"Howard Waldrop - Drean Factories and Radio Pictures" - читать интересную книгу автора (Waldrop Howard)

Press, Perth, Australia 1997/St. MartinтАЩs 1998, with various American paperback and foreign
regroupings and additions and subtractions) of my previous short-story collections.

Most readers have the general impression of me (if they have any at all) of being a guy who writes about
extinct species (only two stories), rock and roll (only three and a half stories), or alternate history (well,
touch├йтАФa lot, including some overlap in all the other categories, including this one).

But as this collection shows, a lot of my stories have been about film and television; their evolution, their
heights and depths, some side channels they could have or should have taken but didnтАЩt; actors,
directors, technicians, hangers-on, all that Raymond Chandler/Nathaniel West Southern California stuff;
other places, too, where movies and television evolved; what effect they have had and will have on us.
These kinds of things will be in the individual sections.

ThereтАЩs more stuff from film, TV, etc., popping up in other stories of mine that arenтАЩt here. тАЬThe Sawing
Boys,тАЭ for instance, which is essentially the Bremen Town Musicians partly told in Damon Runyon style,
set in the early 1920s, which allows a backwoods Kentucky musical-saw quartet to come on like a
bunch of Beirutklezmorim because of the spread of mass communications (radio). But thatтАЩs buried so
deep in the story that when I tell most people what itтАЩs really about, they look at me funny. тАЬItтАЩs the
Bremen Town Musicians, with musical saws,тАЭ they say. They could be right.

Anyhow: These are the stories that are directly (or mostlyтАФsee the individual intros) about movies and
television; personalities, history, projections, alternatives, guesses, and the effects they had on everybody,
especially me.

And, as John Barrymore said, after staggering up the center aisle, still in his street clothes, after theyтАЩd
held the curtain for him thirty minutes, turning to the audience: тАЬYou sit right there. IтАЩm going to give you
the goddamndest King Lear youтАЩve ever seen. . . .тАЭ




Part One
Dream Factories: The Past
With humans, it goes like this:
1. YouтАЩre born.
2. You learn to move.
3. You learn to talk.
4. You learn to tell stories and jokes.

The movies got it all wrong.

They were born. They learned to move. Then they learned to tell stories and jokes. Finally, they learned
to talk.
***


The stories in this section are about film, from the beginnings to (some other) circa 1970. ThereтАЩs plenty
of stuff here on grammar and orientation, on personalities and genres; all the stuff we love that the movies
have done for the past 105 years.
Film was the first mass medium, one capable of taking a product to millions of people at the same time.