{"id":3410,"date":"2023-02-07T18:53:46","date_gmt":"2023-02-07T18:53:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/?p=3410"},"modified":"2026-08-31T18:23:51","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T18:23:51","slug":"the-pain-snob-a-jerry-stahl-retrospective-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/07\/the-pain-snob-a-jerry-stahl-retrospective-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pain Snob: A Jerry Stahl Retrospective, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Jerry Stahl by Robin Muccari<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

**Author\u2019s Note: I would like to state upfront that this retrospective of Jerry Stahl\u2019s life and career was done completely without his participation. I\u2019m simply a massive fan of his and since there isn\u2019t another complete chronological examination of his life and work, I figured I\u2019d go ahead and fill that void as best as I could. This retrospective was written entirely with the aid of all the cited sources<\/a>, and I wish to thank and acknowledge everyone, Jerry Stahl especially, for their work.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

TV Junkie (1985-1992)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of the details of Jerry Stahl\u2019s life during the time period that\u2019s about to be explored, along with the years that have already been covered, have previously been thoroughly conveyed by Stahl himself in Permanent Midnight. <\/em>For the purposes of this piece, we\u2019ll go relatively light on his personal life from this point on so we can pay more attention to the work itself. It should also be noted, however, that it is hard to pinpoint what, exactly, Stahl\u2019s contributions were to the scripts he was credited for co-writing during this next time period of focus, as he claims that he was constantly fired and rewritten. Not to mention, his then-heavy drug use has since made it next to impossible for him to remember such details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After his adventures in porn, Stahl found himself still working as a journalist. He semi-regularly wrote for\/was published by Playboy<\/em> from 1984-1992. While working for Playboy, <\/em>he conducted interviews (his experience in interviewing Mickey Rourke in 1987 is hilariously detailed in Permanent Midnight<\/em>), wrote essays (he recalled his Caf\u00e9 Flesh<\/em> experiences with a 1985 article, Caf\u00e9 Flesh and Me: Confessions of a Cult King, which is quoted in this piece), and had short stories\/chapters from early rejected books published (I\u2019m Dick Felder! <\/em>and Finnegan\u2019s Waikiki <\/em>were published by the magazine in the late \u201880s and later appeared in Stahl\u2019s short story collection, Love Without<\/em>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though his drug use continued to increase, Stahl remained a productive professional for as long as he could. \u201cHe never missed a deadline,\u201d said Stahl\u2019s Playboy <\/em>editor, Stephen Randall, \u201cAt some level, I always knew [he had a drug problem]. But I had no idea he was that tormented.\u201d1<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jerry Stahl<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Stahl\u2019s credit for co-writing Caf\u00e9 Flesh <\/em>wound up opening some doors for him in Hollywood. A script reader who was Stahl\u2019s soon-to-be first wife saw the film and was impressed enough by its originality that she introduced him to Tom Patchett, an established television producer and writer who helped introduce Stahl to the industry by bringing him on board a show on which he was then working. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stahl received his first network television writing credit for the NBC series, You Again?<\/em>, which was created by Eric Chappell and centers on a conservative divorcee (Jack Klugman) whose teenage son (John Stamos) moves back home. Typical for Hollywood, Patchett was soon fired from the project and Stahl was left to deal with the brash and difficult Klugman on his own. Stahl was credited for writing two episodes of the short-lived series in 1986, titled Bad Apples <\/em>(in which Klugman tries to enroll Stamos in a private school) and Enid Quits <\/em>(in which Klugman\u2019s longtime housekeeper quits).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stahl\u2019s next television writing credit, also in 1986, would go on to haunt his professional life and public reputation in the years to come\u2014so much so that people would often mistake him for the show\u2019s creator. Co-created by Patchett along with Paul Fusco, ALF <\/em>was a hit NBC series about a wise-cracking alien whose ship crashes into the home of an all-American family. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stahl\u2019s first ALF <\/em>episode (which ran over a hundred pages in his first draft\u2014roughly four times the length of a regular sitcom) was titled Don\u2019t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue? <\/em>The unintentionally creepy episode centers on the presumably adult-aged ALF\u2019s romantic infatuation with the household\u2019s teenage girl, Lynn (Andrea Elson). The furry alien even goes so far as to ask her mother (Anne Schedeen) for advice on how to hook up with her underage daughter. Schedeen does, at least, express some reservations: \u201cI don\u2019t like the idea of ALF having a crush on our daughter, \u201dshe says to her husband, \u201cI\u2019d like to be able to show people pictures of our grandchildren.\u201d2<\/sup> As was often the case with \u201880s entertainment, everything in the episode is delivered with a na\u00efve and, on the surface, wholesome innocence that is seemingly unaware of how wholly inappropriate it actually is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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ALF, the bane of Jerry Stahl’s existence<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Stahl went on to be credited for co-writing two more episodes of ALF <\/em>in the following years. Since neither of them carry the same amusingly hidden perversions, they are not as memorable or as noteworthy as his first. 1987\u2019s La Cuckaracha sees ALF battling an oversized cockroach from his home planet. \u201cYou\u2019re angry at the world, I can feel it,\u201d ALF tries to sympathize with the creature, \u201cYou probably didn\u2019t get enough love as a larva.\u201d3<\/sup> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1989\u2019s Mind Games <\/em>is a comparatively dull episode that centers on ALF\u2019s attempts at becoming the family\u2019s in-house psychiatrist. It\u2019s possible, upon close inspection, to find some potential insight into Stahl\u2019s strong dislike of psychotherapy with such lines as, \u201cCarl Jung was a big weenie head.\u201d4<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the middle of his time writing for ALF<\/em>, Stahl also contributed to Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick\u2019s ABC drama series about the travails of white middle-class Philadelphians, Thirtysomething<\/em>. The show was about as far from Stahl\u2019s artistic tastes as he could get. His first credit, 1988\u2019s appropriately titled Born to Be Mild, <\/em>centers on the horrifically vanilla dilemma of characters who have to choose between their weekend plans and babysitting. In 1989, Stahl was also credited for contributing to the story for an episode titled Politics, which centers on two characters who go to work for a potentially shady politician.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1989, Stahl was credited for co-writing two episodes of creator Glen Gordon Caron\u2019s ABC comedic detective series, Moonlighting<\/em>, starring Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepard. Plastic Fantastic Lovers <\/em>centers on a mystery surrounding a character\u2019s botched plastic surgery procedure, which makes him, in his words, a \u201cprisoner in my own house. Reviled by family and friends, set apart from the rest of humanity.\u201d5<\/sup> Though it\u2019s hard to be certain, the phrase \u201ccloset kinkoid\u201d and thoughtfully observant lines such as \u201cYou men\u2026 You always want to put us on a pedestal or down in the gutter\u201d and \u201cOur culture treats aging as if it were some kind of illness\u201d5<\/sup> seem to come directly from Stahl\u2019s hand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stahl’s next Moonlighting <\/em>episode, Perfetc, centers on a dying criminal who involves Willis and Shepard in the story behind a twenty-five-year-old \u201cperfect\u201d crime. The episode examines fame and the desire to be remembered. \u201cMaking your mark, being immortalized\u201d and the \u201creal accomplishment\u201d6<\/sup> of celebrity are what the criminal is seeking above all else. Stahl would also serve as a story editor for seven other episodes of the series. Despite his lack of interest and his increasingly drug-addled state at the time, Stahl\u2019s lively writing style was actually a good fit for Moonlighting <\/em>and its reliance on snappy dialogue exchanges and clever wordplay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly before Perfetc aired, Stahl became a father for the first time when his then-wife delivered their daughter at the end of March 1989.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1989 was, needless to say, a busy and important year for Stahl. The third and, to date, final feature-film collaboration between Stahl and Stephen Sayadian was released late in the year. Since this production was R-rated, this was their first collaboration where they were credited with their real names. Though Dr. Caligari <\/em>wouldn\u2019t have quite the same impact as their early \u201880s surrealist hard-core efforts, Nightdreams <\/em>and Caf\u00e9 Flesh<\/em>, the film still managed to make its mark with cult audiences and wound up being a low-budget success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dr. Caligari<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The project came about after Sayadian collaborated on a dream sequence for director George A. Romero\u2019s 1988 horror film, Monkey Shines<\/em>. A producer saw his work, liked it, and offered Sayadian $200,000 to make a Dr. Caligari movie. Though Sayadian initially wasn\u2019t interested, he eventually thought of a way to make it work and agreed to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Sayadian\u2019s updated interpretation, Dr. Caligari (a commanding Madeleine Reynal) is now the granddaughter of the original titular character from the 1920 classic, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari<\/em>. Like her grandfather before her, Sayadian\u2019s Dr. Caligari is brilliantly mad and also performs outrageous experiments on her patients. \u201cThere is only one reality,\u201d she proclaims, \u201cand I write the laws.\u201d7<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The primary focus of the film centers on Caligari\u2019s mind-swapping of a cannibalistic serial killer (John Durbin) and a nymphomaniac housewife (Laura Albert). To what end isn\u2019t entirely clear, but bothering with such logic only misses the point. Dr. Caligari<\/em> (originally released as Dr. Caligari 3000 <\/em>in theaters but later shortened for video) is as challenging and nightmarishly abstract as Stahl and Sayadian\u2019s previous collaborations. It doesn\u2019t go quite as far in its depictions of graphic and perverse sexuality, but the film is still as bold and unsettling as the previous works. Though slightly more narrative-driven this time around, Dr. Caligari<\/em> is still sometimes difficult to follow. If you surrender to its fragmented dream logic without trying to make too much sense out of it, however, it\u2019s a highly rewarding film on a daringly experimental level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Sayadian\u2019s other films, the \u2018storyline\u2019 isn\u2019t nearly as important as the film\u2019s mood, atmosphere, visual aesthetics, and overall tone. Dr. Caligari<\/em> is set within a world of colorfully expressionistic\u2014though equally minimalistic\u2014sets and costumes that make it resemble an adult-oriented episode of Pee Wee\u2019s Playhouse <\/em>or an \u201880s rock video on a bad acid trip. There\u2019s a colorfully low-budget Tim Burton\/Federico Fellini feeling to the film that is often offset when the dream-like visuals become absurdly stomach-churning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film\u2019s many bizarre, surreal, and\/or sexually disturbing moments involve such things as transitions that feel like they were taken directly from Eraserhead<\/em>, a grown man in a baby mask having sexual intercourse with Albert\u2019s insatiable housewife after deeply cutting her wrist with a straight razor, a woman proudly showing off absurdly enlarged breasts that are longer than her arms, Durbin\u2019s deranged cannibal getting off on an Electro Convulsion Therapy session, Albert encountering a grotesquely large and fleshy entity with protruding and sexualized tongues sliding their way out of oozing orifices, the inexplicable scalding of Albert while she performs a hand job on a lifelike scarecrow, the slicing of a blood-and-organ-filled birthday cake, Albert anally penetrating a screaming man with an elongated growth on her arm, and, last but not least, the mind swapping operation performed by Dr. Caligari by way of large needles being stuck into her patients\u2019 restrained foreheads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dr. Caligari<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sayadian credits Stahl for writing a long monologue in which Durbin\u2019s cannibal goes into a disturbingly detailed account of his experience in turning a woman into stew: “Her face kind of floated on top of the stew, you know, kind of like a lotus blossom. I seen one on a calendar once. Her face just floated\u2026 lookin\u2019 up at me with them maraschino cherry eyes. You don\u2019t think I\u2019d boil her peepers, do you? Kind doctor, sauteed is the only way to serve an eyeball.\u201d7<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sayadian also credits Stahl for writing what he refers to as \u201cdreamland\u201d8<\/sup> dialogue. \u201c[Stahl] was really great at writing dream language,\u201d8<\/sup> Sayadian has said, though he also admitted that this probably had as much to do with Stahl\u2019s drug use at the time as it did his talent. Dreamy and surreal dialogue like the following passage delivered by Durbin after the brain swap is indicative of the consistent unreality and disconnected haze that occurs during a life dependent on heavy drug use: \u201cI see my face and I think, \u2018Who is that stranger? Whose eyes are these? Are these hands connected to him?\u2019 And the worst part, the worst part\u2026? Where\u2019s the rest of me?\u201d7<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though Dr. Caligari<\/em> never found more than a small cult audience, Sayadian knew from past experiences how to turn a profit with a smaller film. He went to Toronto to sell the film in different markets and managed to collect $750,000 in deals, almost four times the original budget of the independently-produced film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stahl\u2019s next television credit was in June of 1990 for a co-story (along with teleplay writer Karen Hall) contribution to a quirky, Twin Peaks<\/em>-esque series set in a small Alaskan town called Northern Exposure<\/em>. Stahl\u2019s credited episode centers on lead Rob Morrow\u2019s doctor character inheriting a 140-acre forest estate from one of his deceased patients. The charming episode, titled Soapy Sanderson, lacks all signs of Stahl\u2019s personal touch, particularly with lines he would more than likely never write on his own such as, \u201cBoring women get a bad rap. There\u2019s a lot to be said for boring women.\u201d9<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stahl next briefly worked on the short-lived, Richard Grieco-starring 21 Jump Street <\/em>spin-off, B<\/em>ooker, <\/em>but he never received any credit for it. The co-creator of that series, Eric Blakeney, brought Stahl on board the next project for which he was a showrunner, Uncle Somebody. <\/em>This intended series reunited Stahl with the man who helped get his foot in the television industry’s door, ALF <\/em>co-creator Tom Patchett. The show was set to star Charles Fleischer, an actor best known for voicing Roger Rabbit, as a man who forms fourteen different personalities after getting hit on the head. Studio bosses, however, eventually forced the creative team to par it down to two personalities out of fear of appearing like they were making fun of the mentally ill. Stahl left the project after Blakeney was fired. Uncle Somebody <\/em>never made it past the initial script development stages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stahl\u2019s next television writing credit came in late 1990 and was for Twin Peaks,<\/em> David Lynch and Mark Frost\u2019s hit surreal, genre-bending mystery series that aired on ABC and is set in a small Northwestern town. Though Stahl felt that working on a Lynch production \u201cwas as close to dream-come-true as I had ever hoped to get in this hoary industry,\u201d10<\/sup> his drug problem was then raging and, for perhaps the first time that it truly mattered to him, it got in the way of his work. Stahl failed to complete his assigned script by its given deadline and, by different accounts, turned in a few disorderly pages that had hair and blood stuck to them. Stahl\u2019s then-agent at CAA was less than pleased. Stahl miraculously still received a credit on the episode, whose writing was also credited to series regulars Frost, Harley Peyton, and Robert Engels. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Years later, when Stahl had years of sobriety behind him, he got the chance to work with Lynch again, only this time as an actor with a brief appearance in the filmmaker\u2019s 2006 surreal digital epic, Inland Empire. <\/em>Luckily, on Lynch\u2019s part, there seemed to be no hard feelings about the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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David Lynch, one of the few people in Hollywood with whom Stahl wanted to work<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After Twin Peaks<\/em>, Stahl received his last screenwriting credit for some time. The short-lived Shades of LA <\/em>centers on a police detective (John D\u2019Aquino) who can communicate with the spirits of the dead after surviving a near-death experience. Stahl received a co-writing credit in late 1990 for an episode titled Pointers from Paz, which centers on D\u2019Aquino trying to restore the reputation of a fallen fellow officer who was believed to be corrupt. Though Stahl briefly met with Wes Craven about his short-lived series, Nightmare Caf\u00e9, <\/em>his work never amounted to anything for which he was credited. It would be well over a decade before Stahl\u2019s name appeared in another movie or television series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few years after his initial run as a television scriptwriter, Stahl commented, \u201cCreativity is the opposite of TV. Creativity means sounding like yourself. TV means sounding like whoever wrote the pilot.\u201d11  <\/sup>He also stated, \u201cI was pathetically naive about caring. So, you pour yourself into a script and there’s a guy or a woman whose only job is to change every word you’ve written, so your name is on the script and the show is on the air and you’re mortified. I have a different attitude now, but that’s how I was. Perhaps the word is pretentious. Perhaps the word is stupid.”1<\/sup> Stahl\u2019s stance on screenwriting would, indeed, soften and evolve in the years to come when he would actually seem to enjoy making a very decent living at it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stahl made multiple failed attempts to get off drugs around the time of his last \u201890s television credit. As detailed in Permanent Midnight<\/em>, when Stahl was in his late thirties, he went through the humiliation of working at a McDonald\u2019s as part of his rehabilitation program. Stahl, needless to say, didn\u2019t exactly gel with the golden arch work setting or the teenage coworkers who openly thought he was mentally handicapped. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stahl continued battling with sobriety until he successfully kicked drugs in the spring of 1992 while he was staying in the garage of his colleague and friend, Eric Blakeney (whose 2000 film, Gun Shy, <\/em>would feature Stahl in a small acting role). Though he had brief relapses afterward, Stahl never again fell as deep into addiction as he had throughout the \u201870s, \u201880s, and into the beginning of the \u201890s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hating With Love (1992-1995)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now primarily sober, Stahl had next to nothing. Drugs had destroyed his security, his career, his marriage, and, for a short period of time, his relationship with his then-toddler daughter. In the summer of 1992, Jerry Stahl had nowhere to go but up. The television industry wasn\u2019t exactly knocking down his door, anymore, so he slowly returned to conducting essays, articles, and interviews for a variety of publications. Amongst other things, he did celebrity articles for Los Angeles <\/em>magazine, an ongoing column in Details <\/em>that ran into the 2000s, and celebrity columns for Esquire <\/em>and Outer Limits<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most important, however, was a piece that Stahl wrote about his own life. Stahl had been living in what he describes as a crack house across the street from Musso & FrankGrill on Hollywood Boulevard. While going to the bathroom across the street one day, he ran into an old editor friend who worked for L.A. Style <\/em>magazine and asked him what he\u2019d been up to. After describing his recent travails, the friend was fascinated and encouraged Stahl to write about his experiences. Though it was rejected twenty-eight times by other publications, Stahl\u2019s relatively brief account of maintaining his heroin addiction while writing for television and trying to appear as a semi-normal family man was eventually published by L.A. Style<\/em> for their September 1992 issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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L.A. Style Naked Brunch piece<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The piece was titled Naked Brunch: My Rough Ride on the Low Road of Hacking for TV and Mainlining Heroin. Permanent Midnight <\/em>fans should be interested to know that direct passages from the article later found their way into the book. Stahl opens the article with a darkly humorous description of shooting up in the ALF <\/em>offices\u2019 bathroom and hallucinating the alien puppet\u2019s angry disapproval of him: \u201cOh Christ! I hear him! That rabid puppet! That prime-time hairball. Fucking ALF is out there! He knows I\u2019m messing up his script. And he\u2019s not happy\u2026 He doesn\u2019t want me shooting up in his studio. This is a family show, a wholesome romp.\u201d1<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stahl then tries to explain himself in the article, \u201cThe thing is, all my heroes were junkies. Lenny Bruce, Keith Richards, William Burroughs, Miles Davis, Hubert Selby Jr\u2026. All these guys were cool. They were committed. They would not have been caught dead writing an \u2018ALF\u2019 episode\u2026 It was clear, a man would have to imbibe something on a regular basis to suffer this kind of success. If I wanted to make it in television, I sensed without knowing, I\u2019d just have to roll up my sleeves\u2026\u201d1<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stahl also reveals in the piece that his then-snootiness towards his then-vocation led to a defiant attitude that only allowed his drug addiction to worsen: \u201cBy the time I hit prime-time level, I had this bad habit (no pun intended) of spraying a jumbo bloody Z on the tiles of whatever TV show I happened to be shooting up in. Kind of like an intravenous Zorro. It was, I suppose, my way of saying, \u2018Just because I happen to be here, writing an episode of \u2018thirtysomething,\u2019 that doesn\u2019t make me ONE OF YOU REEBOK PEOPLE.\u201d1<\/sup> Stahl goes on to confess, \u201cThere is, as any sane man can imagine, no real advantage to succeeding at something you loathe.\u201d1<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The piece also sheds light on the then-severity of Stahl\u2019s addiction: \u201cI was so far gone on the needle I\u2019d go through nightly withdrawals, sweat through layer upon layer of sheets, towels, shirts and anything else I used to try and staunch the flow. Even if I could get to sleep, the shakes would wake me up again after a couple of hours. I\u2019d have to shoot up again and slink back to bed.\u201d1<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The candid and wickedly hilarious voice behind Naked Brunch wound up gaining enough attention that it led to Stahl starting work on a memoir about his drug-fueled life up to that point. Though he was still struggling personally and professionally, he was unknowingly on the path to success again and, this time around, he\u2019d finally be in the mental state to thrive with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fighting to stay sober during this period, Stahl went so far as to attend AA meetings, something he previously had open disdain towards. At these meetings, Stahl met someone whose work he had greatly admired since his teenage years and who went on to have a profound impact on both his work and his private life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hubert Selby Jr.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Nicknamed Cubby, Hubert Selby Jr. was the author of such classics as Last Exit to Brooklyn, The Room, <\/em>and Requiem for a Dream. <\/em>In meeting his literary hero, Stahl recalls, \u201cI said, \u2018Hey man, it\u2019s really weird meeting you because\u2026 your book was like the first one I ever, like, jerked off to.\u2019 And he said, \u2018Man, you\u2019re sicker than I thought. What part?\u2019\u201d2<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Selby profoundly challenged Stahl\u2019s attitudes and beliefs and, at the end of the day, served as a positive influence on the still-struggling Stahl. Stahl stated, \u201cI always believed that clich\u00e9 that you had to be completely fucked up to write about fucked up stuff. And that was completely life-changing for me, to meet Hubert Selby Jr., realize that he was this, in his own tough, wiry badass way, a spiritual giant and, moreover, he explained the key thing to me, that both put me at ease and scared the shit out of me, which was, \u2018Hey, man, once you get off dope and the alcohol, that\u2019s when you realize how really dark you are,\u2019 because there\u2019s no buffer between it and you.\u201d2 <\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Selby offered what was, perhaps, his most invaluable advice after Stahl showed him the early pages of Permanent Midnight<\/em>: \u201cHe was very generous when I was writing Permanent Midnight <\/em>and I remember I showed him the first section\u2026 He said, \u2018You know, it\u2019s really great but one thing I would advise you to do\u2026 make sure that when you write about the people you hate, that you write about them with love.\u2019\u201d2  <\/sup>Stahl showed his gratitude for Selby\u2019s advice by dedicating Permanent Midnight <\/em>to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly after meeting Selby, Stahl wrote a profile about him for Spin <\/em>magazine. During this time, when he was also working on Permanent Midnight<\/em>, Stahl briefly fell off the wagon and Selby spotted it instantly during an interview, laughed it off, and even gave him $40 for his next score. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Selby went on to show Stahl a great deal of support over the years of their friendship, even going so far as to supply promotional blurbs for Stahl\u2019s first couple of published books. Selby would be an irreplaceable figure in Stahl\u2019s life up to and after his passing in April of 2004.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No doubt on edge with his, once again, sober state, Stahl threw himself into writing what eventually became Permanent Midnight. <\/em>His first draft, typed on a cheap Australian knockoff of a Macbook, was unknowingly misspaced and came in at a hefty 1300 pages. Upon the completion of an early draft, Stahl got an agent who tried to sell it as a Julia Phillips\/You\u2019ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again\/<\/em>Hollywood insider type of book. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a year of waiting, Stahl eventually let the agent go and sold the book to Warner Bros. Publications. Though they eventually helped make the book an enormous success, Warner Bros. editors first had to cut the manuscript down to less than a third of its original length. Stahl explained, \u201cHuge chunks of Permanent Midnight <\/em>were about just being a more-or-less-homeless sleazeball dope fiend in LA, but hundreds of pages had to be cut, and those were the pages. So my small run as a strung-out TV writer became the focus of the book.\u201d3<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Permanent Midnight cover<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In reading or writing about Permanent Midnight<\/em>\u2014or any of Stahl\u2019s books, for that matter\u2014it\u2019s important to remember that the work almost always speaks for itself. Though Stahl claims to work almost entirely on gut instinct and emotion when he writes, there are still very specific events, ideas, themes, and feelings in his work that have the appearance of having been intellectually scrutinized by the author. Many of these elements would find their way into Stahl\u2019s writing over and over again in the years to come. Permanent Midnight<\/em>, first published in 1995, is where they all began. It laid the foundation on which Stahl\u2019s true artistic voice was built (at least for the public to see). Everything that came after it is a result and an extension of it. Without the success of Permanent Midnight, <\/em>Jerry Stahl\u2019s wholly individualistic voice may have never found its way into the world unfettered and uncompromised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Permanent Midnight <\/em>is about drugs and Hollywood, sure. The hook of the book as it was released is that it combines the sordid details of hard drug addiction with a frank, gossipy, and devilishly entertaining insider\u2019s take on what goes on behind the scenes in show business. All the details are all the more accessible and amusing because they are conveyed by Stahl\u2019s frank, astute, and darkly hilarious voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Past the Hollywood tell-all aspects and the amusingly dangerous drug tales, however, Permanent Midnight <\/em>is, like the majority of Stahl\u2019s work, ultimately about pain. It\u2019s about \u201ca lifetime spent altering the single niggling fact that to be alive means being conscious.\u201d4 <\/sup>It examines the inescapable \u201csense of difference, of being an outsider, that permeates all memory.\u201d4  <\/sup>It provides painfully truthful details that, as Stahl writes, \u201cmake me want to pluck my eyes out and pound dirt in the sockets. There are stories you don\u2019t want to tell, and there are stories that scald your brainpan right down to the tongue at the mere thought of uttering.\u201d4<\/sup> It\u2019s a book, perhaps above all else, about being \u201ccrippled inside.\u201d4 <\/sup>Stahl acknowledges in the book that his writing must face such pain head-on because, \u201cIf it hurts\u2014if I don\u2019t want to say it\u2014then it must be true. That\u2019s the only compass I have.\u201d4<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book provides great insight into Stahl\u2019s lingering pain over the troubles of his early family life. \u201cMy father. My father. I never thought of him. I never stopped,\u201d Stahl writes, \u201cMy father who I have not let myself miss.\u201d4<\/sup>  He also relays painful details of his \u201cterminally tormented\u201d mother who would \u201clay in bed in the dark for much of my childhood.\u201d4<\/sup> Stahl\u2019s early family life ultimately \u201cbred guilt as inherently as love.\u201d4<\/sup> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stahl also relays his hesitations and concerns about being so candid about the loved ones in his life: \u201cthis book is going to kill [my mother]. This book is going to push her over the edge\u2026 but so help me I don\u2019t know what else to do. Not writing it is going to kill me.\u201d4<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Permanent Midnight<\/em>, needless to say, also explores the many painful realities of a hardcore drug addict. It contains numerous stories of Stahl trying unsuccessfully to quit heroin, complete with accounts of withdrawals and visits to methadone clinics. In the grasp of addiction, Stahl writes that he viewed \u201clife as a process of substituting fixes.\u201d4<\/sup> Drugs provided him with the numbness he needed to feel what other people would describe as happiness or normalcy: \u201cthere was all kinds of love floating around me, but it took the dose of opiates to let it out.\u201d4<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of the book\u2019s grittier aspects downplay the importance or the effect of its wickedly hilarious, straightforward, and insightful observations about show business, however. In Permanent Midnight<\/em>, Stahl describes Hollywood as a place where \u201cpeople are always offering you things. And as soon as they\u2019re mentioned\u2014even if the idea never occurred to you before\u2014you feel like you really want them.\u201d4<\/sup> Stahl\u2019s unflattering portrayals of many of his colleagues\u2014from Edward Zwick to Mark Frost\u2014are highly amusing. Stahl\u2019s depictions of such people are oddly refreshing because they lack the standard showbusiness fakeness and forced politeness. Stahl uses the book to describe Hollywood exactly like he saw it and experienced it, just like he did with the other aspects of his life covered within it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Permanent Midnight <\/em>and its success had an extraordinarily positive impact on Stahl\u2019s life and career. Though it took some time, he eventually found himself in a place where he could do the work that most mattered to him while also comfortably supporting himself with writing jobs that weren\u2019t quite as personal. Stahl has few regrets about the book, though he has publicly stated that he wishes he hadn\u2019t named some of the people he is unflattering towards in it. He\u2019s also stated that he doesn\u2019t mind the severe editing that took place between its early drafts and its publication, especially when considering everything the book, as it was published, has done for him. When he recorded narration for the book\u2019s twentieth anniversary, Stahl stated it was hard for him not to cringe because of how much he\u2019s grown and changed\u2014both personally and artistically\u2014since writing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though Permanent Midnight <\/em>is undeniably a bluntly confessional memoir, a hundred percent honesty is never entirely possible for anyone when they\u2019re attempting to write about reality. There are simply too many consequences and too many concerns. No matter how honest Stahl was with his first memoir, there were still things he needed to say and face head-on. If Jerry Stahl was going to be completely honest with himself, he was going to have to write fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Pain Snob continues in part 3<\/a> of 7.

<\/em><<\/a> 1<\/a> 2 3<\/a> 4<\/a> 5<\/a> 6<\/a> 7<\/a> Sources<\/a> ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

**Author\u2019s Note: I would like to state upfront that this retrospective of Jerry Stahl\u2019s life and career was done completely without his participation. I\u2019m simply a massive fan of his and since there isn\u2019t another complete chronological examination of his life and work, I figured I\u2019d go ahead and fill that void as best as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3908,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3410"}],"version-history":[{"count":86,"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4829,"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3410\/revisions\/4829"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}