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Goldenfiddle's Korean correspondent, Divad Q. Nead, heads to the cinema (The Incredible Hulk) with an unwilling chef, spills his pilsner in the aisle, and tells tiny children to shut the hush up. What comes of his movie time is but another dig at the film industry in crisis. However, he reports that assigned seating in Hogye is still the bees knees.
Bill Bixby and Michael Landon sit down to dinner in Decatur,
flipping though the menu and kicking at the table.
‘Mick, so how about that screen test, think St. Peter will pass you through
those gates unscated?’
‘I dunno, Bix, seems I’ve got a remake
in the works, gonna haul my body down from the wall and cut
through my already dead canon to turn a buck.’
‘Guttless, man, gutless dogs.’
There’s a copy of Variety on the next table over,
Landon reaches for it seeing a pic of E.Norton, mug all agape,
smiling for what. Bixby waits, like he’s not looking, and the offers
a word before Landon gets to his sentence, ‘skullduggery’, which,
according to wiki is a low budget Irish film and a Reynolds joint.
‘Skullduggery, Mick, pure and utter table salt trash. Don’t start me.’
‘But Bix your in it says the print, some cameo with a kid on tele,
doesn’t move you, man?’
Bixby’s been beside himself all morning,
popping two Xanax - got them good drugs in heaven - and moping
around the house, playing records, Sibelius. If you’ve ever seen
the original series where Bill spent his greater days, an honest bloke
knows you don’t tread on graves marked circa 1978. Even Joe Harnell,
winner of two daytime Emmys, knows better than to resurrect a score
which followed Bixby from town to town, not fucking Sao Paulo, or [sic].
Landon’s kidding, there’s no article in Variety, no press, nothing better
than a few words about the A-Team remake (ugh) and a shot of George
Peppard at Tiffany’s. The sun comes through the diner shades, Bixby’s
got a cold, his cancer long gone but left reminders. Vetting his breath,
Landon bucks at the waitress -she’s not there- and rolls up his sleeves
before eating -no food-. Bill’s looking out the window, ignoring his, and
there appears a billboard in the distance, some deltoids, ripped denim
on a beast.
‘That’s me,’ he says, ‘in name but not spirit. They loved me
angry, even through the music and the awkward pauses.’
My thoughts on this flick go with the gaze of our leading men, confined to television
they fill our six year old cubbies with kitsch. I’ve got a sticker of B.A.
Baracas pitying fools. My doctor’s note says ‘take with food, they won’t
like you when you’re hungry.’ Don’t go, bring your girl or kid to something
big, like the reruns of Nick at Nite or better yet a pizza and some Clue.  |
