“Mr. Chinaski,” the landlady had said, “we have religious people living here, working people, people with children. Never have I heard such complaints from the other tenants. And I heard you too-all that singing, all that cursing...things breaking...coarse language and laughter...In all my days, never have I heard anything like what went on in your room last night!”
“All right, I’ll leave...”
“Thank you.”
I must have been mad. Unshaven. Undershirt full of cigarette holes. My only desire was to have more than one bottle on the dresser. I was not fit for the world and the world was not fit for me and I had found some others like myself, and most of them were women, women most men would never want to be in the same room with, but I adored them, they inspired me, I play-acted, swore, pranced about in my underwear telling them how great I was, but only / believed that. They just hollered, “Fuck off! Pour some more booze!” Those ladies from hell, those ladies in hell with me.
Jon Pinchot walked briskly into the room.
“It worked!” he told me. “Everything worked! What a day! Now, tomorrow we start again!”
“Give Sarah the credit,” I said. “She knows how to mix a magic drink.”
“What?”
“She loosened up Francine with something in a coffeecup.”
Jon turned to Sarah.
“Thank you very much...”
“Any time,” Sarah answered.
“God,” said Jon, “I’ve been in this business a long time and never nineteen takes!”
“I’ve heard,” I answered, “that Chaplin sometimes took a hundred takes before he got it right.”
“That was Chaplin,” said Jon. “A hundred takes and our whole budget would be used up.”
And that was about all for that day. Except Sarah said, “Hell, let’s go to Musso’s.”
Which we did. And we got a table in the Old Room and ordered a couple of drinks while we looked at the menu.
“Remember?” I asked, “remember in the old days when we used to come here to look at the people at the tables and try to spot the types, the actor types, the producer or director types, the porno types, the agents, the pretenders? And we used to think, ‘Look at them, talking about their half-assed movie deals or their contracts or their last films.’ What moles, what misfits...better to look away when the swordfish and the sand dabs arrive.”
“We thought they were shit,” said Sarah, “and now we are.”
“What goes around comes around...”
“Right! I think I’ll have the sand dabs...”
The waiter stood above us, shuffling his feet, scowling, the hairs of his eyebrows falling down into his eyes. Musso’s had been there since 1919 and everything was a pain in the ass to him: us, and everybody else in the place. I agreed. Decided on the swordfish. With french fries.
33
The film was being shot in 3 locations. Different rooms, different streets and alleys, different bars had to be juggled about.
There was a night scene which was to entail some stealing of corn from a vacant lot and a chase by the police.
The corn had been planted and was ready to steal.
To use the location cost the budget 5 thousand dollars. The vacant lot was now owned by a Rehabilitation Center for Alcoholics. Pinchot had searched everywhere for a cheaper location but finally had to settle for that one, which actually was the same vacant lot which my lady had stolen the corn from over 3 decades ago. The new corn had been planted in the exact location where the old corn had been planted. Other things were not quite so exact. The apartment building nearby where the lady had lived, the one I moved into with her, had now been turned into a Home for the Aged.
The large building next to the vacant lot, now being used as a Rehabilitation Center, back then had been a popular ballroom. It was always busy especially on Saturday nights. The entire bottom floor was a ballroom, gigantic, with large globes of light slowly turning in the ceiling as the live band played dance music until early in the a.m. while many fancy cars, some with chauffeurs, waited outside.
We hated that ballroom and those people while we starved and fought with each other and the police and the landlord, as we were taken to and then bailed out of the Lincoln Heights Jail.
Now that building was full of reformed drunks who read the Bible, smoked too many cigarettes and played Bingo in the room that had once been the grand ballroom.
The vacant lot was all that hadn’t changed. In all those decades nobody had ever built a structure of any kind there.
Francine and Jack had already had a couple of rehearsals and had vanished into their trailers and we were standing around waiting for the action. I was tilting a beer when there was a tap on my shoulder. It was a nice looking fellow, neatly trimmed beard, nice eyes, nice smile. I had seen him about, but didn’t know him, didn’t know his position and didn’t ask. Actually I guessed that his real job was being a Firepower spy.
“Please,” he said, “we can’t have drinking on the set here.”
“Why not?”
“In the contract we signed with the people here it states that we can shoot on the premises but no drinking will be allowed.”
“Water?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes, those x-drunks can’t stand to see anybody else have a drink.”
“They don’t believe in it.”
“But the whole movie is about drinking.”
“We had a very hard time securing these premises. Please don’t spoil it.”
“O.K., buddy. But it’s for Pinchot, not you...”
He walked off with his clipboard, wobbling his soft little ass which had not been kicked often enough.
I turned my back to the building, took another gulp, put the bottle in my coat pocket.
“They can see you,” said Sarah.
“You mean all those x-drunks are hanging out of windows watching me drink this beer?”
“No, but they have people around.”
“All right, I’ll go into hiding when I take a hit of my beer.”
“You’re acting as spoiled as some of these stars.”
Sarah was correct. I had no right to be spoiled. The leading man was making 750 times as much money as I was.
Then Jon Pinchot found us.
“Hello, Sarah...Hello, Hank...”
He told me that Friedman had actually sent the new checks, that mine had been made out directly to me and was in the mail. Our scheme had succeeded.
“I’ve got to go,” said Jon, “we’re about ready to shoot the cornfield scene. You watch it and let me know what you think...”
Finally they went into action and Francine ran up the hill to the rows of corn.
“I want some corn!” she screamed.
I remembered Jane going up that same hill while I was carrying the large sack of bottles. Only when she had screamed “I want some corn!” it had been as if she wanted the whole world back, the world that she had somehow missed out on or the world that had somehow passed her by. The corn was to be her victory, her reward, her revenge, her song.
But when Francine screamed, “I want some corn!” it sounded petulant, there was a whine in her voice, and it was not the desperate voice of the drunk. It was all right, it was good but it wasn’t quite right.
Then when Francine began ripping at the ears I knew that it wasn’t the same, that it could never be the same. Francine was an actress. Jane had been a mad drunk. Properly and finally mad. But one doesn’t expect perfection from a performance. A good imitation will do.
So Francine ripped the corn, stuffed it in her purse, Jack saying, “You’re drunk...That corn is green...”
Then the cop car rolled up, flashing its red light and its bright spotlight on them, and Francine and Jack ran toward her place, just as Jane and I had, and they just got to the elevator as the cops shouted over the loudspeaker, “HALT OR WE’LL FIRE!”
But instead of those cops jumping out of the car and running after J
ack and Francine they just sat there. The shot was over.
It took Sarah and me a few minutes to find Jon Pinchot.
He was just standing there, quietly.
“Jon, man, the cops were supposed to get out and chase their ass!”
“I know. The car doors got stuck. They couldn’t get out.”
“What?”
“I know. It’s unbelievable. We are going to have to fix the car doors and shoot it all over.”
“We’re sorry,” said Sarah.
Jon was depressed. He usually laughed when things went wrong.
“I’ll get back to you after we re-shoot it.”
We left, walked back across the street. I hated to see Jon deflated that way. He had natural guts. Some people disliked him because he seemed to have too much bravado. But most of it was real. We all played at being brave. I did too. But I didn’t like to see Jon lose his bravado.
Francine and Jack and many of the other people returned to their trailers. I hated the long delays between shots. Movies cost a great deal of money because most of the time nobody was doing anything but waiting and waiting and waiting. Until this was ready and that was ready and the lighting was ready and the camera was ready and the hairdresser had finished pissing and the consultant had been consulted, nothing happened. It was all a deliberate jack-off, a salary for this and a salary for that, and there was only one man who was allowed to put a plug in the wall, and the sound man was pissed-off at the assistant director, and then the actors were not feeling good because that’s the way actors were supposed to feel and so forth. It was all waste waste waste. Even on this extremely low budget film, I felt like yelling, “ALL RIGHT, CUT OUT THE SHIT! THERE’S NOTHING HERE THAT CAN’T BE DONE IN 10 MINUTES AND YOU HAVE BEEN TAKING HOURS PLAYING AROUND WITH IT!”
I didn’t have the guts to say it. I was just the writer. A minor expense.
Then I got an ego boost. A television crew came from Italy and one came from Germany. They both wanted interviews with me. The directors were both ladies.
“He promised us first,” said the Italian lady.
“But you’ll take all his juice away,” said the German lady.
“I hope so,” said the Italian lady.
I sat down before the Italian lights. We were on camera.
“What do you think of film?”
“Movies?”
“Yes.”
“I stay away from them.”
“What do you do when you’re not writing?”
“Horses. Bet them.”
“Do they help your writing?”
“Yes. They help me forget about it.”
“Are you drunk in this movie?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think drinking is brave?”
“No, but nothing else is either.”
“What does your movie mean?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing. Peeking up the ass of death, maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Maybe means not sure.”
“What do you see when you look up the ‘ass of death’?”
“The same thing you do.”
“What is your philosophy of life?”
“Think as little as possible.”
“Anything else?”
“When you can’t think of anything else to do, be kind.”
“That’s nice.”
“Nice is not necessarily kind.”
“All right, Mr. Chinaski. What word do you have for the Italian people?”
“Don’t shout so much. And read Celine.”
The lights went out on that one.
The German interview was even less interesting.
The lady kept wanting to know how much I drank.
“He drinks but not as much as he used to,” Sarah told her.
“I need another drink right now or I’m not going to talk anymore.”
It came immediately. It was in a large white paper cup and I drank it down. Ah, it was good. It suddenly seemed foolish to me that anybody wanted to know what I thought. The best part of a writer is on paper. The other part was usually nonsense.
The German lady was right. The Italian lady had used up all my juice.
I was now a spoiled star. And I was worried about the cornfield shoot.
I needed to talk to Jon, to tell him to make Francine drunker, madder, with one foot in hell, one hand yanking corn from the stalk as death approached, with the nearby buildings having faces out of dreams, looking down on the sadness of existence for us all: the rich, the poor, the beautiful and the ugly, the talented and useless.
“You don’t like movies?” the German lady asked.
“No.”
The lights went out. The interview was over.
And the cornfield scene got reshot. Maybe not exactly the way it could have been, but almost.
34
It was ten a.m. when the phone rang. It was Jon Pinchot.
“The film has been cancelled...”
“Jon, I no longer believe such stories. It’s just their way of getting more leverage.”
“No, it’s true, the film has been cancelled.”
“How can they? They’ve invested too much, they’d take a huge loss on the project...”
“Hank, Firepower just doesn’t have any more money. Not only has our film been cancelled, all films have been cancelled. I went to their office building this morning. There are only the security guards. There is NOBODY in the building! I walked all through it, screaming, ‘Hello! Hello! Is anybody here?’ There was no answer. The whole building is empty.”
“But, Jon, how about Jack Bledsoe’s ‘Play or Pay’ clause?”
“They can’t pay or play him. All the people at Firepower, including us, are without any more income. Some of them have been working for 2 weeks now without pay. Now there’s no more money for anybody...”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know, Hank, this looks like the end...”
“Don’t make any hasty moves, Jon. Maybe some other company will take over the film?”
“They won’t. Nobody likes the screenplay.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s right...”
“What are you going to do?”
“Me? I’m going to the track. But if you want to come over for some drinks this evening, I’d be glad to see you.”
“Thanks, Hank, but I’ve got a date with a couple of lesbians.”
“Good luck.”
“Good luck to you too...”
I drove north up the Harbor freeway toward Hollywood Park. I’d been playing the horses over 30 years. It started after my near fatal hemorrhage at the L. A. County Hospital. They told me that if I took another drink that I was dead.
“What’ll I do?” I had asked Jane.
“About what?”
“What’ll I use as a substitute for drink?”
“Well, there are the horses.”
“Horses? What do you do?”
“Bet on them.”
“Bet on them? Sounds stupid.”
We went and I won handsomely. I began to go on a daily basis. Then, slowly, I began to drink a little again. Then I drank more. And I didn’t die. So then I had both drinking and the horses. I was hooked all around. In those days there was no Sunday racing, so I would nurse the old car all the way to Agua Caliente and back on Sunday, a few times staying for the dog races after the horses were through, and then hitting the Caliente bars. I was never robbed or rolled and was treated rather kindly by both the Mexican bartenders and the patrons even though sometimes I was the only gringo. The late night drive back was nice and when I got home I didn’t care whether Jane was there or not. I had told her that Mexico was simply too dangerous for a lady. She usually wasn’t home when I got in. She was in a much more dangerous place: Alvarado Street. But as long as there were 3 or 4 beers waiting for me, it was all right. If she drank those and left the refrigerator empty, then she was in real trouble.
One of my systems was based on index numbers and post positions. There are certain numbers that the public is reluctant to call. When these numbers get a certain amount of play on the board in relation to their post position you have a high percentage winner. By studying many years of result charts from tracks in Canada, the USA and Mexico I came up with a winning play based solely upon these index numbers. (The index number indicates the track and race where the horse made its last appearance.) The Racing Form used to put out big, fat, red result books for $10. I read them over for hours, for weeks. All results have a pattern. If you can find the pattern, you’re in. And you can tell your boss to jam it up his ass. I had told this to several bosses, only to have to find new ones. Mostly because I altered or cheated on my own systems. The weakness of human nature is one more thing you must defeat at the track.
I pulled into Hollywood Park and drove through the “Sticker Lane.” A horse trainer I knew had given me an “Owner/Trainer” parking sticker and also a pass to the clubhouse. He was a good man and the best thing about him was that he wasn’t a writer or an actor.
I walked into the clubhouse, found a table and worked at my figures. I always did that first, then paid a buck to go over to the Cary Grant Pavilion. There weren’t many people there and you could think better. About Cary Grant, they have a huge photo of him hanging in the pavilion. He’s got on old-fashioned glasses and that smile. Cool. But what a horseplayer he was. He was a two dollar bettor. And when he lost he would run out toward the track screaming, waving his arms and yelling, “YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO ME!” If you’re only going to bet two dollars you might as well stay home and take your money and move it from one pocket to the other.
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