s OF MICE AND MEN.

  As self-appointed mad dog yapping at the heels of the verbally underprivileged, I have solicited samples of current Show Biz Talk from a dozen different sources in The Industry. None of whom wish to be named.

  Here’s a beauty. Two agents walking into the Academy Theater the other night. The first one says, “I’ll be damned if I know what Paramount’s buying these days.” The second one replies, “Well, fer sure, they don’t want anything soft.” And the first one concurs. “Yeah, they want hard center.”

  Translation, as best I can piece it together after long analysis with philologists, is this: “soft” originally meant any motion picture that was a story about people. Such films as Resurrection, Kramer vs. Kramer, or My Bodyguard. Small films. Personal stories. But the term has come to be a denigrative in these times of “hard center” films such as Raiders of the Lost Ark, Smokey and the Bandit, or Animal House that clean up at the box office. In a “hard center” film, I’m given to understand, development of character goes by the wayside and what becomes dominant is—and here’s another one—the plunge. Meaning: throw it at ’em fast and hard and chew on their eyeballs.

  Offshoot of “hard center” in television is “high concept” as in the phrase uttered by an ABC programmer recently, “Don’t try to sail anything by me that isn’t high concept.”

  What means this? An associate producer of tv mini-series told me the perfect example of a “high concept” series is The Dukes of Hazzard.

  “You’ve got to be pulling my gotkes,” I said. “That series is as empty of thought as Phyllis Schlafly’s social conscience.”

  “Wrong,” she replied. “It’s high concept because there’s nothing else like it. No imitators.” (Allah be praised, I murmured.) What “high concept” means, in the word of gibberish, is non-replicable. Done once, and impossible to imitate.

  Further. In The Industry people are either “hot” or “not hot.” No in-between. You get hired or not hired that simply.

  These days a “producer” does many things, but producing a film ain’t one of them. For that, you need a “line producer.” By classtime tomorrow, students, write down a list of what it is that a “producer” does do these days. See if you can fill one side of a postage stamp.

  “Let’s cut a deal,” they say. They also say, “We cut the film together.” I think they mean they edited it. Cut and together are mutually contradictory. Out here in syntax country, us rubes call that an oxymoron. And an oxymoron, as we all know, is blemish cream to remove zits from stupid people. At least where I come from. “Let’s take a meeting,” they say. “Great,” I reply. “Where shall we take it? And will we have to carry it yonder portage overland dorten or can we simply send it Federal Express?”

  “What’s this character’s franchise?” That’s a new one. It is a phrase spoken by network executives on the buying end of a hustle from some independent producing entity. (I love that “entity” thing. I always picture something like the creature from Alien, all drool and mad staring eyes.) What means this word “franchise”? It meaneth, I’m told, what is the character’s occupation, and is it an occupation that allows for unlimited stories in a continuing series? Newspaper reporters have a “franchise.” Lady private eyes, wryly witty doctors, airline stewardesses, unjustly convicted prison escapees, cross-country truckers—we’re talking here highly plungeable franchises. Optometrists, certified public accountants, shoe salesmen and ornithologists are definitely “not hot.”

  “Is he talkable?”

  “Let me put a phone call in your stead.”

  “This deal is a highly seductive situation.”

  “It’s a deal-breaker.”

  Then there’s the concept of the “rolling break,” a creation of the late David Begelman, a model for us all not only of rectitude and high-profile hard-center ethical behavior, but of astonishing mutations in the spoken word. The “rolling break” (which I am given to understand is a creature of myth much like the unicorn, elves, gnomes, leprechauns and Ronald Reagan’s concern for the poor) is an element of a deal whereby at certain levels of profit by the producing entity, the party entitled to a “rolling break” gets certain amounts of profit-participation. I’ve always wanted to participate in a profit; orgies have become so enervating.

  The semantic environment is polluted when language obscures from people what they are doing and why they are doing it.

  When the Press Secretary for the President of the United States says, on Monday, “We have no intention of sending troops into any foreign country,” and on Tuesday says, “Yesterday’s statements are inoperative,” and we don’t rise up in our wrath to defenestrate the sonofabitch, what we are doing is letting him say, “What I told you yesterday was a flat-out, bald-faced lie and today I’m saying just the opposite.”

  And when a minion of some producing entity suggests we take an “if-come deal” and we don’t leap across the desk to strangle him or her with his or her own Cardin ascot, we are letting him or her say, “We’ll take your talent for free, and we’ll blue-sky it, and if someone at the web leaps up to bite it, and we cut a deal, we’ll give you a full card as ‘creator’ and your Tony Bills and your Michael Douglases and your Norman Lears will all know that you’re hot!”

  To which we can all reply, hopefully, at that point in time, “Fer sure!”

  Bearing in mind that we are dealing with creatures all drool and mad staring eyes, for whom human speech is not their natural tongue.

  Interim memo

  There were people who did not realize I was using hyperbole. They still show up at Shain’s in Sherman Oaks, California—where I still eat with alarming regularity—looking for bullet holes.

  1996 INTERJECTION: One of my favorite poems is a mere four-stanza gem by Arthur Guiterman, the title of which is On the Vanity of Earthly Greatness. It opens, thus: “The tusks that clashed in mighty brawls / Of mastodons, are billiard balls.” And it closes, thus: “Great Caesar’s bust is on the shelf, / And I don’t feel so well myself.” The point being…everything passes and grandeur goes to rust or rot. Soldiers of armies of nations not even conceived when it was built, used the Great Sphinx for rifle practice, idiotically shooting off the nose of one of the handful of magnificent wonders to survive the ravages of time. We are all, each and every one of us, 100% biodegradable. Not until you are of sufficient age to feel that the terrible twinge of loss when you return to a favorite restaurant only to find it has been converted into a dry cleaning shop, can you lay claim to either maturity or an inkling of the concept we call mortality.

  In late 1995, Don Shain sold the restaurant.

  It is now the Cafe Bizou; it is one of the top ten dining spots in Los Angeles; there are lines of sleek, affluent doges, princes, doyens and trendsetters bright-eyed and salivating to be seated every night. But Shain’s is gone.

  I hear wonderful reports of how good the food is at Cafe Bizou, but even though Don Shain remains “advisor” to the joint, I have been unable to get in to enjoy a meal. And the mere thought of
coming in through the back door, in my bathrobe and slippers, and being seated for a quick, good meal…well, one doesn’t even give it a moth’s-breath instant of consideration.

  All glory passes. Great Caesar’s bust is on the shelf, and…

  INSTALLMENT 20: 4 MARCH 82

  Dining as Action-Adventure

  Had I not been there when it happened, you would very likely be reading this restaurant review as rendered by the Weekly’s indefatigable gourmet critic, Stanley Ralph Ross. But I was there when the two guys came in, took Uzi machine guns from cabretta-grain attaché cases, opened fire, and blew away the one-eyed man sitting at the double beside the window that looks out on the patio.

  The restaurant is Shain’s, at 14016 Ventura Boulevard, in palatial Sherman Oaks. The owner is an old friend of mine, Don Shain; and I had no intention of doing a restaurant review this early in my column’s life. But how can one resist talking about such a den of mythology when it has become, in only twenty months, not only a first-rank eatery…but one of the focus points of the universe where time and space converge to produce the sort of mystical episodes that quickly become legend?

  I was eating lunch at Shain’s last Thursday when the two pistoleros came in. They looked like a couple of home computer salesmen from Apple. Sincere suits, earnest ties, sensible shoes. They were seated at table 16 by the afternoon hostess, Irene, who took their drink order. I was at my usual table, number 3, at the rear of the large dining room between the bar and the patio. I didn’t like their looks. They had the chalky complexion of improperly-fired Limoges china. Beady little eyes like marmosets.

  They sat over their drinks speaking in hushed tones but occasionally glancing at the one-eyed man at the double, table 6. He was an old man in a loud Hawaiian shirt, with one of those plastic inserts in the pocket that held half a dozen ballpoint pens in different colors. The eyepatch was paisley. It was on his left side, the blind side closest to the guys at table 16.

  As I ate, I kept an eye on the scene. Over the best bowl of French onion soup gratinée this side of the Pleasure Dome of Kublai Khan—enough thick mozzarella to refloat the Titanic—I saw them lift their attaché cases to the table, knocking over the drinks but paying no attention to the mess. I knew something was happening, but I couldn’t catch the eye of Shain, who was up front at the reception desk. (I later learned he was taking a call from his close friend, David Stockman, Reagan’s Director of the OMB, who’s looking for a new job.)

  As Barbara and Luana, two of Shain’s staggeringly sensual and efficient lunch-time waitresses, brought my entrée, the remarkable broiled lamb chops à la Toussaint, thick prime cut chops marinated in soy sauce with the faintest angel’s touch of garlic, I tried to say, “Something ugly’s going down over at table 16.”

  But Barbara and Luana, who only work the lunch crowd, and who moonlight every evening as mud wrestlers at Chippendale’s, were discussing the relative merits of the thunderlock over the flying mare, and they weren’t paying attention. At that moment I saw the two assassins close the lids of their cases, behind which they had been unfolding the stocks of the Uzis, and before I could yell a warning they opened fire.

  They blew the guy out through the window and onto the patio.

  You know how good a restaurant Shain’s is? Not even José, the busboy, broke stride. He continued filling the crystal water goblets; Shain continued smiling in his very best host manner; Barbara and Luana refilled coffee cups and delivered the ebullient half pineapple stuffed with fresh fruit and cottage cheese. As for me, well, I suppose this sudden and brutal taking of a life would have nonplussed me, had I not been carried away in the transports of delight by chef Toussaint Moallic’s lamb chops with their precisely crisped surfaces.

  But the two Federal agents seated at table 18 laid aside their crêpe veronique and the justly-lauded poached salmon in puff pastry and had the pair of thugs in custody before I’d even had a chance to order Shain’s most outstanding dessert, the Key West lime pie, available—as far as I know in this city—only at Shain’s. The remarkable thing is that they got to the killers only instants before the day bartender, Kay Cole, leaped the bar with her .357 Magnum in hand, and drew down on them as the Feds were cuffing them.

  It was just another standard lunch at Shain’s.

  At dinnertime one can really count on excitement. The Sunday hostess, who doubles as waitress at nights, Barbara Andrews (who murdered her first husband trying to gain control of his steamship line), has mastered the astonishing feat of being able to throw an enormous margarita goblet filled with gazpacho the length of the dining room, to land right-side-up in front of him or her who ordered it…without spilling a drop as it sails over the heads of delighted diners.

  How, I hear you asking, can all this wonderfulness be? How, you inquire, could what seems to be merely an elegant and secluded dinner club of the most urbane sort, also contain a setting for unforgettable experiences of the most bizarre species?

  Perhaps it is because Shain, who for fourteen years before kicking the filthy habit and getting into an honest line of work as a restaurateur, was a well-known A&R man for such record companies as Capitol, MCA, Pickwick and his own CBS custom label, Great Western Gramophone. Perhaps it is because chef Toussaint, who used to cook for Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia, has learned all the arcane secrets of black, white and dove-gray magic including the ability to cloud men’s minds so they cannot see him (which is handy when the waitresses mix up the orders and the vegetarians at table 2 get New York steak boursin). Perhaps it is because Shain’s was, for many years, the personal watering hole of Bud Abbott, who called it the Back Stage.

  But more likely it is just that the ghost of Don Buday haunts the restaurant. Buday, a colorful gypsy figure of Hollywood’s most glamorous era, was found comatose in the ladies’ room of the restaurant in 1953 when it was called the Ventura Inn. Rumors flew at the time, and the names Kim Novak, Evelyn Ankers and Marie Windsor were bruited about. But nothing was ever proved, and the Grand Jury refused to bring in a true bill. Buday never regained consciousness to tell what horrors had befallen him in the women’s potty. And warm summer nights as the patrons laugh and sup stylishly on the patio or inside the warm and friendly dining room, savoring the crispiest duck à l’orange you’ve ever let melt in your face, the ghost of Don Buday can be heard singing off key in a strange foreign language high in the wine loft.

  Perhaps it is all of these memorable qualities that make Shain’s precisely the kind of fine dining experience you’re seeking. Or perhaps it is that I can be found there eighteen out of every twenty four hours, seven days a week. (Shain’s is one of those rarities, a restaurant that is open seven days a week. Lunch 11:00 to 3:00 Monday through Friday; Sunday brunch 11 to 3; dinner 6 to 11 Monday through Saturday; Sunday dinner 5 to 10; closed Saturday lunch; all major credit cards accepted.)

  And if you want to hear about the giant komodo dragon Shain keeps tethered in the small dark room behind the kitchen…and if you want to hear about the night Jimmy Carter made a pass at Shelley Winters…and if you want to hear about the night a matron from Highland Park found a black pearl in her Greek peasant salad…just drop in for dinner and I’ll make myself available to chat. Or call for a reservation at 986–5510. If Irene answers, don’t mention my name. She’s still upset about the baby.

  Incidentally. Quite a lot of this column is true.

  Interim memo

  Around this time the obscene and threatening phone calls began. Fortunately, they all came in to the Weekly. My friend and editor, Phil Tracy, began looking wan and chivvied. I had to take him out for BBQ ribs at Diamond’s and Dr. Hogly Wogly’s Tyler Texas Pit Barbeque at least once a week. In journalese we call that reparations.

  INSTALLMENT 21: 10 MARCH 82

  One do get mail. And, as promised, a valiant attempt will be made by your faithful columnist to answer as much of it as seems rational. As I noted in an early installment of this column when I was doing it for Future Life magazine, the mail I
receive in response to the wry observations of the world I set down in these little outings is ennobled by the word weird. Some of you veer dangerously close to sanity.

  But I must confess that I have come to love you as an audience. There are far fewer of the whackos writing me from the Weekly’s readership than I used to draw from those who bought Future Life. Don’t ask me why. Most of you heeded the appeal only to write postcards, so I was spared elongated screeds. And nine out of ten of you during the first nine weeks have been extremely kind in your remarks. Several of you have not. The Weekly has published some of those. Each of the correspondents who wrote snotty letters has been visited in the dead of night. The grief-stricken families ask that flowers not be sent; contributions to the Home for Unwed Writers should be sent in memoriam.

  As a ground rule, I won’t be replying in these pages to kind and gracious folks who wrote to say I am a credit to my species and a wonderful fellah who speaks out against the evils of our times. I accept the compliments with toe appropriately scuffing the dust, but it ain’t truly the sort of thing that deserves comment beyond a deep bow and a sincere thank you.