Short story idea.
Title: THE LAST SUPPER.
Convicted killer awaiting execution tries to decide what to have for his final meal on earth.
Each menu item, or course, has a story behind it.
I’d rather be anyplace but here.
Epigram goes like this…. In William Manchester’s The Glory And The Dream
a 1954 survey reported the overwhelming choice – of most Americans – for dinner,
price no object:
fruit cup, vegetable soup, steak, french fries and apple pie ala mode.
Which is French for, “with vanilla ice cream.”
***
Movies to see. Call film critic. Maybe Callahan. Have viewing party?
Any good movies on video about death row,
preferably including the final twenty-four hours before execution.
A film noir gangster drama done in 1954 starring William Bendix would be good.
Final line: “I think I’ll go with the…. ”
or “I think I’ll go with the oysters Rockefeller, Caesar salad, steak tartare,
and so forth, blah, blah, German potato salad, pizza and Bing cherries.”
Study some cook books.
“Suppose an impudent Chateau Benoit ’84
would be out of the question.”
Try the final line a few different ways.
***
Study cook books for the other doomed guys, too.
One of whom could be modeled after Wm. Bendix.
Maybe I want to think about a movie from ’54,
one I saw when I was a kid, which maybe warped my mind,
like those movies Bob Dole is talking about today.
Oh, already thought of that. What about Ernest Borgnine?
***
Book to read: Among The Lowest of The Dead – David Von Drehle
The people on death row, almost without exception,
come from violent families.
Their victims seem to remain always with the condemned killers.
Roommates in solitary confinement.
A forlorn sense of futility and sadness everywhere on death row
and nothing good comes out of there alive.
Only five percent of all death row inmates are ever actually executed.
***
They are so pale, so very pale, ghostly white.
They never go out into the sunlight.
Before they came to death row, they were very mean people
for the most part,
but put a man for six or ten or even fifteen years
in a box the size of a studio condominium’s bathroom.
and they tend to calm down some
until truly they seem pretty harmless.
***
– actual notes from 1993, thereabouts. – JDW