Listen to the Echoes

by Ray Bradbury

  BRADBURY: It goes back about fifty years. I was invited to the University of Southern California to an English Honorary Society to speak. It was a small group, maybe one hundred people. And I got up, and I’d prepared a lot of notes and part of a speech, and I started reading it, and I looked up and everyone was asleep. I said, “Attention! Attention!” And they all woke up. Then I said, “Now watch this,” and I threw the speech on the floor and jumped on it. I said, “Now, to continue.” And from then on I looked them in the eyes, I never looked at notes. I have lists of metaphors I take with me. I have a list of about eighty metaphors—like dinosaurs, IBM, MGM, Twentieth Century Fox—and I’d just look at that metaphor, and I can talk for half an hour on it. It stimulates my imagination.

  WELLER: In November 2000 you were given the prestigious Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation. How important was this honor? After all, you weren’t being recognized as a genre writer, you were being hailed by the New York literary establishment.

  BRADBURY: That was a fantastic evening. My agent Don Congdon was there. My date for the evening was my editor, Jennifer Brehl. Steve Martin was the host. You were there too. That was great fun. It was wonderful. There was a real problem getting back to my hotel room, though. The hotel where they held the ceremony in New York was so huge, it filled me with despair. After my stroke, I walk very slowly. I saw a sign that night that said. “Next restroom, 280 miles.” The registration desk was on the seventh floor! You have to wait ten minutes for an elevator just to go up and register! So, that night, some of the women there were taking me back to my room, and I said, “For God’s sake, where’s the men’s room?” We couldn’t find one. One of the girls said, “There’s a potted palm over there, why don’t you go use it?” So I went over. Nobody saw me. At least I don’t think so.

  WELLER: These speeches are often eventful.

  BRADBURY: I’ll give you a good example of the speech stuff: My friendship with Loren Eiseley, the anthropologist, years ago. I wrote him a love letter back in 1948 because I loved an essay he wrote, “The Fire Apes”, that was in Harper’s magazine. And it was so beautifully written I wrote him a love letter, and said, “Dear Dr. Eiseley, I read ‘The Fire Apes’ in Harper’s, and it’s the single best essay I’ve read in an American magazine in twenty years. You are a genius,” et cetera, et cetera. “I think you should write a book.” He wrote back and said, “Dear Mr. Bradbury, I know your work.” I didn’t have much out at the time, just one book, Dark Carnival. And he said, “You know, that’s an idea. I think I will write a book.” And he went on to write twenty books, and they were all fantastic, and we became friends as a result of my urging him to write a book.

  So, he finally came to the Coast about forty years ago and spoke at Occidental College. I went along with him, and he spoke at this banquet. He put everyone to sleep, because he was face down in his speech, you couldn’t see him, and you didn’t want to listen because he wasn’t looking at the audience.

  When it was over I ran up on the stage, I said, “Gimme that!” I grabbed his speech and looked at it, and I said, “My God, Doctor, this is beautiful. But you can’t read it, you have to learn it so you can recite it, and you’ve got to look at people’s eyes and pay attention to them, and then you’ll be a good speaker.” And I said, “Forgive me,” because he was about fifteen years older than me. I felt like a young punk, telling him what to do. “Please forgive me,” I told him, “but you can’t go on this way because you’re boring people and putting them to sleep. And I’m your best friend, and I want you to succeed.” But he wrote me a letter later and said thank you, because he began to learn how to memorize his speeches. So that’s the truth about public speaking. It has to be like acting, just as natural and wonderful as breathing.

  WELLER: When did you really start to make money as a writer?

  BRADBURY: Only when I got the job writing the screenplay for Moby Dick. We went to Ireland and I was making six hundred dollars a week. That was a lot of money back then. But we never lived beyond our means. Before that, in 1950, when we moved into our little tract house on Clarkson Road, the very first week I ordered a refrigerator and we bought it on time. And then I looked at the carrying charges. I could buy a suit of clothes. So we got money from my dad and Maggie’s dad, and we paid off the refrigerator so we wouldn’t have the carrying charges. From then on, we never bought anything on time until we had the money.

  WELLER: Getting back to your stardom as a writer, what’s the strangest thing you’ve ever autographed?

  BRADBURY: When I had my stroke in 1999, I couldn’t sign my name for quite some time. I did signings and brought an ink pad and put my thumbprint in books. People have heard about this, and they now ask me to thumb-print their books even though I can write again. The other thing, and I don’t know why, but people have been bringing baseballs to signings and having me autograph them. Can you believe that?

  WELLER: Rock stars occasionally sign body parts for people. Have you done that?

  BRADBURY: Not yet, but there’s still time!

  chapter four

  FAMOUS FRIENDS

  SOME MIGHT ACCUSE HIM OF BEING A NAME-DROPPER. BUT WHEN you have lived as long as he has and have accomplished so much in almost every facet of media and entertainment, you are going to meet people. Famous people.

  One night at the American Film Society when he was presenting an award to Orson Welles, Frank Sinatra was in the crowd, and Ray Bradbury approached him.

  “Mr. Sinatra?” said Bradbury.

  “Yes?” responded the Chairman.

  “My name is Ray Bradbury. I’m a writer, and I love you.”

  A slight smile crossed Sinatra’s face. “Right back at you.”

  Over the course of his career, Bradbury has known and worked with an impressive cross-section of Hollywood talent. Along the way, he has collected an unlikely cadre of famous friends—a surreal cast of cultural luminaries.

  WELLER: You’ve known and worked with an incredible array of people over the decades. Who are you particularly close to?

  BRADBURY: I’ve never made a point of making too many friends too close to whatever I’m doing. My New York relationships are long-distance—telephone and letters, personal contacts on occasion. In Hollywood I haven’t made a point of being social.

  WELLER: Why?

  BRADBURY: I’m afraid of being taken in by the romance. You have to be careful not to live with the people you work with. I don’t think it’s healthy. The people I know are directors of films. I’ve known a lot of the old-time film directors: Rouben Mamoulian, King Vidor, George Cukor. I knew a lot of screenwriters, short story writers, and novelists. We have our own little writers’ group that we formed forty-five years ago, and we still meet on occasion. But we’ve all helped each other and it’s very intimate—it’s not a power thing. In other words, I’m not taking you to lunch or dinner because you’re a famous star.

  I know Rod Steiger. We’ve been good friends for years, but we don’t see him more than once a year. I knew Charlton Heston. He had a library of first editions you wouldn’t believe. Incredible. He was very intellectual. I went to his fiftieth wedding anniversary, and he came to ours with his wife. They were lovely people, and the people who hated him when he was still alive are wrong. They didn’t know him. They hate him because of the NRA. That’s a lot of crap.

  WELLER: Ray Harryhausen has been a lifelong friend. How did the two of you meet?

  BRADBURY: I met him in 1938 at Forrest Ackerman’s house. He was there borrowing pictures of King Kong from Forry, and I discovered he loved King Kong as much as I did. When I found out he was animating his own dinosaurs, he invited me over to his house, and I went out in his garage and he was animating the dinosaurs on the floor. There, he showed me his first films. The dinosaurs were ball-and-socket steel covered with rubber and plastic and beautifully painted. Just like King Kong. And later he met Willis O’Brien, the animator, and O’Brien hired him to wor
k on Mighty Joe Young. He learned from the master.

  WELLER: Harryhausen was the best man at your wedding in 1947. What are your memories of him on that day?

  BRADBURY: The greatest thing that happened: The day we got married, Ray Harryhausen drove us to the ceremony at the Episcopal Church on Slauson Avenue, and then we had a wedding breakfast at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. It cost a total of ten dollars: three dollars for the wedding cake, three for the champagne, and a couple dollars for the tip. Then Ray Harryhausen drove us out to our place in Venice, our very little apartment at 33 South Venice Boulevard. And after he dropped us off, Maggie and I walked down to the Owl Drug Store to buy toothbrushes. We needed toothbrushes for the honeymoon. But on the way, three or four little kids that were eight or nine years old followed us and sang “Happy Wedding Day to You, Happy Wedding Day to You.”

  WELLER: Not too many years after your marriage, you met Gene Kelly. How did that friendship come about?

  BRADBURY: A friend of mine knew Gene Kelly. He was at Gene’s house one night, and Gene was reading The Martian Chronicles. He turned to my friend and said, “You know Ray Bradbury, don’t you? Why don’t you bring him to the house? I’d love to meet him.” So I went to Gene Kelly’s house and he told me he loved The Martian Chronicles. I said, “Gene, let me top that. You just made the greatest musical ever made, Singin’ in the Rain. It is simply an incredible movie with a great screenplay, a great cast, and great numbers.” He was enchanted with the fact that I loved him as much as he loved me. So he kept inviting Maggie and I to MGM Studios for the next five years to see all of his films.

  Walking home one night, I said to Maggie, “My God, I’d love to work with that man.” And she said, “Why don’t you? When you get home, take one of your stories out of the file and turn it into a screenplay for him and give it to him.” So I went home and I found my short story, “The Black Ferris.” I turned that into an eighty-page treatment and called it Dark Carnival, and I gave it to Gene the next day. He said, “Oh my God, this is great. I want to make this into my next film. Can I take this to Paris and London and try to get the money?” I said, “Take it, take it.” I couldn’t believe it. Wonderful. So he took it to London and Paris, and he came back a month later and said, “No money, Ray, I’m sorry.” I said, “Gene, don’t say you’re sorry. I’m honored that you tried.” So he gave me back the screenplay, and in the next three years I turned it into a novel called Something Wicked This Way Comes.

  WELLER: You were good friends with the animator Chuck Jones. How did that relationship come about? And what was it about Chuck Jones that made him such a special friend?

  BRADBURY: He used to call me on the phone and say, “Ray, I’ve been reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Should I tell you what I found today?” I said, “Tell me.” He said, “Did you know that when they were constructing the railroad across Egypt and they ran out of fuel, they used to run into the graveyard and take the mummies from the graves and put them in the locomotives and burn them for fuel?” I said, “Oh my God, Chuck, that’s wonderful! I’m going to go write a poem called ‘The Nefertiti-Tut Express.’ ” I met him the day after Halloween in 1968.

  WELLER: Charles Beaumont was one writer you helped along. How did you know him?

  BRADBURY: I was going into a bookstore in 1946, and this young man came up to me. His name was Charles Nutt, and he said, “I hear that you collect comic strips of Terry and the Pirates.” I said, “Yes, I do. I love Terry and the Pirates.” And he said, “You collect Prince Valiant too?” “Yes,” I said. “I’ve got some of those strips,” he said. “Would you like to have them?” He offered to make a trade. He knew of my friendship with the artist Hannes Bok, and he wondered if I could give him any photographs of Bok’s artwork. So we traded. He gave me Terry and the Pirates, and I gave him photographs of Hannes Bok’s work. So that’s how we got to be friends.

  When I worked on It Came from Outer Space at Columbia Studios, Charles Beaumont came up to me—he had changed his name by then, he was no longer Charlie Nutt—and he invited me to his house. One night, he gave me one of the short stories he was writing, called “Miss Gentilbelle.” I read it and thought it was very good and told him that he could sell it somewhere. I told him where to cut a little bit, where to work on it, and where to send it, and they bought it. So he started his career, and he became a student of mine. He came to the house every Tuesday night along with my friend Sid Stebel. I told them both, “Look, it’s very simple. Between now and the end of the year, write one short story a week. I want you to write fifty-two short stories, each of you, and by the end of the year, you will know how to write short stories.” Sid Stebel became one of my students, and he wrote a short story about a young man and a saxophone, and we sent it off to an Italian literary magazine called Bottega Oscura. That’s where he sold his first short story.

  Around that same time, Charles Beaumont sent off “Miss Gentilbelle” and sold it. So I told them, “Look, quantity is important. It makes for quality. You can’t get quality without writing a lot and learning from yourself. And by the end of the year, you have fifty-two short stories as examples of short stories to look at. And you’ll find out what was wrong with each of them, and then you write a new short story taking into account what you have learned, and at long last, you’re established.”

  So those were three stories by three young writers whose careers I helped get off the ground that year, around 1954, 1955. A few years later I introduced Charles Beaumont to Rod Serling, and he wrote for The Twilight Zone. He was fabulous. He was very similar to me.

  WELLER: You are also friends with Harlan Ellison. Did you teach him as well?

  BRADBURY: No. We were totally different. He was a bombastic, Norman Mailer type. He loved life better than Mailer, but we were different people. He was a terrible-tempered Mr. Bang. He was part of a film society with me at the Writers Guild, and every time he came into a meeting, he was angry about something. I’d say, “What is it today, Harlan?” And he’d tell me what was wrong with that day. He hated somebody, and he’d tell me. So we’ve always been different, but we’ve had a good friendship. Behind the bombast, he’s a sweetheart.

  WELLER: How did you come to know Rod Steiger?

  BRADBURY: I was at Sy Gomberg’s house back in 1957, I believe, and Rod Steiger showed up, and we got to talking, and all of a sudden it was two in the morning—we were having such a good time talking—and Rod drove me home. That started our friendship. After that, he’d come over to the house. One time, he bought a new Jag and drove up to the front of the house, and Maggie and I came out to go with him in his new car, and he yelled up at us, “Eat your heart out!” That was pure Steiger.

  WELLER: Was he as macho and eccentric as the persona he projected? What kind of man was he?

  BRADBURY: A combination of macho and vulnerable. Easily hurt. You had to be careful. If you directed him in a film, I think he was a porcupine, in many ways.

  WELLER: You knew the film director Fritz Lang. Can you tell me about that relationship?

  BRADBURY: I bumped into him in a bookstore and he bought an extra copy of The Martian Chronicles right there and had me sign it. Then he took my address and called me later that summer because he wanted to make a film of it. It was 1950, right after we moved to the house on Clarkson Road. We were only there two months, and he came over for Halloween. And I told Fritz to come in costume if he wanted to. I said, “Fritz, I told you to come in costume.” He said, “I did.” And as he came into the light he pointed to his head, and there were little horns coming out the top of his brow. So that was his costume.

  I also invited Ray Harryhausen that night. And Ray Harryhausen brought his marionettes with the strings and performed in the living room for us, and of course Ray was a long way from being discovered or successful or anything, but he did a performance for Fritz.

  WELLER: Charles Laughton was a good friend. How did that relationship come about?

  BRADBURY: I was in my thirties, and I did a
stage play of Fahrenheit 451. I’d seen Don Juan in Hell, the George Bernard Shaw play done by Charles Laughton, with Cedric Hardwicke, Charles Boyer and Agnes Moorehead. It was around 1950. It was one of the most incredible productions on any stage at any time. There were just four people with four music stands and four books. It was a reading of Shaw. And I fell madly in love with Charles Laughton. In 1954 I wrote Fahrenheit 451 as a play for him. I gave it to Charles Laughton and Paul Gregory, the producer. They took me out to dinner one night. They got me drunk. After I was thoroughly drunk they told me how bad the play was. They did the right thing. They prepared me.

  WELLER: How so?

  BRADBURY: The play was terrible. What I had done was copy the novel. You can’t do that for the stage.

  WELLER: But you feel you can do that for a screenplay. There’s that old Sam Peckinpah quote, “just rip the pages from the book and stuff them in the camera.”

  BRADBURY: Well, I’ve learned how to write plays since. You float over your material. You don’t descend into it. You don’t retype it. You float over it like a salmon fertilizing your own eggs. So I went home from that dinner with tears streaming down my cheeks because I had so loved Charles Laughton and I wanted to work for him. Well, he came to the house a year later and said, “How would you like to write a science-fiction operetta for Elsa?”—his wife. And he said, “Find something and come to me.” So I found an idea and I went to his house.

  The next six months, I had a glorious experience with Charles Laughton and his wife. I wrote a science-fiction operetta, which they didn’t produce immediately because they were busy with other projects. Then, a few years later, Charles died. I finally produced the play myself in the fall of 2009, and I think it’s the best play I’ve ever done. It’s called Happy Anniversary, 2116. The director of the recent production retitled it Ray Bradbury’s Wisdom 2116.