LB: Live! From Paradise #237 – “Just Another Chinese Adventure Part 1”

(The Intro above is from this column's previous web incarnation)

by Larry Brody

The way I look at this life and the work we do in it boils down to this:

The reward for doing a good job is you get to do it again.

Whether you want to or not.

A couple of years ago, I went to China as a consultant to a Hong Kong production company. I must have done a good job because they asked me back, as a writer and producer this time. The company supplied the concept and source material—the true World War II story of the sinking, in the East China Sea, of a Japanese ship loaded with Allied prisoners who had to fight against desperate odds to survive.

Once I agreed to take this on it was up to me to build the premise into a film.

The first step was for Gwen the Beautiful and myself to return to the exotic East so I could talk to survivors and visit the places where the events occurred.

I figured this would take about a week. The Boss of the company disagreed.

“We need you here for at least a month,” he said over the phone.

“A month? I’d love to stay a month, but I’ve got a zillion responsibilities at home. No way I can be gone that long.”

Beside me, Gwen was listening closely. She whispered, “A month in China and you’re saying no? Remember what a great time we had there before?”

“It won’t be the same,” I said. “Consulting is…consulting. Writing is work.”

The Boss laughed from 9,000 miles away. “I understand marital compromise. I’ll set the trip up for three weeks.”

A month later, after a travel time of 27 hours, from our front door to Hong Kong Airport, Gwen and I arrived and learned why The Boss needed us to be there for so long.

Turns out that in China, just as in Hollywood, socializing is a major part of the job. And the socializing began the first night, when Gwen, The Boss, and I attended a charity show at the largest venue I’ve ever seen, a live theater-music multiplex in one of the smaller buildings on the formerly pastoral island of Kowloon.

By which I mean it was “only” 50 stories high.

After two hours of professional entertainers from all over the world doing Broadway song and dance, we went back to our hotel and collapsed.

The Boss roused us the next day. Lunch at the Hong Kong Jockey Club, where they had a buffet spread in a room so vast it looked as though the entire racetrack would fit inside it. And after that we were off to see the last day of shooting of The Boss’s current film, the project on which I’d been consulting two years before.

That night The Boss, The Boss’s Assistant (who also happens to be one of the major directors of TV commercials in that part of the world), The Coordinator Who Got Her Start On Enter The Dragon, The Cute Accounting Intern About To Leave To Study For Her Ph.D. In Urban Planning At Cambridge, and I went to a party given by Hong Kong’s Most Important Entertainment Attorney In A Restaurant He Owns.

To her disappointment, Gwen couldn’t make it. She fought bravely but couldn’t fend off her body’s need for more sleep. The only reason I can give for my ability to stay awake is my insatiable curiosity. Was this really going to be just like the L.A. Scene I’d so happily left behind years ago? I had to see.

And what I saw was about 40 people sitting at three large tables in a private room. At the head table were HK’s Most Important Attorney, his Fifth Wife, his three unmarried sisters, and half a dozen suitors for the sisters (and, I’m pretty sure, for the Fifth Wife as well. At the other tables were various Hong Kong film luminaries, including a Lovely Hong Kong Oscar-Winning Actress, and, of course, us—The Boss and his entourage.

Wine flowed. Spirits splashed. And as the 14 course meal progressed The Lovely Hong Kong Oscar-Winning Actress explained its Prime Directive to me:

“If you raise your glass you must down it in one sip. And you must raise it every time someone makes a toast.”

Over 14 courses, that’s a lot of toasts.

Ah, Hong Kong, you are indeed Hollywood East!

I’d salute you, but after that night I don’t think I’ll ever dare to raise my glass again.

More to come.

Finally Spring

by LB

Five days in a row with the temperature finally going above 60 degrees have had a profound effect on Gwen’s and my here and now. If there’s one thing we’ve learned up here in the PNW, it’s to appreciate the Brody Backyard Forest.

Gwen and I think of our place as a private Brigadoon. It appears as its real self very rarely, but the sight, sound, and scent of Brodydoon each spring jacks our life together up to a level neither of us could ever reach without it.

C’mon over and hang out.

Ah-choo!

LYMI,

LB

LB: Live! From Paradise #236 – “Huck is Crying”

(The Intro above is from this column's previous web incarnation)

by Larry Brody

Huck is crying.

He hides it with a stallion’s squeal.

Last week in this space I wrote about the death of Rosie the Romantic Arabian while Gwen the Beautiful and I were out of the country.

Mostly, I quoted the e-mails about her illness, because I was too stunned to find my own words. It’s still difficult for me to separate my sadness at the loss of this fine young woman (who also just happened to be a horse) from my shock at it having occurred without so suddenly.

Huck the Spotless Appaloosa, however, has no such problem.

He feels miserable, and he knows it.

And he’s angry. Testosterone-fueled sadness flaring as fury.

Although Huck officially is a gelding, he’s what horse people call a “proud cut,” filled with as much spice as many stallions.

“I couldn’t escape from the knife,” he once said to me. “But I’ve beaten it.”

And now, only a few weeks since his mare died of colic, he’s beating me.

“You weren’t here, Larry,” he whinnied this morning. “Rosie and I needed your help. But my two-legged brother who swore to keep us safe was gone!”

“I had work to do,” I said. “I’m writing a movie about something that happened far away. Gwen and I had to check it out.”

“How far?” Huck said.

“On the other side of the globe.”

“Is that as far as across the road? Or down the other side of The Mountain?” He regarded me accusingly. “Were you where those mares I smell are? The ones I call to but never get to see?”

“Farther than that, Huck. Much farther.”

He snorted. “You expect me to believe you could go way off like that with only two legs? And no hooves! How far can you get with no hooves?”

“You’re the one complaining that I wasn’t here. So it must seem to you like I got pretty far.”

Huck kicked out with his hind legs. Whirled as though trying to catch the kick in his own chest. “Seems to me you must’ve been hiding in a shed, or in some trees. Hiding from Rosie’s sickness and my pain. Doing whatever you could to not have to deal with that bellyache that killed her.”

“I wanted to be here, My Brother. I wish I’d been able to do something for her —”

“You and me both, Brother,” he said, making the word sound like a curse. He tossed his head, mane flying. Looked at me more closely. “I wonder…what you could’ve done.”

“No more than Billy did,” I said. “Maybe less.”

“Billy took her away,” said Huck. “He’s the reason I’m alone.”

“He took her to the vet. So you wouldn’t be alone. Brought her home, too. And buried her.”

“I smelled that,” Huck said. “I smelled it, and I heard it. But I didn’t see it.”

“Want to?”

Huck nodded. Hard. I went to the hay shed and got a lead rope. Came back and put it around his neck like a lasso. I took him out the far gate of the corral, and together we walked down the unpaved driveway to the pond, then up to the little meadow where Billy Morningstar and Delly the Interstate Trucker, with the help of a backhoe, had buried Rosie.

Huck and I stopped at the marker Billy had built. A round-capped fencepost with a crossbeam across which Rosie’s halter and lead rope hung. In the center of the crossbeam was a little metal sculpture—a horse’s head within a horseshoe. Everything was in the colors of Cloud Creek Ranch. Barn red with white trim.

“I still don’t see her,” Huck said. “But I feel her.”

“Is that better for you?”

“She feels beautiful.”

“How do you feel?”

Huck hesitated. Then:

“Empty,” he said.

He took a couple of steps away from the bare earth that covered his lost love. Lowered his head. Munched on the auburn Autumn grass. “This ought to fill me up fine.”

As I watched him I thought about other deaths of beloved ones Gwen and I have experienced here in the wilds of the Ozarks.

Dogs.

Cats.

Horses.

Chickens.

Humans too.

All these creatures are people to me, whether they were human or not.

Oh! So many people!

Here and then gone. And what do I do?

I write about them.

It’s what I’m best at.

My way, I tell you, Huck—and all my other Brothers and Sisters—of trying to help.