Hollywood Endings
"The actual writing is what you live for. The rest is something you have to get through in order to arrive at that point."
— Raymond Chandler
Perched on a balcony overlooking Laurel Canyon pitching my brush with Nina’s death story to a film producer, I feel sufficiently shallow and quite at home with the Hollywood act. Our host, Canuck filmmaker Penelope Buitenhuis, had invited an array of artsy industry folks for a poolside summer gathering. The party of mostly ex-pat Canadians munched on grilled salmon and couscous while the sun’s rays sliced through the canyons like an oxy-acetylene flame.
Now, after a decade has passed, I don’t mind explaining to strangers how I ended up in LA, how I stayed and wrote a book about my experience coping with a terminally ill loved one. I can retell the story without choking up or making listeners uncomfortable. Thanks to advances in medicine, protracted death is a common, contemporary phenomenon. And being a few years older, most everyone I meet nowadays has some similar tale of tending to a sick friend or family member. Add to this the ease by which people can chronicle and communicate their ordeal and all of a sudden the mysterious march to the nether world is open to discussion.
Sterling Hayden (left) and Elliot Gould in The Long Goodbye
Listening to Poet and author Meghan O’Rourke being interviewed on NPR, I nod in affirmation at her experiences with her mother’s death, her observations about the lonesome absence of mourning in American culture, and ultimately, her wish to have never had had the opportunity to pen her memoir, The Long Goodbye. O’Rourke’s book shares a title with the classic Raymond Chandler novel, which was written while Chandler’s wife was dying from a lengthy illness. Both memoir and detective novel are must-reads, but I suppose it’s the later film adaption of this classic is how we humans prefer to see The End play out. Sitting in a dark theater with a box of warm buttered popcorn is a much sweeter seat to say “see ya” to characters we’ve grown to love. Vigils in florescent-lit hospital rooms with flimsy privacy curtains are more sinister and real. Personally, I prefer the cinematic version with soft focus and string orchestra music. However you witness it, there is no escaping the inevitable end. As O’Rourke points out, death is where all humanity is tied. And might I add, the foundation on which much art and commerce is built.