—She could barely tolerate it then, and she isn't going to tolerate it now. Sighing as she looks out at the mob scene in the living room, she decides to leave for her quiet bed and breakfast up north that night, just one day after she got here.
—Out on the back patio overlooking the panoramic haze of Los Angeles, Tim's hip helpers (a half-dozen young artists and computer whizzes who tend to his needs day and night) set up a video camera to record his interactions with Oliver Stone But the young man who clumsily introduced himself to Leary out in the living room is so annoyingly persistent that Tim decides to process him first and be done with him. -The boy tells a circuitous tale about his father, who was a graduate student at Harvard when Leary was conducting his LSD sessions. The student was strongly opposed to psychedelics use, and when he wandered into one of Leary s private, off-campus parties, he was scandalized by the goings-on.
—"So what?" asks Leary, annoyed. "Why are you telling me this now? I know all this." Leary impatiently drags the boy to the conclusion of his story. Leary has much bigger fish to fry.
—"My father went to his own therapist," the boy explains, "and told him what he saw. It was the therapist, not my father, who told the faculty about the party and the drugs. -Leary could care less about soothing the conscience of a detractor from thirty years ago, especially through a boy one-generation removed. The long letter that the boy's father sent Tim detailing the whole ordeal had sat unread on the imitation Keith Haring dining room table for the past two
—"Fine," Leary says, dismissing the supplicant and turning to Stone for the real business of the afternoon.
—"Oliver," he calls across the circle of lawn chairs. Stone is deep in another conversation about the effects and availability of DMT - a short-acting psychedelic joyride of epic proportion - and doesn't respond to the first summons.
—"Oliver " Tim repeats, a bit louder, as he hands off his glass of white wine for a refill. (Glasses with stems have been outlawed in the house because they topple over too easily )
—Stone finally turns to Timothy and smiles. The power of the entire entertainment industry seems to sit in his chair with him Tim's autobiography, Flashbacks, has been optioned by Interscope several times now, and Stone's frequent visits to the house may herald his interest in signing on as the movie's director - finally giving the project a "green light" Tim isn't sure he wants to become remembered as just another Stone icon, but after Larry Plynt dropped in yesterday and said what a good job Oliver was doing producing his biographical film, Tim warmed up to the idea.
—"What can I do for you, Tim?" Stone asks casually. His face is bright red from the heat of the sun, in stark contrast to his snow-white Nautica windbreaker. Tim doesn't mince words He didn't sleep well at all last night, and he's spent a day's worth of energy getting dressed, into the wheelchair through the sycophants, and out onto the porch. Tim's pretty sure Stone is here to make a deal so he takes a gamble.
—"Are you interested in making a movie about me?" Leary asks bluntly. There are at least a dozen of us on the patio and we are all in hushed attention. We are witnesses to the transaction, and both men know it.
—"What?" Stone asks. He is stalling for time, I assume He must have understood what Tim asked.
—Tim repeats himself boldly. "Are you interested in making a movie about my life or about one of my books?" In other words, put up or shut up.
—"Urn, right now? No," Stone says. "I'm not thinking about doing that now."
—"Than, why are you here? Do you want something?"
—"No, Tim." Stone says. "I'm just here to visit. Just as a friend."
—"Well, good," Tim responds without a second's hesitation I don t want anyone to make a movie."
—We are all shocked. It's all Tim has been talking about for weeks. He even did an interview about the film with the LA Times. Then it hits me. How else could he respond and save face?
—"Really?" stone pursues where perhaps he shouldn't "Why not?"
—"I just don't want that right now."
—After a bit of Smalltalk, Leary maneuvers himself off the porch and back inside. The owner of a small book company gets Leary to sign a few dozen copies of a reprinted work. Each signature will add value to the stash. As he signs each book Tim asks hopefully "Who is this one to?" only to be reminded, each time, that he should just sign his name. It's business, not personal.
—Before leaving with his entourage, Stone procures the number of someone with connections to exotic psychotropics, and gives his own number to a photographer selling fundraising portraits of Tim. A fair exchange.
—Later that afternoon, most of the strangers have left and Tim sits with his loyal assistants - the grad students of Leary U - going through boxes of photos, signing the back of each one and identifying the subjects. It's as if he wants to fill his brain with the images of his own life - load up his cerebral ram chips so that at the moment of death he'll be taking everything he has experienced with him to the other side.
—"Who's that?" a beautiful blonde girl in a satin halter asks. She shows Tim a picture of a man in a strange uniform holding a drink.
—"That's Captain Al Hubbard," Tim answers, squinting at the photo.
—"Who was he?" asks another.
—"He, uh " Tim accesses his cerebral hard drive, "he stole all this LSD from the CIA and gave it out in San Francisco." He thinks back a bit further. "I remember he had Sheriff's badges from all over the country, and diplomatic immunity. Strange fellah."
—These quiet moments are the best time - other than 4am in his bedroom - to glean what's really going on inside the dying man's head. I wait for a pause to tread on delicate turf.
—"What did you mean," I eventually ask, "when you told Oliver that you didn't want anyone to make a film?"
—Tim doesn't say anything. I backpedal.
—"He kept coming around acting like he wanted to make one," I offer.
—"I said I didn't want him to and I meant it," Tim answers.
—"But what if he walked in with a briefcase with $ 100,000 and said, "here, let's make the movie."
—"Well." Tim replies, "first, it doesn't happen like that. It would be much more complicated than that."
—"But you said you didn't want it."
—"I don't want anything," Tim pierces me with his gaze. He's still here, all right. "That's all I meant. I don't want. I wasn't asking him to do something because I wanted it." After a few more minutes of photo-gazing, Timothy goes back to his bedroom to work on some felt-pen word-paintings with Los Angeles artist-photographer Dean Chamberlain. These sketches are about the only creative expression Tim still has the patience to complete and, according to the wild-eyed bleach-blonde artist egging him on, the paintings could be worth a lot someday. If nothing else, their execution affords Tim some privacy.
—Everyone else spends the rest of afternoon decorating the apparatus that the cryonics people have brought to drain Timothy's blood at the moment of his death as preparation for freezing his brain. It's pretty morbid stuff: large plastic tubes and bottles for collecting blood, nitrogen for cooling it buckets, needles, catheters, worklights, and. at the center of it all, an aluminium gurney where the body will rest.
—By the time the artists and web designers are done with it the equipment has been transformed into a pagan shrine to ' Timothy. The gurney has been filled with items Tim might desire on the other side, such as wine, pot, a bong, Tylenol balloons for nitrous, the poetry of Allen Ginsburg, a book by William Burroughs, photos of Tim's friends, and junk food Where Tim will lie rests a shiny mylar mannequin with Yoda mask affixed to the top. The lights have been gelled blue and red, and strings of beads hang over everything else. A picture of Tim, adorned with flowers, sits in front of the whole installation.