“Call immediately. Time is running out. We both need to do something monstrous before we die.”
—Message from Ralph Steadman
I don’t get many letters from Ralph. He is not into small talk. But the few that eventually reach me are always serious. His recurrent themes are Death and Degradation, along with a lust for money so wild and raw that its intensity would shame the gamekeeper in Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
Russell Chatham is the same way. Artists never write letters unless they are desperate, and by that time their brains have seized up. They lack the pure logic and focus of the literary life, and their eyes are rheumy with drink.
I have had trouble with Russell before, and with Ralph for most of my life. They are rich and famous artists, two of the major talents of their time—but they would have long since been legally put to sleep in any properly organized society.
Instead, they are paid huge fees for their twisted works and they are honored all over the globe. Ralph lives like a caliph in a 44-room castle about an hour south of London in the fashionable county of Kent, and rides now and then to the hounds.
Russell carries a platinum American Express card, drives a Cadillac, and lives generally in the style of Sam Coleridge—an existence that not even his friends understand.
They are both shameless Sybarites, far gone in wanton abuse, but who am I to make judgments? We all have weird friends. Some call from jail at four in the morning and others write ominous letters.
I drove down to the post office the other day and found only two envelopes in my box—Russell’s and Ralph’s, both of them crazy with anger. I turned Russell’s over to the sheriff, but Ralph’s had the tone of a serious medical bulletin, and it seemed to need a reply.
Dear Ralph. I finally got your letter from the intensive care ward at Maidstone Hospital, but it was dated 20 March 85 and that was a long time ago, considering that you mailed it from the very lip of the grave.
You sound like an old woman, Ralph. I’m tired of your bitching and whining. Just because you got drunk and almost died is no reason to come jabbering at me about royalties and the meaning of life.
Never mention either one of these things to me again, Ralph. Your questions are dumb and ugly, but so what? We will take them one at a time:
1) There are no royalties on anything and there never will be. It is an ugly situation. My attorney will be in touch with you about the money and the slander problem.
2) This gibberish about the meaning of life is a senile cop-out. You are a full-blooded country squire, Ralph, a man of tweeds and art. Your neighbors don’t want to know what you do to those animals that you catch in the spring traps; and they certainly don’t want to think—when they see you roaming your hedgerows at night with something that looks like a shotgun—that you have six fingers on each hand and your mind is a raging inferno of contradictions.
They would have locked you up, Ralph, if they thought you were desperately crazy . . . and they will, if you can’t get a grip on yourself.
Take my word for it. Don’t give them a handle. I know that man Narley who runs the Maidstone Pub, and I’ve heard the crude gossip he spreads. He is definitely not on your side.
But don’t worry, Ralph. I have the answer. My own life has been exceedingly strange, of late. I went through one of those giddy periods where I believed what people told me, and naturally it ended in grief. I went over there, as you know, to do the Playboy/feminist-porno story, but I ended up deeply involved and was arrested almost constantly, for reasons I can’t explain to you now, due to the numerous pending court actions.
The Night Manager is running a bit behind schedule at this point, because of my weakness for journalism. In addition to all my other jobs, titles and responsibilities, I am now a sort of neo-syndicated columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, the once-proud flagship of what was known as “The Hearst Empire.” Young Will, the heir, has decided to make it “a thinking man’s newspaper for the ’80s,” and of course I am out on the point.
Why not? We have Warren on the night shift, whipping the police at all times, and I suspect there is life in the project . . . which means, of course, that you will have to fill one of the “Artists in Residence” slots, a high-powered four-week gig that will cause you to move to San Francisco and actually work for a living for a while. You will be sent out on routine assignments like an ordinary journalist and your work will be treated like offal, but I think you can overcome it and perhaps do some unusual work.
Let’s look at Groundhog Day for your opening shot. We will get you a flat in the Avenues, my old neighborhood, and your first assignment will probably be the trial of Charles C. Ng, an alleged mass sex slayer from Calaveras County who will soon be deported from Canada to stand trial here in Fat City ... or maybe in some rural jurisdiction where they will treat us like decent people when we roll into town like the Joad brothers.
You will have to trust me on this one, Ralph. I know it sounds strange, but in fact it might even be sane. I have an acrobat’s sense of these things, a higher and finer touch.
So pack your bags and get ready to work on Groundhog Day. We will have a strategy conference at the Beach Boy Cafe and then we will creep out in the fog and do our filthy business. Welcome to the next generation.
November 25, 1985