Gus Hasford Symposium
Transcript
David Willson
|
Steve Bernston and Earl Gerheim
|
Dedication
David Willson:
The
first thing that I noticed by Gus Hasford, the first thing that came to
my attention, was a piece that he did in Mirror Northwest, 1972.
It cost $1.25. And it was a page and a half long. That piece
is what became sort of the bulwark of his literary career. It's a
page and a half long piece called "Is That You, John Wayne? Is This
Me?". . . First thing we'll do is we're gonna look at a film clip, some
pieces from Full Metal Jacket that are very much similar to the
piece that Gus wrote when he was a community college student in 1972 in
the state of Washington . . . Back in 1972, Gus Hasford had already figured
out what was going to be the strongest part of Full Metal Jacket,
which came out in 1987. That's quite a few years earlier. So
when he was a college freshman or sophomore, he already had figured out
what was going to get him nominated for an Academy Award. I'm hoping
that there are many of you out here in the audience who also know what
15 years from now is going to get you nominated for an Academy Award for
something similar. Don't ever think because you're at a community
college that you can't accomplish great things. I think Gus Hasford
and his accomplishments are definitely proof of that . . . I'll formally
say I dedicate this symposium today to the memory of Gus Hasford, who I
think was the greatest of all the Viet Nam war novelists. That's
my opinion but it's other people's opinion as well.
This peace button bit
Willson:
Did any of you Snuffies turn up, did Bob or Earl or Steve turn up
in Full Metal Jacket? Are there characters in there--
Earl
Gerheim: They use our nicknames. I had a nickname, "Crazy
Earl." There are a lot of things I did represented by that character,
there are a lot of things Steve did that Gus said he used also. Steve
spent a time, before Hue of course, he was up at a place called Con Thien
which was near the DMZ. Everybody that's studied Viet Nam has heard
of Khe Sanh, but prior to that Con Thien was just as bad, a place subjected
to tremendous artillery fire from across the DMZ. Steve had been
there for several weeks and finally came down to Da Nang. And according
to Gus he was a little goofy after being up there for so long.
Steve
Bernston: Keep in mind, Gus was making the decision.
Gerheim:
Some of the stuff that Crazy Earl does in the book he modeled after
Steve. But there are little attributes, you know, everybody's in
there one way or another.
Willson:
How about the main character? Some people I've heard say that
Private Joker is Gus Hasford.
Gerheim: I think Gus looks at him as his alter
ego. A lot of stuff Joker did, Gus--this thing about the button,
there's nothing fictional about that. He actually wore a peace button.
He actually got jumped on by a, uh--we worked out of a combat base called
Phu Bai, that we had a very small section there. By and by, most
of it became taken over by Army rear echelon support logistical personnel,
there were very few Marines left there. And an Army lieutenant colonel
just jumped all over Gus for wearing this peace button. By that time
Gus had been in country about 12 months, had been on quite a few operations.
Gus was not one to tell what we call sea-stories, but he had gone through
a bit of combat. He had a lot of close calls. But Gus wasn't
the one to talk about it.
Willson:
Now, were you a near witness to that incident that was immortalized in
Full
Metal Jacket?
Gerheim:
Oh yeah, we were in the hooch and we heard some guy yelling at Gus.
Which was not uncommon to have people in authority yell at Gus. Because
he did not follow the real military code very much and he did get himself
in trouble . . . Gus kinda always did have this contempt for authority.
He actually loved having that happen to him . . . But that did happen.
He didn't just out of the blue make up this peace button bit.
Willson:
When you see that piece in the movie, then you recognize parts of it as
being true to the spirit of what actually happened in the war?
Gerheim:
I think so. You know, everyone has their own perception of things.
Gus, even though he was very young at the time, looked at the whole thing
as being kind of organized insanity. Which I think war is anyways.
I think a lot of people aren't aware, what was he, 19?
Bernston:
Yeah, he was the youngest one of the bunch.
Bernston
and Gerheim on Operation Citrus - 886KB - WAV format
If it's in books, he could
master it
Gerheim:
He had very little post secondary education. Gus was one of these
individuals who, you talk about a self-educated person, extremely well
read. I've got a master's in history, and I also have a tremendous
interest in French impressionist painting. And one time I mentioned
something about Claude Monet and Gus, not a cursory knowledge, was really
talking about different periods of Monet's life. Gus was the kind
of individual if somebody wants to talk about the development of the British
cabinet system and somebody mentions that, he could've talked for 10 minutes
on it.
Willson:
But he didn't learn that in college?
Gerheim:
No, he read. He was one of these individuals, you know, if it's in
books, he could master it . . .
Willson:
He kept a notebook going, when people would be talking he'd jot something
down, I've read that. A ringing phrase and then it would show up
in a story.
Bernston:
Gus was never without his notebook. He had a notebook at all times.
And he had every page, seriously, numbered. And he had a filing system
that would blanch every librarian in America. But he numbered each
of his pages and then he sorted them according to topics in shoeboxes.
But you could be sitting with Gus and you'd be talking anything, doesn't
make a difference what it is. And suddenly he'd have the notebook
out, he'd be writing it down saying, "That's good stuff, that's good stuff,
I'm gonna put it in my next book. And I'm not gonna give you any
credit for it at all" . . .
Bernston:
Gus published The Short-Timers in '79, but Gus was working on it--
Gerheim:
Gus started writing parts of it when we were still in Viet Nam.
Bernston:
Yeah. But see, one of the ways he kept material was, first of all,
he lived with Bob (Bayer), that's why he was Bob's oldest son. When
Bob got married the deal was he had to take Gus.
Willson:
Did that marriage last?
Bernston:
Well, no, no, the first one didn't work because they had to take Gus .
. . But anyway, they would stay together, and that was his seedbed, by
keeping everybody together in his little group down in California, he was
still writing the book, he was still getting material . . . You take it
one step further and you read The Gypsy Good Time and all the names
that are in that are people that he knew in the Hollywood/Los Angeles area
. . .
The end of Gus's writing career
Bernston: And what's significant about that,
you can see, this was taken probably about the last year, 18 months before
he died. And Gus was beginning to fall apart. Physically.
Willson:
But as far as company, talking to him, he could have the same conversations?
Gerheim:
Oh yeah.
Bernston:
Well, he did have fits of depression, that was one thing, Earl, as you
recall when he finally moved up here in the last part. He began to
have periods of, we've talked about it before, he was having periods of
depression, I think, after he got out of that--
Gerheim:
He just wasn't able to write again. He had book contracts, that was
the thing.
Willson:
He had a contract to write five more mystery novels?
Gerheim:
He was even working on a historical novel.
Bernston:
Well, I can tell you the end of Gus's writing career.
Willson:
When was it? Tell us about that.
Bernston:
The end of Gus's writing career occurred shortly after he finished the
manuscript for A Gypsy Good Time. He had a contract for two
books with Bantam. He had a contract. Well, Gus's material
in that Gypsy Good Time, that material was all based on his experiences
with this library fine problem, his experiences living down in California,
after his Oscar nomination and the screenwriting he got hooked up with
what you call the crusty edge of Hollywood. He got connected with
a couple of very gifted writers from the alternative press, Grover Lewis
being one of them. He got introduced to a lot of those characters.
And Gus had a problem. Gus was never one to be pretentious.
Gus was one who dealt with real people. And he got wrapped with too
many of the people that he felt were pretentious. And he alibied
himself by saying, "I'm hanging with these people because they're material
for my next book." He wrote Gypsy and that exhausted his material.
Willson:
That was it.
Bernston:
That was it. He broke from that group of people. He didn't
form another group of people, so he didn't have material for a new book.
And if there is such a thing, whether people accept it or not, there is
a writer's block, well Gus's writer's block was that he had run out of
material.
Willson:
But he had a contract.
Bernston:
But he had a contract. And he was beginning to have periods of depression.
He was ill. He was not taking care of himself. And he began
to run. And, what Earl, the last year, year and a half, Gus was basically
on the run.
Gerheim:
Well, he was dodging calls from his agent. His agent's going "Hey,
I need fifty pages. Hey, come on."
Willson:
But he didn't have fifty pages?
Bernston:
He didn't have fifty pages.
Gerheim:
And he got some foreign royalty check, $10,000 or something, from Italy.
Bernston:
Plus he'd taken an advance for this other book, and that was partly what
drove him, his theory was if he could go to Greece he'd start all over,
he'd start brand new, he'd be able to write. He told me one time
"What I'm gonna do is take Dowdy Lewis and I'm gonna take him to Greece.
And once they're there he'll solve another great mystery." And in
doing that he was also fleeing, because he owed them the books, he had
taken the advance.
Willson:
So, then he did an escape by going to Greece and by dying.
Gerheim:
And he went to Greece and just lapsed into drinking. And of course
that exacerbated the diabetic condition.
Willson:
And then he got away from everybody, and they never could catch him after
that.
Gerheim:
Yeah. And he kept in touch with (Bob) Bayer. Because Bob would
call me, he called me one time wanting to know how to cable money . . .
A big milk, a Coke, and french
fries
Bernston: Gus's diabetes became evident about
four months before we could talk him out of going to Greece. He had
diabetes for probably a year or two before we even diagnosed it.
Willson:
But he wasn't a person who took well to medical care?
Bernston:
No, Gus's standard diet was a big milk, a Coke, and french fries.
That was breakfast.
Willson:
And that isn't recommended as a diet for diabetics.
Bernston:
Not really. Nor is malt liquor.
Willson:
He had not had a serious alcohol problem, I understood, most of his life.
He wasn't much of an alcoholic, from what I'm told.
Gerheim:
After that incident involving the books--
Bernston:
After the library problem--
Gerheim:
--and being incarcerated. Gus was the kind of guy who would sit there
and nurse a beer all evening . . .
Bernston
and Willson on Dessert - 209KB - WAV format
How do you end up with the biggest
library fine in America?
Well, it was a set-up from
day one.
Willson:
(Reading an article) Police at California Polytechnic State University
want to talk with Jerry Gustav Hasford, the Oscar nominated author of Full
Metal Jacket, after they discovered more than 10,000 library books
in lockers rented in his name . . .
Gerheim:
Those 10,000 books were his books. Gus had a massive library most
of his life. Bob Bayer used to have to help him move it. What
had happened was, he had checked out books from some libraries and had
not returned them. That's legitimate. They decided to go after
him at San Luis Obispo, the college there. They somehow obtained
a search warrant, found his storage locker, found the 10,000 books, and
went "Eureka, he stole every one of them." Well, that's not true.
The final analysis, correct me, Bernie, if I'm wrong, weren't there only
something like 300 or something they thought were really overdue.
If that many.
Bernston:
There's one very important thing you need to know about Gus and his books.
This was Gus's home, this was Gus's family, this was Gus. His book
collection was Gus. And when they went through that, they violated
him as much as if they had burglarized his home, if they'd assaulted his
family. I mean, that was the real horrendous thing, because people
had gone in and just, they had actually violated his book collection.
Gerheim:
There was 1500 pounds of stuff that didn't get returned from the police,
including a coin collection, Viet Nam souvenirs.
Bernston:
But the thing about it was, when he called me I said "What the hell's going
on with these books, Gus." And he said, "Aah, Bernie, you know, there
isn't maybe but 25 or 30 that are suspect." But I'll tell you how
ridiculous it got. He was accused of stealing books from the University
of Washington. Gus had never been to a library at the University
of Washington.
Gerheim:
They were books published by the University of Washington Press.
So the cops went in and every book, as we all know universities have their
own press, a lot of the major universities, so every 
book
they found that was from like the University of Michigan Press, the University
of Washington Press, "A-ha, we got him." He also had books from when
he was living in London. He had belonged to a subscription library
in London. In England they have libraries that are subscription,
you pay to belong. You don't have a due date. You get to keep
the books until somebody says, "Hey, I'd like a copy of this book."
So Gus being a member of the subscription library had a lot of books that
he was still using. They thought those were stolen. The fact
he was an Academy Award nominee, if the guy had not been so famous, they
never would've wasted their time with him. It kind of makes me wonder,
you talk about safe places to live in America, San Luis Obispo must be
the safest place on the planet. Because with all the violent crime
and drug running that goes on in this country, the fact that they could
marshal their law enforcement authorities and prosecutors office to get
a guy for a few dozen books that are overdue, my heavens, that must be
a relatively crime free community.
Bernston:
Well, it was a set-up. It was a set-up that started out with a bad
romance. Gus had had a long term relationship with a lady that was
a librarian at the University of California, San Luis Obispo. She
would bring him all these great books. Gus had an insatiable appetite
for books. So she'd take them out of the library. She had her
librarian's pass. She'd give them to Gus. Gus, his great love
was Civil War, and of course, he would have stacks and stacks and stacks
of them. Well, the relationship went bad. And out of that,
she became quite angry. So she claimed that Gus had stolen the books
from the San Luis Obispo library. You had a prosecuting attorney,
young up-and-coming woman who wanted to make a name for herself real bad,
and there was a political race coming up for prosecutor, she was deputy
prosecutor. She leaped on this right away. It was at the same
time Gus was in the headlines because Full Metal Jacket was up for
the Oscar.
Gerheim:
They even talked about arresting him at the Oscars.
Bernston:
The San Luis Obispo police department, who ended up with essentially, in
Gus's description, and I don't know any other description so I have to
go with it. The detective was equal to Fuhrman in as far as ethics
and honesty went. They actually set it up to where they were gonna
be down there with an arrest warrant and as soon as he got his Oscar arrest
him as he came off the stage.
Gerheim:
And Gus's great quote that the L.A. Times, I think, had: "I'm
not going to the Oscars anyways. I can't see myself in a tuxedo."
He wasn't a good dresser.
Bernston:
This was how it happened. How do you end up with the biggest library
fine in America? Well, it was a set-up from day one.
Gerheim:
Well, what was really bad about it, what he had to pay an attorney, this
massive amount of money. And they worked supposedly a plea bargain,
where he would plead guilty to a misdemeanor possession of property, give
the books back and do some community service. So this was the deal.
So, Gus goes in, "Okay, I'm guilty." And the judge says, "I sentence
you to six months in jail."
Bernston:
Which was another set-up.
Gerheim:
And Gus then made the comment, "Have you got the right case? This
isn't right." He wound up serving almost all of that six months.
A good number of us wrote letters to the judge. In fact, Clint Eastwood
himself actually called the judge to try to get some leniency on Gus's
behalf.
Willson:
Some people feel that that incident with these books was sort of the beginning
of the end for Gus.
Gerheim:
He came up to Tacoma, and Bernie and I have known Gus, well at that time
it had been 25 years or more, and while he could still have fits of being
the jovial, funny guy, he had been drinking very heavily. I had never
seen him drink like that before. It really, it destroyed him.
There's no doubt about it. He came out of that jail, he was sick,
he'd lost a lot of weight, not that he didn't need to lose some.
Bernston:
Yeah, he actually ate better and got better medical treatment in jail.
Gerheim:
But he just absolutely, everything was downhill after that. He would
drink vast amounts, he would buy these big cans of malt liquor. And
he was living in a Motel 6, what by the month he would pay, there in Tacoma.
And Bernie went over one time, they were supposed to meet for dinner, and
he was passed out in the room, and you go in there, a recycling center
could have had a field day with all the cans lying around. And it
was just like Grover's article said, "The Killing of Gus Hasford."
And it slowly killed him.
Bernston:
Well, what killed Gus was not so much the alcohol, his depression or the
diabetes. What killed Gus was his child innocence was killed.
The episode with the books, not so much the going to jail, but the way
people turned on him. And people who he thought, you know Gus just
didn't realize that there were people in the world as nasty as those he
encountered, not in jail, but in the whole process. It broke his
faith in supposedly fair play. It broke his faith in supposedly people
being honest and forth right. And more importantly, he got savaged
by the people who, you know, here he was, he'd been very popular three
or four months before as an Academy Award nominee for Full Metal Jacket.
He'd been riding high in the Hollywood set. He had people wanting
his next book, The Phantom Blooper, he was working on that.
And all of a sudden, everybody turned against him, over something that
he didn't understand, which was, you know, a library incident, which he
shrugged off right up until the minute the judge, that was the other thing,
he'd trusted his attorney who he'd believed in for years. The attorney
had supposedly worked out the deal that Gus was gonna do this community
service kind of thing, not realizing that the judge was a favorite person
of this deputy prosecutor, and he was backing her for prosecutor.
And so, all of this ruined Gus's childlike innocence. That was the
thing that I noticed, Bob noticed, Earl noticed.
Gerheim:
We tried to tell him, you've just gotta, we've all had incidents in our
lives where we've been victims of great injustices, savaged by bad people.
You gotta go on with it, cause you're still high, you got the Academy Awards,
you got contracts. And it's kind of like somebody who's been mugged
in an alley, he just can't get over what happened to him. And he
never did. Fortunately, I guess in a way, he may not still be on
the earth, but his books, I think as long as there's a printed page, there's
gonna be sessions like we're having today. That movie's always gonna
be there. I miss him. And unfortunately the world's been cheated
out of subsequent works. Maybe, I think what we need to do is enjoy
what he did leave us. Because he accomplished quite a bit.
 |
Willson:
Three wonderful books.
Gerheim:
Plus, you know, a lot of magazine articles, I guess, if people were able
to find them, you know, various places.
Willson:
Right. They are hard to find. |
He hated the loss of Joker
Bernston:
But when you look at Gus's three books, you're seeing Gus's life.
You look at The Short-Timers, Full Metal Jacket. You know,
if I were to capture it, I'd say, "Gus goes to war." There's a youthful
enthusiasm, there's a curiosity, there's an innocence. The Blooper
is written, pretty much, "Gus becomes disenchanted, reality of war hits
Gus, Gus becomes politicized, and Gus comes home." And the very poignant
parts of The Blooper are where he comes home. Because those
are written pretty much on what really happened to him. And then
you read A Gypsy Good Time, and what you're reading there is "Gus
confronts the real world."
Gerheim:
I saw it in reading Gypsy the first time, I saw a lot of stuff that
I related to, as you get older and things have happened to you in life.
He says, "You know you've really hit middle age when the past looks better
to you than your future." And he also has a passage in there about
Viet Nam. He says Viet Nam was the only time he was free. Back
in this world, you know, you can't trust people. You trusted people
with your life over there. Here people are out to do you in.
And as Bernie says, you can really see that he underwent a transformation.
Well, what had happened was reality had finally got to him, I think.
Willson:
But it works as a trilogy, the set of three books.
Gerheim:
It does, it works very well, even though Gypsy Good Time may not
be set in Viet Nam, that's an excellent way of putting it. To me,
that's just a very normal progression.
Bernston:
You read Dowdy Lewis, and Dowdy Lewis is Gus. Dowdy Lewis is Joker.
Gerheim:
He's an older Gus.
Bernston:
If he hadn't wanted to honor two people by the name of Dowdy and Lewis,
he would've used the Joker again. Because Dowdy Lewis is the Joker.
You read it, there's a cynicism, there's an anger, there's a hurt.
The very first time I saw after he'd gotten out of the road crew for the
county, as he liked to call it, that was the thing I noticed right away:
Gus was not the child anymore. Even though he still enjoyed things,
he had a hard side, a cynicism which he had not had before. And it
comes across very clearly, Dowdy Lewis is a real hardcore character.
Willson:
It works as a hard-boiled mystery.
Gerheim:
Which Gus wouldn't have been years before.
Bernston:
In a way, what killed Gus was he hated the loss of that child. He
hated the loss of young Gus, he hated the loss of Joker. And he didn't
really care after that.
Bernston
on Hue City - 161KB - WAV format
A clear understanding of the
Viet Nam experience
Bernston:
I'm gonna treat you to something. I'm gonna give you an insight into
the real Gus, okay. How many of you out here, in this group, are
veterans? Come on. How many have been in combat? We Snuffies
salute you. How many of you have an immediate member of your family,
brother, father, spouse, that have been in Viet Nam, or that lived the
Viet Nam experience? Okay. How many of those of you that raised
your hands on that one have really got a clear understanding of what the
Viet Nam experience was for them? What we've had the opportunity
here today is to talk about two things, we've talked about a writer, an
individual, and we've also had an opportunity to talk about a period of
history. And that's what the Viet Nam war has become, it's a period
of history. It's still defined by history. The history on it
keeps changing. The thing that's difficult, and I experienced it
when I was watching the clip of Full Metal Jacket, is, first of
all, war is never P.C., it's never politically correct. So when language
and terminology and things are used we find it somewhat offensive and strange
today. But keep in context this was thirty years ago. It was
a war thirty years ago, fought by people who were thirty years younger,
and a nation that was thirty years younger.
Gerheim:
Well, in The Short-Timers, he brings out, there's a very dehumanizing
effect in war. There are things that I can remember that I would
be almost embarrassed. I know, Crazy Earl in the movie, there's a
dead North Vietnamese, remember he's his buddy, got the hat on. I,
as a joke one time, we had a dead NVA propped up against the wall, and
I sat down like I was interviewing him. It's callous 
humor.
It's masking the fear I had at the time. And I was scared to death.
If you've ever run across anyone who says they've been in combat and they
say they were not scared, they're one of two people: they're certifiably
crazy or they're liars, they never been there. Because you're terrified.
I mean, it is absolutely terrifying. You get a sick feeling here.
There's a taste of brass, I don't know what that is, I think it's an acid
of some kind that comes up into your throat. And you're scared.
And you do things like that, that today you look back and you go, "Gosh,
that's sick." All of you have watched "MASH." I know that's
fiction and all that, but the stuff they do there, that kind of humor,
is to try to keep your sanity, it's to try to mask the reality. And
The
Short-Timers does bring out the absolute brutality and the dehumanization
of it. And that's what it is.
Bernston:
But it also tries to bring the humor.
Gerheim:
That's it.
Bernston:
And there's humor in there.
Gerheim:
And the resilience, I think, of the human spirit, too.
Bernston:
And the humor may not be funny, to an audience now 25 or 30 years later.
The humor might be missing. But a lot of the phrases, the language,
which could be offensive, that was the language of expression that you
used to release anger, you released strained animosity, you released fear.
And so when things were macabre or interesting, you know, you have to take
that even when you read the words, there's humor that comes through there.
Gus really honestly tried to project the humor. He projected the
humor by making the stories and making the phraseology what he termed to
be light-hearted. It was humorous to him. It may not be humorous
to you now, but it was humorous to him.
Gerheim:
Well, he always used that as a defense mechanism. Even when he was
having a book problem. That type of humor.
He fought tooth and nail.
Bernston:
When you look at what you see here, did Gus leave you behind a historical
document, accurate of that period in Viet Nam history? Probably he
left you an incident. Full Metal Jacket is fairly well portrayed
the way the book is written. He left behind, in my opinion, one of
the most authenticated, documented, and even to this day in my particular
case, spine-chilling experiences of going through Marine boot camp.
Gerheim:
Which is one thing, some people criticize the movie, it's two movies.
You know, it's got the boot camp, which is absolutely a documentary.
That is the way the drill instructors treated recruits. That happened.
The language that Lee Ermey uses, he had been in the Marine Corps, winds
up playing a D.I. That is exactly the way you're treated. When
I got out of the service in '68, I told my brother to go into the Air Force,
where the worst thing he told me happened was their drill instructors called
them girls one time. They weren't allowed to touch them. They
did this. In fact, the first time I went to see Full Metal Jacket,
where Joker makes the comment, "Is that you, John Wayne?" and the D.I.
comes running around, I went "Oooaaoo!" in the movie, because I can remember,
you know. I remember the senior D.I. I had, he was a staff sergeant,
African American named Greely Tyson. And I don't believe he had parents,
I think the Marine Corps created him in a laboratory. He was the
meanest guy I ever met in my life. I had boxed in college, I had
37 bouts. And this guy, to this day, if he walked in here and yelled
at me, I'd start shaking. I mean, he was that kind of a guy.
But that boot camp sequence, that is as, believe me--now, there are a few
things with the training. If you've seen the movie, they have the
fat guy. He would not be left in that platoon. He would be
put in what they called a motivational platoon, which they later did away
with. Guys like that today they wouldn't even let in.
Bernston:
But it was 30 years ago.
Gerheim:
But that's a pretty minor--
Bernston:
Thirty years ago. Now those of you who'd like to join the Marine
Corps, you'll find it to be a much gentler, kinder--
Gerheim:
They're not allowed to hit you or anything like that. Supposedly
. . .
Bernston:
It is two movies. Because you have that section, that is reality.
When you go into the combat zone and the fight for Hue City, that's where
Gus had a real struggle. I don't know if you've had a chance to relate
to them the struggles that Gus had working with Stanley Kubrick on this
movie? As you've maybe learned from what you've read about him and
hopefully maybe a little something we've told you today, Gus was not the
kind of guy to put up with a lot of bullshit. He was a pretty straight-forward
kind of guy. Well, Stanley Kubrick was the epitome of Hollywood.
So, he sold the rights, he finds out that Stanley is over, he's starting
to make the movie. Now, Stanley Kubrick doesn't live in America,
he lives in England.
Gerheim:
That's where a lot of the filming was.
Bernston:
Yeah. So Gus is on the phone, and of course since Gus was nocturnal,
he was a nocturnal being, he didn't like to start his day until at least
four in the afternoon. Which made Bob's relationships with his girlfriends
when he was living with him very difficult at times. But that's another
story. He would call Stanley, they had these long transatlantic telephone
conversations going all night.
Gerheim:
Oh yeah. Because Kubrick was very meticulous about getting details.
Bernston:
But what he didn't realize was that Kubrick had, one of my favorite
people, Mr. Michael Herr.
Gerheim:
Who wrote Dispatches. Herr was in Hue City. Bernie's
been looking for him ever since.
Bernston:
Anyway. Michael Herr was hired as a screenwriter. So, Stanley
was picking Gus's brain all night long, and then he was giving it to Michael
Herr who was turning it into Clockwork Viet Nam. I mean, it was literally
going into the genre of the anti-war, dope-smoking, baby-killing, all the
typical up to this point, Apocalypse II, you know, Viet Nam genre
that we've been experiencing. And Michael Herr was just writing it
as bad as he could. Gus got wind of this. Jumped on a plane,
went to England, went right up to Stanley's place and said "Uh-uh, you
aren't doin' this." Stanley said, "I bought it, it's my property."
Gus said, "I'll fight you on it." Now this is pretty gutsy for a
nobody out of Alabama, self-educated, who used to get beat because he read
books instead of working. He'd go up against Stanley Kubrick and
say, "You ain't gonna do it." But he did. Gus forced Stanley
into saying, "Okay fine, I'll let you co-screenwrite with Michael Herr."
Well, that set up such a battle, because Gus battled for the integrity.
He did. He battled for the integrity of what was in that book.
He wanted it on the screen. He was successful. When you look
at the movie and then read the book, you'll see that he was successful
in keeping the core, the meat of it.
Gerheim:
He also kept out what I consider some of the ridiculous stereotypes:
the drug use. The drug problem that existed in Viet Nam started very
late in the war, like about 1971. By the time there was a drug problem
in Viet Nam, 90% of the Americans who had served in Viet Nam were gone.
In fact, there have been many studies, one by the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology that I'm familiar with, that there was actually less drug
use when we were in Viet Nam per capita than there was on college campuses.
The worst drug situation I ever saw in my life was when I went to graduate
school. I mean, seriously. And at the time there were problems,
at that time we had more support personal than combat troops there.
Most of the civilian reporters never went in the bush in the first place,
so they're with all these guys in the rear who are smoking dope.
We were winding down, when we were there there were 575,000 Americans.
When they started admitting there were some drug problems there were only
what 60 or 70,000 even left in country. Most of them were aviation,
which were needed, and support for the South Vietnamese. And Gus
was just adamant, you know, Kubrick was gonna have the guys hopped up in
Hue. I never saw any drug use, I will say this on my mother's grave:
during the 1968 Tet Offensive I never saw anybody using any marijuana,
and that's all that would've been available anyways. Now I knew there
was some pot smoking going on before and after, but I never saw any of
that in Hue City. And Gus was successful in that. If there
had been massive drug use he would've been there demanding that it was
put in, because that's reality and he would've wanted that put in.
But he wound up threatening Kubrick with some real serious legal problems,
infringement of things, so he was able to get the credit there for being
one of the co-screenwriters.
Bernston:
And he hung on, and he hung on. The reason I wanted to relate this
was because here was Gus, a nobody who went up against Stanley Kubrick.
Here was Michael Herr, a big icon at that time of Viet Nam literature.
Willson:
Nuff said about that.
Bernston:
Yeah. Some things you don't forget.
Gerheim:
Now, he's upset because, one night I wasn't there, I was still south of
Da Nang--
Bernston:
No, don't tell this. Don't, don't, Earl, please, don't tell it.
Gerheim:
The Marines only had about three cans of c-rats to eat, among about ten
of them, including Bernie. And Michael Herr, a civilian who's getting
paid all this money anyway, ate all the c-rations. And these Marines
went hungry.
Bernston:
And he drank the only booze we had . . . Anyway, Michael Herr, Gus goes
up against him. He fought tooth and nail. There are things
in that movie which are stereotyped things that nobody likes. Gus
certainly didn't like them. He didn't win them all. But he
fought enough, Stanley had to acknowledge him, he got his name as co-screenwriter,
he did save the integrity of it as best he could. Finally he did
get, Stanley sent him away with some money and he went somewhere else.
But now
Gus's willingness
to fight for his literature, his work goes to
The Phantom Blooper.
When The Phantom Blooper was published, it got panned . . .
Because Gus had ran afoul with the publisher. The publisher had wanted
Gus to do a series of endorsements and things and Gus said, "No, my work
stands alone." The publisher also wanted other writers to endorse
Gus, and Gus objected to it. When it came out, it came out with very
little. The publishers did nothing to publicize the book other than
put it on the street. There was no attention, normally when a publisher
puts it out they get various literature, critics, they do everything.
They did nothing to advance The Blooper. Gus was so incensed
about this he took $30,000 and he wrote up and sent to every critic in
America he could find, "My book is dead on arrival, killed by Bantam."
Gerheim:
Bantam's lawyer then wrote him a letter threatening to sue him for doing
this . . . and his attitude was, "Good. Go ahead."
Bernston:
So what happened was, in retrospect, because Gus sent this around to every
critic and every newspaper he could get, saying "Bantam killed my book,
it's dead on arrival, a stillbirth, they wouldn't let me speak, my Viet
Nam literature," he ended up getting more publicity for Blooper
than he'd ever thought about getting. But he didn't go into it, I
mean he was the first one to be surprised that he started getting publicity.
He went in because he was just hacked off. They had violated his
literary integrity. And so he went, armed against the publishing
company. It didn't bother him, you see, Gus was the kind of guy,
it was the principal of the matter. Again, when I say, it was the
principal of the matter when Gus had his books violated. That was
the one thing that really was the most harmful thing you could do to Gus.
Whether it was the ones that you wrote, he wrote, or the ones that he collected.
That was Gus. That was his persona.
Willson:
He liked to get even. In The Phantom Blooper, he got even
a bit with Michael Herr and with Stanley Kubrick by recycling pieces of
the script of Full Metal Jacket . . . Sort of a Gus inside joke.
Gerheim:
He called me one time from London. You know, he was supposedly banned
from the set. He called me one time, it was a Sunday here.
The pubs had just closed, and he was calling me from one of the call boxes,
he had all these coins he was sticking in the thing. And he was trying
to relate to me all the things that had happened. All he ever got
from the movie, I think he said he got $20,000 for the screenplay.
That's all. Over the years he got a lot from Full Metal Jacket,
a tremendous amount of royalty, you know, if you spread it out.
You know, the hamburgers here
are $10
Bernston:
The biggest joke that Gus had out of the movie was points. He got
points. That was the other thing. He wanted points. Somewhere
he'd heard in Hollywood, to be anybody in Hollywood you had to have points.
Well, subsequently he found out how this point thing works.
Gerheim:
Well, Art Buchwald, I don't know if you remember, there was a suit.
He sued some moviemaker. What they'll do is they'll give you a percentage
of the producer's net profit. Well, all the movies are written so
they lose money. There's no net profit. Everybody gets money,
but the accountant comes up with a lose at the bottom line. So Gus
goes, "I get 3% of Stanley's net profits." Which he goes, "This could
be millions. Man, I'm gonna have fun with this." And of course,
that happened to Art Buchwald, and he finds out it's a scam. And
to this day Gus's estate I guess has 3% of the net profits coming.
But they write these things up to show, they may pay people millions and
pay everybody all this money, but they write them to show that they don't
ever make a net profit, even though they may gross $51 million.
Bernston:
One way they explained Gus's points, it could only happen to Gus, is he
was put up down in the Beverly Marquee Hotel. They brought him down--
Gerheim:
In Beverly Hills. It was a suite, he was there for two weeks to be
available for interviews about the movie.
Bernston:
And he would call, he would call and say, "You know, this is great, I can
have all the hamburgers, milk and Coke I want, and I just sign for 'em."
Gerheim:
He'd call room service and they'd bring them up. He said, "You know,
the hamburgers here are $10, and I can have all I want." I said,
"Well, why don't you order a steak?" He goes, "I don't want one."
He'd get a hamburger and a thing of milk. They'd have the milk in
a silver wine bucket.
Bernston:
He'd go down to the bar and meet three or four people and say, "Hey, this
is really great, lets order hamburgers." He was there two weeks writing
on this thing, and it comes time, he figures, "Okay where's the money?"
So he goes to Stanley's accountant and says, you know, "I need some money."
"Well, Gus, your hotel bill came to $26,000, and we're still writing this
off. Maybe by '93 we'll have some money."
Gerheim:
Well, Gus's comment was they should've given him the money for the hotel
and he would've lived in a motel or something.
Bernston:
That goes back to his childlike innocence.
Willson:
So he got charged for every burger?
Bernston:
Yeah, right. But at the time he thought it was a great deal.
Gus was not a money manager . . .
$10 hamburgers
- 536KB - WAV format
They took the stuff and never
gave it back. Usually that's called theft.
Question
from the audience: Whatever happened to all the stuff that
the cops took from his storage lockers?
Gerheim:
He got the books back. Which, when he died, his brother then, you
know, that was part of the estate. Most of them were sold off, through
this one book dealer he knew who was very honest and a very dear friend,
'cause his brother didn't want the books. He died, as far as the
last time he talked to me, he was still missing as he said 1500 pounds
of goods. He had a bunch of gold coins. He collected coins.
He had a lot of Viet Nam souvenirs that were never returned. I think
they just picked his bones was what they did.
Bernston:
Yeah, a lot of his stuff was stolen. There's no other two ways about
it, it was stolen.
Gerheim:
It was taken into police custody and he never got it back.
Bernston:
And he had books, that was part of Gus's life, I mean there wasn't a rare
book store in America that he didn't know. It was not unusual for
Gus to pay $2000 or $3000 for a book. I took him down to Powell's
bookstore one time. Inside of a half an hour he had a shopping list,
and he got a guy and gave him the shopping list and when it was over we
had spent $2100 on books. So he had a lot of money in books.
That was part of his collection. And he had absolutely thousand and
thousands of paperbacks, hardly worth the pulp price, but you know they
were his books. A lot of his goods, that was the legendary, that
was Bob, poor Ding's cross in life, he was always moving Gus's books, one
storage place to another. Gus had spent probably two months, down
every day wrapping his books for shipping to Greece. And when he
went to Greece he left money with Bob to ship his books.
Gerheim:
Of course then when he started having some cash flow problems Bob would
call me and say, "My reserve's running loose--"
Bernston:
"Can you guys help me with the rent on his storage place?"
Gerheim:
They were gonna impound it.
Bernston:
Here was Gus, he left not enough money to keep them in storage. Of
course, then when he died there was no money left. So Bob carried
the storage fees for a while.
Willson:
There were tons of books.
Bernston:
Literally.
Gerheim:
But that's what happened. A book dealer took care of it.
Question
from the audience: I was wondering about the stuff that was
returned, the 1500 pounds of stuff?
Gerheim:
I'm sure the cops split it up. They can sue me for slandering them,
but they took the stuff and never gave it back. Usually that's called
theft.
Bernston:
There they called it evidence. It was really a bad deal.
Oh God, Gus has got money.
When Gus had money it was good times.
Question
from the audience: Did he ever actually see any money off
that movie?
Gerheim:
Yeah, he got paid, I think he told me he got $20,000 for his part of the
screenplay. When he was having a fight with Kubrick, Kubrick sent
him a check, he didn't tell me how much, but he ripped it up and mailed
it back to him.
Bernston:
He sent him a $25,000 check.
Gerheim:
And he tore it up. Sent it back.
Bernston:
Gus would, classic example. He spent the last year of his life pretty
much in Tacoma, he'd go back down to California to check on his books.
His mother was living as a dependent with his brother who is still in the
Army out at Ft. Lewis. So Gus would bounce back and forth.
He came up one time and said, "Bernie. You and Craze meet me down
here at the Copper Penny. I'm buying dinner. I just got a check
from some German royalty for ten grand." Oh God, Gus has got money.
When Gus had money it was good times. So we went there, we never
got to the dinner, we stopped to have a couple beers. Course, you
always had a couple beers with Gus, a couple beers with Gus, and of course
he'd come with a shopping bag and he'd shop for Earl and I. He had
some great old Life magazines, he knew I liked to collect old magazines.
He found you some stamps. Gus was always thinking of little gifts.
Gerheim:
He would have boxes. Like I collect stamps, so over the years he
would, articles about them, he'd buy them places. And I think he
had like little boxes for people, whatever your hobby. If your mom
collected those silver spoons, let's say, and he knew it, he'd see ya,
he'd come up with a shopping bag, hug your mom and hand her the shopping
bag that would be loaded with these silver spoons. That's the type
of person he was.
Bernston:
So anyway. We had a couple beers and a couple beers. Pretty
soon we got around to saying, "Well, Gus, we probably oughtta eat."
"Yeah, yeah." It came time and the bill came around, he handed it
to me and he said, "You'll have to take care of this, Bernie. I brought
you the gifts, you take care of the check."
Gerheim:
He was broke already.
Bernston:
Yeah. Earl looked at him and said, "Where's the ten grand?"
"Well, you know, it's uh, I had to put it in an account."
Gerheim:
No, on the way up from California he'd stopped at a Dalton's bookstore.
That's where a lot of it went. It was unreal. He had no sense
of handling money. You know, if he'd ever gotten to be a multi-millionaire
he would've just, that would've just been money gone.
Bernston:
Gus was the kind of guy, he had an agent by the name of Louie. And
Louie put him on an allowance. And that was literally how Gus lived.
Gus never had a checking account, if he did it was always overdrawn, and
I think he finally quit doing that. He would need money, so he'd
call Louie up. And he'd say, "Hey Louie, have I got any money?"
And Louie would say, "Well, you know, there's a little bit here and there's
a little bit there. How much do you need?" Gus would give him
some figure and Louie would cut it in half, and he'd send it to him.
To this very day, none of us were ever really sure, if Louie stole the
money or if Gus never had enough money and Louie liked him enough he used
to just carry him on the cuff. That was one that remained unknown.
Because after Gus's death some of us tried to help sort things out.
We had no idea where the royalties went, we had no idea. But in all
honesty, and I think this must be fair to tell, we have a strong suspicion
the IRS had a leak against him.
Gerheim:
Because they would get, like for Phantom Blooper he got a $65,000
advance. By the time the book was out, he had spent the money.
There's a great deal of lag time there. And you've got to realize
that he didn't do anything else. If you're teaching English at a
university and writing books like that, you're gonna have a lot of money
on the side. But that's all he did. So if he labored for two
and half years on a book and got $65,000 for it, and of course he's not
getting any retirement or fringe benefits out of it, and that's all taxable
income.
Bernston:
For all you struggling authors out there, when you do sale your books,
and you will sale them, you get something called the 10-99. Maybe
perhaps many of you are aquainted with 10-99s, when you're in business
for yourself. Somebody pays you, you got your tax ID number, and
guess what, you're supposed to do your own withholding, you're supposed
to do your own Social Security. Gus never quite understood that.
Sixty-five grand was sixty-five grand. He's got it, he's got it.
"Taxes? They musta paid the taxes."
Willson:
Well, they never got it from him because he eluded them.
Bernston:
Oh yeah. I'm not saying they got it. I think what they did
is they finally found Louie.
Willson:
Poor Louie.
Gerheim:
He did mention to us once at a reunion in Reno, we were having breakfast,
and, this woulda been '88 I think, and he did allude to the fact that he
hasn't been filing income tax returns.
Bernston:
Well, he laughed at us because we were talking about having to file.
He said, "Well, you know, as an author I don't have to do that."
"Really Gus, how do you do that?" "Oh, I got people to take care
of that."
Gerheim:
Well, he thought they were taking it out. He finally did wind up
I think talking to them. But whatever royalties go to his estate,
I think the IRS probably intercepts them.
"As an
author, I don't have to do that" - 581KB - WAV format
The last story about Gus
Bernston:
I must tell you one last story, if you'll permit me, about Gus. And
it's the last story about Gus. Because when Gus died, he died in
Greece, in what they call a pensioner's hotel. I think we call them
flop houses. And of course, in keeping with what happened to Gus,
they picked his bones clean. He had no clothes, no money, no nothing.
I had to get him back from the uh, first I had to get him out of the hands
of the Greek police, then I had to get him out of the hands of the U.S.
State Department. I spent all of the Super Bowl that year, that Super
Bowl game on a telephone call to a big joke they call the Help Desk at
the State Department, trying to get Gus home. Because the options
they gave him were to be buried in Greece, which amounts to basically they
put you in the ground and three years later they dig you up and put your
bones in a pile. And his mother wanted him to come home, and I was
the only one around to do it. Went through a tremendous amount of,
you got no idea, trust me, if any family member ever dies overseas please
ask them to have on their body, taped to their chest or something, their
passport. Gus didn't have a passport. It was gone somewhere.
A minor thing like a passport. So anyway I went through all this
and finally, I mean it took me days and days on the phone. Finally
I'm working with the funeral director in Tacoma and they're saying, "Okay,
we've got coordination with the mortuary in Greece, we've got the release
from the State Department," and the other thing is, when you die, guess
what, it still costs money. It cost money to get Gus away from the
police, it cost money to get Gus away from the Greek mortician, it cost
money to get Gus away from the State Department, it cost money to get Gus
on a KLM plane. And of course Gus had to ride first class, because
he's in a first class box. And Gus had to change planes in Copenhagen.
Well, Gus being a great traveler such as he was, he hated plane travel,
the only way Gus would fly on a plane, he hated planes, was Gus had to
be totally drunk. Not only just getting on but during the entire
flight . . . He really wanted to go to Greece by steamer. He was
gonna go up to Montreal and get a freighter. Anyway. Gus hated
planes. So I'm sitting there and the mortician calls me. Gus
was supposed to be at the Seattle airport at one o'clock in the morning.
I got the funeral set up for the next day. And he calls me at about
midnight and says, "Uh, Mr. Bernston, there's a little problem with Gus."
I say, "What do you mean, there's a little problem with Gus?" Fortunately
I was working with a funeral director who had a real sense of humor and
had learned to appreciate Gus the way we had. And Gus was still alive
as far as he was concerned. He says, "Well, Gus missed his plane."
And I said, "What do you mean, Gus missed his plane?" "Gus didn't
make the plane change." And I think to myself, how can a box not
get switched from one cargo hold to another? And I say, "Well, what
does this mean?" "Well, it means that they're looking for Gus, and
that as soon as they find him they'll put him on the next plane.
Now we believe that they'll probably find him in time for the next morning
flight, but we'll have to postpone the service for another day."
I say, "Well, you know, I just sorta figured, with Gus." He says,
"Did I mention to you, Mr. Bernston, that Copenhagen airport, all of the
alcohol and the beer at Copenhagen is piped through a central piping system
that's about five miles long, and they sale more beer than any other airport
in the world?" And I say, "That's where Gus would be. If ever
there was a place for Gus to get lost it was at the Copenhagen airport,
which has more beer per capita than any other airport in the world."
Gus missed
his plane - 619KB - WAV format
Copenhagen
airport - 663KB - WAV format
Willson:
Thank you gentlemen. I appreciate you being here and being a part
of this memorial to Gus Hasford. And thanks to all of you for being
here today.
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