The Electric Hotel (book)

Pengo’s 2021 Summer Book Club

Last Christmas, my wife presented me with a copy of Dominic Smith’s historical fiction about the origins of the motion picture, The Electric Hotel. The New York Times calls this novel a “highly entertaining work about the act of creation” though by the time the word reached me, she, my wife, claimed it had been called the greatest book on the act of creation, which is to say ever, and that I found hard to believe.

As I have opined previously this summer, I do like works about the art of creation, but only when they are about other media; I like movies about painting, painting about dancing, dance about television, TV about theater, plays about writing, books about movies. But plays about theater are usually self-congratulatory and rife with inside jokes. Movies about movie-making can be awfully sentimental and hagiographic. Television programs about TV, don’t get me started.

There are exceptions, of course, and we all know what those are. But for every Sports Night there is a Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. For every The Player there is Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (don’t get me started on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.)

The greatest film about the art of creation is, of course, Big Night. This small, period film by Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott film is a beautiful tribute to the immigrant American experience and all the dreams and disappointments that it engenders. But it is first and foremost an epic tale about the creation of food, what it signifies, why what we cook and how we cook it is important, never more poignantly exhibited than the single, five-minute closing shot, virtually wordless, which involves the preparation of a simple breakfast of eggs.

Stanley Tucci, Tony Shaloub
"Big Night" (1996)

The Electric Hotel is like two books. One chronicles the very, very early days of cinema, when folks were happy to just watch short clips of cats doing tricks (yes, yes) and how in very short order unconscionable amounts of money were being spent to cobble together fantastic sights to tell stories of beautiful, horrible people. The other book is about the origins of the uses of film as documentary fact and also political propaganda.

The fact that we have not found any new uses for motion pictures in the hundred years since is actually quite demoralizing.

Each tale is presented as prelude to the narrative thread, the rediscovery of these ancient works by a young film historian in the early 1960s. This man is a cipher, it’s not his story and just as well little time is given to him. His presence is a constant reassurance that the films so elegantly described in Smith’s text will not actually be lost to fire, flood, or the natural decomposition of plastic nitrate.

But is it the greatest rumination on the act of creation ever set to paper? Actually, it may be. At least, it excellently represents the chaos of creation. So many biopics or “great man” histories create a familiar origin tale of those who were destined by the universe to become what they eventually, inevitably became. Against all odds! They rise and fall and rise again!

These fictional film makers, impresarios, side show and classical stage performers; they added their piece to the puzzle of how motion pictures work and what they could do with them. But there was no plan, no grand vision for what it would be. Lives are messy, and art is messy, it is only in hindsight that someone else decides whether any of it was worth doing.

DDT-V (revisited)

The DDT-V All-Stars
(Can you spot Doug Dieken?)

Fred kept us honest. Any expression of ego was roundly mocked. We were kids, making a cheap comedy show. 

DDT-V (“Lethal Television”) was created by high school and college students, and broadcast intermittently on our community access channel from 1983 to 1986. It was a collection of sketches, fake news shows, and a lot of commercial parodies.



Fred was the driving force, no matter what any of the rest of us thought. He wrote most of the sketches, did so many of the voice-overs, even appeared in front of the camera a couple times.

After he died from a heart attack two years ago (on my fiftieth birthday, as it happened, thanks, Fred) I came into possession of the archive of our work.

Some of it holds up surprisingly well. And even where the humor is a bit obtuse, at least it has style. We used every square foot of the studio building, went all over Bay Village, hosted an entire episode from a booth in the North Olmsted Denny’s, did a location shot outside Cleveland Municipal Stadium downtown. 

When we held a charity baseball game against the high school faculty to raise funds for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, our team had a ringer in the recently retired Cleveland Browns offensive tackle Doug Dieken.

Cartoon, The Bay Window
March, 1986

Watching these episodes I am able to track my development from a self-conscious freshman to a cocksure senior, which is a blessing and a curse. The one big regret I have, looking back, is that I never wrote anything for the show. That’s not true, I wrote one sketch that was recorded and aired. It’s not great.

I was intimidated. I didn’t know how it was done. Most significantly, I had nothing, at last, to say. I still believe that, at that age, I actually did not have anything of value to say. Or I did not know if I did. Most of what I did write and put out into the world, in the form of op-eds for the weekly high school paper, took the form of snark and grievance.

My editorial cartoons weren’t bad, however. They improved by the year. I suppose there is a lesson in that, that if I had tried to write, at that time, I would eventually come up with something worth being produced.

I guess that is exactly what I have been doing ever since. 

Wishing you creativity and happiness in 2021!

DDT-V Playlist on YouTube

On Waiting

"Ten percent is putting paint onto the canvas. The rest is waiting."
- John Logan, Red

Down East Writing Desk

My preliminary draft of The Bully of Baker Street was written over the course of three, eight-hour days ("'Banker's hours,'" also from Red.) If this is an ordinary accomplishment, I do not know. Like sex, I only know how I do it (I do not know who I am quoting there.) But it was the fastest I have ever created a rough first draft.

Except it's not. Not really. Because I have been writing it in my head for months, writing about it, in journals, on notepads, in discussion with others. I made notes, mapped the plot, turned characters this way and that in my mind, created lists.

Then, when the opportunity presented itself to write, write dialogue, I merely had to follow the plot and plan I had set out for myself. Easy-peasy.

But not complete. Because there are plot holes, there are missing scenes. There are songs to be sung, and puzzles to be crafted.

And we require simplicity. We demand clarity. And these will come. There will be an informal reading August 23. The "official" first read, September 23. Plenty of time.

Currently, we are on vacation. But the work continues. I have written no less than four plays in this location, though it's a bit challenging this year, as there are ten people staying in the cabin. In spite of anyone's best intentions, there are meals to be made, cuts to be cleaned and bandaged, errands to run, loved ones to be served sandwiches, drinks and attention.

Yet, provided a window of opportunity to consider, to edit and to revise, I see today the front porch, these children, these elders, all reading. And I am inspired to read myself.

I pick up Mr. Logan's script.

To be continued.