They called her Cloris Leachman or Katherine Helmond or Kim Stanley. But until Nighttime, her series, she was just another sagging pair of tits with a haunting look and crows feet.
Robin is older than I am. It's no secret - lots older. But, bubba, I am here to tell you, when we are on our new deck in the late afternoon, looking across the brown stink to where Catalina used to be, when I have my arms around, her, whatever years may have separated her and my birth don't mean squat because
this woman is my mother, my lover, my pal, my advisor, my slave, my master, and I don't see any wrinkles or scars or bridgework or anything on this beautiful creature who basically saved the life of one ex-stuntman porno star who was about to get ate by the coyotes and shit over a cliff: me.
Did I get double parked in that last sentence?
Shawn, our real estate guy, told us our house was originally the guesthouse or gatehouse or something for Errol Flynn. I had to change pants. I've seen Captain Blood maybe fifty times. Know every line, say 'em right along with Flynn, Folks love it at parties when we all get ripped. I even starred in a take off on it in the old days, called Captain Wad. 1'fl let you figure out why.
Robin and I needed some help decorating the place when we moved in. We'd just come from a tiny studio apartment on Sycamore that looked like a hamster warren that tunneled through cardboard boxes. If we hadn't been so much in love, we'd have axe-murdered each other. In the old place, if you put the key in the door too hard, you broke a window. I'm serious.
So anyway, when Robin's lawyers finally called and told her the network had settled out at just under a million five (she had to sue for her points when they syndicated her show, those goniffs), we decided to go for the gusto.
Everybody else we knew had a house. So, this fookie loo became a buyie loo.
Our real estate agent was primarily dealing hot antiques; the poor guy didn't even know how to fill out the papers. And, I mean, you won't believe this luck-he was just getting evicted from his place, so we told him that he could live in the little mother-in-law apartment in the back. Shawa was so grateful, he kind of stuck ft to his client by blurting out that it was some guy who was about to get dragged through a greasy divorce and wanted to unload the house for bupkes just to piss his ex-wife off. What a break for us. You hear about these things but it always happens to somebody named Ed you don't even know.
Me and Shawn probably screwed his old lady out o£ a hundred grand! But I didn't see any reason to tell Robin. She's such a softie. It's one of the reasons I love her so much.
The only thing wrong with the place were the telephones. It was crazy, Marx Brothers. Lines would cross. You'd be talking and you'd hear some guy in German, or it'd just go dead. The phones would ring and there wouldn't be anybody there. Your friends would tell you they'd called and it rang and rang.
One night, somehow I got patched into a call between these two chicks; one sounded like Candy Bergen with those fanny 'r's she has. Jesus, they were slagging some guy who had fucked their sister or something. They were dishing, I tell you! I'm gonna put it in a script. Just grist for the mill. It's the price you pay when you're a writer. Nothing seems real.
Especially anymore.
Robin and I had been coming pretty fast up the valley side of Laurel Canyon.
It was about three in the morning. Maybe I was a little drunk, so before we started out, I sharpened up with a tootsky or two. I don't generally drive when I'm blitzed. In this city you got to be careful of the wackos who turn in front of you or cut you off or just jam on their brakes for drill.
We were in Robin s cherry '58 Triumph, a red four-banger with leather seats, and I was singing along to Don Henley like always, Robin was smiling, happy as a clam. Everything was jake; I was on top of the world. Only we never even got to the top of Mulholland.
Some buttface in a Jag crossed the line--one of us did, anyway - and when we woke up, we were out of surgery, out of danger, and out of our minds on
Percodan. Wheee-owl They had me and Robin in the same hospital room, me closer to the door, which was a good thing because everybody and his brother had to come get a look at the Emmy-winning star of Nighttime and I finally had to get tough. When Robin was asleep (which was much of the time), I collected five bucks a crack. People are ghouls, in case you hadn't noticed.
Both of us recovered unusually fast. Three broken legs between us, assorted cuts and bruises, and my scalp was lacerated, but in back where it didn't show. Robin's face was Untouched.
Which was a good thing. Suddenly, her agent
began to call every day; when it rains it pours.
Seems the wreck had made the papers. Her little Triumph was so mooshed they were actually thinking of taking it on tour, a Be Careful Or This Is What Happens kind of thing. When the reporters found it was The Robin Lamoureaux, the star-making machinery went into overdrive. We drew the line, though, at Life Styles of the Rich and Famous.
Suddenly, with all this new-found pub, the network wanted her. Bad. One of their over-educated young salvors, fresh from Stanford or Harvard, with history's mysteries still in his mind, had come up with an idea for a new show. The network had a big, big hole on Thursday night at ten.
Faced with Hell Street and Dallasty, they had taken nothing but gas for two years. The trades began calling the slot Suicide Alley. Until this kid and his idea.
Later I saw a Xerox of his treatment. This was it:
"RICHARD & BLONDIE
The Crusades! ..... Insanity! ..... Mayhem! ..... Family against family - BANG - children slaughtered wholesale in color - BANG - they love, they kiss, they betray - BANG - Richard The Lion Hearted rescued from his dungeon by Blondie de Nesle, the wandering torch singer from France - BANG - they ran, they searched, they kilted, they made love on the fly - BANG - as the crusaders hacked and slashed their way to hell's very gate in the name of Goodness and Mercy - BANG - exteriors to be filmed on location with a cast of thousands and interiors shot in studio, three camera, live audience! A love story for all time. Especially ten o'clock, Thursdays."
I hated to admit it, but the guy was a great writer. And it was a killer idea.
It was the one area that series TV had never used-probably because of the mammoth costs involved. But they hadn't had the idea to use the long-shot battle scenes in the old Crusader movies they owned from the fifties, like Black Shield of Fattsworth, Ivanhoe, and Them. Then, with a technical trick they call roto-scoping, they "blend" the star into the action. He's half a mile away, slashing through Arabs and shit, who sees details?
Why hadn't I thought of this? Sometimes I'm really kind of a tight-ass; I should have taken more acid in '70, loosened up the brain cells. I mean, you can't think of these quantum jump jobbies just eating your basic food groups.
When the network guys looked into the Crusades, they began to get horny in spite of the costs.
Richard the Lion-Hearted was a historical cross between Dirty Harry and that Shakespeare guy who ended up carving up his whole family.
I don't have to tell you; TV majors in this kind of stuff.
They wanted Robin for the part of Blondie de Nesle. It didn't matter to them that they would have to make a sex change, switching it from a "he" to a "she" - that in actual fact, Blondel de Nesle had been a male balladeer. They figured, probably correctly, that America was not quite ready for a costumed action-romance show costing three million an episode that was about a couple of historical turd burglars.
Which was lucky for us, huh? In a few days, the network started sending flowers, and before the casts were changed, our hospital room began to look like Forest Lawn or Graceland, maybe. It was weird. Robin had pretty much made up her mind not to do Richard and Blondie. She wanted to stay home, help me out on my porno expose novel, be my baby, my inspiration, and like that. It all sounded tits to me until I got an idea one afternoon between This Was Your Life and As the World Burns.