Luminous Numinous

Have I told you about the time I shared the warmth of a fire and the smoke of a good cigar with history’s most esteemed storyteller this side of Shakespeare? Really? You don’t know about my exclusive interview with Spielberg? You haven’t heard about the time Tom (Cruise) and I were acting together in that big budget Extra-Terrestrial Sci-Fi flick Steven was directing? Well, I suppose I ought to tell you. I’d better give it to you straight. I’ll just lash together a few raw facts….throw in a bit of old Negro wisdom.

It all came back to me the other night. I was watching Where the Buffalo Roam. At the very top of Chapter 10, there is a shot of Piru, CA—a pan on a car. Piru’s where it all happened, you see.

Call it heroism, call it destiny, call it trespassing. Steven Spielberg, the grand-daddy shot-caller of them all was in my town, on my territory–my turf. And I was going to get to him, boy. And nothing—no militant lesbian production manager and certainly no grabassing P.A.–was going to keep me out. No, sir.

A lot of filming happens in Piru. Murder She Wrote. The Dukes of Hazzard. Reno 911. And that truck commercial where the guy hitches that restaurant to his pick-up and then tows the whole diner, pretty waitress and all, behind him.

Piru is no stranger to the stars, either. A lot of Hollywood blue-blood has rolled through town—the iconic elite. Burt Lancaster. Judy Garland. Dolly Parton, Sly Stallone, Jennifer Lopez, The Rock, and “The Dude” himself, Jeff Bridges. They’ve all shot pictures in Piru. But this was something else. This was big, boy. Tom Cruise? Steven Spielberg? A remake of War of the Worlds? You don’t get any bigger than that. The Circus had just rolled into town.

“Great Scott! What the fuck are those lights? Are they having the Super Bowl in our backyard?”

“They’re shooting something, Nash Bridges or Carnival maybe,” my girlfriend says.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s a great big fucker from the looks of it. Let’s go sneak a peak.”

I know Piru like the back of my hand. Piru’s about the size of the back of my hand. Piru is located in what is called the Santa Clara River Valley and sometimes the Heritage Valley by those less Catholically or less Mexicanly inclined. The Santa Clara is the last undeveloped river valley in Southern California. Located just south of the Los Padres mountains and just north of the Santa Susannas, the Santa Clara River Valley is a hidden Eden only now becoming sullied by the White Man with his khaki condominiums and his taupe tract homes. In the spring, parts of the valley near Piru, up Sespe Canyon in Fillmore, and down along Grande Canyon back behind Val Verde all light up in a floral display of purple lupine and golden mustard that would make you swear that Jehovah himself, like the white-bearded Jew Spielberg, was a Lakers fan.

But the point in any case is that Piru is a small town. Rural. When you live there, you know your way around. You know how to cut through the abandoned lot with the rotting pomegranate tree down the train tracks and past the machine shop, bypassing several levels of security, right to the center of a major motion picture, should its nucleus happen to be located in downtown, Piru. That’s what we did, my girlfriend and I. We took the short-cut.

Deception was the only way. We wanted at Spielberg bad. It’s not as though we could be forthright with these Hollywood goons. Saying “take me to your leader” wasn’t going to fly. Ingenuity was called for. We played like we were A.D.s when that suited us and played like extras when that seemed more fun.  We kept defecting from our assigned extra groups to new groups, closer to the stars, closer to Cruise and to Spielberg. Finally, we ended up acting in a scene with Cruise, actually being directed by Stevie Spee himself. As we stood around, Cruise smiled and waved at us. It was difficult to tell who was more excited about their close proximity to Tom Cruise:  my girlfriend… or Tom Cruise?

When we started rolling, Cruise was driving this car. Dakota Fanning was in back with the camera operator. Our job was to try and get to the car and to bang on the windows. Well, now, I’m an actor. A trained actor. UCLA. A doctor of thespianism. I played Romeo for the Sacramento Shakespeare Festival, damn you. So get out of my way, boy, I’m comin’ through!

I charged at the van and it didn’t matter how they re-arranged us extras. Even if put in back, I steamrolled my way through like O.J. Simpson in the Rose Bowl or a murder trial. I banged on the window, scaring the crap out of weird little Dakota and even startling the camera guy as well. I growled and snarled and gnashed my teeth and I pounded furiously against the glass. I had a close-up. There could be no doubt. A big sucker, too. A BCU as the boys say. But when the movie aired, I was disappointed. Sure, I was terribly disappointed at the picture’s low level of artistry, but I was even more disappointed that I had been CUT from this bloated piece of cinema trash. The nerve of those evil rat bastards! I was thrown into the terrible dark oubliette of the proverbial cutting room floor. No one would ever see my BCU. Piru as a whole suffered much the same fate. There was hardly a frame of Piru in the whole picture. And those wasteful fuckers spent days blowing shit up and raining on people. All for a few frames that could have been shot on the lot. We, my girlfriend and I, opted not to get rained on. That was to be the final destiny that night for the car-charging, window-pounding extras. They had a great big rain machine and they wanted to give us pneumonia for fifty filthy bucks. We decided to walk home, take showers, smoke some pot. Our labors went unpaid and uncredited.

The next night, the girlfriend had to work. She was a waitress. (I’m certain she was hoping some handsome buck would haul her away in his full-ton pickup).  She couldn’t stalk Steven Spielberg with me this particular night. But she sent over a little buddy who served as her understudy, a fellow from her film classes at the nearby California Institute of the Arts. CalArts is the best animation school in the world, maybe. But the theater and film schools are otherwise overpriced consolation prizes for students who are rejected, like Spielberg in his day, from the acronymic pantheon of SC, UCLA, AFI. The little buddy’s name was Andy. A bright-eyed and star-struck fellow, Andy owned a fancy HD camcorder and had done some film work, including serving as the personal assistant on an NBA commercial for one Kobe Bryant, whose greatness and historical weight Andy seemed to not adequately grasp. But Spielberg’s greatness Andy grasped perfectly. You might say little Andy was obsessed with Stevie Spee. (It was, in fact, Andy who coined this familiar vernacular for his idol.)  It was something like Andy’s Great American Dream to meet Stevie Spee. And for a few bowls of chronic sativa, I was to be Andy’s guide on this historic quest. I’d hand him his hero on the half-shell.

Sufficiently stoned, Andy and I made our way through the abandoned lot with the rotting pomegranate tree, down the train tracks and past the machine shop into the center of the Universal universe. We wore serious expressions. We kept our arms folded. “Yeah, buddy. We’re legit. What the fuck are YOU looking at?” We could have been anybody. We were young—I, 26 maybe, and Andy probably 18 or 19—and that made it worse. You see, all the powerful people in Hollywood are young these days. There are seven-year-olds running studios. Hell, we could have been the representatives of rich Saudi investors for all anyone knew. Or maybe we were government henchman supervising the film to make sure it was action-packed and bloody enough and emotional enough on subjects like sacrifice and heroism to convince at least a few thousand more poor black kids to enlist as Marines. The pentagon controls Hollywood and always has. Like I say, we could have been anybody. Best not to fuck with us. And no one did.

We had heard overheard Spielberg giving a note. There was a hole in Cruise’s windshield after he crashed. The people in charge of smashing the windshield asked Spielberg what he thought of their hole. He said, “A little bigger.” They made it bigger with a hammer and a chisel and looked at him the way a blacksmith looks at the king who’s fond of beheading people when handing him his best attempt at horseshoes. “Yeah, that’s good.” Spielberg said. I turned to Andy and said, “That’s why he makes the big bucks. He knows how big the hole needs to be.”

Andy and I sneaked closer and closer to Spielberg. Finally, we found him alone, standing near the Piru Bridge, near the impromptu movie diner, near where Tom Cruise crashes his car into a phone pole or power pole. Spielberg had drawn first blood. As one of the more evolved species indigenous to Piru, I had ruled the roost. But now Speilberg was king of the hill,  top of the food chain. By coming to town and blaring his damn floodlights into my living room, Spielberg had invaded my world. But now I was about to invade his!

We had Spielberg cornered. It was just us and him. The Young, the Crazy, and the Famous. We approached. Spielberg was smoking a stogie and warming himself near an electric heater. Andy was maybe two and a half feet from Spielberg and I was between them, right next to Spielberg. I could  breathe the insidious secondhand smoke of his cigar. I couldn’t help but breathe his smoke, actually. And the whole metaphorical, archetypal, allegorical nature of the whole thing hit me. How shamanic was this?!?! Here we were breathing in the wafting fumes of a mind altering plant (tobacco) this man was smoking; we were sharing his smoke and his fire, this electrical, artificial fire, as he, the world’s most celebrated storyteller, was taking a breather in the midst of telling another of his epic extra-terrestrial extravaganzas, a film whose budget could have bought you any number of small island nations and banana republics. We were so close we could touch him. I could smell his cologne. Obsession, I thought, by Calvin Klein. This was a close encounter of the third kind. Not just a sighting, but a full-blown interaction.

He turned to us and smiled. I assume that he assumed we must be there for a reason. If I’d wanted to make the headlines, I could have jumped him right there and snapped his neck. He’s a small guy, too. Somewhat wimpy seeming. So much for the security. Universal was paying the fucker a cool hundred million to direct the picture. They could have spent a bit more keeping him safe. Finally, Spielberg turned to me and spoke. He said, “Mr. Heater” and then he pointed at the electric heater that was keeping the three of us warm. It had a brand logo that read, “Mr. Heater.” I smiled back, thinking perhaps that this man was actually some sort of utter imbecile, a complete cretin. Able to read, apparently, but perhaps just barely. “Mr. Heater.” Was that all he had to say for himself? Was this the man who had, at 27 or 30 depending on who you ask, made the world afraid to go in the water? Who knows,  maybe he read my mind or felt my vibes as I was thinking of how easy it would be to do him in on the spot. Maybe he was trying to make small talk so I wouldn’t assassinate him,  and “Mr. Heater” was the best he could muster.

About that time, one of the militant lesbians found us and asked us if we were extras. While I was contemplating an appropriate response, Andy answered in the affirmative. As she began booting us back to where she supposed we were supposed to be, out on the bridge, in the cold air, far from Mr. Heater,  Andy, ever the D.P., was thinking photojournalism. He asked for a picture. Spielberg said no. Then, I, a man of the written word, asked for his autograph. He looked at me squarely. It was a look of disdain, like he was taking in one rotten doozie of a fart and said, “I don’t think so.” He lisped somewhat–a sibilant “s” like you’d hear from a Spaniard or an East Village queen. You don’t catch it when he’s on T.V., but it was there, clear as a hissing snake. Had it been “Mithter Heater?”  Or was it more like  “Mishter Heater?” And was it “I don’t think tho”  or “I don’t think sho?” It was neither. I’m sure of it. The man’s “s” sounds were a rare hybrid between “th” and “sh”  that only he could utter. He has Asperger’s Syndrome, you know. A subtle form of autism. I’m sure it’s irrelevant to his speech impediment, but I thought I’d better mention it.

Spielberg had rejected me, sure. I won’t debate that. But he had spoken to me. I’d asked him a question and he had answered. There was no disputing that much. I asked; he answered. You can call it what you want, but it was an interview in my eyes. Now I could say that I had acted in a Spielberg pic (in a scene with Cruise and Dakota Fanning, no less) and that I had interviewed the autistic auteur. I would say it, too, and often.

As we were ushered away rather briskly, I made a final desperate plea. This bastard had to have a soft-spot. I figured I’d appeal to his sense of artistry. “Sir, is this really how you’re going to to treat the extras…we’re the ones who create the atmosphere!” Spielberg, with his index finger,  motioned me towards him.. and as I leaned in,  he said, “Fuck the atmosphere.”

Fine. You have it your way. Spoil the fun. I fabricated that last small paragraph, I admit it. But the rest is true to the letter. A weird tale to be sure. Aliens. Billionaire Jews with smuggled Cuban stogies. Short, narcissistic Scientologists with smug,  sinister smiles. Little girls with too many adult brains (and too many adult admirers) for their own good. Armies and legions of people committed to making make-believe. And machines pissing man-made rain down on cinema’s untouchables–the extras, a lot whose very name points at their superfluousness. For regular folks, for you and me, the atmosphere rains on us, but Hollywood…Hollywood can rain ON the “atmosphere.”

There are some parts of this account some people can’t believe. I can accept that. They want to believe, sure, but they just can’t. It’s all just too absurd for workaday folk. But that’s not my problem. No, my problem is that it never got weird enough for me.