SINGING IN THE SHOWER

Consider Elvis, Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday, or Tony Bennett. They are, genetically, “sports” (like the albino tiger)—that is, unforeseeable and rare mutations.^I They sing so naturally that we all know we can do likewise. As we can. But only in the shower.

For if someone is listening other than our most devoted fan, our pretentions will be revealed as false. We know we can’t box like Mike Tyson and, should we be taken unaware, will encounter a natural corrective. But even should we have a shower companion, we know it would be a poor use of time to subject them to our warbling.

Dramatists, likewise, are “sports.” Neither Shakespeare nor Johnny Mercer required a rhyming dictionary. Neither did Kipling. He made a grand poem out of the shipping news.

Dawn off the Foreland—the young flood making

Jumbled and short and steep—

Black in the hollows and bright where it’s breaking—

Awkward water to sweep.

“Mines reported in the fairway,

“Warn all traffic and detain.

“ ’Sent up Unity, Claribel, Assyrian, Stormcock, and Golden Gain.”

And Johnny Mercer made a song from the alexandrine he heard in a railroad’s name: “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe.”

The Poet, the actual poet, does not think, What rhymes with “lutefisk”? He thinks in rhymes, that is, in the conjunction of two words, rather than in the completion of an idea through discovery of a similar sound.

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Ted Morgan, in his biography, reports that Maugham, at dinner with Dorothy Parker, challenged her to write him a poem right then. She wrote:

Higgledy piggledy, my white hen.

She lays eggs for gentlemen.

She showed it to Maugham, he shrugged. She continued to write:

You cannot persuade her with gun or lariat

To come across for the proletariat.

One million monkeys at one million typewriters for one million years couldn’t come up with it. Even with the aid of the rhyming dictionary.

Watch the comic onstage. He is heckled, and watch him, he will almost always respond, “What…?” or “Say that again…”; and only after the reiteration will he come back with his quip. What was he doing in the interim? Was he “thinking”? Not in any sense that we would understand. He was, consciously or not, allowing some portion of his brain to catch up. You might ask him to review the process that led to his response, but there wasn’t one. He’s a genetic sport, and that’s why he’s onstage and we aren’t. If he’s overcome by the heckler, he’s going to have to find another job. Who might hire him? The Studios.

Studio Executives are not The Audience, but a Committee of the Concerned. They understand their job as the application of fiscal reason to the process of Creation. They are, in effect, the living rhyming dictionary, placed in power over their hireling, the writer.

In films, the talentless take an idea, that is, and search to see what matches with it. But they do not search their experience, but their memory. Of other films. We might understand a film displaying twenty “producers’ ” names, as their attempt to usurp credit; it is as accurate to suggest that they are trying to dilute blame.

Would we read a poem announcing a score of creators? The only songs crediting more than three, four at most, writers, included, in that list, the thieves and thugs.

Did Charlie Chaplin actually write “Smile”? Did Jolson write “Avalon”? Or were their credits a courtesy or an exaction? We can’t know, but we can guess.

The actual artist just flat out sees things differently than his bureaucratic, neurotypical opponents. He is in league with that group they exist to exploit, the audience; and, so, of course the suits hate him. He needs them to get his cow to market, they need him for his cow, that is, his creativity—until it cannot be connected by the fatuous to their expectation of gain. At which point he is fired, the accepted Hollywood process, not taking his calls; and should a rationale be required for such brutishness, “screw him, he got paid.” Which is sometimes true.

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But there are those who have a debt to the form. What can that mean? Just as our friend The Beaver is driven mad by the sound of rushing water, a dramatic writer needs to complete or correct a composition until it’s resolved. (In any case, I do.)

An example is Suspicion, starring Cary Grant as a bad ’un. He marries Joan Fontaine, but is he a thief, con man, and murderer, or not? Her suspicions are awakened, we always had ours; but the film will not resolve, and Hitch ends it sloppily, Cary’s about to heave her out of a car, but at the last moment CHANGES HIS MIND, and they somehow live H. ever A. The audience must accept the ending, as there ain’t no more. But we cannot enjoy it.

How, I wondered, over the years, should it end? What business was it of mine? The business I spent my life in.

My friend Lou Lenart (1921–2015) was a founder of the Israeli Air Force. We worked together on various films, and he invited me to Israel for a flight in an F-15. “Lou,” I said, “you’re sixty-five, why would they let you fly?” “It’s my air force,” he said.

The dramatically incorrect “nags me like an uncleaned gun.” The correct composition gives me peace irrespective not only of its marketability but of its appeal to damn near anyone but myself. (General cries of, “Oh, my…”) This is the Evil Twin of singing in the shower.

For example: Alaska has its Abominable Snowman, and New Jersey its own Favorite Son, that vicious swamp-dweller the Pine Barrens Devil. My idea for a book title: The Pine Barrens Devil Redecorates: Papa’s Got a Brand New Bog.

On a less picayune note, my (current) favorite among my unproduced screenplays is Russian Poland.

Pre-Statehood members of the Haganah steal a British plane in Italy to fly to Israel. On the runway is an ancient DP, a displaced person, still wearing the striped rags of the Camps. They take him on board. During the flight he tells them stories to pass the time. They are the tales of Isaac Luria (1534–1572), the Ari (Lion) of Safed, a great Jewish Mystic. I set his stories in the nineteenth century, in the Pale of Settlement, the Russian Poland of my grandparents.

In my film the plane intermittently encounters difficulties, and the Old Man’s arcane and Hasidic suggestions curiously aid the pilots. They are over Israel and, running on fumes, the pilot turns to the co-pilot and says, “Tell the old man to hang on, it’s going to be a rough landing.” The co-pilot looks, turns back, and says, “There’s no one there.”

That is the love of form in creation. Here’s an example of correction. I love the arcana of war songs. We all know “Bless ’em all, / Bless ’em all,” but only those in the military realize the original lyrics contained a different verb.

“It’s a long way to Tipperary” was famous as sung in the trenches—“It’s the wrong way to tickle Mary”—and the most famous song of the Great War, “Mademoiselle from Armentières,” not only did not suggest that she hadn’t been kissed for a hundred years, it contained lyrics so filthy that none of them were ever transcribed. And so the interested would have to imagine them.

That is, more or less, what I’ve been doing as a dramatist.^II

1. I. sport: an animal, plant or part of a plant that shows an unusual or singular deviation from the parent type. The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, definition 12.
2. II. One of my favorite Great War music hall songs: “The Rose of ‘No Man’s Land.’ ” My additions are the intro and the talk verse, highlighted in bold. I wrote them for my beloved Patti LuPone, who sang my version in concert. Am I a glutton for Appreciation? Who else goes into Show Business?

   Returned on Leave to England it sometimes fell by chance

   That a curious Civilian asked after the boys in France.

   There was little they could understand and less that I chose to tell

   But I shared with them one circumstance which brightened our time in Hell.

   There’s a rose that grows on “No Man’s Land”

   And it’s wonderful to see,

   Though it’s sprayed with tears, it will live for years,

   In my garden of memory.

   It’s the one red rose the soldier knows,

   It’s the work of the Master’s hand;

   ’Mid the war’s great curse stands the Red Cross Nurse,

   She’s the rose of “No Man’s Land.”

   The whistle blows and the troops retire but there’s someone lingers beyond the wire.

   When I close my eyes I can see the drape of dark gray dress and the scarlet cape.

   To the end of my life I shall see it yet, as she looked from the edge of the parapet.

   While she knelt and worked by the Trooper’s side and she never left him until he died.

   There’s a rose that grows on “No Man’s Land”

   And it’s wonderful to see,

   Though it’s sprayed with tears, it will live for years,

   In the garden of memory.

   It’s the one red rose the soldier knows,

   It’s the work of the Master’s hand;

   ’Mid the war’s great curse stands the Red Cross Nurse,

   She’s the rose of “No Man’s Land.”