by Nick Cole
In a perfect house, filled with all the right tools and luxuries of daily living, complemented by the finest of fabrics and textures in a constant march toward interior decorating perfection, this closet was the one place where things were allowed to exist askew. The closet was left open so that the cat could sleep inside this small cave it had selected, based on some primal jungle logic that still held sway in its brain.
Imagining the worst, the Great Director came running and found his Perfect Robot Wife kneeling, stroking her cat, and cooing gently to it.
“He doesn’t look well, does he?” she asked, not looking at her husband.
The truth was, this cat had not looked well in all its life. It was the ugliest cat the Great Director, or anyone for that matter, had ever seen. But when asked by his wife if he, upon inspection, felt the same way, he diplomatically deferred to her innate cat wisdom.
The cat sneezed, expelling a great spray of filmy snot across the both of them. Its one remaining eye looked even more diseased than usual, which was saying something for such an ugly beast. The Great Director’s Perfect Robot Wife immediately rescheduled her perfect robot calendar so she could nurse the cat back to health.
***
The Great Director drove to the production office to pick up some paperwork before driving on to the production. The setup for the shot that morning was going to take a while. And what did he care if it took forever? He hoped it did.
He wondered if he should pour more fuel on the fire by just disappearing to the movies for an early afternoon and delaying shooting until the next day. He dismissed that plan as too much too soon. It was only the second week of shooting and they were already three days behind schedule. He smiled.
All was quiet at the production office, with only one fluorescent light humming overhead. He checked his own office without turning on the lights. He was just about to leave when Mindy appeared, opening the door and carrying a box of donuts.
“Oh, you’re back!” she squealed.
“Just for a moment,” he said too quickly.
“Aw.” She was instantly sad. “I thought we could have a day like we used to. It could be just you and me. We could have our own Hat Day, even though it’s Tuesday. It’s so lonely here now that everybody is at the set.”
“Umm-hmmm,” he intoned, trying to feign focus as he examined the paperwork in his hands. He was almost to the front door when she said something that made him turn around and come back.
“I hear this is going to be the best movie ever,” she said, as though she were cheering at a Friday afternoon pep rally.
He stopped.
“From whom?”
“Oh, everyone says so. People who come back to the office are saying this is going to be one of the best. Can you imagine that, my first film, one of the best ever? My sorority sisters are going to scream at the one-year reunion.”
“So the crew is happy?” he said weakly.
“Oh, they love it. One guy, who always has a Mr. Grumpy face on, said it was the nicest set he had ever worked on and he thinks this movie is going to be one of the year’s best come Oscar time.”
For crying out loud, thought the Great Director. A film even vaguely associated with the word “Oscar” would be sure to keep him in this prison for years to come.
At that moment Kip Jameson, playing the part of older brother Jay Jameson, emerged from his office. “Oh, hey there. Wow!” Kip began, as he pulled on a jacket and locked his office door behind him. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Just came in to get some paperwork. How’re things going at the office?”
At this point, Kip began to pat his clothing. At times he would feel something in a pocket, and rather than pulling it out, he would feel through the various layers of clothing and, upon tactile identification of the object, mutter some indication of acceptance having nothing to do with the rest of the conversation.
“Right on,” began Kip. “I hear this movie’s going to be the crip.”
“What?” asked the Great Director.
“I said… um… I hear this movie is really going to be good.”
“I was just telling him how excited we are about that,” piped Mindy. At this point Kip began to laugh.
“What?” asked Mindy.
“Nothing,” snickered Kip.
“No, tell me. You always laugh anytime I say something. Why? I’m not dumb.”
“It’s not you. I was just thinking about a show I saw on TV, and it was… you know, funny. Really!”
“Okay, Mr. Silly-Billy. I just don’t want you to think I’m some half-baked schoolgirl.” She put her hands on her hips and walked away. This caused Kip to cry with laughter.
“Are you okay?” asked the Great Director.
Kip continued to laugh helplessly. Then, instantly, “Oh! Man. I have a letter from you. I mean for you.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, it’s in my office. Wait here.”
Kip unlocked his door using a ring of keys attached to a gas station keychain he kept on a thick leather belt. Opening the door only a crack, he stepped inside and quickly closed the door behind him. For a long moment, the Great Director stared at the door. He thought he heard a voice come from within and a definite repeated clicking sound, like someone trying to make fire with a piece of flint. After what seemed quite a long while, Kip emerged red-faced and smiling.
“Here it is,” he said a little too triumphantly, holding the envelope out in front of him as though he were following rather than delivering it.
The Great Director took the letter and shoved it into his pocket, asking Kip why he locked his office door.
“Oh! Because there’s some expensive camera lenses in there,” said Kip, thinking quickly.
“Can’t be too careful,” said the Great Director, and left the office, hoping to further avoid Mindy. He forgot about the letter, which he should have read immediately, as the rest of the day might have given him time to reason out its contents instead of reacting to them rashly, as he would later that night, and doing something he would come to regret.
***
On the preceding Monday the Executive VP had returned to his office after a long weekend. He’d driven the length and breadth of Riverside County looking for the Fox. He’d failed to find his informant and had returned to LA early Saturday afternoon in a foul mood that lasted all the way through Sunday and gave him the vague feeling that he had some sort of flu. He immediately reacted with a speed befitting the deployment of the 82nd Airborne, and put a battle plan into motion to stop the attack of the virus. He blasted the invader with vitamin and herbal regimens, drank three cups of chicken broth, and curled up in front of his fireplace with a blanket and a copy of Dr. Rene Houssard’s Believe the Hype: The Mathematics and Statistical Coverage of Previews. On Monday, he returned to the office, nursing a sniffle with all the stoic heroism of a wounded veteran. He entrenched himself in the office to begin the day.
By nine thirty he had consumed the trades and the numbers, breaking down his preferred sources as opposed to those published by the studio. Finally, he determined his own victor of the weekend’s contest for box office superiority. Often his results were identical to Variety’s, but every now and then there was a surprise. Finished, he returned to a small item he had seen in Variety detailing the greenlight for a picture called Close and Empties. A blurb describing the story in one sentence sounded vaguely similar to the Great Director’s picture, which still had not yet been titled. After a lengthy list of people associated with the film came a vague release date. The date was eerily similar to the expected release date of the Great Director’s untitled project. The Executive VP immediately recognized this as the opening salvo in a classic pincer movement being conducted by another studio. It was most definitely an attempt to beat his studio to market with a comparable product.
Fr
om some unknown source, favorable buzz had been generated all last week. The Great Director’s picture was the one to watch. People were starting to talk. The other studios, or at least one other studio at this point, had freaked out and rushed a similar picture into production. The obvious plan was to steal thunder come release time. Even worse, the other picture could get in ahead of the Great Director’s and grab the audience by either being a better picture, or being a mediocre to poor picture and turning the audience off to the idea of seeing another film of the same ilk the next week. In this race, the victor would surely be fleet-footed.
How dare they! How dare they attempt to encroach upon my domain!
The Executive VP seethed.
We had the idea first and we are attempting to make a great and fiscally responsible film, and here they come. Like those fish that swim alongside sharks, trying to bask in our wake. The jackals! Well, not today, not on my watch. Today we fight back not with sword, not with fire, but with pen. I shall rally this production with a mighty call to arms, and it is we who shall best our foe by beating them to market.
The vultures!
Sitting at his desk with his secretary still absent, the Executive VP shook off his cold. He had no time to be held back by sickness and infirmity. Now was a time for action. He grabbed a yellow legal pad, found a pen, and began to write down his battle plan.
He stuck the pen into his mouth, inhaling its inky fumes.
The Executive VP had been a fan of military history and great leaders since childhood. When others were listening to the latest pop song, he’d be listening to a tape cassette his father had purchased of great speeches by twentieth-century leaders. MacArthur, Churchill, the whole lot. He’d listened to them time and time again, wishing it had been he who had come up with such phrases as “finest hour” and “old soldiers never die.” He had waited his entire life for a moment that would require the use of similarly inspirational words. Someday, when the boys were on the line, and the barbarians at the gate, it would be he who would stand before the downtrodden masses. The pillars of smoke rising behind him. Then he would deliver the great one. The “never has so much been asked of so few.” He would rally the survivors, and together they would go forth to defeat their common enemy. And if someday the formerly downtrodden wanted to erect a statue with the words of his speech emblazoned below in the granite of forever, he would not protest.
Now the invaders had come to his kingdom. It was time to bring together the troops and prepare a defense against these ravening buzz-stealing hordes. Now was the time for action.
He would write a letter.
A letter to his own production that would be more than a letter. It would be a call to arms. The enemy was trying to steal the studio’s thunder by getting a movie into theaters faster than the Great Director’s film. Not today. Not this time. His movie would finish ahead of schedule and win the day.
The Executive VP took the pen out of his mouth and contemplated how to begin a letter that would one day, during a brief fantasy he envisioned, become the industry standard for just this sort of message.
How to begin, he thought.
“Dear Troops…”
No, not that. Its tone should be martial, but not overtly so.
“Fellow Artists…”
No, that sounded too alien and false coming from him. Besides, they worked for him. They weren’t his equals and therefore not his fellows. He laughed dismissively and sought another beginning.
***
The Great Director was standing up from his chair on set when the letter fell out of his pocket and the script supervisor, noticing it, bent over and picked it up for him.
“You dropped this.”
The Great Director took the letter, momentarily unaware of its origin, and then, upon recognizing who it was from, opened and read the contents.
Dear Production Staff,
We at the studio would like to congratulate you on your work. Already the industry is buzzing with news of your cinematic exploits. The Studio would like to take this opportunity to offer assistance and even engage in budget discussions should you require an expanded account to complete principal photography on time. We feel great things are happening with your production and we want to do our part in making this film the success the industry is already expecting it to be.
Sincerely,
Management
The Great Director looked around at the production. Lights were being adjusted. Cameras loaded. Actors prepped. People were talking. It was a normal set, and it was not what he had envisioned when he’d first embarked upon his plan to destroy this production and his career.
He’d imagined… what?
He saw the fall of Rome. Smoke. Screaming. A production assistant running into frame with three lances sticking out of his back as a Visigoth horseman thundered past, hooves accented by the clink and jingle of harness and tack. He imagined something more akin to an apocalypse than the idyllic scene of cinematic progress that lay before him.
Despite his efforts, the production had attained “buzz.” This was dangerous indeed. Buzz, siren-like, would lure others into wanting to possess him, hoping that his buzz would somehow become their buzz. That would mean more work, and eventually, of course, death.
The Martini Shot, the last shot of the day, was underway. Without even watching it proceed to its conclusion, the Great Director numbly called out, “Cut.” He had recently perfected the art of pretending to watch things while really only being absorbed in his own self-interested desire to extend his lifespan. Blankly, he walked to his car and drove the long way home.
How had he managed to do his job properly when he had expended every effort not to do so?
He felt like a failure at failing.
He stopped at a gas station, paying with a credit card at the pump. A few cars away, a young man wearing a sleeveless t-shirt and black pants, a long chain draped from the waist and disappearing into a pocket, got out of a small black Japanese car. The car had been lowered and attentively modified with ground effects and various sponsor stickers. From inside the car came the final sad descending chords accompanied by the “Oh yeah” of a standard blues guitar finish. Then a resonant voice spoke through the speakers.
“That was another Bones Wilson tune from his last album, I’m Not Dead Yet! No, Mr. Bones, you certainly are not.”
Pause.
“We’re playing the songs of Bones Wilson this afternoon, in tribute to our very special friend who passed away last night after a concert in Memphis, Tennessee.”
For a moment the voice of the announcer was silent. Had it just hit him? Did he realize there would be no more interviews with this legend, his friend? No one knew what happened in that pause. No one knew the announcer suddenly missed all his friends and realized he was saying goodbye to more and more of them these days.
Someday, we will all say goodbye.
Peace.
Then, like a true radio professional, the announcer was back, and the party was still going in only that way that a public-radio jazz and blues announcer can make it seem.
“I remember saying to Bones one time, ‘How can a man who loves life and food,’ and you know Bones loved food, ‘How can a man who is so happy all the time, racing from one show to the next, putting out album after solid album, have the blues, my man?’ You know what he said to me? Bones just looked at me and said, ‘Man, I got problems just like everyone else. Sometimes those problems were so thick it was like bein’ in a Mississippi rain. Sometimes, it got too rough. When my lady was jumpin’ up and down ’bout sumpin’ I did wrong, this and that, or whatever. When jes’ playin’ gigs late at night around town weren’t enough anymo’. You know, when I got tired uh the boss-man and couldn’t take it hardly no more. Well, then I jes’ took my problems out there on the road.’”
The disc jockey was quiet for a long moment of dead air. Co
mposing himself before the next record. Forging ahead despite the grief that was strangling him a little more every day.
“Well, it looks like Mr. Bones has gone out on the road one last time. So while he’s gone, let’s hear ‘The Blues Made Me Do It,’ and think about our old friend Bones Wilson. And if you meet him out there on the road this afternoon… tell him… well, tell him we miss him already.”
Bones Wilson’s classic song “The Blues Made Me Do It” began. Everybody, even the Great Director, had heard that song. It had been used in a number of movie soundtracks. Usually to set the mood for the gritty, hard-scratch side of town. It seemed even more poignant now that its player, the man who’d lived it so much that he’d written it down, was gone. Every chord a paragraph on symbolism. Every key change a broken heart, again. Through it all, Bones Wilson worked his guitar and sang badly. So bad it was good. Because he meant every word of it.
The Great Director finished filling his car. After the gas cap was on, and with Bones’s classic song echoing across the expanse of the gas station, he approached the dark-haired youth from whose car the music came.
“What station is that?” he asked.
For a moment, the youth behind the sunglasses noticed the approach of a middle-aged man, readying himself for the inevitable confrontation in which he knew he would be asked to turn down his radio. Now with the question, he was taken aback. Another true believer.
“88.1 KLON. They call it KJZZ now. But everybody agrees it’s still KLON. You like jazz?” In the back of the small Japanese import, a large upright bass in a black canvas cover filled most of the back seat.
“I wanted to hear more about… Bones.” When the Great Director said “Bones,” not adding Wilson, it felt strange, as though he was part of some secret club that spoke a language no one else knew.
“Well, PBS is airing a great documentary on him tonight. You should check it out, man,” said the kid.
“Thanks, I will.” The Great Director turned away, and soon he was in his car, headed west down Santa Monica Boulevard, 88.1 tuned in and the songs of Bones Wilson coming through the speakers.
