A Writer's Tale

Recently, a movie trailer (preview) of Resurrection Dreams was filmed by a production company consisting of Clifton Holmes (writer, director, videographer and editor), Dwayne Holmes (sound, videographer, initial funding and assistant editor), and starring Jeff Jacobson as a deliciously strange Melvin. They have taken an option on Resurrection Dreams and are hoping to make a complete film based on Clifton’s screenplay of the book. Their trailer marks the first time (to my knowledge) that anyone has ever filmed anything I’ve ever written. My hat is off to them!

FUNLAND

On September 9, 1987, I finished writing Resurrection Dreams.

On September 10, I wrote the additional 3-page ending for Midnight’s Lair.

On September 11, I started writing Funland.

If I should now write about the unusual events that inspired the writing of Funland, it would amount to a “remake” of an article I wrote at the request of Ed Gorman back at the time that the book was published. The piece appeared in Mystery Scene, Number 24, in 1988. Having just read it, I think the best course of action is to reprint it here complete and unabridged.

FUNLAND: WHERE TRUTH MEETS FICTION AND HITS THE FAN

Funland got its start in 1984 when my career was in the dumper. I was trying to make ends meet and put meat on the table by writing some fiction for young adults. My wife, daughter and I traveled to the Bay Area, where I met with publisher Mel Cebulash of Pitman Learning. After concluding a deal for me to write a series about a trio of spook-busters (the S.O.S. stories for those of you interested in my early stuff), we decided to make a side-trip to Santa Cruz.

I had never been to Santa Cruz. But the place appealed to me for a couple of reasons.

First, a rather large number of random murders had taken place over the years in the regions surrounding that coastal community. Serial killers seemed to be operating in the area, and I’m intrigued by such things. Second, Santa Cruz had a boardwalk (concrete, actually) with one of California’s few surviving old-time amusement parks.

I really like those old, tacky amusement parks. When I was a kid in Chicago, I had some great times at Riverview before it bit the dust. I moved to California too late for Pacific Ocean Park in Venice. By the time I saw POP, it was closed and fenced a ghost park occupied, I understand, by derelicts. I used to stare at the remains, wondering what it would be like to wander at night among the skeletons of its rides, explore its boarded stands, its funhouse. I imagined winos and crazies skulking about its dead midway after dark, taking refuge in the ruins.

I never got to see the Long Beach Pike, another fabled amusement park. But I heard stories about it. A show being filmed there (The Six-Million Dollar Man, I believe), required a chase scene inside the Pike’s funhouse. An actor, dashing along, bumped into one of the dummies put there to frighten folks. Its arm fell off. It wasn’t a dummy, after all. It was a corpse. There’d been a real dead guy in the place, all those years, spooking the funhouse visitors. (Our coroner, Thomas Noguchi, later identified the body as that of an old west outlaw. The mummified remains had been a sideshow exhibit at about the turn of the century. Somewhere along the line, his succession of keepers apparently lost track of the fact that he wasn’t a fake, and stuck him into the funhouse along with the dummies.

All the above, I suppose, is by way of indicating my longtime fascination with those old, tacky amusement parks. To me, they’ve always seemed both romantic and spooky places where anything might happen.

So I was delighted with the chance to visit the amusement park in Santa Cruz. Here was Riverview, Pacific Ocean Park and the Long Beach Pike still in operation!

I got there after making my deal with Mel. And I wasn’t disappointed. This wasn’t Disneyland. This wasn’t Six Flags.

This was the real McCoy. Old, tacky, and great fun.

But teeming with your basic Skid Row types.

During our first evening in Santa Cruz, we were approached by half a dozen ragged beggars.

Trolls, as they were called by some of the area’s residents.

Looking through a local newspaper, my wife discovered an article about the situation.

Apparently, folks were sick of being accosted by the panhandlers. Some vigilante action was going down. Trolls were being stalked, beaten, and given the “bum’s rush” out of town. Mostly at night. Mostly by roving gangs of teenagers. We saw bumper stickers and various other signs supporting the kids, the “trollers.”

Nasty business.

Funland was born.