Prudence, Bill Murray and how I nearly ruined the Goonies
Not so Gonzo: Three idiots on the Warner Bros. lot
A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished — Proverbs 22:3
Well, I don’t know if I would have RUINED The Goonies, but I could have ruined the movie for many moviegoers. I would have likely been sued and maybe even prosecuted. How I nearly ruined myself and the movie happened the way most stupid crap happens: by chance.
The chance of ruin was provided by the studio itself through a press junket in which student journalists would watch Bill Murray in his first dramatic role and then meet him. I didn’t care a wit about the new movie he was in, a remake of The Razor’s Edge, based on W. Somerset Maugham’ novel. I only wanted to go because he had played journalist Hunter S. Thompson in the comic film, Where the Buffalo Roam. Thompson (aka, Dr, Gonzo) was my journalistic hero, at least I thought so at the time.
I prepared by wearing a short sleeved shirt with white polk-dots on a navy-blue background and garnished it with a fat, stubby navy-blue tie with larger white polka-dots. This was sort of how I thought Murray dressed in Where the Buffalo Roam. I had hoped this would signal to all I was truly Gonzo. Instead, I looked like a Roy Lichtenstein comic. Holding down the garish tie was my trusty Pentax K-1000. Dammit, I was going to get a picture of Bill Murray whether he liked it or not.
I was a journalism major in October of 1984. A presidential election was approaching and the Detroit Tigers were in the World Series. It was one of those autumn’s we all have in our early twenties when meaningful things seem just around the corner. This press junket seemed to me proof of it. A student “junket” in this case was an event whereby the studios invite the student “movie critics” from college newspapers to watch their movie, meet a star or two, and then get free publicity when the student “movie critic” writes their shabby review. All those involved know the game: the studios know they are exploiting the students’ desire for propinquity, the students know (except for me) they are being played for saps, the stars and directors are obligated to play along because their contracts typically force them to do so. Nothing is sincere, just so you know.
Also, what the hell does a college kid know about reviewing movies? Nothing, I am proud to say, and it takes one to know one!
In 1984, Bill Murray was a superstar after his comic performance in the blockbuster Ghost Busters, released in June. The film lasted 30 weeks in some theaters, well into 1985. The Razors Edge would be gone by Christmas. What I didn’t know at the time was that Murray had refused to star in Ghost Busters unless the studio also agreed to produce The Razor’s Edge (ouch). That aside, Ghost Busters and its annoying theme song, were everywhere in the culture, so much so the Republican Party quickly used the movie’s title for their own ends on bumper stickers and lapel buttons. Walter “Fritz” Mondale was indeed busted a month later by Ronald Reagan.
I arrived at the Warner Bros. lot having no idea what to expect. I remember thinking it might be a huge affair, but instead I was taken to a small room with theater seating. Milling around were about 15 student journalists from all over southern California, all nervous and competitive wannabes. A table before me was laden with cheese, nitrated meats, crackers, fruit and soft-drinks (no beer?) and additional press-kit folders. I stood out like a polka-dotted sore thumb and I was the only one with a camera. Seeing another idiot like themselves, two sloppy looking, but gregarious fellows immediately approached me. One was Steve, from Cal State Long Beach, the other I will call Brian, from UCLA. We didn’t take long to start chortling about Bill Murray having the nerve to be in a DRAMATIC film. Hardy- har-giggle-snort, what a dope, right? I caught a dirty look from the well-dressed girl from USC with blue cat-eye make-up (that was a thing in 1984). Steve, saw her, too. “Hey, how’s it going?” That was sort of a pick-up line in those days. Didn’t work.
I was thinking these two guys might be trouble. But I am a GONZO journalist, so I am up for anything. Yep.
After I had downed about a pound of cheese and summer sausage (I had stronger intestines then), we took our theater seats. Steve sat behind me and Brian next to him. The girls avoided us; another bad sign things would get weird. Weird because when young men pursue young women, they are distracted from the stupider things. We would NOT be distracted this evening.
As the lights dimmed, Brian, who had chugged three Dr. Peppers, tried to release a belch silently in that dead silent room. It came out like, “bury-foopf-hahhhhhhh.” I shrank in my seat, trying not to laugh. Steve laughed.
And yikes this movie is boring and I am trying, really trying, to get into it when Steve or Brian, I don’t know which one, starts snoring. I think it was real snoring. The movie didn’t earn a laugh, a giggle, a gasp or a “wow” from the audience. We were supposed to be impartial “journalists” after all, so that might have explained it. The lights went up, the PR flack introduced the director, John Byrum and the star of the evening, Bill.
Bill was a sweaty mess. His body odor was sour, acrid and permeated the room. Imagine raw onion and muratic acid with just a touch of beef. His polo shirt was soaked through the armpits and back. He looked terrible. I think he said he had been golfing. Byrum looked better, cool and composed and if he had BO we didn’t notice it over Murray’s stench.
Begin the great interview!
We fizzled. We withered. The questions asked of Byrum were all lame, off-topic and sort of insulting. The questions to Murray were fawning and he quickly batted them away. That would not stand, man. I was in my first year as a journalism major and I was shocked at this yellow-striped cowardice. I felt like Murray was getting too much attention so I prepared a question for Byrum. What does Byrum do? He walks out, possibly ill from Bill’s BO.
So I have to ask Bill my question. My question:
“Do you think this screenplay accurately reflects Maugham’s novel?”
I had not finished the sentence when I saw Murray’s eyebrows rise. I heard Steve behind me let out a “oooooof…dude.”
Murray pointed his finger upward, “A lot of people think that is a question, but it really isn’t.” And he went on to explain why.
Because I had not bothered to read the press-kit (which I had for two-weeks), I didn’t know that both Byrum AND Murray wrote the screenplay together. They were actually proud of it. I still think it was a fair question, but I myself had not read Maugham’s novel, so it was a chickenshit question nonetheless.
Afterward, Murray graced us with some hand-shaking. I took some pictures with the K-1000 and we yukked it up a bit about Hunter S. Thompson. Time to go home…
But wait, say Steve and Brian, aren’t we on a movie lot? Aren’t there all sorts of things to see? Now why didn’t that occur to me, the gonzo journalist? Hell, yes, let’s go explore.
We left the screening room totally unobserved into the early evening of a depopulated studio lot. But we heard noises, so things were happening in that maze of giant sound stages. Steve and Brian led the way around buildings and somehow we walked into an Old West street set. There was a bank, a general store and the obligatory saloon with swinging doors and like moths to flame we went into that one. “Dude, I wonder how many western TV shows we have seen with this place in them?” None of us could recall. Suddenly:
BOOM!
Boom. “These windows are made of sugar for the bar fights, you know,” Brian said. He had hit the saloon’s plexiglass window with a chair. Boom! the plastic flexed like a drum head but didn’t break. “Brian!” I yelled, “They don’t LEAVE sugar windows out in the elements, man, they would just dissolve. Those are for special effects… you are going to get us busted.”
Brian stood frozen with his crazed eyes darting from me to the window while his UCLA brain considered that what dissolve in the mouth would also dissolve in the rain. Still, he stood there a while, grinning at me and Steve, half believing me. “Yeah, man, lets go see something else.” And we did. But first Steve and Brian pissed in some bushes.
Not far from there, we found a sound stage door open. Black lights from inside cast an eerie glow. We didn’t have to guess the TV show because taped on the door was a paper with the letter “V.” “V” was a sci-fi mini-series in which seemingly friendly aliens secretly want to take over the Earth. This was V’s second and final season. We had walked into the alien space ship set. COOL! We walked down the mother-ship’s corridors and control rooms, giggling at the phoniness of it all. What looks real-ish on television looks really dumb up close. I noticed the colored buttons on one console were made of Jolly Ranchers and other clear candies. Steve and Brian tore a few off and ate them. They just spit out the dried Elmer’s glue later.
We walked out of the building onto a wet street being prepared for filming. On one side was a table piled with donuts and two coffee urns. Of course, the three of us made for that. Several grips were busy with some large lights as we passed; they didn’t notice Brian and Steve joking and laughing. I felt uneasy near them, so I peeled off and approached the table from the side. Three of us barreling down on those donuts didn’t seem prudent. My separating was wise because crews and actors all know each other and one guy noticed our presence. A spooky looking dude with folded arms standing about 20 feet from the donuts was eyeing Steve and Brian. It was Micheal Ironside, a sinister looking actor, who didn’t like stranger’s eating his donuts.
Ironside twitched his head toward Brian and Steve, “Who the hell are those guys?” he asked the man next to him. “I don’t know, extras maybe?” “There are no fuggin extras in this scene,” Ironside growled.
I had prudently not eaten a donut. I pretended to read the script as I drifted behind Ironside and his buddy, motioning to Steve and Brian that we needed to get the hell out of there fast. So we did.
Again, like brainless moths, we stumbled into another set, this one crammed with people, many of whom were watching the Detroit Tigers trounce the San Diego Padres. With everyone distracted, I figured I could march right through the set as long I looked purposeful and serious. Steve and Brian could not manage this, nor did they try. I was putting some distance between us when William Shatner walked up to me in a laughably tight police costume. We had crashed the T.J. Hooker set!
As Shatner approached, he locked eyes with me. Locked. As we passed, heads turning and eyes still locked, and I simply nodded. This was HIS set, he knew everyone on it, and if I showed even faint fan-ishness I would have been revealed an invader. He kept walking. Whew! Somehow Brian and Steve got past him and we ended up in the “chiefs” fake office.
“Dude, did you know Shatner was that short? He’s like five-foot-six!” Steve laughed. “He looked pissed,” Brian added, “did you say anything to him?”
“No, nothing. But I think he knows we are strangers.” I was admiring a real police academy graduation photo on the fake wall. Someone had drawn tiny Hitler mustaches on all the cops. Shatner had made us for sure, I thought.
“We should get out of here.”
We left the way we came in: a path through trailers paved with cables. Shatner was watching baseball with the grips and crew, giving us the stink-eye as we left. It was the prudent thing to do.
“What the hell are Goonies?” Brian read a sign with arrow.
“Goonies… Goonies… hmmm…” Steve said he thought it was a new Steven Spielberg movie, but knew nothing else. We assumed it was about little monsters, a sequel to Gremlins. We followed the plain white paper signs to the door of Stage 16:“Goonies: Stay out.”
“Yeah, right!” Steve laughed pushed open a huge steel door. We gasped.
It was not what we saw that stopped our breath, but the smell, a wet, moldy smell, like damp laundry left in a hamper. I didn’t know it at the time, but that smell was from the tons of plaster-of-paris used to build the Pirate Cave set. The sight before us restarted our lungs.
There it was, the largest sound stage in California made to look like an enormous cave. I read later that the child actors in the film were so awed, it ruined their performances for a day. But an important part of the awe was missing: The realistic pirate ship built for the film. One-eyed Willie’s ship would be installed months later. We three didn’t know that it was missing, of course, so ignorance was bliss.
But BLISS it was. Totally captivating. The craftsmanship and skill was stunning. It was a sight to remember, perhaps remember forever, somehow.
“Harry!” Steve said, “get a picture, man!”
I had forgotten the K-1000 dangling around my neck. Wow. There I was, ready to photograph a Spielberg movie set, a movie a year away from being released. I could take and sell the first photograph of an anticipated film’s climactic scene (which no one knew at the time). Someone might pay real money for such a photograph. I want to emphasize here that such a photograph would certainly have been published, likely in a tabloid and I would have been paid for it. Such were the times.
In that moment, I failed Dr. Gonzo forever. I could not bring that camera up to my eye. Brian scoffed and shook his head. He must have thought I was a real pansy. Steve probably did as well, but he was busy gawking at the cave. I was a Gonzo charlatan. I would have to toss myself into the mire with P.J. O’Rourke and Tom Wolfe. I was doomed.
Did all the possible consequences squirt through my mind when I had the chance to take that photo? No. That came later. I can say, however, that I knew it was clearly wrong, very wrong. A leaked photo would not have enhanced the magic for movie-goers. Warner Bros. could have even fired some people over it. But most all, it just seemed sleazy to lean on other people’s talent, to essentially steal their product. In the movie industry, that product is “surprise” and it is expensive. There was no upside other than it being “gonzo” which in this case was nothing more than callous, opportunistic piracy. A photograph was not prudent.
I often wonder if I could have resisted the temptation had One-eyed Willie’s ship been there and the stage flooded with water. Would my virtue prevail? That Pentax sure did take nice pictures. Prudence is doing the right thing in the absence of experience.
Aristotle wrote in Nicomachean Ethics, “prudence corresponds to intellect, for intellect is concerned with the defining boundaries” and “He who knows about and spends his time on things that concern himself is held to be prudent”
However, I know now I received prudence not merely by my own reason, but the quiet hand of the Lord:
A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished — Proverbs 22:3
Two years later, I transferred to Cal State Long Beach where I again met Steve, who was not a mischievous person after all. He told me Brian was later arrested and kicked out of UCLA for blowing up toilets. Some guys have it, some guys don’t.
I don’t, thank God, and I am happier with Wolfe and O’Rourke.
Vale
What an adventure. So disappointing about Murray. I do remember watching V and being both horrified and unable to stop watching. And Shatner! Well, good for you for doing the right thing. You could have ended up exploding toilets!
That is a good moment in life to reflect on. The principle to your story reminds me of Socrates as well: "The unexamined life is not worth living." Apology 38.A