Great story. Sad to see the passing of such a wonderful writer. For a man with
such a brilliant mind, the stroke must have been incredibly frustrating and at
91, he lived to a ripe old age.
________________________________
From: Rix Posterz <rixpost...@aol.com>
To: MoPo-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU
Sent: Thursday, June 7, 2012 12:46 PM
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 gototally
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
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