All the Wild Children (27 page)

Chop chop snort a line. 

Keep the rum flowing. 

I’m at Doc’s house in the Hollywood hills.  Doc is a feature editor.  Doc is a blast.  Doc always has blow.  We are watching
O’ Lucky Man
, drinking, snorting coke.  It is after midnight when I leave.  Doc asks me to stay the night, but I have Erika and Dylan and Jared at home.  If I admit I have to stay the night, I have to admit I drank too much.  If I admit that, my secret is out of the bag.

I’m in my VW Jetta, it is the first new car I ever owned.  It is a symbol of my success.  I’m doing the one eyed squint to keep from seeing double.  The windows are down, fast cold air slaps my face as I roll south on the 101.  At downtown I almost miss the exit onto the Pasadena freeway.  Keep the speed at 65, not fast not slow.  Stay in my lane.  Fuck, open my eyes.  Chinatown is on my right.  Dodger Stadium ahead.  I look down to adjust the radio, need something snappier to keep me awake.  I look up and I am blinded by the headlights coming at me.  I hear myself start to scream. 

A large American rust bucket clears the tunnels against traffic.  It is driven by two Mexican nationals.  Juan’s wife has had a baby and he and his brother have been out celebrating.  Juan is a cautious man.  He pulls onto the freeway in Highland Park and moves immediately to the slow lane.  Only he is on the wrong side of the road, so he is in the fast lane.  He plays high speed bumper cars with two others before hitting me head on. 

White headlights.  I am screaming.  I am bracing best I can.

There is the deep crunch of metal on metal.  My car jerks in a wild death dance.  The door and firewall crumples in at me.  I am helpless.  A spectator in my own demolition derby.  The Jetta spins two lazy loops then grinds to a halt.  I am still screaming.  For years I will scream whenever a bag flies up on the freeway.  I sit in the Jetta, listening to the safety glass dropping down around me.  It sounds like dull hail, almost. 

Tow trucks, ambulances, cops.  It is a real party.  I’m fighting off the last remnants of a high.  I stumble when I walk.  “You should go in the ambulance.”  He has a sweet face for a cop.

“I’m fine, shook up.  Could have died.  Never see my boys again.”  My eyes are wet.  My emotions near the skin.  It makes the cop uncomfortable. 

“
You’re limping.  You really should go in the ambulance.” 

“
It’s nothing.  I’m good, oh man scary right, look up and bam, Fuck.  I love my boys.”

“
Last chance, do you want to see the paramedic?”  He is sending a coded message.  I just can't figure that out. 

“
I just twisted my ankle.”

“
OK.”  His partner comes over and they give me a field sobriety test.  I fail it miserably.  I am cuffed and put into the back of the cop car.  I really should have gotten in the damn ambulance.

I’m hobbling pretty good by the time they book me.  The adrenaline and coke have deserted me.  Something dull painful and swollen is in my left Tony Lama and nausea swirls in my gut. 

This is really happening. 

A steel door locks behind me. 

I am in the drunk tank.  It smells of vomit.  It smells of piss and sweat and fear and sad resignation.  I stink of bravado moved on.  I stink of defeat.  I will never, ever surrender.

  
When I get my turn at the pay phone I suck it up and call Erika.  She sounds more afraid than anything else.  I’m sure she has been up all night worrying about how she is going to raise the boys alone.  I wonder if they wouldn’t be better off.  I tell her it will be fine, that everything is all right.  I tell her the same lie drunks always tell.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
.  Man I never got that title before this moment.  As a teenager we thought it was a manifesto to the glory of excess, a detailed battle plan for a road trip.  Standing in the cell with my bloodshot brethren I can see it is a cautionary tale. 
Fear and Self Loathing
might have been closer to the bone.

My son is named for a drunken Welsh poet who died of a failed liver.  I listen to Tom (my piano has been drinking) Waits.  I read Hunter S. Thompson.  I want to
drink scotch whiskey all night long and die behind the wheel
.  I almost do.  But it wasn’t the booze’s problem, it was bad luck.  The Mexican new father had been drinking... not me.  That motherfucker couldn’t handle his shit.  A menace to us all.  Lock his ass up, throw away the key. 

And when I had been arrested for being drunk in public six years earlier it was that ignorant redneck Texas cop.  And at fifteen it was them trying to make me walk the line in platforms.  All good reasons.  All lies I told myself first and you next and that made them true.

“Mr. Stallings, you have five broken bones in your left foot.”  The doctor shows me an x-ray of one messed up left foot.  “I’m surprised you are still walking.”  He has no idea how surprising it is.  “You’ll need surgery soon as we can schedule it.” 

I really truly should have gotten in the ambulance.

The insurance settlement for pain and suffering is most of the reason we can buy our first house.

My lawyer takes a knot of cash and the DUI disappears.

I skate.  Zero consequences.

Zero lessons learned.  It will be more years before I get sober.  These are the lost years, the years between when the booze stopped working and when I finally quit.  But as they roll me into surgery I am simply glad to be above ground, breathing, loving Erika, loving my sons. 

I am defeated but I will not surrender.

COWBOYS AND BALLERINAS

I am 50, and there are a few things I have learned about movie marketing.  There is a moment in most campaigns when the studio pan
i
cs and asks you to hide the intrinsic nature of the film.  Luckily they most often see the error of their ways and abandon the direction, but not before I have had the task of trying to make it work.

Mario Van Peebles' POSSE, a Black western.  At one point I am asked if I can lose all the shots of guys in cowboy hats, and all the shots of horses.  Did they think these changes will fool an audience into thinking it is set in modern times?

THE CRUCIBLE, “Don’t you have any shots of Winona Ryder without the weird white hat?”  This was before we used CGI in the finish of just about every trailer.  Today I would just have those pesky period hats digitally removed.

Hiding the hats goes deeper.

RENT, “Can we do a trailer with no singing, no AIDs and no um, gay, people?”

I did it.  Looking like a porno, without the fucking.  Just a bunch of scenes of pizzas being delivered and the cable getting fixed.

DREAM GIRLS, “Can we get some White faces in to the trailer?”

Look at that campaign and in the TV spots you will always see at least one shot of a fair skinned, blonde go-go dancer.  The need for this shot is driven by a fear that White folk won’t go see a film that has no one like them in it.

I was working on John Hughes’s BABY’S DAY OUT.  I started to notice something odd.  Nowhere in that film is there a single non-White face, not even as an extra in the wide street scenes.  Not one.  This film takes place in Chicago.  Not One.

Maybe they didn’t want it to seem too urban.  Oh yeah, urban is marketing speak for Black.  “Make it feel more urban.”  Means put in Hip-Hop music.  “It feels too urban.”  Means put in White music and search for as many White faces as you can find in the footage. 

I was lucky enough to cut the campaign for the Hughes Brothers DEAD PRESIDENTS, a film that lived on urban street.  They mostly left us alone.  We hid no hats that time.

I think the big truth is Hollywood is more progressive and enlightened than they have the courage to market.  They market aiming at a mythical fly-over state audience.  In their minds there is an uptight racist country that needs to be lied to in marketing if we are to get their asses in seats. 

Tad thinks I should add some Hollywood anecdotes, people like Hollywood.  Only thing is, I cut trailers so I sit in the dark whilst the glamour swirls around me.  Stallone was in my edit bay for half a second, only he was so short I figured he was Sly’s little brother.  Dennis Hopper saved the trailer I cut for THE HOT SPOT, a film he directed.  I had used this sexy southern music from an Irish band named Texas.  I played the trailer, and the room goes silent, all eyes are on Hopper, he will tell them how they feel. 

“
What about that music?”  Hopper.

“
Yeah, that music is…” Suit 1.

“
All wrong.” Suit 2.

“
It’s just a placeholder, until we find just the right track.”  Richard, my boss.

“
What the fuck are you gonna put in there man?”  Hopper again.  “Disco, fucking electro pop?”  Suddenly they all love that Irish slide guitar track.  The movie opened to miserable numbers.  But I still love the trailer, and love Hopper for defending it.

I really wish I could fill this with tawdry tales of Hollywood.  But I spend my days looking at movie stars who never know I exist.  I ran into Malin Akerman at the Watchmen premier.  I walked up to her, real familiar like, smiled, I started to speak to her.  She looked panicked, like I might be some rabid fan.  I see them over and over again.  They don’t see me.  Film is a one way mirror.

I am 50 and this is not the job I thought I would tell people I had.  People I don’t know at a cocktail party I’m never going to.  “Hi, yeah I’m Josh… what?  Oh yes I’m an ad-man, I make trailers.”  See who that impresses, actually a lot of people.  They think it sounds cool and glamorous.  John, a copywriter I know, put it this way,  “Every time you see a beautiful woman, remember somewhere is a man who’s tired of fucking her.  That my friend is our job.”

I am 32, I am walking in the snow with my brother in-law Barry.  I’m sad.  He wants to know what’s wrong.  I look out over a frozen lake and speak without looking at him.  “As a kid, I never intended to grow up to be an ad man.”

“
Oh Josh, if we grew up to be what we intended we’d all be cowboys and ballerinas.”

He is right.  I know it.  But knowing this makes it no less depressing.  I put extra rum in my eggnog that night.  Josh Stallings, ad man at your service.

I am 50 and I wish I could tell that young man with the world on his shoulders, relax, it will be OK.  But that would be a lie.

BROTHERS

My sons are both amazing each in his way.  Dylan is deep turquoise lake water, shale clean, bottomless, resting on bedrock.  He makes me laugh.  He makes me slow down.  He fiercely loves his little brother.  He has blonde ringlets around a wide smile.  He marches through life head held high.  A happy cadence plays only for his ears.

Jared is the jagged rock of Joshua Tree, millennia has not smoothed the granite.  He is exciting, fresh.  He is a lad of big feelings.  BIG LOVE.  BIG LAUGHTER.  BIG RAGE.  BIG SADNESS.  He bites and hugs with equal ferocity.  He tantrums so hard, I squeeze him to my chest until the rage slips into tears allowing him to release it.  He needs to be able to see his brother to fall asleep, and he is fearless.  He daredevils his scooter across the yard pushing as hard as he can.  Then he slams in to the tin walls surrounding our water heater.  He tumbles over and laughs deep.

I am 30, I sit in Eagle Rock Park, the fenced in jungle gym sand pit area.  I watch my two boys create entire worlds in an hour.  Jared is easy.  He meets other kids without stress.  Some kids and their parents stare at Dylan with his slack jaw and asymmetrical face.  Dylan is oblivious.  He has too much self worth to imagine they are staring at him.  Dylan is the best big brother a baby or two year old or four year old could want.  He’s tall enough to reach up on shelves and will play any game Jared wants, for as long as Jared wants.  The clock is ticking.  Soon Jared will surpass his brother.

“I am the oldest cousin and the youngest.”  Dylan, twenty-six years old.

Jared will have to be the younger and older brother.  He will have to wait with his mother at Dylan’s speech therapy and sensory integration therapy and physical therapy appointments.  “It’s not fair” Jared, five years old.  Jared is right, it is still unfair.  Just as it is unfair that Jared will one day drive a car, fall in love, marry, have children.  But I don’t tell that to a five year old.

I am 50, and there is so much I wish I could do over.  So much I screwed up.  I was a kid, what the hell?  But had I a do over up my sleeve, I would have tried harder to hear Jared.  I think he got caught in rough waves and I didn’t see it.

There was a moment, one I missed.  It was when he went from loving and respecting his big brother to being embarrassed of him and resenting him.  It must have taken place over time, but I missed the cues.  One day they are two hooligans in cowboy hats, then there is one boy gleefully playing, and a sullen younger brother hoping the other kids don’t see them and draw the genetic connection.

Was there a moment?  A tragic event?  Or simply the unrelenting tick of the clock?  Looking back I can’t see it, but here we are now.  Two brothers that barely speak.  Jared has never taken Dylan for a ride in his car.  He has never gone to Dylan’s apartment.  They see each other at Christmas an
d
Thanksgiving.
 
Dylan asks me for weekly updates on how his brother is doing.  Jared almost never asks about his brother.