The critic started shrieking, “Who said that? Who said that gah-damn shit t’me? You c’mawn down here, nigguh, I’m gonna cufch.nl I gonna cut on you, nigguh muh-fugguh!”
And he did go on. And on and on. “Oh shit,” I murmured, slumping down even deeper in the seat, till my knees were up around my ears like a grasshopper. Beside me, my Texican buddy was praying in High Church Latin, Yiddish and Sufi, all at the same time.
I do believe that the joker down in the first row of that cockroach-ridden movie house was the single dumbest sonofabitch I have ever encountered; and what happened next was the swiftest, most deadly moment of violence I have ever seen.
Motormouth was still working over the conjugation of to cut when suddenly and without warning there was a rush of wind past me, down those steep steps, fast, fast, so damned fast I couldn’t make out whether it was a human or a yeti or simply some terrifying force of nature, and all I saw was a dark blur as something BIG went smoothly down to the front row, something GIGANTIC moved into that row … and that stupid sonofabitch joker just stood up, still working his wet jaw … as if he could do something against that HUGE dude come to silence him … and that monstrous black fury just grabbed Motormouth by the shirt front and yanked … and pitched him headfirst over the rail.
I heard a terrified scream as the guy fell, and then a sickening crack! like the snapping of a T’ang dynasty chopstick, and then there was silence.
The only sounds were Jack Lemmon talking about what emotional violence he was suffering.
Shut up, Lemmon.
No one in the theater moved. There weren’t that many people anyhow. Just my buddy and me and sleeping Leeee-ROY and the buddy of the guy who’d taken the dive … and that humungus shape. In the balcony. And if there was anyone down below, they weren’t saying anything.
The diver’s buddy didn’t move or look around or say a word. He just sat there staring straight ahead, as if he could not possibly have found anything more interesting in the universe to think about than Jack Lemmon’s problems. The dark shape moved back up the aisle … I didn’t look left or right … I saw nothing, Jim, nothing … and it went up past me and was gone.
I watched that entire flick in silence. No one moved to see if the diver was still alive. After a moment’s wait the diver’s buddy slipped out of the balcony like oil washing down a gutter, and gone. From below … nothing.
And when the film was finished, and the lights came up, we rose, and turned slowly. The balcony was empty. Leeee-ROY was still tabula rasa. Just us, all alone. I looked at my buddy from Texas, and he looked at me, and without saying a word we walked down that precarious stairway and came to the railing and peered over.
The diver lay across the back of a shattered seat. He was bent double. Stomach up. His spine was broken. He didn’t move. The theater was empty. We walked back up the aisle, through the upper vestibule, down the winding staircase, into the lobby, and out. We didn’t look back. No one could help the diver. We wanted to get away.
We never spoke of it to each other.
It was sudden. Not a word. Not a second threat. No false heroics like two stumblebums in an alley outside a bar. No feinting, and no swinging. He just threw him; launched him out into eternity. And walked away from it. Because he was being disturbed in a movie.
Violence, real violence, not the Jack Armstrong nonsense we all play-act at … genuine, mindless violence is very important.
Because there is no knowing when it will strike.
And there is no escape from it.
I warn you, it’s terrible.
3. LABOR RELATIONS
At least half our waking life is spent trying to make ends meet. Slouching after the buck. Keeping the rain off our heads. That means earning a living. Aren’t you glad I clarified it for you? And whether you’re on the paycheck or self-employed, whether you wait in line for the dole or cat-burgle through windows in the wee hours, relations with Them As Has the Money are vital. Not getting the Employer pissed-off, maintaining a posture that makes you indispensable, cannot be too strenuously stressed.
One of the most important lessons one can learn in this tragic life, therefore, is what it takes to stay employed. And since almost any job will eventually drive you to erratic behavior, thus precipitating getting your tuchis laid off, I offer the following heart-rending anecdote from my virtually cornucopial stock of life-experiences … as a classic example of what not to do.
One day about ten years ago, I was sitting in this little treehouse I rented in Beverly Glen, a sort of arboreal BambiLand section of Los Angeles just on the Tobacco Road side of Bel-Air and Beverly Hills, what I’m talking here is artsy-craftsy but poor as a s/ju/mouse,® really a treehouse I’m not making this up, see, because half the house sat on a rock ledge up a private little street called Bushrod Lane that was mostly only a kind of paved pathway better suited to fugitives from a James Fenimore Cooper book than this upwardly-struggling young writer trying to bludgeon his way into movies, and the other half—of the treehouse, that is—am I going too fast for you?—was in the crotch of a big eucalyptus tree, and it only cost me $135 a month, which was back then at a time before everything was crazy in terms of what it costs to live decently these days and $135 was not the biggest rent you could pay but I wasn’t all that cushy either, and so I was sitting there when the phone rang, and it was Marty. Marty the Agent. And he says to me, he says, “Walt Disney wants you!”
Now I don’t know what you think constitutes an ominous remark, but as Walt Disney had gone to collect his reward from that Great Consortium Organizer in the Sky at least two years prior to this phone call from Marty the Agent, immediate thoughts of some Lovecraftian horror beckoning to me from the crypt…
Whooooooo … Walt waaaaants you … !
… went pitterpattering through my tiny brain. But, as it turned out, I was never to find out if there was truth to the much-bandied underground rumor that Walt had been flash-frozen cryogenically, with an eye to restoring him in the 25th Century or, at worst, stuffing him and putting him on display like Trigger. What it boiled down to, improbably, was that someone had read one of my science fiction stories somewhere and thought I’d be a terrific li’l fellah to have write a kinda sorta sf film Disney was thinking of making.
• A shul is a synagogue. As a Jew I’m not allowed to have chwchmice. That’s okay, they’re trayf.
My first reaction to “Disney wants you” was horror, and then stark amazement. “There’s been a mistake,” I said to Marty the Agent. “I’m a crazed, radical, bomb-throwing loon who writes stories about things that come up out of the toilets to bite off babies’ asses … are you sure they don’t want Bob Ellison? He writes comedy. Very clean-cut guy. Drives a late model car. Shaves regularly. Never says fuck in mixed company. You sure they mean me, Marty? I’m Harlan Ellison, remember? The one with the hook for a hand.”
No, says Marty the Agent, who has been my theatrical agent (as opposed to my literary agent, who is Bob the Agent) as well as my friend for over fifteen years, no, they have clearly lost their minds and they want you, and I have made a nice little week-to-week deal for you, with a guaranteed six and options … and he named a figure that might not purchase San Simeon in these crazy days of lettuce going for $3.00 a head but back then ten years ago was more money than anyone had ever offered me for anything, including my body.
“Contracts are coming,” Marty said, “but go over to the Disney Studio tomorrow morning. They have an office for you.”
I was in heaven. So okay, it wasn’t writing The Great American Cinematic Answer to Potemkin, so what?! I was on my way. I was going to work in the Studio! It was the big time. And just to get up in the part of a successful scenarist, I dragged out my complete collection of Uncle Scrooge McDuck Comics and re-read them all, till the night had passed away and the morning had come.
I dressed smartly, put on the one tie I owned, looked at myself in the mirror before leaving the treehouse and went back in and took off the tie
and put on a shirt first. Okay, so I was excited, shoot me.
I drove out the Ventura Freeway to the Buena Vista exit, drove up to the front gate in the disreputable 1951 Ford I mentioned earlier, which hadn’t been washed in so long that strangers wrote cleanliness-is-next-to-godliness obscenities in the dirt, and gave my name to the spiffy guard at the kiosk. “Oh, yessir, Mr. Ellison,” he said, validating my existence, “your office is in the Writers Building.” I beamed. “How do I get there?” I asked.
He smiled exactly the same smile as Doc of Seven Dwarfs fame and said, “Well, you drive in here and take the first left, that’s Mickey Mouse Avenue. Then you go down Mickey Mouse Avenue till you get to Thumper Boulevard. Turn right on Thumper to Clarabelle Cow Way and take another left. Go straight down Clarabelle Cow Way till you hit the corner of Horace Horsecollar Drive, and the Writers Building is second building on your right.”
I think I nodded dumbly, refusing to believe what I had just been told. But I drove in and, sure as shit, there was Mickey Mouse Avenue and Thumper Boulevard and all the rest of them, and I said to myself, Ellison … you has fallen down a rabbit hole, keed.
But right there, in front of the building to which I’d been directed, was a parking slot that said H. ELLISON. Right there, on the blacktop, between the thick white lines, some industrious Audio-Animatronic robot (possibly cobbled up in the image of Matisse or Lindner) had stencilled my name for Eternity or six weeks with options … whichever came first.
To those of you out there in the Great American Heartland, that may not be such a significant thing, but in the world of studio sinecures, a parking space of one’s own is dearer to the heart than never being put on “hold” when calling the networks. I know Sammy Glick manques who have given up perks and titles and even a Bigelow on the floor just for a parking space with the name thereon. So there I had it: authentication of my elevated status in the universe of the soon-to-be-hot-stuff.
I walked into the building and on the register I found my name and office number. Walked upstairs, followed the numbers till I found my office, and opened the door. It was a two-room suite with bathroom. The room I entered was antechamber, and there, sitting behind her desk, reading a paperback nurse novel, was my secretary. No, change that from . to !!!
You shoulda seen her. This remarkable creature was so clean I could see dust motes taking 90° turns as they fell, just so they wouldn’t mar her perfection. A smile that would solve all the energy dilemmas of the TVA. Peter Pan collar on the blouse. Malibu blonde, periwinkle-blue eyes, a goyishe nose that would make Streisand climb a wall, a freshly-minted six-pak of dimples most of which were visible.
“May I help you?” she said.
You’re probably too young to remember, but the part of Adelaide in the original stage production of Guys and Dolls was played by Vivian Blaine, an accomplished actress who had the most amazing dumb-blond voice ever bottled. Not even Judy Hol-liday in Born Yesterday could approach the level of stupidity aurally conveyed by Ms. Blaine’s rendition of the nitwit. Only once in the more-than-a-quarter-century since Guys and Dolls opened on Broadway, have I heard a voice, male or female, that rivaled for strident, full-out dumbness, the voice of Adelaide.
“May I help you?” she said.
“Uh, I’m Harlan Ellison,” I replied. “I think this is my office.”
Such instant attentiveness. Such perky willingness to serve, we don’t do windows or floors. Could she get me coffee? Could she type some script? Could she file some reports? Could she read my Tarot?
I pointed out that I was just arriving and that it was my first day on the job and, since I had no idea what I was doing, nor even what the nature of the project was to be, I really needed only one bit of assistance: “Is that my office in there?”
She indicated that the connecting room was, in fact, the Holiest of Holies where, she was certain, I would create great moments in cinematic history. I thanked her, suggested she return to the contretemps of Nurse and Doctor and advanced post-nasal drip, and I’d call her when I needed her. In the background I heard mental riffs by Dan Hicks & his Hot Licks.
I went into my office.
They could have staged the World Cup soccer matches in there. One sofa, too short to sleep on; one wall of bookcases empty save for a well-thumbed copy of the 1948 WORLD ALMANAC; one framed painting depicting beanfield hands laboring under a blistering sun (I wondered if that was intended by the management as metaphor); one desk the size of the battleship Potemkin (and I wondered if that was intended by the management as metaphor); one typing table supporting an enormous IBM Selectric, already humming with life; one rollaround typing chair.
And on the desk, an even dozen #2 Dixon Ticonderoga pencils, sharpened to such a piercing sharpness that they seemed to strobe off into invisibility at the points. Tony Curtis could have dueled with those pencils.
I didn’t have the heart to tell anyone I type manuscript straight onto the machine. My handwriting is in the top l/10th of the top percentile of illegible scrawls.
I sat down and waited. For someone to come and tell me what they wanted me to write. To tell me at least the name of the picture. But an hour went by and nothing happened.
As I’ve pointed out earlier, left to my own devices, I get into trouble. Deep trouble.
So, bored out of my brain, I rose, went into the office where Barbie sat with furrowed brow pondering the mysteries of infections and abscesses of the submaxillary parotid gland, and I said, “I’m going to look around. Be back in a bit.”
The smile fried my eyeballs like a ping-pong ball in a cyclotron, and I stumbled into the hall.
I started checking out the other offices. And to my utter delight, there were at least half a dozen writers I knew, ensconced in Plaza Suites similar to mine. The wonderful thing about it was that most of them were loons like me, I’d name them, but since most of you can’t even remember the names of authors of books, names of scenarists like Albert Aley and John D.F. Black and Mary C. McCall, Jr. won’t mean shit to you. Suffice to say, we all found ourselves gathered in John’s office, shucking and jiving till almost noon. At which point someone said, “Okay, let’s break for lunch.”
I thought that was a terrific idea, having put in an exhausting three hours working in the Disney vineyards.
So we went to the commissary and shoved in around the Writers’ Table.
What I did not know was that the Writers’ Table was right behind the Producers’ Banquette. That was my first big mistake. As it turned out, it was also my last big mistake.
Oh, what fun, sitting there with intellectual companions, cutting up touches and laughing at the drolleries! Born again: the Algonquin round table. Wit beyond compare. And, naturally, as the youngest member of the group, striving to make my mark as worthy of their camaraderie, their respect, I suggested a droll, witty lunchtime conceit…
Two things you must know. First, I do a terrific Mickey Mouse imitation. Absolutely phonographically perfect. If the publishers of this book had the money, they ought to bind in a record, one of those little plastic jobbies, so you could hear my spectacular Mickey imitation. When I tell this anecdote in person, it really enhances a lot. But just pretend you can hear it, okay?
The second thing you need to know is that the Producers’ Banquette had filled up with Roy Disney and the other heads of the studio, behind me; a fact of which I was unaware; a fact no one bothered to impart.
At the top of my voice I suggested, “Hey, listen, what a kick! Why don’t we do a porn Disney flick?”
Everyone smiled,
“It’ll be terrific,” I said. Loudly. “I mean, everyone knows, for instance, that Tinker Bell does it … what they don’t know is how she Does It.” They all looked at me expectantly. “She flies up the head of the penis and flaps her wings like crazy,” I said, proud as hell of myself at this bit of fantasy. Everyone chuckled.
I went on, oblivious to the sudden hush all around me in the commissary. “I’ll be Mickey, and I’ll be the
director; John, you do a good Donald, so you can be the male porn lead, sort of a duck-style Harry Reems; Mary, you can be Minnie, the female lead; and Albert, you can be Goofy … and Goofy, of course, is the producer.”
Their smiles were frozen; the way the smiles of bit players get frozen when they see the monster creeping up behind the hero in a horror flick.
“Hey, gang!” I squeaked in my terrifically accurate Mickey voice. “Everybody ready to shoot the ultimate Disney flick? The film that rips the lid off the goody two-shoes hypocrisy that lies sweltering beneath the surface of G-rated true-life adventures? Okay, you guys, let’s get that hand-held Arriflex right down there between Minnie’s legs! I wanna see closeups of quivering labia!”
A silence as deep as that at the bottom of the Cayman Trench.
I went on, oblivious, carried along by my enthusiasm. In Donald’s quack I said, “Goddam sonofabitch! Pluto, get outta there, you’re steaming up the lens!”
As Goofy, in the dumbest voice possible, I said, “Yuck, yuck, yuck … hey, fellahs, I’m a highly-paid, extremely-inept producer person … c’n I play, too?”
As Mickey: “Fuck off, Goofy, fuck off! Get those Seven Dwarfs in here … I don’t care if they don’t wanna gang-bang a mouse, tell ‘em they’re under contract … and fer chrissakes, Minnie, will you take off those damned shoes?!”
The meal came. Everyone addressed their plates like inmates of the Gulag Archipelago. When lunch was over, everyone vanished very quickly. I was confused, but felt good. What a nice little shtick I’d invented. Wished they’d joined in. Oh well.
Went back to my office. Noticed first that my name had been whited-out in the parking slot. Upstairs, the secretary and her paperback were gone. On my desk: twelve sharpened #2 Dixon Ticonderoga pencils and a pink slip.
I had been fired after working for the Disney empire for a total of four hours, including lunch.
The lessons here cannot be avoided.
Big business is humorless.