Call Me the Breeze: A Novel

by Patrick McCabe

  Now that I knew how to do a treatment — up until now ‘I’d only pretended, I hadn’t a clue what he was on about, treatment this, treatment that, treatment the other — I’d just nodded and pretended I knew. I had a pretty good idea now, though, I reckoned, what with his advice and all the manuals I’d been reading. So a screenplay on the story was definitely beginning to look like it could happen. The Life and Times of Joey Tallon up there on the silver screen. With particular reference to a certain thing that had gone wrong once upon a time in his long-ago life.

  I’d wake up in the night and see it all before me, the water lapping as we approached the shore where the lights of the harbour were twinkling. ‘Soon we’ll be there,’ you could hear Jacy saying, ‘over there in the land of Paradise. That is what your writing means, Joey. It can make it happen! Out of something bad something really beautiful can come.’

  I’d wake and realize that I had never felt so empowered, not even since the very first reading years before of Siddhartha or the chats I used to have with The Seeker. It being so strong, in fact, that those memories seemed as nothing if not adolescent. That’s baby stuff! I found myself thinking. This is it, man, and you’d better believe it! This is home! This is the real deal. The real fucking deal and make no mistake!

  I let my beard grow good and long until it looked like Ginsberg’s. Which meant, of course, you couldn’t go up the town without someone shouting abuse. Such as ‘Beardy’ or ‘Fucking ZZ Top!’

  I’d go out to the reservoir to do some declaiming. ‘You’re like a prophet,’ says this old fellow to me one day out there. ‘Like John the Baptist or someone.’

  I smiled when he said that and closed the book as we had a smoke together. ‘We all are, my friend,’ I remember saying, ‘each one in his or her own way. In his or her own special way.’

  Rejection

  Unfortunately that would appear to be all that remains of a systematic chronicling of my earliest years of freedom. But even the most cursory sifting through the various papers makes it pretty much clear what transpired. If the ‘Writing Class Notes’ are anything to go by — and there are literally thousands of them — there couldn’t have been a minute of the day or night during those creatively fecund times when the scribe was not busy blocking out some script scenes or just shoving down the barest bones of random ideas. There are even story-boards which I’d completely forgotten about, to be honest, and a weatherbeaten jotter called The Movie Book, containing the names of my favourite films — 1,357 to be precise. So I suppose it was no wonder that my skills began to be honed quite precisely and a new confidence was soon on display. Not that it was to make a whole lot of difference, for as this letter shows, the response from Dublin’s Windmill Lane Studios to the first draft of my masterpiece — at that time entitled Psychobilly — was destined, sadly, to be somewhat less than ecstatic.

  Principle Management

  c/o Windmill Lane Studios

  Litton Lane

  Dublin

  Dear Mr Tallon

  Thank you for sending the first draft of your screenplay Psychobilly to us. Unfortunately Bono and the boys are out of the country at the moment as they are recording in Miami. I should point out that the studios are not actually engaged in film production at the moment and you might be better sending it to one of the other major studios who specialize in that kind of thing. However, we will keep your script on file and will be in touch when the band get back.

  Yours etc.

  June Enright

  Which, however necessary, was a lie, of course. They didn’t do any such thing, despite being bombarded with letters and phone calls. As far as I can make out, my efforts over the subsequent months produced only one response: effectively, a mimeographed copy of the letter above, which was not the response Messrs Burroughs or Ginsberg might have received. Something the author was more than aware of, as is plain to see from this frantically penned effort, composed in a frenzy one winter’s evening after a plethora of vodkas …

  Saturday Night (Late) (No Date)

  The reading tonight went really fucking well and I think my confidence is coming back. At first I was shaking but I could see Johnston smiling, giving me the moral support that I needed. So that when the time came to start, I just tore into it with everything I had. Wham! You know what I’m saying? The way you go into something and hold absolutely nothing back?

  When I was finished I was exhausted, but the clapping went on for ages and Johnston made a bit of a speech. Actually saying, in fact, that I had performed it so well that at any minute he had half expected me to start taking off my clothes the way Ginsberg himself had done at the inaugural reading of ‘Howl’. Afterwards the two of us went down to Austie’s and had a really good rap — as usual. He is a fantastic guy, Johnston, with this amazing memory. He seems to remember things I told him months ago, and has a particular fascination, it seems to me, with the seventies. What’s most surprising is — to me at any rate — given his extensive knowledge of English literature in general, how into thrillers he seems to be. Especially when you know damn well he could write the most terrific poetry if he wanted to. Or plays. Or short stories. Anyway, literature one way or another, you can be sure of that. But any time you see him he’s got a bunch of these daft thrillers under his arm — The Devil’s Conundrum, The Nairobi Connection, The Mexico Sanction, you name it!

  I think he’s trying to get me interested but all I can think of is Burroughs. And the gang. Ferlinghetti: ‘Fuck you, man!’

  I don’t know what I’d do without him. For you need someone like him. When you’re trying to find your feet — creatively, that is — you definitely do need a mentor. Which Johnston is happy to be. Unlike that other U2 bollocks!

  Not that I’ve anything against Bono, not personally. But I mean, if he wasn’t interested, why couldn’t he just say so? And if he was too busy to do that, just get June or one of his other secretaries to write and say: ‘Dear Mr Tallon, we don’t want to be involved in this project but thank you for bringing it to us.’

  That’s all. That’s not so fucking hard, is it?

  I mean, you either want to do something or you don’t. I have better things to do than hang around in offices twiddling my thumbs staring at rubber plants. Although no offence to June Enright, for you won’t get a better person and I know that. She said she had been to Scots-field once, actually. I can imagine it would be a long time before you’d get something like that out of Bono. ‘Scotsfield? Oo! Where’s that?’

  But screw him, it’s his loss. There are plenty of others who’ll be interested in the project. Just as soon as I get my next draft finished. I’ve got some fantastic new ideas for it. I reckon I’ve identified all the problems — analyzing it at the class has been a really good help — and know pretty much what has to be done. Like Johnston says: ‘You have to be brutal! Break it up! Deconstruct! Tear it apart! Explore it from the inside out!’

  He was so enthusiastic that he got me excited too and I almost went and tore up my draft right there and then in front of everybody. I was on the verge of grabbing a few pages and going: ‘Yeah! Right on! You got it, Johnston! Let’s show those sum’ bitches!’ before I realized where I was. I calmed down then and listened to his advice, in a less ‘Ginsbergian’ manner!

  But Johnston, as usual, saw the funny side. In the end we agreed that there was no doubt about it — this approach could only improve the piece.

  The problem, essentially, I realized now, was that the screenplay was concentrating far too much on big-time Hollywood shit, writing it first and foremost with a star in mind — Nick Nolte, say, or Keith Carradine. When what it ought to have been doing was sticking far closer in texture and approach to the way things had actually happened.

  ‘That fateful night!’ or however you might like to describe it. (That’s how Johnston refers to it!)

  Softer, I guess, more tender. To hell with Hollywood and Keith Carradine and car chases. Fuck hand grenades and helicopter gunships. It isn’t abou
t that, for Christ’s sake. Which deep inside I’ve felt all along but haven’t had the guts to say. But now I have! For Cunthooks Bono (or should I say ‘The Fly’ — I mean, for fuck’s sake — ‘I am “The Fly”, woo woo!’), without realizing it, has handed me ‘The Answer’ on a plate. Ironically, after all his bullshit encouragement in the magazines and newspapers — you can do it man, anyone can do it! — he has shown me how to find what I’m looking for. But he’s never going to know it — indeed, why the fuck should he? So fuck him and his ‘Joshua Tree’. Way I see it, Mr Bono my man, we’re all on our own, so don’t come around pretending that we’re all in this fucking thing together. Because we the people — the ones you think you’re talking about — might believe Johnston Farrell. But not you. Not you, my man, Mr big-time rock star that’s made fucking millions peddling packs of lies.

  The Author Is Published

  Clearly, as I am sure you are already thinking, with this new-found confidence and professionalism that was on display, it could only be a matter of time before the eminent scribe hit his stride and made his mark at last on the literary world. Except that there you’d be wrong, I’m afraid, for it turned out to be a very long time indeed — and in circumstances that were very much not of his choosing, as shall be seen! (Writing Doughboy, in fact, in Boo Boo’s flat, putting in ten hours a day!)

  Even today I find it hard to believe that a major London publisher accepted it. For I hadn’t edited a word — just wrote the whole fucking thing without thinking, hoping against hope it might make me feel better. When the letter of acceptance arrived, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Boo Boo kept saying: ‘You’ve made it, man! I always knew you would! Well, fuck you, Joey Tallon! You’ve gone and fucked them all, but good!’

  What the letter contained was an offer to include my book in their spring lists. I just could not bring myself to believe the words as I read them, not to mention the money they were offering! But all of that was a long, long way off yet. A lot more water would flow under the bridge before Mr Joey Tallon’s stellar literary career took off.

  The Writing Classes — The Verdict

  A career, however, which, all things considered, had got off to a pretty good start, I reckoned, with the second draft of Psychobilly literally writing itself. A very nice feeling indeed, let me tell you! I was over the moon when I’d finished it and couldn’t wait to get it copied and pass it around the group for some constructive criticism. It wasn’t to be, I’m afraid. I didn’t have a row with Johnston or anything — I wasn’t going to be that stupid, for I’d learnt enough now to know not to act unpro-fessionally and that, whatever comments people make, they are not meant to be taken personally. All the same I thought it mightn’t be a bad idea to write him a note, get my thoughts down on paper, just to clear the air. Because I think he knew that I was a little downhearted when he and the others … what’s the word … expressed ‘reservations’ about what I’d shown them. I think the problem was that I just wasn’t ready, knowing in my heart that some of it wasn’t all that good and didn’t seem to know where it was going or what it was trying to say.

  Which is probably why I cursed, although I didn’t mean to. Any more than I meant to fling the manuscript to the floor and erupt: ‘Who knows what fucking love is! How can you tell me that what I’ve writ-ten’s not true! Come to that, who knows what’s true? What’s true, you sum’ bitches, can you tell me that?’, for that was just childish behaviour. Especially when everyone had been getting along so well. What bothered me most was their insistence on story. ‘What does that matter?’ I kept saying. ‘It’s the feel that’s important! The feel is the motherfucker, yeah?’

  It was at that point Johnston told me to calm down, and I did. I listened to him — of course I did. He was Johnston! I listened carefully to my friend and mentor and we gradually got back on an even keel. Or 50 I thought. Because then he started saying: ‘What have the Romans got to do with it? Why did you include them and this piece about the Garden of Gethsemane? It doesn’t seem to —’

  It was at that point that I stood up and said: ‘Right! That’s it!’, taking my manuscript away with me. A lot of people said later on that that was the reason Johnston had left town, but that’s not true, it really isn’t. It’s got absolutely nothing to do with it, in fact. It was nothing more than an unfortunate coincidence, the truth being that he had been transferred by the bank and had been thinking of giving the classes up anyway to devote more time to his thriller.

  Which turned out to have a very familiar theme indeed, as I would later discover to my horror.

  His big interested eyes in Austie’s all now starting to make sense. Along with his curiosity regarding my battered old ledgers. Not that I minded. I had been glad to turn them over to him. After all, he had given me plenty. But he could have told me. He could have fucking told me! Then, when The Cyclops Enigma eventually appeared it mightn’t have been such a shock.

  Anyway, by the time I got home that night I was completely drunk and wanted to hear nothing more about literature. It was like I was back in the old days before The Seeker, before Ginsberg, before everything, when I didn’t want to believe in anything at all.

  I knocked up Mangan and brought in a bottle and stayed with him there till the dawn began to break. That was the first time we got really talking about things in a long time. It was the first time we’d mentioned Horny Harry and the excitement that day with the mud-wrestling girls. ‘Imagine if you had a woman like that now, Joey,’ he kept saying, ‘that’d do whatever you wanted!’

  I knew what he was intimating but I didn’t want to address it directly. We both knew that he’d seen me with Mona — he’d fucking well made it his business to! So, to make it easier on us both, I said that I had seen inflatable girls for sale openly now in a shop in Dublin and if he wanted I could get him one, ‘if that’s what you want’. He flushed and looked away, drank a mouthful of whiskey and muttered: ‘Aye! Aye! Maybe!’

  We talked some more about this and that. When I was leaving he pressed some notes into my fist and I fell out the door of the caravan. As my head hit the pillow all these images came gliding down, then swooped away like ethereal birds, and once that happened I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep.

  I sat down at the typewriter and it was as though my fingers had a life of their own.

  Wonderful Pictures

  By the time my new draft was finished — and this time I was a hundred per cent sure! — I knew I had something special in my possession and that this time there’d be no deconstructing and no giving opinions, no debates or discussions at all. Of course, there wasn’t a hope of a studio ever touching it — I knew that the minute I’d finished it. It was much too individual for that — no helicopter gunships, blah, blah, blah. But who gave a fuck? It was pretty obvious to me now that if you wanted something made then you had to go and do it yourself. Otherwise you’d be humming and hawing like we seemed to be doing at the classes now most of the time anyway. Yes, Johnston Farrell’s famous classes. Which had been useful for a while, no question. But now, I reckoned, if you wanted to progess, you had to move on to a whole new level. Fact was, I realized, if I wanted it made I had to do it myself.

  And there was only one way of doing that: I would have to form a company of my own. Which wasn’t as difficult as it sounded. I mean, I would have laughed at the idea too — initially, I mean. But after my theatre experience in Mountjoy and the information I’d picked up over the years in Film Monthly, The Screenwriter’s Guide and various other trade publications, I figured I’d have a pretty good idea just how to go about it.

  The first thing I needed was a name. ‘Wonderful Pictures. Wonderful Pictures, Scotsfield. How’s that sound?’ I asked myself, wondering what potential investors might make of it. Pretty good, I thought. I would definitely give it some consideration.

  After reading my piece again, I definitely felt very proud. And confident, too. I clutched the typed sheets and gave them a kiss. I was exhilarated. If it had been back i
n the seventies and someone had asked me to explain why I felt that way, I would have said that I reckoned we’d peeled away every layer of the onion, now finally approaching its pure and untouched heart. ‘And what is it like?’ they might say.

  ‘It’s full of light,’ I would have replied. I kissed the pages again and read:

  The Seven Last Words of Jellyman: A Film Treatment by J. M. Tallon

  The pick-up is parked in the shadows, some way down a dimly lit alley. Just up ahead there is a nightclub with a neon-lit sign over the door. The sign is broken, and sputters and flickers intermittently. The guy at the wheel of the pick-up has his baseball cap turned down, just so. Out of the shadows appear the hoods, waiting for the blonde-haired dancer, who’s coming heel-clicking down the street. She joins them in the alley. At ten after twelve another figure emerges from the club. There are a few muffled exchanges as the doorman says goodnight. You expect the sound of heels but it doesn’t come. You can’t quite see the figure clearly. Just as it reaches the alley the dancer walks out, fumbling in her handbag, eventually producing a cigarette. It is then the light hits the figure’s face and you can see who it is — it’s Joey Tallon.

  ‘Got a light?’ the dancer says again, this time with a smirk that is somewhat playful. ‘So,’ he replies, and you can see his grin, that familiar old grin from those bygone days, those Total Organization days. You can tell it by the clothes. US army jacket. Hawaiian shirt. Doc Marten boots. You can tell it by the Mohawk cut. He reaches in the pocket of his fatigues. This is the signal for the hoods to move in. They range around him in a circle, chewing matchsticks and wielding baseball bats. One of them swings, the implement crunching against his cheek. Then another lifts his way above him and — pow! — he brings him down. As his head hits the pavement for the first time he gets a look at her face, blurred as it might be. It is her. His beloved. ‘So,’ she says, ‘how you feeling now?’ Then she reaches in her handbag and he catches a glimpse of the flashing blade. ‘This is how it should be,’ she says. ‘This is how it should always be. For those who destroy something beautiful. For those who poison the precious harbour.’