The details were made concrete today: My family and I leave for Las Vegas on Wednesday afternoon, after Dad and Meridith get home from work at La Mesa, with enough time for Meridith to change, and we arrive most likely toward 9 or 10 p.m. It takes four hours from where we are to Las Vegas (Just like South Florida to Orlando), but we stop in Baker, which is the halfway point to Las Vegas and is at the true beginning of the Mojave Desert (Los Angeles can say whatever it wants about being at the foot of the Mojave, but Baker faces the true desert), at the rest stop/gas station there, and I also want to stop at Alien Fresh Jerky right near the rest stop. I love the alien theming they do there (Including a car with alien figures inside, including an alien baby in the backseat), as well as the many varieties of jerky.
At the rest stop, we eat at the small food court there, Mom and Meridith most likely from the A&W counter, and me from Subway this time. A root beer float and cheese curds are very nice, but they would have been a requirement by my vastly overweight self a few years ago. I'm not that way anymore, and even though Las Vegas is a land of countless pleasures, I'm going to live in moderation from the start, even as a tourist. If you're just there for vacation, and you live securely wherever you're from, you can be as wild as you want, or as easygoing as you want. You'll have the experiences, you'll have the memories, and then you go home.
It's obviously different for residents. We have so many choices there, but we can't indulge in them constantly like the average tourist does. For one, we'd be the size of mountains, and secondly, we have jobs, either working to please those tourists on the Strip, or working in the Clark County School District, or at McCarran International Airport, or so many other jobs that you couldn't possibly conceive of until you drive off the Strip and see what else is around. It's not like driving to Six Flags Magic Mountain from Los Angeles, mind set firmly on the rollercoasters, and surprise at there being an entire working valley in front of the amusement park, that is if you've never been there before, as it was for me in April 2003. What there is in Las Vegas itself on the outskirts, and in Henderson, and in Summerlin, powers the Las Vegas you enjoy. There's no disconnect. Therefore, moderation is key for a happy life in Southern Nevada. (I know I'm not a resident yet, but I think like one all the time so that when I get there on Wednesday and in the very near future, I can just dive right into my unfettered happiness. The only adjustments to be made are getting used quickly to much smoother and easier-to-navigate roads, and loving the constant bombardment of creativity on and off the Strip that gives so much to this writer alone.)
Baker isn't all that will slow us down before reaching Fiesta Henderson, the hotel/casino where we're staying. Once we reach the California state line into Nevada, there are the Fashion Outlets of Las Vegas, which includes a Williams-Sonoma outlet store for Meridith, and there's a store called Viva Vegas, which I hope is a tourist trap because I'd really like to find a few well-designed t-shirts for myself, preferably one with most of the Strip on it.
I also want to ride the Desperado rollercoaster at Buffalo Bill's, deemed the fastest rollercoaster in the west, but the rides on the property, including the rollercoaster, are closed Mondays through Thursdays, and open Fridays and Saturdays from 12:45-9:45 p.m. So that'll be on the way back, and will be one of the two final rollercoasters for me, the other being the taxicab rollercoaster at New York-York. I'm done with rollercoasters after that one. They're not for me anymore, not after the double hell that was Apocalypse and Colossus at Six Flags Magic Mountain. I know not all rollercoasters are like those, but I think my time has passed with them. I'll have the Pinball Hall of Fame off the Strip, I'll have libraries again, I have books I want to write (I've got an historical one in mind that's Las Vegas-centered, and I'd like to work on that one concurrently with Mayday! Mayday!: The Making of the Airport Movies once I'm settled, have a car, and have a job, and am financially stable on my own enough to contribute well to household expenses), I have every inch of Las Vegas and Henderson to explore, as well as extensive research to do about New Mexico and the presidential libraries, to prepare for those trips in future years.
We're staying at Fiesta Henderson, one of the places Mom and Dad stayed at last time during a three-day trip that stretched to 10 when the PT Cruiser broke down. Mom had a spectacular idea earlier this evening. Meridith and I were going to go see Beauty and the Beast 3D either tomorrow or Sunday, but Mom remembered that there might be a movie theater on the Fiesta Henderson property. It turns out that they do, the Regal Fiesta Henderson 12. We definitely will not make it for the 7:15 p.m. showing there on Wednesday, and probably not the 9:30 showing either. But we can on Thursday, and it's perfect because this will be the first movie I see in Nevada, and it's a Disney movie, and I see it as Walt Disney World passing the torch to Las Vegas, from where my imagination was established and expanded to what I am today, to where my imagination will, I think, explode into a lot more than I could dream of from living in the Santa Clarita Valley for eight years.
The main purposes of this trip are job interviews Dad has, as well as all of us meeting the new manager of our future apartment complex in Henderson. It'll be the first time Meridith and I see the property (which includes a double basketball court, which sold me on it right away), and there may be an available upstairs apartment that we could see, as Mom and Dad saw inside one of the apartments already. Ours will be downstairs, but this way, we can learn the layout, see what the living room looks like, which is where our futons will be, as well as the main TV, which will be the widescreen TV that's in my room. There's two bedrooms, one of which will be Mom and Dad's, and the other will be the office Dad's always wanted to have. I'll be a resident of Henderson with easy access to Las Vegas, so I don't mind where I sleep, especially since the cable TV service we'll be signing up for will be a lot better than what DirecTV offers. Plus, there's always free copies of The Henderson Press at this complex, and there's a newspaper rack where you can buy the Las Vegas Review-Journal every day. Mom's been saving up quarters for that for a while now, so we'll probably have enough for the first few months that we're there.
I'll also be eating moderately while we're in Las Vegas and Henderson. Mom said that we'll stick to cheap eats on this trip, and there are a lot of places in which to eat well at low prices. If we go to 7-11 one morning, I'm getting a container of Cheerios, soymilk (If they have it), and a banana. I'm only changing my breakfast routine if we don't go to 7-11, and if it's Dunkin' Donuts we go to, they have breakfast sandwiches I really like and can find one with a reasonable calorie count. All I need is one of those and the Review-Journal and I'm happy. It doesn't take much to please me in Southern Nevada.
I'm still sitting here looking at every page of the Fiesta Henderson website. I clicked on the "Gaming" tab and it says that there's more than 1,600 slot and video poker machines. I'm one of the few who doesn't really gamble. All I do in Vegas is put a dollar into a penny slot machine, play one line at a time, and that's my kind of meditation. I am completely at peace at a decent slot machine, and am hoping to find the new Zorro slot machines I read about in the Southern California Gaming Guide. There's also a 300-seat bingo room open from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. that I would like to try (Also because I'd like to write a book about bingo one day, but am not sure from what perspective yet), but probably won't be able to on this trip, being that we'll be busy Wednesday night and all day Thursday, with Beauty and the Beast 3D for Meridith and I either at 7:15 or 9:30.
I've also fervently requested that we stop at a Smith's supermarket some time on Thursday. As soon as I walk through the entrance, I'm heading right for the condiments aisle to hopefully see more mustards than I get here. I want to take in everything, to know that I will be able to really eat in Henderson, and to be happy with what I eat, which is nearly impossible here. You eat just to eat and you're overjoyed when you find something that lasts, such as Sprouts having bananas that last and last even as the skin turns brown. That saves a great deal of money and it's not the same at Ralphs because those bananas crap out not longer after they're purchased, and I know bananas. Sprouts finds stock that works.
I'll have Internet access while I'm home and very happy, so I'll write a few things, but probably sporadically. I want to spend every single moment surrounded by everything I love about Las Vegas and Henderson, and to explore new places. I know I'll be seeing many on this trip.
And since losing all that weight long ago, and gaining self-control, I won't be bringing as many books as I have on past trips, but I will make sure that I have enough to read, to cover the distance between Santa Clarita and Baker and then Baker to the state line, because I've seen all that land before. However, on the way home, I will be paying attention to Victorville, because I like the vastness of that area, even though it feels desolate, and no wonder there's drug use there. There's really nothing there. But it's just how far that space stretches that impresses me. Oh to see that ocean of desert from that rock ledge next to Hacienda Hotel and Casino near Boulder City, but most likely not this time. I'll keep the memory of when I first saw it until I'm able to see it again.
As the lyric goes in the song Home by Simply Red, "Home is a place where I yearn to belong." I've yearned, and I'll have it for two days. And with luck, Dad's job interviews will soon let me belong as a resident. I feel like this is the start to finally getting what we've hoped for for so long.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
The Academy Library: An American Monastery and an Amazing Institution
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills is in the part that's not really Bevery Hills, not the Rodeo Drive Beverly Hills. It's more like imagining what Beverly Hills might have been without all that glamour. Impossible, but the Margaret Herrick Library is across from La Cienega Park, where you'll find joggers during the day, and soccer games and dog walkers at night. Immediately across from the library are two lanes of traffic going opposite ways, separated by a long, car-level wrought iron fence.
Open one of the two big nearly all-glass doors, and you find total silence and tile flooring. To your left, the security guard's desk where you sign in and get tokens for the lockers across the way in a small room. I had a cloth Albertsons bag with me containing three legal pads, two legal notepads, a collection of pencils in a black-and-purple zippered pouch (the two zippers on opposite sides and connected by a small strap. Pull it down and both zippers come down), a peanut butter sandwich and a bottle of Arrowhead water, a fruit and nut oatmeal from McDonalds (We ate at McDonalds in Valencia before we went to Beverly Hills, and the woman that put together the order at the counter accidentally gave us an extra oatmeal), and the hardcover edition of Scorpions: The Battle and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices by Noah Feldman (to read while waiting to be picked up later on). All of this had to go into a locker, along with my cell phone, because they don't allow cell phones in the reading rooms. I wasn't comfortable with leaving my cell phone in a locker, but at least I was able to keep my wallet. They allow that in case you need to pay for photocopying.
Behind the security guard's desk is a large framed poster for King Kong as well as a poster for either Grand Hotel or another movie I can't think of that starts with a "G". Not Gunga Din, but it was a movie from the 1930s, and it may very well have been Grand Hotel.
One security guard was going to lunch, and I chatted with him briefly, about the welcome arrival of lunchtime. Extremely nice guy. I can't understand people that turn up their noses at security guards or janitors or anyone else that they believe to be beneath their station in life. Most of the time, the security guards and janitors and others are far more interesting than the stuffy people. This guy was.
The stairs to walk up to the library are carpeted and even if you rush up the stairs, which would be quite unbecoming in this setting, there's very little sound. Just what you hear behind you from rushing up there, that brief clomp, but that's it. At the desk right when you get up there, you give your driver's license to the person at the desk, fill out a form to get a temporary library card, sign the back of the library card, and they take your driver's license and you take the library card. At this point, I didn't even notice the shelves and shelves of movie books.
Walk across the room from that desk and you reach another room, where you'll find the Special Collections desk in the middle, and to your left, the desk where you request photographic prints, and to your right, where you request scripts that they pull from the undoubtedly large back room. I called the Special Collections desk on Monday to have them pull a large number of files for me for Tuesday, including Charlton Heston's copy of the Airport 1975 script, scripts of the trailers for Airport, Airport 1975, and Airport '77, and....
I'm stopping the story for a minute because with the revelation of those titles, I will no longer be vague about what my second book is about. It's tentatively titled "Mayday! Mayday!: The Making of the Airport Movies," owing to my obsession with the four movies in my teens, when I was an aviation enthusiast, and they made me really consider a career in aviation, mostly because of George Kennedy's Joe Patroni and the passion he clearly had for aviation. I thought about it for many years, but decided last year that I'd be happiest reading and writing books.
George Kennedy is the reason I'm writing this book. His memoir, Trust Me, was published at the beginning of October, and I only found out in November that he had a memoir, and quickly ordered it, hoping he had a lot to say about the movies, being that he was in all of them.
What he wrote barely amounted to half a page, and I wasn't disappointed, because he said that he got his pilot's license while shooting the movies, Universal rented the Concorde for $40,000 an hour, and he was allowed to taxi it. The latter two details stuck in my mind. At the time, I was thinking about writing a book about the inner workings of the studios that weren't MGM in the 1930s, writing not only about the studio heads, stars, directors, and screenwriters, but also those who worked in the commissary, those who were teachers to child stars, janitors, not just what was considered the top because without those people, I don't think the studios would have been able to function. But I'm sure the hierarchies didn't allow for the top-tier to express appreciation to the lower rungs. I wanted to express that appreciation in a way, but even though I ordered a few books about the studio system, I hadn't cracked them open since I first looked at them, a few weeks having elapsed. Clearly, this wasn't the project for me.
Then about a week before the final week that led into winter break at Dad's school, I was subbing for one of the campus supervisors, and walked around a lot, thinking, thinking, thinking. I liked my aim for that 1930s Hollywood project, but I wasn't doing anything with it. I wasn't as interested in it as I was when I thought of it. I needed something else. I didn't want What If They Lived? to be my only book, and I knew I wanted to write more. I thought about what George Kennedy had said about the Concorde, about taxiing it, and an idea started to form quickly. The Concorde's rental fee belonged in a book. But also, the DVD set of the movies contained only the trailers. No featurettes. No audio commentaries. No reminiscing from significantly older actors. Bare bones. I started watching these movies on videotape. I remember buying a four-tape set of them from BJ's Wholesale Club in South Florida. I nearly wore them out. Then my parents got me the aforementioned DVD set, called the Airport Terminal Pack, for my birthday in 2005. I wanted to know more about these movies, how they were made, the technical tasks involved in filming it, what the actors themselves had gone through, who the directors were and how they wanted to film these movies, who executive producer Jennings Lang was and what made him create these sequels after Ross Hunter had produced Airport to such great success that it single-handedly pulled Universal from the brink of bankruptcy in 1970.
Mayday! Mayday! will be a straightforward history of all four movies. I'm searching for all the actors, including the ones in small roles, as well as producers, screenwriters (Eric Roth, an Oscar winner for Forrest Gump, wrote The Concorde: Airport '79 early in his career), stuntmen, prop masters, set decorators, directors of photography, composers, costumers, makeup artists, hair stylists, unit production managers, 2nd unit directors, everyone. And for those who are long gone, I'm searching for their families. Such is the case with Alec Smight, the son of the late Jack Smight, who directed Airport 1975. It wouldn't be easy to reach Alec right now because he's a director on CSI and they're back in production, now with Elisabeth Shue having replaced Marg Helgenberger. But once the show finishes production for the season (I have an idea of when that it is, based on what I know about the TV industry), I'm going to try to get in touch with him because I want to know from him his father's experiences of directing '75. (In further paragraphs, Airport will remain that, but the three sequels are '75, '77, and '79, as shorthand.)
Getting back to the Special Collections desk at the library, they had all my requested files in one box, including photocopied storyboards from '79, records from Tallmantz Aviation which used its B-25 cameraship to shoot footage for '77 and '79, a press kit detailing Universal's plans to sell a 20-piece clothing line inspired by Edith Head's costume designs for Airport, scripts for trailers and featurettes for Airport (hosted by Arthur Hailey, who wrote the novel) and '77.
I will not write about my findings in great detail because I'd like some curious readers. I'm greedy that way. But I will say that this was the pivotal day of my research, making me even more excited than I already was about this book. The scripts for the two featurettes gave me terrific new starting points on what paths to take, and even more people and companies to contact.
When you go to Special Collections, they give you a form to fill out, describing why you're there, what you're researching, what you're looking to do with it, what credentials you have, and then you sign it. I liked being able to say that I was doing research for my second book, and I wrote down the title you read. Then once you give back the form, they give you a blue sheet of paper in front of the first file or set of files you're going to pore over that details what those files are, you sign it, and then they hand over the first folder.
I went in whatever order they had put the files in the box. The Tallmantz Aviation records, which came after the Edith Head press kit, took up the most time. I opened that folder and freaked out silently. What details did I need to pull from these records? Well, I needed the tail number of the aircraft. That was a good start. I needed the number of hours flown to get a sense of filming time. I needed to know what the B25 cameraship was shooting (On Monday, August 30, 1976, they were shooting a nighttime takeoff shot for '77, to become the perspective from the private Stevens 747). At the beginning of these records, I found details of the shooting of the exterior shots for the opening credits sequence of '77.
I'm trying to remember when I took my first bathroom break, and I think it might have been after the Edith Head press kit and before these records. I didn't even know these records were coming up before I took the elevator down to the lobby, But it was a lot to go through.
Now, about photocopying, there's a horizontal grid form that you fill out, writing under the labels of the boxes the file name, the file number, the name of the file (For example, Airport - Featurette, even though I didn't request anything from that), a description of the file (One line, very short), and how many pages it is.
At the end of the Tallmantz records, my heart nearly stopped. I found a call sheet for '79 from January 30, 1979 (The movie was released on August 17) detailing what actors were required on the Concorde cabin set, what time they were expected (8:45 a.m. for the majority of them), as well as what scenes would be filmed in the future. There was also an announcement on the page about cold weather gear being handed out for the shoot in Utah (If you've seen the movie, remember the Concorde landing in the snow and being buried under it? Utah, standing in for Patscherkofel in Austria). Even though I could have probably gotten another photocopying form if I asked, I'm lucky I didn't accidentally rip the first one in excitement while writing down the details for the call sheet. As I do further research for this book, and eventually writing it, I'm keeping that call sheet in front of me. From videotape to DVD to seeing all these papers at the library. I'm sitting here a little over a day after and I'm still amazed that I did all this.
But that wasn't the only thing that stunned me. After finishing with the Tallmantz Aviation records, the next file handed to me was thick, with "Charlton Heston papers" written on the tab. I opened it up, and it was Charlton Heston's copy of the '75 script, exactly what I had been anticipating. He used this script. He thumbed through it. He crossed out lines that weren't being used and replaced them with what he was told were the new lines. There were two huge coffee stains on pages 13 and 14, the one on 13 nearly dominating it. Through it, I confirmed the start date of filming on '75, and I also wrote down some of the lines that were crossed out. There is no fanfare in research, no Glory, Glory Hallelujah raining down from hidden speakers. Charlton Heston is long gone, and this is part of what remains of his legacy. The bent pages of his script. His handwriting. The coffee stains. I'll never know at what point he accidentally spilled coffee or when those new lines were given to him, and I don't expect to know. The book is partly about him, and it's also partly about Karen Black, and Dean Martin, and Jack Lemmon, and Christopher Lee, and Darren McGavin, and Monica Lewis, and George Kennedy, and Lee Grant, and Helen Reddy, and Linda Blair, and Jacqueline Bisset, and producers Ross Hunter and Jennings Lang, and directors George Seaton, Jack Smight, Jerry Jameson, and David Lowell Rich, and directors of photography Ernest Laszlo and Philip Lathrop (Lathrop shot the three sequels), and composers Elmer Bernstein, John Cacavas ('75 and '77), and Lalo Schifrin, and screenwriters George Seaton, Don Ingalls, Michael Scheff & David Spector, and Eric Roth, and so many others you wouldn't know right now if I told you, but I hope you will know them through what I intend to write.
It was just me and Heston's script, and the woman sitting across from me tapping out notes on her laptop was involved in whatever her research entailed and it was the same with the two people at the table next to me (Including a woman with very nice legs wearing a slightly above-the-knee skirt, and it was very hard not to take a quick peek when I was waiting behind her at the Special Collections desk to get my next folder). This is what research is. It's the love of movies, of wanting to know what happened in their history. One researcher in the room was working on something about Hitchcock, another was researching Cedric Gibbons, the famous MGM art director. You can't shout to the world your find, not only because the library knew about it before you did, but because you'd be making a ruckus that would probably get you kicked out, and there's more research to be done. How else can a book be written?
After giving back Heston's '75 script, I got the next related folder, which showed that he had a good sense of humor. He clipped the cover of a July 1975 issue of Mad Magazine, which turned '75 into "Airplot '75." Nancy, the flight attendant (Karen Black), became Naggy, Heston's Alan Murdock became Mudrock; Sister Beatrice was Sister Beardless; Helen Reddy's Sister Ruth was Sister Cooth; Gloria Swanson was Swansong; Mrs. Patroni was Mrs. Baloney; Linda Blair's Janis was Janecch; Glenn Purcell was Purehell; and Erik Estrada's Julio was Jigolo.
I wrote down in my notes my two favorite exchanges from the section that Heston had also clipped:
Naggy says to Mudrock, "Engine three is acting badly." Mudrock replies, "So?!? Why should engine three be different from anyone else in this movie?!?"
Salt Lake Control says, "Okay, Columbia 904! Hey, Captain, can I ask a question? If we're all in a Universal picture, how come you're a Columbia airliner?" The captain replies, "It's our sneaky way of putting the blame for this bomb on someone else."
The cover of the issue was pure genius. All the major actors in the movie are asleep on one side of the plane, and it looks like Henry Kissinger is in the back row, also asleep. Alfred E. Newman is sitting next to a sleeping Gloria Swanson, very much awake, holding an inflated air sickness bag in one hand, about to pop it with his fist.
Also in Heston's folder was a Spanish lobby card for '75. I'm curious to know where he got that or if it was sent to him, but that'll never be known.
After the Heston papers came set decorator Jack Moore's bound faux leather copy of the Airport script. Airport was his final movie, and this was the first time I saw a script for Airport, important to me because so far I can't find very much about George Seaton and I wanted some insight into him, through his writing.
Moore underlined all the locations of the scenes, needing to know them to get started on thinking of how to decorate the sets, based on what producer Ross Hunter and writer/director George Seaton wanted, and likely contributing his own ideas. For example, Moore's mind is already at work when Bakersfeld is paged for the white phone outside a section of a building at the airport. Moore circled the words "white phone" in the paging line and in the wide margin, wrote "White phone black one?" (No question mark after "phone." Getting the work done matters most.)
By this time, it was a little past 3 p.m., I had gotten to the library a little after 11 a.m., and had my bathroom break at 1 p.m. I was getting sluggish, a little frustrated (Not by the research, but it's that feeling when you've been sitting for hours, staring and concentrating), and I needed a longer break. Before I had signed for the Jack Moore script, I remembered the transcript from the Academy's 2006 screening of Airport as part of its "Great to be Nominated" series, which featured Jacqueline Bisset, Burt Lancaster's widow Susie, and a few other actors from the movie, and that it was one of the reasons I was at the library. I requested it from the woman at the counter at the time, and as I was nearing the end of Heston's script, she came over to me with the request form, making sure she got it right on there (I had her change "1976" to "2006"), and then she went in the back to get it. When I went up to the counter to hand over Jack Moore's script (You can't leave research materials on the table when you're leaving for a break) and have them keep it near my box for me, I saw that the transcript was waiting on the cart. That would come after my break, after I was done with the Jack Moore script.
I took the elevator down to the lobby, saw the security guard at the counter that I talked to briefly when I came in, asked for a locker token, went to my locker and pulled out my bag, putting it on a small table that was filled with ads for the Aero Theatre, which shows classic movies, and pulling out the paper bag with my peanut butter sandwich, bottled water, as well as the McDonald's bag that had the oatmeal in it.
I put the bag back in the locker, put the coin in the slot, closed the locker, turned the key and pulled it out, and heard the coin drop to wherever the coin drops to. Maybe to the bottom in some kind of compartment, maybe to the floor where it's swept out from under there. Most likely an unseen compartment, I think.
I went outside, but the only bench in front of the library was taken, so I sat on a curb in front of a bush and ate. Relief. I felt a lot better. Sandwich gone, oatmeal nearly gone, water three-quarters gone. I watched the security guard run to the FedEx truck parked outside to give a package to the driver.
I went back inside, got another token, put the key in the locker, opened it, and put the paper bag with only my water bottle and the McDonald's bag with the rest of my oatmeal inside the locker, in front of my cloth bag. Put the coin in the slot, closed the locker door, took out the key, coin drop.
I didn't feel like going back upstairs yet, so I went to talk to the security guard for a little while. I told him that I noticed him running to the FedEx truck and he said that while he was at lunch, the security guard manning the desk for him forgot to give a package to the previous FedEx driver that had come by and he didn't want to miss it this time. He told me that he and others call that particular FedEx driver Bitterman because he's bitter about everything. He complains about his job, he complained that there were so many packages at Christmas. The security guard laughed when he got to that part of the story and said to me, "What did he expect?" He then told me that he lives an attitude of gratitude and didn't see what the driver had to complain about. The driver a job, good benefits, good pay, yet he said to him that he's lucky because he gets to sit in air conditioning all day.
As we were talking, a few employees came by to pick up a few of the packages stacked against the wall, making a bit of small talk with the security guard, and then they left. I liked this guy. He was clearly appreciative of what he had, seemed to enjoy his life, and was good-natured. That's everything I like in anyone.
I asked him when his shift was over and he said at 6. I told him I'd be down later before he left for the night and headed back upstairs, back to Jack Moore's copy of the Airport script.
I liked that Seaton's script didn't have overly long character descriptions and motivations and descriptions of various actions, how an actor is supposed to react. He clearly had respect for actors because he gave them just enough of what they should know about a character, presenting it more as guidelines than edicts. That's the impression I got anyway. He seemed to trust the actor to figure out how to play a scene after reading what he described.
The transcript came next and the hits just kept on coming. I filled a few pages with notes, learning a great deal about the 707 cabin and flight deck sets on stage 12 at Universal, exactly what I had hoped to find when I started this project. After that came another script I was anticipating: The first draft of Airport 1976 by H.A.L. Craig, delivered in March 1974, two months before '75 began shooting. Jennings Lang must have been hoping to have another sequel to shoot right after '75 was finished, but this wasn't the one.
The action returned to Lincoln International from Airport, where George Kennedy's Joe Patroni was now the manager after Burt Lancaster's Mel Bakersfeld became head of the FAA. After I read that Patroni was now the manager, I wanted to see how he did in the position. The main plot involved the hijacking of the private 747 of one of the richest men in the world, which is likely why Craig got a "story by" credit for '77. Helen Hayes' Ada Quonsett was in this one too, but admittedly, the new characters were awful, nothing remotely interesting about any of them. It was a 180-page script, and counting each page of at least one minute of screen time, a little unwieldy in light of there being so much clunkiness about, but then Craig may have been operating under executive producer Jennings Lang's idea of having enough written in case this was the script so that an extra hour could be filmed for television broadcast. You see, '75, '77 and '79 each had an extra hour or so of footage filmed in the way of extended scenes or entirely new scenes, all during the same production. Lang sold these versions to networks, which made entire evenings out of them. NBC aired '75 as its "Saturday Night at the Movies" in 1978. In the '90s, TNT took the sequels and aired them as part of a "Super '70s Week." Scenes from '79 that were filmed for that purpose can be found on YouTube, and there's a bit from '77 there too, but that's it. One of the personal mysteries I want to solve is what all the footage is from each sequel. I know nearly nothing of what was filmed for '75's eventual television broadcasts. I know a bit about '77 from what I saw on YouTube (I may have seen all those extra scenes when TNT aired it, but I've long forgotten), and I remember only the alternate Kevin Harrison suicide scene in front of the media in '79 from that TNT broadcast.
I was relieved that Lang decided not to produce Airport 1976. It could have been that he didn't want to bring the movies back to Lincoln International. Maybe he didn't want to go where another producer had been. He wanted to create his own movies. But it's clear that the hijacked 747 angle stuck in his mind, though something different to incapacitate the passengers then some kind of pellets being dropped into the air conditioning system on the plane to apparently knock out the passengers. I get the impression that Lang wanted more detail. And considering that he had gotten the cooperation of the U.S. Air Force for '75, well, why not go bigger? He wouldn't have gotten that with the '76 script. The opening credits for '77 say "Story by H.A.L. Craig and Charles Kuenstle." Now I have to find out who Kunestle is and if he contributed a script too.
After this came correspondence between special effects artist Linwood G. Dunn and various high-ranking members of the Airport production team. Not a whole lot to write down. It took some time to get through Dunn's special effects papers, just skimming mostly since special effects are part of what makes a movie, not the whole thing, so I wasn't going to go that detailed about the special effects, just enough to be well-informed so it reads well in my book.
With the Linwood G. Dunn papers done, I was finished with my box. I had gone through everything and I thought I might not have, considering the folders that kept coming out of there. I got my library card back and went to the right to the scripts desk and requested Airport, '75, '77, '79 and Poseidon from 2006, in the hope that it was a draft that touched upon what I thought the movie should have been, what would have made it a smarter disaster movie.
While the scripts were being retrieved, I took the elevator to the lobby to see the security guard before he left. I thanked him for his kindness and asked for his name for the acknowledgements page. He said I didn't have to do that, but I told him that he did a lot for me (It's especially nice to see someone who's actually living an attitude of gratitude) and wanted to. I also wrote down my name and What If They Lived? so he could look it up on Amazon. And that was it. I thanked him again profusely, we shook hands, and I went back upstairs to the scripts that were waiting for me.
I started with Airport, which was bound in a tan cover with the title printed in black on the spine and was gifted to the library by director of photography Ernest Laszlo. It was the same script I had read as Jack Moore's, but without all the writings. I forgot to mention before that Moore's folder also included long sheets of legal paper with many lists of locations and tasks. I looked at those, but couldn't find much of anything to use.
'75 was the same way. It was the final shooting script dated April 26, 1974, exactly what Heston had, just without lines crossed out, new lines written in, and huge coffee stains. There was nothing in it that I hadn't already seen.
The script for '77 was a "second revised final draft screenplay" dated August 4, 1976. This was one I needed, and I took lots of notes, mostly asking myself if certain scenes had been filmed for TV broadcast and if other ones had been extended scenes that were filmed for broadcast. I intend to find out about all this.
I then went into the '79 script by Eric Roth, which had the alternate titles of Airport '79: The Concorde (Instead of The Concorde: Airport '79), and Airport '79: Supersonic. I like the last one, but Lang was smart, considering that the plane cost Universal $40,000 an hour. For that price, the plane had better be in the title. There was also a page detailing character name changes, such as David Harrison now being Kevin Harrison and Celeste now being Isabelle, Sylvia Kristel's character, and Coach Spassky now being Coach Markov, who was played by Avery Schreiber. I hope to find out from Roth how he was hired for this, how long it took him to write the first draft, and what research he did for it. For example, was it Roth's idea to give Markov a deaf daughter or a suggestion by Lang expanded?
And that was it. My Airport research was over. I filled all but 19 pages of one legal pad, using only the first page of a legal notepad to copy down the names of two people in Special Collections to help me, as well as the name of the security guard so I can put them in my acknowledgements page. I also used only one pencil throughout the entire 8 hours, a Crayola twist pencil. But better to be overprepared for this.
Now it was time for the Poseidon screenplay. I returned '77 and '79 to the scripts desk (I returned Airport and '75 to the desk after I was finished in order to get '77 and '79) and took Poseidon from the person behind the desk.
This was a "Final white draft" dated June 17, 2005, and future revisions were listed with the color pages they would be. A further revision came on June 27, 2005 and was in blue, July 5 in pink, July 25 in yellow, August 11 in green, and September 12 in gold. The page also listed previous revisions that had been done by 10 other screenwriters, with the current script by Mark Protosevich and current revision by Akiva Goldsman. The movie that was barely seen in theaters was exactly that way in the script, but the only consolation was that some of it read better on the page. Maybe because there's more hope on the page before it becomes a movie. After 10 writers taking a crack at it, director Wolfgang Petersen couldn't very well do much else.
I returned Poseidon, got my library card back, turned the photocopying sheet in to the Special Collections desk, paid $5.75 for 10 pages and told the guy at the counter that they should be mailed to me since this was the only time I would be at the library (The only day when the library's open until 8 p.m. and I needed that time cushion, and the only day it was possible after the holidays were over, and Dad's going back to work next week). I asked the guy if I could look around the library and he said yes, and I made sure I got the spelling of his last name correct for my acknowledgements page, collected everything of mine at my table, made sure I had everything, then went to look at the books.
This is paradise for any movie buff. Any book you can imagine about an actor, about a certain genre, about movies from another country (They've got many books on Mexican cinema, for example), about the making of certain movies, about anything you could want to know, they have it. I went into each tight space in awe to look at the shelves around me, to note the books I've read and the books I have here at home. After circling the entire library, I went to the desk near the stairs and asked the woman there if the library would consider stocking my book, and was told I'd have to talk to the person in charge of book acquisitions. I will.
She then took my legal pads and notepads and flipped through them to make sure I wasn't smuggling anything out of the library, saw that everything was clean, and I handed over my library card and got my driver's license back, then went down the stairs. I went to my locker, got out my cloth bag, stuffed the paper bag with my bottled water and the McDonald's bag into the cloth bag, put the pencils and technical eraser into the black-and-purple zippered pouch and zipped it back up, made sure I had everything and left that little room. I said good night to the new security guard on duty, went outside to the bench near the driveway where Mom, Dad and Meridith had dropped me off, and sat down to wait for them to come from Universal CityWalk, where they had been all day, and had gotten me a magnet that said "Turn off the TV and read a book. Think outside the box," and a laminated card that said "Bowler's License," with the stats and photo being that of The Dude from The Big Lebowski. I spoke to them before I put my cell phone in the locker and outside before I ate.
From that bench, I watched a soccer game going on at the park, joggers, a guy walking his dog, and enjoyed that peace. My research ultimately doesn't matter on this planet. I don't mean it in a low self-esteem kind of way. I'm fine and well-adjusted on that end. I just mean that there I was on that bench, the traffic was passing by, and only my parents and Meridith knew that I had been reading Charlton Heston's copy of the '75 script, learning more than I had ever expected to find about the Airport series, being introduced to new paths to take with my book, getting even more excited about the great possibilities ahead for what I'm doing with this book. The world keeps going on. It doesn't stop for every parade. And I like it that way. My research at the Margaret Herrick Library ended quietly, and I like quiet. I'd rather it be this way, enough quiet to do what I want. I don't need hype. I believe it's overused for many things. If you believe your work is worth something, can be beneficial to some audience, then just do the work. Have something tangible to present to the world. Don't be like those people who audition on American Idol saying that they're the best that anyone will ever know and then they begin to sing and you wish they had decided to go to work that day or do anything else but sing.
All I will say here at the end of this entry is that this research day has pushed me into being serious about this project. I was in a preliminary stage before this, buying books I needed of actors who were in these movies, buying making-of books like one about The Wizard of Oz and another about Blade Runner for guidance and inspiration, and I knew that I wanted to do this, but to what extent? Now I know. I'm going all the way on this. Finding a publisher, writing book proposals, and pitching this book to publishers and agents is all on me now. Only me. I will do it. I want people to read my book when the time comes. When I'm finished writing it, or at least the first two chapters since a lot of publishers seem to prefer that when considering manuscripts, the first draft will be for me. The second, third, fourth and whatever drafts will gradually be for potential readers. I will do my best to make this project what I want it to be, what I hope to gain from it, namely, in a way, getting the audio commentaries I never got from the DVD set. I will only be satisfied once I know as much as possible about the Airport movies, which I prefer to be everything there is to know, but we'll see how this plays out. I'm very happy to be doing this. Most importantly, I'm having so much fun doing it.
(Yet another thing I forgot to mention: The Special Collections area with the tables reserved only for Special Collections researchers is called the Katharine Hepburn Reading Room and has a blown-up photo of Hepburn in one corner of the room. Also in this room, behind glass and under glass was an exhibit about the public reception Hitchcock's Psycho received, with articles and letters and photos. The many bookcases and long tables across from the Katharine Hepburn Reading Room is the Cecil B. DeMille Reading Room.)
Open one of the two big nearly all-glass doors, and you find total silence and tile flooring. To your left, the security guard's desk where you sign in and get tokens for the lockers across the way in a small room. I had a cloth Albertsons bag with me containing three legal pads, two legal notepads, a collection of pencils in a black-and-purple zippered pouch (the two zippers on opposite sides and connected by a small strap. Pull it down and both zippers come down), a peanut butter sandwich and a bottle of Arrowhead water, a fruit and nut oatmeal from McDonalds (We ate at McDonalds in Valencia before we went to Beverly Hills, and the woman that put together the order at the counter accidentally gave us an extra oatmeal), and the hardcover edition of Scorpions: The Battle and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices by Noah Feldman (to read while waiting to be picked up later on). All of this had to go into a locker, along with my cell phone, because they don't allow cell phones in the reading rooms. I wasn't comfortable with leaving my cell phone in a locker, but at least I was able to keep my wallet. They allow that in case you need to pay for photocopying.
Behind the security guard's desk is a large framed poster for King Kong as well as a poster for either Grand Hotel or another movie I can't think of that starts with a "G". Not Gunga Din, but it was a movie from the 1930s, and it may very well have been Grand Hotel.
One security guard was going to lunch, and I chatted with him briefly, about the welcome arrival of lunchtime. Extremely nice guy. I can't understand people that turn up their noses at security guards or janitors or anyone else that they believe to be beneath their station in life. Most of the time, the security guards and janitors and others are far more interesting than the stuffy people. This guy was.
The stairs to walk up to the library are carpeted and even if you rush up the stairs, which would be quite unbecoming in this setting, there's very little sound. Just what you hear behind you from rushing up there, that brief clomp, but that's it. At the desk right when you get up there, you give your driver's license to the person at the desk, fill out a form to get a temporary library card, sign the back of the library card, and they take your driver's license and you take the library card. At this point, I didn't even notice the shelves and shelves of movie books.
Walk across the room from that desk and you reach another room, where you'll find the Special Collections desk in the middle, and to your left, the desk where you request photographic prints, and to your right, where you request scripts that they pull from the undoubtedly large back room. I called the Special Collections desk on Monday to have them pull a large number of files for me for Tuesday, including Charlton Heston's copy of the Airport 1975 script, scripts of the trailers for Airport, Airport 1975, and Airport '77, and....
I'm stopping the story for a minute because with the revelation of those titles, I will no longer be vague about what my second book is about. It's tentatively titled "Mayday! Mayday!: The Making of the Airport Movies," owing to my obsession with the four movies in my teens, when I was an aviation enthusiast, and they made me really consider a career in aviation, mostly because of George Kennedy's Joe Patroni and the passion he clearly had for aviation. I thought about it for many years, but decided last year that I'd be happiest reading and writing books.
George Kennedy is the reason I'm writing this book. His memoir, Trust Me, was published at the beginning of October, and I only found out in November that he had a memoir, and quickly ordered it, hoping he had a lot to say about the movies, being that he was in all of them.
What he wrote barely amounted to half a page, and I wasn't disappointed, because he said that he got his pilot's license while shooting the movies, Universal rented the Concorde for $40,000 an hour, and he was allowed to taxi it. The latter two details stuck in my mind. At the time, I was thinking about writing a book about the inner workings of the studios that weren't MGM in the 1930s, writing not only about the studio heads, stars, directors, and screenwriters, but also those who worked in the commissary, those who were teachers to child stars, janitors, not just what was considered the top because without those people, I don't think the studios would have been able to function. But I'm sure the hierarchies didn't allow for the top-tier to express appreciation to the lower rungs. I wanted to express that appreciation in a way, but even though I ordered a few books about the studio system, I hadn't cracked them open since I first looked at them, a few weeks having elapsed. Clearly, this wasn't the project for me.
Then about a week before the final week that led into winter break at Dad's school, I was subbing for one of the campus supervisors, and walked around a lot, thinking, thinking, thinking. I liked my aim for that 1930s Hollywood project, but I wasn't doing anything with it. I wasn't as interested in it as I was when I thought of it. I needed something else. I didn't want What If They Lived? to be my only book, and I knew I wanted to write more. I thought about what George Kennedy had said about the Concorde, about taxiing it, and an idea started to form quickly. The Concorde's rental fee belonged in a book. But also, the DVD set of the movies contained only the trailers. No featurettes. No audio commentaries. No reminiscing from significantly older actors. Bare bones. I started watching these movies on videotape. I remember buying a four-tape set of them from BJ's Wholesale Club in South Florida. I nearly wore them out. Then my parents got me the aforementioned DVD set, called the Airport Terminal Pack, for my birthday in 2005. I wanted to know more about these movies, how they were made, the technical tasks involved in filming it, what the actors themselves had gone through, who the directors were and how they wanted to film these movies, who executive producer Jennings Lang was and what made him create these sequels after Ross Hunter had produced Airport to such great success that it single-handedly pulled Universal from the brink of bankruptcy in 1970.
Mayday! Mayday! will be a straightforward history of all four movies. I'm searching for all the actors, including the ones in small roles, as well as producers, screenwriters (Eric Roth, an Oscar winner for Forrest Gump, wrote The Concorde: Airport '79 early in his career), stuntmen, prop masters, set decorators, directors of photography, composers, costumers, makeup artists, hair stylists, unit production managers, 2nd unit directors, everyone. And for those who are long gone, I'm searching for their families. Such is the case with Alec Smight, the son of the late Jack Smight, who directed Airport 1975. It wouldn't be easy to reach Alec right now because he's a director on CSI and they're back in production, now with Elisabeth Shue having replaced Marg Helgenberger. But once the show finishes production for the season (I have an idea of when that it is, based on what I know about the TV industry), I'm going to try to get in touch with him because I want to know from him his father's experiences of directing '75. (In further paragraphs, Airport will remain that, but the three sequels are '75, '77, and '79, as shorthand.)
Getting back to the Special Collections desk at the library, they had all my requested files in one box, including photocopied storyboards from '79, records from Tallmantz Aviation which used its B-25 cameraship to shoot footage for '77 and '79, a press kit detailing Universal's plans to sell a 20-piece clothing line inspired by Edith Head's costume designs for Airport, scripts for trailers and featurettes for Airport (hosted by Arthur Hailey, who wrote the novel) and '77.
I will not write about my findings in great detail because I'd like some curious readers. I'm greedy that way. But I will say that this was the pivotal day of my research, making me even more excited than I already was about this book. The scripts for the two featurettes gave me terrific new starting points on what paths to take, and even more people and companies to contact.
When you go to Special Collections, they give you a form to fill out, describing why you're there, what you're researching, what you're looking to do with it, what credentials you have, and then you sign it. I liked being able to say that I was doing research for my second book, and I wrote down the title you read. Then once you give back the form, they give you a blue sheet of paper in front of the first file or set of files you're going to pore over that details what those files are, you sign it, and then they hand over the first folder.
I went in whatever order they had put the files in the box. The Tallmantz Aviation records, which came after the Edith Head press kit, took up the most time. I opened that folder and freaked out silently. What details did I need to pull from these records? Well, I needed the tail number of the aircraft. That was a good start. I needed the number of hours flown to get a sense of filming time. I needed to know what the B25 cameraship was shooting (On Monday, August 30, 1976, they were shooting a nighttime takeoff shot for '77, to become the perspective from the private Stevens 747). At the beginning of these records, I found details of the shooting of the exterior shots for the opening credits sequence of '77.
I'm trying to remember when I took my first bathroom break, and I think it might have been after the Edith Head press kit and before these records. I didn't even know these records were coming up before I took the elevator down to the lobby, But it was a lot to go through.
Now, about photocopying, there's a horizontal grid form that you fill out, writing under the labels of the boxes the file name, the file number, the name of the file (For example, Airport - Featurette, even though I didn't request anything from that), a description of the file (One line, very short), and how many pages it is.
At the end of the Tallmantz records, my heart nearly stopped. I found a call sheet for '79 from January 30, 1979 (The movie was released on August 17) detailing what actors were required on the Concorde cabin set, what time they were expected (8:45 a.m. for the majority of them), as well as what scenes would be filmed in the future. There was also an announcement on the page about cold weather gear being handed out for the shoot in Utah (If you've seen the movie, remember the Concorde landing in the snow and being buried under it? Utah, standing in for Patscherkofel in Austria). Even though I could have probably gotten another photocopying form if I asked, I'm lucky I didn't accidentally rip the first one in excitement while writing down the details for the call sheet. As I do further research for this book, and eventually writing it, I'm keeping that call sheet in front of me. From videotape to DVD to seeing all these papers at the library. I'm sitting here a little over a day after and I'm still amazed that I did all this.
But that wasn't the only thing that stunned me. After finishing with the Tallmantz Aviation records, the next file handed to me was thick, with "Charlton Heston papers" written on the tab. I opened it up, and it was Charlton Heston's copy of the '75 script, exactly what I had been anticipating. He used this script. He thumbed through it. He crossed out lines that weren't being used and replaced them with what he was told were the new lines. There were two huge coffee stains on pages 13 and 14, the one on 13 nearly dominating it. Through it, I confirmed the start date of filming on '75, and I also wrote down some of the lines that were crossed out. There is no fanfare in research, no Glory, Glory Hallelujah raining down from hidden speakers. Charlton Heston is long gone, and this is part of what remains of his legacy. The bent pages of his script. His handwriting. The coffee stains. I'll never know at what point he accidentally spilled coffee or when those new lines were given to him, and I don't expect to know. The book is partly about him, and it's also partly about Karen Black, and Dean Martin, and Jack Lemmon, and Christopher Lee, and Darren McGavin, and Monica Lewis, and George Kennedy, and Lee Grant, and Helen Reddy, and Linda Blair, and Jacqueline Bisset, and producers Ross Hunter and Jennings Lang, and directors George Seaton, Jack Smight, Jerry Jameson, and David Lowell Rich, and directors of photography Ernest Laszlo and Philip Lathrop (Lathrop shot the three sequels), and composers Elmer Bernstein, John Cacavas ('75 and '77), and Lalo Schifrin, and screenwriters George Seaton, Don Ingalls, Michael Scheff & David Spector, and Eric Roth, and so many others you wouldn't know right now if I told you, but I hope you will know them through what I intend to write.
It was just me and Heston's script, and the woman sitting across from me tapping out notes on her laptop was involved in whatever her research entailed and it was the same with the two people at the table next to me (Including a woman with very nice legs wearing a slightly above-the-knee skirt, and it was very hard not to take a quick peek when I was waiting behind her at the Special Collections desk to get my next folder). This is what research is. It's the love of movies, of wanting to know what happened in their history. One researcher in the room was working on something about Hitchcock, another was researching Cedric Gibbons, the famous MGM art director. You can't shout to the world your find, not only because the library knew about it before you did, but because you'd be making a ruckus that would probably get you kicked out, and there's more research to be done. How else can a book be written?
After giving back Heston's '75 script, I got the next related folder, which showed that he had a good sense of humor. He clipped the cover of a July 1975 issue of Mad Magazine, which turned '75 into "Airplot '75." Nancy, the flight attendant (Karen Black), became Naggy, Heston's Alan Murdock became Mudrock; Sister Beatrice was Sister Beardless; Helen Reddy's Sister Ruth was Sister Cooth; Gloria Swanson was Swansong; Mrs. Patroni was Mrs. Baloney; Linda Blair's Janis was Janecch; Glenn Purcell was Purehell; and Erik Estrada's Julio was Jigolo.
I wrote down in my notes my two favorite exchanges from the section that Heston had also clipped:
Naggy says to Mudrock, "Engine three is acting badly." Mudrock replies, "So?!? Why should engine three be different from anyone else in this movie?!?"
Salt Lake Control says, "Okay, Columbia 904! Hey, Captain, can I ask a question? If we're all in a Universal picture, how come you're a Columbia airliner?" The captain replies, "It's our sneaky way of putting the blame for this bomb on someone else."
The cover of the issue was pure genius. All the major actors in the movie are asleep on one side of the plane, and it looks like Henry Kissinger is in the back row, also asleep. Alfred E. Newman is sitting next to a sleeping Gloria Swanson, very much awake, holding an inflated air sickness bag in one hand, about to pop it with his fist.
Also in Heston's folder was a Spanish lobby card for '75. I'm curious to know where he got that or if it was sent to him, but that'll never be known.
After the Heston papers came set decorator Jack Moore's bound faux leather copy of the Airport script. Airport was his final movie, and this was the first time I saw a script for Airport, important to me because so far I can't find very much about George Seaton and I wanted some insight into him, through his writing.
Moore underlined all the locations of the scenes, needing to know them to get started on thinking of how to decorate the sets, based on what producer Ross Hunter and writer/director George Seaton wanted, and likely contributing his own ideas. For example, Moore's mind is already at work when Bakersfeld is paged for the white phone outside a section of a building at the airport. Moore circled the words "white phone" in the paging line and in the wide margin, wrote "White phone black one?" (No question mark after "phone." Getting the work done matters most.)
By this time, it was a little past 3 p.m., I had gotten to the library a little after 11 a.m., and had my bathroom break at 1 p.m. I was getting sluggish, a little frustrated (Not by the research, but it's that feeling when you've been sitting for hours, staring and concentrating), and I needed a longer break. Before I had signed for the Jack Moore script, I remembered the transcript from the Academy's 2006 screening of Airport as part of its "Great to be Nominated" series, which featured Jacqueline Bisset, Burt Lancaster's widow Susie, and a few other actors from the movie, and that it was one of the reasons I was at the library. I requested it from the woman at the counter at the time, and as I was nearing the end of Heston's script, she came over to me with the request form, making sure she got it right on there (I had her change "1976" to "2006"), and then she went in the back to get it. When I went up to the counter to hand over Jack Moore's script (You can't leave research materials on the table when you're leaving for a break) and have them keep it near my box for me, I saw that the transcript was waiting on the cart. That would come after my break, after I was done with the Jack Moore script.
I took the elevator down to the lobby, saw the security guard at the counter that I talked to briefly when I came in, asked for a locker token, went to my locker and pulled out my bag, putting it on a small table that was filled with ads for the Aero Theatre, which shows classic movies, and pulling out the paper bag with my peanut butter sandwich, bottled water, as well as the McDonald's bag that had the oatmeal in it.
I put the bag back in the locker, put the coin in the slot, closed the locker, turned the key and pulled it out, and heard the coin drop to wherever the coin drops to. Maybe to the bottom in some kind of compartment, maybe to the floor where it's swept out from under there. Most likely an unseen compartment, I think.
I went outside, but the only bench in front of the library was taken, so I sat on a curb in front of a bush and ate. Relief. I felt a lot better. Sandwich gone, oatmeal nearly gone, water three-quarters gone. I watched the security guard run to the FedEx truck parked outside to give a package to the driver.
I went back inside, got another token, put the key in the locker, opened it, and put the paper bag with only my water bottle and the McDonald's bag with the rest of my oatmeal inside the locker, in front of my cloth bag. Put the coin in the slot, closed the locker door, took out the key, coin drop.
I didn't feel like going back upstairs yet, so I went to talk to the security guard for a little while. I told him that I noticed him running to the FedEx truck and he said that while he was at lunch, the security guard manning the desk for him forgot to give a package to the previous FedEx driver that had come by and he didn't want to miss it this time. He told me that he and others call that particular FedEx driver Bitterman because he's bitter about everything. He complains about his job, he complained that there were so many packages at Christmas. The security guard laughed when he got to that part of the story and said to me, "What did he expect?" He then told me that he lives an attitude of gratitude and didn't see what the driver had to complain about. The driver a job, good benefits, good pay, yet he said to him that he's lucky because he gets to sit in air conditioning all day.
As we were talking, a few employees came by to pick up a few of the packages stacked against the wall, making a bit of small talk with the security guard, and then they left. I liked this guy. He was clearly appreciative of what he had, seemed to enjoy his life, and was good-natured. That's everything I like in anyone.
I asked him when his shift was over and he said at 6. I told him I'd be down later before he left for the night and headed back upstairs, back to Jack Moore's copy of the Airport script.
I liked that Seaton's script didn't have overly long character descriptions and motivations and descriptions of various actions, how an actor is supposed to react. He clearly had respect for actors because he gave them just enough of what they should know about a character, presenting it more as guidelines than edicts. That's the impression I got anyway. He seemed to trust the actor to figure out how to play a scene after reading what he described.
The transcript came next and the hits just kept on coming. I filled a few pages with notes, learning a great deal about the 707 cabin and flight deck sets on stage 12 at Universal, exactly what I had hoped to find when I started this project. After that came another script I was anticipating: The first draft of Airport 1976 by H.A.L. Craig, delivered in March 1974, two months before '75 began shooting. Jennings Lang must have been hoping to have another sequel to shoot right after '75 was finished, but this wasn't the one.
The action returned to Lincoln International from Airport, where George Kennedy's Joe Patroni was now the manager after Burt Lancaster's Mel Bakersfeld became head of the FAA. After I read that Patroni was now the manager, I wanted to see how he did in the position. The main plot involved the hijacking of the private 747 of one of the richest men in the world, which is likely why Craig got a "story by" credit for '77. Helen Hayes' Ada Quonsett was in this one too, but admittedly, the new characters were awful, nothing remotely interesting about any of them. It was a 180-page script, and counting each page of at least one minute of screen time, a little unwieldy in light of there being so much clunkiness about, but then Craig may have been operating under executive producer Jennings Lang's idea of having enough written in case this was the script so that an extra hour could be filmed for television broadcast. You see, '75, '77 and '79 each had an extra hour or so of footage filmed in the way of extended scenes or entirely new scenes, all during the same production. Lang sold these versions to networks, which made entire evenings out of them. NBC aired '75 as its "Saturday Night at the Movies" in 1978. In the '90s, TNT took the sequels and aired them as part of a "Super '70s Week." Scenes from '79 that were filmed for that purpose can be found on YouTube, and there's a bit from '77 there too, but that's it. One of the personal mysteries I want to solve is what all the footage is from each sequel. I know nearly nothing of what was filmed for '75's eventual television broadcasts. I know a bit about '77 from what I saw on YouTube (I may have seen all those extra scenes when TNT aired it, but I've long forgotten), and I remember only the alternate Kevin Harrison suicide scene in front of the media in '79 from that TNT broadcast.
I was relieved that Lang decided not to produce Airport 1976. It could have been that he didn't want to bring the movies back to Lincoln International. Maybe he didn't want to go where another producer had been. He wanted to create his own movies. But it's clear that the hijacked 747 angle stuck in his mind, though something different to incapacitate the passengers then some kind of pellets being dropped into the air conditioning system on the plane to apparently knock out the passengers. I get the impression that Lang wanted more detail. And considering that he had gotten the cooperation of the U.S. Air Force for '75, well, why not go bigger? He wouldn't have gotten that with the '76 script. The opening credits for '77 say "Story by H.A.L. Craig and Charles Kuenstle." Now I have to find out who Kunestle is and if he contributed a script too.
After this came correspondence between special effects artist Linwood G. Dunn and various high-ranking members of the Airport production team. Not a whole lot to write down. It took some time to get through Dunn's special effects papers, just skimming mostly since special effects are part of what makes a movie, not the whole thing, so I wasn't going to go that detailed about the special effects, just enough to be well-informed so it reads well in my book.
With the Linwood G. Dunn papers done, I was finished with my box. I had gone through everything and I thought I might not have, considering the folders that kept coming out of there. I got my library card back and went to the right to the scripts desk and requested Airport, '75, '77, '79 and Poseidon from 2006, in the hope that it was a draft that touched upon what I thought the movie should have been, what would have made it a smarter disaster movie.
While the scripts were being retrieved, I took the elevator to the lobby to see the security guard before he left. I thanked him for his kindness and asked for his name for the acknowledgements page. He said I didn't have to do that, but I told him that he did a lot for me (It's especially nice to see someone who's actually living an attitude of gratitude) and wanted to. I also wrote down my name and What If They Lived? so he could look it up on Amazon. And that was it. I thanked him again profusely, we shook hands, and I went back upstairs to the scripts that were waiting for me.
I started with Airport, which was bound in a tan cover with the title printed in black on the spine and was gifted to the library by director of photography Ernest Laszlo. It was the same script I had read as Jack Moore's, but without all the writings. I forgot to mention before that Moore's folder also included long sheets of legal paper with many lists of locations and tasks. I looked at those, but couldn't find much of anything to use.
'75 was the same way. It was the final shooting script dated April 26, 1974, exactly what Heston had, just without lines crossed out, new lines written in, and huge coffee stains. There was nothing in it that I hadn't already seen.
The script for '77 was a "second revised final draft screenplay" dated August 4, 1976. This was one I needed, and I took lots of notes, mostly asking myself if certain scenes had been filmed for TV broadcast and if other ones had been extended scenes that were filmed for broadcast. I intend to find out about all this.
I then went into the '79 script by Eric Roth, which had the alternate titles of Airport '79: The Concorde (Instead of The Concorde: Airport '79), and Airport '79: Supersonic. I like the last one, but Lang was smart, considering that the plane cost Universal $40,000 an hour. For that price, the plane had better be in the title. There was also a page detailing character name changes, such as David Harrison now being Kevin Harrison and Celeste now being Isabelle, Sylvia Kristel's character, and Coach Spassky now being Coach Markov, who was played by Avery Schreiber. I hope to find out from Roth how he was hired for this, how long it took him to write the first draft, and what research he did for it. For example, was it Roth's idea to give Markov a deaf daughter or a suggestion by Lang expanded?
And that was it. My Airport research was over. I filled all but 19 pages of one legal pad, using only the first page of a legal notepad to copy down the names of two people in Special Collections to help me, as well as the name of the security guard so I can put them in my acknowledgements page. I also used only one pencil throughout the entire 8 hours, a Crayola twist pencil. But better to be overprepared for this.
Now it was time for the Poseidon screenplay. I returned '77 and '79 to the scripts desk (I returned Airport and '75 to the desk after I was finished in order to get '77 and '79) and took Poseidon from the person behind the desk.
This was a "Final white draft" dated June 17, 2005, and future revisions were listed with the color pages they would be. A further revision came on June 27, 2005 and was in blue, July 5 in pink, July 25 in yellow, August 11 in green, and September 12 in gold. The page also listed previous revisions that had been done by 10 other screenwriters, with the current script by Mark Protosevich and current revision by Akiva Goldsman. The movie that was barely seen in theaters was exactly that way in the script, but the only consolation was that some of it read better on the page. Maybe because there's more hope on the page before it becomes a movie. After 10 writers taking a crack at it, director Wolfgang Petersen couldn't very well do much else.
I returned Poseidon, got my library card back, turned the photocopying sheet in to the Special Collections desk, paid $5.75 for 10 pages and told the guy at the counter that they should be mailed to me since this was the only time I would be at the library (The only day when the library's open until 8 p.m. and I needed that time cushion, and the only day it was possible after the holidays were over, and Dad's going back to work next week). I asked the guy if I could look around the library and he said yes, and I made sure I got the spelling of his last name correct for my acknowledgements page, collected everything of mine at my table, made sure I had everything, then went to look at the books.
This is paradise for any movie buff. Any book you can imagine about an actor, about a certain genre, about movies from another country (They've got many books on Mexican cinema, for example), about the making of certain movies, about anything you could want to know, they have it. I went into each tight space in awe to look at the shelves around me, to note the books I've read and the books I have here at home. After circling the entire library, I went to the desk near the stairs and asked the woman there if the library would consider stocking my book, and was told I'd have to talk to the person in charge of book acquisitions. I will.
She then took my legal pads and notepads and flipped through them to make sure I wasn't smuggling anything out of the library, saw that everything was clean, and I handed over my library card and got my driver's license back, then went down the stairs. I went to my locker, got out my cloth bag, stuffed the paper bag with my bottled water and the McDonald's bag into the cloth bag, put the pencils and technical eraser into the black-and-purple zippered pouch and zipped it back up, made sure I had everything and left that little room. I said good night to the new security guard on duty, went outside to the bench near the driveway where Mom, Dad and Meridith had dropped me off, and sat down to wait for them to come from Universal CityWalk, where they had been all day, and had gotten me a magnet that said "Turn off the TV and read a book. Think outside the box," and a laminated card that said "Bowler's License," with the stats and photo being that of The Dude from The Big Lebowski. I spoke to them before I put my cell phone in the locker and outside before I ate.
From that bench, I watched a soccer game going on at the park, joggers, a guy walking his dog, and enjoyed that peace. My research ultimately doesn't matter on this planet. I don't mean it in a low self-esteem kind of way. I'm fine and well-adjusted on that end. I just mean that there I was on that bench, the traffic was passing by, and only my parents and Meridith knew that I had been reading Charlton Heston's copy of the '75 script, learning more than I had ever expected to find about the Airport series, being introduced to new paths to take with my book, getting even more excited about the great possibilities ahead for what I'm doing with this book. The world keeps going on. It doesn't stop for every parade. And I like it that way. My research at the Margaret Herrick Library ended quietly, and I like quiet. I'd rather it be this way, enough quiet to do what I want. I don't need hype. I believe it's overused for many things. If you believe your work is worth something, can be beneficial to some audience, then just do the work. Have something tangible to present to the world. Don't be like those people who audition on American Idol saying that they're the best that anyone will ever know and then they begin to sing and you wish they had decided to go to work that day or do anything else but sing.
All I will say here at the end of this entry is that this research day has pushed me into being serious about this project. I was in a preliminary stage before this, buying books I needed of actors who were in these movies, buying making-of books like one about The Wizard of Oz and another about Blade Runner for guidance and inspiration, and I knew that I wanted to do this, but to what extent? Now I know. I'm going all the way on this. Finding a publisher, writing book proposals, and pitching this book to publishers and agents is all on me now. Only me. I will do it. I want people to read my book when the time comes. When I'm finished writing it, or at least the first two chapters since a lot of publishers seem to prefer that when considering manuscripts, the first draft will be for me. The second, third, fourth and whatever drafts will gradually be for potential readers. I will do my best to make this project what I want it to be, what I hope to gain from it, namely, in a way, getting the audio commentaries I never got from the DVD set. I will only be satisfied once I know as much as possible about the Airport movies, which I prefer to be everything there is to know, but we'll see how this plays out. I'm very happy to be doing this. Most importantly, I'm having so much fun doing it.
(Yet another thing I forgot to mention: The Special Collections area with the tables reserved only for Special Collections researchers is called the Katharine Hepburn Reading Room and has a blown-up photo of Hepburn in one corner of the room. Also in this room, behind glass and under glass was an exhibit about the public reception Hitchcock's Psycho received, with articles and letters and photos. The many bookcases and long tables across from the Katharine Hepburn Reading Room is the Cecil B. DeMille Reading Room.)
Monday, January 9, 2012
Thank Goodness for Julie Hyzy
Before I get to what this is all about, I just discovered that my workload on Tuesday at the Margaret Herrick Library has increased considerably, though I'm not complaining because there could be even more treasure to unearth.
I searched the library catalog again for the scripts of the movies I'm writing about, to check the date on one of them, and left the search terms at "keyword," rather than "exact beginning of title." I found the listing of that particular script, but further down that page, I saw the listing of the papers of a man who was an art director on one of the sequels, and then the production designer of the following sequel. According to the listing, there's "eight production design drawings," (and I've got to see if any of them are related to my movies), as well as an album assembled by this man and his wife of their careers in Hollywood.
Below that listing was one for the papers of a man who was a set decorator on the first movie I'm writing about, which turns out to have been his last movie. His papers include the script of that first movie and I want to see if there's any notations by him on it, perhaps any insight into his thinking during production, maybe even communication with the writer/director of the film, of whom I can't find much, at least not yet, so I'm relying on other sources to hopefully give me something about him.
Each listing says that these papers are "Available by appointment only," so I'm going to call the library later today and make an appointment. I'll be at the library for hours anyway, more than I thought now with these papers potentially available to me.
Ahead of this important research visit (I'm still stunned that I'm allowed to do this), I began reading the novel that the first movie is based on. I started yesterday afternoon, but by page 136, I'd had it. I know I have to keep reading to get a good grasp on this since I haven't read it in many years, and I respect the author because his insights into various institutions are generally unmatched, but he dumps all his research into his novels, and character descriptions go far beyond what's necessary in the service of the story. There were instances where 20-30 pages passed before getting back to other characters, most of those pages taken up by explanations. The author doesn't think his readers are morons, far from it. He wants them to know what he knows, what they might not know and might be interested in. But there are so many times in this novel that I want him to get on with it already.
I couldn't take this cement block of a novel anymore and went looking for something else to read. I needed a break from the world of my second book, and in one stack near my bed, I found State of the Onion by Julie Hyzy, billed on the paperback cover as "First in the new White House Chef Mystery series." I've been looking for a series I could get into, because I want characters I can go back to often, for as long as an author writes them. I'm trying the Nero Wolfe series again because though I was bored by the mysteries themselves, I liked Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. I liked Wolfe's schedule of life, and I liked the rapport he and Archie have. I have the first two novels in a stack somewhere in my room, but I know where they are when I'm ready.
I also want a series of some kind that I can relate to. I still have the latter two novels of Ridley Pearson's Kingdom Keepers series to read, and that may become automatic because it revolves around the Disney empire. With State of the Onion, I would have a fictional White House to read about (For me, fictional presidencies count, as The West Wing is my favorite show of all time), and maybe whatever mystery is involved would be more interesting because it would be happening in the White House.
Thank goodness for Julie Hyzy! She cured me of nearly-punishing boredom and gave me much happiness in reading about this White House. Hyzy has clearly done a lot of research, and she threads it throughout her story; she doesn't dump all of it in one place. I like novelists who remember that they're writing a novel. Olivia "Ollie" Paras, the White House Assistant Chef, is most enjoyable to know. At the beginning, she carries no baggage and is not a detective in any way. She gets caught in the middle of a major security breach on the grounds of the White House and begins to think that something's not quite right about it after footage on the news is different from what she saw. She digs from there.
Hyzy also fully draws the rest of the kitchen staff, including retiring White House Executive Chef Henry Cooley, and even those characters who are assholes as soon as they walk in, namely Peter Everett Sargent III, head of the White House's Etiquette Affairs department (He prefers "Sensitivity Director"), are fun to hiss at and hope for a swift-enough demise. Hyzy does that very well because you can't be angry at them for too long. There's so much else going on. Hyzy also makes the fictional names of Middle Eastern countries seem plausible. It's not like Hollywood Novelist Syndrome where the names of big stars in that universe seem so far-fetched, even though it's all fiction.
It's rare lately that I read a 301-page novel in one sitting, but this was that novel. And I've already ordered the second novel in Hyzy's series. It makes going back to the novel for my research easier to bear. I've got strength again because of Hyzy.
I searched the library catalog again for the scripts of the movies I'm writing about, to check the date on one of them, and left the search terms at "keyword," rather than "exact beginning of title." I found the listing of that particular script, but further down that page, I saw the listing of the papers of a man who was an art director on one of the sequels, and then the production designer of the following sequel. According to the listing, there's "eight production design drawings," (and I've got to see if any of them are related to my movies), as well as an album assembled by this man and his wife of their careers in Hollywood.
Below that listing was one for the papers of a man who was a set decorator on the first movie I'm writing about, which turns out to have been his last movie. His papers include the script of that first movie and I want to see if there's any notations by him on it, perhaps any insight into his thinking during production, maybe even communication with the writer/director of the film, of whom I can't find much, at least not yet, so I'm relying on other sources to hopefully give me something about him.
Each listing says that these papers are "Available by appointment only," so I'm going to call the library later today and make an appointment. I'll be at the library for hours anyway, more than I thought now with these papers potentially available to me.
Ahead of this important research visit (I'm still stunned that I'm allowed to do this), I began reading the novel that the first movie is based on. I started yesterday afternoon, but by page 136, I'd had it. I know I have to keep reading to get a good grasp on this since I haven't read it in many years, and I respect the author because his insights into various institutions are generally unmatched, but he dumps all his research into his novels, and character descriptions go far beyond what's necessary in the service of the story. There were instances where 20-30 pages passed before getting back to other characters, most of those pages taken up by explanations. The author doesn't think his readers are morons, far from it. He wants them to know what he knows, what they might not know and might be interested in. But there are so many times in this novel that I want him to get on with it already.
I couldn't take this cement block of a novel anymore and went looking for something else to read. I needed a break from the world of my second book, and in one stack near my bed, I found State of the Onion by Julie Hyzy, billed on the paperback cover as "First in the new White House Chef Mystery series." I've been looking for a series I could get into, because I want characters I can go back to often, for as long as an author writes them. I'm trying the Nero Wolfe series again because though I was bored by the mysteries themselves, I liked Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. I liked Wolfe's schedule of life, and I liked the rapport he and Archie have. I have the first two novels in a stack somewhere in my room, but I know where they are when I'm ready.
I also want a series of some kind that I can relate to. I still have the latter two novels of Ridley Pearson's Kingdom Keepers series to read, and that may become automatic because it revolves around the Disney empire. With State of the Onion, I would have a fictional White House to read about (For me, fictional presidencies count, as The West Wing is my favorite show of all time), and maybe whatever mystery is involved would be more interesting because it would be happening in the White House.
Thank goodness for Julie Hyzy! She cured me of nearly-punishing boredom and gave me much happiness in reading about this White House. Hyzy has clearly done a lot of research, and she threads it throughout her story; she doesn't dump all of it in one place. I like novelists who remember that they're writing a novel. Olivia "Ollie" Paras, the White House Assistant Chef, is most enjoyable to know. At the beginning, she carries no baggage and is not a detective in any way. She gets caught in the middle of a major security breach on the grounds of the White House and begins to think that something's not quite right about it after footage on the news is different from what she saw. She digs from there.
Hyzy also fully draws the rest of the kitchen staff, including retiring White House Executive Chef Henry Cooley, and even those characters who are assholes as soon as they walk in, namely Peter Everett Sargent III, head of the White House's Etiquette Affairs department (He prefers "Sensitivity Director"), are fun to hiss at and hope for a swift-enough demise. Hyzy does that very well because you can't be angry at them for too long. There's so much else going on. Hyzy also makes the fictional names of Middle Eastern countries seem plausible. It's not like Hollywood Novelist Syndrome where the names of big stars in that universe seem so far-fetched, even though it's all fiction.
It's rare lately that I read a 301-page novel in one sitting, but this was that novel. And I've already ordered the second novel in Hyzy's series. It makes going back to the novel for my research easier to bear. I've got strength again because of Hyzy.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Hollywood History on Tuesday
When I began research for What If They Lived?, James Dean and Marilyn Monroe intimidated me. They were, and still are, legends, and how could I write about them when so much had been written about them already? So many biographies, so many essays, so many analyses of careers abruptly ended. What could I bring that hadn't been brought before?
As I read some of those biographies from beginnings to unfortunate endings, I looked around, and I was the only one reading whichever biography was in front of me. I was the only one figuring out how to shape my essay. I was the only one in that room learning more than just the tidbits that made them famous, a glimpse into who they actually were at times, the humans they were. It made it much easier because I wasn't looking to compete against anyone to be the King of All Knowledge of Hollywood Gods and Goddesses. These two were among 18 essays I had to write, and I couldn't worry about how I would be received among those who know so much about Dean and Monroe.
That experience makes research for my second book much easier. I know that the first movie I'm going to write about created a major trend in Hollywood. Yes, this was the one that started it all. But I'm not going to worry about how my writing might be perceived by film historians who perhaps have delved far deeper into this particular decade than I ever have and ever will. For one thing, these movies are generally forgotten against what came after them (and in one instance, what came before the three sequels) and what is offered in theaters today. I have as much room to maneuver as I want. I'm sure there are ideas for my book that I haven't even thought of yet, but which may reveal themselves as I keep reading, keep watching those movies, and outline the chapters.
I've been thinking about this because of my current workload: I have one more movie to watch and take notes on, forming questions to ask those who I find for interviews, and I think there will be a lot of people, based on my notes for the three previous movies, and the beginning and end credits for these movies, names that go far beyond "Director," "Screenwriter," and "Starring." I still have to re-read the novel on which the first movie is based. I read it many years ago, but want to again to get a good grasp on the material, and I have a major reason for doing so.
On Tuesday, I will be embarking on what I never imagined in all my years of writing movie reviews, in the eight years I've lived in Southern California. This feels like the pinnacle of my love for movies, like it's one of the reasons I wrote all those reviews, and my first book. It's not all downhill from there, but besides the interviews I'm hoping for, it's going to be damn hard to top this.
I will be visiting the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills. They have scripts for all four of the movies I will be writing about, and they could very well have been used during production. I will be holding history that means so much to me. And that I've gone from watching these movies many, many times on videotape to watching them on DVD to holding these scripts come Tuesday is stunning. It'll prepare me if I get the interviews I want, to be stunned for a bit and then get right to it. Right now, I can be stunned for longer than that because Tuesday is the only day the library is open until 8 p.m. I'll be there quite early in the day (It opens at 10 a.m.), and I don't necessarily need all that time, but I do need a cushion of time because you're only allowed paper (notepads and notebooks count as that too) and pencil (Pens can leak, and there's movie history in that building!), and not only have I not used pencils in years, but my handwriting is still crap, which is why tonight, when I watch the final movie in the series and take notes, I'm going to write more carefully. Same goes when I re-read the novel tomorrow and take notes.
The library also has a transcript from a screening of the first movie that the Academy held in 2006 with actors from it. I hope to find treasure in those pages. And the scripts were written not just with theatrical exhibition in mind, but also television broadcast, because there was an hour or so of extra footage filmed for each of the three sequels that was for TV only. That footage has never been released on DVD. The executive in charge of the sequels was well-versed in television, so he knew how to get even more value out of these movies.
I'm writing this book for myself first. I want to know how various scenes were staged. I want to know how various actors coped with some of those scenes. I want to know the technical details because a lot of them are really a sight to see onscreen.
After I've found all that out and wrote down everything that I've found, then I'll edit for readability. A first draft is for me. A second, third, fourth, whatever, and final draft is gradually for readers.
I'm no different from any other author: I want my books to sell well. I'd like to make some money off of my writing. But I love that on Tuesday, I will be at the Margaret Herrick Library, holding history in my hands, both Hollywood and personal. I didn't start writing when I was 11 because of the thought of great gobs of greenbacks. I started writing because of that kind of experience. You can't get it any other way. It's the reason I still write.
As I read some of those biographies from beginnings to unfortunate endings, I looked around, and I was the only one reading whichever biography was in front of me. I was the only one figuring out how to shape my essay. I was the only one in that room learning more than just the tidbits that made them famous, a glimpse into who they actually were at times, the humans they were. It made it much easier because I wasn't looking to compete against anyone to be the King of All Knowledge of Hollywood Gods and Goddesses. These two were among 18 essays I had to write, and I couldn't worry about how I would be received among those who know so much about Dean and Monroe.
That experience makes research for my second book much easier. I know that the first movie I'm going to write about created a major trend in Hollywood. Yes, this was the one that started it all. But I'm not going to worry about how my writing might be perceived by film historians who perhaps have delved far deeper into this particular decade than I ever have and ever will. For one thing, these movies are generally forgotten against what came after them (and in one instance, what came before the three sequels) and what is offered in theaters today. I have as much room to maneuver as I want. I'm sure there are ideas for my book that I haven't even thought of yet, but which may reveal themselves as I keep reading, keep watching those movies, and outline the chapters.
I've been thinking about this because of my current workload: I have one more movie to watch and take notes on, forming questions to ask those who I find for interviews, and I think there will be a lot of people, based on my notes for the three previous movies, and the beginning and end credits for these movies, names that go far beyond "Director," "Screenwriter," and "Starring." I still have to re-read the novel on which the first movie is based. I read it many years ago, but want to again to get a good grasp on the material, and I have a major reason for doing so.
On Tuesday, I will be embarking on what I never imagined in all my years of writing movie reviews, in the eight years I've lived in Southern California. This feels like the pinnacle of my love for movies, like it's one of the reasons I wrote all those reviews, and my first book. It's not all downhill from there, but besides the interviews I'm hoping for, it's going to be damn hard to top this.
I will be visiting the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills. They have scripts for all four of the movies I will be writing about, and they could very well have been used during production. I will be holding history that means so much to me. And that I've gone from watching these movies many, many times on videotape to watching them on DVD to holding these scripts come Tuesday is stunning. It'll prepare me if I get the interviews I want, to be stunned for a bit and then get right to it. Right now, I can be stunned for longer than that because Tuesday is the only day the library is open until 8 p.m. I'll be there quite early in the day (It opens at 10 a.m.), and I don't necessarily need all that time, but I do need a cushion of time because you're only allowed paper (notepads and notebooks count as that too) and pencil (Pens can leak, and there's movie history in that building!), and not only have I not used pencils in years, but my handwriting is still crap, which is why tonight, when I watch the final movie in the series and take notes, I'm going to write more carefully. Same goes when I re-read the novel tomorrow and take notes.
The library also has a transcript from a screening of the first movie that the Academy held in 2006 with actors from it. I hope to find treasure in those pages. And the scripts were written not just with theatrical exhibition in mind, but also television broadcast, because there was an hour or so of extra footage filmed for each of the three sequels that was for TV only. That footage has never been released on DVD. The executive in charge of the sequels was well-versed in television, so he knew how to get even more value out of these movies.
I'm writing this book for myself first. I want to know how various scenes were staged. I want to know how various actors coped with some of those scenes. I want to know the technical details because a lot of them are really a sight to see onscreen.
After I've found all that out and wrote down everything that I've found, then I'll edit for readability. A first draft is for me. A second, third, fourth, whatever, and final draft is gradually for readers.
I'm no different from any other author: I want my books to sell well. I'd like to make some money off of my writing. But I love that on Tuesday, I will be at the Margaret Herrick Library, holding history in my hands, both Hollywood and personal. I didn't start writing when I was 11 because of the thought of great gobs of greenbacks. I started writing because of that kind of experience. You can't get it any other way. It's the reason I still write.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Walgreens Movies
I keep up on pop culture, music, movies, TV, the latest best-selling book, but I'm slow to get to them. You won't find me waiting hours and days in line for one movie, nor dressing up and going to various geek conventions (though I have a yen to go to one, if there is one in Las Vegas, to see what it's all about), nor waiting until midnight to be one of the first to get a copy of an ultra best-selling book. Meridith did that once with Dad for one of the Harry Potter books, but for her, like me with conventions, she just wanted to see what it was like, and experience it once. She just went that one time, never again to the ones that followed.
But I am curious about pop culture when it stops being in the zeitgeist. I don't wait purposely until a book or a movie is out of favor, just that when it's popular, I'm usually always busy with other books and movies. For example, I knew nothing of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close when it was published, and I plan to read it soon, not because of the movie, but because I finished Greyhound, about an 11-year-old boy traveling alone cross-country, and I was curious to see what the kid is like in Jonathan Safran Foer's novel. I've also got Unstrung Heroes, Franz Lidz's memoir about being influenced by two eccentric uncles while growing up, and I sought that out because I love the movie that stars John Turturro, Andie MacDowell, and Maury Chaykin, one of my favorite actors. It's in my DVD collection. I especially love, and get a little teary at, the scene in which Uncle Arthur (Chaykin) explains to Steven (Nathan Watt) why he collects balls that children have lost: "You know how seashells hold the sounds of the ocean? I think balls hold the sounds of the children who bounce them." I never thought of it like that, but I do think like that about a lot of things in life.
On Tuesday, Mom and Dad had a late-afternoon doctor's appointment, which meant eventually knowing exactly what shade of white the waiting room walls were, while enduring another crappy movie on the TV, which this time was the remake of The Karate Kid, starring the son of stage mother Will Smith.
Then after the appointment, having finished reading Fool Me Once by Rick Lax (I started reading it that morning), we went for wings at Wing Stop (Their Louisiana Rub flavor is quite possibly the best flavor they've ever had), and then to Walgreens to pick up Mom's prescription.
We really only go to Walgreens if a prescription is needed or if Mom finds something she needs at a lower price there, such as lipstick or something for the bathroom. I like it because they sell DVDs for cheap, from $3.99-$5.99. They remodeled the Walgreens near us, putting the books and magazines against a wall near the register, and moving the DVDs for sale into a smaller plastic square display in the aisle where seasonal and discounted items are sold.
Most of what they offer I either already have, such as Swing Vote, or don't want, which is most of what they have. I don't fall into the hype trap that so thoroughly dominates mainstream entertainment because I like to discover books and movies on my own terms. I'd probably make a crappy book publisher for that reason, which is why it's better that I write.
I found two movies in that collection, one that I immediately snapped up: Talk Radio, starring and co-written by Eric Bogosian, and directed by Oliver Stone. I've always liked Eric Bogosian as a stage performer. I wish his novels had the same impressive power his stage shows do. His novel Mall was populated with characters whose personalities were too thin, and when I heard that a movie was going to be made of it, starring Vincent D'Onofrio, Chelsea Handler, and Bogosian, I immediately hoped that it will be better than the book.
I'd seen Talk Radio many years ago, and loved how deep Bogosian got into this manic talk radio host. This had to go into my DVD collection.
Then I found an unusual-looking DVD case, because of its cast: Henry Winkler, Sally Field, and Harrison Ford. It was called Heroes, from 1977, and according to the back copy, Winkler is a Vietnam vet who travels cross-country to open a worm farm, and Field is a woman he meets on the way, with Ford playing Winkler's army buddy. This used to be the kind of movie I'd look up on the Internet Movie Database to see who else was in it and what the general reception was toward it, but no. I want to find out fully on my own how it is. The screenwriter, James Carabatsos, is a Vietnam vet, and this was his first screenplay. He later wrote Heartbreak Ridge for Clint Eastwood, and Hamburger Hill. Points so far for credibility with Winkler's Vietnam vet character.
Jaws began to rapidly change movie marketing when it was released, and I'm sure it went full tilt when Star Wars was released in the same year as Heroes, so this could very well be one of the last small movies that Hollywood was willing to take a chance on. I guess they were less risky back then, but then, the '70s were a time when Hollywood was willing to be bold.
I haven't watched Heroes yet, but I think what made me buy it just to see it was that Winkler's character goes cross-country. I like those kinds of stories, people searching for something in life, or forced by circumstances to go on the road. It may well be a cliche of sorts in movies, but it endures because humanity wonders what it must be like to be somewhere else. Heck, I've been thinking about that for eight years. It also endures because the world is so incredibly vast, moreso than any movie can show. The road leading out of Baker, straight into the Mojave to Las Vegas, is stunning every single time because there's so much desert. It stretches so far in opposite directions. It's a creative wonderland for me because I think anything can exist in the desert. Riverboats too, like the casino we saw once on the way into Vegas that was designed as a riverboat, that was closed and boarded up, and the next time we drove into Las Vegas, the riverboat was torn down, gone. The reality of the riverboat being gone was obvious, but a riverboat seemingly disappearing into the desert like that is pure poetry to me.
Going back to the beginning of this entry, it's like science fiction for me. I'm becoming more interested in it, but I'm moving slowly, seeing what fits me, what worlds, what writers, what movies. Blade Runner has been one of my favorite movies for many years, long before I became interested in science fiction (It must have set something in my mind). I liked Tron: Legacy when I first saw it, and became a huge fan of it when I saw it again on DVD, to the extent that I own a diecast model of the Recognizer. From this, perhaps I'm interested in dystopian science fiction.
I've seen a few episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and while it's not likely that I'll become a Trekkie (or Trekker or whatever the hell isn't considered offensive to devoted Star Trek fans), I liked the vast imagination I felt from it, all those universes out there to explore. I'm not sure yet if spaceships beyond the Enterprise would interest me, but I'll eventually find out.
Time moves fast enough, and I like to wander slowly, never rushing for anything I'm told I should see, never rushing because millions of others are. I'll get there. I like to think that when I do, there'll be more room for me to wander.
But I am curious about pop culture when it stops being in the zeitgeist. I don't wait purposely until a book or a movie is out of favor, just that when it's popular, I'm usually always busy with other books and movies. For example, I knew nothing of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close when it was published, and I plan to read it soon, not because of the movie, but because I finished Greyhound, about an 11-year-old boy traveling alone cross-country, and I was curious to see what the kid is like in Jonathan Safran Foer's novel. I've also got Unstrung Heroes, Franz Lidz's memoir about being influenced by two eccentric uncles while growing up, and I sought that out because I love the movie that stars John Turturro, Andie MacDowell, and Maury Chaykin, one of my favorite actors. It's in my DVD collection. I especially love, and get a little teary at, the scene in which Uncle Arthur (Chaykin) explains to Steven (Nathan Watt) why he collects balls that children have lost: "You know how seashells hold the sounds of the ocean? I think balls hold the sounds of the children who bounce them." I never thought of it like that, but I do think like that about a lot of things in life.
On Tuesday, Mom and Dad had a late-afternoon doctor's appointment, which meant eventually knowing exactly what shade of white the waiting room walls were, while enduring another crappy movie on the TV, which this time was the remake of The Karate Kid, starring the son of stage mother Will Smith.
Then after the appointment, having finished reading Fool Me Once by Rick Lax (I started reading it that morning), we went for wings at Wing Stop (Their Louisiana Rub flavor is quite possibly the best flavor they've ever had), and then to Walgreens to pick up Mom's prescription.
We really only go to Walgreens if a prescription is needed or if Mom finds something she needs at a lower price there, such as lipstick or something for the bathroom. I like it because they sell DVDs for cheap, from $3.99-$5.99. They remodeled the Walgreens near us, putting the books and magazines against a wall near the register, and moving the DVDs for sale into a smaller plastic square display in the aisle where seasonal and discounted items are sold.
Most of what they offer I either already have, such as Swing Vote, or don't want, which is most of what they have. I don't fall into the hype trap that so thoroughly dominates mainstream entertainment because I like to discover books and movies on my own terms. I'd probably make a crappy book publisher for that reason, which is why it's better that I write.
I found two movies in that collection, one that I immediately snapped up: Talk Radio, starring and co-written by Eric Bogosian, and directed by Oliver Stone. I've always liked Eric Bogosian as a stage performer. I wish his novels had the same impressive power his stage shows do. His novel Mall was populated with characters whose personalities were too thin, and when I heard that a movie was going to be made of it, starring Vincent D'Onofrio, Chelsea Handler, and Bogosian, I immediately hoped that it will be better than the book.
I'd seen Talk Radio many years ago, and loved how deep Bogosian got into this manic talk radio host. This had to go into my DVD collection.
Then I found an unusual-looking DVD case, because of its cast: Henry Winkler, Sally Field, and Harrison Ford. It was called Heroes, from 1977, and according to the back copy, Winkler is a Vietnam vet who travels cross-country to open a worm farm, and Field is a woman he meets on the way, with Ford playing Winkler's army buddy. This used to be the kind of movie I'd look up on the Internet Movie Database to see who else was in it and what the general reception was toward it, but no. I want to find out fully on my own how it is. The screenwriter, James Carabatsos, is a Vietnam vet, and this was his first screenplay. He later wrote Heartbreak Ridge for Clint Eastwood, and Hamburger Hill. Points so far for credibility with Winkler's Vietnam vet character.
Jaws began to rapidly change movie marketing when it was released, and I'm sure it went full tilt when Star Wars was released in the same year as Heroes, so this could very well be one of the last small movies that Hollywood was willing to take a chance on. I guess they were less risky back then, but then, the '70s were a time when Hollywood was willing to be bold.
I haven't watched Heroes yet, but I think what made me buy it just to see it was that Winkler's character goes cross-country. I like those kinds of stories, people searching for something in life, or forced by circumstances to go on the road. It may well be a cliche of sorts in movies, but it endures because humanity wonders what it must be like to be somewhere else. Heck, I've been thinking about that for eight years. It also endures because the world is so incredibly vast, moreso than any movie can show. The road leading out of Baker, straight into the Mojave to Las Vegas, is stunning every single time because there's so much desert. It stretches so far in opposite directions. It's a creative wonderland for me because I think anything can exist in the desert. Riverboats too, like the casino we saw once on the way into Vegas that was designed as a riverboat, that was closed and boarded up, and the next time we drove into Las Vegas, the riverboat was torn down, gone. The reality of the riverboat being gone was obvious, but a riverboat seemingly disappearing into the desert like that is pure poetry to me.
Going back to the beginning of this entry, it's like science fiction for me. I'm becoming more interested in it, but I'm moving slowly, seeing what fits me, what worlds, what writers, what movies. Blade Runner has been one of my favorite movies for many years, long before I became interested in science fiction (It must have set something in my mind). I liked Tron: Legacy when I first saw it, and became a huge fan of it when I saw it again on DVD, to the extent that I own a diecast model of the Recognizer. From this, perhaps I'm interested in dystopian science fiction.
I've seen a few episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and while it's not likely that I'll become a Trekkie (or Trekker or whatever the hell isn't considered offensive to devoted Star Trek fans), I liked the vast imagination I felt from it, all those universes out there to explore. I'm not sure yet if spaceships beyond the Enterprise would interest me, but I'll eventually find out.
Time moves fast enough, and I like to wander slowly, never rushing for anything I'm told I should see, never rushing because millions of others are. I'll get there. I like to think that when I do, there'll be more room for me to wander.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Tidbits from the Second Issue of The Henderson Press
It's not enough for me to simply keep on hoping that we soon become residents of Henderson, or, rather, as quick as possible. I'm not any more connected to Las Vegas or Henderson like I want to be. So I've begun pulling books from my Las Vegas stack, reading Fool Me Once by Rick Lax, which I read in one day yesterday, and starting today on Super Casino: Inside the "New" Las Vegas by Pete Earley, published in 2000. The year never matters to me because I want to study every decade of Las Vegas, including before it was the Las Vegas we know.
That covers Las Vegas, but what about Henderson? I've drooled over our future apartment, fondly remembered buying that toy flour truck at Smith's in Henderson, and marveled at how much there is near the apartment to explore. I need to strengthen that connection I feel with Henderson. Last October, I wrote an entry about what I had learned from the first issue of The Henderson Press, dated September 23, 2010, but hadn't written about any more issues. That changes now, because while I still wait, I want to not only know more about my future hometown, but to feel even more for it, more excitement, more pleasure that will undoubtedly multiply once I'm there. It's not a matter of eight years in the Santa Clarita Valley making me want anywhere but here. I've been to Henderson before and I love what I saw. I know that I could easily be part of it, finally part of a community in many facets.
From the second issue, which spans October 22 to November 11, 2010 (They were not yet a weekly paper), I've learned:
- There was a dance troupe from the Las Vegas Indian Center called the Red Hand Dance Troupe that performed at the dedication ceremony for the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge which is perched over Hoover Dam. An Indian center seems to me to be further proof that Las Vegas is open to anyone, a great change from the shameful racism in the city in the 1950s.
- The article about the ceremony notes that it was private, with only the O'Callaghan and two Tillman family members and those who worked on the bridge attending, and "a public event was held two days later with nearly 20,000 well-wishers attending." That would have made quite an article. Report what happened, get some quotes from Nevada and Arizona residents, and tourists, and get a sense of the atmosphere of that event as well. But with this being the second issue, I suppose space was at a premium.
- There's a Clark County Museum on South Boulder Highway, which is all about the history of Southern Nevada. Googling it to find out more, I saw a listing for the Howard W. Cannon Aviation Museum at McCarran International Airport, at 5757 Wayne Newton Boulevard. History never fades here, it seems, and I'm finding more and more to do in Southern Nevada!
- An arson fire caused $300,000 worth of damage to a two-story, five-bedroom, 3-and-1/2 bath house, and even with how short this story is, it's apparent that the reporters care about the stories they write. There are more details in this one story than most that I find in The Signal, which may not be a fair comparison considering how much more Henderson has than the entire Santa Clarita Valley, but if you like where you live, then you care about what goes on in your city and in writing about it too.
- Skyline Restaurant & Casino on North Boulder Highway, offers, at least at the time of this issue, live entertainment every Tuesday through Sunday evening, with Vic Saladino performing in the evenings, and The Dummkopfs performing Thursday and Sunday afternoons. My friend Google tells me that Vic Saladino is a blues musician and The Dummkopfs are a comedy band. I think I'll check out the entertainment there. I want to see what every casino in Henderson offers.
- In the corrections box on page 3 is this: "The Henderson Press corrects its mistakes. Please bring any errors to the attention of Jeannette Carrillo, editor." "Mistakes," "errors," that's fine, but I hope they don't go full force on a thesaurus like that for any same-meaning words that fall close together.
- Also, this issue is "No. 1, Vol. 2."
- Shell has a lube center and car wash on South Boulder Highway at Palo Verde Dr., south of Smith's. It already feels easy to find decent food in Henderson, and it's nice to know that there are more gas stations there than there are here.
- In its efforts to be environmentally friendly, the City of Henderson, according to reporter Jeremy Twitchell (so far my favorite Henderson Press reporter), "is replacing 28,000 street lights with energy-efficient induction lights that are projected to save more than $15 million in energy and maintenance costs over their life." This is the first time I've ever been interested in street lights beyond artistic effect, but then, anything under Henderson jurisdiction has my interest.
- There's a shop called Henderson Hobbies on Water St. I e-mailed the owner, asking about diecast cars and trucks. Even though I'm not there, I want to map out what's available because I plan to buy less online and more in-store to support my town's economy. (At 11:45 p.m.: The e-mail address bounced, which likely means that Henderson Hobbies went out of business.)
- An 11-year-old named Samanatha Chang came up with the winning name for the 6-foot-tall puppy statue at Heritage Bark Park: Barkules (pronounced like "Hercules"). This paragraph was most impressive to me: "Parks Superintendent Doug Guild presented Chang with a certificate of achievement, as well as a prize package. Prizes were co-sponsored by the Galleria at Sunset, Levi Strauss, Tracey Ford Perry Photography, Madame Tussaud's Las Vegas and Rave Motion Pictures.
Galleria at Sunset is the main mall in Henderson, so there was likely a gift certificate for the mall. Levi Strauss, probably jeans were involved. Tracey Ford Perry Photography is billed as "Fine Art Portraits," so undoubtedly a free session. I highly respect how Madame Tussaud's reaches back to Henderson, never forgetting about those who live in the area. And Rave Motion Pictures is a theater chain that has one location in Las Vegas, the Town Square 18 on Las Vegas Boulevard South. Free tickets, I'm sure.
- Downtown Sewing Machine Co., offering sewing machine sales and repairs, at 155 Water Street, Suite 130. You'd never hear about sewing machines here. To me, that's a further sign that Henderson is filled with regular people, with little shallowness. I hope so anyway.
- At Prestige Assisted Living, Henderson City Councilwoman Gerri Schroeder presented a certificate of Congressional Recognition to Sophie Maselko Sojka, who turned 100. In the Santa Clarita Valley, age is to be feared. In Henderson, it's a natural part of life.
- I spotted another ad for Coo Coo's Cafe - "Home of the Funky Monkey Frappe." Instead of waiting until I'm there to find out what's in it, I found the website and the menu. It's a "blended mocha frappe with a whole banana added." I'd try it, but I'd first dive for the "3 Cheese Omelet Quesadilla," which is made with two jumbo eggs, swiss, cheddar and provolone cheeses, and served with salsa, sour cream, and a fruit cup. Sure, it's not enough that our new apartment complex will make me feel like I'm truly home, but this place just has to serve a quesadilla that I'm now craving. I love having such issues.
- The electricity bill at the Lexus of Las Vegas dealership on West Sahara Avenue is $30,000 a month. I always wonder about those bills for casinos.
- Another full-page ad for Johnny Mac's Restaurant & Bar, in business for 28 years, which boasts "the best wings and pizza in town." Meridith's set on trying the wings. I think we all are, since we'll be trying everything in the years to come.
- There's a Hawaiian food truck called Island Breeze. They do events, and they also park outside Island Sushi and Grill on South Eastern Avenue, which supports the business. I'll be there and I'll try Hawaiian tacos.
- There's an Outdoor Picture Show at The Green in The District at Green Valley Ranch (long names, but worth it), which offers free popcorn and Monsters, Inc. on October 29, and Alice in Wonderland on October 30 (It doesn't say which version). It's still going on, and this most recent October they had The Incredibles, Ghostbusters II, and Casper, among other movies. I want to go to at least once next year.
- I know this is a Henderson newspaper, so this is to be expected, but it's nice to see a quarter-page ad from Henderson Libraries with the heading "Your All-Access Pass," touting the library card. There's six locations, including a cubbyhole at the Galleria at Sunset mall, which I will happily hang out at whenever we're there, though not as much as I did at the Valencia library because this is my home mall, so I'll always walk around, enjoying all of it.
- There's two full pages of coupons. Downtown Sewing Machine Co. offers a $10 gift certificate, Skyline Casino is pushing an $8.95 all-you-can-eat large fried shrimp special, the late Henderson Hobbies is giving 10% off all model rockets, and Johnny Mac's has one for $10 for a large one-topping pizza.
- Thinking about needing a car when I get to Henderson, I looked at the nearly full-page car listings and no one at that time is selling a Toyota Corolla. I want one because it's the most comfortable car I've ever been in. The prices on these listings also severely cooled my book-buying habit. I'll have libraries again in Las Vegas and Henderson anyway, but I've got to cut it if I happen to find a reliable-enough vehicle for $4,000-$6,000. Stop laughing. I'm still naive, but I'm learning.
- It's fun looking at the real estate ads because I don't have to think about any of these. We've got that apartment in Henderson, and don't have to worry about any of the costs that would be incurred with these houses. I will pay my share of the rent there, of course, and I'm thinking that when I do move out, I'll seek an apartment, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was in the same complex, considering that they've got a basketball court and a gym there and the grounds seem very well-maintained from what Mom and Dad have told Meridith and I.
End of the second issue, and that felt really good. I've Tivo'd The Good Wife over the final three weeks before holiday reruns, but haven't watched them yet because my research and my books always get in the way, save for Jeopardy!, The Big Bang Theory and returning interests in The Simpsons and Family Guy, which is when they step aside. They'll also step aside for this, reading all these back issues of The Henderson Press. This I can keep up on much more easily than The Good Wife.
That covers Las Vegas, but what about Henderson? I've drooled over our future apartment, fondly remembered buying that toy flour truck at Smith's in Henderson, and marveled at how much there is near the apartment to explore. I need to strengthen that connection I feel with Henderson. Last October, I wrote an entry about what I had learned from the first issue of The Henderson Press, dated September 23, 2010, but hadn't written about any more issues. That changes now, because while I still wait, I want to not only know more about my future hometown, but to feel even more for it, more excitement, more pleasure that will undoubtedly multiply once I'm there. It's not a matter of eight years in the Santa Clarita Valley making me want anywhere but here. I've been to Henderson before and I love what I saw. I know that I could easily be part of it, finally part of a community in many facets.
From the second issue, which spans October 22 to November 11, 2010 (They were not yet a weekly paper), I've learned:
- There was a dance troupe from the Las Vegas Indian Center called the Red Hand Dance Troupe that performed at the dedication ceremony for the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge which is perched over Hoover Dam. An Indian center seems to me to be further proof that Las Vegas is open to anyone, a great change from the shameful racism in the city in the 1950s.
- The article about the ceremony notes that it was private, with only the O'Callaghan and two Tillman family members and those who worked on the bridge attending, and "a public event was held two days later with nearly 20,000 well-wishers attending." That would have made quite an article. Report what happened, get some quotes from Nevada and Arizona residents, and tourists, and get a sense of the atmosphere of that event as well. But with this being the second issue, I suppose space was at a premium.
- There's a Clark County Museum on South Boulder Highway, which is all about the history of Southern Nevada. Googling it to find out more, I saw a listing for the Howard W. Cannon Aviation Museum at McCarran International Airport, at 5757 Wayne Newton Boulevard. History never fades here, it seems, and I'm finding more and more to do in Southern Nevada!
- An arson fire caused $300,000 worth of damage to a two-story, five-bedroom, 3-and-1/2 bath house, and even with how short this story is, it's apparent that the reporters care about the stories they write. There are more details in this one story than most that I find in The Signal, which may not be a fair comparison considering how much more Henderson has than the entire Santa Clarita Valley, but if you like where you live, then you care about what goes on in your city and in writing about it too.
- Skyline Restaurant & Casino on North Boulder Highway, offers, at least at the time of this issue, live entertainment every Tuesday through Sunday evening, with Vic Saladino performing in the evenings, and The Dummkopfs performing Thursday and Sunday afternoons. My friend Google tells me that Vic Saladino is a blues musician and The Dummkopfs are a comedy band. I think I'll check out the entertainment there. I want to see what every casino in Henderson offers.
- In the corrections box on page 3 is this: "The Henderson Press corrects its mistakes. Please bring any errors to the attention of Jeannette Carrillo, editor." "Mistakes," "errors," that's fine, but I hope they don't go full force on a thesaurus like that for any same-meaning words that fall close together.
- Also, this issue is "No. 1, Vol. 2."
- Shell has a lube center and car wash on South Boulder Highway at Palo Verde Dr., south of Smith's. It already feels easy to find decent food in Henderson, and it's nice to know that there are more gas stations there than there are here.
- In its efforts to be environmentally friendly, the City of Henderson, according to reporter Jeremy Twitchell (so far my favorite Henderson Press reporter), "is replacing 28,000 street lights with energy-efficient induction lights that are projected to save more than $15 million in energy and maintenance costs over their life." This is the first time I've ever been interested in street lights beyond artistic effect, but then, anything under Henderson jurisdiction has my interest.
- There's a shop called Henderson Hobbies on Water St. I e-mailed the owner, asking about diecast cars and trucks. Even though I'm not there, I want to map out what's available because I plan to buy less online and more in-store to support my town's economy. (At 11:45 p.m.: The e-mail address bounced, which likely means that Henderson Hobbies went out of business.)
- An 11-year-old named Samanatha Chang came up with the winning name for the 6-foot-tall puppy statue at Heritage Bark Park: Barkules (pronounced like "Hercules"). This paragraph was most impressive to me: "Parks Superintendent Doug Guild presented Chang with a certificate of achievement, as well as a prize package. Prizes were co-sponsored by the Galleria at Sunset, Levi Strauss, Tracey Ford Perry Photography, Madame Tussaud's Las Vegas and Rave Motion Pictures.
Galleria at Sunset is the main mall in Henderson, so there was likely a gift certificate for the mall. Levi Strauss, probably jeans were involved. Tracey Ford Perry Photography is billed as "Fine Art Portraits," so undoubtedly a free session. I highly respect how Madame Tussaud's reaches back to Henderson, never forgetting about those who live in the area. And Rave Motion Pictures is a theater chain that has one location in Las Vegas, the Town Square 18 on Las Vegas Boulevard South. Free tickets, I'm sure.
- Downtown Sewing Machine Co., offering sewing machine sales and repairs, at 155 Water Street, Suite 130. You'd never hear about sewing machines here. To me, that's a further sign that Henderson is filled with regular people, with little shallowness. I hope so anyway.
- At Prestige Assisted Living, Henderson City Councilwoman Gerri Schroeder presented a certificate of Congressional Recognition to Sophie Maselko Sojka, who turned 100. In the Santa Clarita Valley, age is to be feared. In Henderson, it's a natural part of life.
- I spotted another ad for Coo Coo's Cafe - "Home of the Funky Monkey Frappe." Instead of waiting until I'm there to find out what's in it, I found the website and the menu. It's a "blended mocha frappe with a whole banana added." I'd try it, but I'd first dive for the "3 Cheese Omelet Quesadilla," which is made with two jumbo eggs, swiss, cheddar and provolone cheeses, and served with salsa, sour cream, and a fruit cup. Sure, it's not enough that our new apartment complex will make me feel like I'm truly home, but this place just has to serve a quesadilla that I'm now craving. I love having such issues.
- The electricity bill at the Lexus of Las Vegas dealership on West Sahara Avenue is $30,000 a month. I always wonder about those bills for casinos.
- Another full-page ad for Johnny Mac's Restaurant & Bar, in business for 28 years, which boasts "the best wings and pizza in town." Meridith's set on trying the wings. I think we all are, since we'll be trying everything in the years to come.
- There's a Hawaiian food truck called Island Breeze. They do events, and they also park outside Island Sushi and Grill on South Eastern Avenue, which supports the business. I'll be there and I'll try Hawaiian tacos.
- There's an Outdoor Picture Show at The Green in The District at Green Valley Ranch (long names, but worth it), which offers free popcorn and Monsters, Inc. on October 29, and Alice in Wonderland on October 30 (It doesn't say which version). It's still going on, and this most recent October they had The Incredibles, Ghostbusters II, and Casper, among other movies. I want to go to at least once next year.
- I know this is a Henderson newspaper, so this is to be expected, but it's nice to see a quarter-page ad from Henderson Libraries with the heading "Your All-Access Pass," touting the library card. There's six locations, including a cubbyhole at the Galleria at Sunset mall, which I will happily hang out at whenever we're there, though not as much as I did at the Valencia library because this is my home mall, so I'll always walk around, enjoying all of it.
- There's two full pages of coupons. Downtown Sewing Machine Co. offers a $10 gift certificate, Skyline Casino is pushing an $8.95 all-you-can-eat large fried shrimp special, the late Henderson Hobbies is giving 10% off all model rockets, and Johnny Mac's has one for $10 for a large one-topping pizza.
- Thinking about needing a car when I get to Henderson, I looked at the nearly full-page car listings and no one at that time is selling a Toyota Corolla. I want one because it's the most comfortable car I've ever been in. The prices on these listings also severely cooled my book-buying habit. I'll have libraries again in Las Vegas and Henderson anyway, but I've got to cut it if I happen to find a reliable-enough vehicle for $4,000-$6,000. Stop laughing. I'm still naive, but I'm learning.
- It's fun looking at the real estate ads because I don't have to think about any of these. We've got that apartment in Henderson, and don't have to worry about any of the costs that would be incurred with these houses. I will pay my share of the rent there, of course, and I'm thinking that when I do move out, I'll seek an apartment, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was in the same complex, considering that they've got a basketball court and a gym there and the grounds seem very well-maintained from what Mom and Dad have told Meridith and I.
End of the second issue, and that felt really good. I've Tivo'd The Good Wife over the final three weeks before holiday reruns, but haven't watched them yet because my research and my books always get in the way, save for Jeopardy!, The Big Bang Theory and returning interests in The Simpsons and Family Guy, which is when they step aside. They'll also step aside for this, reading all these back issues of The Henderson Press. This I can keep up on much more easily than The Good Wife.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
The Target, Kmart Super Center, and Albertsons Score
On New Year's Eve, Mom's birthday, at Pacific View Mall in Ventura, we turned toward Target after leaving Calendar Club, where Mom had been looking at page-a-day calendars, looking for a new one since Wonderword wasn't published as one for the new year.
I wanted Target because this wasn't the one in Valencia, nor the one in Golden Valley that I still haven't been to to see what Matchbox cars they have there. This was also a Target fitted to the mall, with two levels, with us entering the second level which had electronics and the toy aisles.
I fairly breezed to the toy aisles, finding where the Matchbox cars were, and a lot of what I already had. I didn't need the desert vehicles, I didn't need an ambulance, I didn't need a police car, because the former was a different from what I wanted and the latter two are fairly typical of any city. But I did find a green Matchbox flatbed dump truck, which is what I count as a working vehicle because it can be driven distances, unlike a tractor or a backhoe, as I mentioned in yesterday's entry. Plus, the orange flatbed lifts up to its highest angle toward the back. I still marvel at that only being $1.09.
Yesterday, on the way back to Pacific View Mall for Mom to pick up a calendar she wanted at Calendar Club, we stopped at Kmart Super Center because Mom wanted to try the Pepsi Icee that Kmarts seem to have. By now, you can tell what I was thinking when we parked in that Kmart lot.
I went to the toy aisles, and saw a "Camping Adventure" five-pack that had a camper transport vehicle, but not enough true working vehicles. I couldn't get used to them. At the same time I found that, I also found a gray "Quick Steam Cleaners" van, with the slogan, "Call the Professionals First!" I could imagine the equipment in the back of this van, and so it was mine.
There was also a clearance section in one toy aisle with bins you could dig through for toys at 50% off. There were a few Tron: Legacy figures, and I remembered going to Big Lots the day before and seeing many of them, turning one to the back and finding that a figure had apparently been made of Castor, Michael Sheen's delightfully charismatic club owner and one of my favorite characters in all of movie history. Researching online, I learned that either the figure was rare or had never been made. My theory is that the first wave of Tron: Legacy toys came out before the movie's release, and then when it didn't do as well as Disney hoped, there were no more toys made, with Castor being the second wave if the movie had been more successful according to Disney's standards, which were understandable with an estimated $170 million dollar budget, and a $172 million dollar gross in the United States, though it did make $400 million worldwide. But I would have loved to have that Castor figure, though I guess I'll settle for the film strip bookmark I have with Castor on it from a seller that used to reside on Etsy, but now sells her bookmarks on Artfire. I use that bookmark now for all the Las Vegas books that I'm reading one after the other in anticipation of always-hedonistic days ahead.
Even knowing about the fate of the Castor figure, I still looked through what Kmart had and found nothing of Castor. In one of the bins, though, I found a diecast model of the Recognizer, those flying upside-down wide U-shaped machines that hunt and capture rogue programs in Tron City. The yellow tag on the packaging said "Reduced - $2.00." I got it for $1 (50% off, remember), and with the Matchbox steam cleaning service van, the total was $2 and minor change. Can't beat that for a collection. I'm thinking of keeping the Recognizer in front of me when I'm researching and writing because though the machine is used for malevolent purposes, I'm hunting for what I want to profile in my next book and just like the Recognizer brings the rogue programs on board, I'm bringing all that I learned into my mind and into notes, swirling it around, looking for the combination that works for me. I've got the skeleton of the book down, but now need to make a proper outline to figure out the path for each chapter. To me, the Recognizer is a reminder of tenacity, of unceasingly working to get what you want. I can't do "unceasingly," since I need some time for other things, my working vehicles collection notwithstanding, but I embrace the same spirit for better purposes.
The end of our hours of errands brought us to Albertsons after dinner at nearby Chronic Taco, where I had the breakfast quesadilla with chorizo that I had been craving for a week and a half after having it for the first time two weeks prior. They serve it all day and it's worth it at any hour of the day. At Albertsons, since this wasn't the usual Albertsons we go to, I went right to the toy aisle and found resounding success. At the other Albertsons, there was a five-pack of vehicles belonging to a car repair shop, including a white tow truck, and two regular trucks that I didn't want. The set was $7 and change, and I didn't want to pay for two vehicles I didn't want. That same day, before this Albertsons, Mom said I could buy the pack and donate the two trucks to Goodwill. Leave it to mothers to instantly find the logic that didn't seem so obvious at the time, particularly since I donate a lot of books, some that I had just bought but had read them and determined that they wouldn't be part of my permanent collection. In this Albertsons toy aisle, I found a "Service Center No. 12" pack with a black tow truck with a blue hook, far cooler than that white tow truck I thought I wanted so badly.
There's also a tan "Service Center" truck with a hitch in the back, a blue "30 Minutes or Less Tune Up Service" truck, a green "EcoFuel Intl." tank truck with a black tank, and a nacho cheese-yellow "JC Body & Paint" van saying, "We take any make or model" under the logo.
None of these five vehicles will go to Goodwill. I paid $7 and change and got exactly what I wanted and more. I'm deeply satisfied with every single vehicle I have, and can admire them, play with them, and enjoy them, thinking no further of expanding my collection until we move, and that includes big rigs and Hess trucks that I had when I was little that I want to have again. If there happens to be another working vehicle I find before we move that I really want, of course I'll snap it up, but I don't have that electric desire for any other working vehicle like I did for the tow truck.
I love that what I did as a kid never faded, just waited patiently in the background. To think it all started again with that flour truck I bought at Smith's in Henderson.
I wanted Target because this wasn't the one in Valencia, nor the one in Golden Valley that I still haven't been to to see what Matchbox cars they have there. This was also a Target fitted to the mall, with two levels, with us entering the second level which had electronics and the toy aisles.
I fairly breezed to the toy aisles, finding where the Matchbox cars were, and a lot of what I already had. I didn't need the desert vehicles, I didn't need an ambulance, I didn't need a police car, because the former was a different from what I wanted and the latter two are fairly typical of any city. But I did find a green Matchbox flatbed dump truck, which is what I count as a working vehicle because it can be driven distances, unlike a tractor or a backhoe, as I mentioned in yesterday's entry. Plus, the orange flatbed lifts up to its highest angle toward the back. I still marvel at that only being $1.09.
Yesterday, on the way back to Pacific View Mall for Mom to pick up a calendar she wanted at Calendar Club, we stopped at Kmart Super Center because Mom wanted to try the Pepsi Icee that Kmarts seem to have. By now, you can tell what I was thinking when we parked in that Kmart lot.
I went to the toy aisles, and saw a "Camping Adventure" five-pack that had a camper transport vehicle, but not enough true working vehicles. I couldn't get used to them. At the same time I found that, I also found a gray "Quick Steam Cleaners" van, with the slogan, "Call the Professionals First!" I could imagine the equipment in the back of this van, and so it was mine.
There was also a clearance section in one toy aisle with bins you could dig through for toys at 50% off. There were a few Tron: Legacy figures, and I remembered going to Big Lots the day before and seeing many of them, turning one to the back and finding that a figure had apparently been made of Castor, Michael Sheen's delightfully charismatic club owner and one of my favorite characters in all of movie history. Researching online, I learned that either the figure was rare or had never been made. My theory is that the first wave of Tron: Legacy toys came out before the movie's release, and then when it didn't do as well as Disney hoped, there were no more toys made, with Castor being the second wave if the movie had been more successful according to Disney's standards, which were understandable with an estimated $170 million dollar budget, and a $172 million dollar gross in the United States, though it did make $400 million worldwide. But I would have loved to have that Castor figure, though I guess I'll settle for the film strip bookmark I have with Castor on it from a seller that used to reside on Etsy, but now sells her bookmarks on Artfire. I use that bookmark now for all the Las Vegas books that I'm reading one after the other in anticipation of always-hedonistic days ahead.
Even knowing about the fate of the Castor figure, I still looked through what Kmart had and found nothing of Castor. In one of the bins, though, I found a diecast model of the Recognizer, those flying upside-down wide U-shaped machines that hunt and capture rogue programs in Tron City. The yellow tag on the packaging said "Reduced - $2.00." I got it for $1 (50% off, remember), and with the Matchbox steam cleaning service van, the total was $2 and minor change. Can't beat that for a collection. I'm thinking of keeping the Recognizer in front of me when I'm researching and writing because though the machine is used for malevolent purposes, I'm hunting for what I want to profile in my next book and just like the Recognizer brings the rogue programs on board, I'm bringing all that I learned into my mind and into notes, swirling it around, looking for the combination that works for me. I've got the skeleton of the book down, but now need to make a proper outline to figure out the path for each chapter. To me, the Recognizer is a reminder of tenacity, of unceasingly working to get what you want. I can't do "unceasingly," since I need some time for other things, my working vehicles collection notwithstanding, but I embrace the same spirit for better purposes.
The end of our hours of errands brought us to Albertsons after dinner at nearby Chronic Taco, where I had the breakfast quesadilla with chorizo that I had been craving for a week and a half after having it for the first time two weeks prior. They serve it all day and it's worth it at any hour of the day. At Albertsons, since this wasn't the usual Albertsons we go to, I went right to the toy aisle and found resounding success. At the other Albertsons, there was a five-pack of vehicles belonging to a car repair shop, including a white tow truck, and two regular trucks that I didn't want. The set was $7 and change, and I didn't want to pay for two vehicles I didn't want. That same day, before this Albertsons, Mom said I could buy the pack and donate the two trucks to Goodwill. Leave it to mothers to instantly find the logic that didn't seem so obvious at the time, particularly since I donate a lot of books, some that I had just bought but had read them and determined that they wouldn't be part of my permanent collection. In this Albertsons toy aisle, I found a "Service Center No. 12" pack with a black tow truck with a blue hook, far cooler than that white tow truck I thought I wanted so badly.
There's also a tan "Service Center" truck with a hitch in the back, a blue "30 Minutes or Less Tune Up Service" truck, a green "EcoFuel Intl." tank truck with a black tank, and a nacho cheese-yellow "JC Body & Paint" van saying, "We take any make or model" under the logo.
None of these five vehicles will go to Goodwill. I paid $7 and change and got exactly what I wanted and more. I'm deeply satisfied with every single vehicle I have, and can admire them, play with them, and enjoy them, thinking no further of expanding my collection until we move, and that includes big rigs and Hess trucks that I had when I was little that I want to have again. If there happens to be another working vehicle I find before we move that I really want, of course I'll snap it up, but I don't have that electric desire for any other working vehicle like I did for the tow truck.
I love that what I did as a kid never faded, just waited patiently in the background. To think it all started again with that flour truck I bought at Smith's in Henderson.
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