"We're beginning to look like a hit," said Chip.
I thought I ought to sort of cap the whole thing off with a little brown-nose.
It never hurts. "Who is the Ewho thought the Crusader thing up? I'd like t'meet him!
Wickwire grinned a real power grin; my heart froze. For just a second, I saw actual danger in this guy's bonded teeth. "Devon thought it up. He works here, now."
I almost lost it. Devon Converse was Wickwire's, uhhh, roommate. The same guy who'd rewritten me on the TV movie. He was supposed to have AIDS, too. "Yeah,"
Chip said brightly, "Devon's heading the team now. He'll be in any minute with the director! I guess we could talk about writers-look, here they come!"
But in my power seat, I'd already seen Devon Converse and I had to admit it, the sonofabitch was cool. He looked to be in good health to me although he was leading a man who looked .old enough he probably should have been in an iron lung, maybe two.
When they came in, I led everybody in jumping to their feet. Yet, it seemed like I was the only one in the room who didn't know who the old dude was. Finally, Devon Converse turned to me and said, "Have you met Reed Savage?" I thought he was shitting me at, first. Wasn't Reed Savage dead? Or was that Walter Reed? Or Jessica Savage? Hell, I didn't know, but I covered it okay.
Even though he looked old and stooped over, his ice blue eyes had enough life for a small town.
The deal was set in stone by the close of business on Friday. The only smoke that had to disappear up anybody's ass was me as non-replaceable, non-rewritable, pay-or-play writer for the run of the show. They were thinking of some hack named Thornton Wilder. Puhleeze. Did you ever scope out that wimpola high school play he wrote called Our Town? I mean, get real, Thomie; all Emily needs is a good horse-fucking.
The weather had been hot and nasty; it never seemed to cool down and the smog hung pale red in the air, night, and day. But in Hollywood, stuff like that never matters.
The meetings started as Blondie and Richard, Crusaders in Love went into high development. The network put half a dozen researchers to work on the old time period, castles and armor and stuff. They hired a costume guy to do preliminary drawings, real wild and feathery, especially the dresses that
Robin was going to use. They looked good. The network also sprung for a couple of drug-crazed comic book artists to create a picture book to sell the affiliate stations. It was all part of a kit; tee shirts, bumper stickers, contest suggestions, the whole megillah, and all around the centerpiece, a three-minute video cassette teaser.
Misty smoke cleared and there was Robin, a close up, set against our living room wall, which was fake castle-type stone-like, and while this neat old-timey music played, she read a speech of Blondie's. Mamma-mia, that woman; can act! I know her, I know the wall, I know the words because I wrote 'em, and still, when I see that tape, damn if I don't go boo-hoo. It's semi-embarrassing.
Here's the setup: Blondie has just discovered Richard the Lion-Hearted in this French jail They've whipped the dog shit out of him. The guard lets her radar Richard out and then drags her away. He was just teasing her. They throw her out of the jailhouse and she goes over to her girlfriend's. Blondie s wiped and she takes a couple of drinks. Who wouldn't, right? Then, she leans back against the cool stone wall, looks into nothingness, and begins to talk.
"I saw him, and yet, I did not. I heard him, and yet, I did not. I love him, and yet, I do not. He is cruel-a murderer, a warrior king whose heart belongs to steel alone. He is a hawk at the well. And, dying of thirst, I would give my life just to lie by his side one night..."
I told her to go ahead and write her Emmy speech; she told me she couldn't have done it without the poetry. See how perfect we are for each other?
Well, needless to say, the Crusaders in Love kit was a hot ticket. Some stations around the country did their own paintbox graphics and ran the clip, plugging it for their upcoming season. The big thing became: Who Will Play Richard?
You probably saw it in People. We got them all except Foreign Affairs and Candlepin Bowers Journal. Who would be Richard? that's all anybody could talk about. We ate it up. You can't buy this kind of pub.
Robin and I talked about it plenty. Crusaders in Love had (for TV) some pretty hot love scenes (a tasteful scarf-job, two reamouts, a gang rape, and lots of nipple) that I had done, and I was of two minds about who I wanted to see play
Richard. Somebody who was a good actor, sure, but not too sexy. I didn't want to sit there in the dailies with them, seeing take after take of some hot, throbbing dick in armor home in on my squeeze. I will only go so far for Art, Bo. I wanted Anthony Hopkins. He'd played Richard in Lion In Winter (a little heavy on the lavender) and was the physical type that would have looked good with Robin. Also, I read somewhere that Hopkins was happily married and didn't fool around. Robin favored Richard Gere. I didn't.
When die network (who hadn't even told us) finally announced the actor they had cast as Richard the Lion-Hearted, the whole country caught its breath. We were utterly flabbergasted.
Because they had just signed James Dean.
For a while, I admit, I was a ways north of confused and only a little south of certifiable. I had thought Dean died in a car crash back in the fifties sometime. I'd seen a few of his movies on TV. They knocked me out of course, but I thought the guy had passed away, expired, gonzo, gravesville, dead and buried. You can laugh now, but didn't you think so, too?
As usual, it-was Robin who scraped me off the wall and explained it all to me.
Dean (like Judge Crater before him and President Kennedy after) had reached his personal vanishing point right after Giant, It usually happens when a celebrity reaches critical mass; everybody's pulling every which way, the ex-wife and the I. B. S. are at the door, the ink has turned from honey to piss, and one day, the stress of the responsibility and the lives and the history just shuts them down. Sometimes alcohol and dope plays a part, sometimes no. But whatever it is, they are looking square into the squinty red eyes of a personal melt-down.
So they fake their death, get a new identity, and, saving their life and what's left of their sanity, they glide into chapter three, It is the only real vacation you can ever get from fame. And if you work it right, it's forever. Like that what's-his-face for the Red Sox that pitched the three no-hitters back to back and the next season couldn't throw a strike. He was supposed to have blazed out in a car crash. They had witnesses, the wrecked Caddy, and dental records, right? Wrong! The guy has a Jeep dealership in Portland, Oregon! I met him on the picture I did up Acre with Burt Reynolds.
If you don't believe me, call Burt and ask him. He knew the dude, too. I call them Living Dead Legends. Hey, someday, I'm going to do a book about them. You think Jim Morrison is actually dead? How about Clark Gable? Or Hitler? Amelia Earhart? Hell, no! I know this chick who SEEN HER. Case closed.
Robin and I met James Dean in kind of an unusual dealie. Normally, it would have been in some network office or at his agent's house or like that. Only about two days after the announcement of his signing, Robin and I get this mysterious call up at the house (I thought it was just the weirdo phones acting up again) from a semi-familiar voice that tells us to get in a car and drive east on I-10 toward Palm Springs. Now, me and Robin hate that town. All they have is old people and bad, French restaurants where the air conditioning is turned so high you could hang meat But that's not where we were supposed to go.
Joshua Tree is a little north of Palm Springs on the map and light years from it in all other ways. It's this little town on the edge of one of the more odd-bod national monuments around. You probably heard of it: half the Sunset