In 2007, on our first trip to Las Vegas, I took a heavy bag full of books, despite the drive only being four hours, despite never having been to Las Vegas and therefore negating the need to read during my time there, or at least outside of our room at America's Best Value Inn on Tropicana Avenue, adjacent to Hooters Casino Hotel.
On subsequent trips, the bags got heavier, even though I barely read anything I had packed. Now here comes our next trip on Wednesday afternoon, and what do I bring? This trip is only two days, Wednesday afternoon to likely Friday evening (Dad's job interview with the Clark County School District is at 3 p.m. and we're going back to Santa Clarita right after he's done). Chances are Dad's going to go through the entire school day at La Mesa on Wednesday, with that day over at 3:10 p.m. Quickly home, barely a few minutes to put our bags in the trunk of our rented car (Probably a Kia Soul, which Dad likes), dogs in the car with us, and off we go to the kennel we're going to board them at in Canyon Country, and then out to Las Vegas. This seems like we'll be done at the kennel most likely toward 5 p.m. And it gets dark early here in the winter. So the first consideration is at least one hardcover book I can clip my reading light to, or a paperback that I've read far enough into that I can clip my reading light onto the first ten pages, or just enough to keep it steady.
Since I've not read any paperbacks yet that could hold my reading light, I'm thinking of the first Tales of the City omnibus by Armistead Maupin, titled 28 Barbary Lane, which contains the first three novels. I've wanted to reread the Tales of the City novels for a long time, and what better time to start? Two hours to Baker, along with my mp3 player, sounds right. Then there's the two hours after Baker, and then half an hour still after crossing the California state line into Nevada before reaching Las Vegas. No chance of seeing the billboards I like along the side of the road advertising shows and restaurants in Vegas. All dark.
So that leaves paperbacks during the day, but not very much, since I'll continually be looking out the window as we drive, seeing many of those streets in Henderson for the first time, watching for the route that leads to our new apartment complex, and most importantly, my family and I meeting the new manager there.
A vacation, however brief, is time to do things differently from what you do in your daily life. That obviously leaves out my research for my second book. No way am I bringing along any books related to it, despite my excitement about it. I have Everywhere That Mary Went, the first novel in Lisa Scottoline's "Rosato and Associates" series. I've also got The Ritual Bath, the first novel in Faye Kellerman's "Decker/Lazarus" series; Dog On It, the first novel in Spencer Quinn's "Chet and Bernie" series; and The Case of the Missing Books, the first novel in Ian Sansom's "Mobile Library" series. All mysteries, all first novels, and appropriate for this trip since this will be the first time I'll be seeing our new apartment complex, the first time I'll be going into Henderson knowing I'll be a resident there soon, the first time I'll feel like I'm truly home. So one of these books, or two, would be perfect. And three books would be enough in my canvas bag.
Or maybe four. Just one presidential book, even though it would seem roundly ridiculous to bring along Jean Edward Smith's 900+-page biography of FDR. FDR did dedicate Hoover Dam, footage of which is seen in a small screening room at Hacienda Hotel and Casino nearby, on a continuous loop. But there's no way I'd read 900 pages across two days, nor would I want to. It's the kind of biography I wouldn't want to read and then close for a while and then get back to it and then close it again.
None of this should matter since I'll finally be home. I can begin to see the local Smith's supermarket as a future resident, determining what I'd like to try in my first few weeks there, hopefully finding a sizable mustard collection more interesting than just two rows of French's. And there's also the novelty of a movie theater inside casino property, as it is with Regal Fiesta Henderson 12 inside Fiesta Henderson. Yet, books on this trip do matter, as they always have with me. And it's another first with me not carrying a heavy bag full of books, being more reasonable than before.
28 Barbary Lane will definitely go with me, then, and I've still got time to decide which two of those mystery novels I want to bring with me, and which presidential book I want from those three stacks of presidential books in the living room. Then that'll be it. No uncertainty, no falling back into that old habit. Las Vegas being about reinvention, this is a good start for me.
Monday, January 16, 2012
The "Poseidon" That Should Have Been May or May Not Have Existed
I've reached the end of my notes I've transcribed from my visit to the Academy's Margaret Herrick Library, looking right now at the brief notes I took on the Poseidon script by Mark Protosevich, though how much by Mark Protosevich could be debatable based on the number of people who wrote revisions. Did Protosevich step in after all those revisions, or was he responsible for the huge set pieces?
The front page of the bound script I opened at the library states "Previous revisions by David Scarpa, D.B. Weiss, Stuart Beattie, The Wachowski Brothers, Andrew Marlowe, Paul Attanasio, Akiva Goldsman, Kieran Mulroney & Michele Mulroney." Chances are that the Mulroneys were the first to write a Poseidon script, but it was deemed unsuitable and then Akiva Goldsman was put on it, followed by all the others. Too many viewpoints, too little coherency it seems. Andrew Marlowe is an interesting choice, being that he wrote Air Force One and Hollow Man, so he knew confined spaces.
Did any of these writers have the idea of the survivors being rescued in the opening minutes, followed by massive media exposure, and flashbacks to what had happened? It's something I may never know, but it is interesting that on that front page, it also says "Current revision by Akiva Goldsman." So they went back to him.
At the top right corner of the page is a list of future revisions, being that this particular script was the "Final White Draft - June 17, 2005." Future revisions happened on June 27, July 5, July 25, August 11, and September 12, in blue, pink, yellow, green, and gold pages respectively, most likely expanding on what there already was.
It turns out that even though some of the character descriptions are still shoddy, and didn't fare any better on the screen, Poseidon reads better on the page. Not surprising, but there was still a lot of wasted opportunity here. Undoubtedly, though, there will be books written about the current cruise ship crisis with the Costa Concordia and I'm sure Hollywood producers will try for the rights to various stories now. It's the way they are. But then, after the total failure of Poseidon when it was released, books might have a better chance.
The front page of the bound script I opened at the library states "Previous revisions by David Scarpa, D.B. Weiss, Stuart Beattie, The Wachowski Brothers, Andrew Marlowe, Paul Attanasio, Akiva Goldsman, Kieran Mulroney & Michele Mulroney." Chances are that the Mulroneys were the first to write a Poseidon script, but it was deemed unsuitable and then Akiva Goldsman was put on it, followed by all the others. Too many viewpoints, too little coherency it seems. Andrew Marlowe is an interesting choice, being that he wrote Air Force One and Hollow Man, so he knew confined spaces.
Did any of these writers have the idea of the survivors being rescued in the opening minutes, followed by massive media exposure, and flashbacks to what had happened? It's something I may never know, but it is interesting that on that front page, it also says "Current revision by Akiva Goldsman." So they went back to him.
At the top right corner of the page is a list of future revisions, being that this particular script was the "Final White Draft - June 17, 2005." Future revisions happened on June 27, July 5, July 25, August 11, and September 12, in blue, pink, yellow, green, and gold pages respectively, most likely expanding on what there already was.
It turns out that even though some of the character descriptions are still shoddy, and didn't fare any better on the screen, Poseidon reads better on the page. Not surprising, but there was still a lot of wasted opportunity here. Undoubtedly, though, there will be books written about the current cruise ship crisis with the Costa Concordia and I'm sure Hollywood producers will try for the rights to various stories now. It's the way they are. But then, after the total failure of Poseidon when it was released, books might have a better chance.
Shots in "Lucky You" That Make Me Want More
Upon learning that we're driving to Las Vegas and Henderson on Wednesday afternoon, I extracted Lucky You from my completely full DVD binder (The other still has a few empty pages left) last night to refamiliarize myself with those streets I've missed so much, those views I've been away from for too long.
Lucky You was filmed in 2005, but not released until 2007, and The Aladdin, which is seen in the opening credits shots after Huck drives away from the pawn shop, became Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino by then.
Right when the movie begins, when Phyllis Sommerville, who plays the pawnbroker, is adjusting the earrings on that sheet of felt, "Las Vegas 2003" appears at the bottom of the screen and I immediately feel this hard pull of wanting to know what happened in Las Vegas in 2003, what it was like, what events there were, what changes there were, what whales gambled in the casinos ("Whale" being what casinos like because it means big profits for them, which is why they always offer comps to those usually very rich guests), what attractions opened, what attractions closed, even what the weather was like throughout the year. In 2003, I was visiting Los Angeles with my family, a mere four hours from Las Vegas, completely clueless about the riches it offers, even when you don't gamble. Understandable, since I was trying to figure out exactly what the hell Los Angeles was, this seemingly endless sprawl that you could spend years trying to find your place in, and still not have all that you're seeking.
That line at the bottom of the screen always reminds me of the history of Las Vegas and Henderson and Nevada itself that I still want to study. In fact, I have to put my research for Mayday! Mayday!: The Making of the Airport Movies on hiatus for this week. Today's going to be busy, figuring out what I want to wear while I'm there, if I can get away with a white Fruit of the Loom t-shirt under one of my designed t-shirts (I'm thinking of one or two Big Lebowski t-shirts), and then a jacket over all that, even though I've never been to Las Vegas in January. Today would also be the day to pack a few things, with the majority of the packing tomorrow. It's not much anyway. Just clothes for Thursday and Friday, and Meridith and I are sharing a duffel bag and so are Mom and Dad. Two pairs of underwear, two pairs of socks, two pairs of jeans, two shirts (I've looked at the temperatures which are quite cool, and am still thinking about if I should bring my blue sweatshirt. We'll be inside mostly, wherever we go, and our car will be a rental, so the heat will be quite reliable in there. I'm still not sure), and one pair of velcro sneakers. It's enough for me.
Tomorrow, just to get even more in that mood and feel some of that atmosphere through writing (Besides watching most of Lucky You again after I sign off), I'm thinking of plucking a few books from my Las Vegas stack. I could read through some of the books I have for my research, and the making-of movie books I have for guidance and inspiration, but I know that Wednesday will come up fast, and I want to be completely submerged in everything that I love, everything that I'm totally ready for.
Also in Lucky You, there's that shot after Huck (Eric Bana) has met Billie (Drew Barrymore), and he's riding his motorcycle down the Strip, past Caesars Palace, I think, with all those softly-glowing street lights lining the sidewalk. I'm not sure what street that's on. I still have to develop my navigational skills for Las Vegas and Henderson, but I repeat street names like Decatur and Tropicana, Sahara and Las Vegas Boulevard, Lake Mead Parkway and Boulder Highway, like the mantras I know they are.
Then Huck walks into the Bellagio poker room as the guy overseeing it is ordering breakfast over the phone for one of the players, and after the guy says to Huck, "Why don't you rest up a bit? You know we never close," there's a shot of one poker table where one of the players is eating a bowl of cereal. I look at that bowl and the dish under it, and I wonder where that bowl will go next after it's washed in the kitchens. What will that bowl be filled with and who will get it? I also think about the sheer enormity of the operations of these hotels and casinos and it's utterly fascinating to me. There are so many stories to witness and to write about. There's a reporter named Sonya Padgett in the Las Vegas Review-Journal who writes those stories. In July of last year, for example, she wrote about the MGM Grand's laundry facility in North Las Vegas. She lives the Las Vegas I love to learn about. It stems from monorail drivers knowing us when we went to Walt Disney World every weekend and parade performers stopping by on their route to say hello to us when I was a tyke. I knew that there was another side to Disney, that which was always in motion to keep visitors happy. It wasn't long after that that I learned about the Utilidors, the tunnels underneath WDW property, which is why you don't see Stitch walking through Frontierland. That's where the laundry facilities are for the park, costume shops, banks of computers for all the audio-animatronics in all the parks, and a whole lot more. That's why Las Vegas fascinates me in much the same way. I like the cocktail waitresses dressed in those pleasingly skimpy outfits at Caesars Palace, my favorite out of all the casinos, even those I haven't been to yet, but I also like to learn about what the custodians do to keep the casinos clean. It's always been who I am.
Oh, and there's also the scene where Roy (Charles Martin Smith), who wants to back Huck in the 2003 World Series of Poker, walks with him past slot machines at Bellagio, and I know that atmosphere so well, and I love to walk by and look at all those slot machines, quick glances at those playing at them. I always feel at home because I'm surrounded by so many different kinds of pleasure. What may not work for me works for someone else, but the option to have it if I ever wanted it is always appreciated.
This road trip to Las Vegas on Wednesday will be a relief. It's not just because I've been cooped up in Santa Clarita for so long that it's basicallly an "anywhere but here" feeling. It's also because I read the Las Vegas Review-Journal every day, and I visit the Las Vegas Weekly website at least twice a week. I want to hold actual copies. I want to read it in print. I want to get to know my local newspaper, to be very happy that I'll finally have a newspaper I know I'll read from beginning to end. I haven't had that since the Sun-Sentinel in South Florida. I don't read the Los Angeles Times because I don't relate to it.
It's also because I've seen those roads in Lucky You, and I know those roads we drove on previous trips, and I want them again. I want to see the traffic flow, I want to enjoy smoothly-paved roads, and I want to study them for myself, to begin thinking about routes for myself. What's the fastest way to go from here to here if there's a concert I want to get to in later years, say, Shania Twain when she arrives at Caesars Palace for her residency? What's the best route to take to get to my favorite restaurant? Even better, how close is the nearest library to our apartment complex? These are questions I can't answer in only two days, as this trip will be, but I can re-establish that base and work my way from that. I want everything that Las Vegas and Henderson mean to me and I know I'll get all of it.
Lucky You was filmed in 2005, but not released until 2007, and The Aladdin, which is seen in the opening credits shots after Huck drives away from the pawn shop, became Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino by then.
Right when the movie begins, when Phyllis Sommerville, who plays the pawnbroker, is adjusting the earrings on that sheet of felt, "Las Vegas 2003" appears at the bottom of the screen and I immediately feel this hard pull of wanting to know what happened in Las Vegas in 2003, what it was like, what events there were, what changes there were, what whales gambled in the casinos ("Whale" being what casinos like because it means big profits for them, which is why they always offer comps to those usually very rich guests), what attractions opened, what attractions closed, even what the weather was like throughout the year. In 2003, I was visiting Los Angeles with my family, a mere four hours from Las Vegas, completely clueless about the riches it offers, even when you don't gamble. Understandable, since I was trying to figure out exactly what the hell Los Angeles was, this seemingly endless sprawl that you could spend years trying to find your place in, and still not have all that you're seeking.
That line at the bottom of the screen always reminds me of the history of Las Vegas and Henderson and Nevada itself that I still want to study. In fact, I have to put my research for Mayday! Mayday!: The Making of the Airport Movies on hiatus for this week. Today's going to be busy, figuring out what I want to wear while I'm there, if I can get away with a white Fruit of the Loom t-shirt under one of my designed t-shirts (I'm thinking of one or two Big Lebowski t-shirts), and then a jacket over all that, even though I've never been to Las Vegas in January. Today would also be the day to pack a few things, with the majority of the packing tomorrow. It's not much anyway. Just clothes for Thursday and Friday, and Meridith and I are sharing a duffel bag and so are Mom and Dad. Two pairs of underwear, two pairs of socks, two pairs of jeans, two shirts (I've looked at the temperatures which are quite cool, and am still thinking about if I should bring my blue sweatshirt. We'll be inside mostly, wherever we go, and our car will be a rental, so the heat will be quite reliable in there. I'm still not sure), and one pair of velcro sneakers. It's enough for me.
Tomorrow, just to get even more in that mood and feel some of that atmosphere through writing (Besides watching most of Lucky You again after I sign off), I'm thinking of plucking a few books from my Las Vegas stack. I could read through some of the books I have for my research, and the making-of movie books I have for guidance and inspiration, but I know that Wednesday will come up fast, and I want to be completely submerged in everything that I love, everything that I'm totally ready for.
Also in Lucky You, there's that shot after Huck (Eric Bana) has met Billie (Drew Barrymore), and he's riding his motorcycle down the Strip, past Caesars Palace, I think, with all those softly-glowing street lights lining the sidewalk. I'm not sure what street that's on. I still have to develop my navigational skills for Las Vegas and Henderson, but I repeat street names like Decatur and Tropicana, Sahara and Las Vegas Boulevard, Lake Mead Parkway and Boulder Highway, like the mantras I know they are.
Then Huck walks into the Bellagio poker room as the guy overseeing it is ordering breakfast over the phone for one of the players, and after the guy says to Huck, "Why don't you rest up a bit? You know we never close," there's a shot of one poker table where one of the players is eating a bowl of cereal. I look at that bowl and the dish under it, and I wonder where that bowl will go next after it's washed in the kitchens. What will that bowl be filled with and who will get it? I also think about the sheer enormity of the operations of these hotels and casinos and it's utterly fascinating to me. There are so many stories to witness and to write about. There's a reporter named Sonya Padgett in the Las Vegas Review-Journal who writes those stories. In July of last year, for example, she wrote about the MGM Grand's laundry facility in North Las Vegas. She lives the Las Vegas I love to learn about. It stems from monorail drivers knowing us when we went to Walt Disney World every weekend and parade performers stopping by on their route to say hello to us when I was a tyke. I knew that there was another side to Disney, that which was always in motion to keep visitors happy. It wasn't long after that that I learned about the Utilidors, the tunnels underneath WDW property, which is why you don't see Stitch walking through Frontierland. That's where the laundry facilities are for the park, costume shops, banks of computers for all the audio-animatronics in all the parks, and a whole lot more. That's why Las Vegas fascinates me in much the same way. I like the cocktail waitresses dressed in those pleasingly skimpy outfits at Caesars Palace, my favorite out of all the casinos, even those I haven't been to yet, but I also like to learn about what the custodians do to keep the casinos clean. It's always been who I am.
Oh, and there's also the scene where Roy (Charles Martin Smith), who wants to back Huck in the 2003 World Series of Poker, walks with him past slot machines at Bellagio, and I know that atmosphere so well, and I love to walk by and look at all those slot machines, quick glances at those playing at them. I always feel at home because I'm surrounded by so many different kinds of pleasure. What may not work for me works for someone else, but the option to have it if I ever wanted it is always appreciated.
This road trip to Las Vegas on Wednesday will be a relief. It's not just because I've been cooped up in Santa Clarita for so long that it's basicallly an "anywhere but here" feeling. It's also because I read the Las Vegas Review-Journal every day, and I visit the Las Vegas Weekly website at least twice a week. I want to hold actual copies. I want to read it in print. I want to get to know my local newspaper, to be very happy that I'll finally have a newspaper I know I'll read from beginning to end. I haven't had that since the Sun-Sentinel in South Florida. I don't read the Los Angeles Times because I don't relate to it.
It's also because I've seen those roads in Lucky You, and I know those roads we drove on previous trips, and I want them again. I want to see the traffic flow, I want to enjoy smoothly-paved roads, and I want to study them for myself, to begin thinking about routes for myself. What's the fastest way to go from here to here if there's a concert I want to get to in later years, say, Shania Twain when she arrives at Caesars Palace for her residency? What's the best route to take to get to my favorite restaurant? Even better, how close is the nearest library to our apartment complex? These are questions I can't answer in only two days, as this trip will be, but I can re-establish that base and work my way from that. I want everything that Las Vegas and Henderson mean to me and I know I'll get all of it.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
The Differences Between a Little Over Eight Years Ago and Now
When FX aired The New Movie Show with Chris Gore in 2000, I knew of Chris Gore as the founder of the magazine and then website Film Threat, and that I wanted to be on his show, even though I was merely a stripling in movie reviewing, only a year into my time with the South Florida Sun-Sentinel's Teentime pages. I e-mailed Chris Gore about getting on his show and he said I had to be in Los Angeles to audition.
The evening I had gotten that e-mail, Dad and I went out to pick up Chinese food and in the restaurant while waiting for our order (I remember that the TVs inside were showing Rush Hour on TBS) and walking back to the car, I thought to myself, "Los Angeles? Isn't that on the other side of the universe?" I loved movies, but didn't have that hushed reverence that heartier movie buffs than I undoubtedly have, such as Leonard Maltin, and Robert Osborne on Turner Classic Movies, names I aspired to be like back then, but no longer. I knew Hollywood to be the center of moviemaking, but figured that with as many movies as Hollywood made during a given year, there's no way that the glamour we see on the screen could ever be matched in real life. Surely it was just a matter of putting up sets on soundstages, filming the scenes, then tearing them down again, or filming on studio backlots. I'd read that the work is usually long, arduous, and frustrating at times. No one likely swans around Hollywood in pearls all day.
When my family and I flew to Los Angeles from Fort Lauderdale in April 2003, I didn't know anything about where we were going. I knew we were going to land at LAX, one of the world's largest airports, and I was interested, as an aviation enthusiast, but not threatening to burst out of my skin from excitement. What could I expect from Southern California? Was there anything I could connect to? Why Southern California for job interviews? What makes Dad want so badly to try to find work there?
During those 10 days, we went to places it took us years to get back to. Dad had no trouble driving from L.A. to San Diego for a job interview at the school district offices there, yet it was years later that we finally went to Sea World. We took one of those tours of Hollywood aboard a nice-looking air-conditioned van, but have never done anything like that since. When we went to Six Flags Magic Mountain for the day, I had no idea that there was an entire working valley in front of it. When I went on Viper, I saw some collections of houses on the way up the track, but didn't pay much attention because this was the first rollercoaster I was on since the wooden Hurricane at Boomers in Dania Beach, and it was bitter cold that day, with drizzling rain lashing about like bullets at high speeds.
When Mom and Dad went back to Southern California for another 10 days in mid-July, they went to what I learned was called the Santa Clarita Valley, that entire working valley in front of Magic Mountain. Dad had a few job interviews there and by the end, one principal wanted him, the one from La Mesa Junior High. Dad took the job. Mom described to us over the phone the apartment she and Dad had found in an area called Valencia. From what she described, it seemed like a closely-connected community, wrapping around a pool area and a clubhouse with a gym. And hearing about a train system called Metrolink, I thought I could take the train to Los Angeles, to one of the major public libraries there, return books, check out new ones, and head back home. It sounded easy and I thought I could do it every weekend. I thought Los Angeles was so close together as to have everything accessible. I was naive.
I learned that the apartment complex could not be more disconnected, at least among residents, but at least it was comfortable. Los Angeles was so spread out that not only could I not reach any library via Metrolink on a Saturday or Sunday, but the freeway system made getting anywhere seem like an extensive strategy session was required before you did anything. During my first weeks at College of the Canyons, once I knew where my classes were, I spent time in the big library building, looking for every book there was about Los Angeles, trying to understand this city. It should have been a clue that I was trying to learn about Los Angeles and not Santa Clarita. It became more and more apparent to me as one year became two, and two became five, and five became eight, that in order to do anything interesting in Santa Clarita, you have to leave.
I pulled down Los Angeles anthologies, books of essays, histories, anything that could show me something about what this city had been and what it currently was all about. What set me at a disadvantage is that there was no time to learn anything before or after we had visited Los Angeles as a family. Dad was going to lose his job as a computer and business education teacher in the Broward County school system because then-governor Jeb Bush decided that the FCAT exam was more important than electives and that the funding for electives would better serve the FCAT exam. Or something like that. It's the only twisted logic I can think of.
The additional issue that cropped up after I had learned some things about Los Angeles is that I felt like I couldn't connect to anything. The city and the Santa Clarita Valley felt so desolate. People were rushing here, rushing there, looking to make their mark with this, with that, and never seeming to slow down. It feels like the past doesn't exist in either place, that it just takes up room that could be used for the future, and so they chuck out the past and pave over it so that the future has an easy time of getting in.
I don't know what made us think of Las Vegas in 2007. Perhaps Dad heard rumblings about his job being threatened again as it had been in Florida. The economy was beginning to trip over many cracks in the sidewalk, so there might have been an internal sense of unease within the district Dad works for. But what I do remember is that when I was in 11th grade at Hollywood Hills High in Hollywood, Florida, when my mom worked in the library there as an assistant, I learned that an acquaintance was moving to Las Vegas and my first thought was, "Las Vegas? Isn't that a desolate gambling outpost?" That was all I knew of Las Vegas: Gambling inside a huge desert.
Dad was going there to get his Nevada teaching license, to meet with someone from the Clark County School District, to scope out the area. Where would we want to be if we were going to move there? Could we make a life there?
Yes, we could. But now it's taken five years to get to our greatest chance of moving there with this forthcoming trip this coming week. We had bad luck not long after our first trip there because the district enacted a hiring freeze. And then the economy crapped out. Now it feels like recovery may happen, slowly but surely, and we've got a foothold we couldn't find before because of those circumstances.
Since 2007, we've been to Las Vegas a few more times, giving me the opportunity to learn more about the city, which I didn't have that first time in L.A. and Santa Clarita. I've seen sights that I'd be happy to see for years to come. I've been to the Pinball Hall of Fame three times, which I know will have my quarters many, many times a year. I feel comfortable in Henderson. Making a good, satisfying life for myself will happen there. Because of how many times we moved throughout Florida, and then the move to Valencia, and then the move to Saugus a year later, I've never felt like I had roots anywhere. I love Florida for all the imagination it instilled in me, but I never felt like I truly belonged in any of those cities we lived in. In Henderson, it's different. I feel like I can finally establish roots, that this can be the home base from which I can do everything else I want to do in my life, that after trips to, say, Missouri to the Truman Library, and Arkansas to the Clinton Library in the years to come, I can come home to Henderson and know that I am home.
Even if I had time to get to know Los Angeles and the Santa Clarita Valley, I don't think I would have felt as secure as I do with Henderson. For one, it feels so buttoned-up here in Santa Clarita. Everyone lives an image, but can never just let loose to be who they actually might be. There is always something they have to maneuver for, and with Santa Clarita being where many actors live, as others who work in Hollywood, it's always apparent.
There is image-making in Las Vegas, admittedly, but it's all in the pursuit of pleasure. What do you want? What would make you happy? Chances are they have it. For me, there's the happiness of having two library cards, one with Henderson Libraries and one with the Clark County Library system, used bookstores throughout the Las Vegas Valley, the Pinball Hall of Fame, easily accessible history of Las Vegas and Henderson through different avenues, casinos to explore, and so much else I probably haven't even unearthed yet. There is always something to see, always something to do. I've heard it said that it takes years to eat at all the restaurants and buffets Las Vegas offers. I believe it. But it's not only all that which attracts me to Las Vegas. It's also that everything feels so relaxed there. Driving slows down there. I've never driven in Southern California because I won't face those freeways. They're all M.C. Escher staircases. The only time I ever drove one was during driving lessons I took courtesy of AAA. That was it.
In Las Vegas, not only can you easily find where you're going while you're driving, there's an easygoing rhythm to the roads. You'll get there, and even traffic isn't so bad because there's always something interesting to look at. Plus, the roads are very well-maintained, so your car's not going to get shaken up a lot.
I think some of this will change after I've spent a few years as a resident, but for the good. I'll not always notice what I gawked at in my first year as a resident, but it blends in to become deep appreciation for where I am, what I do, where I go, how I live. I've felt comfortable every time we've visited, and I know that feeling will only grow larger after I've become a resident. That's all I've ever wanted in a place to live.
The evening I had gotten that e-mail, Dad and I went out to pick up Chinese food and in the restaurant while waiting for our order (I remember that the TVs inside were showing Rush Hour on TBS) and walking back to the car, I thought to myself, "Los Angeles? Isn't that on the other side of the universe?" I loved movies, but didn't have that hushed reverence that heartier movie buffs than I undoubtedly have, such as Leonard Maltin, and Robert Osborne on Turner Classic Movies, names I aspired to be like back then, but no longer. I knew Hollywood to be the center of moviemaking, but figured that with as many movies as Hollywood made during a given year, there's no way that the glamour we see on the screen could ever be matched in real life. Surely it was just a matter of putting up sets on soundstages, filming the scenes, then tearing them down again, or filming on studio backlots. I'd read that the work is usually long, arduous, and frustrating at times. No one likely swans around Hollywood in pearls all day.
When my family and I flew to Los Angeles from Fort Lauderdale in April 2003, I didn't know anything about where we were going. I knew we were going to land at LAX, one of the world's largest airports, and I was interested, as an aviation enthusiast, but not threatening to burst out of my skin from excitement. What could I expect from Southern California? Was there anything I could connect to? Why Southern California for job interviews? What makes Dad want so badly to try to find work there?
During those 10 days, we went to places it took us years to get back to. Dad had no trouble driving from L.A. to San Diego for a job interview at the school district offices there, yet it was years later that we finally went to Sea World. We took one of those tours of Hollywood aboard a nice-looking air-conditioned van, but have never done anything like that since. When we went to Six Flags Magic Mountain for the day, I had no idea that there was an entire working valley in front of it. When I went on Viper, I saw some collections of houses on the way up the track, but didn't pay much attention because this was the first rollercoaster I was on since the wooden Hurricane at Boomers in Dania Beach, and it was bitter cold that day, with drizzling rain lashing about like bullets at high speeds.
When Mom and Dad went back to Southern California for another 10 days in mid-July, they went to what I learned was called the Santa Clarita Valley, that entire working valley in front of Magic Mountain. Dad had a few job interviews there and by the end, one principal wanted him, the one from La Mesa Junior High. Dad took the job. Mom described to us over the phone the apartment she and Dad had found in an area called Valencia. From what she described, it seemed like a closely-connected community, wrapping around a pool area and a clubhouse with a gym. And hearing about a train system called Metrolink, I thought I could take the train to Los Angeles, to one of the major public libraries there, return books, check out new ones, and head back home. It sounded easy and I thought I could do it every weekend. I thought Los Angeles was so close together as to have everything accessible. I was naive.
I learned that the apartment complex could not be more disconnected, at least among residents, but at least it was comfortable. Los Angeles was so spread out that not only could I not reach any library via Metrolink on a Saturday or Sunday, but the freeway system made getting anywhere seem like an extensive strategy session was required before you did anything. During my first weeks at College of the Canyons, once I knew where my classes were, I spent time in the big library building, looking for every book there was about Los Angeles, trying to understand this city. It should have been a clue that I was trying to learn about Los Angeles and not Santa Clarita. It became more and more apparent to me as one year became two, and two became five, and five became eight, that in order to do anything interesting in Santa Clarita, you have to leave.
I pulled down Los Angeles anthologies, books of essays, histories, anything that could show me something about what this city had been and what it currently was all about. What set me at a disadvantage is that there was no time to learn anything before or after we had visited Los Angeles as a family. Dad was going to lose his job as a computer and business education teacher in the Broward County school system because then-governor Jeb Bush decided that the FCAT exam was more important than electives and that the funding for electives would better serve the FCAT exam. Or something like that. It's the only twisted logic I can think of.
The additional issue that cropped up after I had learned some things about Los Angeles is that I felt like I couldn't connect to anything. The city and the Santa Clarita Valley felt so desolate. People were rushing here, rushing there, looking to make their mark with this, with that, and never seeming to slow down. It feels like the past doesn't exist in either place, that it just takes up room that could be used for the future, and so they chuck out the past and pave over it so that the future has an easy time of getting in.
I don't know what made us think of Las Vegas in 2007. Perhaps Dad heard rumblings about his job being threatened again as it had been in Florida. The economy was beginning to trip over many cracks in the sidewalk, so there might have been an internal sense of unease within the district Dad works for. But what I do remember is that when I was in 11th grade at Hollywood Hills High in Hollywood, Florida, when my mom worked in the library there as an assistant, I learned that an acquaintance was moving to Las Vegas and my first thought was, "Las Vegas? Isn't that a desolate gambling outpost?" That was all I knew of Las Vegas: Gambling inside a huge desert.
Dad was going there to get his Nevada teaching license, to meet with someone from the Clark County School District, to scope out the area. Where would we want to be if we were going to move there? Could we make a life there?
Yes, we could. But now it's taken five years to get to our greatest chance of moving there with this forthcoming trip this coming week. We had bad luck not long after our first trip there because the district enacted a hiring freeze. And then the economy crapped out. Now it feels like recovery may happen, slowly but surely, and we've got a foothold we couldn't find before because of those circumstances.
Since 2007, we've been to Las Vegas a few more times, giving me the opportunity to learn more about the city, which I didn't have that first time in L.A. and Santa Clarita. I've seen sights that I'd be happy to see for years to come. I've been to the Pinball Hall of Fame three times, which I know will have my quarters many, many times a year. I feel comfortable in Henderson. Making a good, satisfying life for myself will happen there. Because of how many times we moved throughout Florida, and then the move to Valencia, and then the move to Saugus a year later, I've never felt like I had roots anywhere. I love Florida for all the imagination it instilled in me, but I never felt like I truly belonged in any of those cities we lived in. In Henderson, it's different. I feel like I can finally establish roots, that this can be the home base from which I can do everything else I want to do in my life, that after trips to, say, Missouri to the Truman Library, and Arkansas to the Clinton Library in the years to come, I can come home to Henderson and know that I am home.
Even if I had time to get to know Los Angeles and the Santa Clarita Valley, I don't think I would have felt as secure as I do with Henderson. For one, it feels so buttoned-up here in Santa Clarita. Everyone lives an image, but can never just let loose to be who they actually might be. There is always something they have to maneuver for, and with Santa Clarita being where many actors live, as others who work in Hollywood, it's always apparent.
There is image-making in Las Vegas, admittedly, but it's all in the pursuit of pleasure. What do you want? What would make you happy? Chances are they have it. For me, there's the happiness of having two library cards, one with Henderson Libraries and one with the Clark County Library system, used bookstores throughout the Las Vegas Valley, the Pinball Hall of Fame, easily accessible history of Las Vegas and Henderson through different avenues, casinos to explore, and so much else I probably haven't even unearthed yet. There is always something to see, always something to do. I've heard it said that it takes years to eat at all the restaurants and buffets Las Vegas offers. I believe it. But it's not only all that which attracts me to Las Vegas. It's also that everything feels so relaxed there. Driving slows down there. I've never driven in Southern California because I won't face those freeways. They're all M.C. Escher staircases. The only time I ever drove one was during driving lessons I took courtesy of AAA. That was it.
In Las Vegas, not only can you easily find where you're going while you're driving, there's an easygoing rhythm to the roads. You'll get there, and even traffic isn't so bad because there's always something interesting to look at. Plus, the roads are very well-maintained, so your car's not going to get shaken up a lot.
I think some of this will change after I've spent a few years as a resident, but for the good. I'll not always notice what I gawked at in my first year as a resident, but it blends in to become deep appreciation for where I am, what I do, where I go, how I live. I've felt comfortable every time we've visited, and I know that feeling will only grow larger after I've become a resident. That's all I've ever wanted in a place to live.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Living Like a Resident While a Tourist
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.
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.
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.
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