Listen to the Echoes Page 5

  King Vidor became a dear friend. He heard me talking about being a director someday myself. I was having dinner one night with King and some other friends, and he heard me say, “You know, I always wanted to be a director, but it’s impossible. But someday I’d like to direct a little tiny film, ten minutes long, to see if I can do it.” King Vidor spoke up and said, “The day you do that, Ray, I’ll carry the camera.” Isn’t that beautiful? He was so kind to me.

  WELLER: Of all the cinematic adaptations of your work, what do you think is the best?

  BRADBURY: The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit is my favorite. The director followed my script. It’s that simple. It’s a beautiful film. It was released direct to video. I’ve asked the Disney people to rerelease it to the theaters. I wish they would.

  WELLER: The Martian Chronicles has never been made into a feature film. Going back to the 1950s, Fritz Lang was interested in doing it. John Huston talked about making it into a movie. You have written several scripts for various studios yourself, beginning with MGM in 1962. With all of this interest, why do you think The Martian Chronicles has never been produced as a film?

  BRADBURY: I don’t know. The studio people want something more sensational. More male machoness. There’s not enough killing. Not enough violence. At least it was made into a miniseries on television. It wasn’t great, but it’s there.

  WELLER: You didn’t like the 1982 NBC miniseries?

  BRADBURY: It was okay. It was just boring.

  WELLER: Does a studio currently own the rights?

  BRADBURY: Universal. They hired a young writer who did three screenplays for The Martian Chronicles, each worse than the last. I’ve got the scripts in the basement. I’ve got to show you how bad they are. He doesn’t know how to write. He doesn’t know grammar. He rips the guts out of people. It’s bloody. It’s violent. When you look at the remakes of The Mummy—that’s Universal. They think if one mummy is scary, a dozen Rockette mummies doing kicks is scarier. It’s hilarious. Thank God I have a lot of things to do, otherwise I’d go crazy.

  WELLER: What did you think of François Truffaut’s adaptation of Fahrenheit 451?

  BRADBURY: It’s very good, but he made a mistake by casting Julie Christie in double roles as Montag’s wife and as Clarisse. I love the music by Bernard Herrmann. He was a great composer. I helped get him the job working on Fahrenheit. I knew he had just been fired by Hitchcock. They had had arguments over the film Torn Curtain. It’s not a good film. And the point was, if you don’t have much to work with, you can’t write good music. So Hitchcock and Herrmann parted ways. I called Truffaut and said, “Do you have a composer for Fahrenheit 451?” and he said, “No.” I suggested Bernard Herrmann, and Truffaut hired him. I’m responsible for that. I’m very proud of it. The music is beautiful.

  WELLER: What other film composers did you enjoy working with?

  BRADBURY: Jerry Goldsmith started with me in 1956 when he was twenty-seven and I was thirty-six. He did the music for my story “Hail and Farewell” that was broadcast on the CBS Radio Workshop. Later he did the score for The Illustrated Man. The music is great, but the film is no good. It’s boring.

  WELLER: What are your thoughts on the current state of films coming out of Hollywood?

  BRADBURY: The secret of films is screenplays. It always has been. And when an actor who is not known gets a screenplay that’s brilliant, overnight he’s famous. Like Russell Crowe, who won an Academy Award for his role in Gladiator. He’s not a great actor. He’s a nice, bland, character player, but he has good taste in screenplays. Russell Crowe has selected things that improve his image all the time. But he’s not a great actor, just very nice.

  Take a film like L.A. Confidential. All those actors could be replaced by other actors, but it’s a great screenplay. But you have Kevin Spacey and Russell Crowe, and they are wonderful, but they are not great actors—that was a great screenplay. So you think you’re watching great performances, but they’re just good actors who perform well with a good screenplay. Put Kevin Spacey into a boring film like The Shipping News and you go right to sleep. It’s paint drying, huh? Nicolas Cage is another good example. I love Nicolas Cage. But he’s had good screenplays. He’s worked with great directors, like the Coen brothers. Raising Arizona is wonderful. And Moonstruck is terrific. But most of those actors are interchangeable. Most people haven’t discovered this, including Hollywood, that the secret is screenplays.

  chapter three

  FAME AND CELEBRITY

  YOU KNOW YOU HAVE ARRIVED WHEN THERE IS A CRATER ON THE moon named for one of your books. In 1971, the crew of Apollo 15 christened a lunar pockmark “Dandelion Crater,” for the Bradbury classic Dandelion Wine. And if that accolade of celestial significance isn’t enough, there is also an asteroid that bears his surname—“9766 Bradbury.”

  Adding to it all, Gene Roddenberry, the late Star Trek impresario, named a Starfleet vessel the USS Bradbury. Talk about universal name recognition.

  Ray Bradbury likes being famous. Money was never it for him. His primary motivation has always been, as he would say, “to be loved.” At book signings, he will stay until the very last person in line has received an autograph. There was one moment at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in 2005 when he signed books for a couple of hours. It was a taxing endeavor for the almost-85-year-old author, yet he soldiered on, like one of the perseverant colonists in The Martian Chronicles.

  As time passed and the line continued to stretch out of sight, Bradbury grew fatigued. His head began to slump, even as his pen continued to scribble his signature. And then he stopped signing altogether and fell asleep.

  His handlers—on this day his driver, his youngest daughter Alexandra, and his editor—called it off. Bradbury was seated in a wheelchair, and they began to pull him away from the signing table.

  Mass chaos ensued.

  A man near the front of the line—one of the next up to get a signed book—went into a rage. He had waited patiently and was now getting slighted. There was pushing. Yelling. Someone else in line tried to settle things down. Punches were thrown. Within seconds, security moved in to break up the melee and Ray Bradbury awoke.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, bewildered and dazed from his all-too-brief catnap.

  When Bradbury was informed of the situation, he signed a book for the disgruntled fan and was whisked away, to sign again another day.

  With his books a staple on school curriculum lists and his works adapted into twenty-five languages around the world, Bradbury is more famous today than ever before. And unlike other, more reclusive writers, he basks in the glow of his renown. He relishes his fame.

  WELLER: Do you remember the first time you were recognized as Ray Bradbury, the writer?

  BRADBURY: I went east for the publication of The Martian Chronicles in the spring of 1950. And I took the train and had three hours between trains in Chicago. So I went to the Art Institute, my favorite place, and I made an appointment for a lunch there with a friend. I got there and I saw a mob of people at the top of the stairs—tourists going into the Art Institute—and I saw, all of a sudden, all of these people, twenty or thirty, turn and come down the steps toward me. They were all carrying copies of The Martian Chronicles. That was a turning point, you see. All my new lovers. Because that had never happened to me. You see, no one had ever showed up anywhere with a copy of my book in their hands. So I had lunch with all thirty of them, then I took the train and went on to New York.

  WELLER: How did these new fans know you would be there?

  BRADBURY: I think the friend I was having lunch with must have let them know.

  WELLER: Do you enjoy being famous?

  BRADBURY: Sure. To know you are loved everywhere you go. That’s wonderful.

  WELLER: How many books have you sold worldwide?

  BRADBURY: I’ve never bothered to ask. It’s not how many that’s important, it’s who owns them.

  WELLER: You have influenced a good many rock musicians over th
e years. Elton John and his lyricist Bernie Taupin wrote the hit “Rocket Man” as an homage to your 1951 story of the same name. The members of KISS are fans. Black Francis, a progenitor of alternative rock and the leader of the seminal band The Pixies, named a solo album “The Cult of Ray” for you. How do you respond to all this adulation from the world of rock music?

  BRADBURY: Everyone in rock is a science fiction freak. About twenty-five years ago, David Bowie was coming to Los Angeles to perform, and my daughter Alexandra came to me and said, “Do you know David Bowie?” I said, “No.” “You know his music?” I said, “Yes. It’s pretty good.” She said, “Well, he’s gonna have a concert next Saturday night, and the tickets are sold out. Do you think you could try to get us in?” So I called BMI and asked about Bowie’s agent. They gave me his name and phone number, and they said, “He’s in San Francisco with David Bowie right now.”

  So I got his hotel number and I called San Francisco. I identified myself and said, “I want to buy two tickets for the concert. I don’t want free tickets.” They said, “Are you kidding? David Bowie’s your number-one fan. You’re gonna come and you’re gonna see him after.” So we go to the arena to attend the concert, and I take Alexandra backstage afterward. David Bowie comes out and embraces me, and then he introduces me to Ringo Starr from the Beatles. Ringo falls over a chair getting to me. Neil Sedaka, Bette Midler, and John Belushi are all there too, and they swarm. My daughter was standing there like, you know, “This is just my father.”

  The next night we had dinner with David Bowie. It was fun because he liked to talk about certain essays and science fiction books. He was off on some discussion about Francis Bacon.

  WELLER: What other celebrities surprised you by their fandom?

  BRADBURY: I was in London in July 1969 and I got an invitation to go to the Playboy Club. I’d never been to one, even though I’d been to the Playboy Mansion. Maggie said, “Why don’t you go over and see what it’s like?” So they were having a big reception for Sammy Davis, Jr., and I went over there and there’s Michael Caine and Richard Harris. I had a nice chat with both of them, but there was such a mob around Sammy Davis that I couldn’t get anywhere near him. So after about an hour, I decided to leave.

  On the way out I looked over, and there’s a break in the crowd around Sammy Davis, so I shoved my hand through and said, “Mr. Davis,” and he grabbed my hand, he said, “Yes.” I said, “Ray Bradbury, sir.” He said, “Oh my God, come here!” And he pulled me through the crowd, and he sat me down, and he sat at my feet. I said, “Don’t sit at my feet. People will think you’re shining my shoes.” And he says, “I’ll shine ’em! I’ll shine ’em!” He turned out to be a huge fan, and he said, “What are you doing tomorrow?” I said, “Well, I’ve got my daughters here, and my wife.” He said, “I’m at the studio, you’ve got to come out.” So the next day I took my daughters out to the studio, and we had lunch with Sammy Davis, Jr. and Peter Lawford and Jerry Lewis. Now, Jerry Lewis, I never really wanted to meet. I didn’t like his stuff. But it turned out we had a fantastic lunch. He was a sweetie-pie! They spoiled us, and we watched them shoot some scenes.

  WELLER: That’s an amazing story. Certainly there were other luminaries who expressed their appreciation of your work.

  BRADBURY: I was standing on the corner one day in Beverly Hills and Sidney Poitier, the actor, drove by and stood up out of his car and yelled over at me, he said, “Mr. Bradbury, I’m Sidney Poitier and I love you!” And he drove off. Those moments, they last forever.

  WELLER: What other moments do you recall like that?

  BRADBURY: I was at a party once in Los Angeles honoring the Russian film director Sergei Bondarchuk. Sam Peckinpah was there. William Wyler, Billy Wilder, George Cukor—all the great directors. So Bondarchuk went down the line and was introduced to George Cukor and to William Wyler—you know, all the way down the line. And at the end of the line I was standing there just observing. I was curious to be there with the director and see him meet all the great directors, and when he got to me he said, “Oh, Ray Bradbury! Ray Bradbury!” and he dragged me over to a table and brought out a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka. He had two other Russian directors with him, and the four of us sat at that table, and all the great directors are staring there wondering, “What’s happening? He’s paying attention to a writer and not to a director! How could that be?”

  When we finished one bottle, he brought out another bottle. God knows how I got home, I’ll never remember. I was so drunk. I’ve never been so drunk in my life. Bondarchuk was his name, Bondarchuk.

  WELLER: Part of celebrity status entails the talk-show circuit, and you’ve certainly done your share of these programs over the years. It’s always fascinated me how these venues often attract a confluence of unlikely guests. Do you have any memories of sharing the stage with other unlikely cultural icons?

  BRADBURY: I was on a program once with Colonel Sanders, the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken. He was a nice guy. I was on camera and the colonel had just finished being interviewed, and we were both wearing our white suits. For a time I wore my “Wonderful Ice Cream Suit” all the time. But that night, on that television program, I looked like one of the colonel’s employees.

  WELLER: You received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in April 2002. How special was this accolade, considering you spent your teen years chasing stars all across Los Angeles as an autograph collector? You likely rollerskated many times over the very spot where your star now stands.

  BRADBURY: A lot of people say how wonderful it is, but it doesn’t really count for me. The people who come up to me and tell me that my books changed their lives, those are the people who count, because no one told them to do that. No one paid them to do that. I don’t want to be small or mean about it. It was great being there on Hollywood Boulevard with Charlton Heston and Rod Steiger and my kids. When they gave me the star, I appeared before the city council in downtown Los Angeles. The mayor announced it “Ray Bradbury Day” in Los Angeles.

  On my way out of that ceremony in my wheelchair, a man in the audience reached out and grabbed my elbow as I went by and said, “You changed my life.” Jesus Christ! You see? That’s the secret. If I can change one life, I’m a miracle man. He said that to me and it made me cry. It was more important than the meeting with the mayor and the city council. It was more important than the star on Hollywood Boulevard.

  WELLER: When you do book signings, you’re often mobbed. Are you ever annoyed by pushy fan-boys?

  BRADBURY: No. They’re enthusiasts. That’s all. Sometimes you just need to let them speak and then exit. I lectured in the Valley two weeks ago at the Hollywood Museum—all about Hollywood. When it was over this one guy came up and followed me around and all the way out to my car—he wouldn’t let go. He said, “You know, I have verbal diarrhea.” And he then proceeded to prove it! He babbled and followed me all the way to the car, and there was nothing I could do. I didn’t want to be impolite, and he was very loving, but he couldn’t stop. So I handled that by getting in the car with my driver and driving away very quickly.

  WELLER: Does a writer become jaded at the sight of their name on a book or story? It can’t be as exhilarating today to see your name in print as it was when you first started writing.

  BRADBURY: It depends on the publication. For example, when my big book Bradbury Stories came out in 2003, when that galley arrived, I wept. I couldn’t believe I’d written all those stories. When I look at that, along with the earlier book, The Stories of Ray Bradbury, there are two hundred stories in two big books. I look at those and I realize that I owe back to the universe. I’m a genetic result of a bunch of genes experimenting at some level, and it has allowed me to collect metaphors, which a lot of other writers don’t do. I didn’t know what a metaphor was until I was in my fifties, really. But this is a wonderful gift from the universe.

  I don’t want to be fancy or metaphysical about it, but when I look at those two books, I didn’t write them! They wrot
e themselves. There was no intellect involved. Imagination always has intellect embedded in it. So you try not to let your intellect interfere. They work together—your intelligence and your imagination. If you can steer them together, just be careful to hold your hand around both, but don’t let your intellect get in the way, that’s why I feel obligated to the universe.

  WELLER: How important is achieving literary immortality to you?

  BRADBURY: I don’t think about it. But you know, my life has been a fight against death. I finish a story, go to the mailbox, drop it in and say, “Okay, Death, I’m ahead of you.” You see, every time I write a new short story, or essay, or poem, or publish a new novel, I’m that much ahead. I’ve finished a lot since my stroke in 1999—just in case. There’s no guarantee I’m going to be alive next year or even tomorrow. I hope I will be, but when you’ve had a stroke, God knows what can happen to you. So, the stroke was a good experience in many ways, because it taught me to seize the day once again. I hadn’t been seizing it rapidly or hard enough.

  WELLER: What do your daughters think of your celebrity and, more importantly, your work?

  BRADBURY: I’ve never asked them if they’ve read my books. In the past, their boyfriends asked them in front of me. That’s the way to have it done. They would occasionally bring a new boyfriend over and the boyfriend would ask, “What do you think of your father’s book Something Wicked?” They would say, “What?” The boyfriend would then say, “Well, you better go read it or we won’t have a relationship!” So, they were force-fed my books through their boyfriends. That’s the only way to do it.

  WELLER: Over the years you have become highly sought after on the lecture circuit. What is your memory of your first public speaking engagement?