Hollywood

by Charles Bukowski

  “This is a Cape Cod, cranberry juice and vodka.”

  “I’ll have a Cape Cod,” Sarah told the barkeep, Cowboy Cal.

  “Vodka 7,” I told the Cowboy.

  We had a few. Big Monster told me a story about how they had all got in a fight with the cops. Quite interesting. And I knew by the way he told it that it was the truth.

  Then there was lunch call for the actors and crew. The barflies just stayed in there.

  “We’d better eat,” said Sarah.

  We went out behind and to the east of the hotel. A large bench was set up. The extras, technicians, hands and so forth were already eating. The food looked good. Jon met us out there. We got our servings at the wagon and followed Jon down to the end of the table. As we walked along, Jon paused. There was a man eating by himself. Jon introduced us.

  “This is Lance Edwards...”

  Edwards gave a slight nod and went back to his steak.

  We sat down at the end of the table. Edwards was one of the co-producers.

  “This Edwards acts like a prick,” I said.

  “Oh,” said Jon, “he’s very bashful. He’s one of the guys that Friedman was trying to get rid of.”

  “Maybe Friedman was right.”

  “Hank,” said Sarah, “you don’t even know the man.”

  I was working at my beer.

  “Eat your food,” said Sarah.

  Sarah was going to add ten years to my life, for better or worse.

  “We are going to shoot a scene with Jack in the room. You ought to come watch it.”

  “After we finish eating we’re going back to the bar. When you’re ready to shoot, have somebody come get us.”

  “All right,” said Jon.

  After we ate we walked around the other side of the hotel, checking it out. Jon was with us. There were several trailers parked along the street. We saw Jack’s Rolls-Royce. And next to it was a large silver trailer. There was a sign on the door: JACK BLEDSOE.

  “Look,” said Jon, “he has a periscope sticking out of the roof so he can see who’s coming...”

  “Jesus...”

  “Listen, I’ve got to set things up...”

  “All right...See you...”

  Funny thing about Jon. His French accent was slipping away as he spoke only English here in America. It was a little sad.

  Then the door of Jack’s trailer opened. It was Jack.

  “Hey, come on in!”

  We went up the steps. There was a TV on. A young girl was lying in a bunk watching the TV.

  “This is Cleo. I bought her a bike. We ride together.”

  There was a fellow sitting at the end.

  “This is my brother, Doug...”

  I moved toward Doug, did a little shadow boxing in front of him. He didn’t say anything. He just stared. Cool number. Good. I liked cool numbers.

  “Got anything to drink?” I asked Jack.

  “Sure...”

  Jack found some whiskey, poured me a whiskey and water.

  “Thanks...”

  “You care for some?” he asked Sarah.

  “Thanks,” she said, “I don’t like to mix drinks.”

  “She’s on Cape Cods,” I said.

  “Oh...”

  Sarah and I sat down. The whiskey was good. “I like this place,” I said. “Stay as long as you like,” said Jack. “Maybe we’ll stay forever...” Jack gave me his famous smile. “Your brother doesn’t say much, does he?”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “A cool number.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, Jack, you memorized your lines?”

  “I never look at my lines until right before the shooting.”

  “Great. Well, listen, we’ve got to be going.”

  “I know you can do it, Jack,” said Sarah, “we’re glad you got the lead.”

  “Thanks...”

  Back at the bar the barflies were still there and they didn’t look any drunker. It took a lot to buzz a pro.

  Sarah had another Cape Cod. I went back to the Vodka 7.

  We drank and there were more stories. I even told one. Maybe an hour went by. Then I looked up and there was Jack standing looking over the swinging doors in the entrance. I could just see his head.

  “Hey, Jack,” I yelled, “come on in and have a drink!”

  “No, Hank, we’re going to shoot now. Why don’t you come up and watch?”

  “Be right there, baby...”

  We ordered up another pair of drinks. We were working on them when Jon walked in.

  “We’re going to shoot now,” he said.

  “All right,” said Sarah.

  “All right,” I said.

  We finished our drinks and I got a couple of bottles of beer to take with us.

  We followed Jon up the stairway and into the room. Cables everywhere. Technicians were moving about.

  “I’ll bet they could shoot a movie with about one-third of these flicking people.”

  “That’s what Friedman says.”

  “Friedman is sometimes right.”

  “All right,” said Jon, “we’re just about ready. We’ve had a few dry runs. Now we shoot. You,” he said to me, “stand in this corner. You can watch from here and not be in the scene.”

  Sarah moved back there with me.

  “SILENCE!” screamed Jon’s assistant director, “WE’RE GETTING READY TO ROLL!”

  It became very quiet.

  Then from Jon: “CAMERA! ACTION!”

  The door to the room opened and Jack Bledsoe weaved in. Shit, it was the young Chinaski! It was me! I felt a tender aching within me. Youth, you son of a bitch, where did you go?

  I wanted to be the young drunk again. I wanted to be Jack Bledsoe. But I was just the old guy in the corner, sucking on a beer.

  Bledsoe weaved to the window by the table. He pulled up the tattered shade. He did a little shadow boxing, a smile on his face. Then he sat down at the table, found a pencil and a piece of paper. He sat there a while, then pulled the cork from a wine bottle, had a hit, lit a cigarette. He turned on the radio and lucked into Mozart.

  He began writing on that piece of paper with the pencil as the scene faded...

  He had it. He had it the way it was, whether it meant anything or not, he had it the way it was.

  I walked up to Jack, shook his hand.

  “Did I get it?” he asked.

  “You got it,” I said...

  Down at the bar, the barflies were still at it and they looked about the same.

  Sarah went back to her Cape Cods and I went the Vodka 7 route. We heard more stories which were very very good. But there was a sadness in the air because after the movie was shot the bar and hotel were going to be torn down to further some commercial purpose. Some of the regulars had lived in the hotel for decades. Others lived in a deserted train station nearby and action was being taken to remove them from there. So it was heavy sad drinking.

  Sarah said finally, “We’ve got to get home and feed the cats.”

  Drinking could wait.

  Hollywood could wait.

  The cats could not wait.

  I agreed.

  We said our goodbyes to the barflies and made it to the car. I wasn’t worried about driving. Something about seeing young Chinaski in that old hotel room had steadied me. Son of a bitch, I had been a hell of a young bull. Really a top-notch fuck-up.

  Sarah was worried about the future of the barflies. I didn’t like it either. On the other hand I couldn’t see them sitting around our front room, drinking and telling their stories. Sometimes charm lessens when it gets too close to reality. And how many brothers can you keep?

  I drove on in. We got there.

  The cats were waiting.

  Sarah got down and cleaned their bowls and I opened the cans.

  Simplicity, that’s what was needed.

  We went upstairs, washed, changed, made ready for bed.

  “What are those poor people going to do?” asked Sarah.


  “I know. I know...”

  Then it was time for sleep. I went downstairs for a last look, came back up. Sarah was asleep. I turned out the light. We slept. Having seen the movie made that afternoon we were now somehow different, we would never think or talk quite the same. We now knew something more but what it was seemed very vague and even perhaps a bit disagreeable.

  29

  Jon Pinchot had escaped from the ghetto. In his contract it stated that he would be supplied with an apartment to be paid for by Firepower. Jon found an apartment near the Firepower building. Each night, from his bed, Jon could see the lit sign at the top of the building, Firepower, and it shone through his window and upon his face as he slept.

  François Racine remained in the ghetto. He began a garden, growing vegetables. He spun his roulette wheel, tended his garden and fed the chickens. He was one of the strangest men I had ever met.

  “I cannot leave my chickens,” he told me. “I will die in this strange land here with my chickens, here among the blacks.”

  I went to the track on the days that the horses were running and the movie continued shooting.

  The phone rang every day. People wanted to interview the writer. I never realized that there were so many movie magazines or magazines interested in the movies. It was a sickness: this great interest in a medium that relentlessly and consistently failed, time after time after time, to produce anything at all. People became so used to seeing shit on film that they no longer realized it was shit.

  The racetrack was another waste of human life and effort. The people marched up to the windows with their money which they exchanged for pieces of numbered paper. Almost all of the numbers weren’t good. In addition the track and the state took 18% off the top of each dollar, which they roughly divided. The biggest damn fools went to the movies and the racetracks. I was a damn fool who went to the racetrack. But I did better than most because after decades of race-going I had learned a minor trick or two. With me, it was a hobby and I never went wild with my money. Once you have been poor a long time you gain a certain respect for money. You never again want to be without any of it at all. That’s for saints and fools. One of my successes in life was that in spite of all the crazy things I had done, I was perfectly normal: I chose to do those things, they didn’t choose me.

  Anyhow, one night the phone rang. It was Jon Pinchot.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said.

  “Did Friedman cancel the movie again?”

  “No, it’s not that...I don’t know how this guy got my phone number...”

  “What guy?”

  “He just phoned me...”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘YOU MOTHERFUCKER, YOU KILLED MY BROTHER! YOU KILLED MY BROTHER! NOW I AM COMING TO KILL YOU! I AM COMING TO KILL YOU TONIGHT!’”

  “God...”

  “He was sobbing, he seemed out of his mind, it seemed very real. Maybe it is. In this town, you never know...”

  “Did you phone the police?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did they say?”

  “They said, ‘Call us when he gets there.’”

  “You can stay over here...”

  “No, thanks, it’s all right...but I’m sure I won’t sleep well tonight...”

  “Do you have a gun?”

  “No, tomorrow I will get one, but then it may be too late.”

  “Go to a motel...”

  “No, he may be watching...”

  “What can I do?”

  “Nothing. I just wanted to let you know and to thank you for writing the screenplay.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “Goodnight, Hank...”

  “Goodnight, Jon...”

  He hung up.

  I knew how he felt. A guy phoned me once and told me he was going to kill me because I had fucked his wife. He called me by my last name and told me he was on the way over. He didn’t make it. He must have been killed in a traffic accident.

  I decided to phone François Racine to see how he was doing.

  I got his answering machine:

  “DO NOT SPEAK TO ME, SPEAK TO THIS MACHINE. I DO NOT WISH TO SPEAK. SPEAK TO THIS MACHINE. I AM NOWHERE AND YOU ARE ALSO NOWHERE. DEATH COMES WITH HIS LITTLE HANDS TO GRIP US. I DO NOT WISH TO SPEAK. SPEAK TO THE MACHINE.”

  The beep sounded.

  “François, you fuck-head...”

  “Oh, it’s you, Hank...”

  “Yeah, babe...”

  “There has been a fire...a fire...FIRE...”

  “What?”

  “Yes, I buy this cheap black and white TV...I leave it on while I am going somewhere...I want to fool them...Make them think there is somebody inside...I guess while I was gone the TV caught on fire or exploded...When I drive up I see all the smoke...The fire department does not come down here...This whole block could be in flames, they would not come...I walk through the smoke...There are flames...The blacks are in there...The killers and the thieves...They have buckets of water and they are running back and forth putting out the fire...I sit and watch...I find a bottle of wine, open it, drink...The blacks are running about. . . Soon the fire is out...There are embers and much smoke. We cough. ‘Sorry, man,’ one of the blacks says. ‘We got here late. We were having a gang meeting...somebody smelled smoke...’ ‘Thank you,’ I told them. One of them had a pint of gin, we passed it around, then they left...”

  “I’m sorry, François...Christ, I don’t know what to say...Is it still liveable there?”

  “I sit in the smoke, I sit in the smoke...It is like a fog, a fog...Now my hair is white, I am an old man, I sit in the fog...There is fog everywhere and my hair is white...I am an old man, I sit in the fog...Now I am a young boy, I sit in the fog...I hear my mother’s voice...Oh no! She is moaning! She is getting FUCKED! She is getting FUCKED by somebody terrible! I must go back to France, I must help my mother, I must help France!”

  “François, you can stay here…or I’m sure Jon has room...It’s not as bad as you think...Every dark cloud passes...”

  “No, no, sometimes there is a dark cloud that never passes. It stays forever!”

  “Well, that’s death.”

  “Each day in life is death! I go back to France! I act again!”

  “François, how about the chickens? You love the chickens, remember?”

  “Fuck the chickens! Let the blacks have the chickens! Let the black meat and the white meat meet!”

  “Meat meet?” I asked.

  “I am in the fog. There has been a fire. A fire. I am an old man, my hair is white. I sit in the fog...I go now...”

  François hung up.

  I tried him again. All I got was: “DO NOT SPEAK TO ME, SPEAK TO THIS MACHINE...”

  I hoped he had a bottle or two of good red wine to get him through the night because it appeared if ever a man needed that it was my friend, François. Unless it was my friend, Jon. Unless it was me. I opened one.

  “Care for a glass or two?” I asked Sarah.

  “Certainly,” she answered. “What’s new?”

  I told her.

  30

  The man didn’t come to kill Jon the first night. On the second night Jon had a gun and waited. The man didn’t come. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.

  Meanwhile, Francine Bowers had recovered from her operation.

  “$50 per diem, plus room and board, that’s all I can give her,” Friedman told Jon.

  There was also some argument about paying for her flight to California but Firepower finally agreed to do it.

  I was to receive a payment upon the first day of shooting and so was Jon but nothing had occurred. Firepower was to pay Jon and then Jon was to pay me. There had been nothing. I had no idea if the other people in the crew were being paid.

  Maybe that’s why I decided to go to the Distributor’s Party. I could ask Friedman where my money was.

  The party was on a Friday night at the Lemon Duck, a large dark place with a big bar and m
any tables. When Sarah and I arrived, most of the tables were filled. These people were the distributors from all over the world. They looked calm and almost bored. They were eating or ordering their meals, not saying much, not drinking much. We found a table off to the corner.

  Jon Pinchot walked in and spotted us right away. He came to the table, smiling. “Surprised to find you here. Distributor’s parties are horrible...By the way, I have something...”

  He had the screenplay there in its blue cover and he opened it.

  “Now, this scene here, we need to cut a minute and a half. Can you do it?”

  “Sure. But listen, could you get Sarah and me a drink?”

  “Of course. . .”

  “Jon is right,” said Sarah, “this party doesn’t seem to have much life.”

  “Maybe we can add something to it,” I said.

  “Hank, we don’t have to always be the last ones to leave a party.”

  “But somehow, we are...”

  I began crossing out lines. My people talked too much. Everybody talked too much.

  Jon was back with the drinks.

  “How’s it going?”

  “My people talk too much...”

  “They drink too much...”

  “No, they can’t drink too much. There is never enough...”

  Then there was applause.

  “It’s Friedman,” said Sarah.

  Here he came in an old suit, no necktie, top button missing from his shirt and the shirt was wrinkled. Friedman had his mind on other things besides dress. But he had a fascinating smile and his eyes looked right at people as if he were x-raying them. He had come from hell and he was still in hell and he’d put you in hell too if you gave him the slightest chance. He went from table to table, dropping small and precise sentences.

  Then he came to our table. He made some remark on how nice Sarah looked.

  “Look,” I pointed to the screenplay on the table, “this son of a bitch Pinchot has me WORKING during this party!”

  “GOOD!” said Friedman, then turned and walked off toward another table.

  I finished the cuts and handed the screenplay to Jon. He read it.