Out walked Budd

Normally I’d try to wax a little more elo­quent on the passing of the late, great Budd Schulberg, but as I’m cur­rently away from the vast lib­rary of texts and audio-video resources that would nor­mally aid me in such an exer­cise I’m a bit hobbled in that respect. So instead, let me dir­ect you to an intim­ate, admir­ing piece, one that elo­quently notes the wide range of Schulberg’s interests and friend­ships, and one that you might not come across in your travels in the cine­mat­ic blo­go­sphere. (Thanks to read­er Jonathan Hall for point­ing it out to me.) It is worth not­ing that, like Billy Wilder, Schulberg died with his boots on, work­ing away; every couple of years or so there would be word of a pro­ject he was try­ing to get off the ground. Hollywood’s funny like that; it’ll hon­or its “legnds” at awards cere­mon­ies and such to no end, but when it comes to let­ting them actu­ally do what they became legendary for, well, not so much. But like Wilder, like David Lean, Schulberg did­n’t allow him­self to be worn down by a cor­por­ate indif­fer­ence that had to have registered as plain as day­light to him—this IS the author of What Makes Sammy Run? we’re talk­ing about here. He kept on. Which is one of the many parts of his char­ac­ter that made him the real deal.