E-Books: Here to Stay . . . But Where?

You’ll get no argument from me: E-readers and e-books are here to stay.

However, I’ve yet to buy an e-reader. I’m traditionally a second—or third--generation adapter: Wait until the bugs are worked out, prices fall (and my income rises), and, in the case of e-readers, distribution issues are settled. Right now, the iPad looks like the one that I want, even after my disappointment with the iPhone.

I wonder though: How far will e-books  penetrate the world of readers? Pretty far, it's fair to say, but will it be as far as the tech-topians promise? Might these dreamy notions fall a little short, along with other such predictions as the jetpack, the self-cleaning living room and “someday humans will no longer have to eat”?

Now, as a self-publisher, I’m no growling Luddite Fool. When my contemporary Dracula novel Dragon’s Ark (which you all will read, of course) comes out in March 2011, you’re darn right I plan to distribute it as an e-book through both Smashwords and Scrib’d, plus any other major e-book distribution systems that should appear between now and publication day. (The way Tech World changes, I won’t be surprised if both distributors suddenly become as passé as Lady Gaga should be right now.)

Nevertheless, Dragon’s Ark as an e-book still lingers far back in my mind, like a forgotten thumbnail on my e-drive. I’m much more thrilled by the ten advanced reading POD copies I ordered from Lightning Source now sitting in a box on the piano downstairs, ready to be placed in the hands
of actual willing book dealers and interested reviewers. Solid material objects, tangible books, 6” x 9”.with both heft and a knockout cover (by Cathi Stevenson). My heart glows with romance.

In one of his recent postings, the excellent Joel Friedlander (one of independent publishing's more tireless promoters and my book’s interior designer) claims that, statistically, more people are downloading and reading books than ever. The downloading number is easy to track, but the reading? Beyond self-reporting, I don’t know how the number of actual
readers can be confirmed.

And so, I wonder, how many of these e-books are being actually read? Or downloaded and simply forgotten among all the other noise that sprinkles onto our hard drives every day? This is especially important to consider when e-books are being sold at prices as low as 99 cents. At that
that price, that latest YA bodice ripper you bought from Smashwords could well find its way to the bottom of the digital sock drawer. (I bought the e-book of Kemble Scott’s The Sower for $2.00 and still haven’t read it.)

A bound dust-jacketed copy of War and Peace and an e-book of same are certainly the same in terms of
the text contained, but they still feel distinct from each other. One has the weight of a lovingly bounded, attractive real-world object that waves at you from your bookcase or night table whenever you pass by. (“Hey! Your wife gave me to you for Christmas! I cost $37.00! You promised you’d read
me someday!”) And when I did hold in my lap in bed, I felt the sweep and weight of its long human history, how it stretches across time. Like the soul, it felt immeasurable and lofty.

The e-book of War and Peace, I’m less sure about. As a thumbnail on my e-reader it may seem closer to a mere abstract idea, with the same status as the folder marked “Real Estate” (which I haven’t opened in two years). Among all the other files I’m sure to have on my iKindle (or KindlePad), it may be just another thumbnail. Assuming it’s cheaper, it may be even be easier to forget about. And I’ll
never receive a book of that caliber as a gift in that format.

E-readers and e-books are not the same thing. Where one goes, the other doesn’t necessarily follow. I can see using my e-reader to download basic reference works for the editing business or a book I’m writing. Or to read a novelist I’m new to and whom I’m not sure I want taking too much money or
shelf space. I’m still likely to prefer my hard copy issues of The New Yorker, especially if I forget it on the bus, drop it in the bathtub, or leave it out for my in-laws' dog to chew on. With
bound paper, I won’t be out so much.

Now, I’ll hazard a couple of predictions:

First, e-books will almost completely fill the role once played by mass market and pulp paperbacks. And, as happened with the mass markets, some fine books will wind up buried among the hundreds of thousands of volumes of  Tommy Tinkle, Teenage Detective versus the Zombie Army and DIY
Dentistry—Is It for You?

(Note to the ghosts of Jim Thompson and Charles Willeford: It’s not any easier now than it was in your day. Getting novels like Pop. 1280 and Wild Wives published is no longer the challenge. Getting them read is.)

Second, I’m willing to bet that Dragon’s Ark will sell more copies as an e-book than it will as a POD trade paperback. BUT—and here’s what I find interesting—of those who download it, how many will get around to actually reading it versus those who bought it in paper?

I’d sure like to know.

Whatever happens, despite the advice I’m hearing, my book won’t be going for 99 cents. Whatever you can say for or against Dragon’s Ark--a universe-and-a-half away from War and Peace--it’s not that forgettable.

Copyright 2010 by Thomas Burchfield 

Edited 11/19/10; 11/28/10

Photos by author


Thomas Burchfield's contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark will be published March 2011 by Ambler House Publishing. His essays and blog entries can be read at The Red Room website for writers. He can also be friended on Facebook, tweeted at on Twitter and e-mailed at tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.

Copy-Cat ! (Or: Burchfield Rips Off a Jon Carroll Cat Column)

Admit it, macho man. Something in you goes "Awwwwwww!"

Over the past eight years, I’ve seldom written about our cat Flo, a gem-like but goofy and affectionate calico. This is not due to any weeny sense of privacy, but, partially, because I didn’t want my work to be seen as a pale shadow of the fine and famous Cat Columns by famous San Francisco Chronicle Cat Owner, Jon Carroll.

[5:45 a.m.: The World-famous Cat Columnist Jon Carroll suddenly sits up in bed, antennae shivering with alarm in the cold dawn. Something is wrong! Rising quickly, he slips feet into slippers and wraps self in bathrobe.]

My main reason for not writing more often about our dear Flo is that there’s not much to say about her beyond “Yup, she sure is sweet, ain’t she?”

[5:50 a.m.: Carroll trips over cat Bucket and falls on face while rushing down hallway to office.]

I first saw Flo’s green button eyes staring vacantly up at me while on my first visit to Elizabeth’s apartment in 2002. Not many brains in this one, I thought.

Later, I caught Flo curling about on the kitchen counter—a Place Upon Which Cats Do Not Belong (though They Behave Otherwise). Before I could remove her, she stood on her hind legs, put her paws on my shoulder and crawled into my arms, swelling into a purr that melted the granite cockles of my heart.

Uh-oh, I thought. Oh my . . . I couldn't put her down, even after she started to drool on me.

[6:05 a.m.: Bearded lips quivering, Carroll gapes in horrific disbelief  at computer screen: “This . . . this is an OUTRAGE!”]

Later that evening, after a pleasurable time spent combing my fingers through the sumptuous fur of this ecstatic creature, I rose from the couch and walked across the room, only to feel a batting at my feet. I turned to look: It was Flo, chasing after me, with her odd, whisper-soft hiss, her eyes wide with outraged bafflement as she swatted at my ankles: Hey! Come back here! Pet Flo! Then she sat on perfect point, staring up at me, her eyes wide with hope. 

Suitably chastened, I returned to the couch.

[6:20 am: Carroll fires off angry cease-and-desist e-mail to Alleged Plagiarizer.

6:25 a.m.: After an angry response to reply from someone named “Norman Mailer Demon,” Carroll shoots highest-priority e-mails to Chronicle Editorial Board, requesting emergency meeting.

6:28 a.m.: Carroll discovers that cat Pancho has figured out control-alt-delete.]

Most Cat Stories start like this: “I always thought cats were dumb, but one day. . . .” Then comes the tale about flushing toilets; playing fetch, hide and seek, and the piano; ringing doorbells; sounding the alarm when the house catches fire; catching the burglar; stealing chess pieces, hiding them, then leading you to them; signaling it’s time to take the yummy medicine by jumping up on the chair, right when you have the dropper in hand.

Cats are certainly not smart like dogs, but the smart ones reveal an often startling, opportunistic intelligence and awareness. If they were human, crime rates would be three times what they are. But they also display a fierce devotion toward their people equal to that displayed by dogs. I’ve bonded with cats without going within ten feet of the food dish.

I have no Smart Cat Stories about Flo. She’s a WYSIWYG cat. To me, sociability equals smarts in cats, but Flo is an odd exception--dumb as a dust mop, loves all who pass gently through her small rounded world (except, of course, for Other Kitties).

[6:40 a.m.: Carroll trips over Bucket, falls on face while rushing out to car.] 
 
Elizabeth and I have a dumb goofy cat. That’s all.

Example: Flo does not steal food. We could leave a steaming hot chicken and tuna dinner out on the dining table, go out to a movie and it’ll still be there, untouched, when we return. Though Flo may sniff around it, she won’t eat it.

Does this mean Flo is an Trustworthy Incorruptible Kitty, the Eliot Ness of Felines, one who would never stoop to stealing the Food of Her Masters?

Not at all. It means simply this: If it’s not in a dish, on the kitchen floor, it’s not food!

“Yup,” you say, “that’s a dumb cat, alright.”

[8:00–11:00 a.m.: During tense, three-hour meeting with Chronicle Editors, Carroll anxiously proposes options for dealing with new challenge to Cat Column Monopoly. Urges copyright lawsuit and trade marking of such terms as “cat,” “Bucket and Pancho,” and “kibble.”

11:00 a.m: Carroll storms out of meeting after suggestion that he get a dog and write about that instead.]

Cats are said to be “snobby,” “aloof,” “independent.” We’re only their “staff” and all that. I must disagree. I’ve bonded with many cats in my life, and after eight years of living day in and day out with Flo, I conclude that cats are none of those things.

The truth is this: Cats are babies.  

Cats are stuck in an eternal kittenhood, are deeply dependent on their owners and are as domesticated as dogs. The fact that feral cats (the so-called free-living kind) live on average only five miserable years, while fighting off parasites, other cats, dogs and car traffic, while your housebound cat lives up to twenty years (even outlasting many dogs), should settle the matter.

Without us, cats live hard and die early. To me, that’s a pretty human-dependent animal.

[12:15 p.m: Carroll returns home, finds cats have changed locks on doors. Attempts to gain access through cat door.]

Their image of independence could be, I suspect, due to our projection of flattering ideas of ourselves on this sometimes opaque creature. One thing seems true—their stealth and opacity makes them a good subject for whimsical, absurd flights of humor.

[2:48 p.m.: Carroll finally extricates self from cat door, finds entire neighborhood has gathered to stare. Carroll is told that Bucket and Pancho are now posting “Jon Carroll Columns” on the Internet.

“Cats!” Carroll shakes fist at sky. “Damn them!”]

Flo is truly a Wonder Cat. As in, “I wonder when Mom’s coming home?” “I wonder when the Big Friendly Giant’s gonna break out the Wonderful Blue Brush?” and “I wonder why they’re using my water dish as a toilet?”

"Mine!"

Life with Flo is one sweet and simple puff of delight after another: the way she lies on top of my hand (another one of All the Things that Belong to Flo); how she snuggles in my armpit on cold nights; the way she runs in front of me when I walk into the bedroom at night, looking up at me in hope that
I’ll pick her up (which I may or may not do).

 

 "Mine!"

[3:30 p.m.: Carroll rushes into Internet cafe. Review of Bucket and Pancho’s “Jon Karel Kolum” site shows 1,000,000 views since morning and offer of column space at The New Yorker. Carroll’s page views: minus 10.

 Cuter than Bucket . . . cuter than Pancho . . . put Together!

You wouldn’t know it from the photos, but Flo is an old girl now, her joints creaky, her stomach touchy to anything but special kibble. Still, her jewel-like charm and kitten spirit shine bright and Mom and I are happy to be the Greatest Things in Flo World. Even with her low-wattage brain, she’s one of the great cats of my life.

[4:45 p.m.: Carroll goes to animal shelter, brings home dog.]

Copyright 2010 by Thomas Burchfield 

Photos by author

Re-edited 11/18/10

Thomas Burchfield's contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark will be published March 2011 by Ambler House Publishing. His essays and blog entries can be read at The Red Room website for writers. He can also be friended on Facebook, tweeted at on Twitter and e-mailed at tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.

 

Thoughts on "The Dark Frontier" by Eric Ambler

Eric Ambler wrote The Dark Frontier, his very first espionage novel, in the mid-1930s. He meant it to be a parody, as he relates in his excellent and typically erudite introduction to the Mysterious Press edition from 1990. He wanted to write a novel that would “make fun of the old secret service adventure thriller as written by E. Phillips Oppenheim, John Buchan, Dornford Yates and their cruder imitators,” with their indomitable, jut-jawed heroes, ungreased by human failing, and, consequently, often as dull as unspiced soup.

The novel starts out amusingly enough. Henry Barstow, a overworked, dowdy, 40-year-old English physicist and bachelor of celebrated reputation is on an overdue vacation in the south of England, when he encounters a mysterious Mr. Groom. Groom immediately starts picking through the cave-scape of Barstow’s considerable brains for knowledge, specifically about those new atomic weapons that have been making the news (weapons that were in reality already being researched at that time).

Mr. Groom represents the nefarious-sounding corporation of Cator & Bliss. He attempts to enlist Professor Barstow in a scheme to steal the secret plans for a new-fangled atomic weapon held by the unstable government of the shadow-strewn (and mythical) Balkan nation of Ixania, before they can use it against western nations . . . or so he claims. . . .

At first, Professor Barstow, a Scientist with a capital “S”, refuses with admirable English staunchness, suspicious that Mr.Groom cares only about world peace as it applies to the shareholders of Cator & Bliss. On his way to bed that night, he happens across a fictional version of the derring-do tales being parodied here—one titled Conway Carruthers, Dept. Y, and indeed, it’s pretty lame—and almost promptly puts it
down. “Barstow the mathematician had no use for Barstow the romantic.”

Unfortunately for the Professor, not long after, he receives a bump on the brain and  awakens with a case of amnesia so severe that believes himself now to be master spy Conway Carruthers. As Carruthers of the secret service, he promptly adopts the disguise of “Professor Barstow” (an identity doubling that might have spurred an admiring snort from Vladimir Nabokov). With his new identity as a super
secret agent, the professor sets out across the dark frontier into mysterious Ixania to stop the dissemination of this new weapon of mass destruction (before it’s too late! Of course.)

In his introduction, Ambler modestly and intelligently dismisses his maiden voyage into fiction, writing that, as a parody, it fails. Over 70 years later, and from the vantage point of my reading chair, I’d agree.

After the amnesiac Professor decides to don the disguise of, well, himself, you would eagerly anticipate a string of comic calamities like something out of Donald Westlake. Unfortunately, there are few laughs to be found and the misfortunes unfurl in the classic fashion of later Ambler.

As it turns out, tweedy Barstow’s amnesian makeover into Ultra Action Spy isn’t a delusion at all. He really does become a master spy and, therefore, an entirely different character. With nothing to link the two men, we’re left with a character who’s a vague, non-funny and confusing mush, hard to envision either as scientist or hero. Ambler makes a few passes at portraying some confusion underneath Carruthers’ ultra-confident manner, but seems to give up.

Mid-point through the narrative, Ambler changes to the more-believable viewpoint of an American investigative reporter. The narrative swirls along on surer ground here, but it also makes Barstow even more baffling and less interesting. It would also help if all the characters and the world they chase each other through were as whacked-out as the professor/spy should be, but in the end, Ambler the realist rather clumsily wins out over Ambler the farceur.

Outside of the problem of Professor Barstow, the novel does have excellent plotting, a driving story, and is threaded with fine writing, excellently drawn supporting characters, and an incisive and sophisticated take on politics, money and power (though Ambler, always a dedicated leftist, would later strongly disavow his own romantic flirtation with Soviet Russia.)

As a straight novel of espionage and adventure, The Dark Frontier has its pleasures. You can see the talent that would make Eric Ambler a pioneering genre writer whose work would fully flower in novels like A Coffin for Dimitrios, Background to Danger, Cause for Alarm and many others. His innovation of the “everyday hero” inspired no less a personage than Alfred Hitchcock. His novels have influenced such major genre authors as Graham Greene, John LeCarre, and Alan Furst, who relates he wrote the first sentences to his first masterwork, The Night Soldiers, on the back of a copy of Dimitrios. And, finally, his name even inspired the founding of this neat little publishing house.

(Edited 11/12/10)

Thomas Burchfield's contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark will be published March 2011 by Ambler House Publishing. His essays and blog entries can be read at The Red Room website for writers. He can also be approached on Facebook, followed on Twitter and e-mailed at tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.

Photo by author

Copyright 2010 by Thomas Burchfield

You Just Wait! I'll Be RIGHT There!

"I’m now at Trader Joe’s, Emeryville—"  Recent Facebook/Twitter feed.

Dear Earl Eckenlouper:

I am a corporate spy, government assassin, professional criminal, and certified clinical psychopath. I am writing this e-mail to thank you for keeping me constantly up-to-date on your real-time whereabouts via your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Thanks to your penchant for public exposure, I am now able to track you wherever you go without expending endless miles of legwork or investing thousands of dollars in hi-tech surveillance gadgetry. Your compulsive self-promotion enables me to take whatever actions necessary should necessity, desire, or both, arise.

For instance, as a corporate spy for a fast-food franchise, I may “take you out” (as we say in the trade) when you tell the whole world that you have committed the error of dining at my client’s competitor.

As a government assassin, I may “put you down” at some future moment for “friending” the Turbaned Guy at the Local Mosque, signing that Climate Change petition, or hitting on Michelle Bachmann.

Further, as a professional criminal (or a “Crime Pro” as we underworld citizens like to call ourselves) I wish to inform you that next time you’re slumped over at Slumpy’s Tavern at 8th and Weyauwega , I may pop by your place, kidnap your entire family and hold them for ransom. That will be a hangover you will not forget.

And finally, as a certified clinical psychopath, I may simply enjoy watching you squirm when I track you down to Mr. Blister’s’ Deli on 9th and Broadway where, every Tuesday at one p.m., wearing those godawful low slung jeans with your butt crack showing, you order your cold pastrami on day-old white, sprouts, no mustard (and if that’s not reason enough to whack a guy, then there’s simply no justice in the world.)

To make my job/hobby/favorite pastime a little easier in the future, I request that next time you inform us of your current whereabouts via Twitter and Facebook that you wear a large circular bulls eye on your back, or lift your chin skyward so as to enable an easier headshot

Oh, and I’m still mad about Betty Jo Bialowsky dumping me for you!

Because I am not a completely bad person, I will give you a head start by saying that I’m six-two, look like Lee Van Cleef and stare a lot--usually right at you. I also openly carry high-powered weaponry, thanks to recent Supreme Court rulings.

And please note that any sudden movement tends to set me off.

Thank you for your help in this matter. I know I’ll be seeing you . . . soon.

Sincerely,

You’ll Find Out . . . .

Thomas Burchfield's contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark will be published March 2011 by Ambler House Publishing. His essays and blog entries can be read at The Red Room website for writers. He can also be approached on Facebook, followed on Twitter and e-mailed at tbdeluxe[at] sbcglobal [dot] net.

Photo by author

Copyright 2010 by Thomas Burchfield

THEY SAY HE DIED IN THE LAND BEYOND THE FOREST . . . BUT THEY WERE WRONG

 Cover design by Cathi Stevenson/Book Cover Express; cave/moon image by photosani; used under licensing by Shutterstock.

For a century, Dracula--the Prince of Nightmares, the Superman of Evil--has been quietly casting his dark and impish dreams over the sleeping souls of a High Sierra community who only know him as the eccentric recluse who lives under the forbidding peak known as Dragon’s Ark. But now, facing a modern world intent on washing away the shadows of his enchanting but haunted world, the Vampire King gives life to a dying woman and ensnares her in a grim and ruthless struggle with greedy resort developers over the future of his mountain kingdom.

Dragon’s Ark is a weird, thrilling, and violent tale of supernatural power, intrigue, betrayal, and surreal bloody revenge that follows a fabulous legend’s bizarre and bloodthirsty quest to preserve his life and power against the unforgiving, dreamless light of the 21st century.

COMING 2011 FROM AMBLER HOUSE PUBLISHING
IN POD & E-BOOK EDITIONS!

Copyright 2010 by Thomas Burchfield

The Exciting Secret Adventures of Naked Man

Author John-Ivan Palmer’s long colorful career in American show business gives him a lens able to focus on corners far removed from the experience of most writers.

Since the 1960s, the peripatetic Palmer, has roamed the country, first as a magician and, later as a popular stage hypnotist and mentalist. Along the way, he's written a huge number of of distinctive, often brilliant, articles on the often-treacherous ins-and-outs of the fading world of traveling show business folk. He is, in his words, "the only known literary author who is a stage hypnotist."

In his long overdue first novel, the farcical, roughly charming and racy picaresque Motels of Burning Madness (The Drill Press, 195 pp; available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble etc.), he takes willing readers on a fast, entertaining, bawdy, no-holds-barred voyage into the musky backwater swamp of male strippers and other remote bizarries of live entertainment in America.

Though very explicit, Motels is not a sex novel at all of the type found in Borders’ erotica section. Instead, it's a picaresque novel, a traditional form stretching back to Ancient Rome and Petronious' Satyricon. Set in the early 1980s Rome of Los Angeles, its protagonist is Huey Dubois, a 24-year-old gigolo and stripper of fine uncut endowment, not much brain, but more heart than you’d expect. Handsome Huey is a misfit’s misfit—a good soul who’s not much good at anything but being a prancing, g-stringed boy toy, and because of that, he always seems to be bumping n’ grinding away in survival
mode. He’s paradoxical young man: though an exhibitionistic gigolo, stripper (and other kinds of performance, er, artist), he pursues these pursuits while a sense of misplaced honor constantly struggles to break through his selfish exterior.

Even his own private desires make him a freak in an environment already a-roiling with alternative, offbeat desires (S&M fans and the like). Huey has little taste for women his own age. He likes them older. In fact, much older as revealed in Palmer’s sympathetic portraits of Huey’s three main forty years-plus paramours: Malibu matron Madelein; Debra, the abused, lonely wife of an L.A. cop; and, the real
song of his heart, Gloria Madlock, the late-night waitress at the Donut Hole for whom Huey loyally puts on a free midnight show from behind his hotel window, san culottes.

As the novel opens, Madelein from Malibu has just given Huey the boot out of her beachfront bodega in the mis-belief that Huey stole her jewelry. The next day, Madelein winds up mysteriously dead. Not surprisingly, straight society’s suspicion naturally turns toward Huey, who, like his associates in the sexual underworld, is no friend of law and order, lying to the cops even when he’d better off telling the truth.

Soon, Gloria herself mysteriously vanishes as the law closes in. Huey has to leave L.A., but on the way out, he takes us on a gamy, hair-curling tour through the underground of male strip venues, “staggette” parties, private video shoots, all of this arranged by some of the sleaziest, most crooked agents imaginable.

With the hot breath of the law steaming his shoulders, Huey jumps from a bedroom window and lands in a fugitive’s gig--a traveling male striptease troupe that takes him through Las Vegas and on a zany zigzag into America’s heartland (where the biggest audiences of all exist for this kind of entertainment). This barrel-bottom, Barnum & Bailey male animal act happens to be the hideout of a fellow narcissist whom Huey suspects made off with both Madelein’s jewelry and her life: the perfectly named Billy Slipton.

After a series of entertaining and tawdry mishaps—why anyone would ever choose this showbiz career path befuddles my comparatively conservative mind—Huey rips off and gives the nefarious Slipton the slip and sets fire to the troupe’s motel in his escape (hence the title).

Hugh finally tracks his beloved Gloria in Omaha, only to learn that she, like so many in this world, keeps her own secrets, even while parading naked.

After a pungent exploration and analysis of women’s mud wrestling (there’s actually a business and craft behind this performance genre), Huey learns once again he’s only found another bad refuge and so must flee. From there, he stumbles into my favorite stop-over in the entire novel: Clown Town, a bizarro setting that could birth a whole novel of its own inside its limits. (At this point, I must leave you to discover this community for yourself.)

At the end, Huey does land on his feet, a little wiser and, as he realizes with touching insight, a little older. Like other comic heroes, he may not get what he starts out wanting, but he gets something much better.

Palmer—who worked as a male stripper to research Motels (I doubt George Plimpton went so far)—describes Huey’s world with lively evocative care, insight, humor and remarkable kindness. Such a milieu is a natural target for easy putdowns and lazy, knee-jerk moralism. Palmer avoids both.

Sometimes, though, the narrative seems thin. We’re told little, if anything, about Huey’s background and the plot eventually seems to drift away from its whodunnit aspects. Motels of Burning Madness could have burned on for a few pages longer; for example, I wanted more insight into Huey’s brief sojurns of dancing in respectable middle-class households. Though, with a roomful of women grabbing at his intimacies, Huey probably doesn’t have much time to ponder the family photos he passes by and reflect on his outsider's role in the secret world hidden behind those bland smiling masks.

(Photo by author)

Whackers: The Story of an Unproduced Screenplay

During the 1990s, I worked as a freelance legal assistant in San Francisco, while I pursued the improbable dream that I could write a screenplay that Hollywood would want to buy and—maybe—produce.

Sometime around 1994, I was working at a giant beehive of a law firm in the financial district, when I developed another one of my periodic (and failed) romantic fascinations, this time with a compelling first-year associate at the firm. (No names because (1) I am a gentleman; and (2) she is an attorney).

I believed then that one should always perform some gesture in tribute to these feelings—preferably a civilized one, success or no--so I called her up and asked her out. She called back and left a polite “no” on the home answering machine. She ended by adding that she was already engaged to be married (I don’t recall that I ever saw the Ring on her hand).

Rejection took place on a Friday. Saturday I went to work and suffered the sting of running into her. That afternoon, I took my pummeled ego out for a beer at a favored watering hole, The New Delhi, an Indian bar and restaurant at the edge San Francisco’s Tenderloin.

My bartender at the New Delhi that day was a cheerful Nepalese named Rabi Kunnar, who also worked as a doorman at a nearby hotel.. Slumped behind my beer, I whined my tale of woe, concluding with her upcoming engagement.

“Thomas!” Rabi cheerfully scoffed with a dismissive wave. “Don’t feel bad! Tell you what! You give me five hundred dollars, I go kill her fiancé and THEN you can have her!”

My hat about flew off my head as I straightened up on the barstool, my finger in the air, the ecstasy rising in me like sap:

“That,” I cried in my best bad Hitchcock voice, “is a moooo-veee!”

I was in the middle of another script at time, and though I knew it would not turn out to be a good one, that job had to be finished. So another six months passed before l sat down and took a year and a half to write the funniest movie I could think of. Even looking at it fifteen years later, I think I succeeded. Even in the spare, dry restricted language of screenplays, its joyful music still plays.

And now, strictly as an experiment, I’m presenting Whackers for your reading pleasure over at Smashwords online publishing, where you can download it to your computer your e-reader . . . or even your i-Phone!

The pitch for Whackers goes, more or less, like this:

WHACKERS: A law clerk’s blind passion for an attorney puts him on the fast track to hell when a glib n’ greedy hit man hires himself to whack the attorney’s fiancé. A madcap slapshtick nightmare about the awful things that can happen when a dream comes true.

Clearly, this is a wish fulfillment tale. It’s also part film noir parody and the story of a con man and his patsy (a setup that doesn’t seem as popular now as it was in the days of Abbott & Costello and Billy Wilder). Those two clowns, talented but haplessly besotted Bryce Doolittle and scheming but foolish Jack Studd, were the easy parts to write. I encountered significant but enjoyable challenges with the patsy’s “romantic interest” (enigmatic Elaine Wilder) and the climactic showdown where all three collide. The Elaine problem was solved when I happened on a news photo of a young girl jumping joyfully into hurricane-driven surf. For the chase, I opened a dozen
doors, until one led me to where I thought the movie needed to go.

For much of the way, I had no title until perceptive singer/songwriter Pat Johnson, during a long beery conversation at the Club Deluxe in San Francisco one afternoon, pointed to the “whacking” that triggered the main plot, and said, “How about ‘Whackers’?”

I got good advice from a screenwriting critique group, but in the end, I found the best approach was to pass it around to six or seven readers who both knew and did not know each other. The response was perceptive, mostly highly positive, even enthusiastic. Women seemed to like it more than men. The harshest criticism from this group was that it was “way out there” (where I fully intended to send it). One reader admitted he didn’t like comedies anyway and also wanted something closer to a Hollywood ending rather than the bittersweet flavor I gave it.

When it was done, I set Whackers sailing into the Hollywood Fog. And, as with most of the other screenplays I wrote, I was tortured with encouragement. Almost everyone liked it. The Seriously Big Hollywood agent (and nice person) Catherine Tarr at Creative Artists Agency had once asked me if I had a comedy in me. Whackers was my response. Her response: “But I didn’t mean a slapstick comedy!” The rest were intimidated for financial reasons (Bryce, for example, is a frustrated crooner and my idea was to score the movie with classic love songs, the licensing for which would have sent the production budget to the moon. This is why writing novels is better. In novels, there are no budget considerations on the imagination)

The one person who did not DID NOT like, really REALLY hated Whackers was a friendly old gentleman screenwriter I met on a flight home from a screenwriters conference in Austin. I sent it to him after it was done, then called him a few weeks later. His verdict: “Awful. Terrible. Bad. Six drafts? That’s all you could do after six drafts!?”

Lesson learned: Never submit your comedy to a man who worked on Raging Bull.

After over a year of constant peddling, the small barrel of agents and producers who (a) appeared reputable and (b) would enjoy something as righteously off-the-wall as Whackers ran dry and I moved on. My favorite of my screenplays—and definitely one of the most entertaining things I’d ever written—crawled sadly into the drawer with the others.

Looking back, it’s just as well. Whackers is both too “whacked” and too expensive to be a Hollywood movie. And if they had produced it, it might have gone the way of so many other offbeat scripts—its racy, zany spirit weighed down with leaden realism, its wings clipped to make it more pablumatic for the bland-minded audiences that the Hollywood is beholden to.

Hollywood is always looking for the next Titanic, the next Avatar, the next E.T., the next Knocked Up. Whackers frolics far away from those mainstream blockbusters. A righteously outrageous yet sophisticated farce that portrays organized crime and federal law enforcement as multicultural hotbeds of alternative sexuality and ends in a huge vacation resort with a cartoon-like chase out the Silent Era might be beloved by comedians, serious comedy aficionados (meaning people who know who Jack Benny is) and critics, but the “mainstream” audience would go off in search of ever-safe Jennifer Aniston and Sandra Bullock.

Whackers, at best, would become a cult item. No one sets out to make a cult movie.

In case I forgot to mention it, Whackers is a comedy. Here’s a list of some of the movies that directly and indirectly inspired its writing: Laurel & Hardy’s The Music Box; Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last; Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr. and Sherlock Jr.; Bringing Up Baby, Abbott & Costello’s Pardon My Sarong and Buck Privates Come Home; The Three Stooges’ Dizzy Pilots; Billy Wilder’s Some Like it Hot and The Fortune Cookie; the oeuvre of Sylvester the Cat, Daffy Duck and Wile E. Coyote; Going in Style; Monty Python & the Holy Grail; Sleeper; Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Airplane!

Maybe I’m getting old and reactionary, but few of the comedies I’ve seen since I wrote Whackers even try for the oddball alchemy I was trying to create, but a few of them are: South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut; Cannibal!; Strangers with Candy (the film); Hot Fuzz; and 30 Rock.

The lists only hints at what kind of movie to expect because you don’t care how many movies I’ve seen or how darn many clever references I’ve woven into Whackers, right? If you don’t laugh like I think you will, none of that matters.

NOTE TO NON-SCREENPLAY READERS: On normal paper, Whackers comes out to about 110 pages. Smashwords uses a different formatting so don't be intimidated by the Smashword page count. It reads very fast.

NOTE TO SCREENWRITERS: I no longer care whether or not anyone buys Whackers, so I’ve insolently violated several of the Sacred Tenets of Screenwriting to make reading this screenplay more entertaining to the general reader (the vast majority of my loyal but small audience); for instance, the use of Times Roman font, which is much easier on the eyes than Courier, especially on non-paper media; Whackers is also a movie where some of the world’s great love songs are almost characters in themselves, so I put back the titles of all the songs I could only hint at and put more in where they weren’t. Yes and “they” hate things like “ACT I”, etc., . . . pardon me while I sit right down and cry over it.

Now go read and enjoy. I still think Whackers is funny. I'm betting many of you will too.

(Photo by author with the assistance of Elizabeth Burchfield, Annette Roux, Christine Henry and Don Herron).

(Revised 2/14/10)