August 31, 2007
Diary Friday
Hey, member Diary Friday?
It comes in waves ... sometimes I'm into it, sometimes I'm not. I came across this entry last night and it made me laugh out loud. I had forgotten much of it. This is from my second year in grad school - and my roommate Jen and I threw a party.
Some of this might seem like gibberish - it was just my impressions in the aftermath of the party ... but I re-read it this morning, in tears of laughter.
And I still love Wade. He was one of my best friends in school, he was a cocky talented sensitive dude from Texas, so so smart, and we were drawn to one another from the first day (we had a memorable excursion on 18th street after our first dance class - I didn't even know him!) - I don't know, he was a wild boy, a "bad" boy, I guess - and we clicked. He was irreverent. And FUNNY, man. I could talk to him about anything. He also is responsible for me becoming aware of this particular gentleman (http://www.fartingpreacher.org) , and for that I am extremely grateful. He had it on video tape - Wade stayed with me for a couple of months - and we would sit on the floor, pop in the tape, and watch it over. And over. And over. And over. Sometimes we would smooch, you know ... smooch like high school teenagers ... but then sometimes we didn't. I don't know. We were good friends. Friends with benefits, I suppose. So we were relaxed about the smooching thing, and way too busy with grad school to get all bogged down or serious relationship-ish. But there are times when, sorry, a girl MUST smooch ... One can only deal with so much school. It is also important to go out and drink beer and slam-dance and then makeout for hours on end. On occasion.
And we'd be blatant about it. Like a business transaction.
"If I don't make out with someone and soon, I am gonna freak out."
"How 'bout tonight?"
"Cool. See ya after class."
Wade is one of the funniest people I have ever met. And he is also very kind and deep and exciting to be around. (I haven't seen Wade in years - I think not since then. Wade is a sort of peripheral star in this - one of the most popular posts I have ever written.)
The following diary entry makes me miss him.
DECEMBER
Last night’s party. A collage of impressions still flickers thru my brain today. Moments of sheer joy. Moments of awe: Look at everyone! Moments of sadness and acute loneliness. Hysterical shrieking laughter. Looking around at OUR APARTMENT filled with people. Awareness of life. How miraculous it seems. How did I get here? Look at the people in my life! Marcus. Wade. Jen. Who ARE these people? I LOVE them! Life is constantly evolving. You never know what’s gonna happen.
I had a party. I had a party and it wasn’t a totally hair-raising experience. I had fun. I let go.
I am so glad Brendan and Maria came. And Brett. A mixing of worlds which pleased me. Brett did Superman for all of my brand new friends. I watched Jen discover it. I have seen it a million times, but it still makes me howl. It was gorgeous! I love moments like that.
Colored lights in living room. Candles everywhere. Lots of food laid out. I was a hostess! Clip-clopping around my apartment in my velvet pants. Giorgio on my wrists, lighting candles, cooking pasta.
The living room looked beautiful. Festive. Comfy.
Rain coming down. Snow. Thunder. Lightning. Our guests dripping wet. It was a good group. A beautiful blend.
Jen is just the perfect roommate for me. We totally GET each other. She shares my issues with party-giving. She TOTALLY understands me. No judgment. We kept checking in with each other over the night. “How ya doin?” “No judgment!”
Leslie W. kept saying, “You 2 have such nice patterns!” Meaning behaviorally. Nice patterns. Our feverish huddles of affirmation in the vestibule.
Hysterical laughter mixed with hysterical tears right before everyone arrived. Jen said, right at me: “I’m scared!” God, I love that. She fucking meant it. Then she slid down the wall. “I think I just have to cry a little bit.”
Also, when it was 2 minutes past our invite time, and no one had showed up yet, Jen announced, “I’m feeling fat and unpopular.”
Then, she looked around frantically at a room FILLED with people and wailed, “Nobody came!”
She said to me anxiously, “I just hope people have a good time.”
“Jen, I hope you have a good time.”
This struck her. She filled up with tears. “Thanks for saying that.”
And we did have a good time. Many magic moments.
J. came with desserts she had made and a Xmas carol CD. Bren and Maria did come, they weren’t going to. Having my worlds meet. Not as stressful as I thought. Wade meeting Maria. Brett meeting Marcus. Bren and Marcus hit it off.
The next morning over breakfast, Marcus said to Bren, “I think we could be friends.”
Marcus commenting on the natural slope of the floor, and advising people, “Don’t resist the floor.”
Music. Annie Lennox’s Diva. Bjork. The Beatles. Joan Armatrading.
Wade called me COLLECT and asked me for directions. My heart sang. He called me “hon”.
I walked into the living room, and Maria, Brett, and Marcus were sitting on the floor. Maria was talking and Marcus said to Maria, as I walked in: “That was a long-ass saga.”
Brett glanced up at me and said, “We asked Maria how she and Brendan met, and she started the story when she was 12.”
We all sat in the living room playing Celebrity. So much fucking fun.
During Celebrity, Maria, in trying to describe King Kong - said: “He’s a monkey! He’s the head of state!” Wade and I were just SCREAMING and rolling around laughing about that. Wade couldn't stop repeating it. "He's a monkey ... he's the head of state ..." I am in love with Wade.
Celebrity went on raucously until around 3.
The party began dispersing. Various bedding down activities. A bunch of folks slept over. Brendan and Maria slept in our extra room (The Embassy in the Kingdom of Peace). Amy slept on the futon in the living room. Marcus slept with Jen. And Wade and Brett slept with me. The 3 of us in my bed. We tossed and turned simultaneously. Meaning we moved as one. I curled up against Wade’s back in my bed, Brett curled up against my back, and we all fell asleep. At one point, I got up to go to the bathroom, and the sight, on coming back to my room, of Wade and Brett in my bed together, just made me LAUGH.
Wade had to get up and go to work. I set the alarm for him. It was a beautiful day, sun streaming thru the windows. Wade showered. I stood in the kitchen in my pjs, slumbering partiers all around me, the room ABLAZE with sunshine. Call me dysfunctional but it made me feel good to be able to do something for Wade.
We then did imitations of our jazz dance teacher in the kitchen.
Others started waking. Lazy morning. . 4 or 5 of us piled on my bed, sleepy-haired, rather hilarious. Wade stood in my doorway, Sammy was up on his shoulders, climbing around, meowing - and Wade was speaking in his faux German decadent accent: “Don’t smile, Sammy.”
I saw Wade to the door. As he left, he paused, glanced back into the apartment, relived the entire night in a moment’s time, and then exclaimed with gusto, “Man, I had a blast!”
Dean Stockwell montage
we need a montage ...
we need a montage ...
All Stockwell stuff can be found here
The Books: "Wonder Boys" (Michael Chabon)
Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:
Wonder Boys - by Michael Chabon. I wrote somewhere once about the long long wait for this book after Chabon's debut The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Mitchell and I had fallen so in love with his writing that we eagerly waited to see what he would do next. Years passed. Occasionally, one of us would say to the other, "What ever happened to Michael Chabon, dammit??"
Then - finally - Wonder Boys. His second novel.
The story of what happened in those intervening years is well-known (so I won't repeat it here) - and in a way - it's what Wonder Boys is all about. It's always just been such a great example to me - of following your gut. Of knowing when to say: You know what? What I'm working on is NOT WORKING. Of being bold enough to throw something out - and start over completely. (Like recently - when John Irving re-wrote his entire book, changing the POV - and NOBODY wanted him to do it, because he would miss his deadline, etc. and it's almost like - at a certain point in the process, it seems like it becomes too late to change things. I LOVE that story about Irving and I love the story about Chabon. Be bold. Be bold. Don't be afraid. Follow your gut.) The Wonder Boys is a lovely novel - funny - so funny, sad, and full of indelible characters. I mean. Grady Tripp. Come on. I can never forget him.
Oh, and GREAT adaptation of the book into a film. I heard it was going to be a film and got scared ... because I kinda feel proprietary about Michael Chabon and I didn't want them to mess it up (as they so often do. I'm still pissed about The Shipping News) But not only did they not mess it up - they did a great job - and captured the SPIRIT of the book, which sometimes is the hardest thing to get. I love that movie. Bravo.
But what I really love about this book is the parts about writing. It's not so much Chabon navel gazing ... but really examining the whole process. And how one can get so easily sidetracked - that's the excerpt I chose today - although there were so many to choose from.
Excerpt from The Wonder Boys - by Michael Chabon.
While the coffee was brewing I drank a tall glass of orange juice, to which I added two tablespoons of honey, on the theory that an increase in my blood sugar, along with a massive dose of caffeine, would eliminate the last traces of my hangover. Pot for the nausea and the heaviness of heart, vitamin C for the cell structure, sugar for the depleted blood, caffeine to burn off the moral fog; it was starting to come back to me now - the whole praxis of alcoholism and reckless living. When the coffee was ready, I poured it into a thermos pitcher and carried it out to my office at the back of the house, where James Leer lay on the sofa, his head pillowed on his praying hands, like someone pantomiming sleep. The sleeping bag had slid partway to the floor and I saw now that he'd gone to bed naked. His suit, shirt, and tie were draped across the footrest of my old Eames chair, white BVDs folded neatly on top of the pile. I wondered if Hannah had undressed him, or if he'd managed it himself. He had the shrunken look of a tall person asleep, curled up into himself, his knees and elbows and wrists too large, his skin pale and freckled. His body had almost no hair and his naked little circumcised johnson was nearly as pale as the rest of him, white as a boy's - perhaps over time one's genitals emerge from the pots and bubbling vats of love permanently stained, like the hands of a wool dyer. I felt sorry for James Leer when I saw his penis. Carefully I redistributed the sleeping bag over his form.
"Thank you," he said, without waking.
I said, "You're welcome," and then carried the pot of coffee over to my desk. It was six-fifteen. I went to work. I had to slap an ending on Wonder Boys by tomorrow evening if I was going to let Crabtree see it. I took a sip of coffee and gave my left cheek an exhortatory smack. For the one thousandth time I resorted to the nine-page plot outline, single-spaced, tattered and coffee-stained, that I'd fired off on a vainglorious April morning five years before. As of this fine morning I was halfway through its fourth page, more or less, with another five pages to go. An accidental poisoning, a car crash, a house on fire; the births of three children and a miraculous trotter named Faithless; a theft, an arrest, a trial, an electrocution; a wedding, two funerals, a cross-country trip; two dances, a seduction in a fallout shelter, and a deer hunt; all these scenes and a dozen others I had yet to write, according to the neat headings of my stupid fucking outline: nine central characters' and a lifetime's worth of destiny that I had, for the last month, been attempting to compress into fifty-odd pages of terse and lambent prose. I reread with scorn the confident, pompous annotations I'd made on that distant day: Take your time with this, and This has to be very very big, and worst of all, This scene should read as a single vast Interstate of Language, three thousand miles long. How I hated the asshole who had written that note!
Once again and with the usual pleasure I entertained the notion of tossing the whole thing out. With this swollen monster out of the way I'd be at liberty to undertake The Snake Handler, or the story of the washed-up astronaut who marooned himself in Disney World, or the story of the two doomed baseball teams, blue and gray, playing nine on the eve of Chancellorsville, or The King of Freestyle, or any of the dozen other imaginary novels that had fluttered past like admirals and lyrebirds while I labored with my shovel in the ostrich pen of Wonder Boys. Then I indulged the equally usual, not quite as pleasurable fantasy of taking Crabtree into my confidence, telling him that I was still years away from finishing Wonder Boys, and throwing myself on his mercy. Then I thought of Joe Fahey and, as always, rolled a blank sheet of paper into the machine.
I worked for four hours, typing steadily, lowering myself on a very thin cord into the dank and worm-ridden hole of an ending I'd already tried three times before. This one would oblige me to go back through the previous two-thousand-odd pages to flatten out and marginalize one of the present main characters and to eliminate another entirely, but I thought that of the five false conclusions to the novel I'd come up with in the last month, it was probably my best shot. While I worked I told myself lies. Writers, unlike most people, tell their best lies when they are alone. Ending the book this way, I told myself, would work out for the best; this was in fact the very ending my book had been straining toward all along. Crabtree's visit, viewed properly, was a kind of creative accident, a gift from God, a hammer blow to loosen all the windows my imagination had long since painted shut. I would finish it sometime tomorrow, hand it over to Crabtree, and thus save both our careers.
August 30, 2007
Remarkable
This might be my new favorite site. Lots to say but not in the mood to write today. I just find that site really moving - beautiful photographs - illuminating - interesting commentary ...
my city....
still has the power to take my breath away.
The Plain Girl
Below you'll find more from this piece. I wrote this a couple years ago. Pulling old shit out now, to take another look. Lots of writing stuff - much of it just pot-boilers, but it's important to "exercise" ye olde muscles.
The Plain Girl
In between her freshman and her sophomore year of college, Maggie did a season of summer-stock theatre at a barn playhouse in Vermont. She had never gone away from home before without her parents, at least not for that long, and so she was spectacularly on her own, surrounded by actors and dancers from New York City, a wild crew who drank copious amounts of alcohol, had an inordinate amount of sex with one another, and, in general, behaved like raving lunatics. They all liked to play charades and card games, and they took on, as a group, putting together a tremendously complex jigsaw puzzle that they found in the house, a feat which took them all summer to accomplish. Someone also initiated a "movie night": everyone had to write a #1 favorite movie onto a slip of paper and put it into a hat. And every Wednesday night, one of the slips was drawn, that movie was rented, and the entire cast convened to watch. The gypsies accepted Maggie, the virginal college girl from Rhode Island, into their clan, and within two days of rehearsals, the entire cast had become one cyclonic organism. The camaraderie of theatre.
They were put up in a huge clapboard house, with a wrap-around porch, a cavernous yard where cast members played drunken volleyball deep into the night. Rehearsals went on all day, and were grueling. The season included California Suite, 1776, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Maggie, plain Maggie, became a chorus girl. She wore wigs. She sang. She danced.
Within a week, romances began to break out in the cast. Intrigues blossomed. Girls cried backstage. Couples had furious whispered fights in the dressing room during the overture. People had affairs, although "affair" is perhaps not quite the right word for infidelity amongst "couples" who had only hooked up three weeks before.
Summer-stock was a pressure-cooker atmosphere, a time outside of time. Normal rules of everyday life grew pale, less important, personalities disintegrated. Even for Maggie. She too had an adventure that summer, an adventure that she managed to keep secret from the entire wild-world of the clapboard house, a house where gossip was a way of life, a given. Not much of the gossip was mean-spirited, but it was certainly incessant. The fact that Maggie could have an entire life-changing adventure without anyone catching on was a testament to Maggie's self-protective ability. The deeps had been stirred. But nothing on the outside changed.
She met a young man her first time going to the local church, a 10-minute walk away from her sprawling gypsy-house. The young man's name was Bobby, and he was home from George Washington University for the summer. They met at the coffee and donuts reception in the rectory after mass; he had come over and started talking to her. He was fascinated that she was an actress, a concept foreign to him, at least in terms of it being a "job" that you could "have". He was funny. He made her laugh. He asked if he could give her a call sometime, seeing as she would be in town for the whole summer. She said No, she really needed to focus on doing a good job this summer, she didn't have time. He took this relatively philosophically.
The next Sunday, they met at mass again, had coffee and donuts again, and again he made her laugh. He asked her again if he could take her out sometime. And again, she said no, but she recognized suddenly that the entire thing was a game, and that he would keep asking her out, and that eventually she would say Yes. She could feel the "Yes" impulse in her. He didn’t seem like a sex-freak. He had a sunny face, light eyes, and a mop of blonde hair. He was addicted to Ultimate Frisbee. He looked like a very good-natured Heat Miser. Again, the Heat-Miser took the rejection philosophically, and said, "All right. See you next week."
The next week, he asked her again, and she, mouth full of stale sugary donut, said Yes.
She didn't tell anyone in the house. She feared that they would pounce like vultures on her little experience, and ruin it by talking about it too much. Or try to analyze it. Or pump it up beforehand. But there was some anxiety. She was 19. She'd never been kissed. How was some random Heat Miser supposed to deal with all of that?
So she put in a call to Constance, who was also doing summer-stock at a small theatre in Ohio, and having a terrible terrible time involving embarrassing costumes, bitchy dancers, competitive queens, and vain uninteresting leading men. "The plays aren't even good," Constance hissed under her breath to Maggie on the public phone in the duplex she was sharing with the rest of the horrible cast, "We're doing some unknown Gothic melodrama. And you know what? It's unknown for a reason, do you hear what I'm saying? It should have stayed unknown. I hate my life." Constance lived for calls from Maggie, so that she could experience vicariously the carefree scenes of volleyball, jigsaw puzzles, and good-natured gossip. When Maggie first described the concept of "movie night" to Constance, she was greeted by a gloomy silence, and then came Constance's flat voice, "Fuck you." But still, Constance wanted to hear more, and more. "So tell me– any cute guys? All of mine are either gay or dickheads who are straight."
Maggie told Constance about "this guy from church." "He's asked me out three times now. I keep saying no."
"Why? Is he ugly? A psycho?"
"No, I just – That's not what I'm here for."
"But how do you know, Maggie? How do you know exactly what it is you're there for?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean – can't you do two things at once? Maybe you're also there so that you could meet him. If he's nice and all."
"Yeah. He seems nice."
"So? You believe in God and everything."
"Yeah?"
"God works in mysterious ways—" Constance suddenly snapped over her shoulder, "Brandon, I am gonna kick your ass if you don't stop tapping your foot at me. I am ON THE PHONE RIGHT NOW."
A 5 for the day ...
Obviously. (ahem)
But Alan's words about Kurt Russell's final moment in the film brought tears to my eyes. It was one of the best acting performances of that year - and I never get tired of saying it. PROPS must go to him. Hugely under-rated actor.
The Books: "Mysteries of Pittsburgh" (Michael Chabon)
Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:
Mysteries of Pittsburgh - by Michael Chabon. I wrote a bit about my regard for this book, Chabon's first novel, here - and I'm not surprised, but I even reference the "scene" from the book I'm excerpting below. It's been years since I've read the book - but I remember the scene vividly - to me, it's one of the great introductions of a character. We keep hearing her name at the party - "Jane Bellwether" - "we need to find Jane Bellwether" ... and our narrator has never met her, has no idea what the big deal is ... or what exactly it is that Jane can give them (some of the details are lost to me) ... so they wander through this raging party, looking for Jane. And then: she appears. Awesome introduction of character.
Michael Chabon was 24 years old when his book came out. And for once - time has shown that he was deserving of all that hype. He was hailed as the next great American novelist. And whaddya know. He is. How often does that happen?? I love his writing so much - and it's cool to know that I was there from the beginning. I freakin' LOVED Mysteries of Pittsburgh - I still remember where I was when I read it (I think it might have been one of the first books I read after moving to Chicago - a vivid crazy time ... and a perfect book to read, anyway, when you're in the middle of a transition). Then when Mitchell arrived to Chicago - I passed the book off to him. He HAD to read it! He read it - and I had such a good time, reliving it through his eyes. It just goes to show you that you don't have to re-invent the wheel. You don't have to come up with the next best thing. But you had BEST know how to write! Mysteries of Pittsburgh is a coming of age novel, plain and simple. A group of college friends navigate, fight, fuck, fall in love, cheat, talk, drink beer, make mistakes, experiment sexually - things shift, move, break, meld ... No big revelations in terms of plot. It is what is expected. But the writing. Even from the first sentence:
At the beginning of the summer I had lunch with my father, the gangster, who was in town for the weekend to transact some of his vague business.
A great first sentence. I must read on. It's an attention-getter, to be sure, but in general I find that Chabon's style does not call too much attention to itself - and yet it is undeniably beautiful writing. Can you tell I adore him? I adore him even more because he has actually developed in such an interesting way (what happened to him AFTER Mysteries of Pittsburgh and before Wonder Boys is almost as interesting as one of his books - fascinating) - He was hailed as this new writer of unbelievable promise, and for once the powers-that-be got it right.
So about the excerpt .
You know people who are like celebrities - even though they're not famous to the world? People who are famous in a certain circle ... who are revered and watched and admired and envied - in the same way that celebs are? Someone who, even though they are not famous, they have star quality? It may be more of a thing that happens when we are young ... you know, like the popular kids in high school and how they were like famous people to those of us not popular. We knew who was dating who, we took note of what they wore, we were always aware of them - even if we were sitting at another table, or across the room. They were KNOWN.
Whether or not this attention was warranted is irrelevant. It's what happens.
And sometimes ... (like with my friend from grade school and high school Keith M.) - the person is a star. They have that magic THING about them, that aura ... people want to be near a person like that, people vie for attention, or status ... they just want to be CLOSE to the magic. The glow. Whatever ineffable thing this star-quality person has.
It's what big movie stars must feel all the time.
Jane Bellwether and her boyfriend - whose name is Cleveland - both have that.
They are famous. They are different. Cleveland is a great character - my favorite in the book - a wild guy who rides a motorcycle - and who is seen as the key to all things good and right. He is beloved. (I need to read the book again.)
But here is our first glimpse of Jane - her name, though, has already come up multiple times. Because she's famous. "Where's Jane?" "We need to talk to Jane." "You need to meet Jane."
So here she is.
Excerpt from Mysteries of Pittsburgh - by Michael Chabon.
To find Jane Bellwether, who acquired a last name and a few vague features during our search, we passed out of the jumping seraglio and through a long series of quieter, darker rooms, until we came to the kitchen, which was white. All the lights shone from overhead, and, as is sometimes the case with kitchens at large parties, an unwholesome-looking group, all the heavy drinkers and eaters, had convened in the fluorescence. Its members all lookeda t us as we entered the kitchen, and I had the distinct impression that a word had not been said in there for several minutes prior to our arrival.
"Say! Hi, Takeshi," Arthur said to one of two blenched Japanese who stood near the refrigerator.
"Arthur Lecomte!" he yelled. He was well more than half in the bag. "This is my friend Ichizo. He goes to C-MU."
"Hi, Ichizo. Glad to meet you."
"My friend," Takeshi continued, his voice rising, "is very horny. My friend say that if I were a girl, he would fuck me."
I laughed, but Arthur stood straight, looked deeplyl, beautifully sympathetic for perhaps a tenth of a second, and nodded, with that fine, empty courtesy he seemed to show everyone. He had an effortless genius for manners; remarkable, perhaps, just because it was unique among people his age. It seemed to me that Arthur, with his old, strange courtliness, would triumph over any scene he chose to make; that in a world made miserable by frankness, his handsome condescension, his elitism, and his perfect lack of candor were fatal gifts, and I wanted to serve in his corps and to be socially graceful.
"Does any of you know Jane Bellwether?" said Arthur.
The louts, so morose, so overfed and overliquored, said no. None looked at us, and it seemed to me, in the exaggerating way that things seemed to me that exaggerated evening, as though they could not stand the sight of Arthur, or of me in his magic company, in our Technicolor health and high spirits, in our pursuit of the purportedly splendid Jane Bellwether.
"Try on the patio," one, some kind of Arab, finally said, through a white moutful of shrimp. "There are many people sporting out there."
We came out into the yellow light of the back porch, that estival old yellow of Bug Lite, which had illuminated the backyards and soft moth bodies of so many summers past. It was untrue; there were not many people sporting on the murky lawn, though a large group had gathered with their drinks and their light sweaters. Only one young woman sported, and the rest watched her.
"That's Jane," Arthur said.
She stood alone in the dim center of the huge yard, driving imperceptible balls all across the neighborhood. As we clunked down the wooden steps to the quiet crunch of the grass, I watched her stroke. It was my father's ideal: a slight, philosophical tilt to her neck, her backswing a tacit threat, her rigid, exultant follow-through held for one aristocratic fraction of a second too long. She looked tall, thin, and, in the bad light, rather gray in her white golf skirt and shirt. Her face was blank with concentration. Thik! and she msiled, shaking out her yellow hair, and we clapped. She fished in her pocket for a ball and teed it.
"She's plastered," a girl said, as though that were all the explanation we might require.
"She's beautiful," I heard myself say. Some of the spectators turned toward me. "I mean, her stroke is absolutely perfect. Look at that."
She smashed another one, and a few moments later I heard the distant sound of the ball striking metal.
"Jane!" Arthur shouted. She turned and lowered her shining club, and the yellow light caught her full in the face and fell across the flawless front of her short skirt. She put a hand to her forehead to try to make out the caller among us shadows on the patio.
"Arthur, hi," she said. She smiled, and stepped through the grass to him.
"Arthur, she's whose girlfriend?"
Half a dozen people answered me.
"Cleveland's," they said.
August 29, 2007
The number
So okay, I'm going to brag now. It's my blog and I feel like bragging because I've been working really hard. I met with my trainer today. It is the mid-point of my 10 week kickboxing intensive. I took a week off to go to the Cape and have felt a bit, shall we say, OFF since I returned. Like suddenly everything was uphill. But I'm staying with the program - I have completely changed how I eat and it's been major - I have never been a person who habitually eats bad things, never been into fast food or fried food - I don't have a sweet tooth ... but WHEN I eat and how often has been a major problem. Basically I don't eat. I UNDER-eat. So now on this program I feel like I have to eat all the mo-fuckin' time. 6 times a day?? This is so counter-intuitive to me. I have to nibble all day long - 6 small meals a day - in order to make my quota. So it's been a huge adjustment. I pack lunches, I cook in bulk, I have little sandwich baggies of carrots and celery sticks - I time it out - so that I'm eating every 3 or 4 hours. It feels WRONG. But that's only because I've been starving myself (unsuccessfully) for nigh on 10 years. So there's THAT. Changing my eating habits has been so empowering, it really has. I feel in control. I have grabbed the reins. And if I want to sweve - then I KNOW I'm swerving. It's not about never having a glass of wine, or a piece of pizza or whatever. It's about being in control of when I snack, how I snack, and how often. I carry around my food chart. None of this is IN me, yet - as in habitual. I need to be a Nazi for a while, so I am.
Today was my mid-point and I had to weigh in and also get my body fat measured. I was, naturally, scared. I've felt off. I also have my period right now (I just have to quote an exchange I had with M., my longtime boyfriend in Chicago. I announced to him once, "I have my period right now." - It was in context, by the way, it wasn't just a random outburst. But still, had to let him know: "I have my period right now." And he replied flatly, "What else is new." hahahaha It's not that I menstruate more than once a month - it just seemed like it. It still seems like it.) - so I feel like: Oh dammit, YOU again, period? Why now? When I have my weigh-in etc? I swear I gain 15 pounds every month over a 3-day period and then lose it all in one fell swoop. So I was stressed.
I get on the scale. I do not look at the number because I do not want to look at the number and I am sick of dealing with THE NUMBER. I am not doing this intensive to change that number. I can't look at it that way - because that way doom and failure lie. I am doing this to get healthy, fit, strong.
Then I do the body-fat test with the little gizmo.
She says to me, "Okay, do you want the good news or the bad news?"
I shouted, "TELL ME EVERYTHING IMMEDIATELY."
She said, "The bad news is you've only lost 1.2 pounds."
So from the 4 pounds I had lost at the one week mark - I'm back up. I deflated. That damn NUMBER. The number on the scale runs our lives, our identities, how we feel about ourselves and relate to the world. At least that's true for me.
She said, "And the good news is - you've lost 6% body fat."
That is meaningless to me. It sounds so small. Is that good?
She went on, "Let me give you some perspective. Normally, when people do this 10-week program - they lose 7% body fat over the whole 10 weeks. You;ve lost 6% in 5 weeks."
So. What? How is this possible??
Obviously, I am gaining muscle. I have not lost weight - but I can tell my body is different ... and the loss in body fat is why.
She was so cute, she said, "I hate to sound all girlie and everything - but I know that we women obsess about that number on the scale. It's all about how much we weigh. But what you have to get is that it is amazing how much body fat you have lost - it is highly unusual - have people told you you looked different?"
"Yes, they have as a matter of fact."
"Do your clothes feel different? Do you look different to yourself in the mirror?"
"I am not a valid judge about my appearance. I feel like a fat cow at all times. So I am not to be trusted."
"You need to listen to the people who have told you they see a difference. I know you want that weight to go down - but it's going to be in the reduction of body fat that you really see a major transformation in your actual body. So that's great news and I'm really proud of you. Seriously."
Then we did my session with the weights and it was like being coached by an emissary from Beelezebub's entourage. Seriously, this woman is demonic. I go into this ZONE - where my muscles are literally (they feel that way anyway) BURNING. They burn. And she will not let me stop, or give up, or slow down. She is a messenger from the freakin' underworld and I love her.
But it;s over now - and I have lost 6% of my body fat in 5 weeks - and I'm just gonna keep going, dammit, and now I need to watch To Live and Die in LA (I love you, Dean Stockwell!!) and put my damn feet up.
And I actually AM going to think about the number. But not the number on the scale.
I'm going to fall asleep tonight murmuring "6%, 6%, 6% ..." in a mood of utter bliss. That's the number I like.
This Friday: 9:30 pm at The Duplex: Jackie Sidle
One of my best friends in the world, Jackie (she of brown wool leg-wraps fame, and other essential tales of hilarity), is making her New York cabaret debut this Friday at the famed Duplex in Greenwich Village. It's a prime-time spot, too - 9:30 pm.
I'm so proud of her. Jackie has a brilliance to her - it's been there ever since I met her, when we were in college. She's one of the funniest women I have ever met (seriously. She's apocalyptically funny) - and has a beautiful singing voice as well. I am so so psyched for her, and can't WAIT to see her in action.
New Yorkers, if you're interested, come check it out!
Date: Friday, August 31, 2007
Place: THE DUPLEX
61 Christopher Street
(at 7th Ave.)
NYC, NY 10014
Info:
(212) 255-5438
Time: 9:30pm-10:30pm
Price:$5 Cover & a 2 Drink Minimum
You can make reservations by clicking here .
Go, Jackie!!
Daily Dean Stockwell Fix: Quantum Leap: Get ready!!
My life right now is really busy - there's much writing, and television, and kickboxing, and dudes from Trinidad, and keeping my plants alive, and planning a trip, and writing more, and procrastinating about the writing, and talking with friends and family, and cooking, and taking pictures, and also exchanging casual banter with television stars in random elevators. You know, my plate is full.
But I am (eventually - once all THAT is done) going to start a Quantum Leap ongoing thing - which is going to be a lot of fun (for me, and ... er... others). I want to treat the show as if it's on NOW - and do an episode by episode breakdown (Sheila-fashion) - what I notice, what I like, what makes me roll my eyes, blah-dee-blah. I won't skip an episode. I haven't re-watched all of them yet - I'm only thru season 3 now so I have two more to go ... and I don't want to start this project until I've seen the whole thing (I mean: seen it again, since I used to watch the show religiously.) I want each piece I write to be detailed - almost to an obsessive level. Actors who show up on the show, people who do good jobs - people who are too corny - music choices I like (and this is already controversial since they released the DVD without a lot of the music) - what happens in each episode, and also - the execution thereof. You know, like a movie review. That's my plan anyway. Ambitious, yes - but I need a writing project that's ongoing, not TOO hard and that I can do in my voluminous spare time.
Anyhoo. That's my plan. To become as big a fangirl as I possibly can.
But for now. I'm focused on keeping my plants alive. And keeping in touch with friends. And my parents. And handling my aching muscles. And writing every day. Make voyages. Attempt them. There's nothing else.
Oh - and my story of the eclipse the other night is a funny one - almost too perfect, especially since I had just seen that Werewolf movie ... but I'll save it for another time.
Daily Dean Stockwell fix below: (to prime the pump for all the Quantum Leap fans out there):
hahahahahaha
This is gonna be fun!
The Books: "The Alienist" (Caleb Carr)
It is now time to say goodbye to Truman Capote.
Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:
The Alienist - by Caleb Carr.
I have to confess - I remember almost nothing about this book - which I find weird, because I remember loving it when I first read it!
I read this book when it first came out, although it's not really my thing. Actually, it is my thing - with the whole historical New York setting, which I love - and the serial killer plotline - which I love even more. I love any book about the psychology of killers (having just finished 2 books in a row on Leopold & Loeb ... the theme continues) But it was one of those moments when you look around on the subway and you see EVERYONE reading the same book ... and in general, I don't read books like that. Not that I have anything against them, morally or whatever - but if everyone's reading it, I probably will not be into it myself. At any given moment you can look around and see people reading Nicholas Sparks. Or Mitch Albom. I'm not reading those people. But they're obviously massive bestselling authors - which is why you look around and see everyone reading their books - but I am not their audience. Just not. There have been a couple of times when my taste coincided with the zeitgeist moment - and The Alienist was one of them. I can't remember why I picked it up - because i'm usually turned off by 100% agreement, as in: a neverending chorus of "you have to read this book!" What can I say. I'm contrary. The weird thing is, though, I can remember my experience of reading The Alienist (I could not put that book down. Total page-turner) - but I can remember almost nothing about it. I know there was a group of people who came together to solve the crime. I know that one of them was a woman. I remember loving all of the characters - and kind of wishing that I was back in time and part of the group. And the whole setting of New York in 1896 was SO well done - I truly felt like I was reading a novel that had been written IN the 1890s - it had such a breath of reality to it, and it made me look at the streets of Manhattan in a new way (especially Union Square - although I was unable to find the Union Square section this morning ... so I'm wondering if that was actually from his second book Angel of Darkness?) Don't know. I remember almost nothing about The Alienist - no plot points, nothing ... But I do remember these elements very well.
I wonder why on EARTH it hasn't been made into a film. It seems like it is MADE for a Hollywood movie treatment ... it feels very cinematic to me, inherently dramatic - with a great cast of characters ...
I liked the book so much I even read the second one in the series (which, I think, stopped at 2) - and that one I wasn't so wacky about. But I think he should have kept going. I would have definitely kept reading. The main draw about the book was the group of investigators and their interactions - it was a pleasaure to read about them.
Anyhoo, I flipped thru the book this morning and was amazed by how much I didn't remember. And I couldn't find the Union Square section which I DID remember and wanted to excerpt ... so here's another excerpt I tripped over, that seems to capture the true time-machine appeal of this book.
Especially since I live here in New York - and I feel proprietary about the city - it's MINE - I loved the sepia-toned landscapes in the book, with the different skyline - but some of the buildings are still there, buildings I know well. I love that.
Excerpt from The Alienist - by Caleb Carr.
True to Kreizler's prediction, Harris Markowitz proved thoroughly unsuitable as a suspect in our case. Aside from being short, stout, and well into his sixties - and thus wholly unlike the physical speciment described by the Isaacsons at Delmonico's - he was obviously quite out of his mind. He'd killed his grandchildren, he claimed, in order to save them from what he perceived to be a monstrously evil world, whose salient aspects he described in a series of rambling, highly confused outbursts. Such poor systemization of unreasonably fearful thoughts and beliefs, as well as the apparently complete lack of concern for his own fate that Markowitz exhibited, often characterized cases of dementia praecox, Kreizler told me as we left Bellevue. But while Markowitz clearly had nothing to do with our business, the visit was still valuable, as Laszlo had hoped it would be, in helping us determine aspects of our killer's personality by way of comparison. Obviouslly, our man was not murdering children out of any perverse desire to attend to their spiritual well-being. The furious mutilation of the bodies after death made that much plain. Nor, clearly, was he unconcerned with what would happen to him as a result of his acts. But most of all, it was apparent from his open display of his handiwork - a display that was, as Laszlo had explained, an implicit entreaty for apprehension - that the killings did disturb some part of him. In other words, there was evidence in the bodies not of the murderer's derangement but of his sanity.
I puzzled with that concept all the way back to Number 808 Broadway, but on arrival my attention was distracted by my first really clear-headed perusal of the place that, as Sara had said, would be our home for the foreseeable future. It was a handsome yellow-brick building, which Kreizler told me had been designed by James Renwick, the architect responsible for the Gothic edifice of Grace Church next door, as well as for the more subdued St. Denis Hotel across the street. The southern windows of our headquarters looked directly out onto the churchyard, which lay in a dark shadow cast by Grace's enormous tapering spire. There was quite a parochial, serene feel about this little stretch of Broadway, despite the fact that we were smack in the center of one of the city's busiest shopping strips: besides McCreery's, there were stores selling everything from dry goods to boots to photographs within steps of Number 808. The single greatest monument to all thes commerce was an enormous cast-iron building across Tenth Street from the church, formerly A.T. Stewart's department store, currently operated by Hilton, Hughes and Company, and eventually to gain its greatest fame as Wanamaker's.
The elevator at Number 808 was a large, caged affair, quite new, and it took us quietly back up to the sixth floor. Here we discovered that great progress had been made during our absence. Things were now so arranged that it actually looked like human affairs were being conducted out of the place, though one would still have been hard-pressed to say precisely what kind. At five o'clock sharp each of us sat at one of the five desks, from which vantage points we could clearly see and discuss matters with one another. There was nervous but pleasant chatter as we settled in, and real camaraderie when we began to discuss the events of our various days As the evening sun dipped above the Hudson, sending rich golden light over the rooftops of western Manhattan and through our Gothic front windows, I realized that we had become, with remarkable speed, a working unit.
August 28, 2007
Gene Krupa
Awesome photo of the great drummer.
Here's Krupa in action - accompanying Barbara Stanwyck in "Drum Boogie" - from the movie Ball of Fire.
There are a couple of shots of him drumming in that particular clip that make me laugh out loud. He is so IN it. For example: Just WATCH him at around 2:16 in the clip ... like ... chomping gum, grinning, banging, his hair flapping - exhilarating!!
Another great clip - he's so nuts!! Freakin' sexy, too.
Douglas Fairbanks, JR.
The Shamus writes about volume 1 of his autobiography. I think I might have to pick it up. Sounds very enjoyable.
A must-read:
A thoughtful and really moving piece of writing. Thank you, Matt. I've been staying away from most commentary about Owen Wilson (and all the simplistic and ignorant attitudes about fame, comedians, and depression - in particular - that are ususally par for the course with such commentary) - because I knew it would grate on my nerves. Your piece is affirming and sensitive - not just about Wilson, and what you picked up on in his personality - but also about depression. For me, he's always been a bright spot in any movie he shows up in. Unlike the folks who somehow find this ODD, in lieu of his suicide attempt - it makes perfect sense to me. Despair doesn't look just one way. And one is not incompatible with the other. Let's hope he recovers, and can continue to be productive.
August 27, 2007
You know what sucks?
When you're the White House press secretary (and strangely, you look like John Dean and you also live in the Watergate, even though the Watergate scandal hasn't even broke yet), and you're on the President's private helicopter - with the President and the Prime Minister of Red China - and you're supposed to be the President's right hand man ... but the full moon is rising over the Washington Monument ... and ever since you had that run-in with a wolf and a creepy gypsy lady on a lonely road in Budapest you've been a bit ... OFF, shall we say ... and as the President (who's kind of a moron, he really NEEDS you) tries to speak intelligently to the PM, who can barely understand English, you sit off to the side ... and your panic grows ... and you realize that ... you're not feeling ... quite right ...
I'm not feelin' so good. Maybe I ate some bad crabcakes.
Just breathe. It might be just a migraine.
Fuck. There's that insistent underbite that always gives me away.
To quantum leap into the future and quote a certain show that will eventually make my name for all time: "Oh, boy ..."
I hate my teeth.
I have now surrendered to my hairy-faced befanged destiny. Foreign policy be damned.
I am press secretary no more.
I am werewolf.
The throngs wait below. They have no idea that the pentagram has been revealed, the moon is high in the sky, the crucial silver bullets are far from this location, and a werewolf is hungry, dammit.
So yeah. All that sucks.
But you know what doesn't suck? Getting to watch such a film. And getting to watch my favorite actor right now do his thing. I consider this to be one of his bravest and most uninhibited performances - and I'll talk a bit about that, because it might seem like a silly thing to say.
One of the reasons I say this is that the film was made in 1973. Dean Stockwell has said that during the 70s and early 80s he couldn't "get arrested", let alone get a job. He heard from his buddies Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson that directors in Hollywood were saying shit like, "We need a Dean Stockwell type for this part ..." and Hopper and Nicholson were like, "Uhm ... how 'bout gettin' the real thing, peeps? Our friend needs a JOB." But his career was iced. It was over. Werewolf of Washington was one of the few jobs he got during that time - and so, there's something lean and hungry and insanely intense about him in this film. He NEEDS the job - and he fucking PLAYS the part with reckless abandon. He has said he has never worked harder on a part. It's almost uncomfortable at times - the scene in the bowling alley when he breaks down in tears ... You are watching him unravel.
And it's messy - gripping, in a weird way - he pulls you in. There's something completely available about Stockwell (at all times - but espeically so in this movie).
It's never good for an actor to get too comfortable. I'm not saying being a starving artist is great shakes, it's not. What I mean is: there's a certain point where stars get too big to take chances. (Tommy Lee Jones has been quite eloquent about this. "I'd love to go back to the stage - do some Moliere, some Shakespeare - but I can't afford to now." etc.) But here is Stockwell - with no career to speak of - doing his damndest to keep afloat financially ... and he acts the shit out of this part. It's over the top (as well it should be - uhm, it's a freakin' werewolf movie. You don't want kitchen-sink realism in a werewolf movie) - and there's something beautifully affirming about it for me. Because the movie flopped - the Watergate scandal broke while they were shooting, and the parallels were too potent - and nobody felt like seeing a political satire when things were actually so dire. The movie died (although it has its following now.) So it's a thankless part - and Stockwell was not thanked for it - by having his career resurrected. It would be another 12 goddamn years before Paris, Texas catapulted him back to where he should be. 12 years. And the man was in his 40s. When it seems like he SHOULD have found some ease and comfort - the same level of ease and comfort he had had as a kid actor. Nope. That was not in the cards for Stockwell. True and lasting success would not really come for him until he was in his 50s. But here he is - in a movie which was, for all intents and purposes, invisible ... DOING HIS JOB and doing it well. A movie made in the middle of Dean Stockwell's leanest years of anonymity when he never made more than $10,000 a year.
It's easy to admire the performances of those who are at the top. Who get the best scripts sent to them. Who can pick and choose. But those who don't have choices ... or not as many ... what do THEY do with their talent? At this point in my life, that is the question that interests me. And I think that might be why the Dean Stockwell obsession has come into my life right now like a force from above. I really need to learn that life lesson (and I have to learn it over and over again - because I keep forgetting. It's so easy to get caught up in where I feel I SHOULD be right now, and what I SHOULD have accomplished, and where is my husband and my brood of children? I thought they all would have shown up by now. And where is my red carpet, because I'm THIS age now and what has happened to me? Where did it all go? Is it too late for me? It is sometimes a daily struggle to not "go there", so to speak. To keep going, to keep doing the work, to follow Tennessee Williams' advice: "Make voyages - attempt them - there's nothing else". Or like Herb Brooks shouting at his players over and over as the minutes ticked down in the final period on February 22, 1980: "Play your game. Play. Your. Game." Over and over and over. Never ever forget to Play. Your. Game.)
And a movie like The Werewolf of Washington - and Dean Stockwell's ferocious performance - is a great reminder, for me, of all of that.
More screengrabs here:
Jack pleads his case, and it involves push pins and pentagrams.
"Whatever you say, Mr. President."
"I think that damn wolf bit me."
Headin' to work.
What? Huh? Is someone speaking to me? I can't hear you because my hands are swelling up into claws.
This was one of my favorite shots. The car comes driving up to the camera - it's night-time - a sort of Katherine Graham equivalent is driving - hugely powerful in DC circles and therefore a threat to the administration's plans. She also, sadly, has the mark of the beast in her palm so she must die. The car comes into the frame from the road beyond - and as it gets close - we can see a creature crouched on top of the car. It's done with no cuts. And this was a bare bones budget, so I'm sure it was actually Stockwell and not a stunt werewolf.
Intense scene. Hilarious - but played to the hilt. He MUST be chained up so he cannot kill again - and yet his lover shows up, and refuses to believe him and tries to unchain him - and he freaks OUT. He shouts something along the lines of, "I'M A VICIOUS BEAST WITH A TASTE FOR BLOOD. FOR GOD'S SAKE, DON'T UNCHAIN ME." It's genius.
He glances down at his hands during an important stressful meeting with the President and all the top brass in the military (Stockwell's dad plays one of the generals - no lines, but whatever, there he is.) Anyway - Jack is trying to hold it all together - but glances down and sees that his hands are ...
Oh God, no!!!
He basically is struggling NOT to become a wolf during the whole meeting and it's a great acting job, really fun.
Smile while you still can, Jack.
I think that's a hot picture. I'm just sayin'.
"Check out the scar on my chest."
"For God's sake, put your shirt on."
Stockwell quivers with conviction - he MUST show the psychiatrist the scar.
Shots like this are what elevate the movie into satire. It's fun.
"What's it for?"
Oh God, man, don't ask!
On a foggy night in Budapest, with my Commie girlfriend Gisele ... I had a run-in with a wolf and a gypsy. And my life was never the same again ...
I love you. You are the President's daughter. I work for your dad. I am also a werewolf. I am fucked.
Poor Jack. He hangs up the phone from making a date with his lover - and bursts into tears. The moon will rise tonight. He says something to himself like, "Please don't let me go thru this again ..." He is not a HAPPY werewolf, is what I'm trying to say. He is a werewolf tormented with guilt by his own thirst for blood.
God bless you, Dean Stockwell. You are chained to a chair.
Hot kiss. But he is still completely wrapped in heavy chains and there is something I find strangely endearing and also hot about all of it. Even as I realize: oh my god, this is so stupid.
"Are you there, God? It's me. The werewolf of Washington."
Looking at that shot makes me realize why he was first choice to do a planned (but never completed) biopic of James Dean, after Dean's death in the 50s. Stockwell didn't want to do it - said he had no interest in impersonating Dean, and also found no interest in playing an actor - but his name was bandied about quite a bit as the guy for the job. I'm kind of thankful that movie was never made.
Faces I Love, part 4
(For those of you unfamiliar with this - here's part 1, part 2, and part 3)
The wonderful Dennis started it all here ... and I LOVED the idea.
To think about faces I love - and not just because of their physical beauty or that I'm crushing on them. There are many reasons to love a face. And then to search out photos that really illuminate what it is about the face I love so much. And to NOT EXPLAIN. To just post the photos. There was a simplicity to the approach that really appealed to me.
It goes along with the theme of "celebration" that I want to create on this blog.
So Dennis: THANK YOU for the idea!! (More from Dennis in this same series here, and here)
Oh, and I think I've repeated myself a couple times here with a couple faces. So be it.
And here's round 4!
FACES I LOVE
Both.
All 3 of 'em, bless their hearts.
"This next one is me if I had posed for El Greco."
.... "this is what I would look like while relaxing between Islamic rages."....
.... Man, I needed that laugh. The photos did me in ("the hills definitely have eyes") - I'm STILL laughing about it ...
Kids on a slide
There's something infectious about the expressions on the faces of these three kids. I find myself smiling, too.
Showbiz anecdote
Director Henry Hathaway was doing a movie - starring Robert Mitchum. First day of shooting he comes up to Mitchum and says, "Hi, Bob! I just wanted to give you a heads up: sometimes, when I'm doing a movie, I get frustrated and I'll cuss an actor out, call him names. I just want you to know that it happens sometimes, I don't want you to take it personally."
Mitchum replied, "Thanks for letting me know, Henry. I should give you a heads up that when someone cusses me out or calls me names, I like to punch that person in the nose. It happens sometimes, and I don't want you to take it personally."
The Books: "Music for Chameleons" - 'Nocturnal Turnings, or How Siamese Twins Have Sex' (Truman Capote)
Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:
Music for Chameleons - by Truman Capote. Today's excerpt is from 'Nocturnal Turnings, or How Siamese Twins Have Sex'. This is the final piece in Music for Chameleons and it is a "transcription" of a conversation Truman Capote had with himself, as he lay tossing and turning in bed one lonely night. One side of his personality interviews the other. It's incredibly narcissistic, but because I find him an interesting character as well as a wonderful writer and storyteller, I love it. For example, the excerpt below. Now he was a huge name-dropper (as should be probably obvious by now) - but I don't really have a problem with that, either - not like some folks do. I love to hear stories about famous people, and if someone's got the dish on someone else - I'm on board. I read Perez Hilton. Of course I do. Anyway, here is Capote's story about someone famous - an idol of his. He is ruminating to himseslf about "great conversationalists" he has known. He lists some names. Then tells this story.
Excerpt from Music for Chameleons - by Truman Capote - 'Nocturnal Turnings, or How Siamese Twins Have Sex'.
When I was eighteen I met the person whose conversation has impressed me the most, perhaps becaue the person in question is the one who has most impressed me. It happened as follows:
In New York, on East Seventy-ninth Street, there is a very pleasant shelter known as the New York Society Library, and during 1942 I spent many afternoons there researching a book I intended writing but never did. Occasionally, I saw a woman there whose appearance rather mesmerized me - her eyes especially: blue, the pale brilliant cloudless blue of prairie skies. But even without this singular feature, her face ws interesting - firm-jawed, handsome, a bit androgynous. Pepper-salt hair parted in the middle. Sixty-five, thereabouts. A lesbian? Well, yes.
One January day I emerged from the library into the twilight to find a heavy snowfall in progress. The lady with the blue eyes, wearing a nicely cut black coat with a sable collar, was waiting at the curb. A gloved, taxi-summoning hand was poised in the air, but there were no taxis. She looked at me and smiled and said: "Do you think a cup of hot chocolate would help? There's a Longchamps around the corner."
She ordered hot chocolate; I asked for a "very" dry martini. Half seriously, she said, "Are you old enough?"
"I've been drinking since I was fourteen. Smoking, too."
"You don't look more than fourteen now."
"I'll be nineteen next September." Then I told her a few things: that I was from New Orleans, that I'd published several short stories, that I wanted to be a writer and was working on a novel. And she wanted to know what American writers I liked. "Hawthorne, Henry James, Emily Dickinson ..." "No living." Ah, well, hmm, let's see: how difficult, the rivalry factor being what it is, for one contemporary author, or would-be author, to confess admiration for another. At last I said, "Not Hemingway - a really dishonest man, the closet-everything. Not Thomas Wolfe - all that purple upchuck; of course, he isn't living. Faulkner, sometimes: Light in August. Fitzgerald, sometimes: Diamond as Big as the Ritz, Tender is the Night. I really like Willa Cather. Have you read My Mortal Enemy?"
With no particular expression, she said, "Actually, I wrote it."
I had seen photographs of Willa Cather - long-ago ones, made perhaps in the early twenties. Softer, homelier, less elegant than my companion. Yet I knew instantly that she was Willa Cather, and it was one of the frissons of my life. I began to babble about her books like a schoolboy - my favorites: A Lost Lady, The Professor's House, My Antonia. It wasn't that I had anything in common with her as a writer. I would never have chosen for myself her sort of subject matter, or tried to emulate her style. It was just that I considered her to be a great artist. As good as Flaubert.
We became friends; she read my work and was always a fair and helpful judge. She was full of surprises. For one thing, she and her lifelong friend, Miss Lewis, lived in a spacious, charmingly furnished Park Avenue apartment - somehow, the notion of Miss Cather living in an apartment on Park Avenue seemed incongrous with her Nebraska upbringing, with the simple, rather elegiac nature of her novels. Secondly, her principal interest was not literature, but music. She went to concerts constantly, and almost all her closest friends were musical personalities, Yehudi Menuhin and his sister Hepzibah.
Like all authentic conversationalists, she was an excellent listener, and when it was her turn to talk, she was never garrulous, but crisply pointed. Once she told me I was overly sensitive to criticism. The truth was that she was more sensitive to critical slights than I; any disparaging reference to her work caused a decline in spirits. When I pointed this out to her, she said: "Yes, but aren't we always seeking out our own vices in others and reprimanding them for such possessions? I'm alive. I have clay feet. Very definitely."
August 26, 2007
Dean Stockwell: 3 stories about Errol Flynn
Speaking of Errol Flynn ...
In 1950, Stockwell appeared in Kim - with Errol Flynn. Stockwell was about 12 or 13 when they filmed it - and nearing the end of his run as a child-actor. He is here, in this movie, on the brink of adolescence - and he's described how he, unlike other normal kids, YEARNED for acne and awkwardness - because that meant he wouldn't have to be a "child actor" anymore. He's great in Kim - it's an enormous part, he's in almost every scene - and the movie wouldn't work without him. It could have been an insufferable bore with the wrong kid in that part - but as it is, it's a ton of fun (to this day). Errol Flynn, naturally, was a huge star - and you just have to overlook the fact that he's supposed to be from Afghanistan, and just go with it. The rapport between Stockwell and Flynn seems quite genuine - Flynn's terrific with him, and you really believe that these two - one a kid, one a grown man - are buddies. It's fun to watch them together.
Stockwell, as always, has enough talent to go toe to toe with anybody - it has nothing to do with age, or even experience. It's like him practically stealing Anchors Aweigh away (ha) from Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra - and also how he strolls away with Gentleman's Agreement - and Gregory Peck, in all of his ponderous self-righteousness, barely even notices that the kid is walking away with the picture. With one hand tied behind his back. Seriously, Stockwell is TINY in that film, a small child, and easily, easily, steals the whole thing. Just by listening, talking, and seeming like a real little person, as opposed to a plot device. So Stockwell had that THING. He never (to my eyes) seems "precocious" - meaning one of those little show-biz kids, who never takes off their tap shoes, and doesn't seem quite like a real child. Stockwell always just seems like a little boy, alive on screen. Natural, unselfconscious, confident - it's lovely to watch. You realize how rare it is when you see it.
Stockwell's dad had never really been around when he was a kid - and I believe his parents got divorced when he was quite little. He was raised by his mother, a single woman - and he basically grew up on the studio where he was under contract. A surreal life, to be sure.
Dick Moore (or "Dickie Moore") - wrote a book about what it was like for children actors of that era (he should know - he was a huge star as a youngun) - and the book is called Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (but don't have sex or take the car). I've had the book for years - since I was a teenager myself ... because I always kind of wished I had grown up in that era, in the heyday of child movie stars. Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney, Margaret O'Brien, etc. etc. blah blah blah. The book is great, though, because Dickie Moore tracks down all of his old friends - all the kids who are now adults - and asks about their experiences. So some (like Rooney) were like, "It was delightful!" and some, like Stockwell, were like, "Yeah, uhm, it was NOT so delightful." I like the book because it's honest about the pressures those kids were under - and yet it's not a diatribe against it either. Everyone has a different story. Stockwell has been quite honest about how horrible his education was - how he basically had to teach himself how to read, as in - not just learn your lines - when he was in his 20s, because his education had been so spotty. He loved his teachers (all of these kids went to the studio school called The Little Red Schoolhouse - there are pictures in the book of Elizabeth Taylor and Roddy McDowall and Stockwell - sitting at their little desks, all smiling, as they read or write - but classes were held in the hour or so between takes, it was insane.) Anyway, Stockwell looks back fondly on those teachers - even though he never actually learned anything.
He says, in an interview in Twinkle Twinkle Little Star:
When we graduated from MGM, we had to do a magazine layout of a graduation party: Rusty Tamblyn, me, Claude Jarman, Jr., Elizabeth Taylor, and Jane Powell. They wanted a photo with all of us outside in front of the schoolhouse. Elizabeth was so happy she threw her books in the air, and Miss McDonald [the principal] came running out, screaming at the photographers, "Don't have her throw her books like that."Mary McDonald intimidated me. She didn't have the most beautiful visage in the world. She didn't teach me shit. But in retrospect, I love her because I feel she was intent upon educating us. In some way - a way she didn't realize consciously - she sensed that she was dealing with kids that were out of place in time and ties and culture. I tend to revere her.
So now we're coming back to Errol Flynn - and what he meant to Dean Stockwell. Stockwell was a little child, an alien from the rest of boyhood - he had adult responsibilities, he was carrying movies, he made tons of money - and basically spent most of his time wishing he was playing football and going to a regular school. He had no father figure in his life, and was, for the most part, surrounded by women. His mother, his teachers - all of whom loved him, but ... You know. A boy needs a father.
In walks swashbuckling sex-crazed Errol Flynn.
I read some interview with Stockwell - it was recently - and he was asked, "So who taught you about sex?" He said, "I did a movie with Errol Flynn when I was 13. I got quite an education."
Many of these stories might be deemed inappropriate - and probably Mrs. Stockwell would have been horrified if she had known what Flynn was telling her young son. But that's just a matter of perception. From Stockwell's point of view, Errol Flynn was essential. Children actors are always a rare and odd entity ... easy to forget that they are, after all, just children. (A good friend of mine is a casting agent here in New York and the stories she tells of the kids who come in to audition ... and how horrible the parents can be ... She said she was coaching one little boy, he was about 4 or 5, and he had to take a waffle out of the toaster oven, take a bite, and say "Yum"! Something simple like that. My friend has two kids of her own, she loves kids and is very sympathetic to the young phenoms who come in and out of her office. This little boy sat down in the chair, legs dangling - and she told him what she wanted him to do. He thought a little bit, and then said, "I don't want to." They talked a bit - and he basically "didn't feel like it" that day ... He was only 4 so he couldn't give her any reasons - but DUH. He's 4. He shouldn't have to give a treatise about why he doesn't want to audition for a Lego My Eggo commercial. He wasn't a brat, but he was telling her he didn't want to do it. My friend brought him back outside and said to the mother, "He's not really in the mood for this today." And the mother was having NONE of it. "What? No! He has to go back in there and do what he's supposed to do!" My friend was gentle and firm. "No, I really don't think he wants to do it today. Okay?" Etc. The child is 4 years old - and not ready for all that responsiblity - and he said it as clearly as he could. Sadly, his mother was unwilling to deal with that fact - but my friend took it upon herself to at least LISTEN to the small child and get him off the hook. You should never have to do something you don't want to do. If you don't want to be an actor - then you don't have to be one!!) It's a tough line to walk - because naturally there are some little kids who want nothing more than to traipse into an audition room and say their lines and try to get a job. Parents/adults must LISTEN to their young ones. It's okay if a 4 year old doesn't 'feel like' auditioning for something. When Stockwell was 15, 16, his contract was up - and he told his mother he didn't feel like acting anymore and he wanted to go to college. She was surprised - but she also let him go. He had to choose his own way. He had been trapped in that profession long enough.
Stockwell was so good at what he did - that people forgot, sometimes, he was a child.
Stockwell talks about Errol Flynn and what it meant to Stockwell to work with him and be in his presence at this particular adolescent moment in his life:
I'm not saying I'd recommend him for the rest of society. It just so happened that at that time of my life - I was twelve or something - he was what he was: a truly profound, nonsuperficial sex symbol. He was the fucking male.
Funny (and, to me, moving) stories below.
Dean Stockwell:
Flynn was a maniac practical joker. I had a horror looming up, one of those crying scenes - a real toughy - with Paul Lukas. He's a dying lama. The scene is a master shot inside a tent in India and I'm there with the lama and Flynn comes through the tent flaps and gives me food for the lama in a rice bowl, and I'm supposed to be - as the character Kim - on the job and I can't let the lama eat maggots. So I check the bowl. Flynn has a line and leaves. Then I have this big crying scene with the lama.So we rehearse and do a take. I'm talking to the lama and in comes Flynn and hands me the bowl, piled high with fresh camel dung, still steaming. Now I'm supposed to look at it and say, "Is this okay for the lama to eat?" And he's supposed to say, "Yes, of course. I promise it's good."
I looked at the mess and said my line and he backed out. I played the rest of the scene and it cost Flynn five hundred dollars. He had bet everyone on the crew that he would break me up.
haha - I love that Flynn assumed Stockwell would crack up ... but Dean Stockwell, already a seasoned professional, kept going. Ha!!
Dean Stockwell (this one makes me laugh!!):
I had a hell of a good time shooting that picture.Errol Flynn came onto the set one morning a little blurry-eyed, and told me about picking up a girl the night before, a waitress. He really liked waitresses and working girls - secretaries.
So he took this waitress to his place. Next morning, he said, "You know what she did? As I'm fucking her, she said, 'Oh, fuck me, Errol Flynn! Fuck me, Errol Flynn!' I mean, that really tells you where it's at. 'Fuck me, Errol Flynn.' Not 'Fuck me, Errol.'"
hahahahaha
Inappropriate to tell this to a 13 year old boy? Yes.
But amusing and human and appreciated by said 13 year old boy? Hell yes. Stockwell had grown up in the hothouse atmosphere of the studio which had a vested interest in keeping the kids innocent (sometimes to a fault - most of the girls interviewed in Dick Moore's book - Jane Withers, Margaret O'Brien, many others - say that they hadn't even been warned about menstruation - they just randomly began bleeding one day and were like: AHHHH, WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME!) Granted this was also the time ... but the studios were particularly intent on shielding their little child stars from the realities of adolescence.
Errol Flynn was like: FUCK THAT. (In more ways than one.)
Dean Stockwell:
Okay, so I'm going to play this little Indian kid in Rudyard Kipling's tale of Kim and Errol Flynn is going to play the other guy. While they're building the sets, I come onto the sound stage with my mother and the studio teacher, the perfect Norman Rockwell portrait of middle America - sixty-three years old, sweet, giving, a long-suffering spinster with the rimless glasses and high lace collar. She was terrific with her rosy cheeks. Didn't even have to blue her hair; she had her own natural white hair. She and my mother were flanking me.Errol Flynn came up to me. Somebody said, "This is Dean Stockwell." Of course, he's bigger than me, and with this gleam in his eye, he looked down at me. He stuck out his hand and said, "Hi. Have you had your first fuck yet?"
There was a moment, it lasted an eternity, where both my mother and the teacher were going "Brrrr," like pigeons with a gnat up their ass, blushing and doing everything but bleeding on either side of me. Flynn is still staring at me, waiting for me to answer him, but I didn't know what the word meant. I'm just looking at this guy, thinking, I finally found a friend, a father.
Obviously, he knew I hadn't had my first fuck yet, or he figured that out right after he asked me. Still, he gave me one of the special lapel buttons he'd had made. It had beautiful hand-carved wings. In the center were three F's, interlocked. It was "Flynn's Flying Fucker" club, and the part that went into your lapel had a huge erect cock and balls to hold it in. I had it hidden in my top drawer for four years. My mother finally found it. She didn't tell me until two years after she threw it out.
Dean Stockwell:
"There were uglies and there were beauties. For me, Errol Flynn was the best... He was the ultimate father figure for me."
All Dean Stockwell stuff here
The Books: "Music for Chameleons" - 'A Beautiful Child' (Truman Capote)
Next book on my adult fiction bookshelves:
Music for Chameleons - by Truman Capote. Today's excerpt is from 'A Beautiful Child'.
This is perhaps the most famous of these little transcripts. 1955. Marilyn Monroe and Truman Capote, drinking buddies and gossipy friends, meet up at a funeral for a well-loved actress and acting teacher. Monroe and Capote spend the whole day hanging out, drinking champagne, walking down by the docks, talking ... at this point, Marilyn is divorced from Dimaggio - and has a "secret lover" - which will turn out to be Arthur Miller. Monroe has moved back to New York - to protest the crap movies the studios were placing her in - she has formed her own production company and started studying acting with Lee Strasberg. I love this photograph of Capote and Monroe - dude, hold her HAND, not her wrist!!
It's a fun piece .... an illuminating glimpse of Marilyn Monroe.
Excerpt from Music for Chameleons - by Truman Capote - 'A Beautiful Child'.
TC: Now do you think we can get the hell out of here? You promised me champagne, remember?
MARILYN: I remember. But I don't have any money.
TC: You're always late and you never have any money. By any chance are you under the delusion that you're Queen Elizabeth?
MARILYN: Who?
TC: Queen Elizabeth. The Queen of England.
MARILYN: (frowning) What's that cunt got to do with it?
TC: Queen Elizabeth never carries money either. She's not allowed to. Filthy lucre ust not stain the royal palm. It's a law or something.
MARILYN: I wish they'd pass a law like that for me.
TC: Keep going the way you are and maybe they will.
MARILYN: Well, gosh. How does she pay for anything? Like when she goes shopping?
TC: Her lady-in-waiting trots along with a bag full of farthings.
MARILYN: You know what? I'll bet she gets everything free. In return for endorsemenkts.
TC: Very possible. I wouldn't be a bit surprised. By Appointment to Her Majesty. Corgi dogs. All those Fortnum & Mason goodies. Pot. Condoms.
MARILYN: What would she want with condoms?
TC: Not her, dopey. For that chump who walks two steps behind. Prince Philip.
MARILYN: Him. Oh, yeah. He's cute. He looks like he might have a nice prick. Did I ever tell you about the time I saw Errol Flynn whip out his prick and play the piano with it? Oh well, it was a hundred years ago, I'd just got into modeling, and I went to this half-ass party, and Errol Flynn, so pleased with himself, he was there and he took out his prick and played the piano with it. Thumped the keys. He played You Are My Sunshine. Christ! Everybody says Milton Berle has the biggest schlong in Hollywood. But who cares? Look, don't you have any money?
TC: Maybe about fifty bucks.
MARILYN: Well, that ought to buy us some bubbly.
(Outside, Lexington Avenue was empty of all but harmless pedestrians. It was around two, and as nice an April afternoon as one could wish: ideal strolling weather. So we moseyed toward Third Avenue. A few gawkers spun their heads, not because they recognized Marilyn as the Marilyn, but because of her funereal finery; she giggled her special little giggle, a sound as tempting as the jingling bells on a Good Humor wagon, and said: "Maybe I should always dress this way. Real anonymous."As we neared P.J. Clarke's saloon, I suggested P.J.'s might be a good place to refresh ourselves, but she vetoed that: "It's full of those advertising creeps. And that bitch Dorothy Kilgallen, she's always in there getting bombed. What is it wiht these micks? The way they booze, they're worse than Indians."
I felt called upon to defend Kilgallen, who was a friend, somewhat, and I allowed as to how she could upon occasion be a clever funny woman. She said: "Be that as it may, she's written some bitchy stuff about me. But all those cunts hate me. Hedda. Louella. I know you're supposed to get used to it, but I just can't. It really hurts. What did I ever do to those hags? The only one who wr