‘Do we have what it takes?’ asked a youthful grip, Avery Ives.
‘Oh, I hope so, Ives! Really, I do! Do you not think I ask myself the same thing, day in, day out? In the rat cages of my daily session, inmate to the four-walled limits of my working perimeters, I ask: could I ever break through? Could we ever be free? Born in liberty, but everywhere enchained! That is what I feel!’
‘Mario, how do you think I feel?’ asked William Wellman, the director. ‘The tensions I manage, from the studio heads to the traffic cop outside the soundstage! Oh, if I only had my youth to live over again, would I be a vagabond on the byways from Bogota to Cluj!’
‘If only you could capture them, Bill! Don’t you want to?’
‘I do! I tell you, I do! I’ve always wanted to, and I can never tell anyone how much!’
‘You’re a poet, Bill the Wild, and you deserve your time on screen.’
‘How can it happen, though? Here I am, past my prime. Still yearning for the path above the furthermost terrain. And yes, I am still wild – after all these years!’
Everyone applauded.
‘It’s my cry, too. And you others, do you not feel the same? Yearning for the glory! Not for ourselves, but to share amongst those who would come and see it for themselves. Yet, presented by us, by our art and by our craft!’
‘It’s a wonderful dream…,’ said Shufa Liem, associate line producer. ‘But there is dreaming, and then there is the awakening. Are we dreaming right now? I think I am. The thoughts are wondrous, but I’m afraid of the waking.’
‘Oh, girl, yes, you are dreaming. Sleep, if need be. Sleep, to keep the dream alive! Not forever, but for a time. You cannot find wonder in any racing dream before dawn, but only after we come down off these hills, and stand in our place of work, to make what we have dreamt into reality.’
‘Oh, but Mario, you talk a high talk. What if we lose our will, even though we be here but a few years,’ said best boy Charlie Buckbib.
‘Why Charlie Buckerbibs! You speak the truth. What am I, trying to raise the spirits of we who are being dismantled, due to our ultra-downbeat but guile-free acknowledgement of the reality in which we live?’
‘But Mario,’ pleaded Starla, ‘what are we to do? What can we really do?’
‘Well, I’ll tell you. I wasn’t going to say anything if I did not receive the consensus of heavy cheer that all of you have rendered unto me, this eve. This rare and dramatic eve! Think of where we are, first of all. We are at the nexus of international cinema-making! Never forget that. True, there is a funkadelic spell that lies over these lands of creativity and productivity. It is an Age of Brass, now laid firmly in heart, mind, and hand, across our ken.’
‘But did you not say,’ interjected Shufa, ‘that there was something else that –’
‘I did not say it, Shufa, but you have guessed it. Something else. It has changed everything. At least for me. I find it hard to articulate…’
‘You? Mario! You’ve never been at a loss for words!’ hooted Chirves. ‘Plenty of disjointed, grupped-up bullshit, but never speechless in outer space.’
‘Nor am I now. It’s just that, I don’t know if all of you will believe me.’
‘Speak!’ Fred Steiner, composer, urged.
‘Well, I have recently emerged from a triple bill picture show down at the Tower. I attained my seat at 11:00AM, and remained in it until mid-evening. I was so, so, struck. I was troubled, yet I was elated. I was agitated, yet I was transcendent with peace.’
‘Three pictures!’ said Byllington Peckmark, a color consultant.
‘Indeed. Of divergent themes. Thus the spectrum of experience.’
‘Get on with it!’ shouted Chirves.
‘I think I know what’s playing at the Tower,’ Shufa whispered to Charlie.
‘I will! And I know, my dear Chirves, the running-time of your pictures is considerably shorter than mine. Your concise output is a jewel-factory, well-cut and elegant. Me? I’m meatloaf. But at any rate, I have seen a remarkable set of things today. Not the pictures in themselves, but who was in them. I am sure of it. It was this one person, who made each picture into something indescribable. And therefore, the picture in question became as something more than what it was. Something loftier, yet more grounded. Wider in scope, yet more polished in microcosm. And I’m not just talking about extremes. The most important elements were the indeterminate ingredients, in between.’
‘Aw, you’re wacky…,’ snarked Chirves.
Myronica Laidjæzst, editor, always thoughtful, spoke up. ‘I’m reading you, Mario. Listen to Mario, everybody!’
‘Mario, I sense a power, in what you’ve seen. Or rather, whom you’ve seen,’ said Wellman.
‘There is that, Bill. But not simply that. Something more. A light, somehow. Penetrating. Past the script, the lensing, the production itself.’
‘What was it?’ questioned Starla, full of wonderment. ‘Who was it? Who?’
‘It was – it was – this, this Butterbugs.’
The group let out a collective jaw-drop, around the pool.
‘You see,’ continued Mario, ‘I’m not sure about how it all worked on me. Perhaps I just saw too many pictures in quick succession. But I have never been so non-hallucinogenic in my life. Clarity was everywhere. You may not believe me, but when I went into the movie palace, I was stoked-up on my mid-morning Chartreuse. Don’t let me hear groans from any of you! You know that we all have our own versions of the same thing; our coping skills are helped along by a tool, such as, well, with me, it’s Chartreuse. I challenge any of you to –’
‘Mario! What is this? Sounds like you’ve been tippling gripe-water instead! Is this ‘Judd For The Defense’ (ABC, 1967) all of a sudden, or something?’ interjected Teddison Gold, tailor-general at David Lynch’s Oddball Complex of Sort of Studios. ‘I ask you, where is it written that you have to go off on a tirade about your mid-morning Chartreuse? Where? Your line of thought is going off the tracks, baby.’
‘OK, Tedy. You called me. You’re right. Chartreuse or not, this is bigger. But let me tell you. Ten minutes into ‘I, Doughboy’ and all recollection of my friendly Isère River crutch had gone with the wind. Words cluttered my mind because I knew I was witnessing something extraordinary up there on that panoramic screen, and it had nothing to do with me nor my persona. Words, like, <
‘You have seen…’ Starla was aghast.
‘I don’t really know if I have…’
‘You have seen it! Genius itself?’
‘I cannot say, if I have seen it, in toto.’
‘But, you said –’
Mario swept his arms out to encompass the whole group, and the whole night as well.
‘You must all see for yourselves! Something is in the wind! Some one! If it is he of whom I speak, well then, make your own conclusions. But remember, if we desire a deeper, further, better Hollywood than that which surrounds us, do not go hostile into this soft night, but get yourself down to the picture show in question to make your own assessment. For it could determine the rest of your mind’s tolerance for the field we currently call Familiar. It could all change. And something tells me, it already has.’
Just then a particularly late romantic flourish sounded from an orchestral piece that was playing on the stereo through the pool’s underwater speakers, perfectly capping Mario’s espousal.
It was signal enough for most of the somber revelers to bend their steps homeward, but not without some sense of uplift from their host’s provocative insights. At first they headed for their motorcars and three-wheelers, determined to call it a day. However, the seeds planted by Mario were about to make their germination rounds. As partners exchanged responses with partners, and singles traded ideas in their usual sequestered ways, it was as if a mysterious force, probably magnetism – the greatest force in the universe – charted their
courses in the advanced hours of the evening.
To those who reacted with dispatch, there just happened to be snarl-free main thoroughfare-passage, wide open at this hour, the whole way to the Tower on Broadway. The Later Programme of all three pictures was due to start soon, even allowing for parking and refreshment-gathering time. For those whose idea-bulb was ignited a bit later on, several well-positioned radio spots were broadcast over the airwaves, carrying tidings especially germane to the evening’s hot topic. It rendered them ecstatic. Because, at the Yinca, that old reliable 24/7 house down on La Campo Grande Blvd, the same triple-threat of prints was cycling throughout the livelong day. So, one could show up before a dawn breakfast, settle into the heady Pre-Pizarro-Gothic interior, and see the selfsame programme as those being showcased at the upper-crust, matinee-limited and evening-limited houses on Broadway, and at one popular, affordable price, too.
[The Yinca boasted half-hour breakfast, brunch, tiffin, tea time, dinner, late dinner, party-dinner, and night-hound snack breaks between features, served by in-house grub stalls and buffets. The scheme was billed as ‘ROCPE – ’Round O’Clock Pix ’n’ Eats’. After all the bars closed, the hip expression was to cry out, ‘Hey gang, come on! Let’s do the ROCPE at the Yinca!’ The were even Retiring Rooms one could rent by the minute, with piped-in sound and camp-style cots that were conducive only to catnaps, and not kats-’n’-kittens-in-heat behavior. Sid (Grauman) so admired Tinker Dzarngah, the Yinca’s half-loony/half-goony innovatin’-fool of a proprietor, that he’d long ago become the silent partner who’d kept the Yinca grinding on, through thick and thin.]
So, for those who missed the Tower’s sequence, there was barely time to cram into the characteristically SRO Yinca at 4:00AM. That’s when the memorable, scenic light of ‘I, Doughboy’ commenced its reflective effects onto the mighty auditorium’s massed risings of Machu Picchu stone, both fitted and cyclopean, and into the minds of those who dwelt for a time within them.
Showings concluded, at whatever time of day or night, those who came out of the experience now knew both the gist and the grit of what Mario had spoken about. And he’d been, they concluded, quite correct in his findings.
That was action on the exhibition side. There was action on the production side, too.
A searing realization.
Things can go wrong.
Butterbugs was in a Q. Tarantino picture, ‘Wood Buffalo National Park’ (Realart), and it got out of hand. Shot up in the northern Albertas (‘From a story suggested by Sonny Projector, based on recent insights from the region’), it was tough location work, out in the Great Remote.
Butterbugs was contemplative, and hardly drawn into the Tarantino-ean social scene. He played a wandering park ranger, dedicated to game, tree, and muskeg, an outsider, even in an outside land. It was a role to which he adhered instantly, so Quentin left him be, to pull it off in ways he, as helmer, could never have dreamed.
Needless to say, the director became highly pleased, but remained wary in offering dialogue that might upset a perceived delicate balance. In actuality, Butterbugs was firmly confident, bolstered by the landscape, and playing the role with an easy truthfulness that seeped up from the stale-grass below and drifted down from the loft-curlew above.
There was trouble, though. In the picture a small-scale mob scene plays out, with repulsive grunt-people who challenge the noble ranger, after ambushing him in the defile of Cariboo Corn Rock. Quentin recruited a gaggle of genuine ruffians from the back alleys of Saskatoon, and they were such a rough lot that the LA boys wished they were back in the cozy sleaze of the Cujas del’Ouatts neighborhood. Mutant, Albertan drugs dominated their existential scene-playing.
Some kid in the cast, a turbo-ruffian when in front of the camera, if truth be told, after a ‘normal’ rehearsal, shocked everyone by actually slitting his own throat. Bravado was blamed, as nihilism did not readily occur in minds hereabouts. He gave a vaudeville farewell, thinking that a rescue net lay under him, so to speak. But Butterbugs, in shot, facing the semicircle of grunts, of which the kid was a member, could see in his face, seconds before death, that he had serious second thoughts about his star-making deed. In other words, the B-Po-drug-fired kid had done the slit as a stunt, but he hadn’t expected it to be… so real.
Production shut down for two days. Several times did Quentin appear at Butterbugs’ tent in search of company, or, as it turned out, counsel. The New Realism was then very much questioned. What could replace it? What could be the consummate cinematic technique, wherein the realistic needs of the audience could be met, without succumbing to the wasteful and non-thinking miscalculated realism that had inspired the death of this young, misguided extra?
No one knew it yet, least of all, Butterbugs. But by his very performance – that thing he did in front of the busily turning cameras, a new influence was evolving. He was replacing any sort of realism that had come before with his own Incandescent Realism.
Whatever that was…
And they left the northern wilderness, as the weather started to close in, the caravan of cast and crew threading away from the self-slain extra’s lonely grave on its knoll, the already-leaning plank marker providing some slight shelter for the extra’s Assiniboian hound, who, despite entreaties, chose to stay on guard for the duration. This, as snowflakes began to fly over the still-golden spheres of aspen leaf, in the romantic groves.
In the departing bus, everyone wept, sobbed, asked, ‘why?’.
Away from this tragedy were taken the rolls of exposed celluloid, an answer, perhaps, or at least an antidote, to the state of mind that demeans and destructs the self in order to triumph.
The cinema had a conspicuous role in this matter…
Lap-dissolve montaged unto lap-dissolve.
When he returned to the Southland, it occurred to Butterbugs that he hadn’t seen one particular but significant person in quite some time. Support-staff had taken much of his management responsibilities unto themselves, so the actor was freer to rediscover some of his own affairs.
There was Heatherette.
Heatherette, of the naked truth, of the quiet passion, of the flowery but faded environs of the past, no longer occupied the annals of recollection. But she was worth remembering! He wasn’t sure why he took the time of his week off to seek the threads leading to Yniguez Terrace again, but once remembered, once gathered, it was for no other reason than to say ‘hi’.
Now that he thought of it, he hoped to make a ‘Hollywood’ kind of return to her, in a stylish visit resplendent with achievement, for practical purposes of proof of accomplishment. As if scored by Arnold Bax, in a highly colored tone-poem of triumphant return, full of resolve, conveying something more than hope.
So, free of commitments for the moment, and clear of head, he arrived at her mansion at an appropriately dusky hour.
He stood on the huge porch, its mood and dimensions already swallowing him up, into a silent film of suspension in a monochrome moment. In reflection to Heatherette (who indeed answered the gong, but kept the large door just past a chink in its opening, so that Pickford or Gish eyes were all that could be seen), Butterbugs revealed, without much expository explanation, that doing what he was currently doing (e.g. involvement in exciting projects, interacting with amazing people, and going to extraordinary places) was an unimaginably, unbelievably magnificent way to spend a life. Forgotten was all the rubbish that came before. Thus, past could only be a quickly dispensed-with prelude.
The eyes thanked him for the update, and then the portal closed.
So, that was it for the Heatherette end of things.
Old Atrocity balanced a ceiling clamp in one hand with five stage screws wired together in another.
‘Things’re movin’ right along with you, aren’t they, B-bugs? What you think ’bout that?’
‘I think that it is fine.’
‘Boy, you Gen-Y-ers (and everything after) really missed some cool shit. You know? That is, all the sci-fi and grubbis
h films from the ’50s and ’60s. You know, Psychotronic™ pictures. To us, they were the ultimate. Ed Wood had it right. Rodge Corman, Kroger Babb, Al Zugsmith, Teapo Keh. But beyond them, what could we add? I ask you! My own generation? We produced Bill Gates – the ultimate unoriginal. What do you have to offer? Probably not even as much as my generation did. No, it was the vaudeville and post-vaude generations who fueled our imaginations. I feel sorry for you people. Speaking of vaudeville, you have a tough act to follow, and you don’t even know what the previous act was!’
Old Atrocity let out a long stream of cig smoke, and sighed.
So did Butterbugs, but only a sigh.
‘Man, I can’t ever hope to top any of what came before. I don’t care if it’s ‘Teenage Caveman’ (American-International, 1958) or ‘The Brain Eaters’ (American-International, 1958).
‘You know of those pictures?’
‘I do. Some I call favorites.’
‘Sufferin’, bleedin’ Chickamauga!’
‘Yeah, I agree with everything you say. But I am quietly and finally cursed by not having been born when wonders appeared in vaudeville, and Fanchon and Marco swaggered with B.F. Keith, for dominance in the field.’
‘Yeah, you are curséd. I never thought about it, like that.’
‘Well, I have. And now, you rightfully put me in my place.’
‘Butterbugs? You’re all right.’
39.
I Wanna Marry A Chimp Cage Cleaner
Forward to Glory Page 43