Chamblee54

This is a repost from 2022. … I had this bright idea. I was going to do a chapter by chapter commentary of Hollywood, by Charles Bukowski. Hollywood has 48 chapters most of them are only a few pages long. This is my kind of book. Jack Keruoac made a single sentence last five pages. Per this source, Keruoac is the only beat that CB never met. “… Neal Cassidy and Ginsberg ( i think ) coaxing Buk out for a joy ride in Hollywood. … Cassidy was a wild man and drove like a racer in death race 2000. He spun the car out near Ivar and Buk went to floor. Apparently he wet his pants. …”
1 – The story starts with Hank Chinaski (Charles Bukowski,) and Sarah, on a mission. (Sarah is Linda Lee Beighle, his wife.) They go to a meeting in a wealthy part of Los Angeles. Hank does not feel comfortable. “We have just landed upon the outpost of death. My soul is puking.” Sarah replied, “Will you stop worrying about your soul.” This sets the tone for what is to follow.
2 – Hank and Sarah meet an obnoxious, drunken Frenchman. Some people are trying to get Hank to write a screenplay for a movie. Barfly eventually did get made. I’ve never seen it, which is not unusual. I don’t see a lot of movies. There is a scene on youtube, where Mickey Roarke picks a fight with a bartender. It is not pleasant to watch, either on video or in real life. I have known degenerates that can’t control their impulses, and they are no fun at all. Fortunately, the dead tree version of Hank Chinaski can be put down whenever necessary, and then revived again when it is convenient.
3 – Chapter 3 is what I read the other day, when I went to Walgreens for my booster shot. It gets quite juicy. Hank is attending a screening of a documentary, about an African tyrant. Barbet Schroeder, whom Hollywood is dedicated to, once directed a movie about Idi Amin. The dictator would kill his opponents, and then dump them in a swamp, where the crocidiles would become impossibly fat. It is not good for the swamp’s ecological balance.
4 – Two of the obnoxious frenchmen are François Racine and Jon Pinchot. It is uncertain who they are stand ins for. François and Jon go to a Las Vegas show starring Tom Jones. François hates it, and rants on and on about how much he hates Tom Jones. I remember Mr. Jones, aka Sir Thomas John Woodward OBE, fondly. Mr. Woodward was on the WTF podcast last year, but that show is now behind a paywall. I wasn’t going to listen to it anyway, just to remember a few good stories.
Tom Jones: “Fast-forward to 1965. My own singing career had taken off, with three hit records and a big-selling album, and I was on my first trip to America. I went to Paramount Studios to talk about recording a song for a movie and someone told me that Elvis was filming on the neighboring sound stage and wanted to say hello.”
“‘Oh, my God! Surely Elvis Presley doesn’t know who I am’. But I walked on the set, where he was sitting in a helicopter, and he sort of waved in my direction. I couldn’t believe he was waving at me, but I waved back, just in case. Then he came over and said he knew every track on my album and he sang one of my songs, With These Hands, all the way through. He said to me, ‘How the hell do you sing like you do?’ And I said, ‘Well, you are to blame because I listened to all your records in the 1950s.” He told me that when he heard me singing What’s New Pussycat? on record, he thought I was black. I thought that was a bit ironic, as I’d thought he was black when I first heard him singing.”
5 – Hank is in a bar, hating it. A man comes up, and says he wants to finance his screenplay. The man just finished a film about Jack Keruoac called Heart Beat. (Those are not the names Hank uses, but it easy to figure out what he means.) The movie-dude tells Hank the title of the Keruoac-flick. Hank hates the title, and won’t talk to the movie-dude after that.
6 – This chapter is a meeting in a hotel room, full of Frenchmen who talk too much. It is much better when Hank tells the story. I have never known anyone named Hank. When I was a kid, the Braves had a player named Hank, who you have heard too much about. One night, during their lame duck season in Milwaukee, the Braves played an exhibition game at the toilet-bowl stadium. After the game, my long suffering dad took me to the bowels of the stadium. You could stand outside the clubhouse, and get autographs as the players left. A couple of times, the door would open, and you could see a naked player. So, Hank Aaron came out, patiently signed a bunch of autographs. He was smoking a cigarette. Joe Torre came out, saw the crowd of people, ducked behind a truck, and took off away from the autograph seekers. Good times.
7 – Hank finally gets to work on the screenplay, when he is interrupted by a phone call. This is counter-productive to the business of writing. The caller is a hip-talking German, who Hank asks for money. Hank tells him a joke. “Whats the difference between a chicken’s asshole and a rabbit’s asshole?” “I don’t know. What’s the difference?” “Ask little dick.” I don’t get it. I think this one is funnier. “Why did the pervert cross the road? He couldn’t get his dick out of the chicken.”
8 – Some slick talking tax finagler calls on Hank, who is very leery of the whole thing.
9 – Hank goes into this real estate office, and is treated as though he were a degenerate. The only appropriate thing to do is go into a bar. The ale house is full of biker types, who recognize Hank and call out to him. Hank is a wino rock star, and insanely uncomfortable. He gets out of APES HAVEN before you can say rehabilitation.
10 – One of the bits of money advice Hank gets is to buy a house. He goes, with Sarah, to this rundown place in the sticks. It is a scene out of a bad movie. Someone spray painted over the bath tub, IF TIM LEARY AIN’T GOD, THEN GOD IS DEAD. Finally, Sarah gets this notion that this is the house where Charles Manson killed somebody. This is too much, even for Hank Chinaski. They leave before they get too drunk to drive home.
When typing the existential exhortation about Tim Leary, I decided not to use the cap lock, but typed it one letter at a time. If I had it to do over again, I would have used cap lock, even though typing in cap lock is the facebook equivalent of saying LOOK AT ME I AM AN IDIOT. I had a co-worker once who typed with one finger. I think it was the index finger on his right hand. When Kyle wanted to type a capital letter, he would turn cap lock on, type the letter, and, turn cap lock off.
11 – Hank brings in the mail. There are two items. One is a fan letter. Someone writes this letter full of vile insults, and then wants Hank to read his poems. Hank reads one and a half, and decides that he has better things to do with his time. The second letter is from a lawyer. It is incorporation papers, the intention being the incorporation, for tax purposes, of Henry Charles Chinaski. Hank reads through the papers, and crosses out the parts he does not like. The corporation can have Hank declared insane, and take all his money away. Eventually, Hank and Sarah open a bottle of wine.
12 – The neighborhood that Hank lives in is going downhill, even to a point where it is worse off than Hank. People from somewhere in Central America are flooding in, and bringing fourth world conditions to third world LA. Finally, Hank gets busy with the house hunting, and finds something to his liking. The note is going to be $789.81. This is where I was in the book, when I had the inspiration to write this falling-off-a-cliff-notes version of H-wood. This is a good place to stop, edit what I have already written, and decide what to do next.
Other episodes of the “Hollywood” series are available. two three four five Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the featured photograph in August 1941. “Mr. Akers, construction worker from Flint, Michigan now working at Ford bomber plant near Ypsilanti. He lives in a tent with two other men at Edgewater Park. Edgewater Park normally closes on Labor Day. This year it will remain open through the winter.”