Summer 2007 (7 page)

NS:
Yes. He would always offer me candy.

JS:
: Right. Right.

SM:
Did you take the candy from him?

NS:
I would, and then at a
certain point my mother gave me a look, like maybe I shouldn’t do that. But I
don’t think there was anything untoward about it.

JS:
: No, no. I
mean, everybody loves candy.
You and I have gone around on a particular
topic I want to discuss, and feel free to pitch in, Sarah, but Nick, as you
know, at a certain point our friend Winton basically said “To hell with
America, to hell with everything,” and he went to Europe, where he spent time
writing screenplays for Italian science fiction movies. Now, I’ve been a movie
critic for fifteen years. I’ve written a book on science fiction movies. And I
am here to tell you, unreservedly, that Italian science fiction movies are the
worse science fiction movies that have ever existed. In addition to being the
genre of film that spawned the career of David Hasselhoff –

SM:
Which
is a sin for which it can never be forgiven.

JS:
: No, no.
Generations future will curse –

SM:
Curse!

JS:
:
— indeed.

NS:
Hasselhoff aside.
JM: Hasselhoff aside,
you actually think the screenplays that he wrote were sort of a creative
highlight for him.

NS:
I just think it was very different. It’s
not the thing you usually see – spaghetti space opera has a place, and
you just don’t see it very often. They dispensed with a lot of the scientific
aspects of it –

JS:
: And dialogue.

NS:
And
dialogue, and they didn’t use very good actors, and it was kind of a mess.

SM:
But! Nick says. There are redeeming qualities!

NS:
There are
redeeming qualities. There’s a Fellini-esque quality to it. We would actually
put clowns in space. I thought that was very…

JS:
: Well, it’s
because the movie studio was timesharing the building with the Rome Clown
College.

NS:
Yeah.

JS:
: So they were readily
available.

NS:
You have to make use of what you have.

JS:
: But are you giving him too much credit? Fellini used clowns because he
was making a point about clowns. Winton’s using clowns because they were there.
Doesn’t that make a difference?

NS:
Yes, it makes a difference, to
certain extent. But Winton is no Fellini. You have to build with what you’ve
got.

SM:
And it true that by the end of his screenwriting career,
the last film, I think it is heads and shoulder above any of his previous
efforts. And I think it is because, you know, like you’re saying, you have to
dance with them what brung you. But if they want to square dance and you want
to waltz… I think that was the problem Winton was having for much of his
Italian screenwriting career, was that he was working in a medium without
wanting to give in to what he had.

JS:
: Well, in fact, he
absolutely maintained that he should be writing the screenplays in Italian, a
language he did not speak.

NS:
Yes. He refused to learn it on
principle.

JS:
: Right. Exactly. Because he felt that would
detract from the quality.

SM:
Yes. But the last film, with the
extended spacewalk sequence. In which there is no sound, because there is no
sound in space. He broke through the terrible limitations of his form…

JS:
: Aaaah. Oh. Okay. You know what, this is another common misperception, and
I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you. The reason that there is no sound
is because Winton pawned the microphones.

SM:
Yes. But still.

NS:
It’s like guerilla filmmaking.

JS:
: And he did actually use
gorillas, because in addition to the clown college there was also the gorilla
training facility.

NS:
That’s right. And when the gorillas killed
a clown, at that moment they had to stop. And that was the end of his career.
Once you kill a clown in space…

SM:
There’s nothing you can do.
It’s all over.

JS:
: you can’t go back.

SM:
You can’t
go forward, either.

JS:
: You have to float there helplessly.

NS:
Yes. With your greasepaint and your nose.

SM:
However it came
about, it remains iconic.

JS:
: Okay. Now, Winton did come back to
the United States after doing the Italian space stuff, and he actually started
writing the original novels. Some of those titles: That’s My Toe, which I think
you like the best, Nick. Sarah, I remember you saying you actually liked The
Star Accountants.

SM:
Yes. Yes.

JS:
: And let me put
a shout-out to what is my favorite, Contractually Obligated Androids, which
despite the title was actually written on spec.

SM:
Well, the
interesting thing about Winton’s late career, which is when it became
financially almost feasible to make that career. Almost feasible –

JS:
: Almost.

SM:
I mean, better than ’55.

JS:
:
Well, this was the same time and space where people were actually getting paid
very well –

SM:
Yes. Yes.

JS:
: — and
everybody was trying to compete, trying to get the best authors, and to the
laggards go Winton. So Winton benefitted.

SM:
Yes. And it’s true
that Winton comes back from his European jaunt with a much better understanding
of, and finer sensibility about not only about sexual politics, because this is
the era of Cathy and Jo Elle, but he also learned a certain amount about
Marxism and Communism.

JS:
: Right. Because he was in Italy. Red
as the day is long.

SM:
But you can see this in the later works,
both in The Star Accountants and in Contractually Obligated Robots. You can see
that he’s exploring, really in a way that we’re only now beginning to see again
in the work of China Mieville.

JS:
: And of course this is also
after this fight with Bester, so he did write sentences in sequence now.

SM:
Which actually worked much better.

JS:
: It’s strange that it
would be that way, but for him it was a style that did better for him.

NS:
See, I may need to re-read that book again, because I read it purely as
response to Asimov, that robots, instead of having laws, would be given actual
contracts that they would have to fill out. Like, “Will you rebel against
humanity? Check box one. “

JS:
: and indeed there was some
discussion about this – is this in fact just another answer novel? And
there were two things going on. One, of course, Lactic Press had gone under,
and the principals of that had gone to San Quentin. As you do. Accounting
matters. And indeed, that’s the theme of Star Accountants.

SM:
This
is the period of Winton’s life where is personal life and his philosophical
concerns came together in his fiction in a way that he had never achieved
before. Which makes his work much more interesting, and much more powerful. The
contractual obligation instead of a law – there’s a strong Hobbsean
element to that, and a much more honest and realistic assessment of the
responsibilities of creating sentient creatures like a robot. Like Asimov’s
robots.

JS:
: And to lend credence to the theory that it might
have been a response, the scene where the robots actually stab the lead
scientist, named “Basimov.”

NS:
Yeah.

SM:
Well, that
was a little transparent.

JS:
: It was, and it was one of those
things where, up until the death bed reconciliation, Winton maintained it was
completely coincidental. Along with the scene in which the robots beat, on a
jai alai court, the guy named “Lester.”

NS:
But wasn’t there that
first draft where after he wrote these names, he’d write “ha, ha,” exclamation
point, close parenthesis?

JS:
: Went up in the fire, if it did
exist at all.

SM:
There’s still a great debate in academic circles
whether “Lester” is Bester or Lester Del Rey.

JS:
: That is true
as well, because as we know, Lester Del Rey and Winton did have problems,
specifically over money, and a small dog.

NS:
Yes.

JS:
:
What breed?

NS:
Wasn’t it a Pomeranian?

JS:
: I think
it was a Pomeranian. I remember it being some sort of fluffy dog. And I
remember hearing from some of the old timers that it really wasn’t even so much
about the money, just that Winton really loved that dog. It was an unfortunate
thing. And of course people want to make something of it. Like it was unseemly.
But it really wasn’t. It was a pure, clean love between a man and his dog. And
then of course he sued Harlan Ellison, because he thought “A Boy and His Dog”
was transparently about him and his affection for the Pomeranian.

NS:
Well,
and he did think that he and the Pomeranian had a telepathic understanding.

SM:
Here again we see the influence of his need to compete with Philip K. Dick.
It’s sad, really, that at the height of his career, with Star Accountants and
Contractually Obligated Androids, this is the pinnacle of his artistic powers
and to talk about the things that matter to him, and to be funny about them,
and to tell a good story. He’s finally got all his ducks in a row… and they
tell him about Dick, and his writing a novel in a weekend. It was like a red
flag to a bull.

JS:
: He did write, to his credit, an entire
novel, 60,000 words, he timed it as 18 hours and 17 minutes. Now,
unfortunately, the problem was, due to his writing so fast he didn’t enter
spaces between his words. It was very hard to read. They couldn’t hire an
editor to insert the spaces. It’s a lost novel. We will never know.

SM:
Winton was very bitter about the reception of that novel. Because, of
course: Finnegan’s Wake.

JS:
: Right. Exactly. And of course he
was not able to have a death bed reconciliation with Joyce.

SM:
No.
No. Joyce was already dead.

JS:
: Right. Now, we’re coming close
to the end, so what I want to do now is to throw out the rumors that we do hear
with Winton, and tell us what you know about them. Sarah, to begin: World War
II. There is a great discussion about Winton’s involvement with the OSS. Was he
a spy, or was he a janitor?

SM:
Janitor. The persistent motif of
Winton’s autobiographical discourse is self-inflation. I think this is
absolutely a case in point.

JS:
: All right. Nick: The rumor is
that he dated the Gabor sisters, in chronological sequence.

NS:
I
never met them. I dimly remember that there was not an attractive woman out
there who he did not claim he had dated, was dating, or was going to date. And
this was often with his wives present. Just get a couple of Jack Daniels in him
and he was ready to go.

SM:
This was the cause of how many of the
divorces?

JS:
: Seven. I think seven. One of the divorces wasn’t
so much of a divorce as a settlement because of something along the line of her
driving her car into his abdomen. And everyone decided, let’s just walk away
from that.

NS:
There was an annulment.

JS:
: There
was an annulment. But we don’t count that because it was an annulment, not a
divorce. Now: Food fight instigator at Worldcon 12.

SM:
Yes. That
is true.

JS:
: It’s true. Muffins everywhere.

SM:
And
whipped cream.

JS:
: Yes. We don’t want to talk about that.

NS:
I thought it was catsup.

JS:
: No. I have to side with her, it
was definitely whipped cream. There were no stains.

NS:
I had
totally heard that he had sprayed Catsup on everyone, and that this was the
start of the whole Star Trek “Red Shirt” thing.

JS:
: Wow, because
that was what I was going to ask you next. You are indeed a former Star Trek
story editor, is Winton himself he inspiration for the Red Shirt?

NS:
That’s
what I’d heard. But you never know what’s real and what’s not.

SM:
I
think though that that wasn’t Worldcon 12.

JS:
: Wasn’t Worldcon
12?

SM:
No. It was the second food fight.

JS:
: Oh!
So whipped cream one, catsup the other, it’s entirely possible.

SM:
Food
fights were a favorite pastime.

JS:
: Sure. As they were with many
science fiction authors.

SM:
He claims to have been the
inspiration for great pie fight in The Great Race. Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon,
the biggest food fight ever filmed.

JS:
: Yes, and he was very
bitter about that with both Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis.

SM:
Yes,
and again, because of the failure of a death bed reconciliation.

JS:
:
Right.

SM:
They did not attend DeathCon.

JS:
: Right.
And with that, I think that also accentuates again: So many legends, so many
things we hear about Winton, which may be true, which may not. We may never
know the entire story because of the fire, possibly started by Harlan Ellison
–

NS:
Possibly –

JS:
: I’m not saying
intentionally –

NS:
Unproven –

JS:
:
Unproven. But I can say that what we’ve done here is gotten a better
understanding of him. Now unfortunately we’ve gone through this very quickly
and we’ve run out of time, so we can’t discuss his years as the story editor
for the Sid and Marty Kroft Super Show, where the rumor was he was dating
Witchypoo. We’re not going to be able to get into that. We’re not going to talk
about him, at the very end, writing exclusively on ARPANET, where the rumor was
he started the first flame war.

NS:
It would not surprise me.

JS:
: These things we’re not going to be able to tell you. We’re not going to
be able to tell you about his collaborations with religious tract maker Jack
Chick, “Jesus’ Robot” and “Heathens on the Moon.”
But I am going to say
this: He’s having a resurgence now. Subterranean Press, a well-regarded small
press, is soon to release Ten Toes and Others, which is a single-volume book of
his work over the years.