Don't Let Me Die...

Don’t Let Me Die…
By: Pete Crigler

“Shit,” thought famous author Franklin Shaver as he stared at his typewriter, “why can’t I come up with one damn sentence to start this thing?” He had been in this dilemma before but now he was worried and couldn’t think of a way out.
In 1984, Franklin had written an extremely successful novel called “Become the Cliché,” which had won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Two more novels followed but they both failed and critics began to believe he was a flash in the pan. Afterwards he continued to write but he was unable to sell anything and he began to get pissed at publishers because he felt they didn’t understand him anymore. Subsequently, he started becoming extremely depressed.
By the end of the ‘80’s, many people considered him washed up but he was determined to prove them wrong. Together with his wife Iris, he started coming up with ideas for a new novel, which he predicted would be even more acclaimed than “Become the Cliché.” Trouble was he couldn’t think of anything that hadn’t already been done before and he soon started spending his days staring at the typewriter screaming, “Why can’t I come up with anything new!”
Soon he was telling Iris, “You wanna know why the publishing world sucks? It’s because all the publishers want is the same stuff about love and depression and shit like that. Anything new that’s brought to the table, they reject if doesn’t have anything easily identifiable. It’s the same damn thing over and over again and there’s only so many ways you can write about depression before you yourself start becoming depressed.” Iris started to grow concerned about her husband and she wasn’t sure if his creative funk would end anytime soon.
Pretty soon, bored out of his mind and beginning to become delusional, he began cranking Creedence Clearwater Revival and Anthrax all day long and started writing poetry. After a few days he looked at what he’d written and said to himself, “God, I hate poetry!”
After that debacle, all he did for the next few weeks was fill up pages and pages with the phrase “Don’t let me die with that silly look in my eyes.” This scared Iris to death and she pressured him to check into a sanitarium, but he refused, telling her, “I’m fine. Everything will sort itself out soon.”
By the end of 1991, he was desperate for anything to happen so he decided to start writing his autobiography. But he quickly realized he didn’t have much. He told Iris, “Apart from winning the Pulitzer, my life hasn’t amounted to shit!” This began to depress him even more and Iris again started growing concerned he might try to kill himself.
By February 1992, he began reading encyclopedias trying to come up with stuff to inflate his life in order to make it more exciting. Pretty soon he decided to scrap the autobiography and instead began writing a fictional biography of someone he called Oral Kimble. Franklin told Iris that he believed that Oral was an old wealthy oil baron from the 1800’s who ended up brutally killing his whole family because he was doped up and didn’t know what he was doing.
In what seemed like no time at all, he had finished the book and proudly told his wife, “This is the best damn thing I’ve ever done! I can’t wait to show those publishers.” Iris looked at him and said, “I just don’t want you to get your hopes up.”
By the time he started taking the manuscript, titled “Little Bastard,” around to all the major publishers that September, his ego had seemingly become too large for his head. Waltzing into one office he proudly boasted, “Gentlemen, what I have in my hands will save the publishing world from the years of cliché and schmaltz that’s been shoved down our throats.”
In the end, everyone seemed to like it but as one publisher said, “I can’t handle this title and another thing I wanna know is where are the car crashes and love scenes?” He didn’t end up selling the book and instead took all his uncompleted manuscripts and created a huge bonfire in his backyard. Maniacally laughing as the paper burned he repeatedly screamed, “At last, I am king of all!”
Iris heard this and went rushing outside. Grabbing his wrist, she said, “That’s it, tomorrow I’m taking you to see a doctor!” Franklin looked at her and immediately calmed down. “I’m fine. We don’t need to go to a doctor. I just lost it tonight but I’ll be back to normal in the morning.” Iris relented and they went to sleep and the next morning, he was fine and Iris’ worries were eased, for now.
By summer 1993, he decided to take up painting but this began leading him to suicidal thoughts as he thought about all the painters who’d lost their minds and ended up killing themselves. Everywhere he looked he thought of suicide and he began to think there was no way out. Soon he was telling Iris, “I think the devil’s chasing me. I see him in my dreams and he tells me he wants my soul to carry down to hell. I don’t know if I should kill myself and end this fucking bullshit now or what. I just think I should do what he asks of me.” Iris looked at him and said, “You need to check into a sanitarium and clear your mind of all this negative energy.”
After listening to what she had to say, he decided to think about it and locked himself in the bedroom and began writing short stories so he could express whatever came to his mind. After reading some of the stories he had created he decided to finally check into a sanitarium like Iris had suggested. If he didn’t, he knew he’d probably be dead by the end of the year.
Upon checking into a local sanitarium in early 1994, he was given large doses of sedatives and some electro-shock therapy, anything his doctor thought of to clear his mind. While he was locked up, he learned “Become the Cliché” would be turned into a movie. At first he was pleased and thought the film would lift his spirits but when he learned Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman would be starring, he was optimistic.
A few months later, the film was released and he became distraught because although the critics loved the script, they all hated the film but that was only because of how bad the acting was. The film flopped and Franklin decided to stay in the sanitarium a little longer because he knew he was still emotionally fragile.
A few months later he left the sanitarium and was ready to try writing again. He decided to scrap the Oral Kimble saga once and for all and decided to create something that came straight from his soul. After a month of sitting around the house thinking, he came up with what he thought was a fantastic idea: he’d write about his writers’ block and subsequent nervous breakdown. Iris was worried he’d think too much about the breakdown and as a result, could possibly have another one. He reassured her saying, “Look honey, I’m fine, I need to do this because through my writing, I could possibly save another poor soul who’s in the same predicament.”
As he began thinking he thought one of the reasons for the breakdown was because he was pissed about the reaction to his second and third novels. But he went back and reread them and concluded they were both as good as his first, but he believed the public was too stupid to understand what he was talking about.
Next he thought he’d become bored with his marriage. But he went back to some journals from that time and in one entry, he wrote, “Last night, the sex was great. There’s no reason for any man to kill himself after sex that great.” After that, he realized he was beginning to run out of options.
Then he thought that the breakdown had occurred because he still had issues left unresolved from his childhood, because, he later told Iris, that’s why a lot of other people start going crazy. But after thinking about every possible thing he could remember about his childhood, he came to the realization that the breakdown had happened because he was stressed out over the writer’s block and couldn’t think of any other way to express himself.
After a few days of rest, he finally decided to get to work on his manuscript. By the time he finished, he was calling it “I Hate Myself and I Want to Die,” after one of Nirvana’s last songs and it was well over 400 pages because he’d decided to write about every aspect of the breakdown.
When he took it to an executive at Retrovertigo Publishing, the executive looked it over and said to him, “You can’t write worth shit! Winning the Pulitzer was a fluke!” Then Franklin yelled at him, “That’s a lie you son of a bitch!” Then they started shoving each other and the executive pushed Franklin through a glass door and then Franklin threw the executive down a flight of stairs and walked away.
After that debacle, Franklin went to other publishers and was finally warmly received at Doubleday. They offered him $5 million to publish the book; he quickly took it and with the proceeds bought an old farm in Montreal, Canada to go whenever stress began to take its toll.
When the book was published in 1996, it became a smash and soon movie studios began knocking at his door begging to film an adaptation. He agreed to make a movie but wanted creative control because he didn’t want it to turn into “Become the Cliché” all over again. Eventually, Sony stepped up and agreed to give Franklin everything he was asking for.
But the film began to experience problems almost automatically because the studio had cast Will Smith as Franklin and Angelina Jolie as Iris and wanted her to have a nude scene. Franklin was opposed to all these decisions and said, “First of all, I’m not black and secondly, my wife has never paraded around naked because she was also losing her mind!”
Trying to ease the situation, the director, an upstart named Homer Wolf, looked at him and said, “I understand where you’re coming from but I’d like to come at this book from a different angle; one that a lot of people wouldn’t expect.” Franklin didn’t care and threatened to walk off and yank his support unless Tom Hanks replaced Smith and Tea Leoni replaced Jolie and the nude scene was erased. Finally, the studio agreed and all of Franklin’s changes were made and a few months later the film was finally finished.
When the film was released, both the acting and the script, which Franklin had a hand in writing, blew audiences and critics away. When it came time for the Oscars, the film was nominated for six awards and ended up winning every one. Franklin was vindicated, completely free from suicidal thoughts and ended up winning another Pulitzer for his book.
But this renewed success began to rub him the wrong way like a cheap pair of underwear. He felt that people were expecting his next book to also have depression and mental illness weaved into the plot and he couldn’t deal with that. He told Iris, “I don’t want to literally ‘become the cliché,’ but I don’t know what else to do.” Then he had an epiphany and started writing a novel about Hollywood running amok. When excerpts of the piece were released, people in Hollywood were pissed and he was eventually barred from ever doing anything else in Hollywood because of his beliefs.
He didn’t really seem to care and settled into a quiet life of semi-retirement in Montreal, occasionally writing articles for various magazines and publishing a massive volume of all his surviving work entitled “My Ass is on Fire.” But his life of quiet idyllic splendor ended in a sudden twist of twisted and tangled metal.
One night in July 1998, Franklin and Iris were traveling down a dark country road near their farm when suddenly a speeding car came flying up the road. “Oh no,” screamed Iris, “we’re going to crash and there’s no certainty we’ll come out alive!” Unable to swerve, they struck the car head-on and were both knocked unconscious. When they came to, they realized the driver of the car was dead but they had emerged completely unscathed. When the cops showed up, Franklin and Iris were determined to be well over the legal blood alcohol level and were charged with vehicular manslaughter. As they were being led away, Franklin kept screaming, “He ran into us!”
At trial, they were sentenced to twenty-five years each. Franklin was devastated and after two months behind bars had elapsed, Mr. Suicide began making daily visits to his mind. At first, he dismissed the idea of trying to harm himself but after seeing one of his best friends be brutally stabbed in the barbershop and hearing that one of his old publishing friends had shot himself, he thought maybe suicide was the way to go.
Iris was paroled after fifteen years and Franklin was paroled three years later and after so much time apart they decided to divorce. It was a painful time for him and soon afterwards he was walking the streets of New York City when all of a sudden he started screaming, “There’s a huge robot walking around in my head. Someone please get him out before he kills me!” Then he grabbed a woman, stripped her and started beating her with a stick saying, “You’ve been possessed by the robot as well! I can’t let him do this to another person.” The police were quickly summoned and Franklin was hauled off to Bellevue and was locked up until further notified.
A few weeks later, while in Bellevue, he learned he had cancer. During this time he continually asked Iris to come visit him. But because things had gone so badly so quickly after the accident, Iris kept refusing until one summer day when she walked in and asked to see him. Looking at each other through the glass, Iris said, “I can’t stand the sight of you anymore because of how you treated me while I was in prison. I mean you never wrote, you never tried to call. I wrote you all the time but never got a reply back you heartless bastard.” Then she took one final look at him and said, “Have fun dying asshole!” and walked out. Shortly afterwards, Franklin learned Iris had killed herself with an overdose of morphine; saddened but not done, he continued fighting the cancer. Eventually he went into remission and left prison and began writing again. He never regained the popularity he once had but he didn’t care anymore and wrote when he wanted. He died a peaceful and beautiful death at the age of eighty-five.
“There that should do it” said Thomas Markham as he finished the manuscript he’d been working on for five months. “I didn’t think it would take that long to cure my writer’s block but I guess creativity only comes when it wants to. So thanks to Franklin Shaver, I have finished my first complete story in two years.” With that, he gave the manuscript a title, “Don’t Let Me Die” and three months later it was published and went on to become an international best seller.