Walter Davis:  

Walter Halsey Davis I grew up in Compton, Wilmington and Whittier. I attended California High School 1956-1959. At 17 (my senior year), I went to Germany and studied at the Gymnasium am Schloss in Mainz. Back in the U.S., and with no money to attend college, I spent four years in the US Navy. By the time I was mustered out, I had been awarded three medals for reasons that remain enigmatic to this day. After the Navy, I went to France with the notion of writing a novel. Just when I was about to run out of money, I was mysteriously cast in a small part in a movie filming in Paris. This early exposure to the movies didn't take, however, and I took off for Austria where I worked in a ski factory until sawdust and solitude drove me north into Germany where I worked as a television repairman while attending the University of Mainz. When I came home, I attended the University of California Santa Barbara and took a Bachelor and Masters Degree in English literature. From there, on to UCLA for a Master of Fine Arts degree in Theater Arts. My first play, The Tapioca Misanthropa (a verse drama cum cosmic vaudeville), was produced for ABC television in Santa Barbara and later broadcast in Los Angeles on the PBS station KCET. "TAPIOCA" won the Lucille Ball Comedy Writing Award and was published by Painted Cave Books in Santa Barbara. My second play, PANHANDLE, a chronicle of a Texas family's struggle through the Great Depression, was first produced at U.C. Santa Barbara, then in Los Angeles, the Scott Theater in Fort Worth, North Texas State University, Texas Tech University, and in New York at the Walden Theater. On the basis of PANHANDLE, I spent a year in residence at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. My third play, Tilden (written in collaboration with Pierre Delattre and Lew Catching), is based on the life of the tennis champion Big Bill Tilden, and has been produced in Minneapolis. I sold my first screenplay, a brooding science fiction piece called THE LOCUS while still a graduate student at UCLA. Since then I¿ve worked as a screenwriter/producer and have had 18 feature films, mini-series, or movies for television produced. I¿ve been lucky enough to wind an Emmy, a Writers Guild of America Award and two Nominations, an Edgar Allan Poe Award, two Christopher Awards, the Samuel Goldwyn Writing Award, the Texas Bicentennial Playwriting Award, the Red Cross Prize at the Monaco International Television Festival, The Peabody Award, The Humanitas Prize, a Golden Globe nomination. The problem is, a recitation of resume-like facts does not capture the feelings of how it has been. This is how it began and the way it felt: PARIS When I got out of the Navy, I decided to go to Paris to become a writer and capture feelings that had eluded me like gossamer that moves away the minute you try to touch it but floats back your way when you relax. I had lost love in Europe, and somehow I had to go back. It seemed to me Paris, with its glistening sidewalks, black umbrellas, and quaint bistros, was the place of love. All I knew was I wanted to be in Paris, and I wanted to write. Once I paid for the flight to Paris there was not enough money to fly back home, so I had thrust myself on the thorns of fate. I found a small 9 Franc Hotel on the Rue Guy Lousac. In the crisp early summer mornings, I would go to a bistro and have café au lait and long strips of a fresh baguette lathered in butter. I wondered how long I could on the hundred fifty dollars I had left. But it was summertime is Paris. It didn't get dark until after ten at night. The sidewalk cafes and restaurants caused rainbows of smells to waft down the streets. Les bateaux Mouches plied the Seine as their passengers plied themselves with wine and the City of Light. In the French quarter, all the fabulous colors of Algerian, Tunisian and Moroccan specialties were on display on gyros, shiskebabs or simply arranged on beds of couscous. The smells of paprika, garlic, onion and saffron glided past my nose. I wasn't sure what I could afford to spend, so I often restricted myself to some pommes frites from a street vendor. One evening, while walking through the Montparnasse, man approached me and asked, "Parlez-vous Alemand?" I nodded. He asked if I was interested in playing a German soldier in a film and wrote out a studio pass for at the Studio Billancourt. before I answered. At 6 A.M Le Metro is much easier to navigate because there are far fewer people about to give bad directions. I arrived at the Studio on time and was quickly put in a Wehrmacht uniform and given a Bosch haircut. Thusly prepared to lose WW2, I was packed into a bus with other similarly fated axis dupes and driven to Gare du L'est, where we were taught to march like Germans. Most of the soldiers were French. Of those who had the few lines in German were a Russian, a Czech, two Austrians, and a Croat. We rehearsed marching into the train station like Germans, but the French extras had a much more laid back style of marching, which drove the director nuts. If he'd had any hair he would have torn it out - maybe that's what happened to it. Who knows? We'd march and he'd scream, "Ce n'est pas comme les Bosches!" Then he would give us a demonstration of his notion of genuine Teutonic marching which had a toy soldier quality that would have only looked at home on a Glockenspiel. I don't know if we were resisting him or whether we just couldn't do it. Finally, he gave up and started camera takes. Even so, filmmaking is a slow business, and we spent most of our time standing or sitting around. I gravitated toward the opening to the steps that led up to the Gare du Nord. I would stand there in my Wehrmacht uniform with a real German rifle slung over my shoulder (actual captured weapons from WW2). The French commuters who walked down these steps would glance up from their newspapers and see German soldiers apparently guarding the lower train station. You could see the shock in the eyes of those old enough to remember when real Wehrmacht soldiers stood watch over these portals. It wasn't long before the complaints came in: the citizens of Paris did not want to see German soldiers at the Gare du L'est. Some said that it was traumatic. We were told to take off our tunics when we weren't shooting, which meant when they were ready for us, the second assistant director didn't know who the soldiers were. When the director became somewhat apoplectic screaming for his "Bosches," we scrambled into our tunics, put on our helmets and slung our guns, ready for "Appel." Finally, I was ready for my close-up. The camera was close. I had to stop some travelers and deliver my mighty albeit succinct dialog, "Papiere. Bitte." This was the extent of the German required of me in the movie. For this they needed me for four days, gave me four haircuts, etc. I'm not sure how else I might have delivered the line, while I admit here and now I gave little thought to my motivation or back story. My reading of Stanislavsky, Artaud and Eisenstein still lay in my future. Obviously, I didn't sell the line, because they cut it out of the movie. All that remains of me in Le Grande Vadrouille is a brief shot of me walking along the train staring up at the young blond woman who looked like Catherine Denueve. What the film does not reveal is the story behind that brief glance between the young blond and the young soldier. During the breaks, I met her - Elisabeth -- and somehow I charmed her with my broken French. Elizabeth laughed gently, like a rose bush brushed by the wind. I loved the way her blond hair cascaded down over her shoulders, and her blue eyes twinkled with everything she said. I tried to remember if I had ever met anyone more beautiful, and yet she seemed so unspoiled. I found out that she was occasionally an extra during daytime. At night, Elizabeth was a dancer at the Mogodor. She invited me to see her dance. I went the next night. She had arranged a ticket for me in the house seats. It was a very light operetta. Elizabeth danced out, dressed in a variety of traditional gowns, wigs, peasant-girl outfits. She sang, she beamed. She made floating on the stage seem effortless. After the show, her parents picked her up and took us all to Les Halles -- the famed market place of Paris until it was modernized, mechanized, metalized and moved to the outskirts of Paris. But then, it was still the old Les Halles that was Paris' all-night event. Les Halles hummed with trucks and dollies scurrying hither and thither with precious cargos of cabbage, potatoes, artichokes, and pallets of fruit that could put Cézanne into a fit. Ladies of the Night strolled past with fish net stockings and cigarette holders. No kidding. A dolly loaded with fish would squeak past - the fish staring at me with forlorn eyes that seem to say, "Buddy, if you rely solely on fate, you may end up like us." We went into a lively Bistro called "Pieds du Cuchon," which translates something like the "Feet of the Pig". Who am I to criticize the name of a restaurant? One of the great all night places in Paris; it was a lively mix of the most unlikely people. At the bar, several crews of airline pilots were voraciously downing the best Cognac while flirting with the prostitutes who had stopped by for a middle of the shift nosh. Elizabeth's Father, Henri, eyes gleaming, shared with me that the whole secret of the place was to eat at the bar standing up. "It is 'alf the price. The tourists sit and pay double. They sit to see the show...Expand for more