Thus, the validity of Sonny Projector, Agent, personally appearing at the Guelph’s office door (with Butterbugs waiting in the car), requesting a time slot one month hence, to stage a spare but sincere production of Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice’ at the Guelph. To be bankrolled by Sonny’s occult Yutherville Productions (later to be rechristened Occult Yutherville Productions, after the outfit was ‘outed’ by a jealous Mikey O’Vitz), which turned a tidy little profit sponsoring tax write-off-worthy plays throughout the third world of America’s southwest (and southeastern Bolivia, too).
This wasn’t the first, or even the fourth time Sonny had pulled this gentle gambit. Why, superior character actors such as Turl Square had come out of this system, as had Wendis Way and Spring Byington. Hollywood had long tested its hatchlings with eggshell bits still sticking to their flightless wings, but an entry into the Industry via the stage was not so common anymore. Like his Old Fitzgerald darkers, this esoteric method was one of Sonny’s secret weapons, which he had no compunction about using.
‘It’s all fixed,’ he proclaimed, pushing said shades up his forehead, so as to address Butterbugs eye to eye.
‘Hope you don’t mind, but this’ll be a ‘cobbled’ production. Maybe even a reader’s thiertre onstage. It’s a high, dry season here, but you never know who’ll crawl out of the greasewood when word gets around. One night we had Paolo Solari, Geraldine Chaplin, John Ford, Ernie and Betty Cardley (who run the vacuum cleaner repair shop next door), Shelley Duvall and… let’s see, oh yeah, Nat Hiken, all sitting in the same row – separated by a bunch of empty seats, of course.’
‘Boy!’
‘We open at the Guelph in twenty-one days. Dig it. Comments?’
‘I am in favor of it.’
‘I like your understatement, Butterbugs. It could serve you well. Now, let’s get you set up over here at Dinkelsbuhl Mansions. Good grub and decent board. You can bunk there for the duration.’
It was in one of those old-time upstairs lodgings that Butterbugs got to stay, with Sonny making all the arrangements, endowing him with a 900-minute mobile, ‘Merchant’ text, natch, and a survival kit of sensible but austere provisions. He knew this new actor ‘find’ was not very dependent upon material concepts, and that the play was the thing, pretty much from start to finish.
‘You’ll be all right here, kid,’ Sonny thought to himself. ‘Probably better off than you’ve ever been before…’
Sonny didn’t delve too deeply into his clients’ brainpans. He indulged in a little initial grazing, but his theory was that too much introspection was ruining the world, whether it was pop psychology, blame assignation, or the cheap-assed antics of Dagny Taggart-ism, the licenses most often self-assigned for Selfists to strut about with. The fount of creation that was born through the Drama had to be encouraged, but not coddled.
With few other words, Sonny exited down the Old West stairs and through the ramshackle screen door. Then he puffed up the Packard, which zoomed out into the west, leaving a magenta rooster-tail.
‘Later!’
Butterbugs now had a few bucks. Sonny himself had personally stuffed a fairly generous advance into his breast pocket. They were the first legitimate C-notes he had ever seen. He was elated, but characteristically contained.
Though burnt-out torch sockets lined the walls, the room was dustily comfortable. That was a bed over there. Not a casting couch. Or folded down second-and-third seats with a thirdhand sleeping bag. He practically caressed the outwardly banal but implicitly exotic pillow. He had been lacking such simple basics for so long now that once he planted his cheek against it in prone position, tearmist darkened a quarter-sized patch for a time.
Freshened in the vintage downside of day, Butterbugs ambled down the street. It was a spacious, Sergio Leone kind of town: sparse, cast in bronze light, humans absent, with its spaces more cerebral than tangible. Indeed, if the studios hadn’t vast acreage devoted to Westernia already, this would be a dandy location for a Grade-Z programmer, if not a Ford or Hawks masterpiece.
A few pickup trucks here, there, mostly Studes and Harvesters. Rusted rings mounted in the cracked sidewalk for horse tie-ups. Blumby’s Tank Bar, with fingerprinted BubbleUp-bordered windows that caught the blazing sunset. Dim figures within, unresponsive. Then, around the Guelph’s bulk, to the marquee, a near duplicate of the Paramount’s in NYC, with its graceful neo-French curves. The black background with white letters was so weathered from the UV onslaught, there was almost a charcoaly neutrality that blended text with page, as it were. Enough panels still remained though, for letters reading ‘Duel in the Sun’ to sit on the guiding rails. ‘Ends Tonite’ had recently been added on the bottom.
‘Well I’ll be dahned…,’ mused Butterbugs. ‘I’ve always wanted to see that…’
Indeed, the box office was populated, and unlike the ‘Music Hallelujah’ crabapple, this old dame smiled when she took his dollar fifty.
‘Picture doesn’t start for 20 minutes yet, sir.’
Her voice was courteous, as professional as any at the Pantages on Hollywood Blvd.
It was well that he had some time before the Overture. The slightly inclined plane that transported him up and into the fake granite/real plaster of the Guelph’s enveloping national romanticism served as a processional way into the heart of his dramatic dreams. It was the first movie palace he’d been in since… since the Goth, way back home. The wondrous thing was, all the messages his dreams had conveyed for many months now, all the surefire wisdom, facts, and fancies, were intact, revamped, and ready to enhance his hours, waking or not. The ornate environment was heady, but one particular message spake first: if there was a holy subtext to the steps he took now, as if entering a place of worship, it came in the form of a nameless spirituality gained by entering a place – any place – of performance. Once there, it was up to himself, as performer, to present his wares, for the benefit of pilgrims who came to this venue, and knowing, in the profoundest of senses, their reasons for coming. Then, wares displayed with word, gesture and conformation, aided by pipe, drum and costume, surrounded by set, curtain and proscenium, the sacred lyceum of the Drama shall come to be. With these simple tools, the ancient Greeks, Hindus, and Chinese had assembled their theatric culture, and the tools still worked, like a charm.
But he really wasn’t such an intense dude right now, despite all the upright, educative, holy-roller methodology of his vague intentions.
Now that he officially had representation, the vagaries would begin to fade, and dreamy notions could be replaced with actual deeds and events within the framework of realization. Therefore, all he had to do right now was follow this mock-stone way, with its deep forest green ceiling, accented by tones of antique gold, illuminated by a few remaining sconce bulbs, while gruff, legendary faces of Kalevalic origin stood in monumental guardianship and frieze relief, overseeing his progression up the connective tube, to the great room ahead.
He gravitated to the upper balcony, which, when he reached it, rose yet further, and at such a steep rake that the effect was similar to terraced farming in sub-Himalayan Nepal.
Shunned by non-existent audiences, its precincts should have been roped-off if management ever noticed, so this upper circle was apparently the sole domain of the projectionist, whose well-worn trail Butterbugs followed over original carpet, on up, practically unto the shuttered and dark Crying Room. Any light up here was reflected from far, far below. Surely there was a stage and screen down there somewhere.
He sank into a semi-padded seat and found that his shoes practically rested on the same level as the top of the seat-back in front of him, but the view was magnificently unimpeded, to say the least.
This poorly lighted interior: Gesellius or Lindgren might have designed it! Up in the dome, a heroic fresco, which, though watery and disappointing, Gallen-Kallela might’ve cartooned! Though a great space devoted to a particular theme, from up this far, his attention was pulled into the golden curtains and foo
tlights. Anything else below the rim of the lower balcony was hidden, Bayreuth-style, and not known.
There was palpable excitement, generously dished out from his own private stock. Butterbugs felt it without weight, just short of euphoria.
If this house, out here in the way-back, obviously of forgotten status, with himself feeling exalted within it, waiting in anticipation for a given picture show to start, in accordance with showmanship procedures adopted by all self- and audience-respecting cinema halls, then what would the excitement level be in a progressive, vital, and happenin’-now movie house?
Thus was the ever-present concept of a proper audience engraved on his brain. One person mattered. More than one person mattered also, but the validity was the same. Wherever one person – or several thousand – sat, that was the nexus of performance.
Then, along that line of lower balcony, a figure moved, a lonely silhouette against the curtained screen, and it ascended the foothill slope to the upper reaches. Man with empty 35mm reel. Projectionist going on duty. Cig, oily hair, not meant to be detected. No behavior toward Butterbugs, in spite of shadowy eye contact. Up still further and over to a fireproof door, and after clanging shut, faint pre-presentation music heard, probably Bert Kaempfert, speakers definitely kept at low volume, just to imply human presence.
Butterbugs was ready now for his motion picture experience, but he had to wait a further seven minutes or so before a power surge made the house lights dim for a second, and he heard faint projector grind.
Thus, Overture.
The deep grandeur of Dimitri Tiomkin’s score, impeccably perfect for a house this size, flowed over him, and boy, did Butterbugs pay attention, and he learned. How deprived he had been, living on theories, notions, and intentions, rather than the on-the-scene actions of sound and fury.
He learned the true power of art and drama, melded through the anthem/melody/hymn of the Ukrainian’s genius, seizing those in witnessing seats, benevolently terrorizing them, seducing them with mad passions of leitmotifs, sealing their fate with commitment to promised glory, further roller-coastered along when dimming house lights and (spotty) organ grille colors descended, as the arc lamps kicked in, and onto the pleated, emigrating mass of Turkish-sewn drapes in a saga-laced style, the imagery of identification appeared, surprisingly bright, the impact of which sent the curtains parting, making way for the charm of the wedding bell-into-gamelan chime of Selznick’s knurled sign logo – (‘Hey, I’ve been to that door, of that studio, I think…!’), opening into the dithyramb of Main Title, enabling the audience to be figuratively pushed off a cliff for two and a quarter hours, commanded by the voyage therein, immersed in the massed cinematic gesamtkunstwerk. Then, then, ecstatically landing on the inarguable road to climax, the long way, the path of glory, ALL THE WAY THROUGH, to the ectoplasmic, orgiastic, Tristanian-und-Isoldian-cum-liebestod ultimo finale of (not quite yet, not quite –) of… Climax achieved! The proof now told, the confirmation that, despite whatever the characters endured and utterly paid for, all is well and truly wrapped up, affirmed by Dimitri’s Hall Johnson chorale, thrust farther into heaven by Jester Hairston’s supervision, and above the SFX sun way over Squaw’s Head Rock: ‘THE END – A David O. Selznick Production…’
A more sublime resolve cannot be imagined.
…Exhale… and requiescat en pace…
Deprived of speech, the sole viewer of much sensitivity could only reel, as the house lights came up. Exit music of familiar themes softened the blow, and care had to be taken not to tumble over the auction-hall tiers. The imperative was to get back to that incongruous Nordic passage, down to terra firma, where cinematic ecstasy, now consummated, can retreat to more manageable proportions.
An orgasm cannot last, nor should it, lest it be rendered mundane.
It had actually been a working evening. There was no acting technique that he derived from this motion picture experience. It was all tone, and it affected him deeply.
Put in dumbo terms, there was something about ‘Duel’ that he wanted to guard with his life. It was up there behind the fire door, the imminent excitement of which, not too much should be said. He might fear that that wonder would be hijacked and misused by abusers who would take what works in the world, and pervert it to their own ends, if any existed.
The impact could be utilized. It would serve Shylock well.
15.
Shylock Is Really Not A Very Nice Fellow After All
It was something out of ‘Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre’.
Butterbugs’ new theatrical scene, that is.
Theatre in the provinces may not have the glamour of the Great White Way or the West End – or Goethe’s Weimar – but existence of the Drama, wherever boards support players in a play, proves that its innate determinacy promises growth. Growth means hope, and further growth is possible only through experience.
Through practice, also.
The possibilities of the Drama are exercised via its diverse avenues, whether tried and tested, boffo or flop, routine or exception, at every matinee and on any evening, on every kind of stage, from opened tailgate to august Stratford-Upon-Avon.
But here, in the non-Hollywood of no redeeming value, no progressive media, whether opportunistically-traditional or scrumptiously-digital, dared show its face. Because, as qualities of dramatic performance are relentlessly dependent on hierarchical classification, Kunky Creek was at the bottom, so to speak. You know, down under the base-grid and drain-field, where no one with any sense of glory wants to spend their time if they can help it. A zone where both freedom to fail and freedom to succeed share the same bed, table, and WC. Top ramen and turkey franks are the common fare.
Humbleness and ego crawl and prance at alternating times. On cue, both will recite their lines, then meld, which is the act of performance itself. If oil and water do indeed mix for a time as dressing in front of the audience, after the curtain comes down, one exits stage left and t’other stage right. Realizing their loss of identity, they naturally reassert their individual selves again.
For the sake of discussion, one essential question must be asked: is this construct part and parcel of the actors’ classic Egotist/Self-Loathing Syndrome?
Even though Butterbugs did not have much – if any – objectivity in this matter, the bald-faced truth was, he was no longer subject to baseline pigeonholing for any purposes of classification. None applied. With him, the honesty of evolution prevailed.
That being the case, there is no use in wearing out the art of discussion, searching for further explanations.
Environment can be everything. The tendency towards warm or rosy-hued lighting backstage – that attractive combination of, say, brick walls with salmon-painted corridors, contrasted with indeterminate shadows from the fly gallery, the tawny ropes of a sandbag house, the honeyed, tight fit of the hardwood floorboards themselves, the Edison attraction of naked bulbs casting nineteenth-century optimism rather than Century 21 despair, the dusty, matte-black, cast-iron spiral staircases behind the cyclorama, brushed with pastel feminine hues when showgirls chug up and down (to the delight of essential but pervy/voyeur stagehands) – the generally supportive and cozy environment of all the magic lantern mechanisms, which deliver their merchandise in exactly the opposite direction from the photoplay’s one-man-band up there in the projection room, usually brings out the best in people within its sphere.
To Butterbugs, the concept of invitational theatrics was at the core of pulling off the Tailgate Performances. It gave him the vim, the flair, and the very motivation to perform. For how much better does life get when the anticipatory tension before a show has been breached, and the wholesome security of showtime chemistry has been achieved? The richness, the sweetness, the very intimacy of the stage’s finiteness, containing the play’s immediacy, is, to those in the know, one of life’s greatest gifts. One of the greatest, perhaps, but not the most accessible. Through planning, dedication, and sincere effort on the part of the whole team, and an
indefinable response from the audience, this transcendental magic is graspable, here on this polluted and essentially doomed Earth-type planet.
(And what could be more dramatic/theatrical/stagey than having the time of one’s life in the face of inevitable doom?)
Goethe had it right: when one acts within the uterine safety of the stage, and serves the mammary needs of the audience, anything is possible. A fella could become a big, strong boy, as a consequence.
Some of these old theatrical houses out here in the Sticks escaped the alteration runaround that more spotlit venues had to endure, on account of restless notions from profit-minded ownership entities. For decades now, the curse of Suburbia had infected picture show presentation. But go out into the wilderness, and because persons dwell in lesser density, the time-honored undertakings of entertainment still exist! Oh, but they do! Town after town, village after village, wide-spot-in-the-road after wide-spot-in-the-road still has its operative Orpheum or Loew’s or Audion or Pix or Liberty or Gem to supply the dwindling rustic public with something to look forward to. Something to live for.
Out here in the fields, live performance still meant something. An aging few, still seeking that elusive something of value, still relied on lobby, auditorium door, seat in the stalls, and the show, to act as their sane landing pad, to escape an increasingly insane world.
Meanwhile, in the metro-plexus of the modern soul, the depressing plastic casings of video-game husks pile high under garbage lids.
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