As Rick remembers that kid, this kid asks him, “What are you reading?” referring to the paperback western in his hand.
He shrugs his shoulders and tells her, “It’s just a western.”
“What does that mean?” she asks, not understanding the initial dismissal. “Is it any good?” she inquires.
He answers, far less enthusiastic about his book than she is with hers, “Yeah, it’s pretty good.”
She wants more. “What’s the story?”
“I ain’t finished it yet,” he answers.
Jeez, she thinks, this guy is so literal.
“I didn’t ask for the whole story,” she emphasizes. Trying another avenue of investigation: “What’s the premise of the story?”
The book is called Ride a Wild Bronc, and it’s written by Marvin H. Albert, who wrote a pretty good book about the Apache Wars that Rick liked, called Apache Rising, which was turned into a pretty mediocre movie with James Garner and Sidney Poitier, titled Duel at Diablo. So Rick thinks about the story of this new book for a moment, gets the facts in the right order, and then proceeds to relate them to the young girl.
“Well, it’s about this guy who was a bronco buster. And it’s the story of his life. Guy’s name is Tom Breezy. But everybody just calls him ‘Easy Breezy.’
“So when Easy Breezy was in his twenties and young and good lookin’, he could break any horse you could throw at ’em. Back then, well . . . uh, he just had a way. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” she answers. “He had a gift for breaking horses.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” he tells her. “He had a gift. So, anyway, he gets into his late thirties, and he takes a bad fall. . . . Now he ain’t crippled or anything like that, but his lower section ain’t ever the same. Now he’s got spine problems he never had before. Now he spends more of his days in pain than he ever did before—”
“Jeepers,” she interjects, “this sounds like a good novel.”
He sorta concurs. “It ain’t bad.”
“Where are you in it?” she asks.
“About midway,” he answers.
She asks, “What’s happening to Easy Breezy now?”
Rick has been reading pulp western paperbacks since he was twelve years old. And ever since he became an actor, it’s what he does in between takes and in his trailer waiting for the 2nd AD to summon him to set. He’ll mix it up a little with a detective story or a mystery or World War Two adventure, but the pulps he keeps returning to are the westerns. Even though he likes them, he doesn’t really remember them. He remembers the names of the authors he likes—the aforementioned Albert, Elmore Leonard, T. V. Olsen, Ralph Hayes—but not the book titles. Considering how generic those titles were—The Texan, Gringo, The Outlaw, Ambush, Two Guns for Texas—that’s perfectly understandable. But all the years sitting around on sets reading westerns, while somebody may have asked him what he was reading, nobody ever asked him to recite the story. Though Rick never really thought about it before, he kinda now realizes that reading western paperbacks is one of the most solitary activities that he partakes in. So being asked to explain to somebody what’s happening now in the book he’s reading is not something he’s used to articulating.
But for her sake, he tries his best.
“Well, he’s not the best anymore.” Clarifying, “In fact, far from it. And he’s coming to terms with . . .” Rick thinks what’s the right word to describe Easy Breezy’s conundrum. “What it’s like to become . . . uh . . . slightly more . . . uh—” He opens his mouth to say the word “useless,” but the only thing that comes out of his mouth is a loud sob.
The sob catches Rick by surprise and gets Mirabella’s attention. He opens his mouth and tries again to say “useless,” but the word sticks in his throat. On his third attempt, he croaks out, “Useless—each day,” followed by a stream of tears that leak out of his eyes and run down his hairy face, folding him up like a jackknife.
Oh, great, he thinks, now I’m crying in front of children about my fucked-up life? Holy shit, I’ve turned into my Uncle Dave.
As fast as she can, Mirabella is out of her director’s chair and on her knees at Rick’s feet, patting his right kneecap in an effort to comfort him. As his fist violently wipes away the wetness around his eyes, with both embarrassment and self-loathing, he chuckles to indicate to the small child he’s okay. “Heh heh, boy, I must be getting old. I can’t talk ’bout nothin’ touchin’ wit’out gettin’ all choked up, heh heh.”
The little girl thinks she understands and continues to console the weepy cowboy, who is now, in her eyes, starting to resemble the Cowardly Lion.
“It’s okay, Caleb. It’s okay,” she assures him. “It sounds like a really sad book.” Shaking her head in sympathy: “Poor Easy Breezy.” She shrugs her shoulders and says, “I’m practically crying and I haven’t even read it.”
He says under his breath, “Wait till you’re fifteen, you’ll be livin’ it.”
She doesn’t understand and asks, “What?”
He plasters a smile under his glued-on mustache and says, “Nothin’, Pumpkin Puss, I’m just teasing.” Then, holding up his western paperback, he proclaims, “And you know, you might be right. Maybe this book hits harder than I gave it credit for.”
The little girl’s eyes narrow, and she gets back on her feet, rising to her full height, and informs him, “I don’t like names like ‘Pumpkin Puss.’ But since you’re upset, we’ll talk about that some other time.”
He laughs slightly to himself at her reaction, as she climbs back into her director’s chair next to him. Once she’s back sitting comfortably in her chair, she looks Rick up and down in all his hairy-faced, brown rawhide-fringed-jacket glory.
“So this is your Caleb DeCoteau look, huh?”
“Yeah. What do you think? Do you not like it?”
“No, you look groovy.”
Yeah, she’s right. It’s not so bad, he thinks.
“It’s just . . . I didn’t know Caleb was supposed to look groovy.”
Oh shit, I fucking knew it, Rick thinks.
“Do I look too much like a hippie?”
“Well,” the little actor contemplates, “I wouldn’t say, too much.”
“But I look like a hippie?” the big actor clarifies.
“Well,” she asks, confused, “that’s the idea, ain’t it?”
“Apparently,” Rick dismissively snorts.
The little actor gives a more elaborate evaluation of her first impression. “Look, that’s not what I thought when I first read the script, but it’s not a bad idea.” Taking him in more with both her eyes and her eye toward characterization, “In fact, the more I look at it, the more I like it.”
“Really?” Rick asks. Then he challenges her, “Why?”
“Well . . .” The eight-year-old thinks. “Just for me, I find hippies . . . kinda sexy . . . kinda creepy . . . and kinda scary. And sexy, creepy, and scary is a pretty strong choice for Caleb.”
Rick snorts again and thinks, What does this little twerp know about sexy? But her words do calm him down about his anxiety over his Caleb DeCoteau look.
Now that Rick’s questions have been answered, Mirabella’s got a few questions of her own. “Caleb, may I ask you something personal?”
His one-word answer is, “Shoot.”
She asks a question of her fellow actor that she seriously would like to know the answer to: “What’s it like playing the bad guy?”
“Well, it’s actually pretty new for me,” he tells her. “I used to have my own cowboy show once. And on that show I played the good guy.”
“Which do you like playing better?” she asks.
“The good guy,” he says without any ambiguity.
“But,” the little girl counters, “Charles Laughton said that villains are the best parts.”
Of course that’s what that fat queer would say, Rick thinks. But instead of talking to a little girl about fat fags, he tries to explain to her why he pref
ers playing the good guy.
“Look, when I was a kid and played cowboys and Indians, I didn’t pretend I was some damn Injun. I was the cowboy. Besides, the hero gets to kiss the lead actress or, in the case of a TV series, that week’s female guest star. Heroes get the love scenes. Closest thing to a love scene a villain gets is when they let you rape somebody. And the bad guy always loses the fight to the good guy.”
“So what?” she says. “It’s not a real fight.”
“Yeah, but people watch it,” he explains, “and now they think that guy can beat me up.”
She rolls her little eyes and says, “Well, then, good—that means they believe the story.”
“It’s embarrassing,” he emphasizes.
Oh my god, she thinks, this guy is incredible.
“How old are you?” she asks him in exasperation. “I’m sure too old to be thinking like that.”
“Hey hey hey, calm down,” he tells her. “When people ask me what I like better, I assume there ain’t no right or wrong answer.”
That actually makes sense to the young actor’s sense of fair play.
“You know what, Caleb, you’re a hundred percent right.”
He gives her a head nod that serves as a thank-you.
Then she reminds him of something: “You know our big scene is tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” remembering, “our big scene together is tomorrow, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. And in that scene, you yell at me and grab me and scare me.”
He assures her, “Don’t be scared. I won’t hurt you.”
She qualifies her instruction with the caveat, “Well, I don’t want you to really hurt me,” then she zeroes in on Rick and points her little finger at him. “But I want you to scare me.” She continues intensely, “Yell at me as loud as you want. Grab me, grab me hard. Shake me—shake the shit out of me. Scare me. Don’t make me act scared, make me react scared. Anything less,” she explains, “and you’re treating me like a baby, and I don’t like it when adults treat me like a baby.” After her intense finger-pointing, she slips back to her normal snotty demeanor. “The scene we do tomorrow, I want to put on my reel. And the only reason I can’t put scenes on my reel that I want to is because the adults in the scenes aren’t good enough. Don’t use my age as an excuse to be anything less than great—okay?”
“Okay,” he says.
“Promise?” she insists.
“I promise,” he assures her.
“Let’s shake on it,” she suggests.
Having reached an understanding, the two actors shake hands.
Chapter Thirteen
“The Sweet Body of Deborah”
While everybody in the stunt community knows Cliff Booth is Rick Dalton’s stunt double, it’s not the thing he’s most known for. It’s just the most legitimate thing in the stunt community he’s known for. On the list of things that Cliff Booth is known for, it ranks about number four. The number-one thing he used to be known for was his incredible military record. Having more confirmed kills of Japanese enemy soldiers than any other American serviceman fighting in the Pacific theater is one hell of a feat. And that’s just confirmed kills. Ask any of his Filipino-brother resistance fighters how many unconfirmed kills of Japanese enemy soldiers Cliff Booth was responsible for, their answer would be, Who fucking knows?
But once there was widespread speculation that in 1966 Cliff Booth killed his wife, his status as a war hero became the second thing he was most known for inside the stunt community.
Number three on the list of things that Cliff Booth was known for inside the stunt community were his talents as a “ringer.”
As a ringer, Cliff Booth was the best in the sixties’ film industry.
What’s a ringer? Don’t try looking it up; it’s an unofficial term.
Well, say you’re a stunt gaffer and you’re working with a real asshole director who yells at your dudes all the time. Or with some fucking dickhead actor who keeps tagging your dudes and blames them for his mistake. Now, the stunt gaffer or anyone on his team can’t knock the director’s block off or punch the actor back when they get tagged.
But what the stunt gaffer can do is hire a stunt player for the day (not one of the gaffer’s team). And that dude is a ringer.
And he can do what the stunt team can’t. Which is basically fuck the shit outta the asshole, preferably in front of the whole crew.
Say you’re working in the broiling-hot sun of Mississippi for a year with that bald Nazi bastard Otto Preminger on Hurry Sundown. And that sadistic prick has belittled and berated crew members in front of the whole company for an entire year. So you hire Cliff Booth as a stunt day player and have him purposely fuck up a shot in front of Otto. Then you and the crew just sit back and enjoy the show.
Booth socked Preminger, mid-tirade, in the jaw, knocking him flat in the Mississippi mud. Cliff’s excuse was, as a World War Two hero, he experienced a wartime flashback when Preminger yelled at him in his German Gestapo accent, and he forgot where he was. And when the production manager gave him his bus ticket home the next day, Cliff left Mississippi with an extra (off the books) seven hundred dollars in his back pocket. And that night, celebrating with the crew at the hotel bar, he never had to pay for a drink.
Or say you’re part of the stunt team on the western TV series The Wild Wild West. Now, series lead Robert Conrad prides himself on doing (a lot) of his own stunts. Well, that may be, more or less, true.
But while performing his own stunts, he didn’t really mind how many stuntmen got hurt in the process. Especially when it comes to tagging stuntmen during fistfights (“tagging” definition: accidentally punching somebody for real in a staged fight). Which he never took responsibility for. It was always their fault. They weren’t where they were supposed to be. They were the ones that were unprofessional. It was their fault he hurt his hand. He did this to such a degree that, in the stunt community, he earned the name Robert Never-Met-a-Stuntman-He-Couldn’t-Blame Conrad.
So it was considered a grand and glorious day when Cliff Booth—with an “accidentally” mistimed haymaker—knocked Bob on the ass of his skintight pants.
A couple of stuntmen wept.
Again, Cliff Booth left the set with seven hundred extra dollars in his back pocket and a case of beer in the trunk of his car.
Then, while shooting 100 Rifles on location in Almeria, Spain, in a bar, he became the only known white man to ever win a fistfight with Jim Brown. Now, as cool as the Jim Brown story is, it’s the one that might be mythic horseshit. For one, it’s doubtful during the time Jim Brown and Burt Reynolds were in Spain making 100 Rifles that Cliff was there as well. He was probably with Rick shooting his Bingo Martin episode (later in 1969 both Rick and Cliff would go to Almeria to shoot Red Blood, Red Skin with Telly Savalas). Also, the legend of a white man winning a fistfight with Jim Brown might just be that: a legend. Supposedly, it’s either: (a) Cliff in a bar in Spain on 100 Rifles; (b) Rod Taylor in Kenya on the set of Dark of the Sun; (c) Rod Taylor again, not on the set of Dark of the Sun but at the Playboy Mansion in front of the fountain; or (d) it never happened.
But the set fight Cliff was most infamous for was the “friendly contest” between himself and the most renowned martial artist of all time, Bruce Lee.
At the time of what came to be known in Cliff’s career as “the Bruce Lee Incident,” Bruce wasn’t as yet either a movie superstar or a legend. He was just the actor who played the Green Hornet’s sidekick, Kato, on the TV series The Green Hornet, a cheap-jack show made to cash in on the popularity of the Batman TV series. But in the Hollywood community, even more than for his role on the TV show, Bruce Lee was mostly known as “karate coach” to the rich and famous (“karate coach” is how Hollywood would have referred to him, not how Bruce would have referred to himself). The way celebrities would later work out with personal trainers in their backyards for one-hour sessions is how Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Roman Polanski, Jay Sebring, and Stirling Silliphant al
l took classes with Bruce at home. It’s a little funny to think that one of the most talented martial artists of all time would choose to spend his time teaching Roman Polanski, Jay Sebring, and Stirling Silliphant how to throw a straight-leg kick. It’s a little like if Muhammad Ali spent a large portion of his time giving James Garner, Tom Smothers, and Bill Cosby boxing lessons. But Bruce Lee had a game plan in mind. Like Charles Manson, this spiritual sifu stuff was just a side gig. The way Charles Manson wanted to be a rock star, Bruce Lee wanted to be a movie star. James Coburn and Stirling Silliphant were his Dennis Wilson. Steve McQueen and Roman Polanski were his Terry Melcher. Every fourth training session with Roman Polanski, Bruce brought up The Silent Flute, the script he was trying to get made with Oscar-winning screenwriter Stirling Silliphant (who, like Dennis Wilson with Charlie, truly believed in Bruce’s potential), which would star James Coburn and Bruce (playing four different roles). Bruce even accompanied Roman and Sharon on a ski trip to Switzerland to try and get Roman to commit to the project.
As if Roman Polanski would follow up Rosemary’s Baby with a pretentious James Coburn action picture. Roman seriously liked and respected Bruce. He even admired him. But whenever Bruce brought up The Silent Flute, he diminished himself in Roman’s eyes. In fact, it made Roman think about how Hollywood brought out the worst in people.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Page 17
