Title: Meanwhile, Back at
the Ranch
Author: Elliott Capon
ISBN: 978-1-62420-045-8
Genre: Mystery/Humor
Excerpt Heat Level: 1
Book Heat Level: 1
In 1940, American Heartland
Pictures, once a great studio producing hybrid talking/silent Shakespeare
films, is now gushes forth the cheesiest, crappiest, lousiest low-budgetest
serial adventures in the industry. And that’s fine with Farley Rottenwood, the
immigrant-turned-sort-of-mogul who bought the place and kept the owner’s widow
on as Girl Friday. But, while he produces
his greatest—albeit most inept-- serial adventure (which you get to read!)—his
wife is cheating on him, his staff are dropping like flies, and Nazi agents are
producing pro-German propaganda right behind his back…and believe it or not, this is funny!
EXCERPT
THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 1940
The
conference room in The Building was also the lunchroom, so meetings at AHP were
generally held early in the morning. Luther had arranged the three bingo hall
tables so they formed one long conference table. Farley Rottenwood sat at the
head. To his right, steno pad at the ready (though she didn't know steno)
perched Mrs. Greenbaum. At these meetings, she took notes in her own personal
shorthand, and then typed up formal notes while the memories were still fresh
in her mind. Her abbreviations 'fk fr,' 'fr shthd' and 'gdm fr' did not make it
into the formal record. Also at the table this morning were Emile Linkletter,
still a little pale. For some reason, he kept shooting mysterious and
unfathomable looks at Ted Zuresberg, who sat on the other side of the table,
two seats down. Dan Silberman was there, and Winston Niddleman who sat
alongside Bob DeKalb, one of the older writers. Messrs. Pahverty and Rowe were
of course in attendance, as were four production technicians (none of whom, we
discovered as we jumped ahead in the story, said anything important at this
meeting and therefore do not deserve names). The table also entertained
newcomers to our tale.
The first of
these was a silver-haired gentleman of at least sixty years of age who bore the
patrician air of, and a remarkable resemblance to, Vincent Price at his most
regal. This gentleman's name was Alfred Smythe Weddick and he was American
Heartland Pictures' number-one director. About eighty percent of AHP's serials
went out with his name in the directorial credits. Rumor had it that some
people swore they knew people who knew people who, forty or fifty years before,
had seen Weddick when he was sober. No living
eyewitness could ever make such a claim, however. Weddick was apparently
pickled in perpetuity, but that didn't stop him from directing AHP serials as
they were meant to be directed.
Reading the
script for the first time as shooting was going on, Weddick would point here or
there, and the actor would duly move left or right, up or down. With a casual
wave, Weddick would move the camera in close or back it up. Often the sound guy
would have to remove an "Oh!" from the soundtrack as it recorded
Weddick's surprise at some plot machination the actors knew about, but he
didn't til they delivered their lines. In fact, if one could ever get one's
hands on a print of INSPECTOR BLODGETT IN VENICE [it was Venice, California],
in Chapter Seven, after a particularly dramatic revelation by the damsel in
distress, one can actually hear an off-camera voice in a stately British accent
say, "Bloody genius! Never saw that coming!"
No one could
actually remember seeing Weddick drink, that is, lift a glass to his mouth, but
he was always pleasantly crocked. Conventional wisdom held that he kept a hot water bottle full of booze hidden in his pants
and an intravenous needle feeding it straight into his bloodstream.
The Boss
certainly didn't mind because Weddick was infallibly polite and even-tempered,
and produced good enough pictures for relative dirt-cheapness, salary-wise.
Here was a guy who at the age of seventeen had performed Hamlet in front of
Queen Victoria. Apparently, bourbon was unknown in England, and so when he
joined the exodus to Hollywood after the First World War and was immediately
introduced to the liquor's golden charms, a might-have-been career as a
Hollywood actor/director was washed away. Which made him perfect for American
Heartland Pictures. He had been Rottenwood's first acquisition after buying the
studio, one he never regretted.
"So
what's cooking?" Rottenwood asked, getting the meeting underway.
Pahverty,
after seeing that no one else had anything to say, decided to answer. "Um,
well, Mr. R., BONGA THE JUNGLE GIRL is in editing, and, let me see, um, DOPE
DEALERS OF DEATH is wrapping up the last chapter, I believe tomorrow, right,
Cornelius?...Right, and, um, oh, of course, we have four chapters of ACE
O'HARTZ in the can."
"ACE
O'HARTZ," Rottenwood repeated, as if tasting the words. "Oh, yeah,
the FBI picture."
"Not
FBI, really, Boss," Winston interjected. "G-man."
Farley waved
his unlit cigar.
"Yeah,
whatever."
Winston's
lips tightened. "I think it's the best thing I've written in a long time,
Boss. Maybe the best thing I've ever written."
Pahverty
nodded. "Everyone on the set seems to really like it, too, Mr. R. You
know, you do a picture, you do a picture. But this one, everyone is happy to
come to work."
"I
think it's the best thing I've done so far, Boss, if I may say so," said
our hitherto-unnamed attendee.
No comments:
Post a Comment