The view down the canyon was agricultural rather than residential, as the sparsely positioned inhabitants were fiercely determined to maintain a beloved ambience of Elsewhere.
Inside the house, a spaciousness presided, without clutter. Drapes that flowed royally onto the flagged floors, with apothecary urns and assorted busts pictorially-placed, a leather-walled library with a complete set of Vizario Bargelliano’s works in evidence (filling a gigantic almirah), and a still-tinkling honor-fountain in the entrance foyer all contributed landscape features rather more contemplative than the predictability of furnitures.
To be sure, the spread was a little-known Old World import from the Enlightenment of the Silent Era. The Retreat had been the lifelong home of the pioneer director Melwyll Vinejuice. He was one of the many who started out at Griffith’s side, rising to his own plane of artistic expression with such important, refined pictures as ‘I, Bernard Berenson’ (Goldwyn, 1927), ‘Leonardo in Amboise’ (Realart, 1928), ‘Loving Countess Vashannah’ (ArchAce, 1924), and ‘Medici Chapel’ (Famous Players, 1923). His biggest hit was undoubtedly the pastoral romance ‘The Wistful Afternoons’ (Varaga, 1925), with Wenton Mayloft, Niruwanna Parsell, Pola Negri, Lionel Barrymore, and Senna Fazanne. When he expired at the monumental age of 111, so very recently, his ashes were interred in a private niche down the slope from the stage-like West-Seeking Terrace. They were consecrated with a dram of Sforzecchi brandy, and were certain to be bathed for centuries to come in the wistful afternoons he so relished.
Something of this mood was immediately absorbed by Butterbugs, who found the house’s enchantments a perfect fit for his progressive views, particularly those concerning his own past, and its revisionist management.
That is: the efforts he made to focus on the very immediacy of life, and the potential of the moment, rather than indulging in self-centered introspection. Pure, sensible, positivist practicality, designed for action, instead of lingering over sensory impacts encountered in historical experience, striking though they were and are. Pretty simple psychology for an individual who was very busy with life’s offerings.
If some waggish critic had access to these Inner Sanctum thoughts, they might declare that Butterbugs, once an empiricist, was now… a hedonist…! Thankfully though, no ‘ism’-labeler was granted such rights.
Here was a palazzo with plenty of staging space – not a mansion, but the most expansive shelter he’d ever huddled inside. Here, developing and following his very own techniques, which were swiftly advancing now that both opportunity and facility were coming his way, scripts would be studied, scenes could be blocked and rehearsed. Even lighting effects could be tested, so that methods of capturement could be enacted with scientific dexterity. Approached in this ‘home-grown’ manner, his scenes of the day, soon to come to fruition in the barns of sound or the open air of locations in the company of cameras, would get a unique, intelligently-prepared head start.
[Inadvertently then, did Butterbugs’ acting technique evolve past his inherent embryonic instincts, towards realization via the Phenomenon, Substance, and Essence triad, as outlined in Taketani Mitsuo’s dialectics on scientific development. Butterbugs wasn’t a scientist, though he sincerely hoped to portray one, perhaps in a picture with scientific excitement as its chief dramatic force.]
Down the canyon apiece, and over in another dingle, lay the fabulous Drygardens. He was always welcome to enjoy Perry and Darcie’s domain. But The Retreat, possessing the characteristics of a higher physical elevation, had successfully captured his imagination.
As was the now-established tradition, with his new pad came new wheels. A mint-condition 1949 Frazer Manhattan was the star inhabitant of his carriage house. It wore a sober and impartial appearance that did not speak so much of ‘What kind of car is that, and who’s inside it?’ as had his previous oddball rigs. Instead, the vehicles that whispered in and out of The Retreat were of the non-flashy, incognito kind.
In his non-demanding way, Butterbugs found the car’s appointments comfortable and practical. Its power plant had been converted to weed-rubbish fuel, so it had plenty of soup, and went like gangbusters.
‘WELL?’ Sonny had anxiously asked, after Butterbugs only uttered a simple ‘thanks’ upon his discovery of the Frazer. ‘What do you think of her?? Huh? I mean, I’m dying to know! It was a helluva find!’
The reply was absolutely Franciscan in its sincerity. ‘I love that car’ was all Butterbugs needed to say.
And Sonny’s heart melted.
Penny Projector’s mom, Justina, was a consultant for Sonny’s agency, despite a troubled divorce from the man himself some years before. Because of her facility and élan, she quickly became a regular visitor and advisor to the young actor. Born in Rwanda, she’d come to the US as a seven year-old when her diplomat father was assigned to the LA consulate. She’d linked with Sonny over a plate of mashed yeast at a Robert Bresson retrospective at USC. After bearing Sonny two kids and splitting from him when they were grown enough, she returned to her native land to rediscover it. Only the timing was not exactly fortuitous. Her Tutsi heritage got her into an extremely unpleasant situation. To escape death by machete-hacking, she and three others had to spend two months hidden away, Anne Frank-style, in a padre’s godown, breathlessly waiting for the apocalypse outside to end. Once Sonny found out about her subsequent circumstances as a wandering bag of bones, who’d ended up destitute in Ujiji, his resources fully restored her to deep-mahogany health in Bel Air. Ever since, she had gone a long way in establishing needed charitable institutions in stricken Rwanda and region, and with a new will to enter the Industry as a person with unique experience and progressive intentions.
Much more than he could ever conceive of himself, Butterbugs thought Justina was the type of person that was the future of the cinema: holistic, broad-based, and with a purposeful blend of insider/outsider orientation.
‘They say you are the future of the liveliest art,’ she’d told Butterbugs, after he’d brought the subject of futures up.
‘If so, only on the surface,’ he had replied. ‘Below the superficial, and down to the center of the earth – where it counts – it’s you.’
They didn’t just verbally compliment each other. She advised and he rehearsed. She was not a drama coach, nor an agent, nor a creative talent behind the camera. Rather, she was a system of groundings to the possibilities of life, a lead-in to its potential, a vessel that was full – of wisdom and its empiricism – but empty of filler. Not a guru, but a connection.
Also, she thought he was cute, and because he in turn fancied her, they settled into a comfortable relationship of meaning and pragmatic cohabitation. Sonny and Penny were wholly supportive, and had even encouraged this further dimension at an early stage. Sonny knew of Justina’s dependability. He’d lived with it himself, but wasn’t up for a long haul with such virtue.
‘I’m a Bolivian gitano and she’s a princess from the Mountains of the Moon. We’re too much alike!’ he’d told Butterbugs.
This being Hollywood, she was also a stunning beauty. No giant hoop earrings and Watusi patterns, usually just variations on charcoal-and-bone-white knits to showcase her sleekness. She was a mom, pushing forty-something. Not for one minute though, did Butterbugs think, in his remotest imagination, ‘Here, here, is my stagemom!’ Nor were squirrel cages a part of her lifestyle. She taught him the joys and benefits of equal footing, and they moved along.
‘Do you… Do you ever find that the weight you carry – about the days of horror – becomes, you know, a bit much? Especially in regard to where you, and we, are now, in the scheme of things?’
‘Oh, no, Butterbugs. It is not a weight.’
‘How could it not be?’
‘Because, it is as a gift. Because I transcended my trial, I can be at peace. I can only impart the gift on others. Such as you. Right now, you are the recipient. And all this time, the help stretches back to where the gift was given.’
‘To – Rwanda.’
‘Oh, oui, and further afield.’
‘Justina, am I, or, is this whole scene here, uh, all so lightweight, in comparison?’
She dusted him with a pot-blanch frond and made him touch her cheekbones with each of his hands.
‘Butterbugs, touch me there. Feel the warmth?’
The high contrasts of her smooth face radiated something indefinable, some kind of puissance, generated behind the softly familiar façade of loving immediacy. He felt universe-tackling jets of benevolence coming from she who shared not only his bed, but his daily standards in the mundanity of being a rising star in Hollywood, California. All sorts of possibilities entertained, all the time. He blinked out for a time, elated by the dimensions of that reality.
Butterbugs wasn’t the only one exposed to updated realities of a progressive nature. There were new ideas in town. New concepts. And they were powerful.
Some time ago, there had been an explosion in the face of Industrial Hollywood. It came in the form of letters from a group of cinematically-charged school kids in Reepsville, SC. They had an issue with motion pictures today.
Realism.
‘We are having a problem,’ the first letter stated, ‘with how you people are handling realism in the picture show entertainments of our time…’
Long story short, in the communiques that followed, the Reepsville kids identified the imperatives of what they called the New Realism in contemporary cinema. To illustrate them, all they did was cite an automobile advertisement.
The ad in question was of course that remarkable commercial for the Honda Accord, colloquially-titled ‘Cog’ (Partizan Midi-Minuit, 2003), in which one humble, eponymous component proceeds on a path towards an enlightened goal that would make Rube Goldberg bow down in worship. The cog’s progression, from solo entity to finished car, was so cool, so inspired, so balanced, so non-fakey that it became the prime example of how reality should be designed and cinematically portrayed. That is, REALISTICALLY and PERFECTLY. ‘Cog’ took over six hundred takes to get right, and if that was what it took to get things real, so be it.
Just like a baby sprocket rolling towards glory, the noise the Reepsville kids made went viral, became inarguable, and its message wholly embraced by mega-millions of consumers – in about three web-based hours. It was that absolute. The new power of the people: modern, mobilized, and more than just a little bit militant.
They said that ‘Cog’ was all the concrete evidence necessary to establish a standard that filmmakers should not aspire to, but regularly achieve, in order to prove their worth, to earn audiences’ attentions, and render skeptical consumers un-skeptical.
‘Aren’t we already doing that?’ the Industry asked, aghast.
‘No,’ the Reepsvilleans replied. (‘Reeps-villains’ was the politest term for them in H’wood.)
‘But, but, but – why?’
‘You’re good, but not good enough.’
So when that little ol’ diminutive metallic actor rolled off the plank and set the extensive post-Goldbergian process into action, the Industry looked on in awe, and with not a little pain. The exacting high-bar requirements of the New Realism were boldly (and baldly) proclaimed. Those in the Industry collectively shuddered – the management over the cost, and the casts and crews over the sweat factor. But like it or no, the Industry was being pushed over Jordan, and there was no going back. Ever.
Or was there?
Activated by this two-minute commercial then, the kids who spoke out – the ones who defined the New Realism – were foremost in representing the new kind of Everyaudience that now breathed in front of entertainment screens. They definitely had the power, and were so secure in it that filmmakers everywhere listened. Therefore, based on their preliminary Letters of Outcry that manifestoed the sort of realism that should be applied to all motion picture production hence, and with the Honda commercial as their ‘model’ (Sonny HATED that term…!), they duly branded their mandate The Reepsville Accord.
Thus did they who make films receive their marching orders. Those who looked on the bright side said it was ‘a call to excellence’, a ‘plea for quality’, even an Obaman ‘you really should do better’.
Uh-huh.
‘We’ve already done that,’ replied the Industry. Everybody knew that for a time in the late ’40s, the Selznick Studio had superimposed the slogan ‘In A Tradition of Quality’ at the start of their opening logo, suggested by David O. himself.
‘Isn’t that better than ‘good enough’??’
The Reepsvilleans did not need to answer.
‘It’s a ‘Reeps-vile Discord’!’ hissed some, as punny wordplay seemed about the only way to fire back.
In the annals of cinematic history, the whole Reepsville Accord affair was rather an embarrassment. In the Industry’s estimation, audiences don’t get to dictate terms. Now that they did, how would the Industrialists ever get their old authority back?
And then there were the New People. There was a New Realism all right, and, as simplistic corollaries go, there was a People to animate it. So the people were called New. A banal moniker for the group suddenly headed up by… apparently… Butterbugs.
But what ABOUT them? What was so NEW about them? What was so WILD about them? The brand of ‘New’ was good and tempting. Evergreen, too. Producer Selig J. Seligman used to say, ‘Hell, I was New this morning, and in about an hour I’ll be New again!’
That was a philosophy now coming into its own. Yakking heads filled hours of airtime in tearing it down, putting it back together, then trying to understand it.
‘New’ was sweeping the nation – in a new kind of way! The New Dawn Funerary Arts & Sciences chain of mortuaries was really giving Forest Lawn a run for its money. Its national franchise programme was aggressively taking off, with expansion into the western Caribbean, the Kaliningrad enclave, and northeastern Montenegro planned for next year.
Butterbugs confided in Sonny.
‘There’s one thing that worries me about the usage of the word ‘new’. Sometime, I don’t know when, ‘new’ becomes ‘old’.’
‘Yeah well, we’ve got to dip our gristle into the kettle while it’s still boiling, my man,’ was all Sonny had to say on the matter.
Speaking of Butterbugs, then there was Butterbugs. What about him, anyway?
None of this new realism (according to Reepsville) resonated very far into his performing soul. None of it need apply. To him there was no guidebook, no manual, no Baedeker’s for standardized cinema. Scripts, yes, and direction, of course. Interpretation, certainly. Then the freedom began.
At the dawn of his motion picture career, he was certainly ‘new’. But really, what was so NEW about him? What was so… so, WILD about him? Did something NEED to be wild? Why? Was he the new Valentino? (Well, was he?) The new Jaybo Moolcroof? (Really?) The new Whit Bissell? (Could he be?) But he was something – bigger than all three put together. He was, in fact, something unexplainable.
‘Oh, I know, Portersteak, you know what I’m going to say: ‘Star Quality’. No, it’s not that, either. That’s too easy.’
Sonny was on regular speaking terms with Porter Parker again, now that Butterbugs had brought him permanently back to his senses. It was lecture time, and with Porter, a lecture was always a cinch to pull off on the blower. Because Sonny had dabbled in producing, he liked to playfully flaunt a very few tales of being Mr. Jetset Producer in Porter’s ‘little brother’ face.
‘But let me tell you, baby… You’re gonna really like this one. When I was in Hindoostan once, making the picture ‘Chunda’ (MunJun International Pictures) – I know, it bombed in the States, but biz was really big in South Africa, Europe, Brazil, and the Argentine – I was waylaid by a fringe group of radical yogis. They knew I was a picture person, and implored me to get them an audience with Amitabh Bachchan – Big B – the superstar. I knew nothing about the Indian picture biz, but after we were done with the location shooting, I had some time to kill before winging it bac
k to LA. Bolly, Tolly, Molly, Dolly…! I happened to have swung into old Bombay, which is where most of their pix are made. They call it Bollywood. Yeah, I know everybody knows that but you. Anyway, I got called over to Dimple Studios for a complimentary curry lunch for picture people. Somebody knew I was in town. Well, they were honoring Stan Kubrick at this lunch. He couldn’t make it, but, coincidentally, Big B the superstar was there. I was introduced as the token Hollywood mug. Did you know that, in some BBC poll, Big B was voted the most popular star in the universe? So, I found he was a stately fellow in person, and a damn good actor onscreen, too. We posed for pix, old beater Mitchells were grinding to capture the event, and a bunch of other local bigwigs were there, too. It was pretty chummy, and I felt relaxed, and thought I’d make another picture here someday, perhaps ‘The Fall of the Mughal Empire’, a property I’d always dreamt of doing. Sawl Cane and V.K. Kutty wrote a treatment for me. Suddenly, the soundstage door rumbled open and that same bunch of radical yogis burst onto the scene. I was blown away. Their leader, Swami Gangakondacholapuramananda by name, and his gang had jogged all across India to this location, backwards. I kid you not. It was some devotional sorta thing in honor of the superstar, who was recovering from an injury he got on the set of ‘Coolie’ (MKD, 1983). Big picture, from what I understand. At any rate, Swami G. as I call him, started to run at us, but backwards. He had a real trident, and somebody could’ve gotten skewered. But he knew what he was doing, and he drew up to Amitabh – who wasn’t the slightest bit perturbed – Me? I thought I was about to taste curried vomit! But let me tell you. Swami G. started muttering, and doing a ceremony. We all watched, me in disbelief. Amitabh seemed to grow taller, and more exalted, while Swami G. was almost shrinking. I’m not kidding. No, I wasn’t drunk.
‘But let me tell you, all right? This ritual kind of thing went on for a few minutes, and as everyone seemed OK with it, I cooled-it right away, and thought, ‘This is a helluva show.’ Could I work it into the Mughal picture? Maybe. Then things died down and returned to normal. Swami G. made the rounds. I offered him my shot of Indian Made Foreign Liquor, but he declined. I understood. Holy man and all. We chatted about gardening, and the picture biz. He asked me how the location shooting went, and if Coldwater Canyon was still overpriced. He had guest-taught chemistry at UCLA for eight years. I noticed he was covered in grey fireplace ash. He said he had seen devotees all over India who would give their lives to be here right now.
Forward to Glory Page 49