Trouble Was His Business -- Raymond Chandler

I hate to say it, but as far as I can tell, The Times didn't review Chandler's second novel, "Farewell, My Lovely," at left. We did review the 1945 film, however.

Movie Star Mystery Photo

Our mystery movie star is Betty Bronson, who died in 1971. Her last film was "Evel Knievel."  Eve Golden also points out that she appeared in an episode of "Marcus Welby" not listed on imdb.  Check back Monday for another Movie Star Mystery Photo! Los Angeles Times file photo Just a reminder on how this works: I post the mystery photo on Monday and reveal the answer on Friday. To keep the mystery photo from getting lost in the other entries, I move it from Monday to Tuesday to Wednesday, etc., adding a photo every day. I have to approve all comments, so if you're wrong your guess will be posted. If you're right, you'll have to wait until Friday. There's no need to submit your guess five times. Once is enough. The only prize is bragging rights.  The answer to last week's photo: Pier Angeli. Los Angeles Times file photo Betty Bronson in Paramount's "Ritzy" in a photo dated 1927. Here's another picture of our mystery woman. Please congratulate Eve Golden, Anne Papineau and Sophie at UCLA, who correctly identified her. Remember, only post your answer once--all comments must be approved, so there's no point in submitting "Barbara Stanwyck" six times. The answer won't be revealed until Friday, so if your guess is published before then, that means you're wrong.

Los Angeles Times file photo Betty Bronson in 1932. Here's another photo of our mystery woman. And congratulations to Tom in ATL, Juile, Dru Duniway, Valerie Kline, Lisa R, Molly, Randolph Man, Pauli, LicaPP, Douglas Kroger, Burger, Donna, Jennie Bucks, Allan Ellenberger and Photonic, who have identified her. Please remember, I don't publish the identity until Friday so if the guess has been posted, it's wrong. That would be Theda Bara, Clara Bow, Lillian Gish, Fay Wray, Mary Pickford, Rosalind Russell, etc. And to the person who said this was too easy.... Perhaps not. :) Los Angeles Times file photo Betty Bronson, about 1936. This photo of our mystery woman was taken a bit later in her life. She left movies to get married and have a family. Then she decided she wanted to return to films--which she did! Congratulations to Lee B., Theodora Fitzgerald, Randy Skretvedt, Rahuna, Sandy R. and Brent Walker, who correctly identified her. Los Angeles Times file photo Betty Bronson and Daniel Mann during production of "Who's Got the Action?" At left, here's our mystery woman in 1962 with director Daniel Mann. He noticed her name in the studio's casting office after she decided to supplement her income by returning to films. She is Betty Bronson, perhaps best known for her role in the silent version of "Peter Pan," above  Unfortunately, our photo from that film was cut down and heavily repainted by The Times' art department.

Voices -- Sydney Chaplin, 1926 - 2009

By Valerie J. Nelson March 6, 2009 Sydney Chaplin, an actor who experienced his greatest success on stage, earning a Tony Award for starring in the late 1950s musical "Bells Are Ringing," died Tuesday. He was 82. Chaplin, the oldest surviving child of film legend Charlie Chaplin, died at his Rancho Mirage home of complications following a stroke, said Jerry Bodie, a longtime friend. Read more >>>

Blinded by Bullet, Officer Shoots Gunman Who Killed Partner, March 5, 1959

Through the 1950s, Police Officer Ector A. Garcia became a minor celebrity for producing sketches of crime suspects that were astonishingly accurate. But he wanted the excitement of being on the streets and that's what he got. Garcia and his partner, Detective Jose L. Castellanos, were working homicide March 5, 1959, when they got a call that a gunman had gone on a deadly rampage at an East Los Angeles restaurant and was probably heading for the home of his estranged wife. The gunman ambushed the detectives as they escorted the woman and her uncle to safety, killing Castellanos instantly. Although Garcia was struck by a shot that "seared across his eyes," the police artist was able to return fire, killing George J. Arevalo, 2844 Whittier Blvd. "We always knew he would do something like this," Arevalo's wife said. "He would go crazy every time he drank. Last March 27 we separated because of his drinking. He told me when he left he would come back some day and kill the children and me." Lying in the hospital, perhaps blinded by a killer's gunfire, was the last thing Garcia must have imagined when he began his career as an artist. Born in El Paso, he graduated from Woodbury College in 1949 and worked briefly as an editorial cartoonist at a Seattle newspaper. After a short time with a Los Angeles printing company, Garcia decided to join the Police Department. He had no idea of becoming a sketch artist, but the job slowly emerged as department officials realized his talent for producing drawings from witnesses' descriptions. Evidently he was quite talented and in one demonstration for a magazine story, Garcia produced a sketch of "Dragnet's" Joe Friday based on a description given by a woman in the department's Research and Planning Office. One of his most successful drawings was that of Gaylord Hammond, who was being sought in an attempted rape. When Hammond was arrested, officers found that Garcia's sketch was virtually identical to Hammond's mug shot. Garcia also provided sketches of the nonexistent attackers in the Marie "The Body" McDonald case. But all of that was before he was assigned to homicide; before that night in March 1959 unfolded tragically. View Larger Map That evening, Arevalo, 42, had gone to Bill's Place, a restaurant at 506 E. 9th St. where his friend Mary Loera was manager. "He was drunk," she said. "I told him to get out. He left but returned in a few minutes with a gun. He aimed it at me, said he was going to kill me and fired." She fell to the floor, wounded in the arm, as another customer, Carlos Carranza, wrestled with Arevalo for the gun. Arevalo broke free, went outside and when Carranza followed, Arevalo shot him to death. Police staked out Arevalo's room on Whittier Boulevard, and Castellanos and Garcia were sent to the home of his estranged wife at 716 N. Bonnie Beach. They were escorting the woman and her uncle, Alex Verdenas, to their police car and planned to take them somewhere safe when Arevalo ambushed them. Arevalo shot Castellanos in the temple, killing him instantly, then fired again, hitting Garcia in the head and Verdenas in the chest. Garcia, despite being struck in the eyes, killed Arvealo, shooting him once in the head and once in the chest from 50 feet away, The Times said. Although his right eye was destroyed, the doctors saved his left eye and after that he wore a eye patch. In November 1959, Garcia was honored with a Purple Heart during a ceremony in the City Council Chambers recognizing officers who had been killed or wounded in the line of duty. Garcia returned to being a police artist and published a book of his work, "Portraits of Crime," in 1977. He retired about 1981 and went to work for a private security firm, but continued doing sketches, including some of fugitive Nazi Dr. Joseph Mengele. Garcia died Sept. 27, 1987.

Found on EBay -- Hollywood Boulevard

View Larger Map

Notice that there's no traffic signal at Highland, just a stop sign.

This postcard of Hollywood at night, showing the neon signs on Hollywood Boulevard, has been listed on EBay. Bidding starts at $5.99. I suspect my crime buddy Nathan Marsak can give the history of every sign in this picture, starting with Coffee Dan's (6776 Hollywood Blvd.) and the Pickwick bookstore, 6743 Hollywood Blvd.

Matt Weinstock, March 5, 1959

Panes in Stomach First let it be stated that G.K. Williams, editor of the Coronado Journal, and Jane Reed, his assistant, are known by me to be utterly reliable. Now go on. They depose, on a stack of pancakes, that one day recently a red convertible parked in front of their office. In the front seat of this convertible was an Irish setter. While they watched, aghast, the Irish setter began munching on the partially lowered glass of the right front window. While it was chawing away a lady in scarlet capris who, they further depose, was not the type to be wearing them, appeared and exclaimed, "You naughty dog! This is the fourth window you've eaten this week!" * * SPEAKING OF windows, this scrawled message was posted in the Burbank courthouse: "I do odd jobs like cutting yards, washing windows. I charge $1 an hour" -- with name and phone number. * * SHORTLY after the polar satellite Discoverer I was sent aloft at Vandenberg Air Force Base Saturday Grant Holcomb of KNXT interviewed a high officer at the base about it. The officer was explaining the missile's intricate mechanism when George Hause, sound man, broke in with, "Say, do you mind not using all that technical jazz? Only the kids understand it, and this is a news program for adults." * * BEFORE taking off for Seattle on the 6 a.m. plane at International Airport the other day, Mark A. Kunkel of North Hollywood signed up for the maximum casualty flight insurance. The girl at the desk looked at the form and said, "You haven't filled in the name -- who would you like as beneficiary?" Still a little sleepy, Mark gave his own name. "But that's you, isn't it?" she said. Coming fully awake, he replied, "I guess when I made it out I believed in the hereafter." * * ONLY IN L.A. -- Two untidy gentlemen brought a jug of muscatel in a W 7th Street liquor store and as one of them crumpled the paper bag and threw it into the street a police car with siren screaming and red light flashing bore down on them. "Man, they sure enforce that litterbug law!" he exclaimed, retrieving it. But when the police car went past, en route to a bank robbery at 7th and Hoover, he threw it away again. * * ABOUT A week ago some pinups, mostly art studies from Playboy, which circulates through the mails, appeared on the hitherto pure walls of the new police buildingpressroom . A day or two later the chief strolled in and frowned at them. Yesterday the reporters were handed this ultimatum: "The 'art' work on display on this wall will be removed forthwith, immediately and without delay. By order of Arthur H. Hohmann, deputy chief of police." My, my, such redundancy. * * IDES OF MAY "Crewshoff" again sounds off. His talk, with threats, just bristles: Perhaps we shouldn't scoff As he flexes his muscled missiles. -- G. L. ERTZ * * AT RANDOM -- A jagged hunk of iron fell off a truck on Harbor Boulevard near Francisco Street and after about 40 cars swerved around it, a woman stopped her Cadillac and, though wearing white gloves and a stole, picked it up and tossed it into theiceplant . . . First message to go out on Transmit, the new teletype service, was inadvertently a letter Glen Eaken , sales manager, wrote to his wife in Seattle. He wrote it so he could send her the transmission tape to show how the service worked. He didn't know the line was open . . . Western Costume, which rents many of the outfits for TV westerns, calls outlaws' clothes "varmint's garments" . . . A patient inSawtelle Veterans Hospital puts it this way: "They gave up on me but I won't give up."

Paul Coates -- Confidential File, March 5, 1959

CONFIDENTIAL FILE Big Money Bonanza Fails to Pay Off LeRoy McFarland of Huntington Park, has a money mine. It's in his back yard. He just discovered it. It's a lively one -- chock full of coins, thousands of them. From France, India, Burma, China, Germany, the United States, Mexico. Even Russia. Big coins. Little coins. Copper coins. Silver coins. Some of them real old. They date back to 1802. Valuable, no doubt. Looking at it objectively, it's about as good a money mine as anyone could ask to find in his back yard. But those aren't exactly LeRoy's sentiments. LeRoy hates his money mine. Hates it with a vengeance. Little Treasure Island LeRoy, who's 32, manages an apartment court at 5917 Compton Avenue. The way it happened -- the way he stumbled onto his cache -- is that last Sunday night he was cleaning up one of the carports at the rear of his property. There was a piece of tin dividing two of the ports which he wanted to remove. He got a shovel and started digging. When he got about a foot deep, he noticed that there were a few coins mixed in with the dirt. Nothing much. A British farthing or two. A ten-franc piece. Some Mexican centavos. But is whetted LeRoy's curiosity. He dug deeper. And he found more coins. Tenants Join In About a foot and half down he began running into little bags of them. Some were wrapped in a plastic material. Others in rotting burlap. Several of LeRoy's tenants -- surprised to see him digging and working so diligently -- were attracted to the scene. They pitched right in and helped him. Within an hour, LeRoy had a five-gallon can full to the brim with dirty money. Figuring he'd done enough spading for the night, he closed up his money mine with loose dirt, and lugged the can of treasure inside. There, he washed it, filling a dishpan with about 40 pounds of clean coins. Then, with his sister, Ida May, and a girlfriend of hers, he headed to the home of his father-in-law, Bert Johnson, at 5124 E 60th Place, Maywood. Bert, an amateur coin collector, got out his magnifying glass. Some of the pieces were badly worn. Others were mutilated. There were a few with the face of a U.S. penny on one side and the tail of a dime on the other. There was one inscribed "Gold Cup Handicap, one free play, Ocean Park," plus some streetcar tokens and some kids' play money. Mr. Johnson suggested that LeRoy take the whole dishpanful to the police. LeRoy took his advice, and that's when his troubles started. With the two girls, he arrived at the Huntington Park Police Station at about nine o'clock. The whole station house was fascinated by LeRoy's discovery. A sergeant contacted the FBI, and then, in turn, some Secret Service agents for the Treasury Department. The agents told the police to hold LeRoy and his friends until they got there.  LeRoy was led back to an interrogation room, while the girls remained up front. It was getting late. Ida May, LeRoy's sister explained to one of the officers that she had to get up at five in the morning to go to work. "Do I have to stay here, too?" she asked. "Everybody stays," replied the officer. "Those federal boys have it over us. If they say hold you, we hold you." Ida May Talks Ida May is a very pretty girl. She's a good talker, too. She explained her problem to a couple of sergeants, and finally, they relented. She and her friend could go home. "Now, if I could just see my brother for a minute," she said. "I need to borrow a dollar from him for my bus fare tomorrow." "Oh, no," answered the officer. "Nobody's talking to him until the feds do." "In that case," Ida May cried indignantly, "when I go home, I'll get a shovel and just dig up another dollar." The police let Ida May borrow a dollar from her brother. An officer drove the two girls home. When he returned to the station, the federal agents were there, busy with LeRoy. There's More The officer broke into the interrogation session and sprinkled two more handfuls of coins into the dishpan. "He's got a real mint back there in the yard," beamed the officer. "I got this just turning that shovel a couple of times." At midnight, the Treasury agents were through with LeRoy. "We'll take the coins," they explained. "All right," LeRoy agreed. "Would you give me a receipt for them?" "No, sir," answered the agent. "Those belong to the government now." "But I found them," protested LeRoy. "You can keep the mutilated ones, I just want the foreign coins back." Peril of Jail "No," was the final answer. "And if you dig up any more coins, you've got to give them to us. Understand? If you hold out so much as one coin, you can get 10 years in jail for it." LeRoy understood. Meekly, he requested his dishpan back. Here, the agents conceded. Then they followed him home, briefly examined his money mine, and told him that they suspected the bulk of the loot came from vending machines. "The foreign coins too?" LeRoy asked. "Most of them were foreign coins." Then he related a story about what happened to him when he was digging in the rear of the car port two weeks earlier. Stacks of Bills "It might be significant," he said, "although I didn't think anything about it at the time. I dug up two bundles of moldy paper. Shaped just like stacks of bills. I didn't examine them, though. I just shoveled them into the trash." The Secret Service here today indicated it has been busy on several major counterfeiting investigations -- and was a little amazed at some of the stories going around about the coins. "Nobody asked for a receipt and the man seemed anxious to get rid of his find," Special Agent Guy Spaman said. "We haven't had a chance to go through much of the stuff, but so far we haven't found more than 15 cents in actual U.S. money value," he continued. "Whether some of the foreign coins might be worth more than their face value, I don't know." Felony Angle What interests the Feds, and they figure McFarland should be interested, too. Possession of coinlike pieces of metal that could be used in a coin machine is a felony. In fact, they theorize that somebody who operates such machines probably buried the collection of slugs and coins to make sure they didn't show up in his coin machines again. "Nobody said he couldn't dig any more," Spaman said. "But if he finds that type of mutilated coins or coin shapes again, the law remains the same."

In the Theaters -- March 5, 1918

Trouble Was His Business -- Raymond Chandler

Feb. 19, 1939: "The Big Sleep," reviewed in The Times by Wilbur Needham, a name Chandler might have used for one of his characters. Needham and his wife, Ida, operated Needham Book Finders at 2317 Westwood Blvd. Note: To mark the 50th anniversary of Raymond Chandler's death, the Daily Mirror is revisiting some of The Times' stories about his life and influence. We invite the Daily Mirror's readers to share their thoughts.

Rediscovering George Garner, March 5, 1939

From The Times, Feb. 12, 1933.

Seven lines of type in the March 5, 1939, issue of The Times unspooled into quite a story. If the beginning of the tale is a bit unclear, the end is even more enigmatic. All we're left with is the great middle. The focus of our story is the Rev. George Robert Garner III, who achieved so many firsts in his lifetime that it's remarkable so little has been written about him: Garner was the first African American to solo with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, c. 1927. He was the first African American teacher in Pasadena. He was the first African American lead in a production at the Pasadena Playhouse. According to a 1933 interview in The Times, Garner was born in Chicago and his father was the longtime butler of the Timothy Blackstone household. According to a 1932 Time magazine feature, Garner sold papers, worked as a bellhop and sang in the choir at Olivet Baptist Church as a young man. Although Garner was clearly talented, his father opposed a career in music, insisting instead on something more practical. Garner eloped with a young musician (presumably pianist Netta Paullyn/Paullyin Garner) and eventually won the financial support of Mrs. Blackstone and other arts patrons so that he was able to study in England for six years. By 1933, Garner had arrived in Pasadena. The next year, he became the first African American to star in a production at the Pasadena Playhouse, "Finder's Luck," by Alice Haines Baskin. By that time he had established the George Garner Negro Chorus, which performed concerts at the Rose Bowl and took part in the first performances of a choral symphony by David Broekman titled "Harlem Heab'n." The chorus was also recognized for performances at expositions in San Diego and San Francisco. Garner also began the Negro Music Research Foundation, 470 Blake St., Pasadena. Unfortunately, The Times wrote very little about it except to say that the goal was to preserve spirituals. The group later opened a center at 440 N. Westmoreland, Los Angeles. According to a 1938 article in The Times, Garner received a bachelor's degree in music education at USC and became Pasadena's first African American teacher. There's very little about him in The Times in the 1940s except that he led an interracial chorus that performed Dubois' "Seven Last Words of Christ" for Palm Sunday, 1947. The Times critic described Garner as "one of the city's outstanding Negro choral directors." Interesting enough, by 1949, he appears as the Rev. George Robert Garner III in The Times, which says he was regional director of the National Assn. of Negro Musicians. He delivered the invocation at a 1953 Republican fundraiser and campaigned in Illinois for the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket. In the 1950s, he was music critic and arts editor for the Los Angeles Sentinel, a weekly serving the African American community, and the conductor of an interfaith chorus sponsored by the Pasadena YMCA.  He was also a leader in the Los Angeles County Forum Lyceum. In 1959, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors honored him as executive vice president of the George Garner Music Research Center of Pasadena. He was also recognized as the founder of the Pasadena Assn. for the Study of Negro Life and History, which was founded in 1937 and met at First Methodist Church, 500 E. Colorado Blvd. What became of him after that is unclear. California death records list a George R. Garner dying Jan. 8, 1971, but it's not certain if this is the same man. The only current reference I can find is a chapter of the National Assn. of Negro Musicians in Altadena that's named for him. One nice thing about history blogging is that questions can be open-ended. I've asked the Chicago Symphony Orchestra about Garner's historic performance and I'll be interested to see what else turns up. And then there's the citations at the Pasadena Public Library. If I get a chance I'll take a look and see if I can fill in some of the blanks.

Found on EBay -- Tick Tock Restaurant

This postcard of the Tick Tock restaurant, onetime Los Angeles landmark at 1716 N. Cahuenga, has been listed on EBay. Bidding starts at $5.99.

Voices -- Horton Foote, 1916 - 2009

Photograph by Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times Horton Foote at New York's Booth Theatre, where his "Dividing the Estate" was being performed, Oct. 11, 2008. Horton Foote: "I Stick With It" * Theater * The playwright, 86, keeps very busy and has won a new fan at SCR, where his 'Getting Frankie Married' world-premieres. March 29, 2002 By MIKE BOEHM, TIMES STAFF WRITER Horton Foote achieved his first great success in the theater by laying on the histrionics. That was some 70 years ago, when he was a schoolboy from Wharton, Texas, competing in a statewide drama contest. The play, he recalls, was about three college roommates. He was the one with the bad drug habit. "He needed a fix, and I remember [performing] this catastrophic breakdown onstage," Foote recalled. "When it was all over, the judges called my teacher over and said, 'Is that boy afflicted, or is that acting?.' She said it was acting, so they gave me first prize." Somewhere along the line, Foote changed his tack. By his mid-20s he had concluded that writing, not acting, was his true calling. And since 1940, when his first play was produced, he has secured a niche as an admired, Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist who eschews stage histrionics and invites audiences to absorb the subtle, detailed ebb and flow of life in Harrison, Texas, the fictional small town modeled on Wharton where his stories unfold. On March 14, Foote spent a chunk of his 86th birthday at New York City's Lincoln Center, where his play "The Carpetbagger's Children" was in rehearsals for its New York premiere this week. After the opening, he was planning to take a day off, then fly to Costa Mesa in time for tonight's first preview performance of another new play, "Getting Frankie Married-and Afterwards," at South Coast Repertory. "I love the theater, and I'm always there" when a major production is gearing up, Foote said over the phone recently from a New York hotel room. "I'm sure I'm a bother, but there I am. I stick with it." Foote is five months younger than his more famous, and similarly still productive peer, Arthur Miller. But Foote has a four-year head start on Miller when it comes to getting plays produced: Miller's debut didn't come until 1944, with "The Man Who Had All the Luck." (Miller's next play, "Resurrection Blues," opens Aug. 9 at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapollis.) Foote has written more than 60 plays. He won the Pulitzer for his 1994 drama, "The Young Man From Atlanta." He won Oscars for his adaptation of Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" and his original screenplay for "Tender Mercies." He won an Emmy for his TV adaptation of William Faulkner's story "Old Man." In 2000, President Clinton awarded him a National Medal of Arts. And now, finally, he has stuck with it long enough to see one of his plays produced on a major Southern California stage. Overlooked in Southland Until a New Fan Emerges His work has been done occasionally here in small theaters. But until South Coast Repertory secured the world premiere of "Getting Frankie Married," the area's leading resident companies-including the Mark Taper Forum, Ahmanson Theatre and Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, the Globe Theatres and La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego County and the Laguna Playhouse, Pasadena Playhouse and South Coast itself-had been pitching a career shutout against Foote. Martin Benson, the South Coast artistic director and director of "Getting Frankie Married," acknowledges having overlooked Foote until the playwright's agent sent the "Frankie" script about 18 months ago. Benson went for it immediately. Now he is reading his way through the Foote oeuvre, with an eye toward producing more of his scripts--"The Trip to Bountiful," which was made into a movie with Geraldine Page in 1985, is a leading candidate. "I'm a great admirer of his now," said Benson, who spent time in Wharton with Foote, meeting some of the townsfolk and soaking up the atmosphere in hopes of capturing some essence of small-town Texas onstage in Orange County "Maybe one reason he's not produced as much as he should be is that sometimes his plays seem simplistic on the page. You can think, 'Oh, rural America' and that it's oversimplified and a cliche. But when you get up to act them, they're incredibly rich, with enormous depths. That's been my discovery with this play." Foote wrote "Getting Frankie Married" around 1990, the year in which the play is set. One reason it may not have been produced until now is that it requires a cast of 12--a huge number for a contemporary play. Its central figures are Fred Willis, a wealthy, 43-year-old landowner, and Frankie Lewis, the girlfriend he has been stringing along for more than 20 years. Frankie is a wife in all but name and an object of small-town gossip. Fred makes a series of choices-motivated, he thinks, by love and honor-that turn out horribly for him. Foote rates Fred as perhaps the saddest character he has ever drawn. "That last moment is certainly very moving. to me. There's nobody there to comfort him, and he has to struggle through it for himself." Although Southern California has been a tough nut for Foote to crack in terms of productions, it was, long ago, the seedbed for his theater career. After winning schoolboy laurels for his acting in Texas, he managed to get his reluctant parents" approval of his plan to skip college and get more theatrical training. They wouldn't countenance his going to New York--"They thought it was a wicked place"--so he headed West and enrolled in the Pasadena Playhouse's acting conservatory. Foote said s the event that shaped him most in Pasadena--apart from having his Texas accent whitewashed in elocution lessons--was the touring production of "Hedda Gabler" he attended in Los Angeles on his 18th birthday with his visiting grandmother. Eva Le Gallienne's performance enraptured him, and he came back to see "A Doll's House" and "The Master Builder," the other plays the noted actress was performing in repertory. "It really rocked me," Foote recalled. "I'd had this sense of 'Maybe I'll end up in the movies.' This made me go to New York to be a [stage] actor." In New York, Foote began writing plays as well as acting in them. "Texas Town," staged in 1941, won a rave from New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson who loved Foote's writing but panned his acting. Writing became his focus. Foote said he is searching these days for his next idea, making notes and hoping inspiration will take hold. "There's something I've been thinking about for 20 years, searching for a way to do it," he said. He declines to elaborate because "I think it's death to talk about something when you're working on it."