Rick, It is great to hear your story. Ray Bradbury was just the best!!! I met him several times as a kid at birthday parties that Forrest J. Ackerman used to hold at his house on Sherbourne Drive in the West L.A. area in the 60's. He was the nicest of people. No matter who you were, you were part of humanity and that is what seemed to matter to him. I can't imagine how stupid I sounded as a 10 year old talking about The Martian Chronicles or King Kong. He was sooooo nice.
There was no sense of "How important are you?" or "A bigger name just walked into the room, so bye". I shed a tear yesterday. Don't do that often and I'm tearing-up as I write this. Two of Sci-Fi's Three Musketeers are gone now. Ray Harryhausen will be 92 on June 29. All of us who love films and fantasy have been blessed to live during this time. ----- Original Message ----- From: Rix Posterz To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2012 9:46 AM Subject: [MOPO] Ray Bradbury, A Remembrance In the min-1970's, I was a young, aspiring writer living in L.A., working on a Sci-Fi project with a friend named Tim Bruckner (who is now a well-known sculptor of super hero and fantasy figures). The story was about a dream-eating deity called "The Enicol". To make a long story short, both Tim and I were quite excited about the strange tale we'd come up with and decided to try to contact as many well-known writers in the Sci-Fi genre as we could. Believe it or not, back in 1974 Harlan Ellison's home phone number was listed in the San Fernando Valley white pages, so...after staring at it for a day or two, I dialed the number and Harlan Ellison did indeed answer my call. I got as far as saying something to the effect of "Hello, Mr. Ellison, my name's Rick Ryan and I've always been a huge admirer of your work..." That's as far as I got before Harlan seemed to go totally berserk, angrily screaming at me about bothering him with my call, demanding that I promise never, EVER to call him again! Of course, I quietly did as he asked and immediately hung up the phone. Within the following month or so, someone had told me that Ray Bradbury had an office in Beverly Hills (I'm pretty sure that's where it was---if not, it was very close to Beverly Hills). Anyway, early one afternoon, I entered the building where Mr. Bradbury's office was supposed to be and. lo and behold, on the second floor at the end of the hallway was a door that had "Ray Bradbury" on it in some fashion or another. Unfortunately, the door also had a very large sign on it saying something like: "WARNING! Please Do Not Disturb! I Am a Working Author and WILL NOT RESPOND! If you wish to contact me for any reason, call: 555-6238" (Of course the wording on the sign and the telephone number were different, but you get the idea...). So. for the next 2 or 3 days I called and called that number and no one ever answered. Back then, they didn't have answering machines and Ray Bradbury wasn't the kind of guy to have one anyway---hey, he never drove a car, so why would he want an annoying answering machine. Anyway, after dialing that number for what seemed like 100 times, on the 101st attempt, a voice answered on the other end of the line. It was Ray Bradbury. In contrast to Mr. Ellison, Mr. Bradbury talked to me for at least a half an hour about everything from the craft of writing to his experience working with John Huston on the set while they were filming Moby Dick (for which he wrote the screenplay). After all this time, I don't remember all the incidentals of the conversation. What I do remember is what a kind, warm and welcoming gentleman the legendary literary giant Ray Bradbury was when he talked on the phone to some young, naive kid who was callling him with some crazy Sci-Fi idea. I also remember his closing words in our conversation were "God bless you, son". What a wonderful human being. It's one of the great honors of my life to have had that experience over 35 years ago.... Rick Ryan Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com ___________________________________________________________________ How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List Send a message addressed to: lists...@listserv.american.edu In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L The author of this message is solely responsible for its content. Visit the MoPo Mailing List Web Site at www.filmfan.com ___________________________________________________________________ How to UNSUBSCRIBE from the MoPo Mailing List Send a message addressed to: lists...@listserv.american.edu In the BODY of your message type: SIGNOFF MOPO-L The author of this message is solely responsible for its content.