Del slammed down the phone and poured himself a giant gin on the rocks. The role-playing was wearisome, especially on the pretense of relating to these old moneyed farts, as if he were one himself.
‘Sonny! What’s important here is that I’ve laid the pipes in the Old Guys’ pools, and now we’re ready to turn on the gas. Now, I don’t wanna curl your eyeteeth or anything, but we could plug B-bugs right into his next picture. Two days from now. It’s a Bogdan Hmelnitzki production, in Panavision 70 and Technicolor, released thru Grandad Ted. But Omni Zoetrope will probably pick it up. I know, track record sucks lately, but it’s good product. Besides, we don’t necessarily want him in hit after hit, right off. No, not right off. Francis is helming. Really. He’s better now. You may balk, Sonny. Yes, I know the credentials are just fine. But I don’t think you’ll think it’s his type of picture, not after ‘Doughboy’. I’m not sure I want to tell you the working title, Sonny. But listen, it’s a for-sure. The Old Guys came through, and I think we’d better take it so as not to make the seniors mad. We’ll need them in handling this kid down the road. You know that. OK, it’s ‘The Chip Chiggs Story’. You’re not? You like the idea? Why Sonny, I hardly knew ya! I’m glad we didn’t disappoint you. That’s right, you’re right. He did do that musical thang for Sid’s Epilogue, didn’t he? No, no, I agree. Well, it’s a small role, but pithy, Sonny, pithy. Three days’ studio work. Work it out. A nice boost. Over at ‘Spam’ Goldwyn, Formosa Ave-side. All systems GO, baby!’
28.
Old Atrocity
As he stepped out of his coupe just within the walls of the Goldwyn Studios, on this occasion, with plenty of time before his makeup call, Butterbugs felt a déjà vu kick into gear. It was irregular, and it had nothing to do with being inside this legendary and vital studio, because this was his premiere appearance here (and the gatesman was completely professional).
But it had everything to do with being on the outside of its perimeter. The recollection was half-baked, but the bouquet had him by the nose, and he ventured along the side street and on up to the main drag that passed the studio wall at a right angle: Santa Monica Blvd.
He soon deduced that he stood at the location of an event in his recent history. He had been here before, right here, he was pretty sure. The time of day was different, but the sensation was correct. Was it too recent to view its contents as in a past life? Things in the present were so different now, and so progressive. In fact, he had only a few moments to put together this street-side visit’s value before he was required on the other side of the great wall.
The arterial’s traffic was terrible, but it made the same sounds. The terracotta-ish brown of the slab wall behind him gave off a mysterious force, vibes he could almost name. It had been a time of desperation, of near-famine, of shakiness, and fear. The recall was elusive, but it came up against undoubted identity. He had surely been here. That grit-speckled night, when all things started to start, first-off with Vonda’s entrance into his life. He looked up and gently touched the textured pilaster that had witnessed the brief encounter.
‘Here it was, where she who set me upon my path let me into her domain!’ he whispered. His face tilted further, up into the sky, today dimensionless, but perfect for visualizing his late paramour’s gorgeousness. A Moçambiquan face in the LA-bright sky.
‘I shall never forget, Vonda!’
Then down, to the scaly sidewalk, further distorted by thick lenses of unflowing tears in his eyes, a descent to the flat reality of pancaked chew-gum and desiccated condom wrappers.
A sigh, devoted to the departed. That would have to be sufficient. A rousing followed, and he straightened himself. Before he planned to turn about, his eyes cleared, and scanned away down the sidewalk. In the foreshortened view, already occluded by a heat-expanded atmospheric perspective of flying particulates, scattered in a disconnect, plainly in search of permission to please, were the lost boys of Sta. Monica Blvd, milling about in their fashionably torn attire.
‘I could have been one of them, once…,’ Butterbugs thought.
Out of this grey-blue horizon there began an eerie pull to his sensitivities, in which a notion lodged in front of his consciousness. Maybe, maybe, by soliciting here, in the same spot, by repeating an incident in recent history, maybe she would pull up and ask him to climb in again, and they would be reunited, so that they could continue their path towards love… Maybe… There really was a chance that –
Suddenly he felt a claw on his shoulder.
‘That’s rebellion!’ sounded a voice.
Butterbugs turned about. ‘Errr…’
It was Del Nind, smiling the whole time.
‘Those losers! Look at ’em! Streetwalkers! Those rascals! And what do they do? Providing prurience! Huh! And you! What the hell are you doing here? What are you rebelling against? Huh? Look at ’em! What are they rebelling against? Why, I –’
‘Think not too poorly of them, Del,’ Butterbugs replied, a liver-dumpling in his throat. He looked back down the sidewalk. ‘Theirs is but a disadvantaged lot, full of uncertainty, full of…’
‘Yeah, well, I know one thing certain, you’re due on the Merritt Hulburd Soundstage on the lot in about five minutes. Now come on.’
Butterbugs willingly snapped out of his reverie.
‘One thing you’re going to have to do now, kid,’ Del’s voice switched from criticality to helpful mode, ‘is to think of yourself as a working player. You’ve come into some parts now. We’re helping you, but you’re going to have to prove yourself. Whoever said that you didn’t? Don’t muck it up. Hell, it’s better than relief!’
Just once more, and just for an instant, Butterbugs thought of they, the lost ones, who are forever outside the wall, and doomed to a life of hocking both body and soul.
The instant passed.
Well, he was never one of them anyway. Time for ascent. Del was right. Time to get to work.
And he did. ‘The Chip Chiggs Story’ was a quasi musical, directed by Francis Ford Coppola and lensed by Hal Rosson. Butterbugs was impressed when he’d discovered that these and other biggies were in the mix, but necessity had him preoccupied with putting in a good performance. Since he was into this production on such short notice, and would not be required in front of the camera until later that day, he busied himself with script study in a comfy director’s chair off to the side of the set. His experience in the less-formal ‘Doughboy’ shoot had taught him to rely on his own incentive when being around show people. They were cool, and he wasn’t, so, best to mind his P’s & Q’s. Best to take the logical default and behave with Elvis-like politeness.
Also, something he was beginning to realize about himself: he was at home. With the lights, the cameras, the mechanics of deception for Drama’s sake, even the cables and the chicken-wire of the soundstage interior walls, always unfinished and informal, there was the ambience of home, or a kind of base.
The gypsy-like transience of the soundstage brought with it a constant sense of moving-on – in which the activities of the moment, no matter how momentous, were entirely fleeting. The sets, the actors, the crew, and the lighting plots – all were here for only a while. A very brief while.
Nevertheless, that was enough of a home for Butterbugs, especially given his DeSoto-cum-tent sparseness, just past, and for good.
At any rate, these nouveau impressions had to do with the inanimate environment. Those characters and players who inhabited it, and with whom he was soon to interact, could perhaps be a different matter entirely. Personalities acting on transient ground always lead to the Drama, scripted or unscripted.
This was indeed a musical picture (new songs by Irving Berlin), but his role was non-singing, non-dancing. He played the friend of the best friend of the lead character, none of whom were on set today, nor would Butterbugs see the friend of the best friend face-to-face. Nor would he see the best friend, either. All his skedded shots would be facing the face of a stand-in. The role was plain and easy to gra
pple. With script in hand, leaning slightly back in the canvas chair, here in his homely nook, he felt he had it mastered.
Funny how all the equipment in this studio was so modern, yet they still cobbled scripts together with those brass brads and attempted to inscribe the title on the compressed pages of the spine with a sloppy Magic Marker.
It was a time to not only concentrate on his craft-to-be, but also to engage the clear purpose in simply letting things happen as they may. Such were his feelings of security. After all, he was in a studio, working. Right now.
All the production personnel were absolutely occupied, and they were tending to everything and everyone but him. Tension was not readily detectable, but the pressure of the Industry was. It was not a negative or uncertain sort of feeling, though. Business as usual?
Time passed, and soon he got noticed by an assistant director, who told him it was time to go on set.
‘Coming!’ Butterbugs sounded off.
He hopped up, and in those steps towards the carpentered rise of the set’s floor, he felt an elation, a rush of bona fide goodness, to be at work, working his craft, and to leave such hallucinogenic notions as the one far out on the Santa Moniker pavement unutterably far behind.
Contrary to what he’d been told, he would be doing his scenes with no mere stand-in, but with Neville Brand himself!
The venerable character actor was nothing but professional.
‘Glad to meet you, young-un. You need a rehearsal? I don’t, but I’d be happy to do one.’
‘I sure wouldn’t mind. I’m kind of new.’
‘Sure. Sure you are. Let’s do it before Francis gets here.’
Not only were the rehearsals cordial, but the subsequent social interaction with the great director and his associates was as well, and completely businesslike. No legendary-sounding pronouncements or Wildean wit or intelligent in-jokes, either. Just some prep-talk, and that was it. No, there was no tension on this set, only a mandate to keep on schedule.
‘All right, action,’ the director said, fairly quietly.
N. BRAND’S CHARACTER: I guess I’d rather impress my wife – or, hell, my partner – with my sexual equipment and performance rather than trying to convince some pizza-faced old atrocity like you that I am anything but a man!
‘What the hell!’ bellowed A VOICE FROM THE GRID.
‘Cut!’ shrieked director Coppola, instantly shook up. ‘Who’s the damn fool who interrupted my shot?’
‘What’s the big idea, using my name for that – shitty character?’ returned the voice.
It was Old Atrocity.
Neville Brand was not amused. He could only growl.
A momentary impasse.
Butterbugs took on the situation. There was no reason not to. He was jazzed by the easy rapport on the set with these old pros, and they had been entirely supportive of him, even though his horn was Kelly-green. And because it was this new fellow who rose to the occasion, an already sleep-deprived Coppola relaxed, sat back, and looked forward to a resolution that would stop his Zoetrope dollars from going down the drain. This kid Butterbugs could… serve as plumber, perhaps.
The director then gestured, with sort of a choir leader’s up-beat. On cue, the kid actor raised his face to the etherworld up past the glare of the kliegls and called out, words flowing as easily as ginger beer.
‘Detach yourself, sir! Whatever gave you the notion to take personally this here dialogue bespoken beneath you – that’s right, beneath your dignity, sir – What? What was it that led you to take fictitious lines so close to heart? This is a photoplay, sir. To which you are no stranger, I hear tell. And you have cost us time and money. Your lamps are burning. All, down here on the ground, are waiting. Your producer/director, who has had the generosity and foresight to give you a job, now craves your understanding. By courtesy, not condescension, do I make these points, crewman. Consider the rest of us, all the way down here. There are those hereabouts who anxiously hold weighty cans of 70-millimeter motion picture film stock, ready to re-load the magazine of the camera, a process which would have been accomplished by now, as the expected footage in the magazine still on the camera would have run out at the end of my co-actor’s speech, and no doubt mine, as well. Now there comes this, an unexpected holdup. Those who serve we in front of the camera, several dozens of them in this corner of the set alone, were all loyally and dutifully executing their required tasks, in service to this picture. And now each one of their courses of action has been interrupted, and the courses of those ancillary and other various support groups and systems are effectively altered as well. This is indeed a photoplay, sir, achieved through high-level studio method, and there is little or no room for any sort of unsynchronized or unsolicited behavior. In industrial regimes of achievement and power in this world, there is often much to criticize for the role that machines have played, not only in our world today, but back in time. But here, under this roof, in this room, where so much cinematic history has taken place, we, this unit, a singular object really, is itself a machine. Designed for efficient operation in the production of what we humbly hope will be art, or at least a viewer’s dalliance with his or her mortality, passing a time-unit from that what’s left to them on the present planet, we are necessarily well-oiled and dependent, not only on nature – if not Providence – to see our mission through, we are similarly expectant of each other (for we are a machine of humanoids!), and there you have our group effort, by which to make our mission whole. Think now, and ponder on all these things, so as not to act rashly, but only supportively, and with good cheer.’
Fred Elmes, who was doing fill-in for Hal Rosson behind the camera, had had the sense to roll, even without Coppola’s green light, and thus, captured the Butterbugsian flair as it emanated, as if from a star, or like the rays from an expanding meteor. There was a bit more footage in the magazine than he had thought. Associate Producer Mendron Callendantella was already on his cellphone, dickering with Zoetrope and Goldwyn to issue the soliloquy as part of a widescreen training film for studio staff and union crews. The time loss could be jitterbugged into the general studio budget.
Ordinarily (except on a DeMille set), someone would have added a smart-ass comment, either to the offending interruption itself, or to a speech as stately and mannered as Butterbugs’. But in this instance, there was nothing but crystalline silence.
As for Old Atrocity, he was in tears.
‘Newcomer… Butterbugs, as it were… I can’t help it! I was once such as he!’
Butterbugs knew in his heart that he meant Neville Brand’s character, not Neville Brand the man. Sometimes the origins of nicknames are no joke.
‘Such is our challenge in the sunlight and cloud of Drama and Reality…,’ he mused out loud.
Then, aiming his face back up unto Old Atrocity, Butterbugs said, with the utmost benevolence, ‘We’ll talk soon.’
‘I apologize!’ Old Atrocity called out to Neville. ‘And, and, I apologize again, Brandy! It was me, not thee. I’ll not speak up so, again.’
Amends now, amends for all. Thus was Butterbugs’ brave new influence of magnanimous peace felt, even unto the community of the grid.
F.F. Coppola and his production team knew full well that Butterbugs’ soliloquy and its aftermath took up much more studio time than the original offense, but there was something heartwarming, even beatific, about the simple lesson learned.
Old Atrocity was a crusty, seemingly old, tech guy who, for some grandfatherly reason, enjoyed unprecedented privileges. Like, doing any job he pleased on a motion picture set. And because the International Alliance of Stage and Theatrical Employees logo-bug was stitched to his coverall with fluorescent green thread, he proudly wore his union endorsement, and had cards from every other one in his wallet, to be flashed if challenged, which he never was. Actually, the unions made this special dispensation simply because of Old Atrocity’s astounding proficiency in any and all technical skills. He bridged all gaps, between sweeping up the m
ost glossy of Astaire dance floors and focus-pulling on any camera that carried celluloid, capture-plates, glass-cans, or X-UP cards. He could do it all. He also had the remarkable talent for choosing the job on the set in which he would be best-served at any given moment. No one argued with him or doubted his decisions. His was a fluid unorthodoxy that made complete sense, and no one messed with him. He might be gripping on one shoot, operating a brute the next, carpentering on the following one, then pulling off operation of extremely sensitive SFX procedures at the end of the day.
During a difficult shoot on a big John Huston picture, his perceptive mind determined that his skills could best be utilized on that particular set by picking up cig butts exclusively. Not only was the stressed crew grateful for his untiring and humble efforts, he prevented over ten fires from breaking out, and hundreds of lives were saved.
Work was an obvious reality to him; he had no use for ego, score-keeping, or point-proving. He just wanted his paycheck, but was not without his own cogent and often pungent thoughts concerning not only the Industry, but life in general. All things considered, he was the tech equivalent of Orson Welles or Alec Guinness. On soundstages and out on locations all over the cinematic world, he was an institution. He had the makings of a genius, he commanded universal respect, and his personality could be a mixture of porcupine quills in flight and spraying jets of mercury.
Most of the time, though, he just did his job. Brilliantly. Perhaps that was why there was such silence after Butterbugs’ speech. All waited for the fecal matter to hit the ventilation system. Who dare confront Old Atrocity?
‘I feel – like a little kitten – reborn!’
The rest of the cast and crew gladly let the two talk alone at lunch break.
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