Jerzy Kosinski’s Cockpit

There was a time when American fiction writers were celebrities.

Throughout the 1970s, Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal and Truman Capote turned up regularly on late-night television, and you could count on each to be outspoken and opinionated, and to meet America’s vision of a public intellectual.

Then there was Jerzy Kosinski. Charming and witty, with his Polish accent and full head of hair, he wasn’t gruff like Mailer, sniffingly condescending like Vidal or weird as Capote. Kosinski made 14 appearances between 1971 and 1980 on The Tonight Show, making him recognizable enough that when Bantam Books reprinted several of his novels in the early 1980s, his portrait was prominent on each front cover.

Born in Poland in 1933, Kosinski and his family survived the Holocaust thanks to local villagers who aided Polish Jews. After the war, his father aligned with Poland’s newfound Communist regime and Kosinski, forging official documentation, migrated to the U.S.

Nearly all his books were best sellers; he’s best known for Being There (1971) and The Painted Bird (1965), novels that won him accolades, literary awards and were later adapted as films.

His book Cockpit, published 50 years ago in 1975, although superficially about a former operative in a security agency called "the Service," isn’t a spy novel. Novel may not be the right word to describe it either. Like his Steps (1968), the book is constructed of random vignettes written in the first person. Cockpit’s protagonist (a cold and clinical word, but this shoe fits) is a Class A sociopath, ticking every box: a lack of conscience; patterns of antisocial behaviors and attitudes; controlling with threats or aggression; manipulating others using intelligence, charm or charisma.

Most of the pieces in Cockpit revolve around violence or sex, sometimes both; the sexual content is often reminiscent of those “erotic” ghost-written letters used to run in Penthouse Forum. Sometimes it’s English-as-a-second-language awkward (“I induced her orgasm”).

It’s a claustrophobic read not helped by the lack of chapters, points where you can catch your breath. The copy just flows on and after a while, the cumulative examples of animal cruelty, mimicking bureaucrats to frighten people, stealing mail, scaring children, retracting one’s penis to make women believe it was amputated, and just the overall creepiness is wearying. At one point the narrator, speaking of the hours spent secretly photographing, developing and enlarging photos of his sexual activities, says, “I am overcome by its pointlessness.”

Understood.

Since most of the narrator’s antics – secret surveillance, trolling, photographing (not even filming) sex – seem almost mainstream these days, Cockpit is creepy, but almost quaint.

Plagued by allegation of plagiarism and deteriorating health, Kosinski died by suicide in 1991, ingesting lethal amounts of drugs and alcohol, then sealing the deal with a plastic bag around his head. 

Unless there’s some sort of Kosinski revival, like a biopic -- and he's probably worthy of such treatment -- I'm not sure if anybody is still reading him. As with many other celebrity authors, the guys who dominated The New York Times best-seller lists for decades, he seems to have dropped out of public consciousness.

Turn on, tune in, turn your eyes around 

With the sun having set over the Summer of Love several months before, a few rays of psychedelic sunshine were still beaming down on the Top 40 charts in January 1968.

Driven by its Hammond organ and fuzz guitar -- and the cowbell, the Strawberry Alarm Clock’s Incense and Peppermints was slipping down the charts after holding the number one spot for one week in November. It was easy to question the band’s Haight-Ashbury Street creds, always neatly attired for television in kaftans, paisley pants and beads as if they had a key to the costume closet of a theatrical company, plus their contributions to the soundtrack of Dick Clark’s hippie exploit flick Psych-Out. Nonetheless, still groovy after all these years.

Strawberry Alarm Clock

According to Eric Burdon, what broke up the Animals was that he got turned on to acid and pot, while the rest of the band preferred Guinness. The reinvented Burdon found a new band of like-minded musicians and together they wrote Monterey, which may help explain the obvious lyrics and production.

Referring to their fellow musicians who played the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967 as "young gods" and "religion was being born" was pure hippie drivel, calling Brian Jones “his majesty Prince Jones” is just embarrassing. Hey Eric, you may have forgotten that you and Jones are peers.

The clumsiness continues by namechecking musicians followed by their corresponding instrument: Ravi Shankar by a sitar, The Who with power chords, Hugh Masekela by a trumpet. I will admit to really digging this record when I first heard it as age 13. Monterey went to #15 on the Billboard Hot 100.

The experimentation of Sgt. Pepper (and Revolver) likely gave producer James Guercio permission to drop a snippet of Avant-garde music into the middle of the pop ballad Susan by the innocuous Buckinghams (without the band's knowledge). The sample (Central Park in the Dark written for chamber orchestra by Charles Ives in 1906) made Susan the scariest thing on Top 40 radio, monster movie music crashing out of nowhere, a thunderstorm in the middle of a sunny afternoon. Most radio stations played the edited version without the noise. It peaked on the charts at #11.

Unassuming and pretty aren’t words very often used to describe Rolling Stones songs, yet She’s A Rainbow is both (which may explain why it only got as far as #25). The lyrics are pure acid trip (“She shoots colors all around, like a sunset going down”), although the strings (arranged by future Led Zeppelin John Paul Jones) can border on what used to be known as elevator music.

By the end of the month, Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In) by the First Edition was beginning to move up the charts, as good a satire of psych music as there ever was (although I always doubted whether the band was in on the joke), signaling an end to Top 40’s brief flirtation with psychedelia.

The Ghost Who Walks

The Phantom always promised more than it delivered.

Created by Lee Falk, the character began as a newspaper comic strip in 1936. The Phantom was a true pulp hero, more Doc Savage than Superman, relying on his strength, smarts and two holstered handguns (and of course, he was an expert marksman) to battle evil.

Working out of a fictional country in Africa, the Phantom checked off all the boxes: cool purple costume, terrific origin story (phantoming is the family business, handed down from generation to generation since 1560 and leading to the locals thinking the Phantom immortal, calling him The Ghost Who Walks), his Skull Cave headquarters, a pet wolf named Devil and a skull ring that left a long-lasting mark on the faces of bad guys.

As newspaper comic strips began to lose some of their stronghold on popular culture storytelling in the 1960s, the Phantom moved to comic books. Gold Key owned the Phantom franchise from 1963 to 1966 and that’s where the expectation versus execution argument begins. The Gold Key issues of the Phantom sported dynamic covers painted by George Wilson, good enough that Gold Key reprinted them on the back covers minus the title and cover blurbs. But inside, the stories were never very exciting, the artwork stiff.

A typical Gold Key Phantom cover

The license was transferred over the decades to other comic book publishers with mostly negligible results. A Phantom movie was released in 1996 which I seemed to remember enjoying at the time, but I can’t recall any details.  

At a used bookstore I recently came across two Phantom novels published by Avon Books. The painted covers by the same George Wilson who did the Gold Key comics covers lured me in just as they did in 1965. Avon published 15 Phantom books from 1972 to 1975, adapted mostly from Lee Falk’s comic strip, then ghosted by sci-fi author Ron Goulart, writing as Frank S. Shawn. That’s four books a year, a difficult pace similar to the production of the old pulp novels.

As with the comic books, the novels left me feeling that this was a great missed opportunity. They have an entertaining, if shlocky pulp feel to them and seemed to have been written quickly. In The Swamp Rats (1974), the Phantom is almost a secondary character in his own book; sometimes several chapters tick by without any involvement from him, at least until the end when his heroics are needed to end things and bring the villains to justice.

The Hydra Monster (1973) isn’t a monster at all, but a crime organization similar to Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD’s nemesis Hydra, created many years earlier (including a reference to cutting off one limb and two replacing it, part of the Marvel Hydra creed). As additional evidence that these books were written very quickly, Devil the wolf plays a significant role through the first half of the book before disappearing completely.

Going into these books with low expectations feels right. They’re quick reads and if you aren’t paying too much attention, enjoyable in their own ways.

Yesterday, today was tomorrow

In December 1974, four years after the breakup, the Beatles were still all over the Billboard Hot 100.

There were other weeks when two or three members had solo records in the Top 40, but for the week ending December 14, each Beatle had a solo record in the top 40: Paul (Junior’s Farm, #10), Ringo (Only You, #18), George (Dark Horse, #32) and John (Whatever Gets You Through the Night, #40).

(The feat was repeated one month later for the week ending January 11, 1975, with the same songs but swapping out John’s Whatever Gets You Through the Night for #9 Dream).

George’s attempt at a New Year’s Day anthem, Ding Dong, Ding Dong, was also released in December 1974, climbing to #36 in January.

As a footnote, several records with Beatles connections also made the Hot 100 that month.

Elton John’s cover of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was moving up the charts; John Lennon sang backing vocals and played guitar on the cut. It would go to #1 for two weeks in January 1975. Less than a month earlier, on November 28, 1974, Lennon joined Elton John onstage at Madison Square Garden to sing Lucy, Whatever Gets You Through the Night (which the two co-wrote) and I Saw Her Standing There.

Day Tripper by Anne Murray was on the lower rungs of the chart, peaking at #59. Murray had a mini-career covering Beatles’ songs. In 1973 she took You Won’t See Me to the top ten and her 1980 cover of I’m Happy Just to Dance with You went to #13 on the Adult Contemporary chart.

Following the Beatles break up, George Martin moved on to produce seven albums for America, including the hits Tin Man (on which he played piano) and Lonely People, both records making Top 100 appearances that December.

Four years after scoring a #3 hit with Green-Eyed Lady, Sugarloaf’s Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You debuted this month, eventually moving into the Top Ten. The song lifts the riff from I Feel Fine, and alludes to a song that "sounds like John, Paul and George")

If you’re looking for something Beatlesque, there was the Hudson Brothers’ So You Are A Star, which peaked at #21. Mark Hudson later worked with Ringo as a producer and composer.

The Electric Light Orchestra, a band whose mission was, as founder member Roy Wood said, to "pick up where the Beatles left off,” had Can’t Get It Out of My Head on the charts where it would peak at #9.

Lastly, also debuting in December 1974 was Billy Preston’s instrumental Struttin’, which would enter the Top 40 in January 1975.

John Saxon in The Glove

(This blog is part of the John Saxon Blogathon hosted by Realweegiemidget and Cinematic Catharsis)

Following Enter the Dragon (1973), directors (I’m hesitant to say Hollywood) began to see John Saxon in a different light – that of action hero – leading to his appearing in a string of adventure films through the rest of 1970s, including The Swiss Conspiracy (1975), Raid on Entebbe (1977) and several Italian crime/action flicks among others. The final film in that run was The Glove (1979).

John Saxon: If the glove fits

Saxon plays Sam Kellog, an ex-cop turned bounty hunter, six months behind in child-support payments and experiencing a full-blown existential crisis, doubting his career choice, waxing nostalgic over his pre-cop minor league baseball days and generally confused by his purpose in life.

(We know this because director/screenwriter Ross Hagen's script has Saxon provide voiceover narration about “the emptiness in my gut,” or “when you live on the edge, one push and you’re over” and “a bounty hunter does things the police can’t.”)

When Kellog catches wind of a $20,000 reward for the capture of Victor Hale (Rosey Grier), an ex-con suspected of the brutal murders of several prison guards, this is the opportunity for him to at least solve his financial woes.

Hale was beaten in jail by prison guards using an outlawed riot glove, described as “five pounds of lead and steel.” He now has his own version of the glove and with revenge on his mind, he punches through a car windshield to get at one victim and destroys a bathroom while beating another. This is no Nintendo power glove.

Kellog and Hale play cat-and-mouse before an epic showdown on the roof of Hale’s apartment building. They beat each other silly before Kellog concedes defeat, but as Hale offers to escort Kellog from the building a rival bounty hunter suddenly shows up, leading to Hale’s death as well as that of the bounty hunter when residents of the building take matters into their own hands avenging a death of “one of their own.”

You might say (if you’re corny enough and I guess I am) that the role of Sam Kellog fits Saxon like a glove. He’s a complex character, whether interacting with his grade-school daughter, joking – a fluffed line that was kept in the movie – with his kibbitzing boss (Keenan Wynn) or providing cynicism and world-weariness in his narration. Saxon even does his own stunts, including a fight with a bail-skipper in a meat-packing plant, which includes using animal parts as weapons.

After a successful career in pro football, Rosey Grier moved on to TV and films, including The Thing with Two Heads (1972), and becoming almost better known as a macrame and needlepoint enthusiast. In The Glove, when he’s not beating people to death, he’s a gentle giant playing guitar, befriending a neighborhood kid, driving a Country Squire station wagon and shopping for groceries (he buys a bouquet of flowers for his shabby apartment).

Along with Grier, the supporting cast also includes Joanna Cassidy, Keenan Wynn, Michael Pataki, Jack Carter, Aldo Ray and Joan Blondell (her final role before her death). 

The Glove can feel a bit schizophrenic. When Saxon is onscreen tracking down bail jumpers and bemoaning his lot in life, the film takes on a noirish quality. When the focus is on Grier, the vibe is one of Blaxploitation. Overall, the film has the feel of an extended TV pilot, serving to introduce Sam Kellog and his world to viewers.

Either way, the movie holds its own as an action film, John Saxon playing a hero who is a Hamlet for 1970s: plagued by self-doubt and uncertainty while outfitted in an Adidas track suit (the jacket fashionably unzipped enough to show off his bare chest).

Bad company

While they may picture themselves as The Avengers or The Justice League coming to save us from rising egg prices and DEI hiring practices, the next administration’s cabinet appointments, a cavalcade of the weird and unqualified, seem more reminiscent of the old Marvel super-villain teams, dangerous but ultimately second-rate bad guys with dubious superpowers, laughable costumes and names. 

Any of these names are probably available at the right price for a plaque nailed to this next cabinet’s clubhouse door. 

The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants: Super-villains team brought together by ideology: mutant superiority (homo superior) over humans (homo sapiens). Magneto recruited Scarlet Witch and

Quicksilver by rescuing them from an angry mob in their “Central European” home. Mastermind, a John Carradine lookalike, had a creepy interest in the much younger Scarlet Witch. Toad’s name described his springy bouncing ability and how he toadied up to Magneto. Magneto wasn’t much on team building; the Brotherhood quarreled endlessly. 

Sinister Six: A team-up of some Spider-Man’s initial rogue’s gallery: Sandman and Electro (with no lessons learned, both would join other subsequent super-villain teams), plus Mysterio, Kraven the Hunter, de facto leader Dr. Octopus and the Vulture. Together, they never add up to anything greater than the sum of their raw talent as they insist on going after Spidey individually and not as a united front. 

Frightful Four: The Wizard, Sandman and the immortal Paste Pot Pete (who changed his name to the Trapster to keep superheroes from laughing themselves silly) couldn’t beat the Human Torch singly in any of his early solo adventures, yet somehow when they added Medusa of the Inhumans they defeated the Fantastic Four once and had them on the ropes a second time, a storyline that launched a two-year run of issues of the Fantastic Four that to my mind has always been The Great American Comic Book Novel. 

Emissaries of Evil: Daredevil’s laughable archenemies band together to no effect. Electro and the Gladiator, with twin circular saws on his wrists could be formidable, but the rest of this crew? The Matador would throw his cape over a foe’s head to create confusion. Scary. Stilt Man wore a telescoping device on his legs that extended his height. That’s it. Top-heavy at best, he may be the dumbest villain concept ever except for another Emissary of Evil, Leap Frog with his exoskeleton frog costume, complete with webbed feet. 

The Fellowship of Fear: Mr. Fear’s contribution was fear pheromones from gas pellets shot from a special gun. According to an online Marvel database, he recruited Ox and The Eel primarily because of their low intelligence, making them easier to control. The Eel was a classic Marvel second-banana bad guy. Ox was Lenny from Of Mice and Men. The sightless (but with other senses enhanced Daredevil) knows Ox is around by his heavy breathing and “cheap hair tonic” – the first time Vitalis contributed to the bring down of a super-villain team.

One final last at bat

On October 6, 1985, at Shea Stadium against the Montreal Expos, Rusty Staub was the final batter of the Mets’ season.

The Mets will finish second place and with Darryl Strawberry (23 years old, 27 home runs) and Dwight Gooden (20 years old, 24-4 record), anchoring a young and talented team, the Mets are primed for promise.

Almost in anticipation of ticker-tape parades to come, the fans are shredding paper and throwing it onto the field: hot dog wrappers, pages torn from programs, newspapers, toilet paper, falling to the ground or getting swept up into a current circling the inside of Shea Stadium.

From WWOR's game broadcast, 10/6/85

Staub watches paper falling through the air and fouls off the first two pitches, then takes a ball. Indifferent ownership, the inability to get funding for a new stadium, dropping attendance and other economic pressures over the coming two decades would tip the scale in favor of a relocation, and in 2004, the Expos became the Washington Nationals.

Another pitch out of the strike zone for a ball. Staub began his major league career as a 19-year-old with the Houston Astros in 1963; Shea Stadium opened the following year as a multi-purpose stadium built for baseball and football. Aging badly and with the trend towards stadiums built expressly for baseball (while acknowledging a certain old-time vibe – archways, brick facades, distinctive angles to the outfields), Shea was demolished in 2009, replaced by Citi Field.

He calls time, distracted by more paper falling from the rightfield grandstand. The count goes to three balls and two strikes. Never a Hall of Famer, but certainly a first-ballot induction in any mythical Hall of the Nearly Great, Staub retired that winter to organize charitable programs and focus on his Manhattan restaurant, Rusty's, specializing in steaks and ribs. Nearly 30 years to the day of his final at bat, on a flight from Ireland to the U.S., he went into cardiac arrest. Two doctors on board assisted in resuscitating him. He died in 2018, three days before his 74th birthday.

The last swing of the bat is a grounder to the Montreal second baseman, who bobbles the ball but still throws the slow-running Staub out at first. Even the best batters succeed only three out of ten times. The field is littered with white paper, resembling a tentative late autumn snowfall that barely covers the grass, a reminder that winter is right around the corner.