We are lucky that we share an appreciation for these great human beings.
Sent from my iPhone
On Jun 7, 2012, at 10:21 AM, "Phillip W. Ayling" <mro...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> 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
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