They filmed on location in Uttar Pradesh’s Sitapur, Rampur, and Hardoi Districts, for eleven weeks, resulting in outstanding atmosphere and ambience. The lyricism of the riverbanks was there, and the scenes of his forbidden repasts were beautifully done.
The complex symphonic score by R.D. Burman, Michael Nyman, Alfred Newman and Dmitri Shostakovich was achingly glorious. The soundtrack album’s four-composer status made it an instant collectors’ item, and sales were huge.
Quite understandably, the picture was initially banned in Hindustan. Nevertheless, a groundswell of sentiment dogged the Censors even before its release. After a special screening in the ballroom of the Rashtrapati Bhavan reduced the entire Indian cabinet and much of Parliament to tears, the picture was wholeheartedly allowed for release throughout the entire subcontinent. Audiences worldwide were stimulated by its power on an ongoing basis. Its social commentary was deemed universal, and the sacredness of the Indic tradition remained intact. This feat was accomplished not only through the sensitive direction of Randy Ogg and Sengupta Ramirez, it was the magic of Butterbugs, and his Effect.
After the film had been premiered, in Sitapur (at the Eros Talkies), Delhi (at the good old Regal), London (at Collcutt’s vast Palace), and New York (at the venerable RKO Roxy at Rockefeller Center), and all the hooprah and publicity chores were completed, Butterbugs returned to visit Heatherette in the Sleeping Porch. It was on an evening not unlike that of his previous visit, but now there was a greater sense of resolve.
The visit was wonderful. Not once did Butterbugs think of Pepper Carlson or Prairie Browne, or their apparently lost world.
‘I just wanted to tell you, Heatherette, that, uh, there is no doubt that, uh, you saved my life. Life! It is what we are in, right now! I am here. You are here. We are alive. We are real. I did not really know that. Until now.’
On the drive home, Butterbugs waxed shallow, filing the scene he’d just played for Heatherette into his mind’s ‘projects completed’ basket. Actors often do such things, not to be callous, but because of sheer practicality. He was already thinking of ménage sex with Saskia and Justy. One of his ‘projects to be completed’ he could still fit in today.
76.
Interval In DeeCee
Preface
It can be difficult conveying the details as to why and how a phenomenon is phenomenal.
All the transactions, deals and dealings, logistics, travels, conferences, fortunate occurrences, and advances concerning Butterbugs’ picture career, whether by design or by luck, happened to regularly fall into successful slots. Assuredly, this was all based on talent, ability, and competence, but there were also many supportive forces at work, making everything possible, and on a massive scale.
Nevertheless, there were some who were not so benevolent.
I.
Permit us, pray, to indulge a slight digression from the tremendous and high-toned power generation so indicative of the ways and means of Hollywood, not to mention its closely associated urban ‘mother’, Los Angeles. Hop on an aeroplane at Tom Bradley (the H’wood Power Structure’s code name for LAX), and head northeast, across the terrible wastes of Nevada-to-Kaintuck, and proceed far above the deep woodedness of the White Trash mountains east o’ there. Then get a quick glance at the sylvan landscape of Old Virginny before touching down at Allan ’n’ Jawn Fahstah Dullard field, just outside of the Nation’s Capital.
[Butterbugs happened to be an enthusiastic fan of Eero Saarinen, who had a hand in his Mulholland Drive pad, and was a personal friend.]
For anyone in the Industry, such an air route is fraught with bad memories (except maybe for the likes of Bob Taylor, Adolphe Menjou, and Ronald Wilson Reagan), because so many from the film community made the journey under duress, not to mention the stressful anticipation of a face-to-face encounter with the pockmarked mug of Tail Gunner Joe himself!
[For post-Generation X’ers, we’re talkin’ about Senator Joe McCarthy – is who we talkin’ about heah.]
But let’s forget about the whole Hollywood groove-thang for a while. In the capital dwelt the President, Con Murn, and a series of other governmental personnel. They drove Cheavy Suburbans like it was goin’ out of style, man!
VP Fendal Kraypstane was a bloated, nightmarish fellow, rather like a Vladimir Harkonnen, who preferred propulsion in a bathchair to perambulation on his own pins, due to a blown-out gumboil in his bile duct – or so he said. ‘Look sharp!’ was the favorite exclamation to his bathchair chauffeur. Thus, ‘Look Sharp!’ had become the war cry of the nation, applicable to any situation of importance. Thus was the mighty influence of the Master Obfuscator VeePee.
Secretary of State Hope Cripe was a tad bit different, and she shunned the DeeCee style, which caused the media to cry, ‘A Halfway House Divided!’ about the Murn Administration. Thus were Kritchurd Puerile, Davy Frume, Howdy-Doody Kristol, Heinric Kissinger, Sarah ‘Miss LensCrafters’ Palin, and even Danny-Dan Quayle troubled. Neocon power must be sustained at any cost. For the sake of the American People.
II.
Montague Realms stepped out onto the street where ‘The Silver Chalice’ (WB, 1954) was playing at the local Audion picture show. It was in Yougah, VA, within wishful thinking of both Langley and Reston. And if a topmost turret in the town was achieved, the lantern of the George Washington Masonic National Memorial might even be spotted on a good day.
Notwithstanding this, no one knew who he was. And that meant a lot to him. But, why should the Associate Secretary of Defense behave in so curious a manner? It was because, then and there, at the exact moment when he placed his WaxWalker’d feet onto that un-fabled concrete, the world changed.
Why?
Because it was a turning point in history, that was why.
He was a hoarder, and even boasted possessing a plastic packet of Paxton menthol cigs from the ever lovin’ early ’60s, when Realms was developing into an important ‘intellectual’. When Rev. Dr. King said, ‘I have a dream’, he was sneering, in deep privacy, ‘Yes, but I have a scheme’. That was the kind of ‘mind’ he was. His pipeline mentality, so confident and sure of success, was made available for Policy Preparation, adaptable to any high level governmental agency. But the wait was endless. If only they would let him know! Decades were spent in servility to think tanks, Academia, and the more contemptible outposts of Empire. So when the Secretary of Defense, Rhadamanthus Smith, requested his presence for a beverage and a talk, he knew his ship had its bund in sight.
That being the case, a very few tumultuous years later, when Mr. Realms stepped out from the shadows of that nowhere alley in Yougah – at that very second – was launched the decisive de facto programme of his life. His career, and indeed, his very being, had existed on this planet in order to give nativity to this particular course of action. In his mind, and his mind alone was it born. Thus, the sanction of power was forged, wrought, and delivered for prosecution. All his life he had dreamt of crossing a Rubicon, with the supplemental dream of having an entire world in tow, and doggoned if it wasn’t going to happen. Right now.
He had toiled for years under the proper banners, but when he heard of Butterbugs’ rise from complete obscurity to the tip-top roster of the best and brightest that fame has to offer on this planet, he thought:
‘If a peasant who becomes a movie star be granted all that he possesses, well then, why can’t I achieve yet greater status? For if he is a mere actor with scripts and directors to guide him, why can I not supersede such a poseur, for I am an actor of reality, and I move in the real world, and thus, I am the greater man!’
He paused under the flashing marquee, his lurking form covering most of the ‘Chalice’ poster, with only the Lesser Samuels and Franz Waxman credits visible in the lower corner, next to the moderne WB shield. Paul Newman’s shabbily rendered and weirdly lifeless face jutted up just over his shoulder, whilst Virginia Mayo’s lascivious form was chastely obscured. Inside the house, the Victor Saville Production was half over, and
‘The Flabbo Chieftain’ (Universal) was the second feature, so Realms eschewed purchasing an entrance ticket. He preferred to proceed along the lonely street, engulfed in a meditation on power and fate and destiny and power and goals and money and power and some sex and power and fulfillment and legacy and apotheosis.
Even though there was much to do, he had never been so ecstatic, nor so filled with conviction.
He was a homely man, a somber man, one who knew he had greatness in him, but its full potential had never been realized, due, no doubt, to his own native homeliness and somberness. Therefore, there was no one to blame but everyone else.
Individuals who were in power in DC had similarly studied Butterbugs’ rise to prominence, and communally thought something like: ‘I deserve just as much glory as that ignorant little jerk’, so to speak. As far as the hierarchy of power was concerned, within a sole superpower, they certainly thought themselves well above any old strolling player.
(Butterbugs, of course, was scarcely ‘any old strolling player’…)
Numbing, dumbo-brained but authoritarian Ego tended to be the prime imperative in such empire-building civil servants’ minds. Willingly and ambitiously did they dwell inside such banal limits, by which their lives were circumscribed.
Could Associate Secretaries of Defense not arrive at the status of Haughty Satrap within the stretched remains of the constitutional republic that now straggled onward in DC? Why, of course! As surely as a loser-punk-know-it-all-wise guy-kid in Hollywood could, let them tell you that, right now!
III.
Simultaneously, Butterbugs, in deepest slumber way out in LA-LA land, chanced to have a politically-oriented dream. An altogether uncommon occurrence, but there it was. In it, he, as a real person, and Sec’y of Defense Smith are bunking together in the same room, as roommates. They are just going to sleep. The Sec’y is quite a boozer, and Butterbugs has done the right thing by him, tucking him up and bearing his drunken ramblings like a soldier. The setting is apparently a summer camp dormitory, lighted in studio style, with plenty of bluish night-light coming through the window so that the camera might capture every facial innuendo.
SEC’Y OF DEFENSE RHADAMANTHUS SMITH: (inebriated, but coherent) I feel so bad! I just can’t believe why everybody hates me! Is it because I have done bad things?
BUTTERBUGS: (regarding him while standing over his bed) Why are you doing this thing at this time in your life?
(The SEC’Y explains that, before this time, he was doing nothing and drinking heavily, so he seized the opportunity and proceeded. His actions have been aggressive, bellicose, and selfish.)
(After his long, painful and pathetic explanation is over, BUTTERBUGS looks over and sees a tear slowly falling down the SEC’Y’s cheek. Camera dollies in for CU.)
IV.
Enticed by the wholesome obscurity of a small neighborhood cinema, Assoc. Sec’y Realms returned to the Audion, entered its lobby and hung out on a Deco settee near cardboard displays of current and coming attractions, plotting further policy, in secret.
Never mind the careful motion picture productions in which the folly of machination and plotting on political levels are demonstrated. Those who need to see them – and heed them – never do, and they have no intention to.
‘The Silver Chalice’ for one, which the Assoc. Sec’y declined to view, has within its plot an evil character whose aspirations to power are designed to triumph via trickery, so that a cult of personality will propel him into absolute power, and protect him at the same time.
Despite the soundtrack that leaked through the auditorium’s doors, in which the evil character’s plans come to a dubious and well-deserved end, there was nothing this particular Assoc. Sec’y cared to absorb. It was all dramatic, fictional stuff in there, and no advantageous tips from such fluff had anything to offer him. Any inference a moralistic plot might apply to him personally would be nothing more than a vulgar insult. Entertainment was entertainment. Besides, when one is actually above history, one is not doomed to re-live it.
Days later, he again returned to the theatre, to continue his scheming, as the lobby was proving copacetic to his covert state of mind. And speaking of Butterbugs (the Assoc. Sec’y’s chosen poster boy to represent the emptiness of fame), a uniformed usher placed a cardboard display with just his face near the Deco chair in which he sat. It advertised a re-release of ‘I, Doughboy’ (Kemmendine), and it was to start in just a few minutes. The usher opened the auditorium doors, revealing a narrow but lengthy chamber, its streamlined modernaire lines illuminated in attractive candy-tones of green, orange and red. Compelling organ music emanated from the glisteny curtains at the far end.
Realms had to admit, the sequence of chance events in this little lobby had an invitational persuasiveness that he rather fancied. For a so-called intellectual, his prissy ego was easily seduced.
‘Perhaps’, he mulled, ‘I might learn something about control from this… this movie thing…’
Not at all a picture-goer, and not quite comfortable with the fact that he had fallen so rapidly for such superfluous baubledom, he sat facing the screen, somewhat ill at ease. But as the story unfolded, he became captivated. It was the first time he had actually seen Butterbugs in anything. As a result of an intractably sociopathic personality though, he lacked the wherewithal to identify what it was that affected him so in experiencing this film. It was actually Butterbugs’ performance itself, but such a realization was beyond him. He nevertheless admired what he erroneously assumed was the main theme, that of an individual’s will to a power of consequence. Actually, the premise of ‘I, Doughboy’ was the individual’s defeat by powers of consequence. In other words, Realms was derailed into misinterpretation, due to his own perceptual flaws. Rather like the Nazis missing the boat with Nietzsche, while at the same time co-opting him, and appropriating his name without benefit of portfolio, or even basic understanding.
Past this bogus reading of the film’s message, the star himself was briefly considered. ‘He has a power,’ admitted Realms. ‘That is all that matters to me.’
V.
For his own part, Butterbugs himself happened to be in DC just now, accepting an award from The New People, an enthusiastic organization of contemporary young people’s groups that had nothing to do with that awful label for H’wood’s newbies. Before he arrived at the venue (the weird George Washington Masonic National Memorial in Alexandra, VA) the emcee, Beryl Bairns, was candid about the achievements of Butterbugs.
‘He is curing us! And I do not mean like meat hanging in a smoky root cellar. No, he is curing the society of its ills. Don’t you think?’
The affirmation was tremendous.
After Butterbugs was presented with the Newest Of New Award, a delegation approached him and proclaimed:
‘You taught us not to live by our own thoughts alone. Yes, you cured us, not only of the rampant ADD in our sick society today, but also, of preoccupation with ourselves, and the shallowness therein. You made us real again! You are our torch!’
In his address, Butterbugs said, ‘I make no claims, nor could I possibly insist on any mandates. These such are for peoples everywhere to decide on and refine. In my work, I have guides in every direction, but if I can contribute by my own personality and its creations, then the rightful existence we all hold title to, might possibly shine. In this classical mold, I do declare my followance! Turn not away from its possibilities, for we have not yet divined the manifold wonders within!
‘So, where is it? Where shall we go? SHOW ME THE WAY!’
And what else was there to do, but to place a trim bronze brand, with an adjustable flame control, into the young star’s outstretched hand, which he held aloft, so that the dome of the hall, previously enshrouded in gloom, caught the upward coil of flame in its bowl and reflected it, multiplying its intensity, and shedding an umbrella of coppery glow on all those who stood magnetized in the auditorium.
Tableau!
The scene’s very natur
e was nowhere near anything derivative of ego-based motivational behavior. Butterbugs stood there for all to see, not as a symbol of ego (too often mistaken for identity and integrity), but as a liberator from it.
For if People were to be truly New, ego had no place in a world of progress. Nor had fear any seat therein. For if the star had simply stood and let the moment transpire, with the continuum uninterrupted by any audience disagreement, or even lack of conviction on his own part, then he should stand down.
But he did not. The only remaining possibility in this event was that he was enacting some sort of truth, by which he was solely instrumental, though not its sole author.
For its true authors were the people themselves. Every one of them. All were players as much as the player who stood above them now, with torch ignited.
To show the way.
If this was a role to play, so be it. But if it were also a truth to display, then pride would stand aside to allow humble privilege to prevail.
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