Last night, we had another guy-and-gal reporter duo trying to solve a murder, this time of a diplomat who gets clobbered and thrown overboard on a docked ship. "The Diplomatic Corpse"(1958) is thus an apt title, as, at first, the body is unidentified. Then a young Persian woman visits Scotland Yard (pron.) asking about her missing fiance. He's got a phonetically unusual name, Shafhad Farhoud, and because this movie is super talky, it reminds one of another of the talkiest movies of all time, "A Few Good Men", in which the characters say "Santiago" about 100,000 times, and "Code Red" perhaps double that.
In this movie, for the first half hour it's "Shafhad Farhoud" this, and "Shafhad Farhoud" that. "Are you telling me the body IS Shafhad Farhoud, or is NOT Shafhad Farhoud?!"
Saniago! Code Red! Santiago! Code Red! Jack Nicholson was so obnoxious in that flick he should've been arrested for his performance.
The movie gets interesting when an eyewitness to the murder enters, a witty, small time, well-dressed Cockney crook (Harry Fowler), who just so happened to recover the briefcase that was thrown overboard with the dead man. The crook is willing to spill his info to the reporters (not the cops) but for a price, which is negotiable. He says that besides money, 1000 pounds, there was heroin in the case. "Junk, smack, you know - narcotics". The fact that it's a diplomatic courier case is a plot-thickener, even more so when a detective visits the embassy and is reminded that it is, by diplomatic treaty, foreign soil (sovereign to a fictional Middle Eastern country,) which is of course how Julian Assange and that Snowden commie were able to hide out until they busted them.
It becomes pretty clear that the embassy chief is running drugs, even moreso when Shafhad Farhoud's fiance gets pushed under an oncoming subway train. But then, intrepid gal reporter "Jenny Drew" (Susan Shaw) gets too clever in competing with her would be boyfriend/male counterpart, and applies to be a replacement secretary for the dead fiance, who worked at the embassy. Jenny gets the job, posing as a "Miss Jones", but then the embassy chief traps her in a ruse, discovers she's from the press, and kidnaps her, again on the grounds that, even though he's in England, his embassy is technically his home country's soil. Now her boyfriend and the police chief have to figure a way to get her out before the dope dealing ambassadors murdalise her and toss her in the ocean like they did with Shafhad Farhoud. Their solution to the problem of embassy/foreign soil/immunity is very novel. The last half redeems the Sorkin-like phrase repetition of the first half.
Shafhad Farhoud! to you! Two Bigs, razor sharp. ////
The previous night's movie was "Faces in the Dark", in which "Richard Hammond" (John Gregory), a brilliant inventor, has designed a new super powered light bulb that will set a new standard. He won't share it with the corporate powers, however, and they threaten to do a Jeff Bridges/Coppola trip on him. Before that can happen, he is blinded when a test bulb "brighter than the sun" explodes and blinds him. Now the movie becomes the study of a blind man's fear of everyone coveting his empire. His brother Max (John Ireland) shows up at the country mansion to which he's been moved by his wife (Mai Zetterling), and because she plays ice cold European blondes, you know shes up to no good. This is reinforced by her more-than-familiar acquaintance with "David Merton" (Michael Denison), Hammond's business partner, who's always felt like a useless second banana to the genius. This is their revenge, to steal his invention now that Hammond is blind, and they do a superb job of gaslighting him through and through. getting him to sign contracts he can't see, stealing everything he has. They encourage him to trust them, saying, "The doctors say your accident may have affected your mind as well as your eyes." In other words, "you're crazy as well as blind". Hammond has increased olfactory and aural sensations now, and hears bells where no bells should be heard, and smells pine where no pine trees should be.
His cat has no tail. a maid unknowingly says its a tabby, but his cat is black. Where is he? Has his wife and her boyfriend David Merton spirited him away to some unknown house and disguised it to seem like his own? The only man he trusts is his chauffeur, who's nervous about being trapped between warring rich people. Brother Max is an alcoholic, womanizing, cocktail lounge pianist, and we can't tell if he has Hammond's best interests in mind, or if he's jealous and in on the gaslighting, money-stealing plot. But then he turns up super-dooper dead, which answers that freaking question.
Ultimately, we see that the plot is not gonna have any twists (although I thought his sight might come back, like in a Gilligan's Island-type deal where he has one accident that takes away his sight, then another one that brings it back).
Wifey and David try poisoning him. Much of the movie is actor John Gregory portraying a blind man alone with evil-doers and trying to survive in their company. In this case, the doers are his wife and business partner, who have to work up the courage to finish him off, and they don't have the stones to just blow him off the map, so they try poison, but Hammond is on to them and says "I'm not hungry". Finally, they take him for a drive and he wakes up in a hospital in France (pron. Frawnce). and that's all I am going to tell you. Two Big Thumbs Up for "Faces in the Dark", though it could've been Two Huge with a little more plot twisting. Still very good, if long at 81 minutes. The picture is widescreen and razor sharp. ////
Now then, in considering the night of September 1st, 1989, we must put more stock in Dave Small's appearance at Northridge Hospital, in the parking lot, after Lillian was attacked by Howard Schaller. That was a first-generation memory, coming back to me in 1997, that Dave and his brother Gary had stood over Lillian and I on the pavement, and made an obscene gesture, as if they were acting out part of a game, like it was something they were told to do. To give context, Lillian had fainted after Howard Schaller slapped her. I was kneeling over her, and Dave and Gary Small walked up, though Gary's presence is not now important. The important point is that for years I never considered that memory as being crucial, but I now see that it is extremely crucial because it puts Dave Small among the first responders to the scene, on the very first night of The Event, just one to two hours after I was stun-gunned. It puts Dave there with Howard Schaller and Lillian, which means that Dave Small was one of the first people contacted, in phone calls that began from Terry's apartment. The first call might've been to paramedics. Lillian called Ann and may have called Lys (or Ann called Lys). I've always thought the Security Thug called Howard Schaller (or the apartment manager did). And someone called Dave Small. And it had to be either Howard or Lillian. As for Terry, the only person he would've called was his Mom. But someone called Dave Small, because he was at Northridge Hospital, in the parking lot shortly following Howard's attack. After 1997, and as the years went on, I didn't think much of Dave's presence that night because I had not yet connected him to Howard Schaller and Lillian. But now, the connections are popping up right and left, and I have re-examined his appearance. Dave was there at Northridge Hospital, he was one of the first responders, and that was because he was connected to Howard Schaller and Lillian, and one of the two of them called him. Straight up.
We must also consider how Dave Small, in May 1990, asked me if I wanted to work at Mr. B's Flowers over the Mother's Day weekend as a bookkeeper. I said yes, but he later let it slip that Lillian had called him to ask if he would help get me a job, even a temporary one. So there's another Lillian/Dave Small connection, and it happened at a time when I personally had little contact with Dave, who in 1990 was being reclusive with Kelly at the Burton Street house. But Lillian apparently did have contact with him. Prior to that, she took me in April 1990 to see a movie called "I Love You to Death", in which a wife tries repeatedly to kill her oblivious husband. We both found it amusing, and she even remarked, "what if I did that to you?" or something to that effect, to test the waters and see how my amnesia was holding up.
She needn't have worried. My amnesia was Full Strength in those days. I was as oblivious as Kevin Kline in the movie.
Also interesting, concerning Dave and Lillian, is that Dave and Kelly turned up at an opening weekend screening of the first Batman movie, likely on June 24th, 1989, at the UA Theater in Granada Hills, located at Chatsworth and Zelzah streets. Let us give some background. Spring 1989 was a time of great mistrust, on my part, toward Lillian. I've mentioned some of her infamous Spring Break antics, and the Pool Party at Concord Square. There was also Lillian's CSUN graduation that she insisted Terry come to, and by June, I'd had enough. She was going to France, on a vacation as a graduation present from her Dad, and, on the night before she left, I said "have a nice f-king vacation" and got out of her car and slammed the door. Now, I immediately regretted it, and I spent the two weeks she was gone stewing and worrying, and when she got back, I called her. She said, "can I write you a letter instead?" I said yes, and she sent me what I'll call an ultimatum letter that is postmarked June 23, 1989 (I still have it, and it's crucial).
In that letter, she asked me to stop drinking. I agreed to stop and did so that very day, because I didn't want to lose her. In the letter, she also hinted at a potential breakup down the road, saying, "in time, I may want to see other people" (oh, the irony). What is most crucial in that letter, is that she acknowledged appearing "aloof or distant" at the time, but added, as a qualifier, "please just understand I'm scared of what's to come."
That's a straight-up admission that Lillian knew something scary was coming, and it did come two months later. That letter can be further dissected and we will do so when we write our book.
But as for Dave Small and his then-girlfriend Kelly, and the context of their attendance at "Batman" on June 24th, 1989, I had received Lillian's ultimatum letter just the day before, or maybe that day, because it was postmarked June 23rd. I called her immediately after reading it, and said "I've just quit drinking" (meaning "please don't leave me"), and at first she was nice, but non-committal. But then, a short while later (less than an hour) she called me back, very forgiving, and said, "Let's go to a movie". We always went to movies, they were our dates. Lilly chose Batman, which was new and had huge advance ratings. So we went, and after the movie, lo and behold! - there sat Dave and Kelly, directly behind us. Dave Small - who I hardly ever saw from 1988 to 1993, and the only places I ever saw him in those years (besides one brief visit to Burton Street on Halloween night 1988), was when I was with Lillian, either at Terry's apartment during the infamous Spring Break, or that June afternoon seeing "Batman" at the theater.
Add these things to the mix, and especially add his first-responder appearance at Northridge Hospital on the night of September 1st, and you've got a compendium of connections between Dave Small and Lillian, going all the way back to February 1982, and Lilly's notice of the loose glass at our rehearsal studio, just prior to the Zilch robbery.
Now, let's switch gears for a minute and look at the evil David Friedman.
First of all, I did not see the evil David Friedman for many years, between June 1994 and about late Summer 1999. 1994 is of course the year my memories began coming back, albeit in fragmented, fragile form, which confused the hell out of me. Initially, I thought they had to do with the film Dave Small and I were making at the Northridge Meadows apartment complex, but that's a whole 'nuther story. In 1994, I called David Friedman a whole bunch of derogatory names, which, at the time, was my intuition talking, sensing he was a bad guy but not knowing exactly why, because in those early days I didn't yet remember what he'd done to me in September 1989 (for which he is now rightly dubbed "evil"). So, I called him names intuitively, and he didn't come over or call for several years. I basically didn't see him for five years.
By 1998, I'd discovered the Internet (in those days called the World Wide Web). I'd already started blogging, on the old Delphi site, and in one of my blogs I proposed a new game show which I called "Who Wants To Be a Zillionaire?" The actual show with Regis debuted in August 1999, so it's around that time I created my version. But what happened was that, in my blog, one of my hypothetical contestants was "David Greedman."
Well, howdy-doody and pass the apple pie, because who should call my Mom's apartment the very next day, but David Friedman himself? I hadn't heard from him for five years, hadn't spoken to him, yet he not only knew I was living with my Mom, but knew her number (which may have been in the phone book, but he still knew I lived there, and I hadn't told him). Now then, I'm not sure, but I think the mention of his Game Show Name did come up. He might've said "David Greedman, eh?" (not finding it funny), or I might've said "Hmm, you're not calling 'cause you read my blog, are you?" Either way, it was obvious he'd read it, and that's what prompted him to call. But in addition to never telling him I lived with Mom, or giving him her phone number, I also never gave him my blog URL. Which means that someone else did.
That call brought David Friedman back into my life, and he started calling so much that Mom and I even invented a game, called "Dad, Friedman, or Nobody." Whenever Mom's phone rang, it was only ever one of three people calling: My Dad, David Friedman, or a solicitor, and because we always screened the calls, and because solicitors never say anything unless you pick up, the solicitor calls became known as "Nobody." So, for our game, we had a piece of notebook paper, on which I'd drawn three columns, one each for "Dad," "Friedman," and "Nobody". And every time the phone rang, I'd call out to Mom, "Dad, Friedman or Nobody?" and she'd make her guess. I'd make mine, and when the answering machine picked up, the answer would be revealed. Then I'd make a check mark by the correct caller, under Mom's name or mine, and that's how we kept score. I think Mom won the game over the many months we played it.
But David Freidman was connected to Dave Small, and to Terry and Kelly. It's very interesting that, during the downtime when I didn't see him, David Friedman was the only one of the old Circle of Friends to attend Terry and Kelly's wedding. I believe it took place around 1998-99. David Friedman knew Terry, of course, but he rarely hung out at Concord Square. He and Terry never palled around and went to movies or concerts. They were acquaintances, at best, connected by a liking for marijuana. But out of the blue, there's David Friedman as the only friend at Terry's wedding. He also went to Disneyland with them, too.
David Friedman also worked at Mr. B's Flowers, briefly, around 1982-83, with Dave Small. And as we've already seen, David was a big-time cocaine user and the right-hand man of the demonic Gary Patterson. And Dave Small was connected to Howard Schaller, who lived around the corner from Mr. B's and came in on a regular basis.
Terry, Dave Small, and Mr. Friedman are all dead now. All three have ties to Kelly (two by relationship), of whom Lillian once said, when I told her about Terry and Kelly, "It's funny who winds up with who."
Something is up with these connections. Then there is Shecky, who came to 9032 for that phony intervention the friends pulled on me in May 1994, when there was absolutely no reason for him to be there. We'll have to examine him more closely, as he is from Chicago, Lillian's favorite city. But for now, I'll leave you with a song Shecky used to sing when I was in his band, The In-Sect, from 1991-93. David Friedman was also in that band, on keyboards, and Shecky used to like to chide him. For some reason, he always seemed to want to irk "Freedy,"as David was known, and he had a song he used to sing, which was only one line long. It was a short little song, and it had a Tom Jones/Las Vegas feel. Shecky liked to sing it in a big, booming voice, and it went, "Mister Friedman!.....Whattaya know?!"
Let me try to play it out for you, with syllables. You'll have to imagine the melody, and while you're at it, imagine a Vegas-style orchestra, with lots of swingin' brass. And forget Tom Jones. Think of someone more slick. Jack Jones maybe. Ready? Here goes: "Miss-tah Freed-mannn!......What-a-ya-Knoww?!"
Shecky used to belt that self-penned song at David Friedman almost every time we rehearsed at Sheck's house, which we did three nights a week for three years. I'd chuckle or cringe, depending on the mood, because I didn't want a rift to develop between the other two, and at times, David Friedman got visibly irritated by the song, and no doubt by the volume at which Sheck sang it. Sometimes Freedy got vocal himself over his dislike of the song. Once or twice he threatened to quit the band.
Me? I never thought of it as anything but an innocuous little tune, less-than-five-seconds-long, sung brashly by Shecky to - for some reason - get David Friedman's goat, which it invariably did.
I never thought much of it, and after the band broke up I never thought about it at all, except in passing, for the next thirty years.
But now, with all of the 1989 work we're doing, and with the recent Enormous Discovery of the meaning of another little song, belonging to a different person, Shecky's song popped into my head the other day, and I reconsidered it's lyrics.
"Mister Friedman, whattaya know?"
Or, "Mister Friedman, what do you know?"
What do you know, Mr. Friedman? That, of course, is what Shecky was chiding him with. And, oh yes, Sheck knew much about 1989. We haven't yet delved into him, but we may.....
We can't sing Shecky's song to Mr. Friedman anymore, nor can we ask Freedy what he knows, but I used to ask him things, in those early days and months when he returned to my life after reading my David Greedman blog. I used to ask him, "Don't you remember when you and Dennis drove me up to Gary Patterson's house, up in the Tujunga hills, the night he wanted to kill me?" Mr. Friedman would claim he didn't remember, which was 100% unadulterated bullshit.
One time in Fall 1997, when I'd just moved in with Mom, I ran into Dennis and his then-wife Kim at the "Coffee Cup" - shaped snack bar on Reseda Boulevard, near Prairie Street. My memories were then freshly back, my amnesia was over (though total amnesia of a weeks-long period is very difficult to recover from), and when I saw Dennis that day, I confronted him: "Hey, do you remember the time you shot me in the back of the head with a starter pistol on the sidewalk at 9032, or the time you drove me to Gary Patterson's house in the Tujunga hills on the night he wanted to kill me?"
Dennis got very nervous and said, "why don't you ask David Friedman?" Then he said "let's go, Kim."
When I used to ask David Friedman about his actions, which included driving me to the Wilbur Wash house, and also to Howard Johnson's, he denied it, which was bullshit. And then one day he said: "If you keep talking about this stuff, I'll stop coming over."
I said, "why? What's the big deal? You say you didn't do it." And it must be noted that I never hassled him about any of it, I just mentioned it casually, and I'd drop it when he repeatedly denied it (even though I knew he was lying).
So I finally just flat-out asked him, "what's wrong with just talking about it?"
His answer was, "If I talk about it, I'll become part of it."
I thought: But you already are part of it, Mr. Friedman.
I've always found his answer very unusual: "If I talk about it, I'll become part of it."
Cue Shecky: "Miss-tah Freed-mannn! What-a-ya-Knoww?!" ////
And that's all I know, for this Friday night at any rate. My blogging music is Van der Graaf Generator "H to He", my late night is still Handel's Julius Caesar. I wish you a great weekend, and I send you Tons of Love, as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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