But of course Fred had already passed out in the hammock, the warm dented can of Make-U-Mix Chilled Martinis cradled against his chest like a begging cup.
It was so Fred, Dazzle thought. You couldn't help but like him.
* * * *
Dazzle loved the beach. He loved the salty sand between his toe-pads, and the distant tease and crash of rubber-clad, seal-like surfers frolicking in the waves. He especially loved the air that felt both clean and astringent, as if the sea weren't simply providing an alternative to city soot, but was actually scrubbing away its residue, like swarms of hungry, eco-conscious animalculae. It was the perfect place for people without jobs, Dazzle thought.
"Like hey there, doggy-dude! How's the creativity thing going? You should find a wet suit with four little doggy legs and I'll teach you to surf."
Diggy Bop was scrubbing his chapped, freckly face with waxy sun-screen and sucking diet soda from a can. At various times in their conversations, he had claimed to hail from the midwest, the east coast, the Gulf of Mexico, and even the former Republic of Sudan, but most of the local surfers knew him as a native Whittier boy, born and bred. It was one of the few qualities Dazzle had learned to respect in these otherwise-unpalatable human biped types—the capacity to dissemble. The alternative seemed to be human beings who were perfectly happy with who they were.
Yuck, Dazzle thought.
Dazzle sat down to rest beside Diggy Bop's stash of sandy boards and crumpled wet suits. “I'm afraid it's not going well at all,” Dazzle conceded. “And to be perfectly frank, I don't think my so-called writing partner's giving it his best shot. All we seem to do is lie around the house watching TV."
Diggy Bop was looking at the vast Pacific. He had just finished his soda.
"Sometimes a guy's gotta wait for weeks to know what he's waiting for,” Diggy said softly. “A girl, a wave, an inspiration, you name it. You can't go looking for it. It can only come looking for you."
At which point Diggy scooped up his board and sprinted toward a whitecap forming in the blue distance. Diggy wasn't much of a talker, Dazzle conceded. He was more of a doer.
And thank God for that, Dazzle thought.
* * * *
By the time late afternoon came around, Dazzle had usually given up on receiving any help from Oscar-winning screenwriter and former Writer's Guild Assistant Secretary Fred Prescott, so he ventured alone into Fred's messy office and stared at the antique, dusty Selectric for a while. It was a peculiar, dense little machine with a revolving print-ball that Dazzle found infinitely amusing. What he didn't find amusing, however, was the alert thrum and snap the machine emitted whenever he activated the black power button, as if it had been waiting all morning for Dazzle to show up.
And now it was time for Dazzle to deliver the goods.
ACT I, Dazzle would type clumsily with his stubby, inarticulate fore-paw. SCENE 1. DAZZLE ENTERS. DAZZLE SPEAKS.
It was as far as Dazzle's imagination ever took him. Perhaps because the subject that least interested Dazzle was himself.
Dog meets bitch, Dazzle thought, recalling a notorious Faulknerian parable. Dog loses bitch. Dog finds bitch again.
Coming soon to a theater near you.
But sometimes, things don't tie up in a pretty little bow with appropriate theme music, Dazzle thought. Life just unravels until there's nothing left.
So then Dazzle deployed all of his worst narrative instincts. He thought about stupid movies he'd seen featuring big name stars grimacing in tight close-ups on multi-media-formatable movie posters. Like a grizzly, Bruce Willis sort of dog, with a flamethrower strapped to its back. Or a telegenic dog who plays basketball. He toyed with ideas of a precognitive dog, a flying dog, and a dog who saved children from imminent catastrophes. But try as he might, Dazzle couldn't get his creative juices flowing. And no matter how long he sat there trying to appease the hungry Selectric, he never once progressed beyond the same unhappy phrases:
DAZZLE ENTERS. DAZZLE SPEAKS.
Dazzle wished, Dazzle thought.
"Speak!” he told the Selectric. “Open your stupid maw and let it out!"
But, of course, machines don't talk. And dogs don't talk. Only human beings talk.
And that, in terms of Hollywood-style creative development, was the rub.
* * * *
The only time Dazzle actually liked to hear the phone ring was when he sat down to do the work he couldn't do. Which was why he was always so quick to activate the desktop speaker—and utter the only word he could usually muster:
"Woof."
It didn't sound right even to Dazzle.
"Wow, Dad. You just fall out of the hammock or something? It's me, Benny. Your kid. Remember?"
It was the sort of voice Dazzle was accustomed to having directed his way. Short, curt sentences without modifiers. Simple animal expressions of calm and appeasement.
"Woof,” Dazzle replied. “Woof woof."
"Gotcha, Dad. Know you're busy, just wanted to make sure you hadn't killed yourself with those damn TV dinners you're always stuffing down. Too bad I don't have any Hollywood connections. Maybe then I'd be worth your while for lunch or coffee or something. Or maybe even some minimally polite interpersonal conversation."
Click.
It was a lot of unlived life to live with, Dazzle thought, gazing out the window at somnolent Fred in his hammock, hearing the dial tone recommence like an endless, audible ellipsis. Three divorces, four angrily neglected kids, seven undelivered scripts, a pending mega-deal at Paramount, and an irate Colombian lover with her own dry-cleaning service in Sepulveda. No wonder Fred got up so early each morning. It took a lot of time to get your head around doing so little.
You can't outlive bad karma like this guy's got, Dazzle thought.
You could only arrange to fall fast asleep before it came knocking.
* * * *
Unlike pages, the weeks were mounting up. And whenever Dazzle felt especially panicky about his contractual responsibilities, he called his agent.
"You got five minutes,” Bunny said, her voice a deep echoing mine of patience with itself. “You speak and I'll listen. Shoot."
Bunny started off every conversation as if it were a race between Dazzle and her preconceptions about him. A race, of course, that Dazzle was always destined to lose.
"Oh, well,” Dazzle muttered slowly. “Nothing new, really. I'm just getting nervous. We don't seem to be making any progress. And I don't mean to sound judgmental, but it's all Fred's fault. I was never born to write, Bunny. I'm just a goddamn dog. But Fred hasn't lifted a finger, and I think he may be burned out or something. So this is what I was thinking. Maybe we could just, you know, give them their money back, and I could go home to Big Sur. I'd even be willing to surrender all my rights to, you know, my life and identity. Really, I don't mind. Money's never mattered to me; basically, I'm happy with a few berries and wild mushrooms and a splash of clear spring water when I need it. I want my old life back, even if I don't own the rights to it anymore. So what do you say, Bunny? We tear up the contract, Sony brings in another, as they like to call it, ‘creative team.’ And we all go our separate ways."
Bunny's silence was potent enough to frost glass.
"Look, Daz-baby. We got you paid, right?"
"Well, yeah,” Dazzle conceded. “But—"
"And now you're working with one of the most venerable and widely respected scriptwriters in the profession, right?"
"Sure, if you want to call Fred venerable, Bunny. It's just that—"
"So let me say one last thing, and listen to me good. I'd tear off my left tit before I gave Sony back a dime. I'd even tear off your balls, if you had any. So get back to work, and call me when you're ready to deliver. Otherwise, I'll turn you into the dog pound so fast it'll make your head spin. No offense, Darling. But I'm making you a Hollywood success story or my name ain't Bunny Fairchild."
* * * *
It was like living with plutonium, Dazzle thought. The unwri
tten script emitted black radiance through every room in the house.
"I don't think you appreciate who you're working with,” Diggy often told him, as they exchanged lukewarm cans of Coors over a sputtering, illegal campfire. “That's Fred Prescott on your team. He's like a filmic genius or something. He's like the only soulful person in the entire Hollywood community. Why, a list of all the great movies he could have made would astound Michelangelo—at least that's how Fred tells it. Like his totally disrespected seven-hundred-page film treatment for Finnegans Wake starring Nick Nolte—that got totally dissed by the powers-that-be. Or what about Fred's genre-bending concept about a boxing promoter on Mars? That got totally crummed on, too. Whenever the suits want to pretend they're artists, they hire Fred Prescott for a draft or two, and pat themselves on the back all over Rodeo Drive. Then they turn every script he delivers into a vehicle of mush for Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore. But Fred endures the toil and struggle, Daz. He marches to the beat of his own drum. Give the guy a chance, and before this job's done? He's gonna teach you bozos what art is all about."
Dazzle wanted to believe Diggy—and in Diggy's vision of Fred. But the only way to believe in Fred was to disregard the daily pageant of shame and desuetude that constituted his “routine."
Art is never easy, Dazzle conceded. Maybe, just maybe, Fred knew what he was doing.
* * * *
"Hey there, Daz baby. Stu Sanderson at Sony. Would you pick up the phone, Daz? We know you're in there. And we're totally sympathetic to your creative needs as an artist. But we really gotta touch base with you on one or two important concept points before we forget them. Isn't that what writing's about, Daz-baby? Writing down every little detail and pawing over it endlessly in high-power executive lunchrooms? Sally, have you got the concept points we discussed at yesterday's meeting? I need to read them to Daz here ... Okay, point one—we need humor. Got that? It has to have some humor, Daz, but not too much humor, because comedy's not our department, but a little humor's okay, and actually pretty necessary, especially when it comes to talking dogs. Get me? Point two—and this is a little something Syd and I developed in our meeting with Roger last week—Daz is a dog, but he acts more like a cat. How do you like that one? Syd and I came up with that by ourselves. He's sort of a cat-like dog, with all these feline needs and desires and so forth, the audience will really eat it up. Like he digs catnip or something, or peeing in kitty litter—I'll leave the gory details to you creative types. We did this survey, or somebody heard about this survey, we're pretty sure a survey was done anyway, that says people are either cat people or dog people, and doing a dog movie alienates the cat-viewership and vice versa. So this way, we appeal to every possible demographic. We could sign any A-list director with a concept point like this one, Daz. You and Fred need to incorporate it into your treatment right away."
* * * *
As Dazzle grew less concerned about their long-broken contract deadlines, Fred slowly awakened from his stupor like a bewitched maiden in a castle. Some days, he even ventured out of his hammock before noon, and could be found browsing yesterday's sun-stained Los Angeles Times on the sun deck, or shoveling through a plate of Maria's huevos rancheros while tapping a pencil against a tablet of yellow fine-lined legal stationery. When he felt unusually perky, he cranked up his old LP-player and treated the beach-side sun worshipers to a mega-decibel-blast of Stan Getz being mellow, or Paul Desmond pouring cool hi-fi martinis. It was like watching a space captain emerge from suspended animation, Dazzle thought. He was still groggy and blood-sore. He couldn't quite work his lips.
"Hey, Fred,” Dazzle would say as he padded to the kitchen, where Maria would stop brushing cobwebs off the ceiling with a damp mop, waddle to the stove, and happily scoop Dazzle's favorite lunch from a simmering pot: soft-shelled chicken tortillas with extra hot salsa and sour cream.
"Mucho bueno, Señor Perrocito,” Maria liked to say, scratching between his ears, just the way Dazzle liked it. “Escribir con Señor Fred es muy difícil, no?"
Meanwhile, Fred examined the tip of his yellow Ticonderoga pencil with a piercing, level-headed gaze.
"The first thing you've got to do is walk away from what the world keeps telling you,” Fred announced softly. “Like a penny saved is a penny earned, that sort of crap. Or how better mousetraps are always the rage, and the world will beat a path to your door. You don't need to be human to recognize human turds when you smell them, right, pooch? You just gotta clear your mind of all distractions and think for yourself."
* * * *
"We're not trying to ‘hound’ you, Daz-honey. Get it? We're not trying to hound you?"
"We're just worried about the, you know, legal implications of all these delays and binding contractual clauses and modifying clauses which, you know, we can't just keep modifying like this. Unless there's an act of God or something."
"Nobody'd hound you, Daz-baby. If it was an act of God—"
"But we need words, sweetheart. We need some—I know you hate this word—but we need some pages. Syd isn't the most patient chief executive in town, but he's not the least patient either. He's just doing his job, Daz. And whether you like it or not, we're just doing ours."
"We've got families to support."
"We've got wives, ex-wives, ex-semi-permanent live-in love-mates, and so forth. We're as human as the next guy. Which isn't to cast any aspersions on you, Daz-baby. It's just an expression is all."
"Can we at least drive out and have a little meet at Cross Creek or something. We can watch Goldy play with her grandkids. You could show us some rough thoughts on a napkin and talk us through. You don't even have to tell Fred. It'll be our little secret."
"We could buy you a nice big bowl of naturally carbonated spring water. Or maybe a beer."
"And you could tell us, right, Daz-baby? You could finally tell us what this movie we're making is all about."
* * * *
Dazzle knew his days of Hollywood fame were numbered, so he tried to close the door securely on his way out. He instructed his accountant to dump his earnings into a series of 501(k)s and offshore investments. He set up a trust fund for his ever-widening (and increasingly errant) canine family back in Big Sur, and arranged a lump sum guaranteed annuity with a Hartford insurance firm. He gave himself a flea bath, had his nails clipped at the canine beautician's, and even endured what he hoped would be his last-ever full-body upper and lower GI polyp-palpating exam at the local vet, who turned out to be a well-groomed man in his mid-fifties named Dr. Leroy Ferguson.
"I guess I moved here in the late sixties and never looked back,” Dr. Ferguson confessed, as he gently posed and reposed Dazzle through a panoply of the usual indignities. “Where I came from, back in Ohio? We had nothing more interesting to do all day than go to the Laundromat or visit the bank. Farmers would sit in Bob's Big Boy complaining about their stock, or some leaky roof. And on your first (and often only) date, you drove to the woods in your third-hand car, got laid, got your girlfriend pregnant, and got unhappily married, not necessarily in that order. Personally, my only viable career choice was to become either a mortgage broker or a vet, and being a vet meant nothing but performing livestock viral exams and animal husbandry. You wouldn't see a decent doggy or kitty for weeks at a time. You were too busy driving across Farmer Brown's scrub-strewn land in a truck. But then I got crazy and came to California, where everything was different. Suddenly, I was living with movie stars. I was spaying and neutering full-blooded manxes and Siameses and even, I swear to god, an actual declawed leopard from Borneo once. And now my life is like a beautiful movie. I walk on the beach every morning, my kids go to great schools and get married to entertainment lawyers and software executives, and my third wife, Patty, wow. She's got tits out to here and they're almost all hers. I have never felt more fulfilled as a veterinary surgeon and animal health-care worker in my life, and my golf swing, Jesus. I'm knocking seagulls out of the air with my seven iron. I've gotten that good."
Ev
en the doctor's hands, while they probed Dazzle's weary orifices, exuded confidence. It was like visiting one of those Shiatsu places at the mall. And when it was over, and he was gently lifted down from the paper-shielded metal table by a pair of bountiful young starlet-like nurses, Dazzle felt like a million bucks.
"I've just never met so many happy people in my life,” Dazzle told Diggy over chocolatey cappuccinos at one of the Cross Creek picnic tables. “It's not like I pictured at all. I'd sort of expected some sunny den of despair, where everybody's constantly enraged by the bastards who screwed them over on the last project that fell through. But when you look at Malibu for what it is, everybody has so much free time. Their nannies are taking care of the kids, their administrative assistants are answering the phones, and most of the time, all these people do is wander around clothing outlets, drive back and forth to Blockbuster, and eat lunch. In fact, now that I think of it, I hardly see any signs of depravity whatsoever, even from the sixty-year-old guys with twenty-something wives. They seem just as boring as everybody else. Except, of course, that they have a lot more money to be boring with."
* * * *
But as Dazzle had learned from a lifetime of pissing on the lampposts of polite society, he always spoke way too soon. And the moment Diggy dropped him off at Fred's, he encountered a fleet of chickens coming home to roost simultaneously. These particular chickens were driving Arnold Schwarzenegger-style “energy-efficient” retooled Humvees, decked out PT Cruisers, and four-wheel-drive off-road vehicles thumping with Wagner, Patti Smith, and mid-seventies progressive rock.
"We know you're in there, Pop!” shouted a twenty-something version of Fred in a linen sport coat and Levi's. His features were so well tended that they seemed shellacked. “You shut down, passive-aggressive, family-abandoning old hack! The worst part about hating guys like you, Dad, is that you never even show your face, or give us a chance to make fun of that hypocritical sixties getup you wear! And then to hear you spouting all that outdated bullshit about marching to your own drum and beautifying the muse, Jesus! It makes me want to puke! You practically ruined my life, Dad! And if Mom hadn't met that property developer in Pasadena, you'd have ruined her life, too!"
FSF, October-November 2008 Page 13