‘Heh! You are very thorough and fair-minded, ProwlerCat!’
‘Still, I was wary to expose you. When a person worships another, they don’t wish the object of their worship any harm.’
Butterbugs actually started weeping, so touched was he by this goodness girl who was the very flower of gentle caring and all things truthful.
‘I’ve seen your tears before, Butterbugs. And that was why I said I was so sorry. We all shed tears, but yours meant so much on that day. And today, they have a different message entirely.’
‘Oh, but they do!’ agreed the sniffling star. ‘Today, they signify joy.’
‘Joy! It is what we live for!’
She settled her head on his shoulder, and they looked out upon the vista below.
‘One more question for you, loving boy.’
‘Yes-yes-yes. By all means, yes!’
‘How came you to lie, all nude and intriguing, yet with such pathos, in a bed of dirt next an obscure lodging, before dawn, in such a wasteland?’
The male star was silent for a time.
‘I just don’t think I really know, girl. I just don’t think I know.’
‘Well. I just don’t think you have to know, then.’
In the weeks to come, Butterbugs lost no time in setting up his Russel Arms Foundation, a strong, well-connected agency designed to aid people in the throes of life conditions that cause one to lead a Russel Arms existence. The very building was acquired, remodeled into a Help Centre (by Norman Foster himself), and huge progress was made in improving the lives of uncounted souls who came into contact with its benevolence.
Among those missing, despite attempts to locate them: 1) Starling the Obscure. 2) The actor’s erstwhile quasi-roommate, the enigmatic and tragic Marshall. No one, anywhere, could say which faraway crack either had fallen though, or where.
68.
Big Plans, Big Parts, Big Hopes
The next few months rushed by like a circus train.
Butterbugs was utterly engaged with so many projects, there was not one moment when he was not occupied in contemplation, preparation, or enactment of them.
Now that many matters had been resolved in his life, a formidable list of pictures was adding up on Butterbugs’ docket.
London: Butterbugs stood in awe in front of the statue of Sir John Franklin. This was his final research stop before principal photography began on ‘Stark Raving Mad’ (MGM), the grand saga of the doomed Franklin Arctic Expedition of the 1840s.
Sir Kevin Kemble would play Franklin, with Gaston LeBru as the Old Man of the Arctic. Butterbugs would be playing Jonny Trim, a sort of Fletcher Christian part. Seven weeks would be spent in the impossibly remote isles of uttermost northern Canada, on genuine reproductions of the ships Erebus and Terror. It promised to be a grueling shoot of a gruesome story, with everyone either dying, or going loco from the lead-lined food tins. Butterbugs could not possibly articulate how excited he was over this production.
‘It’s all happening so fast,’ he told a reporter. ‘But who cares!!?’
Girls all over America loved that line.
Next, an ‘ensemble picture’ set in the back alleys of Calcutta: ‘Seeva’s Conch Shell Shoppe’ (Foonman Stvdios). Community and conflict; conflict solved by community. A Jimmy Chuckerverrity film.
‘You’re just the greatest, Jimmy!’ was the opening line in the actor’s address to his director at the wrap party, which filled to overflowing the Chung Lung restaurant in Stuart Lane.
Butterbugs was quite taken with the Bengali lifestyle, and purchased a large crumbling villa in Howrah, converted most of it to a finishing school for disadvantaged young people of no particular persuasion, and bunked in a loose-box portion of the old ballroom. It was a wonderfully harmonious and cheerful environment, and the school instantly became a booming success. Every day he took the ferry across the Hooghly for shooting in the core city locations. And what’s more, while he was in the region, an important Indian Railways film trilogy followed.
Then, Tennessee Williams’ ‘The Red Devil Battery Sign’ (Metropolitan). Director: Joe Mankiewicz. Liz Taylor was easily coaxed out of quasi-retirement. What a shoot!
Followed by a political satire, ‘Dick Nixon Presents’ (Lionsgate), about the former President’s subsequent career as a standup comic in Vegas. Bob Altman directed.
And after that, ‘Gravel School’, about a rough and tumble crew that has to build an emergency aqueduct on the Moon. (‘Not ON the Moon, TO the Moon!’ ran the tagline.) Bob Aldrich directed.
Then, the Roman epic he had always dreamt about: ‘Marius the Epicurean’ (20th-Fox) would finally reach the screen.
‘I am very keen to make this picture, which will capture Walter Pater’s examination of imperial Rome in the context of late 19th-century æstheticism, and in a big Century 21 way!’ he crowed to Vim Varker of ‘Variety’. ‘Tracey, Stacy, and Trina Jones will direct, along with Joe Mankiewicz, in what will no doubt be another successful collab. And I’m totally thrilled!’
His beloved Bard was also now on the ‘to do’ list. ‘Cymbeline’ (WB), with Butterbugs in the lead, beat out all the West End and Stratford stalwarts, with Peter Greenaway to direct, no less. It was a long way from the Funeral Mountains, no?
Next up: ‘To Serve Führer Und Vaterland’ (United Pyramid). An all-American band of four brothers decide to go back and serve in the Wehrmacht, even though they were mere tots when they emigrated from Germany. Essentially weak-willed, they agree to serve because of the virtual bombardment of letters from the Reich which, because of their power (they thought Adolf’s printed signature the real thing – yeah, sure), are considered orders. So they, in Bible Belt ruralia, try to do the right thing and follow orders.
Sequel: ‘But, My Papers Are In Order!’ (United Pyramid) concerns their utter downfall in the war, but their successful assassination of Hitler. It outdid the hardass ‘Stalingrad’ (Senator/Strand, 1993) in terse portrayal of WWII’s fictional possibilities.
Butterbugs’ mantra was the same:
‘We’re going to DO IT!’
And he did.
69.
Penciled, Skedded, Inked
Like a vast tapestry draped over the front dooryard of Butterbugs’ new Bel Air hacienda-cum-casa (a Populuxe wonder, more adventurous than the Eames House), a panoply of pictures continued to array itself. The coverage was for the foreseeable future. Rich, bold, innovative, colorful and stimulating projects. Truly, there was much to be progressively excited about.
Great news for Legendary Epic fans: Butterbugs was inked to play ‘Prester John’ (Temple Pictures)!
After a series of ‘steppes’ (aka ‘Tartar Sauce’ westerns) such as ‘Count Ilya Vosskov, 1827’, ‘Nikolai the Cossack Chief’, and the Temujin, then the Jamuga pictures, ‘John’ would deal with the mysterious figure of Prester John, who supposedly ran a utopian Christian kingdom somewhere in the fastness of central Asia. But where? Producer Temple Smith, the big-time proprietor of Temple Pictures, was personally producing this one, and as far as directors were concerned, he got one of the best: Milo St. Jupiter.
They engaged a whole staff of scholars to track down the truth about the Prester.
‘We’re gonna get to the bottom of this one, once and for all!’ declared Smith.
The opening scene was simultaneously poignant and electrifying:
Exterior, day. Wild desert at sunset; a savage Tartar, unsympathetic and with mayhem in mind, is raising holy hell in a hapless village. At the edge of a cliff, he slays the last villagers by flinging them off, effortlessly. The music, by the great Mario Nascimbene, sounds like Judgment Day. A poor child and his young mother narrowly escape and chance upon Prester John in a hermit’s retreat. The Prester is in isolation, troubled by a poor judgment he made as a king, so he has abdicated unto hermitage.
Picture documents his return to power, the strange Lost Child and Mother, the treachery of Unc-Khan, the latency of Urma, the lost tragedy of Wamba, and a
bold commentary is made on the controversy of the Crusades. With a mostly Kazakh and Uzbek cast. Nominated for Best Picture and five other awards. With Shug Fisher.
Butterbugs just couldn’t stay off the plains of the Virgin Lands. The brilliant director Lev Ventrakowskoff, who was on the skids and had to make ends meet by doing second unit work for ‘Prester’, snagged Butterbugs one day at the canteen, on location.
The vodka flowed, and after that the two were best pals. ‘Wacky Lev’ had long dreamt of making a full-length adaptation of Zekkakrasstrash’s immortal ‘Tungor Bognaprashkush’ (Mosfilm), and once he’d hogtied Butterbugs’ imagination and used his clout to secure funding, the project went precariously ahead. There was an extensive sequence in the picture of making a cast-iron obelisk – startling, violent, and hazardous. With typical audacity, Lev ripped the idea off from Tarkovsky (e.g. ‘Andrey Rublyov’ (also Mosfilm, 1969)), but Butterbugs admired the picture, though it was a bust – one of his few failures. Still, he felt good about it being so, as he looked upon it as an uttering from the senex in his ear, reminding him he was mortal.
(Or was he? – First flickerings or intimations at… Glory).
Not that it was a change of pace, for Butterbugs was always changing pace. But for his next picture: ‘Psychosurgery’ (UA), he would put up his tartar sauce (but never his horseradish, of course) and crawl into a sleazy white wrapped-neck doctor’s tunic. It was the saga of Doc Freeman and his Golden Ice Pick. Studio-bound, it was the perfect enclosure to depict the life of one mad medical man who cranked out lobotomies on an outpatient basis. Edward Albee’s script was trenchant and John Frankenheimer’s direction made this one of the most searing film experiences of the year. Golden Globes and Oscars were showered upon it.
Then there was ‘Bland House: The Blanding of America’ (ABC Films).
Butterbugs hosted a new incisive examination of the dulling of the society. A multi-part TV series. It was his first television participation, for the subject of the series was a passionate interest of his. His first foray into social issues in the documentary context.
The nation was listening.
70.
Lots Of Properties, Lots Of Options, Lots Of Pictures…
Now we have arrived at the point when a strolling player’s career in picture shows risks being termed (by a given biographer) as… well… somewhat boring. That is, when the personal events have settled down and the meat of the career is made.
Because, he had no time for anything else.
There were indeed a lot of pictures in this, the undeniable Halcyon Era of the Emergence and Dominance of Butterbugs. But it was not dull. It was transcendent. Corporate big-hogs, studio heads, producers, directors, crews, co-stars, agents, and consultants, not to mention – audiences – agreed.
Fecund production and proliferation blossomed in bumper-crops and seminal fruit-laden cornucopias of creation. High concept descriptions were all that was necessary. Some were lengthy, but most were brief. If Butterbugs starred, what else was necessary?
He appeared in the sci-fi picture, ‘Why? Why Do You Do These Things?’ (Universal), set on a remote scrap planet, Zongo. Its topography is split up into badlands filled with dangerous items and creatures. Violators of the Basic Law which rules much of Zongo are deported to the worst of the badlands, which are crisscrossed with jagged trenches and bluffs covered with spear-grass and other noxious plants. The convicts are suspended over the trenches, naked, and risk losing their pendant private parts due to horrible conflicts below, such as laser-like beams that pass without warning at an acute altitude (but no higher). Butterbugs, as freedom fighter Mike Mut, is in the unpleasant position of being so restrained. He is installed next to a veteran who shows him how to successfully avoid the loss, as the freedom fighters are attempting to increase in number. Here, the genes that are passed down ensure that the offspring will be harmonious with the parents, e.g. that freedom fighters will breed more freedom fighters; oppressors will breed more oppressors, without any possibility of genetic variation. It is a biological caste system in play. Interestingly, this primitive and horrific area is endowed with good Scandinavian design everywhere, as that is the natural state of this planet. Phyllis Lux produced.
In a change of tack, and in order to expand his range, Butterbugs continued to take on pictures of all kinds, big and small, esoteric and mainstream. His agent encouraged this diversity, and the public loved it.
‘Whatever will he appear in next??’ was the popular line in both workplace and homes of the world.
For instance, Butterbugs leapt at the chance to play the eminent but under-known Edwardian architect Halsey Ricardo, in a biopic of his life, ‘The Peacock House’ (Babcock & Baby). It was an excellent, quiet, but rich exploration into the heady world of æstheticism, Arts & Crafts, the tail end of the Victorian Epoch, the attendant context of King Ned VII, and a touch of Bloomsbury. It was the only time that the much-used locale of the Debenham (or ‘Peacock’) House played itself in a picture. Butterbugs relished the opportunity to portray the gentle, talented and erudite architect and artist. It was a film without violence or noise or really any overt conflict, yet its sweep of the triple crown of Best Picture, Best Director, and yes, Best Actor (Butterbugs’ repeated climbs to the podium are not necessary to describe) set the seal on his primacy, and, in the process, he re-trained millions of viewers to seek other things in motion pictures, and to find them there. Everybody who was anybody in British theatre and film was in it. Bobs Watson, Ann Doran and Whit Bissell were the only Yanks to appear besides Butterbugs, and all were praised by the London critics for their mastery of accents. Exec produced and helmed on location in West Kensington, Chelsea, and Sussex by the excellent Charmian Serangoon.
What about comedies? There were plenty of those, too. To scarcely anyone’s surprise, Butterbugs proved an excellent comedian. From saturnine to sanguine, slapstick to stoic, Sir Toby Belch to Baby Gumption, Butterbugs was able to grasp the mechanisms of comedy without effort.
And without complaint. Melancholia or tragedy may spur some to greatness in comedy, but it seemed that Butterbugs did not need to draw upon any such heavyweight life experience in order to burnish his technique. There were, though, nuances that might indicate some consultation in the Senate of his mind with certain things, if not dark, then at least struck in an underwater tone, so to speak. Long buried or denied issues with his Old Dad perhaps, or the incomplete parts of his ante-fame life, which he would never talk of. More likely, he couldn’t ever talk of them, as, apparently, they had been mercifully deleted from his memory banks, perhaps as a result of his horseradish-based disorder. Besides, he had his rights of privacy, and they were not violated. Nor were they vitiated, for the public, and the public media, respected him on a breathtaking level.
Then there was the quick cameo he did in that peculiar Buzz Berkeley musical ‘Song of Bilitis’ (WB), based on the work by Pierre Louÿs. Shot in impeccable 1930s style. Black and white sets. Ray Heindorf with the conductor’s baton. Plantinum-perm’d chorines, water tanks, ten-ton camera booms, and permissive lyrics. Tipped off by Old Atrocity, Butterbugs had quietly agreed to fill a slot for a guy who was out sick with Xanax poisoning – gratis. Buzz had no idea, so when the new superstar swam from around the back of a spiral-stepped set, ornamented with bikini-clad babes, in line with alternating lezzie Olympic swimmers out of Leni Riefenstahl (who visited the set), with queery Sicilian native boys chastely assisting, all to the dulcet tunes of ‘My Gal Sweats Honey That No Bee Could Excrete’, followed by the finale to d’Indy’s ‘Istar’, Butterbugs was set to receive a classic Buzz-ish dressing-down for not fitting in.
Swimming on the periphery, the mighty excitement of the absurdity of it all hit him with an ecstatic massage. The surging urgency of the overture to the scene implied that he was a part of something he’d always desired: a sequence showing off Buzz’s genius. That combination of cinematic playfulness and invention, and the soulfulness and unabashed Romanticism of th
e musicality, plus the sort of sweet remoteness of it all, made him… weep.
It was a good thing that he was surrounded by water, otherwise the eagle-eyed and hardass assistant directors would have had him canned. This picture, this scene, it was all so full of good will and sincerity, plus the desire to entertain and make one feel good. Never mind that the crew were crude and attempted to make time with the chorus girls, who were themselves lacking in good graces (long-lost Shawna would put them all to shame!), or that the legendary Buzz wasn’t exactly a gentleman in his directing the traffic.
Butterbugs, the perfect fan, chose to absorb the magic of all that surrounded him, and thus he was transported to fantasyland, just as Buzz had intended.
Swimming round back of the set in the huge production number, Butterbugs felt particularly linked to the seriousness of what the team were attempting to achieve here, rather than to write it off as kitsch fluff. No mere pageant this, nor a pursuit of his for a genre role he might not be ready for.
To him it was dreamlike, really dreamlike. Entranced by the score, broadcast through Voxes of the Thiertre in the awesome Warner Bros. soundstage, it provided a net of guidance for the concept to be carried to the screen, and if the imaginations of his fellow chorines and choristers did not happen to experience the same magic, that was their shortcoming. Despite the mandate of the camera, Butterbugs enjoyed the gambol for its own sake.
To the actor then, this lark was a substantial milestone. There was a great deal of exposed flesh on this soundstage, some tastefully full frontal, à la a non-scandalous Roman scene, captured with academic propriety, and the R-rating encased the whole with a safe predictability. Everyone was so into their own trip that the superstar went unnoticed, thankfully. That is, until Buzz’s obsessively laser-look landed on the clunky intruder. After all, Butterbugs hadn’t attended any rehearsals, so how the hell could he even fake it?
Forward to Glory Page 78