Bukowski and 18 Charlie Chaplin Movies

Bukowski cracked the seal on a pint of Dark Horse vodka — a strange, charcoal-flavored blend of fermented potatoes and wheat mash imported from Czechoslovakia — and coaxed a slug from the bottle. It burned and seethed and whined like Jesus Christ on the cross going down his throat but it was cheaper than Smirnoff and did the trick in half the time.

He addressed the typewriter with a raspy “What the fuck’re you looking at?” but the bastard from Smith-Corona refused to acknowledge his greeting or his existence. Three hours before deadine for his Open Sewer column and all he could contemplate, for reasons unfathomable to him, was Charlie Chaplin; the Little Tramp in his shabby oversized trousers, undersized bowler hat, and bamboo cane, an eternal optimist struggling to survive while keeping his dignity in a world with great social injustice.

“Okay,” Bukowski muttered, taking another murderous swallow of Dark Horse. “Charlie Chaplin it is.”

He rolled a crisp sheet of paper into the typewriter and studiously pecked out the titles of eighteen Chaplin movies, impressed with himself that he could recall that many titles, even though the effort took the better part of forty-five minutes and the last three-quarters of the pint of Dark Horse. He yanked the sheet out of the roller, parked a hand-made cigarette in the corner of his phlegm-encrusted lips, and studied the list through misty bloodshot eyes.

“That’ll do,” Bukowski declared. He would embed the eighteen titles in a 260-word piece called Night in the Show, the title itself taken from a Chaplin comedy he saw as a boy at a kiddie matinee at one of those grand movie palaces in downtown L.A., a momentary respite in the dark from his father’s sadistic abuse and his mother’s asphyxiating indifference. He invited a new sheet of blank paper into the roller and raised his trembling hands to type after striking a match to his cigarette:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Night in the Show

When the circus is over, a vagabond woman from the idle class slips behind the scenes with the kid. It is payday and the jugglers and clowns, the lion tamers and trapeze artists, the elephant handlers and tiger wranglers, all line up for their cash from the hands of the circus boss.

Studying his features in the dying light of the tent, the woman finds the man strangely handsome; circus boss is his new job, she hears him tell a man in sad clown face, having previously worked in the pawn shop on East 16th Street in dusty Wilco, Texas.

“This is easy street next to that goddamn job,” he says, a cigar perched in the corner of his mouth. His teeth, the woman notes, are perfect. “This is a gold rush compared to working for wages in a pawn shop, dealing with the police once a week, coming in to scour our inventory for pawned goods that might’ve been loot from some burglary.”

“Modern times,” the clown says, shrugging his shoulders indifferently. Big Top clown is his new job as well, he tells the handsome young boss, his regeneration, a better way at making a living than selling apples on a street corner in Hell’s Kitchen. “They’re calling it a depression these days; all I know is a lotta folks is outta work.”

She fantasizes a jitney elopement with the circus boss, a whirlwind romance wherein she becomes his favorite pastime. But then she remembers the kid standing at her side and the dream comes crashing down.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bukowski stabbed his cigarette butt into a glass ashtray stolen from a Mexican cantina in Rosarita Beach, slipped his reading glasses over his prominent, allergy-inflamed proboscis, and examined what he wrote.

“Fuck it.” He swallowed the last of the Dark Horse and felt his bowels beginning to rumble. “It’ll have to do.”

Bukowski and the Movie Star

It was ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning. Bukowski wrestled with a looming deadline and an insatiable thirst. The thirst had to be satisfied before the blank sheet of paper could be addressed. He loitered outside the Lock and Load Lounge on Hollywood Boulevard, drawing hard on a hand-rolled cigarette and studying the busy car wash across the street. All the pretty people, the vital and productive citizens, rushing to meaningless jobs but really rushing to the grave, making their cars pretty and shiny for their journey to Valhalla.

A brand-new 1978 Jaguar XJ6 was rolling off the belt, a handful of hard-working Mexicans giving the bright chromium and steel a once-over with chamois cloths. The new model Jaguar was easy on the eye, as far as land yachts go, but Bukowski could never surrender his Volkswagen Beetle for a shiny new Jag. The Beetle represented the apex of German automotive technology, the one thing that Hitler got right: a car affordable enough for the average working man.

Bukowski polished off his cigarette and swiveled through the doors of the Lock and Load Lounge. He settled onto a bar stool, ordered a draft beer from the surly bartender who looked like he got kicked in the teeth the minute he rolled out of bed that morning, and considered the face of the stranger occupying the stool next to him: jet-black hair, well-built, late-fifties perhaps, the hearty Midwestern good looks of a marquee idol, though the youthful gloss was fading and the trembling hand that held the martini glass was betraying something more than a mere case of nerves.

“Anyone ever tell you that you look like that movie actor?” Bukowski dropped half of the beer from the frosted stein down his parched throat. “Gig Young?”

The man slowly turned to face Bukowski, drunken eyes swimming in their sockets like panic-stricken fish. “I am Gig Young. Motherfucker. I am Gig Young.”

“Horseshit. What’re you doing in the Lock and Load Lounge?”

“Not many bars in town will have me,” he slurred. “Not the good ones, anyways. I’ve been 86′d from the Polo Lounge, Trader Vic’s, the bar at the Marmont, the Beverly Wilshire …”

Bukowski scrutinized the man’s craggy features and determined right away that he was indeed gazing upon the handsome supporting player who stared down at him from the silver screen and sometimes on the TV in old rerurns of The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Gig-Fucking-Young. Who gives a shit? Bukowski returned to his beer.

Before he could down the last swallow, the actor’s vodka-laced breath was assaulting Bukowski’s flaring nostrils. “I won an Oscar in 1969, you know, worst goddamn thing that ever happened to me. Best Supporting Actor. The kiss of death, end of the line. When I walked up to that stage to collect that fucking hunk of junk, I thought ‘Here we go, now they’re finally gonna create a Gig Young movie’, you know, a vehicle I could star in instead of just being fancy wallpaper in the background but it doesn’t happen that way. There’s a whole goddamn curse along with the Academy Awards. You win one and suddenly the phone stops ringing; everyone assumes — they fucking assume — that your price went up or that you got an atttude all of a sudden and are difficult to work with or … I don’t know. The so-called accolades of your peers is the lowering of your coffin into the grave. My career was over the minute they called me up on that stage.”

Actors, Bukowski knew, particularly movie actors, are an insufferable lot, prone to drama and histrionics, even more so when they’re drunk; he avoided eye contact with the man and threw his words into his empty beer stein instead. “I heard differently about you. You had one hand on the throttle and the other hand on the bottle.”

“Hey!” The actor laughed and tossed his hands in the air, nearly falling off the stool in the process. “One hand on the throttle, one hand on the bottle. You’re a goddamn poet!”

Bukowski rolled another slim cigarette in his calloused fingers. “Actually, I am.”

The actors eyes narrowed to small slits. “Who the hell are you?”

Bukowski hiked his shoulders. “I’m an avereage guy. Nothin’ special. Writer. Poet. Dying in a steaming pile of shit, just like you.”

“Here’s to steaming piles of shit!” The fading movie star hoisted his martini glass, polished off the lukewarm remains and signalled the mean-faced bartender. “Two more, barkeep!” He licked his dry lips and returned his attention to Bukowski. “Now, what’s this garbage that you’ve heard about me and how the hell would you know anything anyway?”

“I know a few monkeys in the movie business; it’s a residual effect of life in L.A. You got shit canned from Blazing Saddles because you were having DT’s on the set.”

“Well … that’s true,” the actor softly confessed. “My first wife, Sheila, she died of cancer one year after we were married. Did you know that, Mister Smart Ass?”

“And my father beat me damn near every day when I was a kid. So what? No one needs excuses to climb into the bottle. Life gets complicated and fucked up the second you pop out of the womb.”

With a scowl, the bartender deposited a fresh beer in front of Bukowski and a dry martini refill for the inebriated movie star.

“You’re a philosopher too,” the actor mumbled, as if talking in his sleep. “I got fired from Charlie’s Angels last year. I was gonna be the voice of Charlie. Too goddamn drunk to record my lines so they brought in John Forsyth. I mean, I had things going on at the time so, yeah, I was hitting the sauce a little. Jesus. Give a guy a break, huh?”

They sat in silence for several moments, the steady hum of traffic on Hollywood Boulevard flooding through the open door and filling the void with white noise. The actor completed his work on the martini and rose, staggering, swaying precariously like a suspension bridge in the wind.

“Someone pour me into a cab,” he muttered, floundering toward the door and the harsh white sunlight that was filtered through billions of particles of airborne automobile exhaust.

Bukowski never saw Gig Young again, not in life and certainly not in the movies.

Six months later, on a crisp October afternoon with a hint of a Santa Ana wind in the air, Bukowski perched himself on the very same bar stool in the Lock and Load Lounge. He ordered a Michelob and unfolded the front page of the L.A. Times. The story in the right hand panel just below the banner and above the fold immediately caught his eye:

The dateline was October 19, New York City. Actor Gig Young, the wire service reported, shot and killed German actress Kim Schmidt, his bride of three weeks, and then turned the gun on himself in their New York City apartment. The direct cause of the murder-suicide, authorities stated, remained unclear. Young was almost 65; his bride was 21. An NYPD spokesman said that an Oscar statuette was found between the bodies of Young and his wife.

Bukowski downed the Michelob in one long swallow and turned to the Daily Racing Form. It was a good day for a drive out to Santa Anita.

 

Bukowski and Pinnochio

Bukowski hated Pinnochio jokes. It seemed to him that Collodi’s fairy tale figure was a cheap and easy target for punsters.

“What did the hooker say to Pinnochio?” a bar mate might posit for Bukwoski’s humorous pleasure.

“I dunno. What did the hooker say to Pinocchio?” Bukwoski would grunt into his beer.

And then the guy always launched into a beer or gin-soaked apoplectic laugh  before he reached the punch line. “She said … I swear to Christ, this so fucking funny … She said … Are you ready for this? … She said …  ’I'll sit on your face, Pinnochio, if you’ll tell me another lie!”

Bukowski always pretended to laugh.

“How did Pinocchio find out he was made of wood?” another colleague in inebriation would inquire after two rounds of boilermakers. “His hand caught fire!”

Where was the Walt Disney Technicolor Pinocchio of his stolen youth? Reduced to jokes of a vulgar sexual nature.

And then on a day when the ponies weren’t running well at Santa Anita and a sheet of yellowing paper blowing in the wind in the typewriter reminded him of a looming deadline, Bukowski met Pinnochio in a bar in Anaheim, a stone’s throw away from the over-priced gates of the so-called Magic Kingdom. He was a little man with little ambition who put on a big costume everyday, except Sundays, he told Bukowski, and pretended to be Pinnochio for thousands of snapshot-greedy tourists anxious to get a picture of little Elizabeth or Mary or Nancy or Sue Ellen or Tatiana or Jeb or Jimmy or Frankie posed with their favorite Disney character. How cute. How quaint. Won’t the folks back home in Joplin, Missoruri, be impressed and, by the way, how do hayseeds from Joplin round up the dough for a Disneyland vacation?

“The bitch of it all,” he confided to Bukowski as he sipped his dry martini, “is that I have to leave the costume at work every night. I mean, really, if they want me to be Pinnochio, to truly embody the role, shouldn’t I be allowed to sleep in his oversized head and body every night? Wouldn’t that absorb me in the sensation of being a puppet made of wood?”

Bukowski frowned. “You’re not portarying the wooden Pinocchio, for chrissakes. You’re the little boy, flesh and blood, come to life from the wooden marionette.”

“Oh.” He took another delicate sip of the martini. “They didn’t fill me in on that backstory when they hired me.”

Previously: Bukowski’s Winter

Bukowski’s Winter

Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons played on the radio. The concerto was at the high string accent of the Winter movement. Years earlier, poring over allergy-inducing dusty books in the downtown branch of the L.A. Public Library, escaping from his soul-numbing job at the post office, Bukowski had memorized the sonnet that was written to go along with the concerto, four sonnets in all rumored to be written by the Baroque composer himself.

Bukowski sat on the edge of the mattress, beer can in one hand, hairy belly bulging over the frayed waistline of his boxers, a deadline waiting at the typewriter in the next room. He closely examined his calloused bare feet and recited the Winter sonnet in his head as the music over the radio evoked dagger-sharp icy rain and darkening thunderstorms.

Allegro non molto
Shivering, frozen mid the frosty snow in biting, stinging winds;
running to and fro to stamp one’s icy feet, teeth chattering in the bitter chill.

Largo
To rest contentedly beside the hearth, while those outside are drenched by pouring rain.

Allegro
We tread the icy path slowly and cautiously, for fear of tripping and falling.
Then turn abruptly, slip, crash on the ground and, rising, hasten on across the ice lest it cracks up.
We feel the chill north winds course through the home despite the locked and bolted doors…
this is winter, which nonetheless brings its own delights.

Bukowski considered a hangnail on the big toe of his left foot. It hurt like a mother. The toenail clippers were nowhere to be found in his line of vision. With great strain, he bent forward and clenched the offending nail in his teeth and yanked. It bled and bit and stung like a winter wind.

Previously: Bukowski and Joe Camel

Bukowski and Joe Camel

Joe Camel settled onto the empty bar stool next to Bukowski. He shook a Winston out of a soft pack, lit it, and ordered a Bud on tap.

“Find any work yet?” Bukowski mumbled, bloodshot eyes fixed on his own ugly mug in the mirror behind the bar.

“Not a fuckin’ thing, Bukowski. I’m telling ya, days are over for camels in this town. They don’t make desert pictures anymore. At my peak — at my peak, mind you — I was in Lawrence of Fucking Arabia. You know what my goddamn agent recommended for me last week? Huh? You ready for this shit?”

Joe stabbed his cigarette into an ashtray and lit another with trembling hooves.

“He said, Bukowski, that I can get a gig as a spokesman for Camel cigarettes. Can you believe that horseshit? I mean, the money’s good but they want me to endorse these –” He held his cigarette aloft. “I can’t go there, not in good conscience. No.”

Bukowski sipped his beer. “You’re a camel in Hollywood, Joe. Shut the hell up and take the money and run.”