Written By Summer 2010 : Page 34
notism, kid?” Huston asks early on. “Ever been hypnotized?” When Bradbury resists, Huston swirls his whiskey “languidly” (it’s after midnight at the castle) and, having learned the science of hypnosis during the war for his documentary Let There Be Light, assures him: “You’ve never been in the hands of a pro… You want to go under, son? I’ll put you there.” This, in a nutshell, was their relationship. Bradbury lived in Above, Ray Harryhausen, Bradbury, and Forrest J. Ackerman at Mystery and Imagination Bookshop in Glendale. Below, Ray at home in Los Angeles. Ireland for roughly a year while he wrote the Moby Dick screen- play. (He’d not read the novel before taking the assignment, but read it three times cover to cover, “and 10 times, piecemeal,” as he wrote the script. Melville became a leading light in his imagi- nation, superseded only by Shakespeare.) We are inclined now to wrap Huston in the cozy mantle of his kindlier, cannier old age—as self-mocking survivors go, the man earned his heroic legend—but through Bradbury we get a bare-knuckled sense of what a problematic monster he could be, a literal Lord of Mis- chief (former boxer; lifelong gambler) who would always push a situation to its most entertaining extreme, no matter who else shed tears. 34 • W G AW W r i t t e n B y S U M M E R 2 0 1 0 John King taRpinian
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