Fred Wemyss

Here's a review I posted on IMDB yesterday of the 1970 movie GIMME SHELTER, which documents the Stones concert at Altamont:

I saw this movie in its first run in 1970. I was ten years old. I'll rent the DVD someday, but I think I can comment on the impression it made on me then. I remember being intrigued when Mick Jagger is in the editing room being shown footage of the stabbing. What stayed in my brain was that this person (Mick Jagger) was just as horrified by what happened at his concert as anybody else. As a kid, I equated celebrities with authorities, and seeing Jagger's expression of astonishment as he watched the footage was, as it were, an eye-opening experience. I went with two friends who were about eleven. When the mother of one of them picked us up afterwards (this being an era when an adult wouldn't have a second thought about leaving a group of children at a suburban movie theatre for a few hours) my friends described the movie in detail. They gave her minute details about the chaos, the murder and the ugliness. When I piped in to say I liked the part with the naked girls the car got quiet. My friends looked at me as if I'd stabbed the audience-member myself. Even at eleven years old, they got the message and knew the talking points. I was still in my Woodstock mindset. They were already children of Altamont. At the time I didn't much like the music. I'd still rather hear Gram Parsons sing "Wild Horses" than the Stones, even though they wrote it. I'm going to rent this and look for ol' Gram Parsons. He's listed in the credits.

Lisa's in the house! She checked out my webpage recently. She told me today at work. Thanks for saying my site is good. I'll try to maintain quality!

TIME TO PARSE PARSONS. I've been listening to lots of Gram Parsons today. Here's a lyric by him and (possibly) Chris Hillman. I say possibly, because when it comes to songs credited to Parsons and Hillman I don't know who wrote the words and who wrote the music or if they both wrote the words and music. This is hard enough to do with Lennon and McCartney and I know their stuff better than I should. Here's a lyric which lays out the Christian grounding of the apocalyptic song SIN CITY:

A friend came around,
Tried to clean up this town.
His ideas made some people mad.
He trusted his crowd,
So he spoke right out loud,
And they lost the best friend they had.

I have to do this in the next ten minutes because Bill Maher's coming on, so, very quickly, here's my analysis of this lyric:

"A friend came around" refers to Jesus, who is often called a "friend" in song. (One such song is an old church song called "What a Friend We Have in Jesus.") "Tried to clean up this town" refers to Jesus's efforts to persuade people to do good. "His ideas made some people mad." Jesus enraged the religious authorities in his day. "He trusted his crowd." Jesus trusted the Apostles (his crowd) to spread his word. He also trusted that the their selfishness would help lead to his crucifixion, which would, in its turn, save sinners. "So he spoke right out loud." Speak out loud he did, and he knew this would cause the authorities to destroy him. "And they lost the best friend they had." "They" being everybody on earth, the authorities, the believers, the Apostles, the non-believers and people who had never heard of him or what he had to say. He was lost and rose again.

I have no idea if Gram Parsons believed in Jesus, but he certainly sang a very sincere version of "I Like The Christian Life." I think he wanted to bridge gaps. The Byrds recorded over the vocal he'd done for that and sang it in a snarkier way, but Parsons's vocal, which has been restored and can be found on a bonus track from the Byrds's SWEETHEART OF THE RODEO, is sweet. He died at 27, a heroin addict. From pain, much art.

One day, God was walking on the beach. It was early in the morning and he didn't see many people. The waves lapped his feet. Looking left, he admired the seamless horizon and the dipping of the gulls. Then, straight ahead, he saw a man in a backwards baseball cap and T-shirt, but no pants. God didn't say anything as he passed. "Pants MIGHT have covered that man's state of semi-arousal," thought God. He continued walking. He looked to his right and felt inspired by the cutting-edge architecture.

"Glass and blonde wood do match the seashore," thought God. He saw two men with baggy bathing suits, sunglasses, striped T-shirts and flip-flops. They were walking a pair of Corgis.

"That's nice," thought God. He noticed a swimming pool by one of the houses and heard laughter amid the splashing. Glasses tinkled.

"It's early for them to be drinking," he thought. He heard cheering in the distance, bellows of laughter and a chorus of voices saying "Awwwww!"

"Volleyball," thought God. The scent of sun lotion wafted his way as he passed. "Each of them naked," thought God. "Flaccid, however, from what I see. Nothing untoward." He decided to cross the ocean.

All was well over the waters of the deep and by the time he reached Chelsea God was feeling refreshed. He saw the happy faces of the tourists on the London Eye and thought of humming "Rule, Brittania."

It was getting dark. He stepped into a pub.

A football match was on a TV screen above the bar. Behind the bar, a man in a team T-shirt was hitting a woman across the face with the backs of his hands. He hit her right cheek with his left hand and her left cheek with his right. The woman gurgled sobbingly.

"You like that, do you, girl?" said the man. "You like that?"

God saw a little boy in the corner who was moving his eyes from the match to the couple and back again.

God opened the door and walked out. He got on a double-decker bus which let him off at the Thames. He splashed his feet, made his way toward the entrance to the ocean and walked back to Fire Island.

In the little woods between the hot spots he saw a T-shirt draped over a branch, a bathing suit over another and heard and saw two men, one bent over the other. "No love in the voices," thought God. He jumped into the air, out of the little woods and landed about twenty miles north. He went into the window of a house and watched a man typing on a computer. "Why don't you write about my vengeance?" he wanted to say. "Why don't you write about the floods I send, the wars and the pestilence?"

The writer turned and looked at God. "I don't think God works that way," said the writer aloud to himself.

God went back to that summer, ten years before, when the writer sat in the sand at the Fire Island Pines. The naked writer's member pointed at the member of another naked person across from him. God had observed and had thought "This is reckless!" As the two men left to get on the Ferry together, a man began shouting at the other naked men.

"I'm here with my kids!" he shouted. "I'm here with my kids! My kids saw!"

God thought about the angry man and the men denied acceptance and the little witnesses among the adults. He jumped forward into the future and stood again next to the writer.

The writer looked at his computer and thought about the man's kids. "I hope to God they didn't see me," he wrote.

God didn't tell him what he thought.

In second grade, he dreamed that a hangman's noose descended from an airplane hovering above the playground at recess. The noose was made of copper wire. The other kids had been cheering, but the noise of the plane took over and everybody looked up. When the noose came down it was just in front of his face. The only sound was the engine of the plane and the increasingly loud beating of a ladle on a cafeteria table as the lunch monitor shouted "Quiet!" over and over.

The day before, there'd been an assembly in the gym. A classmate of his, David Nicholls, had won the contest for best paper written about the assassination. His own paper hadn't won, much to his own surprise, because the teacher always said his stories were good. He didn't think what he'd written was good. It was called "The Sadness of Senator Kennedy," and he hadn't heard of him until the shooting happened. The paper which the teacher picked was called "Murder," and at the assembly, David Nicholls's eyes amazed him as he read. "Murder!" David Nicholls read. His eyes were beams of blinding fury.

He'd been surprised when his mother had told him Robert Kennedy was the brother of President Kennedy. "So two brothers from the same family got shot?" he said.

He was pretty sure David Nicholls had never heard of Senator Robert Kennedy before, either, but he knew that David Nicholls was cognizant of good and bad and knew that adults could do unforgivable things. "Murder!"

"Quiet!" the cafeteria lady shouted in his dream the next night, when all the children stood still, and the flag was half-mast and a noose was lowered over his head. "Quiet! Quiet!"

When he was four, he saw a Charlie Chaplin movie at the Thalia and asked his mother, "Will that man be shot?" He always thought famous people would be shot. When he was seven, he began answering the phone at home and when he was eight he picked up the phone and the neighbor said, "Fred, tell your mother and father to put on THE TODAY SHOW. Robert Kennedy's been shot."

He loved to turn on the TV, so he put it on first and saw the moaning man whose head was moving right and left and heard someone saying "Back the cameras up, back the cameras up." He went up to his parents' room and told them Mrs. Vaivoda had called and that she said "Robert Kennedy" had just been shot.

But David Nicholls wrote the best paper.
The assembly was going to be outside, but there was rain, so it was in the gym. But the dream had all the same people where they would have been if they'd been outside. It was quiet out in the open, with the noose hanging in the air and the plane waiting in a fleecy cloud.

"Quiet!" shouted the cafeteria lady, banging her spoon. The writer of the losing paper looked up and saw the means of his own execution.

The next year an indelible "69" was chalked on the wall, which everybody always saw at recess.

I Announce A Contest:

If there are any readers of this little blog, and of http://fredwemyss.livejournal.com, they are hereby invited to read the item below, which is the beginning of a story I'm writing, and to put their interpretations in the comment field. On top of this, they can tell me where they THINK it's leading.

Contestants are encouraged to be individualistic. These questions, which may be disregarded with no pain to myself, may be helpful in formulating answers:

Who is who in the story?
Is it confusing?
If so, does the author seem to be TRYING to confuse the reader?
Or, conversely, does the author seem to be confused himself? That is, is it true that he has nothing up his sleeve?

Winners will see that I avoid their ideas completely, so as not to plagiarize. They also win my thanks!

Please bear in mind that I can't indent on either blog. New paragraphs will be preceded by a space. A new section will be represented by two spaces.

Here's the beginning of the story:

Big Tragedy

by

Frederick Wemyss

The world, as seen through teardrops, begins to resemble an impressionist painting. The yellow, green and brown of a park become the trembling, final vision of a dying artist. There he is, prone, the brush rolling away from his hand, his easel falling forward. His painting is part of the garden now.


"Oh, that nut job?," said Bendenberg. "When?"

"Sunday," said the woman at the other end.

"What of?" Bendenberg asked.

"Well, natural causes I guess. They found him on the ground."

"Where?"

"Kretzer Park."

"Was this nighttime?"

"No, this was about three in the afternoon."

"They just found him?"

"Isn't that weird?"

"There are so many people there on a Sunday."

"I know."

"Well," said Bendenberg. "Thanks for letting me know."

"You're welcome."

"Did he have any family?"

"We all do."

"That means no."

"Bye, Tom."

"Bye, Myrtle."

Bendenberg pressed the "End" button and snapped the little cell phone shut. He opened his office door and lifted the lid of the metal box with the number 27 on it. He saw an envelope with the Bigco logo, a postcard from the dentist depicting a giant, smiling molar, a letter from a credit card company he didn't use and a flyer from the Kretzer Park Museum. He went back inside and read the flyer. There was a number on it.

He snapped the cell phone open again.

I just ordered the DVD of NIGHTMARE ALLEY from the store of my employ. It came to my attention when I was watching the Biography Channel's millionth rerun of its life of Tyrone Power. I'd heard of the movie but had forgotten a mental note I'd once made to myself to get hold of it. The clip from it showed our star emoting to his core and I realized I had to get the movie as soon as possible. Zanuck didn't like the fact that this movie, which Power had lobbied to make, shows him lsing his good looks. Even though the point of the movie was that the main character was falling apart, Zanuck felt the movie audience would stop going to Tyrone Power movies because he was ugly at the end of one of his movies. Zanuck released the movie to as few theatres as he could and let it play for as minimal a run as possible. Zanuck probably resented being pushed by one of his own employees. Edmund Goulding directed it. It was 1946 or so. Goulding's massive hit, GRAND HOTEL, had been made about fourteen years earlier. Hollywood hates artistic movies, actors who become artistic and artists who decline. Zanuck, personifying Hollywood, squashed the movie. Tyrone Power went back to making second-rate swashbucklers, really did lose his looks and died about twelve years later at the age of 46. He'd been a huge star since the age of 23, but by the time he died in 1958, he might as well have been a Civil War vet. He seemed ancient. He was, in fact a vet. He was in some of the fiercest battles of World War Two, in the Pacific. A Pretty Boy made of steel, Tyrone Power had enlisted in the Marines. When he got back from the war he tried to make a movie of substance. That NIGHTMARE ALLEY was made at all is a definite sign of his strength. But Hollywood sapped something vital from Tyrone Power. The country owed some of its freedom to his actions in the Pacific. But he had a fatal heart attack filming one of those sword fights. Poor old George Sanders was the other actor doing take after take in the terrible heat that day. Poor old George Sanders, who killed himself six years later, leaving a note which said, "I leave you to your cesspools." Ah! Hollywood is glorious in its misery. And Tyrone Power fled it briefly, to join the anonymous soldiers whose sisters, girlfriends and mothers would much rather have seen him from a balcony in flickering sumptuousness, in love with every adoring pair of eyes.

Hi, this is Del Whitsun, and I directed LADIES, PLEASE!

And I'm Teilhard De Har Donn, who played Saccharine. Oh, oh! Snarl's Gate Films! Del, tell us how Snarl's Gate got involved in this.

Hobleigh Hummerbun saw my short at Moondown. He mentioned it to Tracy Skidaddle, who worked with my Mom on SIX MAIDS ON A MAIDENHEAD --

Your Mom was in that? Which one was -- ? Was she the one who kissed the dust bunny?

That was Sheila Shelaylah.

You mean from I FATHERED YOUR FORBEARS?

Yeah.

That was my baby sister's favorite show!

No kidding?

So your Mom worked with the neighbor from I FATHERED YOUR FORBEARS?

Yes, and Hobleigh had contacted Mom years before after she did SIX MAIDS and he almost signed her onto WINGS OF WOMBATS, but they just became air-kiss acquaintances and he called her after Moondown. They started talking about which was Mom's favorite film and she said she'd just seen some of my shorts --

I've only seen the top part.

Teilhard! So, later, Tracy Skidaddle mentioned my short.

Which short?

The one that won.

Which one won one what?

PRINT THE LEGEND won best short.

Okay? I haven't heard of it.

Well, what were you? Thirteen?

I was if it was 2000?

Okay, so it was 2001. You were thirteen for part of that, unless you were born on January 1st.

I was born on Bastille Day.

I don't know when that was.

It was before either of us was born.

So was the 4th of July.

Yes, originally. Oh! It's the Frisbee scene! I hated that dog!

Well that was Tina's dog.

Tina? Who? Tina Who?

Tina of key grip fame.

The hound was her dog?

Yes. We had to put tangerine fruit roll on the part of the Frisbee with the lettering so "Wham-O" wouldn't show.

Wham what?

We didn't want Wham-O to sue.

Who the fuck is Wham-O?

Wham-O ran Enron in the sixties...WHEN THIS TAKES PLACE!

So the dog was such a pain in the nads because you couldn't get it to bite the right side of the Frisbee?

Corbett Smills! What a stroke of luck.

Corbett liked that dog, didn't he?

He let him hump his leg.

That's disgusting. You know why I hated that dog? Do you know what it was about that dog I despised?

Corbett inhabited the Park Ranger part, I just want to say.

No pigmentation in the irises. Like a damn Wegman dog. A normal person doesn't trust those animals.

I wanted a Golden Retriever but we'd have had to sign a release and we were running out of light. Tina had Randy in the van.

Did she sign a release at some point?

She still hasn't. Don't tell Snarl's Gate! Oh! The End.

We've been talking all this time? Did we illuminate?

Well, Teilhard, it's been a pleasure. What's next for you?

Looping.

Anything else?

Just my thanks. Del's an auteur, movie fans.

Want to see my Director's cut?

Action!

Oprah's patented giant "O" has been scoured off the cover of James Frey's A MILLION LITTLE PIECES. Frey's apology to the retired crackheads who've never before cracked open a memoir has been included, along with, I think, an expression of contrition from Nan A. Talese.
Every memoir I've flipped through in the last decade has included a disclaimer on the copyright page to the effect that names have been changed, composite characters put forth and events altered. I noticed a week or so before the "scandal" broke that there was no disclaimer in Frey's book.
THAT'S the scandal. The publisher didn't cover the ass of the author. Oprah Winfrey would have been unable to stage Frey's show trial if the standard disclaimer had been present.
Oprah Winfrey has not improved the reading habits of the American people. She's merely updated the concept of the prestigious bookshelf. Everybody's onto the fact that a wall of leatherbound editions is a sign of the owner's desire to climb the social ladder. A paperback boxed set of Faulkner does the trick these days. If 3 per cent of the Oprah fans who bought that last summer got through 3 per cent of "Barn Burning," I'll still believe they couldn't understand what they were reading.
Oprah reminds me of a teacher who turns on the kid who suddenly shows ambition. She hasn't helped any writer one bit.
I used to say Jonathan Franzen, in pooh-poohing THE CORRECTION's induction into Oprah's Book Club, had become the prig he always pretended to be. But now I see that he did what an artist must do, which is to distance himself from the great promoter of fad diets, simplistic psychology and televised punishment.