Such was Sonny Projector’s last-minute media gambit. Not bad for a bite-back gesture. But where did that leave Butterbugs? Still within the perceived tomb of justified oblivion.
17.
The Great And Moving Aftermath
After the horrors of Jangtown, that last of all Last Stops, where the un-staged Merchant ran his course into a dead end of dust and cockroaches (‘petered out’ is too mild a term…), the time of experimental thiertre in Butterbugs’ ‘training’ had unwound into entropy.
It’s not that it was a traumatic thing, or even an unfortunate one. No one hardly noticed. The heat, the dust, the moribund theatres, with all their intrigues, their intactness reflecting perfectly their halcyon days, their entire substance, from box office to backstage door (all of which would send old movie and vaude palace enthusiasts into paroxysms of semi-sexual ecstasy, if they even knew that such musty-dusty glory still existed in this heartless world), this was the stuff of recessional meditation…
Such were the factors in the winding down of a young and inexperienced actor’s experience bringing the Bard to the back end of the desert, while obtaining a showbiz credential, ostensibly in order to face the hard tasks of a picture show gig in the future.
Back, then, in LA!
He was not summoned back by Sonny so much as re-assigned, as it were. Kerroll Kubbutsch, an almost-pleasant but actually-dull underling associate, was assigned the task of presenting Butterbugs with a manila packet, delivered at the gates of the city, where the bewildered actor, not-so-fresh from his road tour, was deposited by omnibus.
‘Misterprojector has instructed me to, uh – Let me look at my cheat-sheet for a second. Oh. Here it is. Here you are, on the list. Butterbugs, is it?’
Butterbugs nodded.
Ms. Kubbutsch was a dress-for-success type, but unfortunately she seemed to achieve it in 1980s style. Pretty much like Dustin Hoffman in ‘Tootsie’ (Columbia, 1982). Perhaps she was an aspiring actress or something similar, doing part time for Sonny, yet soon to audition for a period picture. Perhaps.
That Butterbugs! Always with the benefit of the doubt!
‘OK, here you are. This is it. This is the packet. Your packet. Your kit. OK. Here’s a bit of spot-cash money for modest living expenses. Here is a voucher for a few nights at a Leonard’s Nice Motel, at the address noted. Here are the keys to the motor vehicle just there, that Misterprojector has generously provided, including a half-a-tank of paid-for gasoline. You will of course be charged for these advances against your first employment cheque, should it occur, in accordance with your contract. If no actual employment under Misterprojector’s providential umbrella never quite occurs, you will be liable for 95% of these grants within a really quite generous and sympathetic payback deal. Please sign here to show that you are in complete, utter, and total agreement with these terms. Please note that this especial contract is for these generous grant items only, and that it does not in any way affect your standard contract under Misterprojector, himself, his company, any parent investors, nor his affiliates, whether contractually affiliated or non-contractually affiliated. Please sign now, in the seven places I have indicated with the little x’s there.’
Butterbugs signed, seven times.
How generous, how very generous of Sonny.
The quasi-urban setup here at the edge of the megalopolis was very much in tune with his recent Jangtown and previous gigville experiences whilst living within a dying production. Therefore, the world at large must be dying. This is what it was like. Even the sun, wearying of the day’s bland and unpromising activities, was casting a vinegary light from a certain western angle that implied lack of fulfillment rather than resolve.
The motor vehicle in question was a dusky yellow pod of a thing, brushed with house paint. It was a vintage Davis, a three-wheeled rig with hidden headlights, one of which was stuck open.
A third-string assistant, Snitz Teraph by name, had driven the Davis, following Kerroll all the way out here to this telephone-pole-and-parking-lot land, and now that the task was done, couldn’t wait to retire to Kerroll’s old black Jimmy, which sat there idling, with the A/C on, like an apathetic city employee’s service rig.
‘’S go!’ he called out to Kerroll as she was handing over the keys to Butterbugs’ new wheels. If Kerroll was 1980s, Snitz was 1940s – balding, pencil-line mustache, oily, and generally reprehensible.
It all seemed so… un-Sonny… to Butterbugs. The dismissive treatment, the indirectness, the obviously uncaring employees, their styles. That was the second contract he’d signed with Sonny, a total of twenty-six signatures, on his part. What had he gotten himself into? He felt bilious.
Yet the gift of (three) wheels was to be noted. Heaven knew if his DeSoto wagon would ever run again. The engine oil was probably tar by now. The fuel turned to varnish. The tires, circles of tree bark. The interior, probably squatted on, vandalized, trashed… Besides, he was leagues away from it, if he could even remember where it was, exactly.
‘Thank you, Ms. Kub–’
Kerroll Kubbutsch herself couldn’t wait to be on her way back to tolerable LA.
‘Yeah,’ was all she said.
Approaching the Davis, Butterbugs thought, ‘How weird.’
Actually though, he found that the rig’s weirdness was copacetic with his own recent orientation with the backwash of LA’s unwanted hinterlands. Everything about it was unorthodox. So was everything about Butterbugs at this moment. Such meshing allowed for him to operate the vehicle’s rather eccentric controls in instinctive harmony, while mainstream items like the Sonnycash, bound with a ‘Thanks, Sinatra’-labeled money clip (imitation), and modern devices such as the Sonnyphone, lay on the Rexene-covered front seat, unattended, while the Sonny-endorsed Leonard’s voucher languished on the Vinalon-coated dashboard.
Even the tube-fired wireless worked on board, and as he took off, the last quarter of Enescu’s ‘Romanian Poem’ blasted out of the vibrator/speaker from some side street station on the AM dial.
Here was the deal. By his contract, Sonny was obliged to do… nothing. That is, not until something broke through that was worth noticing. It implied that the signee must be patient, and have Trust engaged at all times. Talk about benefit of the doubt.
He headed up a canyon. No, it wasn’t the canyon of his romantic yore, but it wasn’t that far away, either. There was the same vegetation and habitation, all on edge, and all so vulnerable to not only car and careering, but there was something that always seemed unfinished about these linear places. As in, how could one really settle here and feel complete? Oh well, he did not have to trouble himself with that issue, entirely. All that he’d intended was following some ads for potential rentals. He assumed, partially correctly, that the arrangement was like in Rio de Janeiro: rich folk at the verdant bottom, poor folk at the barren top, though with a great view of the lush life below. Cheaper = upper. Like the bunk on top, the topmost balcony; despite the overview, cheap! It was all part of his oddball background of late, much of it transposed with reality.
Not that that was bad, really, in a heartless town like this.
The segmented concrete panels of roadway, laid in the 1920s, always seemed to accompany him with reliability and steadiness. The maze of infrastructural adaptations, determined by the topography of the immediate environment, came across with a certain sense of style, firmly grounded, thank heavens, in City Beautiful prestige. Therefore, a safety factor kicked in whenever feelings of desolation questioned his place in the universe at the moment.
In other words, because the layout of the city’s streets, and its fixtures and furnitures was so civilized, and indeed, so comforting, the scale of the desolation was never what it could have been – compared with a place like Jangtown. Indeed, there was something gentle about civic LA. It was all executed with the best will in the world, or so it seemed. The rest was up to the players in the scene, as to whether they would muck things up or not. Or enhance them or not. Therefore, ther
e was nothing really to fear. There was nothing to anticipate, as conscientiously-designed settings were present to accommodate all comers and all situations. If those concrete panels led the way out to gas-station towns and other wonders, they led back, as well. Back home. Or where home could be.
In any case, Butterbugs noticed the details of civic appointments much more when he was a lodger in his DeSo/Yniguez Terrace alley quarters. Pavement dwellers usually do. Back then, conditions necessitated the bare essentials. Whereas now, with Sonnyphone and Sonnywheels (albeit not quite four), plus the promise of provisions based on representation, one’s expectations dared to grow and grow more, anticipating progress.
But progress had dragged. Like the still-willing sun, extended through global disruption, penetrating the cinderblock and redwood interiors, the ’60s optimism via open plans and everyman motel rooms, evidenced by concrete that was painted instead of ignored, symbolizing potential more than actuality (as the promise of actuality meant more than the actuality itself), Butterbugs’ progress of desire had grown distended and languid, just when it should have been picking up a leaner and more temperate pace.
The segmented road panels led upward. Then, a grove of Cliff May’s California, where every house was pre-fab, had cathedral ceilings, and honored Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian principles. A very nice middle ground, relaxed, spacious, sensible. There were many more examples down in the offshoot lanes, protected by privacy. He passed by the whole clutch, its appeal as fleeting as a favorite Kingston Trio song… ‘Coast of California’… ‘It Was A Very Good Year’… even ‘Old Joe Clark’…
Especially confusing to Butterbugs right now was the apparent perception that significant things might well be happening in one way or another, all around him, but he knew nothing of them. He felt shut out. So, if that was the case, why weren’t significant things happening within his knowledge, and was there reason to get the whole misguided doubt thing going once again?
He didn’t mind his life being so episodic so much as the fact that the episodes were losing their meaning. And, being enough of an accountant as far as making an effort was concerned, ever since his TABP experiences, a subtotal of sorts required reviewing from time to time.
But maybe that’s what life in Hollywood was: an account that refused to actually add up, gentle civic fixtures or no, interacting with a few celebrities or no, acquiring some legit experience or no, having an agent and a contract or no.
There. Sorta figured-out, now.
Maybe there was plenty of reason for desolation amongst the concrete slabs and the bougainvillea, and the chock-a-block cluster-housing on up the canyon hereabouts, after all.
The Davis coasted to a stop, having developed vapor lock in its tiny pot-metal carburetor.
Butterbugs glanced down onto the seat next to him. The Vivaldian gurgle of his Sonnyphone hadn’t sounded for a long time. Who was he to call if he needed something, anyway? Like now?
He got out of the rig and looked out at the viewpoint.
On his desk, another tiresome Del letter to Sonny. And Sonny read:
The BELOW STANDARD DRAVIDIAN
Pictures, plc
Streevygoondrum Studios
Thanks for sending the ‘Parker IX’ text of the Butrbugs to my goodself. I’m really hoping he can try out for the play, and our pic-chah version. He’d make a great Parker.
Other great roles awaiteth him: ‘Larry the Fifth’, ‘Irving the Last’, and ‘Darrel the 507th From The Planet X!’ He was BORN to perform heavy, heavy historical drama (in verse) on some of Alabama’s most obscure stages! Stay tuned!
So long, Sirrah!
(signed)
Sat d’Gawth
Ha ha. Sonny didn’t bother to answer.
Del Nind! Great guy. Brilliant. But a knife twister. He liked to see flesh turn to puree.
At the moment, Sonny had plenty of other hog gristle to pan-fry. Rad Flange was in deep negotiation trouble over at Metro. Sir Hatcher Yidbreemling was in dark water with his DeMille inking. Featherkins’ UBS series had just been cancelled. Johnny Seven and Nicole Kidman needed hands-on agenting in their contract crises at Seven Arts and RKO respectively. Time to get on the blower.
In observing evidence of cinematic technique, based on the fact that the cinema is the liveliest of the arts, press and audience alike look to motion pictures for exposition and explanation of life’s myriad concepts. For example, who has not sought a tangible redoubt for coping with the disappointments of life, and found it within a movie? What is better for coming to terms with lowering expectations than the sensible distractions of a picture show that fits like a friendly glove?
Who at some point does not find consolation in the Drama?
So, if he could just employ a little patience, and not a little native intelligence, Butterbugs thought he might just be able to stave off the letdown of getting near to something, and then having it fade – not out, but away.
‘I can think of this as a scene, a real scene, in the process of shooting,’ he thought.
It was the first time this approach had occurred to him. It was the first time he really understood what acting was.
‘Character stands at the rim, overlooking the site of importance. He feels the pull, but still wants to live. He considers the impact of his end, which is as nothing. He reconsiders leaving. Leaving the premises. The prospects. The motives.’
It was hyped-up emotion, obviously. He was hardly suicidal, though. Not knowing psychology, he could not use it to his advantage. But he knew the Drama, and now he used it as incentive.
‘Down there in the hazy heat… Something important beyond the horizon… Look past the obvious…’
He returned to his stalled vehicle, reached in and plucked his Sonnyphone, then regarded it with great solemnity.
Suddenly he attacked the AutoDial button. Direct feed to Sonny.
And Sonny answered.
‘This is Butterbugs. I am stranded. I feel I’m doing nothing. I feel I’m going nowhere. You made a lot of statements to me. We talked a lot. You, mostly. You wanted me to sign your contract. I did sign your contract. You wanted me to gain experience on the stage. I did gain experience on the stage. You wanted me to come back to Hollywood. I did come back to Hollywood. You wanted me to have several items of use and a few spot-cash dollars. I did sign for them. Your people were rude and dismissive toward me. I did not get vexed or even show one peep of emotion. You wanted me to have your wheels. I did have your wheels. Now they have quit on me, and I stand on the brink of the future. What is to be? What can there be?’
‘Relax, kid. You’re right. You’re going nowhere. I wasn’t, either. I want you to understand that you have reawakened the – realization, that I, uh…’
‘I am here, Sonny.’
‘Yes, and I am there. I mean here. And I have been here. But I know now. I have been – I can say it. I, emboldened by your own dare to spell out your soul, shall we say, in all humility…’ He chose to interrupt himself. ‘Say, do you know that today I dealt with none others than Willy Wyler, Jesse Lasky Jr., Ethel Merman, Charlize Theron, Sidney Poitier, Victor Sen Yung, John Cusack, Paul Newman, John Williams (thespian), and Oprah?’
‘I am here, Sonny.’
‘Of course you are…’
‘And I listen.’
‘Well, all right. Forget the VIPs. I do, every day! Pretty much required to. But I, I have to tell you, I forgot about you, and that’s something that is unforgivable.’
‘But you said that you forget the VIPs.’
‘I don’t really forget them. I sign off for the day. Besides, they can stand to be forgotten, if it only be a day, a night, a bare hour. You, you and your type… cannot, should not, must not be forgotten. The stars are established enough to take their lickings, but those who still toil below levels of recognition, they I must protect.’
‘Past those sentiments, what lies to be considered?’
‘For your own part, you’re not gonna like what I have to
say, baby.’
‘Shoot,’ answered Butterbugs.
‘OK, since you’re apparently abandoning your ‘sensitive actor’ trip for the moment and becoming ‘ironman’ in response to my fucking with your brainpan, there’s nothing else for it. So I’ll spit it out. I was testing you. Yeah, biblical-style. Well, maybe not that easy, but I was testing. OK, without very much effort, then, but I’m a busy man. If anything, I was seeing if you had the stuff of endurance.’
Butterbugs’ next line was uttered with the utmost epicness of truth, wrought from the very basement of his soul, where were stored the tablets of memory and fact, and where thought was most raw and real.
‘I have endured, Sonny. I have endured.’
Sonny, though at the far end of the line, beholding the transmission of digital voice particles doing an Alan Shepherd leap beyond the exosphere, the Agent of Agents almost passed out when he felt the power, Butterbugs’ power, coming across in waves. It figured perfectly into his sense of place in the matter, admittedly dormant these long weeks. There was no time even for self-hatred at this transgression; only awe and wonder, coming at him like a rolling storm-cloud of joy. It took a moment for him to do a mental Reinhold Messner-style somersault on the face of a cliff (and landing with tiptoes – on a two-inch deep ledge), before he could find his voice again.
‘In all my time on Earth so far,’ the Agent instantly thought, ‘I had yet to hear such truth! Yet, here it is now, filling me with New Ideas and New Fuels! I am awash with the New Realization: that extraordinariness awaiteth on a threshold – but for how long…?’
And Sonny found a voice. A new one.
‘Oh, Butterbugs! I hear ya! All I can say is, all I can feel is, all I can tell you, deeply, in purest truth is, stay with this route. Stay yet awhile.’
Forward to Glory Page 22