The Dodgers, Christian Slater, and Me (2)

One thing I noticed at the ballgame.

Before the gates there are big signs listing all the things you're prohibited from bringing in. They include alcohol and weapons and there's a bag search to check for them.

As soon as you're inside, they'll sell you beer and a baseball bat!

The Dodgers, Christian Slater, and Me

On Sunday I went to my first-ever ball game. The Dodgers vs the Chicago Cubs. Christian Slater was the day's celebrity first-ball pitcher, and he'd invited the cast and crew of The Forgotten to attend the game as his guests.

I dithered a bit, I admit... I'm not really a sports event kinda guy. But I'm so glad I went - it made a good break from deadlines and I had a really good time. I still know bugger-all about baseball and didn't even watch that much of the action, but the stadium atmosphere was great. Loads of kids and families and just a big, big buzz. It's like the game is just something to hang it on. Christian had bought VIP seats behind third base for all - we weren't all sitting together but nobody stays in one place for any length of time anyway. After I'd bought my Super Dodger Dog (all beef) I discovered that my ticket included complimentary food in the VIP suite.

I'd set out early thinking that traffic and parking would be a problem but the traffic was light and the parking lot so enormous that I just sailed in ahead of the crowds... though the rows weren't numbered by any system that I could make out, so I made myself a map as I went to be sure I'd be able to find the car again. Amongst all the stuff they put on the big TV before the game, they played trailers for the show.

The VIP boxes were right down at ground level and out in the brutal sunshine (I'd remembered to slap on the sunblock before I set out), so when I felt I'd endured being a VIP for long enough I went up to the middle of the tier to watch from the back in the shade, and from there on bumped into various co-workers including all our cast. I was sitting having a beer and catching up on stuff with with one of our executive producers, and I swear Adam Baldwin walked past.

The Dodgers lost the game. But they'd beaten the Cubs in the other games in the series during the week, so they still came out the overall winners. I left before the end to get out ahead of the traffic, and again got away with no problems. Drove back along Sunset Boulevard and through Beverly Hills. Flopped on the bed for an hour to sleep off the sun and the super dodger dog and to reset the brain for some work.

And hey. I'm a Dodgers fan now. I've got a hat to prove it.

The Autry

I got to the Autry National Center of the American West in Griffith Park yesterday - looked as if there might not be much to it at first but it was good fun. Like a pocket version of the Cody museum in Wyoming. Even has a Buffalo Bill section, and a series of rooms dedicated to early western movies with an emphasis on B-movie cowboys. There was a corner of a case with Ken Maynard memorabilia - my dad's childhood hero. Felt like coming full circle.

One of the galleries houses an exhibition called Sparkle and Twang, a collection of Country Music memorabilia accumulated by Marty Stuart throughtout his career. Not a name I was familiar with. He started as a teenaged mandolin player with Lester Flatt's band (Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs played The Beverly Hillbillies theme and on the Bonnie and Clyde soundtrack) and played backing for Johnny Cash before he went solo. I wasn't expecting much but the collection's great - loads of gaudy and ludicrous stage clothes worn by various big names, handwritten lyrics by Hank Williams, Cash's first 'man in black' suit and an explanation of how he landed on the style, and various videos of just the right length.

It'll be worth another visit. I wanted to go in the bookshop but I was in the museum right up until closing time. Only just managed to see everything. The entrance to the LA Zoo is directly opposite.

Mystery and Imagination

In the comments section, Good Dog wrote:

...if you’re stuck for something to do next weekend, the Mystery & Imagination Bookshop at 238 N. Brand Blvd in Glendale is having a signing/celebration for Ray Bradbury’s 89th Birthday on Saturday 22nd, August starting at 1:00pm.

When I last stopped by (some years back) they were still in the tiny premises around the corner on East Broadway so I don’t know what the new location – a few blocks down from where Warner Bros Feature Animation used to be - is like. More space for a start, obviously. Still, the owners are really great people. They were certainly happy when I bought a fine hb copy of Harlan’s Strange Wine for $75.

The heads-up info is much appreciated. As it happens I found the M&I on my very first night in LA, which confirms my belief in some kind of supernatural karma-driven radar - Steve Jones had mentioned it to me in an email but I wasn't specifically looking for it, just doing that thing where you've landed and you're tired and wired at the same time, so you go exploring.

My motel was right by the Americana Mall, which has sprung up complete in the past couple of years and isn't a mall in the usual sense - that function's served by the enormous Galleria Mall that all but adjoins it. The Americana is a bizarre open-air retro small-town square, style of Disney, feel of Futurama, with performing fountains and piped Tom Jones and Dean Martin from speakers hidden in the street furniture. Some Angelenos seem to hate it but for me... well, I clearly have debased tastes because I thouight it was fun, not least because of the way that its enormous Barnes & Noble - about six strides from my motel - stayed open until 11pm.

The new M&I premises are maybe a five-minute wander up the street, with stuff to look at along the way. I can't say what the area was like before, but my impression is that North Brand has been given a boost by the development... maybe not a huge boost but it's created that fringe of cheaper-renting premises where the more interesting businesses are always found. And though, for some reason, town planners never get this, it's always those businesses - the stamp shops, the second-hand bookshops, the woman who makes her own jewellery, the bloke who fixes old watches - that make a place a destination.

The frontage looks like something out of a Bradbury or a Wells story. Once you're inside, the stock goes way back deep into the building and there's an upstairs room for readings and talks. And I got recognised! They asked me to add to their signature wall in the stairwell. I found a space and wrote big. I could barely get my ego out through the door afterwards.

I'm reaching a point now where the town feels like it's opening up to me, and instead of seeking out tourist high-spots I'm beginning to find those quirky little pleasures that don't need to feel like a 'day out'. They just call for an hour here and there.

So this afternoon I'm heading for the long flight of steps in Silverlake, up which Laurel and Hardy made repeated attempts to lug a piano in The Music Box. Not only are the steps still there, but some devotee with time on his hands has scrutinised the footage and established from cracks in the concrete that they're still the originals. Gonna walk 'em all, whistling and saying a silent thanks for hours of childhood pleasure.

And speaking of childhood pleasures, and while we're under the Mystery and Imagination banner... Network DVD have released all the surviving episodes of the '60s series of that name. It set an unmatched standard for television treatment of the supernatural and macabre.

This highly acclaimed anthology series presented a selection of Gothic tales by major 19th century writers. Among the adapted works featured in this collection are Robert Louis Stevenson’s nihilistic The Suicide Club, Sheridan le Fanu’s Uncle Silas, Bram Stoker’s classic Dracula and a commendably faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. A distinguished cast includes Ian Holm (Chariots of Fire), Denholm Elliot (Indiana Jones), Patrick Mower (Callan) and Freddie Jones (The Elephant Man), who gives an astonishing performance as the demented barber, Sweeney Todd.

While checking their website for the link I noticed that in September Network will be releasing the Ted Willis-created Sergeant Cork, which I remember as a hugely atmospheric Victorian procedural.

Laurel and Hardy on Bob Monkhouse's Mad Movies, Sergeant Cork, Mystery and Imagination, The Avengers... my God. Is that what ITV Saturday nights used to be like?

UPDATE:

Well, I found it. I parked on Sunset Boulevard, just across from what appeared to be a strip club, a one-story windowless building with no name but a neon skunk for a sign. In the dark and with the sign lit, the skunk's tail would be animated and would flicker back and forth. Pepe le Phew, perhaps? I have no idea.

The stairway begins about a hundred yards or so from Sunset. Where once it ran up a largely open hillside, it's now lttle more than a narrow alley with properties right up against it on either side. First thing I saw was a toilet bowl which had been dumped, along with a pile of ruined old suitcases, just behind where the nursemaid is standing in the picture.

But f*** it. They're the Music Box stairs! A blue civic signpost tells you so, top and bottom, and there's a small plaque let into the lowermost step honouring L&H.

I climbed to the top. The stairs there end at a street of houses that seem to have been built on shifting ground -- the sidewalks are buckling, the driveways are sagging, and perimeter walls are bursting outward under pressure from tree roots.

Of course, when I got up there I had that dorkish feeling. Because there was nothing for it but to check out the view and then turn around and go back down.

At which point I heard it - someone, no more than two or three houses away from the top of the steps - was practising the piano.

Sweet.

I didn't take any shots. But I did find this YouTube video made by someone else.

New Work, and Some Old Places

I'm thinking of going to the Gene Autry Western museum in Griffith Park this weekend. See if there's anything that helps my ideas for the new book.

(That's the new new book; the new book, a big historical in the same vein as The Kingdom of Bones and from the same Random House imprint, is written and wrapped and I'll have a confirmed title and a publication date to give you soon)

I picked up Richard Alleman's Hollywood: The Movie Lovers' Guide earlier this week. Loads of historic Hollywood sites and addresses with the history behind each - not really for your average tourist, who probably doesn't give a crap about where DW Griffiths' Intolerance set once stood, or the house where George 'Superman' Reeves shot himself (not far from where I'm living, it seems), but engrossing for some of us. Apparently the Bob's Big Boy Restaurant that I pass every day on my way to the studio is quite historic. As these things go.

And there's a closed apartment above the carousel on Santa Monica pier that was opened up and rented out to filmmakers in the 1960s, where Curtis Harrington shot NIGHT TIDE - a little B&W indie horror movie that no one's heard of and which took me years to track down, until Stephen Laws steered me to a copy. Dennis Hopper's first lead role and a story about an off-duty sailor who falls for a sideshow performer who may or may not be a real mermaid... if you know The Boat House, you'll know why I was drawn to it.

PS Publishing Summer Sale

Pete Crowther is currently applying a walloping 60% discount to almost all of his back catalogue titles, which means that the hardcover editions of White Bizango and Out of his Mind can be had for ten quid (or sixteen dollars) each.

The indie presses often have to price their titles on the high side to reflect their high setup-to-volume costs, so this represents a really good deal.

The link for White Bizango is here.

That for Out of his Mind - winner of the BFS Award for best short story collection - can be found here.

Both books have covers by the amazing Chris Moore and Out of his Mind has an introduction by the great Brian Clemens. The White Bizango introduction is by the awesome Joe R Lansdale. According to the PS website, remaining stocks on each title are low - between 11 and 20 copies of each. Once they're gone, that's it.

Go here for the PS Publishing home page.

Go on. Go on.

Callan

Blog follower dvikib asked this question in the comments to Rockford Redux, and I thought it worth giving some prominence because it's another opportunity to direct attention to one of the best TV series the UK ever produced:

"I envy you that you were able to see the TV version of Callan. Amazon US recently added Callan: Set 1 (1970) for US DVD players. It's actually the 3rd season April-June 1970. Do you think a yankee would be able to follow the episodes without having seen seasons 1 or 2? I'm not concerned about accents or British slang (which I love) but sometimes it's hard to jump into the middle of a long running series. I realize the film quality might not be the best but I would love to see that character. Any thoughts would be much appreciated!"

When you say "the TV version" I'm inferring from your choice of words that you've maybe seen Callan: the Movie, which is the theatrical feature version of A Magnum for Schneider, which was the TV play from which the Callan series sprang... if you have then the boxed set will make perfect sense, and if you haven't I reckon you'll probably be ok with the boxed set anyway. They're pretty much standalone stories, and their 'world' is fairly self-explanatory.

And if you haven't seen the movie... well, there you go. One for your wish list.

The picture quality of the boxed set is that of old colour videotape -- hardly feature quality, but way better than the low-grade 16mm telerecordings that survive of the earlier series.

I have to say that the image at the top of this post is hardly representative of the show's gritty, downbeat tone, which is far closer to that of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold than to Bond. In fact, if you know the show at all, it's kinda hilarious.

Rockford Redux

So here I am, midway through my boxed set of The Rockford Files season two, when I see the news today that David Shore, creator and showrunner of House, is lining up a revival of the show.

It's a task both enviable and unenviable - Rockford is probably the best show of its kind, but it'll be a tough challenge to match it. Jim Rockford was a Philip Marlowe who'd survived the Summer of Love with his old-fashioned principles intact. The format was deceptively simple. Tone was everything, and the show was one of those where its magic was an alchemical product of stylish, witty screenwriting and charismatic lead.

One of the things I've come to realise is there's an underlying principle common to many a long-running show, which is "the world is scary but your dad's here."

I noticed it first in The Equaliser, because I couldn't make out why the show worked; the hero wasn't dashing, nor was he intimidating, but when he showed up you knew everything was going to be OK. Then I started noticing how many shows depended on the dad principle, or variants of it. Grissom's a dad figure, Mac of CSI: NY is a dad figure. All the way back to James Arness in Gunsmoke and Lorne Green in Bonanza (literally), Mark Harmon in NCIS. Our own Doctor Hood.

Jim Rockford was more your big brother, but same principle... with him on the case, you could have faith in the outcome. Columbo and The Mentalist are your funny uncles. It seems to be the key to a strong format that never burns out whereas a heavily-engineered, Pushing Daisies kind of format... doesn't matter how much you love it at first, after a while you're going to tire.

You Don't Say...

"But as he came to the door of the salubrious squat close to Guildford dressed as Delores in a blonde wig, sheer black tights, a leopard skin skirt and a cropped top with prosthetic breasts, before explaining that the world as it is known will end on 23 December 2012, it is perhaps clear why some of his former friends are concerned that he has suffered some form of mental collapse."

David Shayler, MI5 whistleblower, is now Jesus in a frock. Read all about it here!

Travelling in Time

I'm seeing trailers for the new movie The Time Traveller's Wife (as we'd spell it in the UK), and they've reminded me that a while back I did some thinking around the uses of time travel in fiction and on the screen. And what's a blog for, if not to share?

The most obvious form is the 'paradox romp' like Back to the Future, where something in the past gets changed, and repairs have to be made to safeguard the present as we know it. There's a '70s Czech comedy called Tomorrow I shall Wake Up and Scald Myself with Tea that involves defeated Nazis trying to go back and give the H-bomb to Hitler. The Terminator is one of these, inverting the concept so that the aim is to prevent an unpleasant future rather than preserve the timeline. NBC's Journeyman featured the same kind of action on a weekly basis, with Kevin McKidd going back to change individual lives for the better. Which is laudable but not half as much fun as killer robots. In Harlan Ellison's Star Trek episode City on the Edge of Forever, Kirk has to watch Joan Collins get hit by a car knowing that if he saves her, Hitler gets atomic weapons (again).

After that comes the 'story of ironic fulfilment', where someone travels back in time and becomes an essential part of history, for example by unintentionally starting the Great Fire of London. An extreme case here would be Michael Moorcock's Behold the Man, where the time traveller goes back to AD 28 hoping to meet the historical Jesus, only to end up taking on the role and being crucified. (In Garry Kilworth's Let's Go to Golgotha, time-tourists at the crucifixion are instructed not to change history and to join in the call for the release of Barrabas instead of Jesus; the protagonist realises that the baying crowd is comprised entirely of time tourists, and no-one from the actual era.)

Perhaps the most subtle riff on this theme is Chris Marker’s La Jetee, a French arthouse short told entirely in still images, in which a man is sent back from the future using his most powerful childhood memory as the means of focusing for his journey. The memory is that of seeing a man shot and killed at Orly airport moments after parting from his lover. Without realising it, he was witnessing his own death. The short was the basis for Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys. Often the most memorable thing about these tales is the resonance of their conclusions.

The simplest form of time travel narrative is the 'fish out of water' story where paradox and consequentiality don't much matter, and the pleasure is in a) having a present-day protagonist experiencing a past or future landscape, or b) seeing someone from another era experiencing ours. Life on Mars and Somewhere in Time fall into this category but the granddaddy would probably be A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur. Karl Alexander's Time After Time has H G Wells pursuing Jack the Ripper through present-day San Francisco.

And there are time travel stories that don’t involve actual time travel but achieve man-out-of-time scenarios by other means. In the Sixties the BBC made Adam Adamant Lives! In which an Edwardian adventurer frozen in 1902 was thawed out in Sixties swinging London. While being dismayed by just about every modern advance he encountered, he was also a walking 60s style icon. It was cheaply and sometimes quite shabbily made (an hour of TV, rehearsed for a week and then shot in 2 hours of studio time), but could be tremendous fun. It inspired/was ripped off liberally by Austin Powers to an extent that’s probably nuked its chances of ever being revived or remade. In Richard Ben Sapir's The Far Arena, a Roman gladiator is thawed out of a glacier and struggles to adapt to the modern world. It's a long novel with a promising concept in which not very much happens. The focus is on the detailed procedure of discovery, revival and adjustment. Very short on mayhem. The TV series New Amsterdam had its main character travel in time by living for 400 years, as in Highlander.

Probably the most robust way of doing a weekly time travel series for TV is to have a big machine, a team, and an agenda. Or a fault in the machine that repeatedly drops the main cast into new and dangerous situations. Time Tunnel immediately springs to mind, where the two leads bounce around time like a pinball table, every week showing up on the eve of some well-known historical event, while the 'control team' anchored in the present day mostly watch helplessly and occasionally manage to supply a warning or some vital information. In the UK we have our own Doctor Who, where the hero makes random jumps through time and space and happens upon a local adventure wherever he shows up. Originally this was because his time machine was busted and he’s hopping around trying to get home. In his current incarnation he’s the ultimate tourist, so far from his home that his home’s no longer there. Doctor Who mixes sf and historical episodes; my memory from when I worked on it is that the historical episodes were fewest in number but always drew the higher ratings. Quantum Leap, slated for a remake, had an everyman hero, again with no control over where he'd show up next. Sliders involved parallel worlds rather than time travel but it was pretty much the same kind of thing.

I understand that the late Michael Crichton's Timeline pretty much follows the machine/team/agenda model, although I haven't read the book or seen the movie. In series terms I can't help feeling that the Stargate franchise may have colonised the setup.

If the big machine isn't broken, then the key lies in the agenda. Jack Finney's Time and Again sends the hero back with a mystery to solve. But a weekly non-mythology series needs a weekly mystery. I've heard of – but never seen – a UPN show called Seven Days in which, after any national disaster, an agent is sent back in time (using Roswell technology) and has seven days to avert it. It's a neat idea.

My own modest contribution to the genre is the short story My Repeater (F&SF, Jan 2001), set in a near-future where time travel is available to all but used only by an obsessive few who waste their entire lives returning to the same moment in repeated attempts to perfect it.

At Home on the Range

'Tis truly weird. I've been here about three weeks now and it feels like longer... kind of like on a ship when home drops below the horizon and you can't see it anymore, you have to imagine it instead. Which is dumb, I know, after only three weeks... but in my defence, it has been a pretty intense three weeks. I had to hit the ground running in the job, get oriented, and look for somewhere to live in a place where I knew zilch about the areas, the roads, distances, the neighbourhoods...

I did a lot of online research in the evenings (Craigslist and different rental agencies) and then at the weekend did a big Satnav-guided drive-around, setting out from the studio gates and making the journey out to a few places that had caught my eye. Most sank my spirits. There was one Hollywood Hills place that looked great in description and pictures but which, when I got there, was right next to the bins for the car park of the Hollywood Bowl. I had to email the owner and graciously extricate myself from a viewing.

But the next day I got a response from an ad for a 'guest house' in Beverly Glen, Bel Air, actually a suite of rooms comprising the entire lower floor of a canyon home. The owners had just bought the place and hadn't even moved in themselves yet, and in two days were going off to Italy. So for the past fortnight I've had the place to myself. I won't get any internet or cable TV until they get back, so I've bought myself a small TV and a boxed set of The Rockford Files to watch.

(Season Two. For some reason it includes the feature-length pilot, which the Season One set doesn't. And if the Amazon reviews are any guide, the Season One set also has technical issues)

Here's something else that felt weird...today's walk across the lot took me past the frontage of the movie theatre where they shot the ending of Subway. It's a set but it's also a usable cinema for screenings and stuff. On the marquee it said WARNER BROS WELCOMES BACK TY HARDIN, BRONCO 1958-62.

I have no idea where on the lot Hardin was or whether he was working or visiting or what, but... I can remember the theme song for that show from when I was about five years old. And my office is pretty much on the spot where they made it. And Maverick, and Cheyenne, and...

I need to get more professional. This geeky wonder stuff's supposed to have worn off years ago, I'm sure.

Family Ties (2)

Well, there was an upside to the delay in getting my visa.

It meant that I was in London for long enough to catch my daughter's grad show at the Shepherd's Bush Empire - and on Father's Day, too.

It was a great gig with lots of talent all round, and seriously well-attended. I stood behind Hank Marvin in the line outside. Here's a shot of Ellen in an Aerosmith medley. Clearly not enjoying herself at all.

It was loud and full of energy and it got the balcony on their feet. The debris on the stage is the remains of a ukelele, smashed a few seconds before by the guitarist.

Now that's Rock and Roll.