Forward to Glory

by Brian Paul Bach

  David Brown, sitting on the periphery and gazing at Davis in the increasingly sulfurous light, wondered if it were not about time for this hideous oaf to no longer dominate the Industry that he himself had loved for over sixty years.

  ‘I thought it was a costume ball!’ he mockingly muttered to himself.

  To be sure, David’s was hardly a sarcastic observation. Isaac always liked to ‘costume-up’ at his self-celebrations, and the rules were that he be the only one to do so. Bunny suits, gorilla outfits, clown-gowns, and Capt. Kangaroo coats and wigs. All pretty innocuous, but there was always something jeering about them. Probably his most unforgivable appearance was at the searingly-hot Nellis AFB event, as a huge baby – in blackface – sitting in a specially-constructed crib, plied with all-day suckers and bottled asses’ milk. The big tension for guests was ‘to not make baby cry’. His cast-aside swaddling blanket revealed that his entire body had been coated with dark chocolate frosting, which he commanded a host of hired hookers to lick off, even coercing several noted starlets and one fully-fledged star to join in, ‘lest baby start bawling’. His ‘joke’ of the day was to provide an actual cargo of diaper gravy for partygoers to wonder at.

  At any rate, today’s festivities were building to a focal point. Just then, with significantly royale panoply, an ingeniously ornamented toilet was wheeled up onto the dais, with a flex sewerage tube extending from it, manned by a staff of slave-clad tube minders.

  It was Michael Eisner’s high privilege to do the honors of activating the flush lever. After all, ex-Disney top brass had a special place in Isaac’s diabolical Comprehensive Programme of Continued Humiliation For Those Who Have Hurt Mr. Davis’ Feelings In Some Or Other Way.

  ‘Beverage!’

  Butterbugs had his cue.

  ‘Beverage! NOW!!’

  With stretched nerves, Nicole Kidman relayed a beaker of arcane liqueur, from a sullen-faced Kirghiz-Hispanic bar laborer, then all the way over to Butterbugs, without spilling a drop.

  The young superstar, standing out dramatically amongst his older peers, endeavored to put on his most stately walk for the occasion. If those peers were, in their own minds, somewhat critical of Butterbugs’ willingness to put on a show for this unutterable bastard-cum-fiend, they were also gratified to know that during the 1911 Coronation Durbar in Delhi, the Gaekwar of Baroda, who took a dim view of the British in India, made obeisance to King-Emperor George V in person, but in doing so, had the temerity to merely bob his head instead of making a fulsome bow.

  And Butterbugs did one better. Once he had delivered the beverage of request into the grasping, sausage-like fingers of Isaac Davis, instead of taking a few respectful steps backwards with bowed head, he turned his back on he who had just been served!

  An almost audible gasp went up from those super- and mega-stars who witnessed it.

  Liv Tyler almost started bawling with joy. Mickey Rooney had to sit down, he was so overcome with emotion. Jennifer Lawrence whispered, ‘About fucking time!’ Whit Bissell smiled tearily. Gena Rowlands mouthed a silent ‘YEAH!’ Warren Beatty was initially consumed with jealousy that this young upright fellow had beat him to the punch, then thought better of it and was filled with admiration.

  But nobody, not N. Richard Nash, nor Steinah Los Giddis, nor Ron Zuckvuck, nor Daniel Taradash nor any of the dozens of mega-talented scriptors present, could have imagined the appalling incident that happened next.

  58.

  I Was There When Isaac Davis…

  The sun was in its late afternoon apogee, casting a urreen-like light that made the already considerable airborne particulate matter more likely to be noticed on the heavily made-up visages of Hollywood’s finest (mostly) non-minority actors, and associated creative personnel.

  Britney Spears, whose tongue had found its way into Rene Zellweger’s ear, came away with the sensation of frenching a gravel pit. Gene Hackman’s face, which usually reminded viewers of underdone pork, today appeared as the mask of Dimitrios. Berry Pumpkin, used to all sorts of makeup to accommodate any character role, looked like a flocked Christmas pudding.

  There was a preponderance of grittiness, itchiness, and general discomfort about the camp. The heat, the perspiring super-people, the stoking of the ambient atmosphere by blasts from the A/C plant’s vents (keeping the audience nice ’n’ cool in the UA below), the almost cold sweat that was beginning to break out on many a forehead, and the sense of impending anxiety that penetrated the good lookin’ wrapping of celebrity bodies was not only palpable, it was turning oppressive.

  Cedric the Entertainer stepped aside. Too heavy, for Cedric. ‘Porkfat’ Russell, the new sensation in wrassling pictures, in full black Ralphie Lauren three piece suit, with a too-tight Pink shirt collar, looked like he was going to blow up.

  The semi-concealed infusion of ’Lude/Ecstasy cocktails didn’t seem to be helping very much. Indeed, few people were actually indulging in alcoholic or even other beverages, probably because the ‘foreign’ serving staff looked so forbidding, and the implication was that they were probably harmful. Could this become the next front on the world-wearisome Terror Wars? (Or was it simply an economic thing, a ‘War on Tare’…?)

  Yet, there was ample evidence that every private-hire SWAT team available, trained in Severe, Catastrophic, and Holy Fundamentalist-cum-Arch-Terror Mælströms, were not only doing their rent-a-fuzz job on lookout in the immediate vicinity, but were unimpeachable in their poise and tact.

  Regardless, the tension of the scene was becoming unbearable. There was something about it all that David Brown didn’t like. There was also something unsavory and pathetic about all these people who had done so much in the Industry, and had also done so much to make themselves perfect for the occasion, and the occasion was turning out to be very hard on them.

  There was something truly awful about Nick Nolte fainting, obviously because of heatstroke, or Sally Hawkins looking really ghastly when she dropped her finger bowl and then didn’t know what to do.

  In fact, the guests were rapidly becoming inflicted with some sort of nameless panic.

  These people’s faces, so known on the blown-up screens of picture palaces right here today, on this roof, in this celebratory meltdown, became like vizards in a disturbing drama told under a Neapolitan sun, tainted by the miasma of a Vesuvian eruption.

  (Coincidentally, a Butterbugs/Perry Flask/Kate Beckinsale spectacular, ‘Scenes From The Late Parthian Empire’ (MGM), was playing on the immense screen just below them.)

  But up there on his elevated plane, Isaac Davis continued to pose, unaffected by the indeterminate turmoil. Any sensitive host would have detected trouble in the glen, and would have done his utmost to assuage the fear in his guests. At the very least, he would order the strapped-and-padlocked umbrellas, plonked worthlessly in the middle of the cheaply-hired guest tables, opened and raised, or shamianas to be improvised over the old sign frameworks. But Isaac was not that kind of guy. He wasn’t even remotely concerned with such concepts. Nor was his eye dimmed, either by human tears or the compassionate conservatism sometimes native to his race.

  Butterbugs, too, felt the communal dismay. There was something about it he himself didn’t like. True, he was in an æyrie of eagles, where one might be tongue-tied when facing Demi Moore, or consumed with low self-esteem when confronted by Julio Iglesias. But those were all potentially positive feelings that contained the promise of improvement. Here, instead, about them descended a strident tone of hopelessness and helplessness. And what’s more, from the center of a deity-absent universe.

  Shelley Winters gazed out into the increasing smog and asked herself:

  ‘Who, then, will protect us?’

  No answer was returned.

  Too sociopathically self-absorbed to notice Butterbugs’ impertinence in retreating from his presence so disrespectfully, Isaac preened and wiggled, hissed and giggled, belched and farted, all in a little sideshow-worthy burlesque. Truly, it was an anti-showbiz put-on, mean
t to ridicule, sneer, and project snot to those he hated, which was everyone.

  Isaac raised his hand, that which contained the glass of arcane liqueur. The perverse solar rays penetrated its bile-tinted confines, producing a projected hue that perhaps, in some lightless crypt, might provide a source of wan illumination. But today, even in the harsh blast of the aberrant sun, it merely cast a faint gobo of sickly green and age-spottish taint to Isaac’s slab-side cheek, sheened with fatty perspiration, secreted in scorn for everyone on the planet.

  Onto the surface of his sexually-ambiguous tongue, he let fall several mercury-like drops of the beverage. Their viscous flavor and feel were foreign to his flabby taste buds, but he slurped ’em slobbishly, so they rolled down his gullet and into the dungeon depths, where processing could commence without further equivocation.

  Aware of the royal-type attention coming his way, as all now cast their inexorable gaze towards the birthday blob, his ego compelled him to reach outward and upward. A Promethean act! To him, it seemed the next logical step in his ascendancy. Here, on this great height, on his birthday, with the melting crème of Hollywood held in his thrall, he grabbed at Phœbus himself in order to secure the light of the world.

  ‘My right!’ he crowed.

  It was a grasp that struck observers as disturbingly Nero-like (mainly due to this financial führer’s togic guise), while to those of Jewish background who looked on, it was unmistakably Hitlerian.

  (For a Hollywoodian mogul, Davis’ dimness could be stunning. He condemned FDR and JFK for being ‘kikes’, yet thought Herschel Bernardi was, ‘I dunno, a Mongol or something…’ Had he known of how many guests at his Parties were children of Israel, they would have been instantly denied admittance or continuance, and their careers subsequently hijacked, as punishment for their ‘fakeness’. Stupid, stupid Davis…)

  To Isaac’s mind he was neither Roman godling nor Nazi freak. Rather, he fancied himself as a Canute figure, yet one who would succeed where that piddling Dark Age English king failed so totally.

  [In one of his more sane moments, inspired by the visionary English artist John Martin (1789–1854), who painted ‘Canute Rebuking the Flattery of his Courtiers’ in 1842 – in a fine CinemaScope 55 aspect ratio, Davis had wanted to film the tale, perhaps as a vehicle for Michael Lerner (another fine actor whose Jewishness totally escaped him).]

  His private thoughts were more flushed with power than ever before. Standing firmly at this centrum, surrounded by his lesser beings, wearing the shades of perception that not even Joseph Smith could have dreamt up, fingering leaf and ingesting fluid of inspiration, surely now, he was ready to make a truly grand gesture. He would not merely reach up and shave off a tiny bit of flame to light his cigar and impress the peasants down here on the ground. No, he would simply overpower it. He would command the sun to stand still.

  [Inspired by Martin again, who painted ‘Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still Upon Gibeon’ around 1812 – in proportions closer to VistaVision than any other process, Davis dreamt, at this very moment, to produce a picture on the subject, in which he himself might make his acting debut; or perhaps as a vehicle for Lou Jacobi (yet another fine actor whose Jewishness totally escaped him).]

  But, Joshua he was not. Not quite.

  Precisely at this moment of climax, Isaac lost his balance.

  He whipped wildly around, failed in his footing, got hopelessly tangled in the sewerage flex pipe connected to his trophy toilet, and plummeted over the adjacent rampart. Suspended above the howling abyss behind the stage house (currently entertaining over six-point-five thousand persons in the auditorium below), he had enough moments to be fully appalled at what was happening to him.

  The clunky water closet, dislodged by his violent movement, was pulled rapidly down and hit Davis like a hammer. The china shattered and embedded itself in his hulk, which was so weakened by its evolution into what was essentially blubber-tissue, that it splattered from the force.

  Viewers, located behind the sweltering safety of the nether parapet just at hand, obtained distinctive profile views of this power-mogul, presently in Position Disadvantaged. They simply couldn’t not watch him emit volumes of blood and esophagus-meat in quick time, as if caught in a loop of old-fashioned special effects.

  They – those who viewed – were utterly silent in the yellow haze, spellbound at the scene, instantly aware of their roles as witnesses to an Incident of Consequence for the Industry.

  A particularly unwelcome addition to Isaac Davis’ person was a forced décor, in the form of a magistrate-like necklace of his own waste products, previously residual in the intestine windings of the flex tube, freed at last for rococo display. In addition, the toilet having proven a less reliable anchor than would have been desired, he therefore lost the source of his suspension on the wall. So now, Gravity mandated that he proceed towards the center of the earth without further delay.

  What was left of his face let out a howling of true horror, a sound with its own accompanying saga, from one who, moments before, had strutted before the footlights of Vanity, and now, for reasons of his own aspiration of pride, was exiting life via the crudest and most horrendous back-passage imaginable.

  On the way down he thought for a second, certainly with envy, of the late mogul Bob Maxwell and his watery demise. And, just a jiffy before the last of the film that was his life passed through the aperture of the projector which was itself his life force, he was allowed a few more micro-seconds to reflect on a pet duckling named Perky he’d had as an overweight child in Kettle, Texas.

  Cue: Alfred Newman’s ‘Death for Gregg’ track from Jerry Wald’s ‘The Best of Everything’ (20th-Fox, 1959), when Suzy Parker’s character catapults off a fire escape because of a malfunctioning high heel. Truly, a masterful musical accompaniment for the absolute, final, finality of anyone falling from a great height.

  Such was the scoring most of the viewers who witnessed the actual fall of the high and mighty evoked at that instant, so sensitive and literate were they in the teachings of The Film.

  And God bless them, for they had not a better usher to aid them in the dramatic significance and garish conclusion of this event. By such sophistication were they led into understanding, thus avoiding personal damage to their private lives by the graphic brutality, so unexpected, yet so… welcome.

  Sophocles, Shakespeare, O’Neill, Albee – this was the theatric plane upon which those witnesses stood. And it sustained them despite the banality of he who had just perished.

  The wages of cinematic grandiosity can be lethal. So they were, on this solemn day of birth – and death.

  59.

  An Awesome Verdict

  Butterbugs was born free, but now he was in chains.

  Judge Proth, despite his aggressively WASP name, was in fact, mestizo. He had never forgiven JFK for mispronouncing his native country’s name (viz: ‘…and uh, Cuber…’), so, as an idealistic exile from Coral Gables, he turned upon the predictable path of anti-Castro orientation, rising in the ranks of lawyeria and judgedom. And, being a protégé of Justice Clarence Thomas, he knew right away how to work the system in order to be a judge of quality. He had been one of the few to see the actual Fisher VCR unit that had purportedly played the actual video of ‘The Long Dong Silver Story’ (Supreme Court Pictures, 1995), although any further talk on the subject over sherry and ladyfingers was discreetly avoided.

  The Isaac Davis Case’s trial was really starting to get in the way of shooting schedules. Butterbugs was skedded to do location work in Bihar and Orissa, India for ‘The Sugarbee Report’ (Sippy/RKO) with Big B (Amitabh Bachchan). A charming tale, telling of the rivalry between a urinal attendant and a sweets trolley vendor in a tiny village. Coincidentally, the picture climaxes in a big courtroom scene in Cuttack, so Butterbugs was especially observant of the drama of legalia that surrounded him now.

  Jack Nicholson and Ms. Kidman had already done their testimony, as had Muaz-José Khirigh, the beverage procur
er.

  Judge Proth was unimpressed by show people.

  ‘Butterbugs, as you know, you are being accused of being an accomplice in a serious crime.’

  The young idealistic star was not nervous. How could he be? He sat politely, confident of his innocence, and confident that American justice would prevail. In his favor.

  Judge Proth continued.

  ‘But, because of some shattering evidence which/that was presented to me by my council in Chambers, I can announce that you, Butterbugs, as an accomplice in murder, are dismissed. You may go. Please decamp, lest the bailiff force the issue.’

  ‘But whie???’ shrieked Butterbugs.

  Was this American justice? Wasn’t there some distance to go yet?

  ‘If the court will permit, m’lud,’ offered Lawyer Carstens Cuxhelm. ‘Me client hath the right to know.’

  ‘I see no reason why your client and, indeed, the world itself should not know the reason why.’

  Judge Proth could not resist the temptation to tell all. The hall went silent.

  ‘This court has been privy to certain evidence that allows me to make a Burkmart Bonanza Super Sale out of this case, ya know –’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about???’ barked Butterbugs.

  ‘You shut the hell up, you, otherwise I’ll cite you as an accomplice of contempt in this here court!’ wailed Proth.

  ‘M’lud, pray, accept my client’s apologies for the outburst –’

  ‘What’s with this ‘m’lud’ guff?’ moaned the Judge. ‘What are you, from Harvard or something?’

  Lawyer Carstens Cuxhelm composed himself.