THE VIRTUES OF THE SINS OF BABYLON
My first year in Los Angeles I lived down the street from what was once “The Garden of Allah.” It was the estate vision of Tellulah Bankhead (one of the most idolized, famous, and infamous lead actresses. Most of her fame was from Broadway or radio; however, she did play an award-winning role in “Lifeboat.” She bought and developed The Garden of Allah to be the most private place to party, have wild sex, and do drugs. Gardens, bungalows, pools, and no way for reporters to sneak in and get pictures. Covering several acres on the corner of Sunset Blvd. and Crescent Heights it was closed for many years and finally torn down and replaced by a strip mall. To visit the place impacts any person on a deeper level. I also went to The Magic Castle before the far end of it was torn down and when it had much more of a “secret society” of magicians often rumored to be involved with Fabians, Templars, and occultists.
“Babylon” starred Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie among other stars and encapsules the magic of capturing creative energy with all its emotional power and making that moment immortal, to be experienced by generations after a star died. Samuel French the book store devoted to film and people of Hollywood was a regular stop for me and they allowed visitors to read books for free in chairs set up in the bookstore. So I read about dozens of immortals of the silver screen. Just as important was to read the history of Hollywood, starting with “An Empire Of Their Own.”
Babylon was produced in 2022 and I am sure the screenplay existed years before then. It premiered at the MGM Theater, a location I was lucky to do work in for the greatest version of “Alice In Wonderland” every produced. I was doing a minor silent bit stunt as one of the cards that get killed by the Jabberwock. Irwin Allen’s dream was to pull together into one production his favorite super-stars. It starred and I talked with Sammy Davis Jr., Carol Channing, Red Buttons, Ann Jillian, Imogene Coca, Donna Mills, Arte Johnson, Telly Savalas, Sid Ceasar, Eydie Gorme, Karl Malden, Jonathan Winters, and George Gobel. This was the last time many saw each other so even on days they did not work they would visit the huge sound stage at MGM. Babylon’s last witnesses and players.
Of all the people in the audience or watching Babylon at home now, who knows the obese man that killed the fan was Fatty Arbuckle? Or what Thayer meant when Brad Pitt met him? Do they know how we exploited Harlem? How many knew the deep green drink was Absinthe? Did they know early versions of it had some poisons in it that made it addicting and also drove Edgar Allen Poe mad and into insanity? When a star exclaimed, “I know Proust,” do they know what knowing Proust meant? He was known as the most difficult writer to read because his material was so brilliantly dense with meaning. Amusingly, he wrote Sodom and Gomorrah, which fit the wild scenes in Babylon. He also wrote Swann’s Way and essays yet his most impressive writing was “In Search of Lost Time” (1913) also titled “a la recharche du temps perdu” or just “La Recharche.’ In it he recounts his life as a child and observations so complex and lofty it led to what was seen as his philosophy. This philosophy on life is still read by people trying to understand his or her role in humanity. In Babylon the columnist or reporter was defending herself by declaring she knew Proust before he died in 1922.
In the movie a scene between two actors reflects Proust’s viewpoint that what is experienced “now” can unlock a sea of memories of experiences from our past and that looking at ourselves and time explains, ultimately, all of a person’s life. This force, this idea, is what is captured in a film and left for people to experience for centuries. This is explained to Brad Pitt in the end by the columnist who tells him he could not have done anything differently, the audience laughed simply because his time is up. All his moments in his 80 films will change people in the future.
Pitt’s never recovers fully from the death of George. Why? As he explains, George was the first person to tell Pitt’s character he had talent and would be important to film. When George dies this begins the fading of the flame of Pitt’s career in a symbolic way.
It is the explosion of creative energy captured on film that drives every person in the movie: actors, actresses, stage hands, sound, journalists, sycophants, studio heads, producers, and stage hands like Manny. They felt the gravity. The gravity without time, where cameras reconstructed moments the audience never feels lived out but feels in thousands of ways not just through what they see and hear but from the energy of the people sitting in the audience with them. The energy resonates throughout the audience. Yet, long before that it somehow resonated throughout the sets and sound stages.
Pitt tries in vain to avoid the inevitable end of his purpose – to deny time. What he had up to that moment was the resonance so strong it made other people around him think they could do the impossible, proven in the shooting and ultimately in the film. The people judging them played little or not at all in the spontaneous explosion of this gift he talks about, the talent to change how someone far away feels and sees life and themselves as heroes. The talkies began paying attention to whether actors and actresses were heroes they could admire in real life: ergo, Rock Hudson and so many others hit their true selves and suffered from this hiding. Others forced to live out the moral dream died after being drained, like Marilyn Monroe. Is this far from what we see now emerging from Hollywood? The do-nothing elites telling us what is moral or not? What is truth? What is this moment in time? What is the purpose an actor plays and if he or she does not tow that line is an end put to their ability to touch people emotionally? Listen to the wrong people and understand the history of filmmaking and you see elites demand this art form and all its actors follow the doomed example of France, when it demanded its films tell a story the government wanted to use for more power. Would the open sinful life of Babylon be a step forward if this is true? Is Babylon in our past if I could relive it as I watched it and be moved in an artistic spirit level to press on regardless of those shot down in the name of freedom of artistic expression?
For the ending to race forward and show the most important creative films of modern time symbolizes how the Babylon era of debauchery, sex, and fame began it all. They made a point of showing the age of the famous people when they died. Margo Robbie died the youngest as she was unable to handle the new era of talkies in Hollywood. And so with them dies the original flame of Hollywood as we know it today.
Who among the current leaders of Hollywood lived through even the final years of Babylon by meeting those who were young when the last of the legends of Babylon died? Who remembers being told first hand stories from Babylon? Who took the time to read about them in Samuel French?
Who today knows how essential the knowledge and some personal experience on a Proust level it is to evolve filmmaking? Sensory details and the idea that time is experienced differently among people – that it is not an arrow of time that is inescapable. In Babylon someone says movies are an escape, not just of tedium and fear but of time itself. And yet, the last sound are the frames moving through the camera at exactly the speed needed for 35mm film to break the concept of time for those watching.
Oh, the irony of it all…