The Last Title Writer
Well, it’s 23 skidoo for the title card and me. If you don’t believe us, ask Jolson—he sang about it to his Mammy two years and a lifetime ago, way back in 1927. But it was last year’s Lights of New York—“The 100% ALL TALKING Picture” (shot, of course, here in Hollywood)—that really blew all the fuses in the bungalow of my mind, and everyone else’s to boot. Okay, last month, Farnham grabbed the first gold statue for Title Writer, but I’ll bet you dollars to donuts there won’t be another. It kills me to say it because honest to God if you want to know the truth, I’m just about the best in the business. I can pretty much put any shelved picture in the black—cover any fancy director’s fumble, fix any scenario writer’s gaping plot hole, transform any acting atrocities—with just 8 cards, 16 lines well–placed. You could deliver to my door tomorrow 9 random reels of cutting floor catastrophes, give me a week and a case of your best bathtub gin, and 4 days from now I’d give you or Lasky or Laemmle or anybody except Louis B.—to hell with you, Louis B.—the next Don Juan or Beau Geste, and I wouldn’t need a war or the Great Profile to do it either. Just scraps and my cards. I was that good. I am that good. But what’s an artist to do when your medium is silence—and the world’s become of a sudden and for good a torrent of noise, talk and songs? I wasn’t a scenario writer, and I’m no playwright. I’m a title writer goddammit, a magician with a card and a handful of letters glowing, floating in the dark like ghosts or angels. Yes, the art’s gone out of pictures, and my art and career’s gone with it. All I can do now is pray that Wells finally builds that time machine, so I can move back to 1926. Until then, I’ll guess I’ll ride the stock market into the future, and stay far away from the movie palaces. I’d love to show you what I mean and what you’ll soon be missing with the perfect, pithy title card. But when you get to the moment in the picture where we are now, there’s only one card left in the deck. It’s the one you always see just before the dream ends and the lights come up:
THE END.
About the Author
Nathaniel Lachenmeyer is an award-winning disabled author of books for children and adults. His first book, The Outsider, which takes as its subject his late father’s struggles with schizophrenia and homelessness, was published by Broadway Books. His most recent book, an all-ages graphic novel called The Singing Rock & Other Brand-New Fairy Tales, was published by First Second/Macmillan. Nathaniel lives outside Atlanta with his family.