Budd Schulberg:” What’s for dessert?

Soon after the sad news was known that legendary writer 95-year old Budd Schulberg had passed away, I received my first letter of condolence and the tears finally started to flow. People know how much Budd meant to me and it touched me deeply that they would think of sending me a note.

Just a week before my boyfriend and me had been invited to join the immediate family in Hoboken, NJ for dinner and a reading of Budd’s play based on his Oscar-winning screen play On the Waterfront. Eventhough he watched the play with a beatific smile on his face as he heard his dialogue on stage one last time and gave his last very lengthy and completely lucid interview to a New York Times reporter, I knew that the end was near. He had refused to eat his dinner and Budd loved to eat.

I met him soon after Zarela opened in 1987. John Bryson, famed celebrity photographer for Life Magazine best known for his book ““>The Private World of Katherine Hepburn brought a nattily dressed older gentleman with a mane of white hair and dancing blue eyes in one day and introduced him as Budd Schulberg, a name I recognized. We talked all afternoon and a friendship was born.  He spoke perfect Spanish and in his halting way told me about the years he lived in Mexico City, his love of my country and Mexican food.  He ordered tamales at the bar and relished every bite. He drank tequila neat with a little salt and a lime to suck on just like he squeezed every last drop of every moment he lived.

He took a child-like pleasure in everything he experienced. He was immensely curious and observed everything and everyone intently in a non-judgmental way and if you were his friend he would tell you anything you wanted to know about his past and wanted to discover everything about yours and who you were.   I always had a story or two to tell him that I knew would spur a good conversation.

Budd loved to hear a good story and he  listened to every word with quiet intensity and if you hit a chord, a hidden memory, he’d say YES!! YES!! And he’d rock with a belly laugh, eyes twinkling….all the way to the end.

One day I was struggling to translate the line “con la aventura sonada” from a book Veracruz en la Historia y la Cumbancha by Paco Pildora. It refers to what Hernan Cortez was probably feeling while standing on his ship as he was about to touch land. In a split second Budd perfectly translated it to “with dreams of adventure” and we were about to set off on a great adventure ourselves.

In 1992 my friend Alicia Rodriguez was the enlightened director of the Mexican Tourism Office in New York.  I had met super-hunk biologist and conservationist Fulvio Eccardi, a transplanted Italian now a Mexican citizen who has dedicated his life to documenting and preserving Mexico’s biological diversity.

In 1986 UNESCO  had  declared several Mexican areas Man and Biosphere Reserves and they were anxious to get the world’s attention.  I agreed to organize a press trip, Alicia approved it, and I somehow convinced Betsy to let 78-year old Budd to come along on a very difficult trip.  He loved it and so did we.

We spent the evenings listening to fascinating stories about the Press Club in Mexico City where a shadowy character used to hang out, never speaking to any one, and who everyone suspected was B Traven. Or his inside stories of Hollywood greats like Marilyn Monroe “who he took around” and Joan Crawford’s foibles not fit to print on a food site. He explained why he disliked Humphrey Bogart who played the lead in the movie of his marvelous book, “>The Harder They Fall and nearly came to blows with Ernest Hemingway, an ongoing fight he chronicles in “>Sparring with Hemingway.

We visited Sian K’aan in Quintana Roo and went down the ancient waterway that Mayans used for trade all the way to South America. We glided on out on silent skiffs to catch and measure crocodiles their red eyes gleaning in the night,  We had to change boats when a huge one attacked ours and his big teeth got stuck in the boat. The next day, one of  the other press members went home.

I insisted on a two day rest in gorgeous San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas and stayed at magical Na Balom., a non-for profit community center where artists, writers, researchers can stay for a time in exchange for work and each room is decorated with the distinct weavings of each surrounding Mayan town. We experienced a fascinating ritual in the Church in Chamula that I will describe in another article some time soon.

The next day we set  out for El Triunfo, a cloud and rain forest with 90 meter high trees covered with ferns, epyphites, orchids and other bromeliads. Our goal was to see the quetzal, the mythic bird of Mexico.

Getting there was not easy. In the first place we had to go from 200 meters above sea level to over 3000 and the only way to get there at that time was on foot or on a horse. I put Budd on a mule, gave him a bottle of tequila and told him I’d meet him at the top where we could see the Pacific on one side and the Gulf on the other. We even saw the quetzal, something that unbeknown to me was on Budd’s things to do in life.

I learned about my own country on this trip through Budd, Fulvio, the fervent directors of the Biosphere Reserves and the elders in the villages. The experiences I lived on this journey, the people I encountered, the beauty of their arts and crafts, their way of looking at and living life, the strength of the traditions all helped me find the mission I still have today: to protect and make my culture known and understood in all it manifestations. I do this through this website, my books, videos and writing.

On our return Budd wrote the forward to my first book Food from my Heart. That was the first priceless gift he gave me. Through him and Betsy I have met many of the people who I most enjoy and am the closest to: Lou di Bella who introduced me to Mark Jacobson, who brought Ratso Sloman into the circle, who in turn introduced us to the hip artistic world of New York and beyond: Gilbert Gottfried, Penn Jillette, Kinky Friedman, Steve Cuiffo and enriched our lives tremendously.

But nothing is as precious as being taken into his family and becoming close to Betsy, Benn and Jessica.

One year, Jamie and me were driving towards Nova Scotia but stopped in Martha’s Vineyard to have dinner and spend the night with Betsy, his wife of 30 years, and Budd.  Jamie and Budd clicked. One night turned into 5 days as they talked incessantly about Budd’s entire life. He was giving oral history to someone just as curious and genuinely interested as he.  Jamie is somewhat obsessed with the Holocaust and wanted to know everything  about Budd’s role at the Nuremberg Trials and everything else in his fascinating life,  Budd was obsessed with boxing and that topic was practically covered fight by fight with glee. Budd claimed to be more proud of his Boxing Hall of Fame ring than of his Oscar
His book Moving Pictures is about the history of movies through Budd’s life until age 18 and we all wanted  him to write a memoir of the last 69 years. And though he was purportedly doing just that,  Budd confessed to me that he was afraid that if he finished his memoirs, he’d die so he died and his story died with him.

I cooked for these two voracious men for 5 days and after each meal Even at 90 something he’d say: “What’s for dessert?”  Betsy made sure there was always blueberry pie a la mode, his favorite.

See Budd on the New York Times Video series Final Word

Benn Schulberg’s documentary, Hollywood Renegade, on his father still in production . if you like this and want to help contact me.