Romeo and Juliet in L.A.

By Edward Loomis

The novel ROMEO AND JULIET IN L.A. gives the story of the making of a film

called that, which is the story of street kids enacting the Romeo-and-Juliet

theme to a tragic conclusion, and the novel as it happens tells that

story--the story of Mayo, Julie, Adam, Angel, and Reno--against a background

of the complex workings of a modern professional movie production.

Included in those "complex workings" is the revival of a high school

friendship between the author of the screenplay and one of the financial

backers of the film--and this is a story of cooperation between Jew and

Gentile begun when the participants were still in high school.

So the novel has the street kids and also the movie people, from the

Producer, Sam Willavoy, to the actors and directors--and the writer, who is

responsible for it all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 10, 2000
• ISBN: 9781462832187

Edward Loomis

"FRANK GOAD is a retired beach volleyball player, an artist manqué, a barely published writer, a marginal but occasionally successful progenitor of performance art, a very early and accidental dj, a runner-turned-jogger-turned-walker, and an occasional lightweight lifter. He lives in rented digs in Santa Barbara with his diffficult girlfriend and her lazy, sullen, lordly son, and gleans a living by making graphic designs on his computer. His pets have died." "EDWARD LOOMIS is a writer and audio artist, and a collaborator on the Goadian audio projects. His best known work is THE CHARCOAL HORSE, a novel, "A Kansas Girl," a story, and ADVICE TO THE LOVELORN, an audio tape. In recent years he has been working on a non-fiction book on Spain, and translating the poems of Rubén Darío and the brothers Machado."

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

When I was a child, the family lived for a while in Chicago, and my father showed us how to deal with a big city.

First of all, he did not live in the city, but rather in a suburb called—improbably—Flossmoor, twenty-six miles by train from his work-place at the University of Chicago, and he went to great lengths to avoid driving in the city; he took a train to work, and went back the same way as soon as the workday was finished. He maintained no interests in the city, no clubs, lodges, friendships, or community commitments. He never spent a night in the city.

When he absolutely had to, he cautiously drove his car on city streets like a soldier on patrol, grumbling all the while at the unfortunate necessity that had required this behavior—and his tactic on the family’s summer auto trips was to make a careful study of road maps so that he could circumnavigate any city that was in the way, and we therefore moved forward by elaborate roundabouts of dirt roads and farm-scapes, getting lost and delayed often and normally in those days before freeways when the main roads were not so very different from other roads.

He enjoyed the city for his job and—I now suppose—for the baseball games he took me to, for the museums and the great stores—Carson, Pirie, Scott and Marshall Field especially—but our ventures to city occasions and places were always done in the spirit of a raid, and were done on public transportation and not at the rush hour.

He was like a bee investigating the flowers in a backyard, intense and alert.

He did not trust the city, though he made his living there.

He disliked the city as a place to be, preferring any style of country scene that could remind him of the places in Kansas and Michigan where he grew up, where small town and farming country blurringly succeed one another in the prospects of life.

I now suppose that this habit of dealing with cities is one of many things I learned from my father. For many years now, I have lived in Southern California not far from Los Angeles—but far enough so that the smog normally does not reach my neighborhood. Up the coast a little way past Santa Barbara—it is about an hour on the freeway to the great bend past Thousand Oaks where Los Angeles in effect really does begin, another twenty minutes to the northern reaches of the San Fernando Valley where the city thunders at you in full dynamic redundancy.

I have a daughter living in Los Angeles, some friends there, and some well-established interests in movie matters and the music business (to give it the correct name—music business)·, but I avoid Los Angeles. I find every reason not to go there, and for half a lifetime of visits I never spent more than a single night there—like my father taking his son to the Book Department at Marshall Field, I appeared at the site, quickly did something, and departed.

So there is at least a sort of personal story in my staying there for an extended period—this was a couple of years ago when in my retirement I thought I could find time to go down there for an over-night.

I stayed one night with my daughter and her husband, heard about their doings, and then I found myself staying on as a consequence of my decision to visit an old friend from Stanford days—a harmless activity, I thought, and possibly amusing.

Patrick Gallagher and I had been students together in a certain Post-World-War-Two style—both on the G.I Bill of Rights, and poor as students are poor. Having no television in our houses, we used to watch the TV fights as displayed on a TV set in the Central Electric front window on University Avenue—the management making this concession to public relations. A very miscellaneous little group assembled there on Wednesday and Friday nights—among them often a small old man with wrinkled face and battered hands who had been a pug himself, in his youth; he would now and then instruct us on what we were seeing—You should never get hit with a right hand, he liked to say. But anybody can get hit wid a lef hook. We were young then—we treasured such wisdom, who have prospered in the years since.

Patrick has gotten rich, in fact; he lives in Encino and is a writer for movies and TV, a known person in that world; and he is acutely intelligent, genial, charming—on this occasion I found myself staying on into the afternoon; before long, it was clear that I was not ready to go home that night (I worried about the traffic on the freeways); and so it happened that I got caught up in his life by accident, since a little after four o’clock he received a phone-call inviting him and his wife to a major-league movieland celebrity bash on the following night, and he generated the idea of taking me along after his wife made it clear that she would not be interested in going anywhere on such short notice, since she of course could not buy something suitable to wear in just a single day.

The banquet (for that’s what it was) was scheduled for the following night, a Thursday, at the Century Plaza—and it was apparent to me rather quickly that I had let myself in for something. Patrick was interested in going because he was interested in the person who was to be honored—the actor and producer Michael Williams, who was to receive an award for Lifetime Achievement in the Movie Industry.

He said, This is somebody who can make things happen—that’s why my agent arranged an invitation for me; and after all, Archie, you’ve talked about doing movie work yourself—maybe it could finally happen for you, old buddy.

He was grinning, making a sort of joke: but it was a joke with a subtext, and he knew it—knew that he had me.

Of course I was interested in making a movie, and had been for most of my life. I was acquainted with the locked-in realities of that world which made it impossible for me to do anything there; but I was still interested in trying because I love the form, and know something about it. My heart was ready for action though my mind at this stage of my life was grave and reserved—when called on effervescing difficulties and a wide range of prejudices.

You’ll have to rent a tux, he said, and we had a guffaw over that. After all, we had started out in life as a pair of Stanford roughs in levis and cotton shirts.

He more than I had become a spirited dresser—his basketball player’s physique made a good frame to hang clothes on, and he enjoyed dressing well or even spectacularly well, with something of his original Chicago southsider’s cultural aspirations. I have owned a few suits, but am currently getting by with a Navy blue blazer from C and R Clothiers: and as I considered his remark, it occurred to me that he of course would own a tux.

So I asked him,

You have your own, don’t you?

He agreed that this was so.

Maybe you should think about doing the same, he said. Down here, you never know what you may be asked to do—

Or put up with, I said.

He was able to agree with that—he beamed upon me—yes, he did indeed understand that it was necessary to put up with many things in this world which had allowed him a great success—there was for example what he liked to call the bear shit in doing TV work, and we understood that a person not only has to eat some of that bear shit but also seem to enjoy it. Patrick has a large domed forehead given a certain massiveness by baldness; it is a mature face, with wrinkles and minor battering and scarring, but the expression is normally cheerful—he looks like an intelligent football coach, ready with discipline and the game plan; he looks successful—and he is; and on this occasion he was amused at the thought of tempting me into doing something I would not ordinarily do.

He was grinning at me—and I remembered his facial expression the next day when I visited Parkinson Black Tie on Melrose not far from my daughter’s apartment. My plan was to rent a tuxedo, a thing I had never done before, since I have always regarded myself as something of a populist—at least since my days as an enlisted man in the US Army, an experience that might make a populist out of anybody, given the peristence of the officers in asserting their caste-privileges and then grossly enjoying them. So I presented myself to a clerk and explained what I had in mind, all the while bearing in mind what Patrick had suggested; and I was thinking, Why not go in style if you’re going—and the clerk read me rather easily, seemed to know what to do, in no time at all he had persuaded me to purchase rather than rent, had a tailor come forward to mark tuxedo and trousers for the necessary modifications, and sold me a shirt, tie and cummerbund, and black patent-leather slippers; nor did I have any difficulty making the people at the store understand that I had to pick up my tuxedo and trousers before three o’clock that very day—

They were used to impulse-buying of such items, I decided—they had been ready for me—saw me coming. Perhaps they imagined that like other customers I had a great dream?

Not wanting to burden my daughter and her husband, I had stayed that night at a motel on Sepulveda, to which I returned after my visit to the store, and there I laid out on the bed the package containing my purchases, as one part of my mind was saying, What on earth are you thinking about, to throw money away like that? This is an I that wants to spend only as needed, that wants to be a good citizen, opposes mere show, seeks a plain style in most of life’s adventures; it is above all a self that has done reasonably well, is funded to a comfortable retirement with equipment suitable for its projects—a MAC, a small sound-recording facility, movie and still cameras, a digital keyboard.

But something was in the wind. I looked down at the package and the store’s logo—a satirical line-drawing of a man in formal dress, wearing a top hat; and I was able to smile, murmuring,

I can have some fun, can’t I? Go out in public and swagger around? Why not?

Something like the old Adam in me then spoke up, saying,

"Lighten up—it’s just clothes."

The package was ineluctably there on the bed, and the store had my signature on the credit-card slip for almost 700 dollars, and this was supposed to be an Economy outlet.

I was stirred up, excited—but not having anything really to do, I settled down for a look at the LA Times, which I’ve been reading for years—and I had with me, folded up in my notebook, a clipping from earlier that month:

… Pope John Paul II issued a bulky encyclical Tuesday that asserts the absolute moral authority of church teachings over the world’s 900 million Roman Catholics and commands the loyal assent of all bishops, priests and theologians in proclaiming it.

Written longhand by John Paul in Polish over six years, the dense, closely reasoned papal teaching, titled Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth), is a stunning intellectual tour de force by a deep-thinking moral theologian rooted in mainline Catholic dogma. It is pure Pope, a stern, uncompromising reaffirmation of authority …

And a little later:

John Paul teaches that morality cannot exist independent of faith. As defined in fundamental church teachings, good and evil are immutable, he insists …

This was to me soothing as it confirmed my belief that the social world as I know it is still very much as I have always known it. The constituted authorities speak on behalf of everybody while protecting their own cherished life-styles and comfortable ways of thinking. And there was a little comedy, too: It is pure Pope, for example—that is the language of the Sports Section, as in It was pure Woody Hayes, or It was pure Lou Holtz …

Sitting comfortably at ease near a window, I came across in the

VIEW section a longish article on the Lutheran Church—I had read about Martin Luther’s manifesto nailed to a church door, and I was familiar with the idea that great things had come of this and of the great man’s teaching, but I had not really dipped into the realities of Lutheran thought: and here were some hair-raising examples of it. Luther "termed Jews ‘alien murderers and bloodthirsty enemies’ who ‘practiced all sorts of vices..’, and he urged the burning of synagogues, destruction of Jewish homes and prayer books, and confiscation of Jewish property.

Just as savage were his denunciations of the Pope and cardinals as idolatrous blasphemers who should be nailed to the gallows and their tongues torn out.

This touched a nerve in my memory-system as I remembered what happened to the assassin of William of Orange—publicly tortured by people skilled in keeping a victim alive and sentient for a long time, while the audience cheers the process at each groan and scream: so Luther was not just talking, his passion expressed a reality in the world that he knew—that old world before criticism had begun to take its toll on such villainy.

Abruptly I was returned to that time in youth when I had turned against all such violent behavior, whether of the mind only, or as policy being carried out in the street or dungeon while a victim flashes on an unbelievable pain—and though I could always believe in the necessity of social control, I came to believe that the great issue would have to be the controlling of the controls, bringing them under a rule of reason counselled by sound feeling.

This attitude has gotten me into trouble more than once, exactly with the forces of social control as constituted in the social world I have been obliged to inhabit, but I have never given up this attitude. It still feels good to me. Social controls are necessary, but—I have built up a willingness to challenge them, selectively. Martin Luther and the Pope; Queen Elizabeth and Mayor Dinkins; Barry Diller and the ghost of Walt Disney; the President and the Ayatollah Khomeini; Islam and the Vedanta; Washington and

Tehran; the Compact Disk store and the Videotape store and the bookstore—and of course the newspapers: all these are mobilized in a grand effort of keeping the world’s people in line, all therefore can be thought about as targets..

My role—self-elected—would be to do a little something in the way of correction, if I could; I was willing to be the critic, I would notice the not-noticed, and speak the unspeakable—granted that I myself was part of the instrumentality I worried about, conditioned by it in my most private thoughts. But the great institution is self-correcting and therefore has a place for the likes of me, however troubled the moments and epochs when things are not working well—

And so I found some entertainment in reading the morning paper—I continued, hoping for lighter fare, and I found it in a story about the trials of a man famous as the founder of a chain of fast-food restaurants:

I read, Carl N. Karcher, who founded the Carl’s Jr. fast-food chain as a single hot dog stand and helped it gain attention serving as its colorful TV pitchman, was ousted Friday as chairman in a dispute over how to revive the company’s flagging fortunes … Then, a little later, This is a man with hamburger flowing through his veins, Karcher spokesman Steve Fink said.

This was just what I needed as I got ready to enter the real-world Los Angeles.

I thought, We have to consider that hamburger is ‘flowing in his veins,’ evidently meaning all of them. And I thought, This is a lot of hamburgers. A sort of wild crassness was there for me to consider, and my question was, "In such a world, will I really have anything to contribute?—and I found some consolation in the thought that I could always produce some bitter commentary; and that is what I planned for the night’s excursion into Los Angeles luxury at the Century Plaza Hotel.

For years I have been unable to sit through a Hollywood movie; the normal product of the Industry seems to be beyond the reach of my most genial sympathies. Now and then, relaxing on pillows on the bed, I can watch something on TV for a while, but the movie theater has become for me a hall of insufferable boredom, with magnificent sound and astonishing pictures enforcing crude violations of common sense.

Now and then there is something tolerable, of course, as talent outwits the system—and Michael Williams has participated in a few such episodes. I remembered a domestic comedy catching the common life of marriage among the middle classes, and a political melodrama involving an industrial polluter. He is a man of some modest ability, Mister Williams, and he would have an audience of actors, agents, starlets, aging heroines, executives with deals cooking, and his family beaming upon him.

I had my expectations in place and sited to the targets.

I was ready for the banquet.

When it came time to pick up my new black trousers and jacket, I was promptly there at three o’clock, and had to wait a little—but when I emerged from the dressing-closet wearing my black tuxedo jacket and black pants, I felt a novel gentleness come over me. I seemed to like these clothes. I was greeted by the salesman smiling largely, and a young female employee in suit and nylons; they seemed to be impressed by my prospects of success in these clothes they had found for me.

I stood in front of a full mirror and was astonished at the strange new person staring back at me with a smile that faded, slowly, as in my soul I felt the beginning of a deep pleasure.

I was startled to see that I seemed to belong in such clothing. My grey hair and balding brow seemed to belong to the costume, and I was overtaken by a strong desire to get back to my motel room where in the full-length mirror beside the bed I could look at myself in the complete outfit—the cummerbund, the patent-leather slippers, the black tie, the dazzling white shirt.

I asked for instruction in tying the tie, and received a well-considered, lesson from the female employee, and so I was ready when I got back to the motel.

The mirror in the motel provided a convincing image—I was obliged to believe in myself, as the ravages of passing time appeared in form of what our culture has taught us to regard as a distinguished appearance. The forehead—much more exposed than when I was a young man; the quiet gaze of the eyes, which had seen a few things; the carriage of the head, not aggressive but not hiding, either—

A tall, prosperous-looking American—obviously a success in life!

I was startled that I should fit into such clothes as if they had been meant for me. Evidently they had been meant for me. I was expected to attend banquets, inaugurations, formal balls, and I had not known this. What sort of populist might I be, then?

The overalls I wear at home are a uniform I have taught myself to accept as giving the world a chance to see who I really am—but how about this tall, solid-looking man in black?

I was a retired English professor no longer obliged to swink and sweat for his bread; and as I looked myself up and down, I was heavily pleased, I was admitting it as my eye roved over the details.

I smiled at myself, and said,

Are you feeling more charitable now toward the other people you’ll find at the banquet? Liking them a little better? Conceding their merits—even just a little?

Already I was doing that.

Of course these people had many merits that I knew nothing about! I was glad to admit it—and I was getting ready to swagger about at their party as if I had some merits too.

CHAPTER 2

The Conversation

Food was imminent now, and the occasion settled down to be itself, that is to say a boring affair, but Sam Willavoy was not the man to be intimidated by a boring affair.

He said,

I thought maybe I was right about that, and I wanted somebody to talk to. So how are you liking the great motion picture ball of 1994?

A leading question—but I was willing to be led. After a moment, I said,

"There doesn’t seem to be much serious drinking. People are being polite—drinking a little wine—you know."

You’re right about that. It’s not the place for a lot of heavy drinking—too much business going down.

We looked at each other—he was on secure ground with such a statement, that I knew: very probably he even knew what some of that business was. A taste of business was present in the air of this occasion, like a perfume—it had to do with money, and the hot impalpable glow of power.

But he did not seem to be too much concerned with this topic: I saw something else in those eyes, and I’ve seen it often before, it is a look that can be found at many an AA meeting, and it has turned up in my academic office, staring at me out of a life which has some secret difficulty.

Trouble in mind, was the phrase that came into my mind about this handsome, prosperous-looking man, well-dressed and

looking as if in general well served by life. He looked as if he might get along with the women—and they could be imagined to want to get along with him, why not? He would travel first class, and he could afford generosity—certainly he could afford it!

But his expression told me something, and I was expected to get it: he had something in mind that he would like to talk about—something personal, nor did this strike me as strange. People do that; especially the friends of Bill W. do that; it is almost a lifestyle for such people.

But now he looked more guarded, as he said,

This is really a sort of family occasion, people are on their best behavior. Later on, some of these people will be snorting coke in the bathrooms and getting drunk, of course.

That seemed likely; and I began to seek a topic of a neutral character, interested by this man and interested by his interest in me; I said,

I’m not a member of the family, so I feel a little left out—you can imagine.

He looked at me—calmly, appraisingly; then he leaned forward so that he could catch Patrick’s eye—and he said to him,

Hey, Pat, who’s this stranger you’ve brought onto the lot?

Patrick was happy to respond. He’s a novelist, and a Professor of English—we’ve been friends for a long time. We were at Stanford together—

Sons of the Stanford Red, Mister Willavoy said. Then he and Patrick exchanged some technical talk about an actor-friend they shared—Old Leslie Something-or-other, who was working at ABC, and had recently changed agents. While they talked—very much in a pro forma way I thought—I was free to catch some secret glimpses of Mister Sam Willavoy in his normal work-persona; and he was impressive, knew what he was about. Quite noticeable were a sharpness of knowledge and a feeling of authority—and clearly he was comfortable in this persona. A certain hardness was present in his facial expression—a Don’t fuck with me expression, a clear understanding of the limits that other people should feel in his company. I did not mind that because it suggested to me that he was a capable fellow, and had to have a way of informing the world about what he could make happen. He gave out a warning: I can do something—so be careful, and be nice—I might do something for you. That was part of the effect.

Quite suddenly this official business persona was present at my side, speaking to my old friend, and I had the feeling that a demonstration was intended—he wanted me to know who I was dealing with—and I was grateful for that.

It suggested that he was taking me seriously; and so it was easy for me to take him seriously, in turn.

He could make a movie, and that interested me. As he sat there, he reminded me of a box containing a tape recorder or a mixer: take the machine out of the box and use it, that was the invitation.

But that would be impossible, I thought. He had his own agenda, he would not be used, you could not get to him. But here he was, after all—sitting beside me by his own choice evidently, and now once again turning his attention to me.

He said,

"You’re a novelist—what did you think of Shortcuts? Or do you not go to movies at all?"

I went to that one, I said. "Carver’s a hell of a writer, and Altman is a wonderful filmmaker. No way I’d miss that one."

I paused, wondering how I should continue. I know both of those art-forms, and was ready to talk about either of them, but I hesitated .because I needed to generate a policy with respect to Mister Willavoy. Should I speak right out? Or censor my thought, curtail the nastiness, withhold the sting? I did not hesitate long—for really, since I had nothing to gain from this man, I had nothing to lose, either.

So I said, "I couldn’t stand it—I left after ten minutes—and of course I was delighted by Nashville. In Nashville, you have a sort-of Grand Hotel situation, and it’s natural to jump around as you keep track of the various groups you’re interested in. But

Shortcuts couldn’t hold me. I was eager to leave, almost from the very beginning."

Is that right, he said, grinning a little. So what bothered you?

He seemed to be amused with me—at my age, it’s pleasant to have the feeling that I’m amusing someone; I was tickled. I said,

"Well, first of all, Ray Carver got left out—I don’t quite know why. There’s a lot of drinking—but not the Carver kind. The desperation isn’t there, that portentousness of being at the edge of the abyss—nodding your head and taking another one, lifting the old glass to go on killing yourself. Carver contemplated his drunkenness—it never went away."

I thought he was with me so far: we were on common ground. I said,

"In Shortcuts, Altman takes the fast cut to the limit and all the way past—poor bastard, couldn’t think of anything else to do. Afraid of boring people."

He was listening.

I said,

"He needed a plot—and there’s only one in Ray Carver’s world; and we know what it is—I guess."

I caught his eyes, and we were in agreement. There is that one story of addiction—drugs or alcohol, there is that one story, and we both knew it.

"Altman is like the Jinn in the Arabian Nights . He gets out of the bottle and stands there waiting for somebody to tell him what to do. He can’t tell himself what to do, he’s just a Jinn. Not to fault him. He’s a real Jinn—a marvellous power. The sound and pictures in the film are great—wonderful—couldn’t really better. But Altman needs a writer—a real one—to put him to work. In Nashville, he somehow did it for himself—but he had some nice stories, maybe they took care of him."

I paused, then said,

Carver is writing about something subjective, something inward—being intoxicated. Passionless, like a god. Indifferent—like a god. Uncaring—like most of gods—

I get you, Mister Willavoy said. Not saying I agree with it all. Kind of a novelist’s point of view, isn’t it?

I suppose. But that’s how the world presents itself to me—as a story to be told—more like a bunch of stories all tangled together, actually.

I could see what he was thinking now: If this is a novelist, why haven’t I heard of him? Or perhaps, more realistically, Since I don’t read novels, maybe he’s putting something over on me. and he said,

"I wonder how you come to know about things like fast cutting—like in movie editing, I mean. Most writers don’t know anything about stuff like that."

My wife is an anthropologist, I said, "and we made a documentary about some Mexican Indians she’s interested in—the Mayos of southern Sonora. And before that I did an experimental film—in sixteen millimeter. I’ve