Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [320]
The first time he worked with Barry was after a period of six months Schiller had spent on and off with Timothy Leary, then Laura Huxley. Life was doing a big piece on LSD and Schiller had done fifty hours of taped interviews and taken thousands of photographs of adolescents and junkies, and college kids, and middle-aged people who took the tour with gurus and had profound experiences. Schiller had begun to think how much he'd like to be a writer, and realized he didn't know how. When he got back to New York, Life had assigned Barry Farrell to write the text, and the man just sat in his fucking office and worked. Schiller really got upset. How could you write a major piece on the use of this drug, he asked Barry, without going out in the field? So he developed an antagonism for Farrell, even a hatred. Yet when the piece came out, the guy had done it all. Really shaped it. That was the year, 1966, when Larry Schiller went from one side to the other on Barry Farrell, and developed a great regard for him as a craftsman and a writer. He did not see why Farrell could not do the same stuff with the Gilmore interviews.
Of course, this was only part of his feeling for Farrell. Barry was not only a craftsman, but a great ladies' man. The type to get away with three-hour lunches. He wore the right suits and right ties, and Schiller was frankly envious of anybody who could go out that long, come back a little tipsy, and still do a hell of a job. Schiller wasn't that good looking then, no beard, pointed nose, small chin, a hungry look.
He was just a working photographer, a kind of maniacal smile on his face because he was trying to do ten pictures at once while toting a big load of equipment on his back. Knew he looked bizarre, but tried to be part of the woodwork. The less a photographer was noticed as a human being, the better the pictures. Your camera could be dynamite when people paid you no more attention than a fly on the wall.
Whereas Farrell, the ladies' man, had a bit of magic about him. Schiller remembered how Barry began to go around with this black girl who was a researcher at Life. A beautiful black girl, oh, God, Schiller remembered, in the '60s to be black and beautiful was to be a star.
She was sweet, she had this nice honey voice, she was intellectual and not street-wise. There was a whole fineness to her, beauty to her, black, beautiful and intelligent. Now she and Barry were married and had a child together. Schiller decided the hell with it, he was just going to see if he could hire Barry Farrell. It would be like getting a prize.
He called Barry and asked if he'd be interested. Right from the start, he said it would be no pie in the sky. Nothing like the Muhammad All project. No great returns promised. No book involved. But definite work for definite good pay. Five thousand dollars for editing the Playboy interview. That was all right with Farrell. He had his own book to get back to, he said, and they sparred a little, then discussed it back and forth. To Schiller's surprise, he had the feeling there was less of a selling job here than he had psyched himself up for. They ended with Barry agreeing to take a look at the letters and interviews done so far. In a week or so, he ought to be able to decide.
"I'm running a bold move," Schiller told Stephie.
She didn't understand the interplays, didn't see how Farrell could write something like "carrion bird" and still respect you.
Stephie was furious at the term. Besides, she didn't want Larry to give the interview over to anybody. He obviously wanted to do it himself, she said. Schiller only won the discussion by telling her about The American Dreamer. " 'Schiller went absolutely blank on Dennis Hopper's more mystical ideas'-you