Tough little predator

Seven days a week I'm as pliable as clay, easily chumped, a softy who cries if I see something innocent, e.g., Ingrid Bergman in The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, especially the third act when she leads 150 orphans through Japanese lines across the mountains to safety, or when Jane says to Michael: "It's her, it's the person!" in Mary Poppins. Break out the Kleenex. It happens when I feel my way through a page of my own writing, when he loves her and she loves him. I'm a sucker for love and lovers, Jimmy Stewart nervously rotating his hat in his hands while talking to a girlfriend's mom (a terrific Capra insert in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) or Greer Garson holding a wounded Nazi pilot at gunpoint, and allowing him to eat, in Mrs. Miniver.

I like writing comedy, and I might be pretty good at it. I laugh easily. I shot G-rated comedy and goofball satire. I laughed on the set, silly unscripted improv that cracked me up. I talk to dogs and cats and cows, little birds nesting in the barn, neighbors and strangers, cops and crazy Vietnam vets. I'm a good listener and a good audience, happy as heck when I hear my daughter sing. I loved a thousand musicians and vocalists and dancers and actors in England and Australia and Holland and two dozen U.S. cities and villages, coast to coast.

So, who is that evil-looking character in the photo? Hard as nails. Armed and dangerous in a previous life, a daredevil who challenged pirates and prosecutors. I was an umpire who called balls and strikes in a prison baseball game played by killers and bank robbers, because no one else wanted to. That hard face is adamant about justice. It's impersonal, and it doesn't matter that I've been ignored and ridiculed and threatened. Justice matters.

That's all well and good, no regrets, but I have a problem. I've written everything I know and every story I could imagine. Something happened with my last novel, Chiseltown, the story of a fictional filmmaker and a low-budget movie. He has six weeks to organize it, six weeks to shoot everything, and six weeks for post production, working at lightning speed, no room for error, and every conceivable obstacle thrown in his way. It was a fun project for me, a goofy situation comedy with enough drama and verisimilitude to make it real.

I doubt that Chiseltown will earn two cents in royalties. My third wife slammed it, said it was beneath me to write about a B movie. It was published at Lulu because I didn't have $5 in the bank to buy a proof copy, a precondition for global distribution via Amazon.

That, in itself, doesn't bother me. None of my books sold more than a handful of copies, and I'm more obscure than ever as an intellectual or storyteller. Perhaps that's how it should be. The difficult problem I have is nothing further to say.

In a couple of days I will be 69 years old. I can take a lot of punishment, if there's a story to tell, but I'm empty, nothing left to explore or express. Poor old warrior, toothless and sick, kaput creatively. When I look at that photo, taken a year ago, I see a hard old midget inured to hardship. No mortal can do that perpetually. I should take up golf or ping pong.

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