All his movie star friends would be asked to appear. There were specific clips of film in another folder of Kellino in his best roles to be shown on that special. There was a film clip of him accepting his two Academy Awards as best actor. There was a fully written comedy sketch in which friends of his would poke fun at his aspirations to be a director.
There was a list of everybody Kellino had helped so that some of them could tell little anecdotes about how Kellino had rescued them from the depths of despair on condition they never let anyone know.
There was a note on those ex-wives who would be approached for a quote and those who would not be. There were plans for one wife in particular: to fly her out of the country to a safari in Africa on the day Kellino died so no one in the media could get in touch with her. There was an ex-President of the United States who had already given his quote.
In the file was a recent letter to Clara Ford asking for a contribution to Kellino’s obituary. It was written on the letterhead of the Los Angeles Times and was legitimate but inspired by Houlinan. He had gotten his copy of Clara Ford’s reply but never showed it to Kellino. He read it again. “Kellino is a gifted actor who has done some marvelous work in films, and it’s a pity that he passed away too soon to achieve the greatness that might have been in store for him with the proper role and the proper direction.”
Every time that Houlinan read that letter he had to have another drink. He didn’t know whom he hated more, Clara Ford or John Merlyn. Houlinan hated snotty writers on sight, and Merlyn was one of them. Who the fuck was that son of a bitch he couldn’t wait to have his picture taken with Kellino? But at least he could fix Merlyn’s wagon, Ford was beyond his reach. He tried getting her fired by organizing a campaign of hate mail from fans, by using all the pressure of Tri-Culture Studios, but she was simply too powerful. He hoped Kellino was having better luck but he would soon know. Kellino had been on a date with her. He’d taken her to dinner the night before and was sure to call him and report everything that happened.
Chapter 28
In my first weeks in Hollywood I began to think of it as the Land of Empidae. An amusing conceit, at least to me, even if a bit condescending.
The empid is an insect. The female is cannibalistic, and the act of sex whets her appetite so that in the last moment of the male’s ecstasy he finds himself without a head.
But in one of those marvelous evolutionary processes the male empid learned to bring a tiny bit of food wrapped in a web spun from his own body. While the murderous female peels away the web, he mounts her, copulates and makes his getaway.
A more highly developed male empid figured out that all he had to do was spin a web around a tiny stone or pebble, any little bit of junk. In a great evolutionary jump the male empid fly became a Hollywood producer. When I mentioned this to Malomar, he grimaced and gave me a dirty look; then he laughed.
“OK,” he said, “do you want to get your fucking head bit off for a piece of ass?”
At first nearly everyone I met struck me as a person who would eat off somebody’s foot to become successful. And yet, as I stayed on, I was struck by the passion of people involved in filmmaking. They really loved it. Script girls, secretaries, studio accountants, cameramen, propmen, the technical crews, the actors and actresses, the directors and even the producers. They all said, “the movie I made.” They all considered themselves artists. I noticed that the only ones concerned with films that did not speak this way were usually screenwriters. Maybe that was because everyone rewrote their scripts. Everybody put his fucking two cents in. Even the script girl would change a line or two, or a character actor’s wife would rewrite her husband’s part, and he’d bring it in the next day and say that was the way he thought it should be played. Naturally the rewrite showed off his talents rather than forwarded the movie’s purpose. It was an irritating business for a writer. Everyone wanted his job.
It occurred to me that moviemaking is a dilettante art form to an extreme degree and this innocently enough because the medium itself is so powerful. By using a combination of photographs, costumes, music and a simple story line, people with absolutely no talent could actually create works of art. But maybe that was going too far. They could at least produce something good enough to give themselves a sense of importance, some value.
Movies can give you great pleasure and move you emotionally. But they can teach you very little. They couldn’t plumb the depths of a character the way a novel could. They couldn’t teach you as books could teach you. They could only make you feel; they could not make you understand life. Film is so magical it can give some value to almost anything. For many people it could be a form of drug, a harmless cocaine. For others it could be a form of valuable therapy. Who doesn’t want to record his past life or future traits as he would want them to be so that he could love himself?
Anyway, that was as close as I could figure the movie world out, at that time. Later on, bitten a little by the bug myself, I felt that it was maybe a too cruel and snobbish view.
I wondered about the powerful hold making films seemed to have on everyone. Malomar passionately loved making films. All the people who worked in films struggled to control them. The directors, the stars, the chief photographers, the studio wheels.
I was aware that cinema was the most vital art of our time, and I was jealous. On every college campus students, instead of writing novels, were making their own films. And suddenly it occurred to me that maybe the use of film was not even an art. That it was a form of therapy. Everyone wanted to tell his own life story, his own emotions, his own thoughts. Yet how many books had been published for that reason? But the magic was not that strong in books or painting or music. Movies combined all the arts; movies should be irresistible. With that powerful arsenal of weapons it should be impossible to make a bad movie. You could be the biggest asshole in the world and still make an interesting film. No wonder there was so much nepotism in moviemaking. You literally could let a nephew write a screenplay, take a girlfriend and make her a star, make your son the head of a studio. Movies could make a successful artist out of anyone. Mute Miltons no longer.
And how come no actor had ever murdered a director or a producer? Certainly over the years there had been plenty of cause, financial and artistic. How come a director had never murdered the head of a studio? How come a writer had never murdered a director? It must be that the making of a film purged people of violence, was therapeutic.
Could it be that someday one of the most effective treatments for the emotionally disturbed would be to let them make their own motion pictures? Christ, think of all the professional people in films who were crazy or near crazy anyway. Actors and actresses were certifiable certainly.
So that would be it. In the future everybody would stay home and watch films his friends made to keep from going crazy. The films would save his life. Think of it that way. And finally every asshole could be an artist. Certainly, if the people in this business could turn out good pictures, anybody could. Here you had bankers, garment makers, lawyers, etc., deciding what movies would be made. They didn’t even have that craziness which might help create art. So what would be lost if every asshole made a film? The only problem was to get the cost down. You wouldn’t need psychiatrists anymore or talent. Everybody could be an artist.
All those people, unlovable, never understood you had to work at being loved, yet despite their narcissism, infantilism, their self-love, they could now project their internal image of themselves to a lovable exterior on the screen. Make themselves lovable as shadows. Without having earned it in real life. And of course, you could say that all artists do that; think of the image of the great writer as a self-indulgent prick in his personal life, Osano. But at least they had to have some gift, some talent in their art that gave pleasure or learning or deeper understanding.