Hillel Aron

If there was any writer who disliked Hollywood more than Raymond Chandler, it was William Faulkner. “They worship death here,” he once remarked at a dinner with a friend. “They don’t worship money, they worship death.” A small, trim man, his mustache now gray, Faulkner was in Hollywood because almost nobody bought his books, not even The Sound and the Fury (1929), not even Light in August (1932). His first four novels had sold an average of two thousand copies, and when he tried to dash off a best-seller, Sanctuary (1931), his publisher soon collapsed in bankruptcy. So he came to Hollywood in 1932 and signed a contract with M-G-M at what he considered a princely five hundred dollars per week.

M-G-M’s story editor, Sam Marx, asked him to start working on a wrestling story for Wallace Beery. “I want to write for Mickey Mouse,” said Faulkner, quasi innocent. When informed that Mickey Mouse belonged to the Disney studio, Faulkner said, “Then what about newsreels? I like cartoons and newsreels.” Marx sent Faulkner to a projection room to watch Wallace Beery in The Champ and asked an office boy to go along with him to answer any questions. Ten minutes later, the boy returned and told Marx that Faulkner had disappeared after asking only one question: “How do I get out of here?”

Obviously, I would like to see a lot less nuclear weapons. I - - I don’t want Iran to have a nuclear weapon. I would like to reduce them, because there would be less chance of war. But to declare war on 1.2 billion Muslims and say all Muslims are the same, this is dangerous talk. Yeah, there are some radicals, but they don’t come here to kill us because we’re free and prosperous. Do they go to Switzerland and Sweden? I mean, that’s absurd. If you think that is the reason, we have no chance of winning this. They come here and explicitly explain it to us. The CIA has explained it to us. It said they come here and they want to do us harm because we’re bombing them.

What is the whole world about the drone being in Iran? And we’re begging and pleading, and how are we going to start a war to get this drone back? Why were we flying the drone over Iran? Why do we have to bomb so many countries? Why are we in — have 900 bases, 130 countries, and we’re totally bankrupt? How are you going to rebuild the military when we have no money? How are we going to take care of the people?

So I think — I think this wild goal to have another war in the name of defense is the dangerous thing. The danger is really us overreacting. And we need a strong national defense. And we need to only go to war with a declaration of war, and just carelessly flouting it and starting these wars so often.