Harlan Ellison's Watching Part 27

And he took it to market; and because he is dealing with the sort of people I noted a few columns ago, the sort who wanted to make a tv special: "Let's do The Wiz . . . white!" he had no trouble selling the project. Before Gale Anne Hurd picked up on it at 20th in April of 1987, Warners and Paramount wanted it. It was a "hot" idea. Like Pete Hyams standing in front of Alan Ladd, Jr. and getting a deal to make Outland when he suggested, "Let's do High Noon in outer s.p.a.ce." Rock O'Bannon is a cagey guy, a canny a.s.sayer of the lowered expectations, petty pretensions, and cultural illiteracy of the New Executives who run this industry. Rock is (with one important difference) the very model of the kind of writer who is. .h.i.tting it big in Hollywood these days. He has his eye not on the sparrow, but on the box office. He spots, early on, the trend for the season; and he boils it down to basics; and he pushes a simplistic version of that trendy idea couched in derivative terms that make the New Execs comfortable. He understands, as do his brethren who write films like The Hidden and Robocop and the Nightmare on Elm Street features, that he is dealing with men and women who are not only ignorant, but who are arrogant about their lack of knowledge. He understands that for such people, the daring offbeat original ideas are anathema. He knows on a primal level the truth of Ellison's First Law of Movie Marketing: PHILISTINISM MAKES LUCID COPY FOR DOLTS.

The important difference between Rock O'Bannon and the larger measure of his brethren, is that Rock has it in him to reach an artistic level most writers can only shade their eyes and aspire to from far below. Up there in the sun, where the air is crisp and the mind seeks to unravel the secrets of the human condition and the universe, few of us are given to exist. For the Steven de Souzas of the world, the Chris Columbuses, even the Steve Cannells, it is a summit unreachable and forever intimidating. They do the best they can, but it is the difference between Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k and Brian De Palma. King Kong and Mighty Joe Young. Jefferson and Dukakis/Bush.

The kick in the a.s.s is necessary, because Rock O'Bannon is better. He wrote "Wordplay." He can go there again. For him to get his foot in the feature film door with Alien Nation was cynical and self-destructive. Like the film, it was a calculated act of empty calories, artistic vacuum. For the soul, no surge of enrichment; there were only money and "clout" to be garnered.

For those who now ask, "Well, what's wrong with that?" I suggest you find another film columnist to read: surely we are dealing with concepts of self-respect and responsibility forever beyond your ken. For those of you who remain, let me digress only slightly to explain why this film was doomed from the starting blocks . . . and please bear in mind that quotation from Ring Lardner, Jr.: "No good film was ever made from a poor script."

Only G.o.d and Bill Warren know where the idea of the buddy-movie began. It has to be somewhen subsequent to the Edison Kinetoscope filmstrip The Kiss (1896), but prior to the most recent Pee-wee Herman extravaganza. After Cain and Abel, but prior to Sly and Brigitte. After the creation of the Heaven and the Earth, but prior to Burke and Hare. If you get my drift: this is an old formula we're looking at.

Even before the spate of flying buddies movies-exemplified by Cagney and Pat O'Brien in 1935's Devil Dogs of the Air-the genre was in full swing, but the chum flick as a separate form was most obvious in the aeronautic alliances. Perhaps the lineal descent is from the first attempt to put Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson on film (about which more in a moment), though the Quirt and Flagg buddydom of the 1926 What Price Glory? certainly sticks out as a watershed event.

For those who contend the buddy-movie reached its highest point of originality and vigor with the 1939 Gunga Din, in which Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen and Doug Fairbanks, Jr. stood off Eduardo Ciannelli and his ravening hordes howling "Kill for the low of Kali," I'd like to point out that Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, who cobbled up that c.o.c.keyed adventure plot, were only rewriting their 1931 hit The Front Page, as perfect an example of the buddy-movie as has ever been remade more times than we can count.

But by the forties it was a staple commodity, requiring not much more thought for inclusion on a production schedule than an offhand "Who'll we buddy-up with whom?" Or is that who?

A staple commodity, having manifested itself in dozens of Republic and Monogram westerns of the "Three Mesquiteers" type (and does anyone else remember that ventriloquist Max Terhune and Crash Corrigan were but two-thirds of that rootin' tootin' shootin' trio completed by John Wayne?), reprised to the point of fugue state boredom in all the Dennis Morgan-Jack Carson "Two Guys From-" comedies, the Crosby-Hope roaders, and even proffered in the Batman&Robin mode with Wild Bill Elliott as Red Ryder, Bobby Blake as Little Beaver.

Through all such flotsam and jetsam (another terrific buddy pairing), the huffingpuffing exhausted idiom dragged itself into the modern era with Duncan Renaldo as The Cisco Kid and Leo Carillo as Pancho.

("Oh Seesko!" "Oh Pancho!" "Ha ha ha ha ha!" Which is the way all Sat.u.r.day morning cartoons and most tv sitcoms from Lucy to Cosby end.) This discounts all the Mr. and Mrs. North or Nick and Nora Charles Thin Man flicks, which really don't fit the mold, and I discount them openly just to remind you that I'm being nothing but fair in my selections as the form burgeoned in feature films when The Defiant Ones (1958) proved that if you made the buddy-buddy connection a bizarre one, you might triumph at the box office using a template already h.o.a.ry and creaky, because critics would tend to overlook the paucity of invention at a plot level, and focus on the acting of the princ.i.p.als, their "relationship": just manacle a tough-but-heart-of-gold black convict (Sidney Poitier) to a bigoted white convict (Tony Curtis), let them escape from the chain gang, and send them on the run. This was the great icon of the buddies-with-animus-toward-each-other subgenre, most recently reprised with Secret Service bodyguard Charles Bronson "manacled and on the run" to his real-life wife, Jill Ireland, as the First Lady in a.s.sa.s.sination . . . and bounty hunter Robert De Niro "manacled and on the run" with bail-jumping Federal witness Charles Grodin in Midnight Run.

Seriatim, the gang-buddy idea overinflated two years later with the success of The Magnificent Seven (from Kurosawa's Seven Samurai), followed by The Professionals in 1966, The Dirty Dozen in 1967, The Devil's Brigade in 1968, and Peckinpah's 1969 gang-buddy cla.s.sic, The Wild Bunch, ending the decade that year with the buddy-movie that sent the entire film industry scrambling to flood the screen with chums, pals, mates . . . Butch Ca.s.sidy and the Sundance Kid. And the sluicegates were opened.

By 1971 you could spot the variations sans recourse to dowsing rod: They Might Be Giants, like the aforementioned a.s.sa.s.sination a male-female buddy-up, recasting George C. Scott as Holmes with Joanne Woodward as Dr. Watson. (This is such an obvious duo for the perpetuation of the genre, that hardly a year goes by without a new note being sounded as coda to Conan Doyle's original duet, echoic currently with Michael Caine as a dunderhead Sherlock and Ben Kingsley as a brains-of-the-act Watson in Without a Clue, which I recommend unreservedly.) Other boy-girl buddy-ups: The Late Show (1977) with Art Carney and Lily Tomlin, Foul Play (1978) with Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn, Hanky Panky (1982), Runaway with Tom Selleck and Cynthia Rhodes and Romancing the Stone (both 1984), and Stone's sequel, Jewel of the Nile and Into the Night with Jeff Goldblum and Mich.e.l.le Pfeiffer (both 1985). And that's just iceberg-tip of boy-girl buddy-movies.

To demonstrate how interchangeable these phony-friendship-flicks are, Hanky Panky was originally intended as a followup to the successful buddy-movies of Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor-Silver Streak (1976) and Stir Crazy (1980)-but for reasons I'm too weary to recount, Pryor's role in Hanky Panky was revised for Gilda Radner, and no one noticed any dichotomy.

But wait, there's more!

Scarecrow with Hackman and Pacino; City Heat with Eastwood and Reynolds; Partners with John Hurt and Ryan O'Neal; The Sting with Redford and Newman; Wise Guys with Piscopo and De Vito; Ishtar with Beatty and Hoffman; Planes, Trains and Automobiles with John Candy and Steve Martin; Lethal Weapon with Mel Gibson and Danny Glover; and Running Scared with Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines (as we return to black and white pairings a la The Defiant Ones); Buddy Buddy, the Billy Wilder-I. A. L. Diamond remake of the French A Pain in the A-, recast with Lemmon and Matthau; Red Heat with Schwarzenegger and Jim Belushi; another girl-boy linking that subst.i.tutes Debra Winger for Paul Newman in Legal Eagles with Redford; The In-Laws with Falk and Alan Arkin; Mikey and Nicky with Falk and Ca.s.savetes; Three Amigos! with Chevy Chase, Martin Short and Steve Martin; 48 Hrs. with Nolte and Eddie Murphy; Tough Guys with Lancaster and Douglas; Dragnet with Aykroyd and Tom Hanks; Stakeout with Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez; Real Men with Belushi and John Ritter; Number One with a Bullet with Billy Dee Williams and Robert Carradine; and Nighthawks with Billy Dee Williams and Stallone.

Not to mention all the girl-girl buddy-ups-"biddy-movies"?-like Outrageous Fortune with Bette Midler and Sh.e.l.ley Long or Big Business with a pair of Bette Midlers and a pair of Lily Tomlins, which makes it the first buddy-buddy-buddy-buddy movie . . .

Or such offbeat pairings as those found in films like, uh, er, A Boy and His Dog with Vic and Blood played by Don Johnson and Tiger . . .

Or even precursors of the human-alien tieup in Alien Nation (which makes it an even less original conception) such as The Hidden with Michael Nouri and Kyle MacLachlan, or Enemy Mine with Dennis Quaid and Lou Gossett, Jr. And all of them foreshadowed in print by Isaac Asimov with his human-robot pairing of R. Daneel Olivaw and Lije Baley in Caves OF STEEL, et al.

Which list, rendered here as exhausting (though hardly exhaustive) evidence that the buddy-buddy idea was worn to the nub long before Rock O'Bannon came to it, should indicate just how hackneyed and cynical is the core of Alien Nation.

We would expect no better from a producer like Gale Anne Hurd, whose contract with 20th Century Fox was not picked up this summer in large part because of the disposability of Alien Nation; but we are required to expect more from Rockne O'Bannon.

Now here's the good news.

O'Bannon won't be killed by this film. Unlike my situation, which parallels Rock's, it will do him no harm. Alien Nation is so empty of calories, so forgettable, that it will not cast a pall over his name. With the sharp eyes and Me Decade smarts of his scriptwriting brethren, Rock understood that to get what he wanted in this business, he had to toss out a commercial film like this one. It got made. And that is the lowest factor of survival in film work. It got made, and because it got made at a major studio, with major stars, and had a big budget, he has sold another. And next year he gets to direct it.

Perhaps the means justify the end in a business where Art is anathema. Perhaps.

But the free ride is ended. Rock O'Bannon is a rare and original writer when he struggles against the rigors of the marketplace. He wrote "Wordplay." And if we choose to give him a pa.s.s on Alien Nation, if we choose to let that one go through our memory like s.h.i.t through a tin trumpet, let him understand this: the free ride is over.

The next time-and we're all going to be watching-he had d.a.m.ned well better do battle with the G.o.ds. And even if he doesn't win, we'd d.a.m.ned well better see some sweat.

This has been a public service announcement.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction / March 1989.

INSTALLMENT 34:.

In Which We Praise Those Whose Pants're On Fire, Noses Long As A Telephone Wire.

Right around World Series time last fall, readers of these columns in California, Oregon, Nevada and Washington, also Hawaii, suffered mild cognitive dissonance when they turned on their television sets and saw Your Obedient Servant as oncamera spokesman in a series of Chevrolet commercials, extolling the virtues of a line of j.a.panese-designed, American-built cars called the Geo Imports. In these sixty- and thirty-second mini-encounters, as I walk through an elegant museum setting, the super that flashes across my body says Harlan Ellison, and under the name appear the words Noted Futurist.

This designation-however marginally appropriate-however startling to, say, Isaac Asimov or Alvin Toffler or Roberto Vacca, who are commonly held to be both futurists and noted as such-was the appellation of choice of Chevrolet, its West Coast advertising agency, and the director, Mr. Terry Galanoy.

Friends, acquaintances and casual thugs (who suggest I was selected for these commercials not on the basis of charisma or ability, but because I make the cars look larger), have expressed some startlement at my having been labeled Noted Futurist. "What the h.e.l.l does that mean?" they codify their confusion, further asking, "Why did they call you that?"

To which I respond: "It seemed to Chevrolet that it was a more trustable identification than Paid Liar."

As a creator of fictions, I have frequently referred to myself as a Paid Liar; that is, a storyteller; one who receives monies from publishers and moviemakers for cobbling up what Vonnegut called foma, "harmless untruths." Thus, a paid liar in the context of dreaming fantastic dreams . . . not (he said very sternly, looking them straight in the eye) in any way suggesting that what I say about the Geo Imports is less than the absolute truth, spoken with conviction and sincerity. (It is not my intention to get into discussion of these commercials, why I did them, or the astonishing effect their airing has had on Susan's and my life, save to a.s.sure you that I would not present myself as spokesman for a product in which I did not believe. The cars are excellent, I drive them myself, they are remarkably responsible environmentally-speaking at 53 mph in the city and 58 in the country, and I add this aside only to avoid the gibes of those who would purposely misinterpret the term Paid Liar in conjunction with the commercials.) Pushkin said: "Better the illusions that exalt us than ten thousand truths."

The great liars of narrative literature remain, from century to century, some of our most treasured teachers. The truly great ones come along all too infrequently, and if we manage to get one every other generation we feel that our lot is salutary. Mary Sh.e.l.ley, Poe, Borges, Kafka, Bierce, James Branch Cabell, Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, John Collier, Roald Dahl, Fritz Leiber . . . these are the transcendentally untruthful, the paid liars who, like Mark Twain and Jules Verne, shine a revelatory light-through the power-source of invention-on our woebegone and duplicitous world. Through n.o.ble mendacity, enlightenment!

As Isaac Bashevis Singer has said, "When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I'm grown up, they call me a writer."

In the late 1700s, the hands-down t.i.tleholder of the belt for prevarication, flyweight, middle-and welterweight, cruiser-, bruiser- and heavyweight, was Karl Friedrich Hieronymus, the Baron von Munchausen. Recounting his no-less-than-eyeopening exploits as a cavalry officer in the service of Frederick the Great against the ravaging, pillaging, b.e.s.t.i.a.l Ottoman Empire, Munchausen (17201797) erected towers of tales so tall they dwarfed Babel or Trump. Behind his back, his drinking companions rolled their eyes and called him Luegenbaron, the lying Baron; but one of them, Rudolf Erich Raspe, hied himself to England where, in 1785, he wrote and caused to have published Baron Munchausen's Narrative of His Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia, a book instantly a bestseller.

The tales contained in that volume can be counted among the biggest lies ever wafted on hot air across our planet. Or so we must believe. Who would impart even a scintilla of truth to the anecdotes of a man who swore he had been blown by hurricane to the Moon, had enjoyed carnal knowledge of the G.o.ddess Venus while visiting in the bowels of Mt. Etna, had been swallowed by a Monstro-the-whale-like sea beast and had escaped by dint of Balkan snuff, and a.s.serted, "On another occasion I wished to jump across a lake. When I was in the middle of the jump, I found it was much larger than I had imagined at first. So I at once turned back in the middle of my leap, and returned to the bank I had just left, to take a stronger spring." Add a large question mark to the end of that last sentence.

Filmmakers took the Baron to their bosom from the start. His adventures have been chronicled on celluloid more than a dozen times, from 1909 (as far as we know) to the cla.s.sic Melies version in 1911 to the legendary two-reelers of the 1930s, to the charming and sweethearted 1961 Czech fantasy filled with loopy special effects, as conceived, co-scripted and directed by Karel Zeman.

But only Melies, one of the great Paid Liars of all time, could claim a breadth of imagination capable of lying up to the level of the Baron. The others were mere fibbers. Talented, but hardly in that ballpark of audacity. Dilettantes. Pishers.

It is our happy lot to be blessed in these days of inept lying (as exemplified by the recently ended Presidential campaign) with one of the great, consummately eloquent diegesists, a falsifier of such singular abilities that he rivals the Baron in ability to make the jaw drop; and like Melies, his medium is movies. He is, of course, ex-Python Terry Gilliam. And just around Eastertime, Columbia Pictures will release his most magnificent lie to date, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

And if ever there was one destined to a.s.sume the mantle of the Baron, it is Gilliam. He has become a shoo-in for the Whopper Teller's Hall of Fame. He is a world-cla.s.s liar whose potential value to us as a teller of truth through tommyrot ranks with that credited to Scheherazade, Don Marquis, and the nameless whiffle-merchants who cobbled up Paul Bunyan, the Loch Ness Monster and the Bible.

Gilliam's new film, the final third of the trilogy begun with Time Bandits (1981) and Brazil (1985), is a two hour and seven minute string of shameless lies-edited by Gilliam from its initial 2:41 length-that will make you roar with laughter, disbelieve what you're seeing, and have you clapping your hands in childlike delight. It is: A carnival! A wonderland! A weekend with nine Friday nights! Terry Gilliam's lavish dreams are beyond those of mere mortals. Munchausen is everything you secretly hope a movie will be. What most movies turn out not to be: adequate or exceeding your expectations.

In this column, three years ago, I urged you not to miss Brazil, one of the exceptional fantasies of all time. Compound that enthusiasm by an order of ten and you may begin to approach my delight in alerting you to Munchausen. Every frame is filled to trembling surface tension with visual astonishments so rich, so lush, so audacious, that you will beg for mercy. As with Brazil, a film that despised moderation and was thus mildly disparaged by stiffnecked critics incapable of the proper sybaritic gluttony for sensory overload, Munchausen simply will not quit. Like Cool Hand Luke or Joe Namath at the end of the '76 season, it won't stay down for the count. It keeps coming at you, image after image, ferocious in its fecundity of imagination, wonder after wonder, relentless in its desire to knock your block off!

It is a great and original artist's latest masterwork of joy, and despite reports that it has opened in Europe to tepid box-office, it is a film that lives up to everything the Baron tried to put over on us. It is-without tipping one delight you deserve to savor fresh and on your own-one of the most wonderful films I've ever seen. And I ain't lying.

ANCILLARY MATTERS: (The following taken in toto from an item by Steven Smith in the Los Angeles Times of 8 January.) Remember back in 1985, when director Terry Gilliam battled MCA-Universal prez Sid Sheinberg over the final cut of Gilliam's Orwellian comedy, Brazil . . . and won? Well, maybe he didn't.

Universal released Gilliam's 131-minute version to numberous raves and a best picture award from the L.A. Film Critics a.s.sn., albeit to lackl.u.s.ter box-office.

But last week, a 93-minute version of Brazil aired on KTLA Channel 5 as part of a Universal syndicated tv package-promoting it with raves actually written about the original.

But scenes have been recut and rescored, using new takes and dialogue dubbed by sound-alike actors. The story-about a clerk who escapes a repressive society through fantasy, but is finally lobotomized-was changed and simplified, with a new, happy ending a.s.sembled from unused footage. Elaborate dream sequences now total 47 seconds.

Who's responsible?

Sheinberg hadn't returned calls by press time. But the new Brazil closely follows the "radical rethink" devised three years ago by Sheinberg, as described since by two film editors hired to make the changes.

Gilliam, reached in London and apprised of the altered state of his movie, told us: "It's wonderful, because it gives Sid a chance to break into tv. The only sad thing is, the world doesn't get to appreciate that Sid made this film."

Late last year, Gilliam said, Universal asked for his "input" on the latest edit (he declined)-and that the studio wouldn't let him remove his name.

Now, he added, "They're selling it as Brazil, the film that won best picture, and that's nonsense."

There is a special sea of boiling hyena vomit in the deepest and darkest level of h.e.l.l, tenanted thus far only by those who burned the Great Library of Alexandria, by the dolt who bowdlerized Lady Chatterly's Lover, and by those who have torn down elegant art deco buildings to erect mini-malls. It is my certain belief that Sid Sheinberg will sizzle there throughout eternity. Standing on Ted Turner's shoulders.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction / May 1989.

APPENDIX A.

Twentieth Century Fox Film Has Science Fiction Theme.

Hollywood, awakening to the fact that the public is tired of trite westerns and mysteries, has tried something new.

Fantasies and science fiction films, until now, have been attempted with a "tongue-in-cheek" att.i.tude.

But Twentieth Century Fox has now taken the lead in presenting a truly adult science fiction thriller. At a preview in the Hippodrome Theatre, Tuesday, September 11, The Day the Earth Stood Still, starring Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe and a promising newcomer, Michael Rennie, was unveiled.

Taken from a story by Harry Bates, the plot concerns the repercussions resulting from the landing of a flying saucer on the Mall in Washington, D.C.

Moving rapidly from scene to scene, the film boasts such unusual occurrences as the melting of a General Sherman tank by a robot, the stopping of all electricity in the world and the restoration to life of a man who was dead.

Besides having a fascinating plot, the acting in the picture was excellent. Mr. Rennie, as the man from s.p.a.ce, is so convincingly real, that one immediately believes he is an actual alien.

Patricia Neal, as a widowed mother, gives a lifelike and convincing portrayal.

But, undoubtedly, the real star of the picture is a large fellow named Gort. Gort is a metal robot with the ability to fire a beam of energy from his eyes which are really photoelectric cells.

Unlike other fantastic movies, The Day . . . has no fake props but portrays the futuristic "saucer" in an adult manner.

In the picture there are no bug-eyed monsters killing innocent people or Buck Rogers heroics, but there is a story that is fast-paced, different and thoroughly enjoyable.

For an entertaining evening, and for one that will keep you continually in a state of wonder, don't miss The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Blue and Gold / September 26, 1951.

APPENDIX B.

Nightmare Nights At The Daisy.

As referenced on page LII of the Introduction..

In the h.e.l.l-images of Hieronymus Bosch, one sees the tormented, writhing in anguishes of their own making: a garden of earthly delights predicated on the suffering of themselves and others, a playpen of sado-masochism. Beheaded corpses lying chill and white in shrouds of their own wound hair; serpentlike creatures with knives thrust through their throats, breathing fire on pickled humans peering beatifically from barrels of toad-ridden brine; s.e.x-circuses in which the partic.i.p.ants are so intertwined that none know which are their own extremities or those of another; bare men strung like crucified offerings on the wires of giant harps while oily, ebony salamanders slither over their naked flesh; burning buildings casting a fire of the pit against the sky; carnivorous fish and stalking plants; half-humans composed of all arms and legs; the stench of sensory pleasure carried to a visual level that can only be described in terms of the sense of smell: The scent of rotting gardenias, vomitously sweet and cloying.

Bosch would have loved to spend an evening on the town in Los Angeles. He would have felt at home in The Daisy. The scene just described, adding the names of television producers, hungry starlets, clean-shaven hero actors, the children of Beverly Hills merchants, expensively coiffed hookers, lean-hipped models, fading sports stars and a.s.sorted kept types, would be a 20th century doppelganger of Bosch's 15th century madhouse.

Once again the scent of the rotting gardenias fills the night. Cloying and sweet, and called by its contemporary appellation, it is the stench of paranoia. On far Rodeo Drive has Jack Hanson a stately pleasure dome decreed, and it is called The Daisy.

Were it not a reality, composed half of myth and half of urgency, necessity would compel its invention. Did it not in fact exist, hysteria would conjure it up from the dark ingredients specified in the Hollywood grimoire: Eye of a lecher, toe of a Terpsich.o.r.e, sweat of a hustler, blood of starlet, the faded memories of a slipping star, glory dreams of a social-climbing toy manufacturer, intimations of cla.s.s by a street urchin newly nouveau-riche, insults, gossip, infidelities, violence, and moneymoneymoney.

Bosch would have capered and gibbered with joy. He would have identified with them instantly. The lineal descendants of his Bedlam dwellers, cloaked in silks and essences, cavorting and swilling in an upholstered, red velvet ghetto of their own fears and insecurities, clinging to one another with bonds of venality and hatred and common use.

Hi-ho and away we go! For an evening at The Daisy. Be sure to bring your switchblade and your smile.

You come by car. If you are Sal Mineo you come in a Rolls. If you are Peter Bren you come in a Ferrari. If you are Phyllis Diller you come in an Excalibur S*S with your boyfriend, dressed like an Eskimo. If you are Herbert Hutner your Rolls has a right-hand drive. If you are Eddie Fisher you come in a Bentley convertible. If you are me, you come in a 1953 Healey and park it yourself.

If you don't know where to look for it, you can pa.s.s The Daisy a hundred times a day and be blinded by the sterling silver in the windows of David Orgell, or by the jewelry, furs and Tiffany lamps in the shop windows on the other side, and never notice the un.o.btrusive brick-front building with its huge wooden daisy high up in the darkness of the unlighted facade. For those who need specifics, modern America's number one pleasure dome is located at 326 North Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills, on the east side of the street, between Little Santa Monica and Wilshire.

You enter by a tiny alcove, at the rear of which is a stout wooden door with a knocker. One can imagine this door as the setting for a thousand mid-Victorian poppas pointing into the blizzard where their daughters and their illegitimate offspring must go. Or if you're unfamiliar with the cartoon reference, consider it any large, carved, wooden door you've ever had slammed in your face.

If you don't happen to be Soupy Sales or Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones or Lynda Bird Johnson or Princess Margaret or Governor Pat Brown or Cary Grant, that door will more than likely slam on your face.

(Vignette The First: A ten-thirty night, a stout woman in a pink dress has her foot in the door. "I'm Mrs. Stockmeier. Would you tell Mr. Hanson I'm out here, I've got several guests with me from out of-"

("Mr. Hanson isn't here this evening," the doorman says, looking uncomfortable; the populace is demonstrating. Cut off in mid-sentence, Mrs. Stockmeier grins helplessly at her several guests, in from out of.

(Two mid-thirties teenagers slide out the door, past Mrs. Stockmeier's foot. The doorman tries to get it closed but she agilely re-inserts it. "But we met Mr. and Mrs. Hanson in-"

(Mrs. Stockmeier removes her foot as three cuddly types in poorboys and Jax slacks, all lean meat and dark eyes, slip like oil through the door. This time the doorman gets it closed. The little speakeasy window is open. Mrs. Stockmeier is yelling through it at the disembodied head of the doorman. Her voice is strident. "We were supposed to mention his name, we have guests in from out of-"

(The window closes. Mrs. Stockmeier will return to The Beverly Hills Hotel in her husband's rented Cadillac, making weak excuses to her guests in from out of. They will smile understanding. It may be too much for her. She may take an overdose that night. Maybe not.) But if the door doesn't slam, you've walked right up, unafraid, to the bra.s.s knocker and the bra.s.s letters MEMBERS ONLY on the wall, and you've banged in your special staccato and the door has opened wide for you, ring-a-ding right down the rabbit-hole to wonderland.

In the foyer there is a white marble statue. It is a statue of something or other. Not one out of a hundred can tell you what it is a statue of, for the view through the inner door to the poolroom arrests the attention immediately. It is usually a view of something like Jocelyn Laine or Samantha Eggar or a Jax girl, sling-hippedly walking through into the chandelier room. There used to be a huge papier-mache daisy in a flowerpot on the pedestal, but it isn't there any longer. Someone boosted it.

In the tiny foyer there is a table. On this table there are printed forms that you will sign if you are a card-carrying Daisy member, in the event you are bringing in more than the one guest allotted to you freebie. Each additional guest will cost you two dollars.