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*****
When I roared up to Chris' house on my Suzuki, he was already rolling his bike into the garage. It was a tricked out Kawasaki Z1 that could do an honest 150 mph, with still more twist in the throttle.
When Chris saw me he pulled a manila envelope from his jacket and waved
it. "Got the shit," he said. "Straight from the Guild."
Translation: The "shit" was a list of Guild -sanctioned agents.
(Only later did I realize just how right-on that description was.)The Writers
Guild Of America -west (WGAw ) was a union of brother and sister scribes we'd
recently joined. You had to sell at least one movie or two episodes of
television to qualify. We'd made that sale - a low budget flick about The Lost
Dutchman Mine that would never be made. But it did pay well enough to cover the
several thousand dollars it cost for WGA membership.
I made appropriate "hot damn" noises and we repaired to his
home office, equipped with one state-of-the-art IBM Selectric for Chris, and an
elderly electric typewriter whose particulars I can't recall, but I can tell
you that when you hit a letter, a key rose up on a slender, curved metal type
bar, which struck an ink-soaked ribbon, making an impression of the chosen
letter on a piece of paper. In that pre-I-Pad age it wasn't quite a quill pen,
but close.
Chris shook two copies of the list from the envelope so we could get to
it. "It's divided up by state and city," Chris said, "but we can
ignore most of them. Met another writer - a pro - coming out of the Guild office
who was nice enough to give us some tips."
I fanned the pages. "Skip everything but Los Angeles, right?"
I guessed. We were newbies, but not so new that we didn't know if you wanted a
book agent you stuck with New York City and if you wanted a film agent, you
stuck with Los Angeles.
"Narrowing it down to LA isn't enough," Chris said. "The
guy told me that the only agents worth a fuck are In The Loop?"
"What's The Loop?" I asked, naturally enough.
"Basically, anything within a thirty-mile radius of SAG headquarters,"
he replied. (SAG is the Screen Actors Guild.) "He said by contract the
actors get more bennies for any shoot outside that area, and the other unions
basically follow suit. So that's where any agent worth a shit hangs his toupee."
"Another thing," Chris said, "he warned us that just
because an agent is what he called 'A Guild Signatory,' and is 'In The Loop,'
doesn't mean he's any good. First red alert, he said, is if they are ready to sign
you at the drop of the fucking hat. They're just churning for scripts, hoping
to come up with a winner. Second - and this was the biggest caution - is that
if anybody asks you for money, tell them to fuck off. They are crooks. No fucking
exceptions, he said."
I laughed. "An easy lay that asks for money is to be avoided,"
I said. "Sounds like somebody's uncle talking."
We got to work: dividing the list, then narrowing it down; first by zip
code, then by the Agency's comments - if any. More than a few said they weren't
taking on new clients. Much later, we learned that actually meant they would
only consider writers recommended by somebody already in the business. All of
them discouraged phone calls. They wanted a query letter, and if they liked the
letter, they'd graciously permit us to send samples of our work. And we'd go
from there.
Chris said, "I think we oughta send a query letter to every single
swinging dick and dickette."
I agreed."Writers' Market says you're supposed to approach them
one at a time. That's bullshit. We'll be old and past it before we get to the
end of the list."
And so that's what we did: A mass mailing of query letters, but with
each letter tailored to what we could find out about the agency. In the
following weeks, some positive replies trickled in.
Quite naturally, they wanted to see some script samples. Here's where
the mass mailing idea turned up a flaw in our cunning plan. In those Neolithic
times there was no such thing as a home printer or copy machine. Unless, of
course, you had a spare 10 grand handy - which is what a printer cost back
then. According to my handy-dandy inflation calculator, that'd be $38,909.73 in
modern currency.
Bottom line: if you wanted copies you were at the mercy of print shops,
which charged anywhere from 12 cents to 15 cents a page.
Your average movie script is a hundred pages plus. That was minimum
fifteen bucks a copy, plus a Suitably Fancy Cover (more on that boneheaded
notion of ours down the road), which would run another five dollars, making it
twenty dollars. Getting out my inflation calculator again, that'd be $72.80 in
today's bucks. Now, each agent would need samples of three or four movies. So
that means... Well, you get the idea. A whole mess of greenbacks for what would
more than likely be a turndown.
Fortunately, right about then I got a gig on the side writing a car
repair manual for the Chevy Nova for Peterson Publications and was able to hold
up my end of the expenses. (I'd been recently divorced and after alimony and
child support was clipped from my paycheck I was broker than a sailor after a
two-week toot - but without the fun.)
So, you can understand that we greeted every positive response with
mixed emotions.
"Fuck me, Cole," Chris said one particularly successful day."Any
more agents say 'Yes, please send samples of your work,' I'm gonna have to hock
my bike."
His Z1 had been tricked out by the guys at Russ Collins ' Speed Shop. Collins,
for those who aren't students of motorcycle history, held the speed record in
the quarter mile for eleven straight years - breaking his own record each of
those years. He raced to promote his after-market shop.
Chris' ride was a project motorcycle for Big Bike Magazine, which he
edited.
And in return for keeping it goosed up with the latest go-fast
technology, Chris let Collins' lads bolt on new shit and run his bike through
speed trials every month or so.
In short, it was his pride and joy and for him to talk about hocking it
demonstrates just how desperate we were the day the my phone rang at the City
Desk and the guy on the phone wasn't calling to threaten one of my reporters -
or me - but to say that he was an agent and he'd liked our scripts so much he
wanted an actual face-to-face meeting with the not yet legendary writing team
of Bunch & Cole.
I had to stall him a tad because Chris was in Vegas on assignment for
Rolling Stone covering the Bike Show.
Chris and I were both writing pros, but we had taken divergent paths to
get there. After the Army, Chris had been saddled with the sort of bullshit
jobs soldiers home from the wars have been stuck with since - well, forever. A
stint as an architectural reporter for McGraw Hill. A foray into the
Underground Press - Open City and The Free Press, among others. Then into motorcycle
magazines. And finally into magazine freelance. Popular Mechanics and Popular Science.
The various motorcycle magazines. Life Magazine. Rolling Stone. And even the
magazine for the California Highway Patrol - I shit thee not.
Meanwhile, I'd gone a straighter route, working my way up the ladder at
a series of Southern California dailies, until I was City Editor, then Wire
Editor at The Outlook - a Santa Monica -based daily newspaper.
Another bit of Bunch trivia: While in Vegas for the bike show he ran
into his old buddy - and Rolling Stone colleague - Hunter Thompson, the
legendary Gonzo Journalist. He was there living the events that would become
Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. Chris set Hunter up with a rare Vincent Black
Shadow motorcycle to ride during his visit. Hunter later acknowledged Chris'
help in the dedication of that book.
After some fairly insistent dialing - and making false use of my
newspaper credentials - I finally caught up to Chris. I told him about the agent's
call and the request for a meeting.
"Where's the guy's office?" was the first thing Chris asked.
Naturally, I'd double checked the address. "Beverly Hills," I
said.
"So it's In The Loop," Chris said.
"Looks like it."
"I won't be back for at least a week," Chris said. "I'd
hate to lose the deal making the guy wait."
"No problem," I said. "I'll give him a call, say you're
on assignment for Rolling Stone. Which sure as hell won't hurt our Creds. Then,
I'll set up a solo meeting."
Chris said go for it, and a couple of days later I climbed aboard my
Suzuki and headed out.
Like I said, the agent's address was in Beverly Hills. That should have
been gold, but when I got there, and made the turns as instructed, I suddenly
found myself in some kind of factory district, with buildings pocked by busted
out windows and guarded by razor wire and junk yard dogs.
Obviously, he was stretching the Beverly Hills connection a wee bit.
I finally found the address marking a little cottage on a huge
gravel-covered lot. This couldn't be it - could it? Double-checked my Thomas
Guide. (Expedia with a cover and pages) Yep. This was the place.
Went to the door, crossing a small porch with sagging floor boards.
Knocked.
A harried-looking guy answered, glanced furtively up and down the
street, then hurried me inside.
It was the agent.
The office was set up in the cottage's living room and he hustled me
over to his desk and asked me to relax for a minute while he finished what he
was doing. To my amazement, he was addressing a big stack of Christmas cards.
Mind you, this was in early February.
He grimaced when I looked at the stack. "Running a little late
this year," he said.
I wanted to say, "No shit," but thought it unwise.
Then he called out over his shoulder, "Honey, can you get our
guest some kind of refreshment."
I saw a door open and you might imagine my surprise, Gentle Reader,
when a lady with long blond hair, wearing nothing but a pair of sheer bikini panties,
stepped out of the kitchen.
The first thing I noticed was her rather amazingly enhanced tits. The
second thing was her bush, which was as blond as the hair on her head.
And the third thing I noticed was this big damned lion standing next to
her. I suppose it was actually a lioness, since it didn’t have a mane.
I suspect my reaction was typical guy: tits and bush, and then - oh,
shit a lion. Not - oh, shit a lion, then the chick.
So now I was stuck there, wondering what to look at next - the lady, or
the lion. For some reason I couldn’t turn my head away. And the guy was saying
that this was his wife and "our pet pussy cat."
The might-as-well-be naked lady smiled and said, "Why don’t you
come into the kitchen and pick out what you want."
In my confusion, I suppose I wondered if she was offering herself, or
the lion, but I only gobbled, "Thanks."
What I really wanted to do was get the hell out of there, but I didn’t
have the nerve to flee. What if they set the lion on me?
Anyway, I squeezed past the lion - the lady saying, just give her a
shove. Which I sure as hell didn’t do and then I’m in the kitchen, and she’s
got the fridge open, bending over and showing me everything all the way to
China, and the lioness sidles up to me and starts sniffing me like a dog. I
almost pissed my pants, Gentle Reader.
Soon as I could, I got some kind of a cold drink, retreated to the
office and eagerly accepted the agent’s invitation to come along with him to
the Post Office. He said we could talk while he drove.
The moment I got outside, I mumbled some kind of an excuse, jumped on
my bike and peeled the fuck out of there just as fast as I damned could.
Obviously, Chris and I crossed the guy’s name off the list.
And no, we didn't get the script samples back.
NEXT: JACK KLUGMAN AND THE KO KIDS
*****
Here's where you can buy it worldwide in both paperback and Kindle editions:
United Kingdom ...........................Spain
Also: NOOK BOOK. Plus ALL E-BOOK FLAVORS.
Here's where to get the paperback & Kindle editions worldwide:
Here's what readers say about Lucky In Cyprus:
- "Bravo, Allan! When I finished Lucky In Cyprus I wept." - Julie Mitchell, Hot Springs, Texas
- "Lucky In Cyprus brought back many memories... A wonderful book. So many shadows blown away!" - Freddy & Maureen Smart, Episkopi,Cyprus.
- "... (Reading) Lucky In Cyprus has been a humbling, haunting, sobering and enlightening experience..." - J.A. Locke, Bookloons.com
*****
THE SPYMASTER'S DAUGHTER:
A new novel by Allan and his daughter, Susan
After laboring as a Doctors Without Borders physician in the teaming refugee camps and minefields of South Asia, Dr. Ann Donovan thought she'd seen Hell as close up as you can get. And as a fifth generation CIA brat, she thought she knew all there was to know about corruption and betrayal. But then her father - a legendary spymaster - shows up, with a ten-year-old boy in tow. A brother she never knew existed. Then in a few violent hours, her whole world is shattered, her father killed and she and her kid brother are one the run with hell hounds on their heels. They finally corner her in a clinic in Hawaii and then all the lies and treachery are revealed on one terrible, bloody storm ravaged night.
*****
TALES OF THE BLUE MEANIE
NOW AN AUDIOBOOK!
NOW AN AUDIOBOOK!
 |
Venice Boardwalk Circa 1969
|
In the depths of the Sixties and The Days Of Rage, a young newsman, accompanied by his pregnant wife and orphaned teenage brother, creates a Paradise of sorts in a sprawling Venice Beach community of apartments, populated by students, artists, budding scientists and engineers lifeguards, poets, bikers with a few junkies thrown in for good measure. The inhabitants come to call the place “Pepperland,” after the Beatles movie, “Yellow Submarine.” Threatening this paradise is "The Blue Meanie," a crazy giant of a man so frightening that he eventually even scares himself.
*****
STEN #1: NOW IN SPANISH!
Diaspar Magazine - the best SF magazine in South America - is publishing the first novel in the Sten series in four episodes. Here are the links:
REMEMBER - IT'S FREE!
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