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"And right there for a minute I knew you so well." Tori Amos, “In The Springtime Of His Voodoo" |
WRITERS' FRIENDSHIPS Edited and compiled by Robert Sward Regarding Rod Thorp--With a Vengeance
A Memoir by Wanda Coleman
In the mid 80s I was living in a 4-plex walk-up in Hollywood, on
Heliotrope Drive, just north of Melrose—on the dark end of the hottest
youth-culture cruise spot in Los Angeles. The landlady swore she had once rented that
exact unit to 60s actor Vince Edwards (Ben Casey), to justify the
outrageous rent. I paid begrudgingly, trapped there by the dynamics of racism and
the scarcity of low-income housing. The funky neighborhood surrounding the
Los Angeles City College campus, was a mix of Gay and punk-rocker hangs,
the residents lower-middle class merchants and professionals, mainly new
arrivals—Armenians, Latinos, Thais and Russian Jews. Vampira (Maila
Nurmi), the actress from Plan 9 From Outer Space, was living in a dilapidated
hexahedron down the block.
The fall Rod Thorp came into my life, I was freelancing between jobs,
trying to jump-start a moribund scriptwriting career. I was also busy making
my mark in L.A.’s full-tilt spoken-word scene, working on a third book of
poems, writing an occasional article and short story. Rod had run into
my husband poet Austin Straus and accompanied him home. They were
acquaintances from Austin’s loft days in New York’s East Village. Nostalgia ruled and
I did the wife thing, serving iced drinks, listening politely to
reminiscences.
Soon, Rod was hanging out with us, dropping by, borrowing books and, to
our surprise, showing up to hear us perform at local poetry venues. Rod’s
specialty was the detective novel, based on his experience, purportedly
while working for his father’s investigative business, and, according
to what I remember, Rod got ideas from his father’s copious and detailed
files. It was said that the hero in his second novel, The Detective, was based
on Rod’s father. It was also rumored Rod made a cool half-million on the
paperback rights. It was rare that highly paid commercial fiction
writers took any notice of the Southern California poetry underground. But we
welcomed Rod, a low-key, unpretentious man who would become a regular
in our circle for roughly three years, 1984 through 1987.
At that time, racial tensions in Los Angeles were mounting. The Black
community still vibrated from the Jonestown Massacre, in November 1978.
Less than two months later, in January 1979, thirty-nine-year-old Eulia Mae
Love was slain by twelve bullets from the guns of LAPD Officers Edward
Hopson and Lloyd O’Callaghan. Love had allegedly wielded a butcher’s knife at a
gas company serviceman over a disconnect order for nonpayment of a $22.09
dun. Love’s was the most high profile of the continual incidents resulting
in death for Black citizens. The White community of Southern California
was impervious, the national climate governed by Bernard Goetz, the NYC
subway vigilante who had shot four Black teens.
The racial tensions of 1984 were akin to those tensions that had always
existed in the Los Angeles into which I had been born and reared. They
were at the heart of my work—and identity. This was the city I loved and
hated, the city Rod Thorp was busily exploiting in his slow-selling 1978 novel
Nothing Lasts Forever. Often speculating about Rod’s frequent visits,
Austin and I wondered if Rod was milking us for material. We had enormous
appetites for like-minded discourse, or "brainstorming," but worried that our
passions for the cultural might make us susceptible to those with thievish
motivations— jealousy, hunger, greed—under the guise of friendship.
Cautiously, we decided Rod was trustworthy.
Rod liked to talk, gave off disarming warmth, and was extremely sharp.
He claimed E. L. Doctorow as a mentor, and quoted him often. A gourmet
cook, he enjoyed recreating dishes in the kitchen. A heavy drinker, he had
restricted his intake and gone on a crash Herbal Life diet. Recently divorced, the
heavyset, loose-fleshed, balding man lived alone with Dawn, the cat, in
an upstairs two-bedroom apartment—with a big table and a bulletin board
where he kept clippings of the various murder cases he was researching for
novels.
Rod was working two agents, east coast and west, hunting package deals.
We concluded that, contrary to his casualness, Rod was lonely, if a lone
wolf, and that his visits were prompted by our conversational skills and
Rod’s rocky readjustment to bachelorhood.
The Christmas of 85, he joined us for a benefit reading and after-party
for the Valley Contemporary Writers, where I introduced him to my longtime
friend, poet Sylvia Rosen. After that night, Rod and Sylvia began dating.
We saw a lot less of Rod.
Immersed in my own demands, I touched bases with Sylvia between
readings for updates on her romance with Rod. She described his habits of
chain-smoking blank brand cigarettes, prowling thrift shops for bargains, and playing
the horses at Hollywood Park and del Mar. But, she complained, he never
stopped working. She was particularly miffed by his chronic eavesdropping, and
how difficult it was to enjoy an evening when his attention was constantly
on the conversations of others. Rod, she said, marveled at our poetry
scene and had wondered aloud if there were a way to turn his observations of it
into something commercially viable. According to Sylvia, Rod was always
writing, even when he wasn’t in front of a legal tablet or keyboard. He was a
disciplinarian and wrote a designated number of pages daily. While they
were dating, he made a ritual of calling her every evening at five o’clock
and discussing how many pages he had produced that day.
"It was as if he needed to report to someone," she said. "He was a
writer who lived on film options between books." When working, Rod’s approach
was often so matter-of-fact it stunned Sylvia. "Once he had this assignment
to do an article for a pornography magazine. ‘Tell me your fantasies,’ he
asked me. It was so bizarre. I said ‘No.’"
One afternoon, I heard a knock on the door downstairs. I shouted it was
open and watched Rod huff his way upstairs. I complimented him on his weight
loss. He mentioned high cholesterol. I didn’t think I had any reason to
distrust him, yet I felt awkward having him there. He was my husband’s
acquaintance and my girlfriend’s man. We didn’t have much in common to
talk about. I hadn’t read a detective novel since the Nick Carter of my
teens, explaining to Rod that Austin hadn’t gotten home from work and that he
had interrupted my work on a new manuscript.
His latest hustle, Rod explained was the Laurel Canyon murders in which
porno star John Holmes had been implicated (the movie Rainbow Drive
would be a lesser Thorp success). He also had a bite on the movie end of the
package deal for Nothing Lasts Forever, and would shortly be on his way for the
meet with The Suits. But, he had a couple of hours between appointments and
didn’t want to go back to his apartment. He thought he’d stop by
because the studio was minutes away. Could he keep me company? I said okay, invited
him to sit and offered coffee, tea, Hawaiian punch or ice water. Politely,
I took my usual spot on the floor, barefoot in slacks and blouse, propped
up on my elbows for the listen. Instead, I ended up doing all the talking
as Rod engaged me on the subject of race relations, pointing out my
marriage to a very Jewish ex-New Yorker. It was fertile ground, and I had things to
say few in the pitch dens of Hollywood cared to hear.
Rod wanted to hear them.
His best feature was his eagle eyes, which had large bright translucent
irises. As I talked, they made me uncomfortable. He stared at me so
intensely, I wondered if I were being hypnotized or if he were wearing
contact lenses, or both. His staring was accompanied by a tremendous
and uncanny wanting, absent hints of sexual overture. Rod shot question
after question at me, not quite grilling, but virtually without commenting on
anything I said or offering any argument. This process of absorption
was interrupted only when he needed another smoke or to use the restroom,
or when I emptied the ashtray. I answered honestly, amused that he was so
interested.
"He’d ask questions my psychiatrist wouldn’t ask," Sylvia said later.
"He knew you were going to be a character." When Rod finally left, we parted very cordially. Rod thanked me and
invited me to call him soon to get the name of his agent, who, he thought,
could resurrect my scriptwriting career. It was one of the last times I saw
Rod.
Minutes after Rod had scurried off for his appointment, Austin came
home. I recounted the afternoon’s strange tête-à-tête. Austin wasn’t pleased,
or as convinced as I that the wanting I sensed wasn’t sexual in nature.
"He was really a pouncer. He’d pounce on anything," Sylvia said. "You
couldn’t say anything he couldn’t dissect. He was always speculating
about anyone he would see…what their life was like, where they lived, what
they did for a living. He was always making up back stories."
The last time we heard from Rod, he had broken up with Sylvia and was
purportedly scheduled to return briefly to New York to negotiate a deal
on the Laurel Canyon murder story. His appointment that fateful afternoon
had panned out for his biggest score since Frank Sinatra had starred in the
movie version of The Detective. Under its new title, the second
printing of Nothing Lasts Forever was going into immediate production as an
action-adventure film scheduled for July release the coming year, 1988.
He urged us to take the kids and see the movie when it was released.
Rod Thorp then permanently dropped out of our circle, returning to
Southern California to live in Oxnard.
Austin dislikes action-adventure films, and Rod Thorp’s name was no
enticement, so one midsummer’s afternoon, I lugged the kids and friend
Kika to the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, five minutes from the house. We
stood in a line half a block long. After getting seats, popcorn and sodas, we
sat back to enjoy the flick.
I sharpened my eyes.
Long jaded by the too-often clumsy, ill-thought and pretentious product
of Hollywood’s politically correct poseurs, I was cynical about Die Hard
the moment Argyle (De’Voreaux White), the brown-toned savvy ex-cabbie
turned virgin limousine driver appeared to greet the hero, NYPD’s John
McClane, Rod Thorp’s alter ego, played energetically by Bruce Willis. The century
was nearly over, and I had yet to see anyone (Spike included) nail racism
to my satisfaction, on either the small screen or the large, in anything that
wasn’t a documentary or art film. Now I was about to witness pal Rod’s
version via screenplay by Jeb Stewart and Steven E. de Souza. I kicked
back for the hijinks. While Argyle snaps his fingers to the funk (as opposed
to running the meter), a high-voltage, multiethnic crew of Euro-trash
thieves fronting off as terrorists, make their clean mean entrance.
Neutralizing security, they then disrupt the penthouse suite Christmas shenanigans
of multi-international corporate personnel. As our Bad Guys gleefully take
hostages, they unknowingly trap the Teddy-toting, wisecracking yahoo
John McClane in the 30-odd-floor Japanese-owned skyscraper. Little do they
know, of course, that among the hostages is McClane’s estranged wife (Bonnie
Bedelia’s Molly), or that he’ll fight till hell’s frozen over to save
the estranged mother of his children.
I watched the screen roar for forty-odd minutes, then gasped with a
chill of recognition. Right-thinking, even-tempered Officer Al Powell (Reginald VelJohnson)
appeared, the complete antithesis of the real LAPD cop, any age, color
or gender. Anchored in Thorp’s fantasy, Officer Al Powell became McClane’s
guardian Angeleno, maintaining valued if frequently interrupted
citizen’s band radiophone contact with the NYPD cop turned self-deprecating
shitkicker, notching up one fake terrorist after another despite
interference from an inept LAPD SWAT team, the more inept FBI and a
slew of dufus newshounds. (There are John Wayne and Roy Roger cracks, and
McClane is affectionately called "Cowboy" by Powell.) I wasn’t crazy about
McClane, my repulsion was reserved for Powell. But there was a flipside. Officer
Powell appeared to be my male counterpart, lifted straight out of that
one-sided conversation I had with Rod on that memorable afternoon many months
before.
The longer I watched, the angrier I got.
It was enough that the film’s dialogue was peppered with idiomatic
expressions I favored at the time ("running it," "running some
bullshit," "I hear you," "when you rang," and "diddlysquat"). It was virtually
impossible for me not to take Die Hard personally. Ironically, I had been reduced
to the very formulaic stereotype I loathed. My questions were endless. Had
Rod tacitly used me as the basis for the Powell character when discussing
plot development? Had Rod taken one of my poetry books into the script
conference? Had Rod spotted me early on and maneuvered reconnecting
with Austin in order to study me?
Gratuitous slayings and non-threatening stereotypes aside—Argyle the
finger-popper, Theo the super-nerd (Clearence Gilyerd, Jr.), and
guardian cop Powell (the same surname of one of the officers that would beat
Rodney King three years later), Rod—-through surrogates Stewart and de Souza-—it
seemed, had gone way beyond copping a few writerly licks. If so, Rod,
had not only stolen my words and personality, but he had perverted events I
held dear. That they were packaged in high production values and snappy
repartee was of no consolation.
Three instances in the film stood out among those:
During one lull in the violence, Officer Powell snipes snidely, "Arrest
’em for not paying their electric bill?" Beneath his jibe at fellow
officers is the Eulia Mae Love slaying mentioned above.
In another, McClane and Powell engage in patter about eating Twinkies,
a droll reference to the Twinkie-defense mounted for the assassin of San
Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone in 1977.
The third occurs during a bonding session when McClane asks Powell why
he left the streets to man a desk. Powell replies, " I had an accident. I
shot a 13-year-old kid." Powell believes himself so traumatized he can no
longer fire his police special. A transparent setup for Die Hard’s silly
finale, this exchange exploits the 1983 incident in which five-year-old Patrick
Andrew Mason, a Black child, was fatally shot by Anthony Sperl, a
Stanton police officer. Sperl had entered the apartment with a passkey, kicked
in the bedroom door and shot the child who was playing Cowboys ‘n’ Injuns
with his toy pistol and holster set.
Tripling my hurt and rage, was Die Hard’s undeniable success. It played
like gangbusters. Among the millions of dollars flowing into the box offices
nationwide, would be the millions of dollars of Black filmgoers, like
me. Once again, we would put money into the pockets of those who exploited
us in the guise of entertainment for want of enough alternatives.
But—-suppose I was wrong?
Suppose some smarmy script person had twisted Rod’s not-so-original PC
ideas? How much of the blame should be shared by scriptwriters Stewart
and de Souza? (Pseudonyms for Rod?) Or whoever else had their hand in that
screenplay, from the director to the actors? It was the norm for books
to alter radically when transformed into screenplays. Books were to be
read, movies to be watched. I had not read Rod’s Nothing Lasts Forever to know
for certain if Powell, as he appeared on screen, predated our talk or not.
Nor did I intend to do so. Watching Die Hard was more than I could stomach.
Was my rage misdirected? Painfully, I recalled my first TV script. In it,
one of the production execs had decided to take a swipe at the Trousdale
Estates in dialogue not written in my original script. That statement would
unfairly be forever attributable to me. That considered, was I willing to give Rod
the benefit of the doubt?
Yet…
Thinking back, I wondered if Rod had carried a bug or micro tape
recorder on his person. He favored safari jackets, loose khaki slacks and sweaters.
Perhaps he had total recall or ran out to his car and scribbled notes.
I once observed a dramaturge who always made a suspicious run on the
latrine whenever something noteworthy came up in creative powwows. Rod, it
seemed, had a strong bladder, if the weak heart that would eventually end his
life twelve years later. Whatever Rod was, he was cool with it and looked
you straight in the eye without a blink.
Suppose Rod was innocent. Suppose it was a confluence of coincidences?
My mind was awhirl.
As the theatre emptied out, the kids played in the aisles while Kika
shook me and asked if I were all right. Upset, I grabbed her shoulder, and
hissed, "The dirty mutha ripped me off!" That wasn’t exactly what had happened,
but at that instant, the actuality was too complex, and too fresh for me to
get my tongue around it. Nevertheless, I would call Sylvia that night and
make a like attempt. She listened patiently until I had cleared my rant, then
said softly, "Guess where Rod got that title he was looking for?"
One day, after work, Sylvia’s car wouldn’t start. She had a hot date
with Rod but was stuck in the lower level of a subterranean garage. The
Automobile Club gave her a boost but warned that once the car stopped
they couldn’t guarantee it would start again. She needed a new battery.
Upset, she drove straight to the nearest Sears auto repair outlet. They
installed an inexpensive but excellent battery, one of her long-time favorites.
Then she hurried off to meet Rod, arriving late. Ever the gentleman, Rod had
waited for Sylvia with the patience of a rock. When she explained what
had happened, he listened, eyes gleaming with that familiar if uncanny
light. Then she told him about her favorite Sears battery, how reliable it
was, and how pleased she was to be relieved of worry. His eyes gleamed even
brighter. Then Rod reminded her about that troublesome book of his, the one that
was not moving in the bookstores. All Nothing Lasts Forever required was
the proper new title to perk up sluggish sales. He reminded her that he had
spent months searching for that title.
"Die Hard!" He said, trying out the name of the battery. "That would
make a great title."
Then he thanked her for the help.
BIO NOTE: A former columnist for Los Angeles Times Magazine,
and Emmy award winning TV scriptwriter, Wanda Coleman's non-fiction most recently appears in the
autobiographical Native in a Strange Land: Trials & Tremors (Black
Sparrow Press). Her books include A War of Eyes and Other Stories (1988), and
the novel Mambo Hips & Make Believe (1999). She received the 1999 Lenore
Marshall Poetry Award for the best book of poetry published the previous
year (Bathwater Wine), presented by The Academy of American Poets.
The memoir chapbook Love-Ins with Nietzsche (Wake Up Heavy Press, 2000), was
nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
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