Teaser Tuesday: Blockbusted

Teaser Tuesday: Blockbusted

Mar 09

Excerpt from “A Hero’s Journey,” Rolling Stone no. 397, June 1983
By Charles Huff

Our Hero stands tall against the forces of evil. In this case, “evil” represents a scene from his next film, one which refuses to achieve the rhythmic perfection for which he has become famous.

“Faster, more intense,” he repeats to his editors, over and over, a filmmaking mantra. Faster, more intense; faster, more intense; faster, more intense, for what seems like hours. If they’ve heard it enough, none of them lets on.

Finally he watches the scene and is satisfied.

“Let’s stop there for today,” he announces in a clear, crisp voice. “Thank you everyone.”

Only he won’t be stopping here today; he will spend the majority of the evening in the studio with this editing machine, watching his work in progress again and again. His wife stops by with dinner, a thirty-minute break to inhale a plain hamburger, fries, and a gigantic coke. Then it’s back to the reels. He takes copious notes with a number two pencil on yellow thin-ruled legal size notepads. There are hundreds of them stacked against the wall of his home office in Manhattan Beach, California.

Even in these nascent days of computer technology, most of the screenwriters I know have already made the transition to word processors. You can hear them comparing their bits and bytes against one another as they procrastinate in the endless coffee shops and diners that dot the LA landscape.

In his movies, Henry Lane frames the relationship between old technology and new technology as a constant battle; in his real life, the war has already been won.

You pride yourself on the cutting-edge technology that brings your stories to life, I ask him one afternoon over cheap beer. Yet you rely on the oldest of mechanisms to record your work. I’ve seen that ancient reel to reel tape recorder you keep by your bed for the ideas they come to you in the night.

“It’s what I’m comfortable with,” he says. “More than anything else, I’m a creature of comforts.”

The blockbuster success of Henry’s first two films has guaranteed that comfort for life. We’re drinking our cheap beer as we sit on the deck of his home, which is both large and beautiful. I stare at the ocean, rolling in, rolling out.

The large and beautiful home sits on a thin strip of sidewalk known as The Strand. Just past that strip is the beautiful California coast, and along the coastline roars the ocean.

“I’ve lived here for five, six years, and I spend a couple hours every day just staring at the water,” Henry admits. “It’s reassuring, like no matter what else happens in your life or your mind, there is always something that will be constantly moving, never stopping, never tired. It’s comforting, I guess, though comforting from what, I’m not sure.”

A pissy reporter in a People magazine feature, annoyed because he repeatedly refused her request for an interview, once described Henry as “an awkward gazelle, long and edgeless, with a hint of frump.” She nailed it, except for the frump, which has somehow evaporated with age, and that’s shocking, because Henry refuses to exercise.

I’ve known Henry for more than a decade, so his nearly implacable calm in the face of enormous tension is something I’ve grown used to. It doesn’t mean it’s any easier to handle, especially when I know he must be sweating right now. At least a little.

I empty the last of my brew. You’re staring down the end of a six-year journey that has made you wealthy and the most successful filmmaker of all time. You’ve changed the entire landscape of filmmaking and impacted our culture for probably decades to come. One more movie, and then it’s all over. What if it…

“What if it sucks?” Henry chuckles. “I don’t know…depending on who you ask, all my movies suck. I’m just trying to stay true to the story and see this through.”

Then what’s next, Henry? Another big movie? Something small and personal?

“A lot of rest,” he replies, grabbing my glass for a refill. “I can be incredibly lazy when I want to be.”

From Blockbusted (title tenative), due 2010 from Alert Nerd Press