Monday, June 26, 2006
London, 1985 (Pt.2)
My employer in London, a writer named S, had broken into writing as a newspaper woman. Her first big novel made a ton of money and went on to be one of the first big TV mini-series in the early 80s. It was a potboiler, pure and simple. But it managed to buy her a nice four-story townhouse in the happening part of London at the time, Camden Town. The Regents Park Zoo was quite close by, and if you happened to be alive around 4 a.m. or so, you could be serenaded by the stirring sea lions.
After our first day or so of working together, I had to confess I had not read her first big book. S laughed. "Don't worry, neither have I, really." She could tell it was not my style either.
But even if you're writing for a schlock market of housewives you still have to pull it together in a realistic fashion. The research really does have to count.
As the novel got under way, S had already decided to make one of the women bisexual. This was the character Susie, a flashy little blonde who seemed to have an eye out for every man around, tied down or not.
This seemed an odd choice to me and I had no hesitations about telling S that. One of the things she appreciated about me was that she saw I had no qualms about offering comments and criticisms. Intellectually I ran very well with her. I knew story and characters well enough to know what they needed to have along for the ride.
The Susie bisexual angle did not work for me at all, and so I argued that point with S. Not that Susie couldn't ever be bisexual; it's just the way S had drawn her was not yet convincing enough. She finally agreed with me and removed the bisexual bit.
Then S went in to the meeting at the studio with the Big Wigs with her first draft. As you might suspect, the first thing out of their mouths was, "So what happened to the lesbian angle?" S argued with them that it made no sense, but they didn't care.
Hollywood loves its lesbians. Especially the studio heads. And lesbians it will be. Back into the story went bisexual Susie. S and I just laughed. We're just whores doing a gig. Now get out of our way and let us lie down and do our thing.
S let me do my thing pretty much in my private time. She gave me the run of the top floor of her townhouse, which was actually a suite of rooms, with bedroom and a nice sitting room with a fireplace and bath.
S inquired politely if I required anything? I wondered outloud if she knew any...well, sources for illegal substances. She did. Presto bingo, right at five o'clock in the evening the doorbell rang and I happened to be right there to answer it. A neatly dressed young man was standing there. "I heard it was something of an emergency run," he said. The Pot Man Cometh. Thank you, sir.
Unfortunately I decided to be nice and offer S a finder's fee, of sorts. So I rolled her a nice big fat joint which she took to bed that night. I never expected her to smoke the whole thing, but damn if she didn't. It would have lasted me nearly a week.
"I couldn't move," she tells me the next morning. "All I could do was just....lie there in bed," she moaned. Gulp. You need supervision, I tell her back. We had a good laugh over that experience.
We worked an eight hour day in S's office that overlooked the little garden she had in back. For some reason it rained nearly every day that summer in London. The temperature would be fairly warm, so the window would be open as we worked, and when the rain started it came down with such a cool hissing sound. Hell, monsoons sounded just like this. And sometimes the rain came as thick as it did in an Indian monsoon season. Our tropical story of women in danger was impinging upon our life in London.
The research was the biggest thing we worked on. I had lists of places to call and people to bother. I told S it was good she hired a woman like me, because I had been to the tropics and was enough of an outdoor girl that I could relate to what the women in the story were going through. If she had hired some prissy type who had never made it out of London, it would have been a disaster. I was the perfect tomboy for this.
Our interviews were quite fascinating for this book. The major coup we achieved was getting two Royal Marines to spill their guts for us over the course of a long day. Aided and abetted by a fabulous Indian meal at a restaurant around the corner, then followed by hours at home in the living room, plying the Manly Men with some damn good Scotch. They spilled their guts alright. We summoned a London cab at the appropriate time, poured the two guys into it and pointed them toward Victoria Station. We assume they made it home OK. Wonder what their wives thought.
S had learned in advance that the Royal Marines take pride in not spilling their guts about. Our pair's job was to provide p/r for the public, but of course in these matters it seems their real job is to obfuscate whenever possible. Hence our copious efforts to wine and dine and basically seduce them. Intellectually of course.
The question I wanted to ask them really occurred to me later, namely, "How many ways do you know to kill people?" They had that look about them. One of them looked a lot like John Newcombe, the tennis great of the early 70s. With long sideburns and a handlebar moustache.
I like to think S got good value out of me. I know she did. Early on she had told me about her last assistant. A British woman whom S seemed to know a bit before as a friend. But it didn't end in friendship, that's for sure. One night S came downstairs for a late-night nibble and happened to find her assistant standing at the xerox machine, copying portions of S's diary. My mouth dropped open and I started to laugh. It was so bloody cheeky I just had to hahaha may way through it.
S liked that I reacted that way. "I could tell right away that you were a 'normal' person," she said to me. She liked that. She wanted that in her next assistant. She liked my level of good old American get-up-and-go. "The people over here don't seem to have a work ethic anymore," she complained to me. I was about to say that few persons of decent repute had ever attributed a work ethic to moi, at any time. But I held my tongue. I think she was confusing my energy and chutzpah with a more truly Protestant thing, which is not me. When I am working creatively though, I am happy.
S loved Americans, and had spent time there. She had spent time everywhere. It sounded like a lonely life though, at times. S had been married in her salad days to a really big figure in the world of architecture. Now a Knight. Their divorce had been rough. S had two sons by the man. J was a hot young clothing designer in the London scene, a dead ringer for David Bowie in his Thin White Duke stage, same type of deep voice actually. And flaming to beat the world. Gay as gay could be. But a fun guy. You were doing well when you got an invite to one of J's parties. He had a house just down the mews street from his mother. I met J when he dropped in one day. I came home from a run and saw a hot-looking young man, all in white, doing a shoulder stand on the carpet of S's study. Nice ass, I was about to say. But thought better of it. After all, he could be anybody.
The other son, S, I only spoke with on the phone. Apparently my deep voice intrigued the hell out of him. "Mother, is that your assistant? My God, that voice!" He wanted to meet me but it never quite panned out, I don't recall why. S took after his mom, and had gone into the newspaper business.
His mother had one of the best editors in the business, Michael Korda, son of the famous 1930s film director, Alexander Korda. "When you've been critiqued by MK," she told me once, "usually you want to go and open the nearest window and throw yourself out." Exactly what you want from an editor worth his salt. If you're not on the knife's edge of life and death with your editor, then it's probably time to find another one.
TO BE CONTINUED
After our first day or so of working together, I had to confess I had not read her first big book. S laughed. "Don't worry, neither have I, really." She could tell it was not my style either.
But even if you're writing for a schlock market of housewives you still have to pull it together in a realistic fashion. The research really does have to count.
As the novel got under way, S had already decided to make one of the women bisexual. This was the character Susie, a flashy little blonde who seemed to have an eye out for every man around, tied down or not.
This seemed an odd choice to me and I had no hesitations about telling S that. One of the things she appreciated about me was that she saw I had no qualms about offering comments and criticisms. Intellectually I ran very well with her. I knew story and characters well enough to know what they needed to have along for the ride.
The Susie bisexual angle did not work for me at all, and so I argued that point with S. Not that Susie couldn't ever be bisexual; it's just the way S had drawn her was not yet convincing enough. She finally agreed with me and removed the bisexual bit.
Then S went in to the meeting at the studio with the Big Wigs with her first draft. As you might suspect, the first thing out of their mouths was, "So what happened to the lesbian angle?" S argued with them that it made no sense, but they didn't care.
Hollywood loves its lesbians. Especially the studio heads. And lesbians it will be. Back into the story went bisexual Susie. S and I just laughed. We're just whores doing a gig. Now get out of our way and let us lie down and do our thing.
S let me do my thing pretty much in my private time. She gave me the run of the top floor of her townhouse, which was actually a suite of rooms, with bedroom and a nice sitting room with a fireplace and bath.
S inquired politely if I required anything? I wondered outloud if she knew any...well, sources for illegal substances. She did. Presto bingo, right at five o'clock in the evening the doorbell rang and I happened to be right there to answer it. A neatly dressed young man was standing there. "I heard it was something of an emergency run," he said. The Pot Man Cometh. Thank you, sir.
Unfortunately I decided to be nice and offer S a finder's fee, of sorts. So I rolled her a nice big fat joint which she took to bed that night. I never expected her to smoke the whole thing, but damn if she didn't. It would have lasted me nearly a week.
"I couldn't move," she tells me the next morning. "All I could do was just....lie there in bed," she moaned. Gulp. You need supervision, I tell her back. We had a good laugh over that experience.
Then S inquired, "Would you like me to fix you up with some men?" As if not to sound too forward she added, "Mind you, I'm not suggesting that this will be a stud service, but I do know some people." Why can't it be a stud service, I should have quipped back. This surprised me. Because basically I hadn't thought about sex in London for the three months I was going to be working there. And basically because I was surprised she assumed I was heterosexual, something not many people took me for back at that time. Maybe she was politely giving me the benefit of the doubt.
Of course, now, I would have said, "Hhhmmm, men, yes, please fix me up." And about a week or two after that adventure, I would have gone to S and said, "Well that was fun, but how about a few good women? Surely you know some lesbians, don't you?" I mean, that's what writers are all about, isn't it? They know all these weird types. Still, it might have surprised her. A little bit anyway.
But I was still a bit shy at the time, and quite enamoured of my friend, Ms. Kar, back in L.A. I did not know where that situation would go, but while in London I had planned on nothing really sexually for myself. So I thanked my employer for her kind offer, but said I would take care of that myself.
We worked an eight hour day in S's office that overlooked the little garden she had in back. For some reason it rained nearly every day that summer in London. The temperature would be fairly warm, so the window would be open as we worked, and when the rain started it came down with such a cool hissing sound. Hell, monsoons sounded just like this. And sometimes the rain came as thick as it did in an Indian monsoon season. Our tropical story of women in danger was impinging upon our life in London.
The research was the biggest thing we worked on. I had lists of places to call and people to bother. I told S it was good she hired a woman like me, because I had been to the tropics and was enough of an outdoor girl that I could relate to what the women in the story were going through. If she had hired some prissy type who had never made it out of London, it would have been a disaster. I was the perfect tomboy for this.
Our interviews were quite fascinating for this book. The major coup we achieved was getting two Royal Marines to spill their guts for us over the course of a long day. Aided and abetted by a fabulous Indian meal at a restaurant around the corner, then followed by hours at home in the living room, plying the Manly Men with some damn good Scotch. They spilled their guts alright. We summoned a London cab at the appropriate time, poured the two guys into it and pointed them toward Victoria Station. We assume they made it home OK. Wonder what their wives thought.
S had learned in advance that the Royal Marines take pride in not spilling their guts about. Our pair's job was to provide p/r for the public, but of course in these matters it seems their real job is to obfuscate whenever possible. Hence our copious efforts to wine and dine and basically seduce them. Intellectually of course.
The question I wanted to ask them really occurred to me later, namely, "How many ways do you know to kill people?" They had that look about them. One of them looked a lot like John Newcombe, the tennis great of the early 70s. With long sideburns and a handlebar moustache.
I like to think S got good value out of me. I know she did. Early on she had told me about her last assistant. A British woman whom S seemed to know a bit before as a friend. But it didn't end in friendship, that's for sure. One night S came downstairs for a late-night nibble and happened to find her assistant standing at the xerox machine, copying portions of S's diary. My mouth dropped open and I started to laugh. It was so bloody cheeky I just had to hahaha may way through it.
S liked that I reacted that way. "I could tell right away that you were a 'normal' person," she said to me. She liked that. She wanted that in her next assistant. She liked my level of good old American get-up-and-go. "The people over here don't seem to have a work ethic anymore," she complained to me. I was about to say that few persons of decent repute had ever attributed a work ethic to moi, at any time. But I held my tongue. I think she was confusing my energy and chutzpah with a more truly Protestant thing, which is not me. When I am working creatively though, I am happy.
S loved Americans, and had spent time there. She had spent time everywhere. It sounded like a lonely life though, at times. S had been married in her salad days to a really big figure in the world of architecture. Now a Knight. Their divorce had been rough. S had two sons by the man. J was a hot young clothing designer in the London scene, a dead ringer for David Bowie in his Thin White Duke stage, same type of deep voice actually. And flaming to beat the world. Gay as gay could be. But a fun guy. You were doing well when you got an invite to one of J's parties. He had a house just down the mews street from his mother. I met J when he dropped in one day. I came home from a run and saw a hot-looking young man, all in white, doing a shoulder stand on the carpet of S's study. Nice ass, I was about to say. But thought better of it. After all, he could be anybody.
The other son, S, I only spoke with on the phone. Apparently my deep voice intrigued the hell out of him. "Mother, is that your assistant? My God, that voice!" He wanted to meet me but it never quite panned out, I don't recall why. S took after his mom, and had gone into the newspaper business.
His mother had one of the best editors in the business, Michael Korda, son of the famous 1930s film director, Alexander Korda. "When you've been critiqued by MK," she told me once, "usually you want to go and open the nearest window and throw yourself out." Exactly what you want from an editor worth his salt. If you're not on the knife's edge of life and death with your editor, then it's probably time to find another one.
TO BE CONTINUED
