Faulkner goes west

The next few Fridays I'm going to focus on two of my favorite subjects -- William Faulkner and Hollywood. Faulkner had an off-and-on relationship with Hollywood beginning in 1932 and lasting into the 1950s. He claimed to despise the place, but his chronic money troubles made it hard to turn down opportunities to make quick cash. "Where else could he earn $500 a week? It would be like selling a short story every week for six weeks" writes Joseph Blotner in Faulkner: A Biography. The solitary writer fit uneasily within the collaborative medium that is the movie business. Writes Blotner: "If he had had money enough, like Hemingway, he would never have touched a Hollywood film script." Faulkner told his brother Jack, "Nobody would live in Hollywood, except to get what money they could out of it."

According to Blotner, Faulkner referred to his stints in Southern California as "my sojourn downriver" and "he would often use metaphors of fieldhands or slaves for his dealings with the film studios. Sometimes they would be more dramatic. He would later tell another writer, a young friend, (Shelby Foote) 'Always take the people seriously, but never take the work seriously. Hollywood is the only place on earth where you can get stabbed in the back while you're climbing a ladder.'" Throughout Faulkner's writing Hollywood became a symbol of corruption, see especially his novel Pylon or his short story Golden Land, a tale of perversion too sensational for the literary magazines that usually jumped at the chance to publish his latest offerings.

Yet, Faulkner returned again and again. While being in Hollywood exacerbated his personal demons, he made some enduring friendships and did respectable work. It wasn't all as bad as he made it sound. Despite the drinking binges and erratic behavior Faulkner remained a professional writer, and for the most part was paid handsomely for his services (putting the lie to his plantation metaphors). For better or worse his time "downriver" passed on into something approaching legend. Faulkner's experiences in Hollywood furnished some of the inspiration for the Coen Brothers' quirky masterpiece Barton Fink (1991). Here's Blotner describing the 34-year-old Mississipian's first trip west in 1932 on a 6-week contract for MGM.

In 1932, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was the undisputed leader among motion-picture companies. On fifty-three acres in Culver City, "on the dusty outskirts of Los Angeles, opposite three gasoline stations and a drug store," the studio produced forty feature films a year that grossed more than $100 million annually and played before an estimated total world audience of a billion persons.

The shortened workday of Saturday, May 7, had nearly passed before William Faulkner arrived. When he did arrive, things seemed to go wrong from the very start. The first thing Sam Marx (MGM exec) noticed was that his head was cut and bleeding. He had been hit by a cab while he was changing trains, he said--in New Orleans. To Marx it was obvious that he had been drinking. Marx wanted to call a doctor, but Faulkner said he didn't need one and that he wanted to get right to work.

"We're going to put you on a Wallace Beery picture," Marx told him. "Who's he?" asked Faulkner. "I've got an idea for Mickey Mouse." Marx explained that Mickey Mouse films were made at the Walt Disney Studios, and arranged for a screening of The Champ. Beery had starred in it as a lovable prizefighter, and now he was to play a wrestler in Flesh.

Faulkner allowed himself to be led to the projection room by Marx's office boy, who reappeared very shortly. Faulkner did not want to watch the film, and he kept talking. "Do you own a dog?" he asked the boy, who said no. Faulkner said, "Every boy should have a dog." He should be ashamed not to own a dog, and so should everybody else who didn't own a dog. The film was hardly under way when Faulkner said to the projectionist, "How do you stop this thing?" There was no use looking at it, he said, because he knew how it would turn out. Then he asked for the exit and left. Marx started an immediate search for him, but it proved fruitless.

As it turned out Faulkner had wandered off and ended up in Death Valley, 150 miles east. He reappeared a week later, apologized, and went to work in Office 27 of the writer's building with Marx's reassurance that from now on he would work exclusively on "original stories" for the studio. No more wrestling pictures for the celebrated author of The Sound and the Fury! The first script he worked on was a reworking of a short story he'd been unable to sell a dozen years earlier. It never saw the light of day, but was good practice for someone learning the conventions of movie writing. Faulkner wrote home: "I am not settled good yet. I have not got used to this work. But I am as well as anyone can be in this bedlam."

To be continued...