Inside Moves – Page 4 – Under The Table

(First published in The Anderson Valley Advertiser, thanks to Bruce Anderson)

I wrote the novel that would become Inside Moves in 1975, just as the United States was finally pulling out of Vietnam. I was living in a garage in Eugene, Oregon, having been saved from an ignominious return to college by the sale of a short story to Cosmopolitan magazine. My rent was thirty dollars a month, so the nine hundred dollars from Cosmo was, to me, a vast fortune and would enable me to write two novels, two plays, and several short stories before the largesse was finally spent.

The voice that spoke Inside Moves through me was that of a young man wounded and disabled in the Vietnam war. My first and finest literary agent, Dorothy Pittman, now deceased, showed the manuscript to thirteen publishers in two and a half years (this was before simultaneous submissions were permitted in the publishing business.) The book was declared a narrative tour de force by several of the first twelve editors to read the manuscript, each anointing the book “an impossible sell.” Cripples and Vietnam were not popular topics in those days.

Miracle Number 1

The book was eventually bought in 1977 by a young editor at Doubleday named Sherry Knox under the auspices of the powerful Betty Prashker. I believe this was the first novel Sherry ever purchased. My advance, minus Dorothy’s commission, was thirteen hundred and fifty dollars, which money lifted me out of dire poverty into semi-functional poverty in my garret in Seattle.

When I had rewritten the book to Sherry’s satisfaction, and my brother Steve had come up with the stellar title to replace my original title, The Gimp, the great minds at Doubleday decided to let Inside Moves die before publication. This is common practice in large corporate publishing houses when Sales decides they don’t want to push a book.

However, to minimally fulfill their contractual obligations, Doubleday listed the book in small print at the back of their Spring catalogue with this briefest of descriptors: “Inside Moves: story of friendship between two men in San Francisco bar, basketball sub-plot.”

Miracle Number 2

An editor named Bill Contardi at the paperback house New American Library read the descriptor and asked to see the manuscript. He loved the book, showed it to NAL editor-in-chief Elaine Koster, and she offered Doubleday 100,000 dollars for the paperback rights.

Miracle Number 3

When Dorothy called with news of the paperback offer, I was quite ill and in a very dark mood. Rather than rejoicing (we would get half of that 100 thou) I said, “Did they show it to the other paperback houses? They’re supposed to, aren’t they?”

Dorothy said, “Honey (she was from Georgia), this is a mahvelous offer.”

And I said, “They were going to kill the book. They should at least show it to other paperback houses. Maybe more than one will be interested.”

Dorothy reluctantly relayed my wishes to Doubleday. Some honcho (I can’t remember his name) called me and berated me, saying this was a wonderful offer and I was a fool not to take it. I explained to him that though I was grossly naive, I did know they had decided to kill the book, and since I might never get another chance in New York, I wanted them to show it to other paperback houses.

Miracle Number 4

So the honcho called Elaine Koster and asked for a few more days to consider her offer, and she countered with a take-it-or-leave-it offer of 150,000 dollars and the promise of a big bonus if a movie was made. Dorothy begged me to accept the offer, so I did.

Miracle Number 5

Two weeks later, Bob Evans, having recently produced Chinatown, The Godfather, and Love Story, optioned the book for Paramount Pictures for 100,000 buckeroos.

Miracle Number 6

I was flown to Los Angeles to meet with Bob Evans in his mansion. He wanted me to rewrite the entire novel per his directions. He wanted to eliminate the Vietnam connection and not have so many disabled characters. I refused. He was not happy.

Miracle Number 7

Bob Evans hired Barry Levinson (before he became a famous director) and Valerie Curtin (then Barry’s wife) to write a screenplay of the book. They changed the narrator from a man crippled while serving in Vietnam to a failed suicide, but were otherwise faithful to the heart of the book. Bob Evans dropped the project.

Miracle Number 8

Dick Donner, fresh from Superman I and before he made all his Lethal Weapon movies, got hold of the script and eventually made the film with independent money. The film starred John Savage, David Morse (his first role) and Diana Scarwid, nominated for an Academy Award for her role in this film.

Miracle Number 9

I was on the set of the film (Echo Park imitating Oakland) for a week and got to watch them shoot scenes with dialogue intact from my novel, most of which ended up on the cutting room floor, and it was a huge thrill to hear good actors acting out my scenes.

Sudden End to Miracles

The distribution company, AFD, went bankrupt just as the film was being released and the little beauty was barely distributed. And though the book eventually sold over a hundred thousand copies, and I subsequently published five more works of fiction and two works of non-fiction, I was never again (not yet, anyway) to have a place on the larger literary stage.

Recent Resumption of Miracles

A month ago, thirty years after publishing Inside Moves, I got an email from a man in charge of preparing the DVD release of Inside Moves for Lionsgate Entertainment. At first I thought he was joking, but he was not. Two days ago, he and his assistant arrived at our house in Mendocino to interview me about the novel and how it became a movie.

I think the interview went well. Had I known Cliff was going to let me ramble and say whatever came to my mind, I might have waxed more dramatically, but all in all I felt good about what I said (and didn’t say) and Cliff said he was pleased. A very professional duo, David Chan the camera person, Cliff Stephenson the director/interviewer, spent twenty minutes setting up, mixing the natural light of the living room with two of their own lights, and they even backlit my hair slightly and powdered my impressive brow to reduce reflection.

More interesting to me than my own memories was hearing how this DVD project came to be after so many years of deep freeze. Turns out Dick Donner has wanted to release this film (his favorite) in DVD since the advent of that medium but no one could untangle the corporate mess and discover who actually owned the film. When they concluded the owner was probably a British conglomerate that had eaten an earlier owner of the movie, and Lionsgate had a good connection with that behemoth, they decided to release the film. Initially they were just going to find a decent VHS copy, transfer to DVD, and bring it out with no extras.

As it happened, Cliff’s wife worked for Lionsgate, knew of Cliff’s love of Donner’s films, and asked Cliff if he wanted to oversee the project. He said Yes, and when he saw the quality of the print they were going to use, he said he thought Donner would be outraged. So began a hunt for a print of the actual 35 mm film, which they found in England. Not a perfect print, but better than any VHS. This was transferred to DVD, cleaned up, and then Cliff convinced Lionsgate to let him approach the extra matter for the DVD from the angle of how the movie went from book to screenplay to film. As they have gathered material, Lionsgate has gotten more enthusiastic, and they are now planning to do a somewhat snazzier release than originally planned. Feb 3, 2009!

I forgot all about trying to plug my soon-to-be-published novel Under the Table Books until the very end of the interview. Thirty years after publishing Inside Moves, I’m about to publish another novel about outcastes gathering to create an ersatz family. In Inside Moves they gather in Max’s Bar. In Under the Table Books they coalesce in an anarchist bookstore.

Who knows how much of what I said will make it onto the DVD? I suppose if I were really daring I would self-publish a new edition of the book to coincide with the release of the DVD, but I’m pushing the limits of my daringness (and bank account) these days. Cliff told me there is a surprisingly large cult following of the film and Lionsgate is expecting an initial response from that base to give the film a boost.

But the most fascinating part about these two very nice movie guys coming to our house (My wife Marcia was impressed with how down to earth they were) was my sense, and I mean this viscerally, that the same unseen powers that spoke the book through me and opened the way for the book to be written and published and made into a movie so long ago, had finally returned to my neck of the woods after a twenty-nine year exile (perhaps around Saturn.)

Or maybe it was just déjà vu all over again.

Todd Walton’s web site is underthetablebooks.com

The following memory was first published in The Anderson Valley Advertiser. Many Thanks to Bruce Anderson for his continuing support of my writing.

Playing For Capra

Marcia and I recently watched a new Israeli movie entitled The Band’s Visit about an Egyptian police band spending the night in a godforsaken Israeli settlement. Seeing this remarkable film coincided with my struggle to write about the time I played piano for Frank Capra, the famous movie director.

Why the struggle? Because the story of playing piano for Capra is entwined with my dramatic rise and fall as a professional writer nearly thirty years ago, a larger story with far too many unhappy chapters. By the time I played piano for Capra in 1982, I had gone from living on pennies in the slums of Seattle to being the toast of New York and Hollywood, and back to barely scraping by in Sacramento, all in the course of a few dizzying years.

Capra, for all his many triumphs, was a Hollywood outsider. Having succeeded brilliantly under the protection of the powerful mogul Harry Cohn, Capra only made the movies he wanted to make, which were almost never what his overlords desired. In that regard, Capra was my hero. I had failed to build relationships with the powerful producers of American movies and books despite the many opportunities my success provided me. I was young and naïve, and I believed that great stories and great screenplays would sell themselves. To my dismay, I experienced over and over again that quality and originality meant less than nothing to those who control our cultural highways. But I didn’t want to believe that, and so burned a thousand bridges.

Capra knew all about what I was going through, for he and his movies, despite their popularity with moviegoers, often received muted support from the power brokers. Why? Because he, too, was unwilling to compromise the integrity of his visions. Indeed, he made movies about these very conflicts: integrity versus corruption, kindness versus cruelty, generosity versus greed, and originality versus imitation.

Capra’s autobiography, an incomparable history of Hollywood from the days of silent movies until the 1960’s, was one of my bibles. In recent years, a confederacy of academic dunces has tried to discredit Capra’s recollections, but their pathetic efforts only amplify Capra’s importance.

So there I was in 1982, hoping to resuscitate my collapsing career, when we heard Capra was going to speak at a showing of It’s A Wonderful Life in an old movie house in Nevada City.

In 1980 a movie had been made of my novel, Inside Moves. Directed by Richard Donner with a screenplay by Barry Levinson, the movie—a Capraesque dramatic comedy if there ever was one—starred John Savage and launched the careers of David Morse and Diana Scarwid, who received an Oscar nomination for her performance in the film. But just as Inside Moves was about to be released, the distribution company went broke and the film was never widely seen. I was then hired by Warner Brothers to write a screenplay for Laura Ziskin (Spiderman) based on my second novel Forgotten Impulses, which was hailed by The New York Times as one of the best novels of 1980, but then Simon & Schuster inexplicably withdrew all support for the book and the movie was never made.

Indeed, as I drove from Sacramento to Nevada City with my pals Bob and Patty, I was in a state of shock. My previously doting movie agents had just dropped me, Simon & Schuster had terminated the contract for my next novel, and I had no idea why any of this was happening. Yet I still believed (and believe to this day) that my stories would eventually transcend the various obstructions and be read with joy by thousands of people—a quintessential Capraesque vision of reality. And I was sure Capra would say something in Nevada City that would help me and give me hope.

We arrived in the quiet hamlet in time to have supper before the show. We chose a handsome restaurant that was empty save for a single diner. On a small dais in the center of the room was a shiny black grand piano. The owner of the restaurant greeted us gallantly, and to our query, “Where is everybody?” replied, “You got me. We were expecting a big crowd for Capra, but…” He shrugged. “That’s show biz.”

Our table gave us a view of the piano and our elderly fellow diner, who we soon realized was Capra himself. Waiting for no one, eating slowly, sipping his red wine, the old man seemed to lack only one thing to complete the perfection of his moment: someone to play a sweet and melancholy tune on that fabulous piano. And I was just the person to do it if only the owner would allow me the honor.

I made the request and it was granted. Frank was done with his supper by then and having coffee. I sat down at the piano and looked his way. He smiled and nodded, directing me, as it were, to play. We were still the only people there, the room awaiting my tune.

I played a waltz, a few minutes long, something I’d recently composed, a form upon which I improvised, hoping to capture the feeling of what was to me a sacred moment.

When I finished, Frank applauded.

I blushed. “Another?”

Frank nodded. “Can you play that one again?”

“Not exactly, but close.”

He winked. “Perfect.”

So I played the tune again, longer this time, and slower at the end. Frank smiled and tapped his coffee cup with his fork. I approached him and told him we’d come to watch his movie and hear him speak.

He said, “Thank you. I love your music.”

His anointment of my waltz would have been more than enough to fulfill my wish that he say something to help me and give me hope. But the best was yet to come.

Capra’s genius was comprehensive. His best films are not only beautifully written and acted, they are gorgeous to behold. It’s A Wonderful Life was made when the art of black and white cinematography was at its apex, and we may never again see such artistry now that digital technology has replaced film and the secrets of the black and white masters are largely lost to time.

We marveled and wept at Capra’s masterwork, and then a nervous moderator gave Capra a succinct introduction, and the old man took the stage. He thanked the crowd for coming and took questions—questions that made me despair for humanity.

The worst of the many terrible queries was, “Do you think you’re a better director than Steven Speilberg?”

“Different,” said Capra, pointing to another raised hand.

And then came the one meaningful question of the evening. “Your humor seems so different than the humor today. Why is that?”

“Humor today,” said Capra, “for the most part, is pretty mean-spirited. We used to call it put down humor, and we consciously avoided that. With Wonderful Life, you’re laughing with the characters because you identify with them, which is very different than laughing at someone.”

The inane questions resumed, and finally Capra couldn’t take it anymore. He waved his hands and said, “Look, if you want to make good movies, and God knows we need them, you have to have a good story. That’s the first thing. That’s the foundation. And what makes a good story? Believable, compelling characters in crisis. That’s true of comedy or drama. And the highest form in my opinion is the dramatic comedy, which has become something of a lost art in America. Then you need to translate that story into a great script. And I’m sorry to tell you, but only great writers can write great scripts. So start practicing now. And when you think you have that story and that script, then get somebody who knows how to shoot and edit film and make your movie. And when you finish, make another one. And if you have talent, and you persist despite everybody telling you to quit, you might make a good movie some day. Thank you very much.”

Which brings us back to The Band’s Visit. Capra would have loved these characters and their crises, and though he never in a million years would have made such a movie, his influence is unmistakable.