Forward to Glory

  Sam finished his gig, capably hobbled between the joins of the glamé, and made way for the powerful logo of Selznick International Pictures to ring its gamelan-inspired bell tones throughout the legendary auditorium.

  The picture, directed by N’mumba Mbabane, was beautifully shot in b&w by Arthur Miller and Ernie Dickerson, like a series of ink wash drawings. Or was it aquatints – or mezzotints? Lithographs? At any rate, from the looks of it, Miller/Dickerson and their team had done æsthetic research in some lonely library. Or was it just naturally-occurring art?

  This was the first time the white-boy star had seen the completed production. Coming in at 197 minutes (a rather typical running time for a Butterbugs picture), the film’s importance was certainly palpable. The poignancy of it, the heartfelt performances by the nearly all-black cast, the touching score (which made everyone bawl by the end, with a couple of Ray Charles originals installed at key points), and the whole ambience of this intimate epic, with its midnight, southern gothic, ‘interior’ feel, was almost overpowering for him. And he showed this in public.

  In the dimly-lit auditorium, with its remotely calm grass-green orbs glowing in the main chamber, and the back-lighted purple totems of glass along the balcony walls, those who were lucky enough to be there witnessed the compassion of the star by merely existing in the same room with him. It was another sign there was something extraordinary about this fellow. Something unsaid, unnamable perhaps, but undeniable anyway. Of course, it was an extraordinary picture, too. Picture and cast combined catalysts to virtually electroplate the audience.

  If TABP had been present (he was in Sierra Leone doing a benefit celebrating the Complete, Utter, and Permanent Eradication of the Ebola Virus), the extraordinariness in the room would have been doubled.

  ‘Just plain old-polished nice!’ said Shonnaleen Gubbins, occupying a specially constructed girth-booth within earshot of Butterbugs. She was quoting an expression from the film that indicated understatement in the extreme.

  The Churl, Simon Oakland, and Richard Crenna, who played the unspeakable plantation owners, were literally prostrate from the picture’s impact.

  ‘I didn’t really realize how moving it would be,’ said Butterbugs, when the houselights came up. The whole world was listening, via the media. He experienced an emotional tidal wave, a landmark taking of stock. His face looked like it had been splashed with clear but viscous water. This was because, during the filming, he’d thought little of the film’s message, only the mechanics of doing it, scene by scene. Then, when the power of the finished product was suddenly upon him, he was brought to a different plane of realization. This wave, the wave of emboldened emotion, was certainly good in its nature, with its intrinsic humanity, poignancy, and love. He welled up with quiet pride at having been part of such an undertaking, one he’d previously and curiously written off as a mere time-filler.

  ‘I owe TABP a huge apology…!’ he muttered. Fortunately, no one heard him.

  Mystics in the audience claim to have seen auras and possibly proto-halos above the heads of Butterbugs and many of the cast attendant, a mysterious manifestation in a savage-themed auditorium, reminding at least one viewer of the strange, disturbing paintings of Nicholas Roerich.

  Oh, but how doth one separate the antique, flimsy falseness of the Hollywoodian façade from the solidly-built palaces of the heart? For the longest time, certain films have attempted to delineate such contrasts, like the D.W. Griffith-directed ‘True Heart Susie’ (Artcraft, 1919), a meditation on selflessness and obscurity, its own mise en scène reflecting Hollywood itself in a microcosm. That is, in spite of known façades, unknown soulfulness usually remains undiscovered. Who would know it? Or care?

  The atmospheres of the early silent films still resonated. But who now would plumb the depths of those long ago Californian-lit afternoons, when so many seminal images were caught in photoplay technology and sent packing to other, less reflective environs? Where was the ability to filter the images from the overarching matter, the matter that mattered to they, the famous players who really understood what they were doing?

  If Butterbugs, who had just delicately stumbled through the subtle veil of protection that surrounded such occult thought, made it through the narrow pass to understanding, yet somehow felt outside the pale, how then should he summon the response to such an emotional journey?

  Within the Butterbugsian ken, these labyrinthine musings were entirely germane to the picture just seen. So, for a minute or two, he was simply stalled in his seat.

  He looked over at Octavian Jones, the ninety-six years-young former vaudevillian and picture show player, volcanic in every one of his scenes on the screen tonight, who had done Shakespeare monologues (never a whole play, mind you) on the riverboats in the early 20th century, and he recognized a persistence of vision in the stalwart entertainer’s gunmetal eyes.

  It wasn’t a question of role-playing as much as, in The Bard’s inviolable words, ‘The play’s the thing’!

  Really.

  These days, clichés like this did not occur so regularly as in the past (because a contemporary society basically gives no figs for such maxims), but it was a visceral revelation for the likes of Butterbugs.

  Here was the man Jones, who had known Satchmo, the Nicholas Brothers, and Ulysses Abraham Scipio in person, yet retained dead-accurate confidence on what he had done on this here screen, right here and now. And that included what others around him had done.

  ‘He taught me what ‘progressive’ really means…,’ the star thought candidly.

  Thus was Butterbugs reduced to happy neutrality. And more tears. There was an unspoken bond betwixt Octavian Jones and Butterbugs, and there was no need to exploit it.

  Octavian did happen to glance over at Butterbugs though. Then their gazes linked, and the voltage was high.

  Across the globe, TABP felt it, too.

  Out in the awesome space of the Metropolitan’s lobby, a small group gathered. Everyone else had gone, the congrats had been delivered, the compliments duly noted. The house was empty. There would be no party afterwards. None was wanted, or needed, by anyone. For once, the picture itself had the last word.

  Butterbugs, Octavian, and Shonnaleen were the only ones who remained. And Sid, who handed over the keys to the house before calling it a day.

  ‘Don’t forget to lock up, kids!’

  In the magic quietude, the three simply glanced around the premises. Then, without a word, Octavian and Butterbugs were enfolded into one long Shonnaleen-style mega-hug.

  The picture ran on. All had done their duty.

  One influential critic chopped into Butterbugs as being guilty of tokenism on any number of planes, and reduced it to one headline:

  ‘How could a white boy from Carstairs be welcomed into such an intimate circle?’

  Numerous voices fiercely defended him.

  ‘How could he not be, ya jackass!!??!!’ TABP retorted.

  ‘I will not dignify myself,’ Octavian tweeted.

  ‘A rather primitive critical reaction,’ Steve McQueen blogged.

  And Bert Williams, who had a small role, came nobly to the star’s defense, chiding the reviewer (who happened to be African-American) as ‘clueless and distracted’.

  Butterbugs was gratified and moved.

  ‘I don’t know, though,’ he told TABP in a follow-up hobnob, ‘White folks can be pretty vacuous in their responses to race.’

  ‘Of course,’ the author/star/musician answered. ‘That’s what white folks do, because white folks on top. Elementary, my dear B-bugs.’

  ‘Thing is, I played a slave owner who turns liberator. Too late the freedom?’

  ‘Hell yes. That was my point. Liberators form easy targets. Abe got it for emancipation, serf-freer Tsar Alex 2 got bumped off, and –’

  ‘That was for different reasons, though.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. If a leader’s got liberation in their resume, the target looms large. Corporations hate democracy, po
wer-graspers hate freedom.’

  ‘Mahatma Gandhi?’

  ‘Different deal, but related.’

  ‘So, my character had to be sacrificed.’

  ‘In their world, the club had to take a member out. Lesson time.’

  ‘Clear enough. Why did the critics pounce on me, then? And on you, more indirectly?’

  ‘These New Realists just want martyrs ’n’ bad guys.’

  ‘Black folks. White folks. No grey folks.’

  ‘I like that, B-bugs.’

  ‘Well, plantation-life was black & white.’

  ‘So’s a lot of today-life.’

  ‘Your novel & script were just so brilliant, TABP.’

  ‘Compliments are cool with me. Pleasure actin’ with ya again.’

  ‘I just didn’t understand Judd-Mar-X’s characterization of my role, as just…token.’

  ‘JM-X not quite ready for golden time yet. This one’s more on my back than yours.’

  ‘Still…’

  ‘You know what I said to him face-to-face?’

  ‘That he was full of…’

  ‘Naw. I just quoted Oscar Wilde: ‘Only a fool doesn’t judge by appearances’.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And, he replies, ‘You should ease up on me’. And I said, ‘What makes you feel that I’m not?’’

  ‘Kinda confusing now,’ Butterbugs replied.

  ‘Well, it just sort of pissed me that so-called ‘critics’ today know so little of the universality of commentary. Problem is, they just stick to what they know at the moment.’

  ‘Growth stoppage?’

  ‘Yoe. I wanted him to know how white-assed vacuous he sounded, by tearin’ you down.’

  ‘My thoughts are just so totally provoked right now.’

  ‘Good sign. That’s why our cast was so striking. It pissed people off, even my bro’s, that there’s so little to actually criticize in my thesis. They have to manufacture somethin’ to gain attention. I understand. No annoyance, no contempt.’

  ‘Maybe a little annoyance?’

  TABP adjusted his carbon fiber clerical collar, faintly smiling in trademark style.

  ‘Yeah. A little.’

  Octavian Jones entered into contract for six more pictures this season. The deal was brokered by Sonny, on Butterbugs’ recommendation.

  ‘I don’t even need to say anything in the realm of advisement, B-bugs. This one’s yours,’ TABP had said.

  Octavian’s stardom progressed in due course.

  One role was especially plum, as Jacques I, the heroic emperor of Haiti, c. 1804.

  For the first time, Butterbugs felt worthy of being a person of influence in Hollywood. He would not shirk from that office, for whatever duration remained to him.

  Now, what next?

  We’ll be back, in a minute.

  57.

  I, Isaac Davis

  When showbiz isn’t Grade ‘A’, it’s Grade ‘Z’… – The Old Ones

  Isaac Davis was a dangerous man.

  He just stood there, in the summer wind. His power was upon him, and it condescended unto others only at his designation. It was his party, today, on the vast roof of the United Artists Theatre. It was so high above Broadway, no motorcar noise ever reached such a rarefied elevation. After all, the seating capacity was over 6500, the next largest after Sid’s Metropolitan, several blocks away.

  The United Artists!

  The house still caused many in Hollywood to tremble in awe. The Gothic box that held the huge water tank on top of the building loomed as the largest element way up here, and people were appalled at its presence, and some were very afraid.

  But the Party was the thing today.

  Due to the yellowy tint to the sky, red-lining on the Thermidor pollution meter, the hot tarry surface of the roof was not yet overwhelming. This, despite rising starlet Nennie Prestrore’s stilettos getting stuck in a gummy puddle and sucked down into the swirly quicksand of mastic near a drain. Coco mats for paths did their job, but unfortunately the effect was somewhat like the courtyard of a blowsy caravanserai somewhere in formerly Soviet Central Asia.

  The servers and wait people had dour looks on their faces, and there was a decidedly racial divide between those who served and those who were served. But that was typical of Isaac.

  Bolder than the utterly disgraced and disempowered Rupert Murdoch (Rupert who?), more shameless than the utterly discombobulated and deported Ivok Timkine, the Davis approach was to sharply adhere to a profoundly imperialist line when viewing the world. As a mega media magnate, he was more furious than Zeus, more warlike than Ares.

  One tiny example of his stylish approach to showbiz: when his own studio nixed his cherished, personally-produced biopic of the ultra-racist Count Lair-Zooynar at the story conference stage, his wrath knew no known bounds. After sacking his entire studio management and threatening them with career ruination, he turned independent producer in order to finally get it made. However, he encountered so much flak from the Industry in general that it became an exile production. After a grand tour of boorish promotion, he actually found willing participants in places like Ruthenia and Bessarabia, and even lesser lights from beyond the nimbus of the world. Karabogaz, Turkmenistan had to pass for Varna, Bulgaria, and the dubbing job, covering hundreds of fifth-string players, dredged up in over twenty countries, was a nightmare. The star, Harold Djumbah, a black super-racist from Equatorial Guinea, played the role in whiteface, but died of pockmark fever the week after principal photography wrapped. Substantial rumors persisted that Davis had him poisoned, in anticipation that the picture would be a flop. The only places it actually turned a (minuscule) profit were: 1) Central African Empire (as it was then known), though never publicly exhibited. ‘L’Empereur’ Bokassa possessed several bootleg copies, in Regalscope, no less. 2) North-Central Zimbabwe. 3) Ireland, curiously enough – though it was banned in Galway.

  Yet, the great and soon-to-be-great of the privileged Hollywood crowd were all here, today, at Isaac Davis’ Party. If anyone ever referred to ‘Davis Duty’ as a genuflection to Isaac Davis, it could never be considered a sourly cynical statement. Davis Duty didn’t bring any association with brown-nosing, because nothing was expected in return. Showing up was all that mattered. It was Isaac Davis’ way of projecting his contempt, particularly for those in the Industry who made so much money for him. Because that’s the kind of guy he was: jealous, envious, self-loathing, but loving every second of it.

  Thus, Davis Duty, gruesome though it was, was just one of those H-wood requirements that so riddled the Industry. Just part of the scenic, dramatic landscape. Besides, humiliation and embarrassment were easier to deal with than the Industrial train-wrecks Isaac Davis was capable of engineering. If you showed up, the train would pass you by and move on down the line.

  Because, heck! Isaac Davis was Isaac Davis, and what Isaac Davis meant was that Isaac Davis was essential for the average, not so average, and even the super average participant in the Industry to function with some degree of practicality and success. You just didn’t ignore an Isaac Davis invitation, even if you were sitting in CEO splendor in New York, or on location in northern Novaya Zemlya, or being wheeled in a bathchair around the Motion Picture Home grounds, and no matter how stupid his birthday party locales were…

  Such as, an asphalt parking lot next an ex-Howard Hughes warehouse in Long Beach, a motel parking lot of fissured concrete one block off the Strip in Vegas, an abandoned airstrip at Nellis Air Force Base, a redundant munitions storage vault field near Irrigon, Oregon, etc. etc. Isaac Davis had a thing for parking lots, sand lots, whatever – as long as it was desolate and somewhat post-Apocalyptic in tone. And because it was always the most torrid site possible in an already boiling season, there was an element of sadism, which, as partygoers sort of gathered, just might be part of Isaac Davis’ personality. But it was duty, sheer duty, that made them duty-bound to attend.

  So it came as a relief, a bona fide relief, to know that I
saac Davis had chosen somewhere in LA itself for his annual shindig. The roof of the beloved old United Artists was a little hokey as a Davisian conception of desolation, but partygoers could always catch the picture below, once their duties had been enacted.

  Pasadena Pups’ shortstop Johnny Bodge played in a rooftop baseball game in ’29, and hit a home run right out of the park. Unfortunately, the ball bonked a pedestrian down on Broadway. The incident jinxed such events ever after, probably because Bodge’s bash-ball crushed the skull of one Sidney Flimp, small-time investor, on that blackest of Tuesdays when the stock market blew out. Ironically, Flimp was on his way to his office in the bran-new Richfield Building – to jump out the window.

  In recent years, the roof was a popular beach volleyball venue (all traces of sand were absent today) and champs Misty May and Kerri Walsh once played a midnight match for a private party – in the nude. Their conditions were that everyone else had to drop their kits, as well. A legendary evening, as Butterbugs could testify.

  Sir Jack Nicholson (recently knighted by QE2, who wasn’t present today, despite an invitation) duly showed up, and, approaching the throne, offered Isaac a vintage cigar, newly signed by Fidel Castro.

  ‘Light!’

  Tom Cruise dutifully advanced, a laser ’gar lighter thrust into his hand by a tense Bruce Willis.

  ‘Ash receiver!’

  Now it was Cathy Zeta-Jones’ turn, who, in spite of wearing a Chanel micro-mini, insisted on hauling a rather heavy looking Roman-style tripod for his use, already smoldering with choke-worthy incense.

  Isaac just stood there, looking a tad incongruous now, not because the tripod matched his toga and gold-coated laurel-leaf crown, but because he was flashing a huge Long Nine cee-gar (with ‘Fidel’ in bold Magic Marker script on the side), and his Plattwoorde shades were a bit styled for the younger crowd – or so thought everyone who drew nigh.