Provincetown

Provincetown, by Burt Hirschfeld

June, 1977  Bantam Books

By the late ‘70s Burt Hirschfeld was still trading off between hardcover publications and paperback originals. Provincetown was one of the latter, sporting a nice cover that opened into an even better inlay (below). Plotwise the story is like a longer variation on Hirschfeld’s earlier Acapulco, in that it’s about a film company coming onto location and all the soap opera dynamics that ensue. But Provincetown is longer, slightly more risque, and also features a biker as one of the (many) characters, which is pretty cool. But then Hirschfeld also wrote Bonnie, so he was familiar with the biking scene. 

If I didn’t know any better, I’d suspect Burt Hirschfeld had been reading some William Hegner. While Hirschfeld’s affected prose style is still apparent in Provincetown (ie, sentences that keep elaborating on themselves), Hirschfeld tells a lot of the tale via dialog, a style more used by Hegner, with the characters expounding back and forth to one another. There’s also a slightly more raunchy tone, but still nowhere in the league of Hegner. Actually, most of the sex is off-page in Provincetown, but there’s a definite focus on oral sex and even gay sex (the biker, you see, goes out of his way to be mean and cruel to convince himself that he isn’t attracted to men…which totally isn’t cliched at all, folks!). This “raunchy talk,” coupled with the Hollywood vibe, just brings to mind the contemporary work of William Hegner. 

It just isn’t as good as Hegner. Here Burt Hirschfeld, who by 1977 had penned scads of trash fiction novels, proves out Dean Koontz’s dictum: that “Big Sexy” authors will eventually reach burnout. Such would seem to be the case here, as Hirschfeld appears to be going through the motions in Provincetown. Perhaps I’m thinking this due to the various means he resorts to in filling up the 300 pages; there will be periodic faux-newspaper clippings about the movie, or interviews with the characters that take place after the novel’s events, and none of this stuff does anything to add to the plot. Also, the large cast of characters or course resembles Hirschfeld’s biggest success, Fire Island, only none of the ones here are as memorable as the characters in that earlier book. 

And the plot is kind of a mess. Provincetown is about a film company that heads to Provincetown in Cape Cod to film a movie titled…you guessed it, Provincetown. This movie is based on a novel by a guy named Tom Reynolds (one of the many characters in the book), which is about an older woman falling in love with a younger man. I mean that’s it. Yet the director of the flick, a former bigtime Hollywood talent named “Little John” O’Day, is certain this plot is going to be box office dynamite. However Pike, the creepy producer of the movie, has his own plans, and as the shooting progresses Pike starts demanding that more sex and violence be added to the film. It all just comes off as very hard to buy; I mean we’re to believe that O’Day, who goes back to the old studio days, would be willing to go on location and shoot a film in which several roles haven’t even been cast yet. I found this unbelievable. 

As usual for a novel with a large cast of characters, the opening pages are a bit bumpty until you figure out who’s who. And as with Fire Island, not all the characters are truly integral to the story; for example, the stuff with Mario the yacht captain could’ve easily been cut. But so far as the main characters go, there’s O’Day, 60 and concerned his best work is decades behind him, hoping to get his name back with this film; Vicky Pierce, a onetime box office star of famous beauty who herself has retired from the movie biz and is looking to Provincetown as a way back into the big leagues; Sexton, an alcoholic painter given to street fighting who himself was once involved with the movie business; Sandy Hayden, hotstuff young wannabe starlet who will screw anyone who helps advance her career; Kiley, the aforementioned biker whose savagery is a mask for his homosexuality; and finally Tom Reynolds, author of the novel the film is based on who hopes to become rich and famous. 

There are sundry other characters in addition to these, some of them more important than others, some lost in the shuffle: chief in this regard would be Joe Crespi, a willowy young “actor’s actor” who can’t handle the action scenes producer Pike insists on adding to the script. Oh, and Crespi’s gay, too, as we learn in his intro, but he sort of disappears from the novel after that until midway through. Only to return late in the book where he is the sudden object of Kiley’s wrath…not just because Crespi is the star of the movie (which Kiley feels he himself should be), but because Crespi is gay, and of course that just works up the in-the-closet Kiley all the more. 

The first quarter of Provincetown isn’t like most other Burt Hirschfeld novels I’ve read. It’s more brutal and crime-pulp in vibe, first with Sexton getting into a savage street fight and then later Kiley, in Greenwich Village, trying to get back his stolen chopper. This part is more grim than the typical Hirschfeld fare, with Kiley first finding a notorious area slut and “banging” her all night to get her docile and subservient, then using her to ensnare the rival biker who stole his chopper. It’s not overly violent but Kiley does toss someone off a rooftop…actually, two people, in one of the more surprising turns of events. But at least Hirschfeld here lets us know Kiley is a savage and not to be trucked with. 

Which makes Kiley’s mid-novel retcon into a wanna be star quite hard to buy. With his muscles and brawn often noted, it’s not hard to see Kiley protrayed as Big William Smith in the movie of Provincetown that plays in your mind. It’s all just a little ridiculous, though. O’Day and company arrive in Provincetown to shoot the movie, and Pike starts insisting on more violence and action. Somehow Kiley, who is hiding in Provincetown after committing murder in Greenwich Village, gets the job as the stunt man on the film. I mean, he’s not a professional stuntman, not in any union…he’s just a muscular guy they hire off the street to handle the on-film action stuff that lead actor Joe Crespi can’t. At least someone on the film crew might have started thinking about liability. 

But from this, Kiley begins to develop dreams of stardom, and begins demeaning himself to gain O’Day’s favor and prove himself as “the better leading man” for the movie. And also he’s got the simmering hots for Crespi over the whole gay thing. Oh and Kiley also becomes the thrall of a Rona Barrett type who comes to Provincetown to drudge up some gossip, but she instead finds Kiley at a party and takes him into an empty bathroom to suck him off. As I say, there’s a definite oral focus to Provincetown, not to mention a part where Kiley unleashes his “monster,” “bull”-sized member and sodomizes a poor character after beating him to a pulp. “He must’ve enjoyed that part of it,” a sensitive character later remarks on the sodomy, given that the victim happens to be gay. 

Now that I think of it, there’s hardly any straight-up screwing in Provincetown. Sexton, who seems to be Hirschfeld’s “main” character, has his chance with former box-office babe Vicky Pierce, but he’s “busted” and no longer able to get it up (due to his drinking or his general pessimism with life – it’s all the same for Hirschfeld), so he ends up dining at the Y. Again, the oral focus! There’s a whole lotta sucking, licking, and lapping going on in Provincetown. But anyway I guess being an alcoholic beach bum who runs an art shop is the way to pick up the ladies, as they’re throwing themselves at Sexton throughout the novel: first Vicky, then later a hippie free spirit type in her very early 20s who latches onto him, trying to prove he’s “not so tough.” 

Speaking of which, despite being published in 1977 there’s actually more of an “early ‘70s” vibe to Provincetown, which of course is fine by me. Other than an errant mention of disco, the soundtrack of the big party scene toward the end of the book is the “throbbing beat” of the Rolling Stones, and also there’s a part where O’Day and Pike meet in what appears to be an acid rock club, complete with strobe lights on the walls and dancing half-nude women. The drugs are also more early ‘70s than late, with grass being the most commonly used drug in Provincetown. In fact I don’t think there’s a single mention of coke, which seems strange for a 1977 book about Hollywood characters. Indeed, in a total early ‘70s bit that aforementioned 21 year-old gal plies Sexton with joints, forcing them on him, and the marijuana defeats not only Sexton’s alcoholism but it also helps him to, uh, “get it up.” 

But the lack of coke and the feeling that a lot of this is imitation William Hegner could however just be more indication that Burt Hirschfeld was falling behind on the times. While I enjoyed the novel for the most part, there was just a feeling here that Hirschfeld was going through the motions and delivering the type of book he thought was expected of him. It’s also interesting that the book’s plot is so similar to the earlier Acapulco, only as mentioned this one’s longer, and also has those gimmicky bits where Hirschfeld will fill pages with an interview with, say, upcoming starlet Sandy Hayden, or another with novelist Tom Reynolds. Which reminds me – Hirschfeld’s plotting is also kind of jacked up. Sandy Hayden is introduced as the mistress of Reynolds, and he’s brought her here to Provincetown for some action on the side (despite also bringing along his wife – and she’s another of the many supporting characters, a bombshell beauty with the mind of a prude). 

But somehow Sandy ends up with the lecherous press agent Pike has hired for the movie, and it’s almost as if Hirschfeld’s forgotten that she was introduced as being Reynolds’s kept woman. Regardless, Sandy’s storyline is a mirror of Kiley’s, in that she feels she should be a big star and is willing to do whatever it takes to get there. So, like Kiley, we have a lot of parts where she tries to catch O’Day’s eye, so that he’ll cast her in the movie…the movie that he’s already filming. It just all seems so goofy and unbelievable. Not to mention that O’Day, in his own scenes, is shown to be a bitter old cynic who doubts his ability to do anything worthwhile; he’s so similar to Sexton that the two are easily confused, particularly in the early pages. 

Now that I think of this, it seems Hirschfeld’s theme was clear: the oldschool studio-days film people are bitter, cyncial, lost, and, in the case of Sexton, alcoholic. They want to get back into the bigtime but don’t know how. The newschool actors, ie Sandy Hayden and Kiley, are willing to do whatever it takes to make it – in Kiley’s case, to kill, in Sandy’s case, to screw whoever will help her career. So in other words, the theme is pretty similar to most of the other “New Hollywood” trash paperbacks that were published in the era. But man. If only Hollywood people like this still existed…or at least were the ones who were making movies today. 

The novel works up to a nightmarish conclusion, with yet another main actor in the film getting raped – but this one is also murdered. This spirals us into a too-quick finale in which fate dispenses some justice…and also again via those egregious “industry articles” we learn that Mario, the fishing captain, is thrust into stardom due to his role in Provincetown. WTF? Also Sexton suddenly seems to have a plot that is separate from the main novel; the book concludes with him going around Europe with his new 21 year-old gal and finding himself or something. Meanwhile the stuff on Provincetown the film is almost rushed through. 

Overall this was a fairly quick read, and entertaining due to the fact that Burt Hirschfeld seemed to be pushing himself in new directions. But the center didn’t hold at times, lending the impression that Hirschfeld didn’t put as much of an effort into the writing of Provincetown. 

Here’s the uncredited inlay art spread: