Artie was easy on the ears -- when he played

Artie SHAW, who died last week at 94, was surely the Coriolanus of bandleaders. Artie banished everybody. When he was about 40 he just walked away from it all -- the fame, the money, the public adoration -- and went to live in Mexico, saying he was through with “Begin the Beguine.” It didn’t last, but he never played the clarinet in public again.

We were off- and then on-again friends for the last 15 years or so -- a greater portion of my life than of his. Artie wasn’t easy. He was usually irritated at something or somebody, often for what he considered rampant stupidity. Artie could be exhausting. His standard mode of conversation was something like a harangue. In my carelessness we had been out of touch recently. Sometimes I just needed a little rest.

Artie was born on the Lower East Side of New York and went to school -- which he never finished -- in New Haven, Conn. He always said he taught himself to play the clarinet. It’s hard to believe, but he insisted it was so. He wasn’t just a good player but one of the best and most popular (with Benny Goodman, whom Artie couldn’t abide) of the swing era.

Artie’s was a life like no other. All those glamorous wives. He dumped Betty Grable to marry Lana Turner. He was a fabulous nickname dropper, and he had plenty of names to toss around. One of his wives was the daughter of Jerome Kern. Artie called him “Jerry,” which always made me feel buoyant and a little giddy. When he spoke of Louis Armstrong, he referred to him as Pops. If anyone said “Satchmo,” Artie would have rolled his eyes or maybe walked away.

Of Bing Crosby, he said, famously, “Bing was the first hip white man in America.” Of Glenn Miller: “It would have been better if Glenn had lived and his music died.” It was Artie who hired Billie Holliday as a band singer at a time when black singers didn’t get gigs like that. The racism on the road was hard on her, but the job put her in the big time. He called her “Lady” or, if he was feeling expansive, “Lady Day.” He said, “She was a junkie, but when you heard her [sing], how could you think about anything but that voice?”

Artie published a couple of books of stories and wrote reviews. He thought of writing as serious; music was just show business. In the years I knew him, he was writing a novel that was the story of his life. The last time I heard, “Sideman” was about 1,800 manuscript pages long. He showed me a bit of it once. I all but begged him to make it a memoir. Nobody was going to publish that gargantuan thing as fiction. Young assistants came and went, organizing the pages, typing revisions and new sections.

Artie lived in an old cottage in Newbury Park amid a more recent development of suburban stucco houses. He ignored their bland presence. I don’t think any of the young families around him had any idea who that guy in the frame house was. The second floor was his library and office. There were thousands of books and records and scores. A clarinet was out one day -- sitting on a stool, mouthpiece in place. “Been playing?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“You going to play for me?”

“Listen to the records. My chops were better.”

“I’d like to hear it live.”

“Not today.”

Well, not ever, but it was interesting to know he occasionally played for himself. When he was nearing 90 he talked about death. “I’m not afraid of it,” he said. “I don’t want it, but I’ll be there.”

Artie was a raconteur with a lifetime of material. A few years ago, Aram Saroyan taped him telling his stories. I think they both hoped it might be a sort of autobiography. There’s a documentary film about him, called “Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got.” It’s out of circulation over a confusion of rights problems, probably to do with music clearances. People who’ve seen it say it’s good, that it catches his charm and his abrasiveness. Rest in peace, Artie.

The call of the craft

I’m back in the script game again. For me these days, that means doing treatments and proposals on spec and then trying to set up deals, which means the heavy lifting is unpaid. A producer suggested a movie idea in the hope that I would put up my time at this early stage. The story is set in late antiquity, a period I didn’t know much about. I liked the idea so I went for it and did the preliminary reading. Who knows if anything will come of it? It’s not the most lucrative way to proceed, but script writing is just lodged in my bones and so I’m doing it.

DVDs can be too smart

This is screener season. DVDs have been arriving at my door two and three at a time. I must have accumulated 60 of the things. I’m trying to see as many as I can before it’s time to vote. Members of the academy have been sent DVD players that will play specially encrypted DVDs that won’t work on any other machine. All this in the name of fighting piracy.

Except that the people making these devices were so late that there aren’t any encrypted DVDs. Just the regular ones that will play on any old machine. I hooked up the new one anyway. Well, I didn’t do it, a friend did -- to her regret. It lurches along, stopping and starting. So I decided to dump it and go back to the old one. Now the sound system is crossed with the TV set. It’s funny to be looking at, say, “Vera Drake” and hearing dialogue from a recycled episode of “Seinfeld.”

David Freeman is a screenwriter and the author most recently of “It’s All True.” This page from his diary is one of an occasional series.