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= Just For Laughs, Counsellor
  by Adam Nightingale


I hate James Stewart. I mean that with all my heart. He is an aberration. A malignant cuss. A skid sniffing son of a male prostitute. I know that it is an unpopular point of view. I will concede that it is even a minority point of view. I understand that. Everybody loves James Stewart. I hate his rancid decomposing guts. May he suffer the agonies of the damned for all eternity.

I love Robert Mitchum, but I was overjoyed when he died. In addition to my bread and butter film reviewing duties, I write obituaries. I specialise in character actors and young dead hopefuls. My cemetery role call includes Brandon Lee, J.T. Walsh, Ben Johnson, Raul Julia, Haing S. Ngor and Jack Nance.

I first got the gig as a consequence of a pub conversation that me and some journo mates were having one Friday lunch time. We liked to play movie listing games. You know, give me your ten best Harvey Keitel films. Mine are:

Taxi Driver
Bad Lieutenant
Fingers
Blue Collar
Order of Death
Reservoir Dogs
Mortal Thoughts
Smoke
Monkey Trouble
and The Last Temptation of Christ.

We were doing the ten best movie death scenes. Mine are:

Joel McCrea: Ride The High Country.
Burt Lancaster: Ulzana's Raid
Slim Pickens: Pat Garret and Billy the Kid.

Shit. Sorry. I'll stop my list there. If you haven't seen these films, I've just spoiled them for you. Damn. Sorry. Critic's affliction, I'm afraid. We get excited and blurt stuff out, we get annoyed and we give stuff away.

Sorry.

I had finished my movie star death list. I went on to my ten best actual movie star deaths. Mine are:

Jayne Mansfield: Car crash beheading
Vic Morrow: Helicopter rotor blade decapitation.
Brandon Lee: Faulty SFX gut shot slaughter.
Bruce Lee: Aspirin misadventure or Shaolin assassination conspiracy.
Tupac Shakur: Gangland drive by or cynical faked death to improve record
sales conspiracy.
Dr. Haing S. Ngor: Botched LA burglary shooting or poorly disguised Cambodian
death squad assassination conspiracy.
Passolini: Brutal rough trade swish hit.
Jack Nance from Eraserhead: LA donut shop switchblade slaying.
John Wayne and Dick Powell.

These last two caused some argument on account of their having died of cancer, which is technically natural causes, but there is a case to be made that they contracted it when filming The Conqueror on location in what was subsequently proved to be an A bomb testing site.

I'm getting off the point. Sorry.

I didn't just recite a bad taste list. I made each death a mini eulogy. I was showboating. I am not a frustrated actor, but that evening I was an inspired performer. It got me noticed.

31st October 1993.

I will be eternally grateful to River Phoenix for ingesting the particular drug cocktail that left him wheezing his way to eternity on an LA sidewalk outside Johnny Depp's Viper club. I would also like to thank River's close friend who denied paramedics the crucial narcotic information that may just have enabled them to save his life.

I didn't expect to be given the assignment at that point. I had never written an obituary before in my life. There were many other writers who outranked me. But I was given it, and it was a good piece of work. It was tasteful and non judgmental of River's lifestyle but unforgiving of the narcotic culture that has butchered too many talented young starlets ahead of schedule.

My editor liked it very much. From that moment, on the sad occasion when somebody below the age of thirty-five with earnings below $10 million a movie died under spurious circumstances, I would get the gig.

I got to cover some older character actors as well. This is far more satisfying. You have more to work with in terms of a healthy CV. The flip side, though, is that like many of the artists you are writing about, you tend to get type cast. Before long, I was known as the young hopeful and forgotten old dead guy man. Fine for a while, but I wanted something better. I wanted a legend. I wanted Robert Mitchum.

Robert Mitchum was my small god. I liked him when it was unfashionable to like him. I liked him as a child watching him with my dad, every Sunday afternoon it seemed, as he stormed the German defences at Omaha Beach or Anzio. I grew a bit older and stayed up later. I survived The Winds Of War and kept the faith. I admired the way he intimidated Gregory Peck "just for laughs, counsellor", and amputated his own little finger. I loved the way he scared the shit out of me praying to some god, defiantly not in heaven, in that creepy baritone with love and hate carved in ink on his knuckles. As my tastes matured and my opinions solidified, I admired his weakness and malleability as Coyle and Ryan. I even owned a copy of his calypso album and a compilation of Hunter S. Thompson's favourite tunes because it had a recording of The Ballad of Thunder Road. My favourite book is La Brava because Jean Shaw acted with Mitchum and my favourite song is New Age by The Velvet Underground because the fat blond actress kissed Robert Mitchum.

All this qualified me to write his obituary as far as I was concerned. Passion and ability have to dictate these things, not old school ties. Like I said, I knew that Bob was winding down. It was simply a matter of time before age, ill health, vodka and Mary Jane would eventually claim him. I knew exactly what I was going to say. I was going to praise his invisible acting, discuss the man who was a cleverer than thou closet poet but too cool to actively publicly give a shit about it. Lament an aesthetic that didn't engage itself enough to leave more classic roles for our edification, that turned down Patton, Thornton. I would be poetic, cine literate, educational, entertaining, respectful, objective, very good.

I pitched for that assignment. I harangued the editorial staff. I made my intentions clear. I was persistent but stopped just short of harassment.

1st July 1997

I remember the date like it was my own birthday. I get the call from the editor in chief telling me that Robert Mitchum had died. Would I like to write his obituary? I wept. I always secretly thought I would. I told him I would be honoured. I told him I would begin post haste. To be truthful, I had written the thing about a year before anyhow. All I needed was to tweak it a little and add the exact circumstances of his death. It was a fine piece of work, if I can be permitted to say so, totally transcendent. My boss liked it enormously.

There were overtures of promotion in the air, better paid assignments. I could build a mighty reputation off of the back of this for sure. Leave for higher profile work in the broad sheets, perhaps even the Guardian. And of course in time America would beckon, I would write for Rolling Stone or The New Yorker and have my work published in volumes. And when I had myself died, a hundred thousand hacks would strive in vain to find the correct combination of words to mourn my passing.

2nd July 1997.

James Stewart died and nobody gave a shit about Robert Mitchum or my fucking obituary. Everybody went James Stewart crazy. Articles were being commissioned left, right and bloody centre and you can bet your life that my name wasn't connected with any of them. Mitchum had been totally and completely shafted by faggot Stewart. James Stewart cut the ground from beneath my feet.

There is a historical precedent for this particular type of divine sabotage. Shakespeare and Cervantes died on exactly the same day. Did you also know that the day after C. S. Lewis died, Kennedy was shot?

One of England's finest religious thinkers and the writer of all those marvellous metaphorical children's stories beaten to the publicity punch by an oversexed man with his finger on the button. A man who got a violent headache every day, if he didn't get a blow job. And think of Diana and Mother Teresa dying within a week of one another.

So? So, I was left with two dead movie stars, a cosmic persecution complex and some really good films to look forward to on the TV over the next few weeks.

For a long time afterwards, I suffered what is theologically known as a "long dark night of the soul". I lost confidence, my work was substandard, I missed deadlines and was very nearly fired.

I deleted my Robert Mitchum video collection.

It was a crucial time. It could have gone either way. I could easily have vanished into the ether of obscure hackery. "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger." I believe Friederich Nietzsche said that, or Nicholas Cage, I can't remember. Anyway, it's a good philosophy and it carried me for a while.

It took time, but eventually I regained my status as favourite office junior film ghoul, occasional author of non premier league obituaries. I re-established a level of reliability and competence. I was ready to begin again.

As long as I can remember I have been a Franky fan. Frank Sinatra was the Robert Mitchum of music, cool representative of an era but simultaneously timeless. A distinguished career in the movies and on death's doorstep, he was an obituary waiting to happen. Actually, to tell you the truth, I always thought Dean Martin had the monopoly on cool as far as the Rat Pack was concerned, but he was already dead.

I went to work doing my Franky pitch. Dropping his name in conversations and articles, humming "Witchcraft" and other classic, less obvious Franky standards whenever in earshot of anybody of influence. I kept this up for about six months. I was subtly and unobtrusively planting seeds in the subconscious of the editorial staff so that when Mr Sinatra finally sang his final encore, I would be the man that would pay the Chairman of the Board his last respects.

In the middle of all of this I had a family crisis. My mum's next door neighbour fell ill. Her name was Mary Creek. She was an old lady in her eighties and was well loved by all my family. My Mum and Dad have lived in the same house for thirty something years and all the while she had been our neighbour. I think that she had lived there herself since the war. She was a widow and we were her second family. She used to baby-sit for me when I was small and we would talk about films. My tastes were fairly rudimentary at that point, generally confined to monster movies and westerns. She didn't patronise me. She used cowboy movies as a springboard into this marvellous universe of Wayne, Cooper, Marvin, Scott, McCrea and, of course Robert Mitchum. Stewart, the maggot, was never mentioned.

It's stating the obvious to say that she was a formative influence. She encouraged my passion for movies and shaped my tastes. That's what annoys me about movie magazines (mine included) today. We pay lip service to the past. You see it whenever a magazine produces a hundred best list of movie moments, films of the century, best villains, whatever, substitute your own list, the principle remains the same. You'd think that cinema had begun in 1960, since the likes of Renoir, Vigo, Von Stroheim, Ozu or Bresson never get a mention. Oh, there's the token Casablanca, or It's a Wonderful Life (it figures they love that one), but that's exactly what it is, tokenism. I thought we were supposed to educate as well as entertain, but far be it from us to risk alienating our demographic by including a film the readership might never have heard of directed by someone whose name they can't even pronounce.... What was I talking about?

Mrs Creek. I remember. Yes. I always enjoyed her company and she was an indulgent mentor and surrogate Grandma. I grew up and moved to London and after an initially vigorous correspondence, we kind of fell out of touch. I would see her when I went home, but that wasn't very often. When I heard that she was ill and was likely to die, it was a kick in the stomach. This was, after all, a real flesh and blood human being that I had actually known since before I could first remember anything at all

This was real death in all its real obscenity. Not the romantic bestower of glory that I had exalted in my articles, but a viscous thief. This was death stripped of the romantic Mount Olympus hall of fame bullshit. For a tiny moment I actually felt ashamed of what I did for a living, I suppose. I should have seen her in person before she went away, but I didn't.

Well, she died. I got a few days off work on compassionate grounds and went home to pay my respects. I was asked by a relative of hers that I had never met if I would give the eulogy. It transpired that she had mentioned me many times in her last weeks and had suggested that I should speak at the funeral. She never phoned me or insisted that I come to see her. I said that I would be honoured. It was good, the best thing that I had written. It would never see print, but there was something pure about that in itself.

The morning of the funeral I was anxious. I had never read anything that I had written out loud in front of an audience before. I was concerned that nerves would hamper my delivery, a great woman's memorial spoiled by my clumsiness. It would all prove to be academic, because that morning a friend phoned to tell me that Frank Sinatra had died and his obituary was being given to somebody else on account of my "delicate grief stricken condition". Frank Sinatra had died and I was two hundred miles away in some provincial Midlands crap hole.

I didn't deliver the eulogy that I had written. I really couldn't be bothered. I just mumbled a few pleasantries about what a nice old woman she was and then went to the wake to get shit faced. Oh yes, guess what they played over the loud speakers as Mrs Creek was being laid to rest? "My Way".

Like I said, I got drunk. I couldn't hold my liquor like Bob or Franky, but I bet in all their days of raising hell they never pissed on a freshly buried old lady's grave. Grief has a million and one not always appropriate ways of expressing itself. Suffice it to say my family don't speak to me anymore, and if I ever return to the Midlands someone will have to write my obituary.

I went to London and smashed up all my Sinatra records.

The next day I read my hack contemporaries' feeble best efforts to do justice to the legacy of Blue Eyes.

This time I didn't experience the bouts of depression that had followed the Robert Mitchum episode. I was angry, make no mistake about that, but there was no self pity. It was a war and I needed a brand new strategy. Something reasonably radical. I pondered long and hard, then one evening I cursed myself for a fool for not having seen it sooner. Time was the issue here.

I'll explain. All the while my colleagues and I had been at the mercy of time. We had waited around for people to die. We were at the beck and call of fate, waiting for the rich and famous to OD, get shot, stabbed, choke on their own vomit, or, heaven forbid, die of natural causes. We had it back to front all these years. Why not give fate a helping hand once in a while? Control the market, so to speak. When we decided that a career had reached its zenith, then we should be the ones to terminate it and commit it to eternal posterity, save the public having to see their idols demean themselves with shoddy self work, the natural by-product of old age and prejudicial casting. How much more of a cult icon would William Shatner, for instance, have been if he had been killed in a boating accident just after the third and final series of Star Trek and had never lived to do T.J. Hooker?

Wouldn't it also be perfect to have our favourite actresses preserved in our collective consciousness forever at their most beautiful? Would Marilyn Monroe have been half as iconic if she had survived the Kennedy murder plot and lived to be fat, ugly and old? Can you imagine Bruce Lee in a retirement home? I think the monks did kill him, but if they did, then they did us a favour. We don't want to see our stars subject to the same cycle of decay that is the lot of every normal, unremarkable human being. We want our heroes to be immortal, preserved in time at their absolute iconographic peak. So why not pitch in, do them a favour, send a few to heaven when it suited us? And if I could bring the whole shebang to a tidy conclusion with a glowing thousand word obituary, then all the better.

That left me with who I was going to retire. It had to be somebody I admired. It would be unethical to retire someone I had absolutely no respect for. If I killed Michael Winner, people would read the obituary just to make sure that he was really dead. No, it had to be somebody that I would personally grieve for. The choices were slightly constrained by geography. I couldn't afford to go to America where the real glamour resides. This was a shame as I understood that Arnold Schwarzenegger had recently had a heart operation. American stars were a no no really. They were already paranoid about assassination, making them far too well protected when they come over here. It would have to be someone local, someone British. Anyway British stars, although always not ideal from the glamour perspective, were easier because we members of the fifth estate know where they all live.

John Mills? Peter O'Toole? Michael Caine? I'd think of somebody.

I had settled on Richard Attenborough, and I was sitting in a cafe in Soho contemplating what would be the best way to go about my business. I had to think of methods of disposal. The more spectacular the exit the better, but as it was my first time I couldn't really afford to be too demonstrative.

I was reminded of a Charles Bronson movie in which he played a freelance assassin who kills people by making their deaths look like accidents. The Mechanic. A Michael Winner movie! I was trying to think of how he had done it, when something I can only describe as providential happened. He walked by my window. The face of stone.

Charles Bronson.

I know what you're thinking. I can hear you thinking it. It wasn't Charles Bronson, just someone that looked incredibly like Charles Bronson. It was, it really was Charles Bronson. Long overdue a reappraisal, don't you think?

He was an icon in danger of being forgotten by those who had never seen the Magnificent Seven, Hard Times, The Dirty Dozen or Once Upon A Time In The West and remembered as the old guy in Family of Cops. I loved Charles Bronson almost as much as Bob and slightly more than Franky. I had never considered him as an obituary prospect before. He always seemed like he was made of granite, as immortal as Mount Rushmore. I assumed that he would outlive us all.

I certainly didn't know that he was in London at the moment. I was surprised that nobody seemed to recognised him. I know that he wasn't necessarily the world's greatest actor, I know that, but he had a presence the stars today would sell their souls to Satan to posses. Anyway, I followed him to Tottenham Court Road tube station and pushed him under a train. He was dragged for about twelve feet. It seemed apt to send him to his doom in the subway ambience of so many of his Death Wish movies. In rush hour, it's a really easy thing to get away with.

It was a bit of a risk. I mean, I hadn't really mentioned him within earshot of the editorial staff before. It wasn't a given that I would get the obituary. There was a lot of snobbery regarding Charles Bronson, but I figured that would go in my favour as none of the senior staff would be that enthusiastic. To the hunter the spoils. I would get the obituary. I left the tube station before the police and fire people arrived. I went home, switched on the all news channel on my TV and waited for the phone to ring.

Nothing.

I was surprised. He was a huge star in his heyday. I sat at my listening post for six hours. The phone went twice. One wrong number and a work mate wanting to borrow In The Wee Small Hours on vinyl. The third time the phone went it was a journo friend called Andy.

"You're a Charley Bronson fan, aren't you?"

I hate it when they call him Charley. It makes him sound like a homosexual.

"Yes."

"Well, guess what?"

"What?"

"Guess?"

"I don't know. He's dead?"

"No."

"Oh."

"No, some Charles Bronson impersonator got pushed under a train at teatime"

Shit.

"Apparently he was quite good. Had an advert in the Stage and everything." The Stage is a magazine for out of work actors and actresses.

I put the phone down mid conversation and immediately started to delete my Charles Bronson video collection. I didn't think that there was a market for Charles Bronson impersonators anymore.

I never found out how Andy found out. It wasn't important anyway. All this had begun with Big Bad Bob. Papa Mitchum. I guess I had wanted to share in his mythology somehow. I hoped that some of it would rub off on me. I have never smoked a joint, and if I did I would never inhale it. People don't step aside for me, and they never will, but in a way I have what I want.

Robert Mitchum made his name in film noir. Wasn't film noir the most fatalistic of all film genres?

Thunder Road
Angel Face
The Lusty Men
The Friends Of Eddie Coyle
Home From The Hill
Out Of The Past
Bob dies in them all. Fate pulls the trigger.

Despite my best efforts it was always going to end badly for me, just like it always ended badly for Bob. We had something in common, Mitchum and I, and that was enough. Either that or I was the most anal retentive idiot murderer the world had ever seen. I prefer to believe the former.

I could have gotten away with what I did easily, but I have decided to turn myself in to the police. It has to end badly for me, because it always ended badly for Bob. If I don't have that much, I have nothing.

So where does that leave me? I could write the great British prison novel, but I doubt I ever will. I will probably be some huge convict's puppy dog for a while, and I know that he will be a big James Stewart fan. In truth, what will probably happen is that the police will not believe me. They will think that I am a crank and let me go. Whatever happens, I think that I know this much. Nobody will ever write my obituary.


ADAM NIGHTINGALE writes a film page for City Lights, an entertainment magazine covering Robin Hood country in liddle-ol-England. He lives in London with his brother.


Copyright (c) 2001 Adam Nightingale