The Brain Eaters

When Pop came a courtin', Mom was the switchboard operator at the Pasadena Playhouse, a legendary theater school that spawned an impressive number of famous actors after the War. Pop was a student and then a teacher's assistant in the set construction end of things, though he did take parts in the student shows, especially if historic dress up was required.

"I was born in the wrong century," he was fond of saying, my guess being he would have done a lot better as a character in a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, given that he knew the entire corpus by heart.

Mom moved up to bookkeeper in time and Mr. Charm eventually lured her away from a very respectable family in San Marino, which legend had it was the second most expensive city from a property value perspective in the world; Vatican City being the very distant pace car.

She didn't talk much about those days but for some reason one day I wanted to know what she remembered of the Playhouse.

"Did you know any famous people?"

"Raymond Burr used to be in a lot of the productions," she told me, not all that enthused about remembering her "insane" first husband and those times.

"I heard he was gay," I said, still surprised by that information Pop once provided. Back then I had a hard time resolving that with the fact that Perry Mason was a darling of said Vatican and had gotten the Pope's blessings to make a hagiographic biopic of John XXIII. Of course, in the fullness of time, we now know better.

"Oh, everybody knew that," Mom said. 

They did? She didn't even know what "Fuck” meant and she sussed out that Perry Mason was a twee? I could see that now; all the young dudes who came out to Hollywood, if not themselves or their family, could crowd that closet and an older Daddy would have a field day mentoring young ambition in such an environment. Of course the Church would have to condemn such predation, if anyone outside the family had known, but the Hollywood press was long ago brought into the studio fold and if one's business did not conflict with another's, "Te salut".

"I liked Charles Bronson," she said. "He was Chuck Buchinsky then and had a unibrow. His hair came way down his forehead. They had to do electrolysis to raise his hairline. He was spooky looking."

"Sounds like a werewolf halfway through his transformation," I said, taking mental notes. There's a book in this I was thinking.

"Yeah, we'll one day I had to get in the elevator and this big hand reaches in to keep the doors from closing and its Chuck. I was shivering until he leaned in and in a baby soft voice said he was afraid of Mrs. Davenport, my boss. This big scary guy, can you believe it?"

"They're always acting," I said. "They have no clue who they really are."

"Yes, your father was an actor. Probably still is."

                                                                       *** 

I paid the bill as Pop ran his finger over the theater show times page. I can't recall any of what we decided on that day title wise but the timing was right and he saw everything so I just hoped it wouldn't be an all British cast, but being that it was an American production, it was all British save for a piece of stateside strudel with a barely disguised Bronx honk and knockers not found in nature, mangling an accent heard only in a desperate sound mixer's worst nightmare. I would lay odds she was probably in the first trimester of the producer's third bastard child, which would help explain the gravity defying cleavage.

We parked and bought our tickets. He loved his senior discount. He made the hassle of old age pay out as much as he could squeeze it.

"Mom mentioned Leonard Nimoy was enrolled at the Playhouse and had asked about me when I was born."

Pop had to think about it.

"1958," I said.

"Yeah, I know when you were born," he said, deciding to smirk rather than fume.

"I never saw Nimoy at the Playhouse," he said, digging into his tub of popcorn. Three teeth left but he refused the limitations absent dentition would impose on mere mortals. Theater, movie, popcorn; a holistic system, each component as necessary as the others. I gave him points for forgoing the motor oil, but three stents and pulling out at the last second from a legally fatal heart attack and stroke can beat down even the most recalcitrant of lost cause warriors.

"He was in...The Brain....." He took a pull on his 7up. "Some piece of shit, can't remember."

I didn't want to fill in all the blanks; his mind needed a chance to work, even if slowed by a life that would kill most punks in their prime.

"The Brain Eaters?" I finally said, thinking that had all the earmarks of where his show biz status was around the time I was born.

"Yes, The Brain Eaters. Nice enough guy. Never saw that show, Spock, whatever it was called. But boy did that picture get talked about. We had a scene with a brain that was supposed to be a human zombie brain so we got this cow brain at a Ralph's over on Western. Ed Nelson was the lead and we put this brain on the lab table and they lit the set and he did the takes, poking around this mush, not a prop, but real meat, and between takes we carefully put ice on it to keep it fresh. A few hours later we wrap for the day. Now on a set the props stay put; they're labeled with a sticker that says 'Hot' because it's got to stay in the same place in every shot. I think they take Polaroids of everything now so they can match camera angles- ('digital camera' could not be pronounced, let alone understood, with just three teeth left, apparently...) - but back then, Jesus I think you were about three months old- anyway, someone didn't put two and two together and the next day we slide open the sound stage door and that brain had been left out all night, the ice had long since melted and the reek of rotten cow brains..."

We laughed. Fragments of mushed popcorn rained on the empty seat in front of him.

"So, of course, I'm one of the first in there and get the full effect and just start launching."

Our laughter was contagious, an old couple a few rows ahead turned back to look at us, smiling.

"Of course other crew members see me and the stench has made it outside and when you see a guy..." He had to wipe his eyes

"Yeah, I get it," I said, giggling, "everybody wants to join in."

"Exactly," he said, drawing a breath, "and here comes the director, a big guy, Bruno Ve Sota, and his crew is ralphing all over the place and he's a sitting duck and launches his breakfast and then he catches a whiff and you should see a three hundred and fifty pound man run at full gallop, trying to keep his insides inside..."

The half dozen people in the theater just shook their heads.

"We'll," I said, "he probably lost twenty pounds". 

Pop laughed all the way through the trailers before he calmed down.