Year 2 Week #10 or whatever. Arthur Bell - Play, Movie, Comic

First off. If anyones reading this thing. I've decided to only post to one of my blogs a week. Either this one or the food one:

http://theeatingproject.blogspot.com/

I just don't have time with sleepwalkers, School and Cultures of Wonder to do both so I'll only post to this one once every two weeks.

But I'm going to still try and keep up with the idea of working on the projects I posted during the first year in the same order.

So without further ado... the progress I've made on The Arthur Bell project.

First off I came up with the rather bazaar idea a while back that I would incorperate all the real people throughout time who are named Arthur Bell these are the ones I found

The Dancer

The Whiskey Maker

The Botanist

The Radio Personality

The Saint

The Gay Rights Activist

Along these lines I also wrote the following scene about a guy names Arthur Bell (who may be a reincarnation of his namesake) meeting with a sort of immortal mystical hollywood character named "Johnny"

A cafe somewhere on the sunset strip

Arthur sits with a Johnny, a mysterious sort of Showbiz character.

Johnny: Oh this fucking life. How do you live this life? (to the waiter) Scotch please and water. Nothing to eat. Not now maybe later. (back to Arthur) god it’s like all anyone wants to talk about these days is marriage. Brad and Angela “TomKat” and the fucking alien baby of there’s what’s it’s name Sufi or something? No I don’t think Brad and Angela are going to get married I mean their going to marry but their not going to be married you know what I mean. There will be a wedding that’s for sure. I know these people. Brand and Angela and Vince and Jen and whoever else. There all fucking each other. Hell I’ve fucked each one of them and I’m not even good looking. That’s like all these people do. They fuck more than they act. They are fuckers. Anyways… marriage who has time for it? All those shots in the magazine are staged. I know I’ve been there when they shoot them. Those ones with Brad and the little mohawk kid I was there when they shot those. They got that kid from a casting agency that specializes in orphans. Actually the agency adopts orphans but…

Anyways… Arthur Bell that’s what you where asking about yeah haven’t heard that name in a while. Fucking marriage again. His marriage made him. He married well as they say. That’s where he got his initial round of funding if you know what I mean.

(The Waitress arrives with his drinks)

Johnny: Thanks honey. (to arthur) you want any food? Booze?

Arthur: I’m fine. Maybe coffee.

Waitress: Coffee. Sure. (to Johnny) How about you? You want any food now?

Johnny: Sure I’ll have a salad with bacon.

Waitress: We have a few salads that have bacon.

Johnny: You choose. Whatever just a salad with bacon on it. A bacon salad.

Waitress: How about a warm spinach salad?

Johnny: Whatever.

(Waitress leaves)

Johnny: (without missing a beat) Arthur Bell had a huge following here in LA and up north. He claimed it was like 500,000 people but it was more like two, but still 200,000 people is a shit load of people.

Arthur: How do you know how many people he had…

Johnny: I don’t really it’s just an estimate. A guesstimate as they say. I looked more like 200,000 than five. I knew Arthur Bell. I knew a lot of those guys.

Arthur: Wait that’s… how old…?

Johnny: I knew Jim Jones too. He was a fucking asshole. Total speed freak and sexual deviant. When the whole Kool Aid thing happened I didn’t even bat an eye. I was like “that’s what you get for taking your orders from a guy like that. You go to South America with to build a workers paradise based on Benzedrine and Sodomy and what do you expect to happen?”

But I digress… Arthur Bell was not an asshole or a sodomite or a drug addict he was a believer. People say he did it for the money that he was stealing from these people but I say he did it out of fear. He truly believed there where 10,000 families that have, throughout history conspired to rule the world and that he was part of a sacred secret order that has been working in secret to keep them in check. He also believed that there where little metal men beneath the earth but you know…

Why did you want to hear about Arthur again. I don’t remember if Eric said.

Arthur: Well see, my name is Arthur Bell, I mean...

Johnny: Oh okay. I guess that’s as good a reason as any. You where curious about your name sake.

(The waitress arrives with salad and coffee)

Johnny: Thanks sweetie. Bacon looks delicious. (to Arthur) You sure you don’t want anything else? It’s on the studio.

Arthur: No thanks. Hey can I ask you something?

Johnny: Sure that’s what I’m here for I guess.

Arthur: How do you know all this stuff. I mean, I’m sorry but who are you?

Johnny: What did Eric tell you?

Arthur: Uh… he just said he knew someone, Johnny, he said he knew a guy named Johnny who could help. He didn’t really tell me much.

Johnny: Isn’t that just like Eric! So mysterious. So aloof. Only as much information as you need to know right? I bailed him out of jail once. Did you know that? He used to think he was some sort of Gangster. Fuck one night in city jail cured him of that right?

There’s really not all that much mystery to what I do. I’ve just lived in L.A. all my life so I know it really well. You know I was born here and I never left. I’ve never been anywhere else. I mean I’ve been to Pacedena a couple of times but besides that I’ve never even left the county. So now I know things about the city and people come to me and ask me questions and I answer them and they give me things or do things for me. Pretty simple stuff. No big mystery.

Arthur: I don’t know about that.

Johnny: Yeah well, enough about me. We’re here to talk about Arthur Bell and I guess we’ve discovered that you, in fact, are Arthur Bell.

Arthur: Well I’m a Arthur Bell.

Johnny: Right. Good point! There must be hundreds of you out there. I knew one I think that made Scotch.

Arthur: Scotch?

Johnny: Well yeah I didn’t know him but I knew of him. Bell & Sons whiskey. First blended scotch to really get any attention. It’s okay I guess. I don’t know I’m fine with Dewer’s. It has a comforting watery taste.

Arthur: I’m not much of a drinker.

Johnny: Yeah well who is? (he toasts to Arthur then finishes his drink) Arthur Lowler Osborn Fosntain Bell. Let’s see. He was born somewhere in the midwest, sometime in the 1910’s I imagine, I don’t know much about that stuff. If it doesn’t happen in LA well… you know. Anyways he came here in 1934 and founded Mankind United and The Church of Jesus Christ and the Golden Rule. I can’t remember which came first or whatever but they where really the same thing. A cult dedicated to the overthrow of the worlds “hidden rulers”. It seems that since time immemorial there’s been 10,000 families who’ve controlled everything, big surprise there huh? Well Arthur Bell, the other Arthur Bell, was working for the other side, the good guys, he was working for these people called the “Patrons” and these guys have been around as long as the Hidden Rulers have, they’ve been keeping them in check. Standard good and evil shit, real epic stuff. According the Arthur they’ve been fighting this spiritual war in secret for the past few centuries and maybe even longer. He even claimed every so often that America’s Founding Fathers and even the Apostles where actually “Patrons”. However Arthur himself was not a Patron. He was something else. He was “The Voice”.

Arthur: The Voice?

Johnny: (very serious) The Voice. (laughs) No but seriously why do you want to know all this shit? Are you working on a script. I could get you a meeting. You know who would be great? The Coen Brothers. I’m going hunting with them this Friday. Want to come?

Arthur: I don’t really hunt.

Johnny: Neither do they. That’s why it would be fun. It’s fun to do things you don’t really do. Do you want some of my bacon? (Not allowing Arthur to respond) No seriously what are you talking to me for? I mean let’s take this to the studio. Get a real expert on it. Some asshole who’s entire job is to know shit like this.

Arthur: Isn’t that what you do?

Johnny: Fuck no!

Week #12 Arthur Bell,Movie, Play or Comic Book

A couple of Thanksgivings ago I was staying at a cabin in Tahoe with my family. In the room I was staying in there was a Time/Life book about cults in america, I think it was from the “Mystery’s of the Unknown” series. Everyone went to sleep before me so I ended up reading the whole thing. 


What I discovered reading this book was that there was a major breakout of occultism centered in LA during the 1920’s. There where a few well known modern established religions that had there birth here such as the Nation of Islam and the Jehovah Witnesses but what really captured my attention was the more marginalized utopian cult’s that seemed to be popping up everywhere like “I AM” and the one I’m particularly fascinated with “Mankind United”.

What I found particularly interesting about these cults was there apparent sincerity. Money was taken and not accounted for, utopias where promised in return for long hours and never achieved, but through all this there was a distinct absence of the sexual exploitation and violence the seemed so tied up with the cult’s of the 60’s and 70’s. These Utopiasts of the 1920’s seemed to really believe in what they where doing, even if it was insane and inevitably lead to bankruptcy hearings.

As I noted before the one I’m really interested in doing some sort of story about is Mankind United (Later Christ’s Church of the Golden Rule) and particularly it’s founder and leader Arthur Bell. Arthur Bell appeared on the cult scene in the mid twenties with the release of his paperback pamphlet “Mankind United”. According to Mr. Bell there was a group of 10,000 families who have been conspiring since very early times to consolidate all the wealth in the wold and enslave the rest of us. In the envisioned future of these families, a group who the book called the Hidden Rulers, everyone would live in giant skyscrapers with the rulers living on the top floors and the rest living below.

The only reason the Hidden Rulers haven’t achieved there dystopian goals is that there is an equally old opposition, a group called only “the Sponsors” (Aparently short hand for there full name “Sponsors of The International Institute of Universal Research and Administration”). Through out history the Sponsors have operated entirely in secret foiling the Hidden Rulers from plans at every turn. There membership, although highly secret, is rumored to have included a couple of presidents and maybe even a few apostles. The Sponsors achieve there work in the world with the help of individual agents as well as there organization “The Universal Service Corporation”.

The Sponsors also have a plan for this world. A future classless Utopia where everyone works for four hours a day, four days a week, for four months a year. They have a forty day plan on how to achieve this heaven but it can only be announced to the world when Mankind United's membership reaches 200,000,000.

The public face of all of this. The man who spoke for the Sponsors as well as the Universal Service Corporation was the author of the book’ Arthur Bell. He served as there priest, recruiter and for all intensive porpoises avatar. He referred to himself as “the Voice”.

Besides his comparatively low level of sleaziness what really lit up my imagination about Arthur Bell and his cult was how close his ideas came to seeming right. Besides his childish proclivity for round numbers (10,000 families, 200,000,000 members, 4 hours, 4 days ect.) there’s no denying that over time money and power has been consolidating into the hands of fewer and fewer people. Plus with mechanization it’s appearing that shorter and shorter work hours may be the only way to go.

On top of these sort of generally accurate anxieties there was also the case of the Universal Service Corps.’ only publicized field activity; one where they destroyed a prototype of a device the hidden rulers wanted to place in everyones house, a screen, very much like a television, that would vibrate your eyeballs out of your head. Then in the beginning of WWII Arthur Bell was finally arrested by the infamous house on un-American activities for sedition. His crime was spreading literature that said that the war was a conspiracy to consolidate the world’s resources into the hands of a few countries. Which of coarse, with histories perspective, is what the war ended up doing.

Arthur Bell was completely insane of coarse. He believed there where tiny metal men who lived underground and did the bidding of the hidden rulers, he also claimed he could be in multiple physical places at the same time. Still I believe the best approach to a story about him would be to take it all as the truth even the things I just mentioned. I good story would start with the things we all see to be almost reasonable and then lead into the less easy to swallow ones.

Of coarse I’m not sure exactly what the story is I’d like to tell or even what medium is best for it. I’ve sat down and tried to write a few times but I don’t know where to start. I’ve done tons of research but I can’s seem to find a format for it. I do think it should be a film or a comic book since I think the visual aspect of the era would add a lot to it. If anyone else seems this is as ripe for exploration as I do I’d love to hear any ideas anyone has.