CURIOUS SURVIVALS
Telegraphists developed great skill in transmission of Morse code, but when voice transmission superseded Morse their skill was useless. Of use to them, in the transition period, however, was their proximity to the new technology.
The telegraphist’s skill was manipulation and interpretation of one simple key—in effect, an on-off switch; but Radio and Voice required understanding and skill in electronics.
Telegraphist lore survived in operator lingo, 23 = I have to go, enshrined as 23 skidoo, of the twenties, meaning get lost. Eighty-six = no further, in bar lingo, no more drinks; SOS, the universal signal for “I require help,” this last the final echo of the telegraphists.
Why this and not that?
The whole damn thing is a mystery and, like them all, gets lost in a future that, in addition to being ignorant of the facts, couldn’t care less—right around the bend, the demise not only of knowledge of the telegraphists but of the awareness of their lore in hobbyist anthropologists who cherish it as arcana.
This, as I understand it, is Time.
Cockney rhyming slang was an in-group lingo. It differs from pig latin in that it was a language rather than a code. PL is a simple transition, rhyming slang was all invention, its neologisms adopted for their poetic or humorous worth.
Trouble and strife for wife; bottle and glass for arse; God forbids, kids, godfors—what a treat, rhymes found for words and then mutilated.
I mention twist. Abe Reles (1906–1941), a noted gangster, was known as Kid Twist because of his fondness for the ladies. Twist was a contemporary term for a girl. It’s now held to be derogatory, perhaps because of Reles’s hobby, but it was only rhyming slang: twist and twirl = girl.
A student of language (myself) might note the opprobrium attached to Twist as somehow directly insulting, assuming that the word has some connotation unfriendly to the female disposition or anatomy (how?); thus are we suckered past understanding into prejudice. This is, of course, inevitable, as who has the time to dissect all human behavior and speech searching for final clarity? Q. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? A. The Shadow Knows. MWAAAhahahahah! In this he is preeminent, if not, in fact, alone.
Of rude speech: I made my early reputation and living by my use of the vernacular. But my internal Nice Jewish Boy is still affronted by “this sucks” and “your night in the barrel,” two phrases in genteel and universal use connoting fellatio.
Baseball’s next-up batter is described as on deck, and that following him as in the hole; hole is, of course, hold; the phrases are clearly nautical.
The square shades, used in controlling light onstage were known, for their opacity, as Blacks; they are now called solids, and “White” has become an epithet.
Mrs. (missus), was originally an honorific applied to a woman irrespective of her marital status; it is an abbreviation for Mistress. It was later taken up as a designation of honor for a married woman. Gloria Steinem insisted that there should be a marriage-neutral term for women, and we now have Ms., with Mrs. seen by the Left as an insult.
Gender-specific designations are the “fightin’ words” of today’s corporate coteries. The fraidy-cats of Film notable among them. Best Boy (the second position in the electrical department) was a position and term worthy of respect, applied even when women began filling that position, and accepted, by them, as an in-group irony. Today the job is known as Head Gaffer.I
But D-girl, a development person, seems to be used for job holders of any sex whatever. And my beloved friend Meg is a teamster, and I refer to her as “My Teamstress.” She, like most teamsters I know, has a sense of humor.
Here’s a game we played on the set of Phil Spector (2013). The challenged were required to reply to any statement in Teamster. This speech was limited to the job’s three responses: Whoa, Hey, and Alright.
Q. You go out last night?
A. Whoa…
Q. What do you think of Borges?
A. …hey…
Q. Your mother’s a whore.
A. Alright.
Lordy, we had fun on Phil Spector. It was the summer of Anthony Weiner. The Post and the Daily News competed, day by day, with headlines sufficient to save All Journalism from disgrace. “Weiner Still Standing Up,” “Weiner Sticks It Out,” “Give Weiner a Hand,” etcetera. He, it will be remembered, was a Congressman or something, disgraced for the online self-pornography issued under his nom de guerre, Carlos Danger.
In New York, we had an ongoing hurricane, and an earthquake sufficient to clear the set as we scurried for cover. Bette Midler was injured and had to leave the show, and Helen Mirren gave up her vacation in Spain to fly in on two days’ notice and replace her. Al Pacino played Phil, and Helen his defense counsel, modeled on Linda Kenney Baden; her on-screen partner was played by Jeffrey Tambor, the funniest man who ever lived.
He delivered one of my lines, disparaging some idea, with an accompanying motion. I said “cut,” and Helen asked him, “What does that gesture represent?” “Helen,” he said, “that’s masturbating.” “No, Jeffrey,” she said, “this is masturbating,” and made an entirely different gesture.II
We know that should the tail become smarter than the dog it will wag its host. The phenomenon is obvious not only to victims but to sentient observers of bureaucracy.
Teddy Roosevelt instituted the Civil Service in 1883, to cure the ills of the spoils system. One hundred and change years on, the Civil Service unions possess the clout to strong-arm the government.
Like any prosperous bureaucracy, a Nation or a Rich Man’s Estate, bureaucrats in Movies will appoint subordinates. In the atmosphere of plenty, and without supervision, these will engage in graft, empire building, and chicane. They’re free to do so, as they have little else to occupy their time. Those above them are not only busy with their own schemes but happy to display attendants, whose number indicates the boss’s power.
Early movies indubitably required scripts. These had to be purchased and churned out, as the audience was waiting. That a script might have “worth” was, of course, important, but its worth consisted, back then, solely in its immediate accessibility to a waiting cameraman.
Later, Golden Age studios staffed rooms full of writers, some of whose work was Not Needed on Voyage. Prolonged prosperity suggested more layers of waste (and thus of the display of prestige).
Producers of every sub-description (Co-, Executive, Supervising, Co-Executive, and so on) emerged to oversee (that is, batten on) the Development Process. As no film ever emerged from the Development Process, it held great possibility for display of waste.
Actual films could only employ a limited (if large) number of drones, but a process that made nothing could direct any number to pursue that goal.
The Development Process created the “girlfriend-as-executive.” This is not to disparage women, either as employees or drones, nor to dispute their right to either position. But I will comment on the Job Description. “D-girl,” a term currently in use. (D standing for Development.)
Why the “girl”? As the job evolved from the old studio heads’ weekend habit of handing the scripts (which they never read) to their young friends. In effect: “Here, feel important, I’m going to take a nap.” (I wrote a play about it, Speed-the-Plow.)
The D-girls make a living ensuring that no scripts that pass their desks get made. If their operations were limited to endorsing filmable scripts, they’d be out of a job. (Only two hundred to three hundred films a year are actually made in Hollywood. They are greenlit based upon the marketability of cast, director, and franchise. None of them is made because some underling endorsed a script.)
Well, all that lives must breathe (Lord Byron), and an organization is an organism and not a machine. Its life strives to continue and grow; and both growth and decay will attract parasites.
These, the development folks, Diversity Capos, and so on, are subsumed within the host organism; but there is another class, offering not support but proximity—in effect, like sex therapists following the camp followers who are trailing the caravan.
These offer classes in scriptwriting, auditioning, voice, résumé writing, and so on. As if the Persian caravans, unable to accommodate more hetairas and eunuchs, offered “Eunuch Workshops” to the folks who couldn’t make the trip.
How does one Break into the Movies?
Ted Morgan in On Becoming American observed that Americans speak of “getting a break,”III but that the concept is foreign to Europeans, who assume that success might only come through application and persistence.
How might one persist in a hopeless task without losing hope? By ensuring that the task is endless—that, in our case, a screenplay could be infinitely perfectible, kept in “development” till the cows come home, with regular meetings with the assigned executive, and repeated returns to the computer with yet another load of notions. Or perhaps an aspirant has not yet gotten to a D-girl but is making the rounds, offering his script to anyone self-proclaimed as a producer. These attempts will come to nothing but eventual disenchantment on the part of the self-proclaimed, as the original script, given his notes, becomes less and less distinguishable from mud.
Should this producer decamp, the aspiring writer will seek out another before whom to throw his wares, and this fellow will begin with a whole other parade of notes. By this time the writer has, himself, sickened of the project, but how to disengage? He cannot, for then he must recognize he has failed. So his “work on the script” may go on for years. See Mark Twain’s The Gilded Age, where an aspirant trying to build a dam or something, spends a lifetime in Washington, always just one lunch away from success.
Everyone wants to get into the act. And always did. Film Schools, actually unrelated to the moviemaking process, may trace their descent from fan clubs; and this book, actually, is a descendant of the Movie Mag.
- I. Enlisted Air Force personnel of both sexes are referred to as Airmen, a tradition with no ill effects.
- II. My daughter Clara, age sixteen, was a production assistant (dogsbody) on the set. She was out all night holding down the perimeter, running for coffee, and generally living the old Cowboy Adage: if you join the Cattle Drive, sleep in the winter. When we wrapped, she’d been promoted to Head Transport PA. It was time for her return to high school, but she said she couldn’t abandon the crew during wrapping out. A triumph of Film Culture. She came back to L.A., dropped out of high school, and did two years of acting as the “human child” on the ABC sitcom The Neighbors. She then wrote, directed, and starred in a film that went to Tribeca; this, today’s Jewish improvement on “My son, the Doctor.”
- III. “Now and then a ‘lucky strike’ or an ‘excellent prospect’ gladdened the miners’ hearts, but most of the time they felt sorry for themselves.” On the California gold rush, from A Shovel of Stars, by Ted Morgan.
Hollywood is where Nope Springs Eternal, and yet they come, my like, inseparable from the addiction as the stuck ’n’ steaming gambler who points to his few remaining chips and says, to his pleading spouse, “Just wait till I lose this.”