Daily Archives: September 24, 2009

Okay, here’s the last of our extended riffing on Fat City. From John Huston’s autobiography An Open Book:

I had done bits of films in the United States, but it was a long time since I’d made an entire picture there. Ray Stark was responsible for my reappearance on the American scene with Fat City, a novel by Leonard Gardner. “Fat City is a term jazz musicians used to designate success with a capital “S.” It’s about people who are beaten before they start but who never stop dreaming. Its main characters are two fights: one aging, slightly paunchy, who’s had his moment of glory in the ring who whose next stop is Skid Row, and his younger counterpart who’s headed in the same direction despite the living lesson before his eyes.

We had hope to have Marlon Brando play the part of the older fighter. Ray and I ment him in London. He had read the script and liked it, but refused to be pinned down, saying that he would call us by the end of the week. The time passed, we heard nothing. I despair at chasing actors, so we started looking elsewhere. (Some time later I heard Marlon had injured feelings at having been “passed over.”) The man we found was another actor whose star was rising–Stacy Keach. I had never met him, but when I found that he was making a picture in Spain, I went over and paid him a visit. There was a quality there. I also saw him in a beautiful, sadly neglected little film called The Traveling Executioner. His performance was exceptional, and I knew I was lucky to have him in Fat City.

Most of the other actors–apart from Jeff Bridges, who had a few pictures to his credit, and Susan Tyrell, who’d done some theater–were non-professional. som of the cast came right out of my own past–fighters I’d known in my youth. Others turned up in Stockton itself. I remember particularly one black man we pulled out of the onion fields to try for a part. In the film he was to walk side by side with Stacy, hoeing weeds in a tomato field and telling a long story about the break-up of his marriage. This old fellow came to my apartment and read for me, his eyes glued to the pages of the script. He read as though the words were his very own. I asked him whether he tought he could learn the part.

“I already have,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t read. I was just pretending.” Someone had read the part to him a few times, and he had memorized it.

Then there was an arrogant sixteen-year-old black kid from the local high school. When Muhammad Ali saw him on the screen during a special showing I had for him, he stood up and shouted, “Stop the picture! That’s me up there! Listen to that…that’s me! you hear?” The kid was that good.

We shot most of the picture of Stockton’s Skid Row. It’s now a thing of the past; they’ve wiped it out. I wonder where all the poor devils who inhabited have gone. They have to be somewhere. There were crummy little hotels; gaps between buildings like missing teeth; people–blacks and whites–standing around or sitting on orange crates; little gambling halls where they played for nickels and dimes. Many of the signs were in Chinese because the area had a large Chinese population. The police were very gentle with the derelicts. As long as they stayed within the sharply defined boundaries of the neighborhood, they could sleep in doorways, win bottle in hand; if they wandered out, the police simply shooed them back. They were completely harmless, defeated men.

Fat City had a great reception when it was first shown, at Cannes in 1972. After the screening I walked into an adjoining hall to meet the press, and they gave me a standing ovation. When that happened, i was sure it was going to be a success. But no. Wherever it was shown, it was beautifully reviewed, but audiences didn’t care for it. It’s a fine picture, no question–well conceived, well acted, made with deep love and considerable understanding on the part of everyone involved. I suppose the public simply found it too sad. It has at least one devoted fan: Ray Stark considers it the best picture he has ever produced.

When I was younger I used to day dream about being the good samaritan hero. I’d save an old lady from being hit by a car, or take a bullet for my girlfriend. Then I’d be in the papers and I would be humble. It spoke to my sense of insecurity. I felt that if I could be a hero, if I could prove myself, people would recognize me as a good guy. They would appreciate me.

A spell of Indian Summer hit New York yesterday. This morning, the humidity covered the autumn chill like a heavy wet blanket. The sun was shining. I walked out of my apartment building, a block away to 238th street, and turned right. 238th street is a narrow block that runs downhill. I looked up and saw the fat bearded man that I see every morning on the far end of the block with his three small children waiting for the school bus. Today, he was in the middle of the block, having just walked out of his apartment building.

He walked to the curb and then crossed the street. His kids trailed behind him but didn’t go across the street. The smallest son, maybe five or six years old, was closest behind him. The boy wore a blue yarmulke that covered his head; he was weighed down from behind by his backpack. The boy stopped at the curb and watched his father. I was about thirty or forty feet away, looking downhill at them. I absent-mindedly watched the father and wondered what he was doing on the other side of the street.

The second son, taller, though not by much, than his brother, watched his father too but didn’t stop at the curb.  Out of the corner of my left eye, I saw a car coming down the hill. The boy didn’t stop so I shouted. I don’t remember what I said but I said it loudly enough for the boy to stop dead in his tracks. The car came to a halt too. And everything was quiet. It was like pressing pause on a VCR. It was about to happen and then it didn’t.

Everyone was awake now.

The father, standing on the other side of the street, looked at me and then at his son. “What is the matter with you,” he said in a thick accent that I couldn’t place. “I said to stay there.”

I looked at the driver of the car, a metallic-blue sedan. She was in her forties I guessed. She looked back at me, a flat expression on her face. I looked down and exhaled. I thought of the boy, seeing me tomorrow, and every day after that, mortified at my presence, a reminder of his carelessness. Then again, maybe he’d already forgotten about me.

I apologized to the boy. And then, to the father, “I just wanted to get his attention.” The father said something back but I don’t remember what it was. I looked at the driver again, she turned back ahead and the car rolled away.

She would have hit the boy if I hadn’t said anything. I thought about the anxiety that parents must live with every day and I started to sweat as I walked away. I imagined the impact, the reaction on the father’s face, the blood, screaming. I thought of the boy in rehab learning to walk again, a funeral.

I didn’t feel special. I felt unsure and insignificant. I had a thought to walk back home, wake up my wife and hug her but I kept walking down the hill. I thought about how safe and small my life is and how everything can change in a moment. I didn’t speak but I could feel my voice going away, like water down the drain.

I didn’t feel heroic. I felt like I was going to be sick.

Today’s news is powered by Bruuuuuce! (He turned 60 yesterday):

• Pop goes the Hairston:

Yankees utility man Jerry Hairston Jr. was removed from Wednesday’s 3-2 win at Angel Stadium after feeling a popping sensation in his left wrist and will undergo an MRI examination on Thursday in New York.

Hairston was batting in the seventh inning against right-handed reliever Jason Bulger with New York leading, 3-2, and took a ball from the hurler. He tried a practice swing after the pitch and felt something strange and painful.

“It’s just been bothering me the last three weeks or so,” Hairston said. “It felt really weird. I’ve never had that. I felt something pop and I tried to take another swing and felt kind of a sharp pain. Right now, I’m hoping it’s scar tissue or something I can play through.”

• Will Carroll on Andy Pettitte’s season:

At 37, Pettitte’s been an effective mid-rotation starter . . . but the consistency in his workload over the years is astonishing. Aside from two seasons with arm problems in 2002 and 2004, Pettitte’s always been a workhorse. He’s put up four straight years of 200+ innings, and if he gets 16 more innings this season, he’d have his 11^th season with 200+ IP. At 215 wins, Pettitte’s unlikely to hit the 300-win milestone, but he’s also an interesting case for the Hall of Fame. The Yankees are far enough ahead in the standings that they can do things like give Pettitte a week off to rest up, and given his results last time out, it appears that worked. . . . The age and workload may have worn him down a little, but the Yankees are smart enough to get him the needed rest.

(more…)

So of course I knew things had been bad with the Angels, but I didn’t realize that the Yankees had not won a series in Anaheim since May of 2004. Judging from the hilarious “Yikes, really?” look on Joe Girardi’s face when Kim Jones asked him about this after the game, neither did he. But that streak ended today, and if the Yankees showed last night that they can win at Angel Stadium, today’s 3-2 squeaker showed that they can even do it with Damon, Swisher, A-Rod and Posada tied behind their backs. (Although I would prefer not to see them try it again, okay? Thanks!)

More important than the outcome of today’s game was A.J. Burnett’s solid start. True, he only went five and two thirds innings, but that was largely because it was 95 degrees today in Anaheim and Girardi, as he explained afterwards, wanted to err on the side of caution. Burnett allowed seven hits and three walks,  more than would be ideal, but he also had 11 strikeouts and just two earned runs. Not bad, and for my money far more impressive than his last start against Seattle, because the Angels are an excellent offensive team whereas most of the Mariners could not hit water if they fell out of a canoe.

Scott Kazmir started for the Angels, but since Al Leiter wasn’t in the booth today, Michael Kay was unable to ask him for the 73rd time about that rumor that the Mets traded Kazmir because he switched Leiter’s music in the gym one day without asking. With Swisher and Posada recovering from yesterday’s foul-ball bruises and Damon and A-Rod resting, the Yankees’ lineup was not exactly at its most ferocious; things got even rougher when Jerry Hairston Jr left the game with a wrist injury, resulting in a batting order that included Jose Molina, Shelley Duncan, and Ramiro Pena, along with both Melky Cabrera and Brett Gardner. Nevertheless they scraped three runs together – two on Robinson Cano’s lovely single in the fourth, another when Cano scored on Cabrera’s  subsequent double – and then hung on for dear life.

After Marte, Albaladejo and Coke had all flirted with disaster, Ian Kennedy got the call in the eighth inning, which was a nice moment on a purely human level. Baseball-wise it was a little strange, but I suppose the team needs to find out soon if Kennedy can help them in tense postseason situations or not, and this was probably as good a time as any to find out. Although since Kennedy first hit a batter and walked the bases loaded, then worked his way out of trouble for a scoreless inning, I’m still not sure what the answer is. Nature took its course in the ninth  as Mariano Rivera came in and worked his 42nd (nice) save of the year.

The Yankees are off tomorrow and hopefully will get some rest before this weekend’s series, the season’s last against the Red Sox — or is it? Dun dun dun. Friday night Joba Chamberlain faces Jon Lester, and I’m sure that will go absolutely swimmingly… now please excuse me a moment while I wipe the dripping sarcasm off my keyboard.

Finally, for those of you who are into this sort of thing, I just joined Twitter. My “followers” so far include Cliff, Diane, and about 17 porn spambots, so feel free to join the party.