“Wait a minute,” a surprised Cliff asks. “You met Charlie through your father?”
“Yeah,” Pussycat says. “He picked him up on the side of the road, gave him a lift, then took him home for dinner.”
She continues, “So we had dinner. And we were definitely attracted to each other, so we snuck outta the house that night once everybody went to bed. And we fucked in the backseat of my dad’s car and then drove off.”
Wow, Cliff thinks, that’s a bold motherfucker. Steal a guy’s car and his hot little piece of ass fourteen-year-old daughter? Doesn’t just fuck her in the night. That would be plenty rude enough. But steals the guy’s car and runs off with her?
Guys get fucking shotgunned from fathers for pullin’ far less shit than that. That’s a free-of-charge fuckin’ murder right there, boy. No cop would arrest you, and no jury would convict you.
“So, what happened?” Cliff asks Pussycat.
“Well, we had two fun days on the road. But then Charlie told me I had to go back. Charlie said my parents probably got the cops looking for me. And if we go any further we’ll cross the state line and he can’t do that in a stolen car.”
This fuckin’ dude knows his shit, Cliff thinks.
The Los Gatos girl continues explaining to the Hollywood stuntman: “But Charlie said if I want to be with him, what I gotta do is go back home. Go back to school. Back to my room. Back to watching TV with my family. And then—marry the first jerk I meet. Because once I marry some jerk, I immediately emancipate myself from my parents.
“So I marry some bozo, then I send word to Charlie I’m emancipated. He sends word to me where I can meet him. I split from Dumb Shit and meet up with Charlie.”
Cliff never had much sympathy for guys who let girls jerk them around, but even he feels sorry for the poor sap that married this piece of work.
“And then what?” Cliff asks.
“Then,” Pussycat explains, “a life that consisted of merely existing transformed itself into a life of purpose.”
And it is at that point Debra Jo takes on the glassy-eyed look that all of Charlie’s girls take on if they’re allowed to babble on long enough.
“So all this happened because your dad picked up a hitchhiker?” Cliff confirms.
She laughs her big, loud spastic laugh. “I guess so! I never looked at it that way, but yeah, I guess.”
“So what does your father have to say about this turn of events?” a curious Cliff queries.
“Well, that’s kind of a funny story. My mom left my dad because of it.”
That’s funny? Cliff thinks.
“And my dad tried to blow Charlie’s head off with a shotgun.”
Well, it’s about fucking time, Cliff thinks.
“I take it he wasn’t successful?” Cliff says.
This giggle puss shakes her head from side to side.
Cliff asks, “What happened?”
“What happened,” Pussycat explains, “is Charlie is love. And you can’t kill love with a shotgun.”
“What does that mean in plain old American?” Cliff wants to know.
“It means Charlie turned my dad’s hate to love.” Pussycat goes on to describe, “Charlie told my dad he was ready to die, and if it was to be today, so be it. My dad calmed down. Charlie ended up turning my dad on that night. Then he had one of the girls with him—Sadie or Katie, I’m not sure which, I wasn’t there—suck his cock. And when they parted the next morning, they parted as friends.”
“Turning him on?” Cliff asks. “What does that mean?”
“They dropped acid.”
“Your dad dropped acid with the guy that ruined his life?”
“My dad dropped acid with the dude who showed him how groovy life could be,” she says. “Later my dad asked Charlie could he join the Family.”
“Holy shit, you gotta be fuckin’ kidding me!” Cliff exclaims.
Pussycat shakes her head no, she isn’t kidding. Then clarifies, “But Charlie thought that was too weird. He said, ‘Jesus Christ, we can’t do that, he’s Pussycat’s fucking father.’ So my dad isn’t a member of the Family, but he’s a friend of the Family.”
After hearing Pussycat’s wild story, Cliff can’t help but have a level of respect for this Charlie fella. I mean, manipulating a bunch of hippie-girl runaways, that’s one thing. Cliff could probably do that. But Cliff never held much sway with irate shotgun-toting fathers.
So Cliff asks, to sum up, “Okay, let me get this straight: A dude picks up a hippie hitchhiking? He takes the hippie home for dinner with his wife and his fourteen-year-old daughter? The hippie fucks the fourteen-year-old girl and takes off with her in the dude’s car? The same car that gave him a lift? Because of the hippie, the daughter gets married at fifteen and then runs off with the hippie? The dude’s wife leaves him due to all the chaos he caused by giving that fucking hippie a ride? The dude tracks the hippie down with a shotgun, but instead of blowing his head off, he later drops acid and parties with the hippie? And then later asks to be one of the hippie’s disciples?”
Pussycat nods her head. “I’m telling you, Cliff, Charlie’s a far-out cat. You’re gonna dig ’em, and I know he’s gonna dig the fuck outta you.”
As Cliff turns all of his attention back on the road, he admits, “Well, I gotta say, I am rather curious to meet this Charlie fella.”
Chapter Twenty
Sexy Evil Hamlet
While Rick Dalton, with the use of his reel-to-reel tape recorder, is going over the lines for the next scene, he hears a knock on his trailer door. He pushes the pause button on the machine and the tape reels stop in mid-rotation.
“Yes?” he says to the door.
“Hello, Mr. Dalton,” the second-second assistant director says. “If you’re ready, Sam would like to have a word with you on set.”
“I’ll be right out,” Rick tells him.
Rick looks around his trailer. Oh shit, I’m gonna hafta clean this place up before I leave, he thinks. And I’m gonna hafta come up with a good excuse why the window’s broken. The actual reason the window is broken is that when he entered the trailer after performing the last scene he shot, he was so angry with himself, he flung his cowboy hat across the room so hard he broke the window. The reason he was so angry with himself was due to an embarrassing moment on set when he kept fucking up his lines. Now, actors go up on their lines all the time. But the reason it caused Rick anguish was how it made him look. For three hours last night, Rick worked hard learning his lines. Rick knew he had a lot of lines to learn for today’s shoot. Professionals know their lines, and Rick is a professional.
But professionals don’t usually drink eight whiskey sours till they pass out drunk, not remembering how they got to bed. Now, some acting professionals do do that. But over the years they’ve learned how to handle it. But those actors (Richard Burton and Richard Harris) are professional drunks. Rick’s still an amateur.
In the generation before drugs and weed became de rigueur among SAG members, alcohol was the monkey on most of their backs. Now, a lot of them started drinking for the same reasons their children would take drugs. They would just drift into it as an escape, till it got out of hand. But some came by their alcoholism honestly.
You must remember a lot of leading men of the fifties served in World War Two. And a lot of men who became actors in the late fifties and early sixties served in Korea. And a lot of those men saw things during the war they could never unsee. And since their generation understood this, their alcoholism was tolerated, to a large degree.
Both World War Two hero Neville Brand and classic World War Two dogface Lee Marvin were allowed to be drunk on set without the insurance company closing down the production. As Marvin got older, he seemed more and more haunted by the ghosts of the soldiers he killed on the battlefield. During the climax of his 1974 western, The Spikes Gang, when Marvin’s character is supposed to shoot his young co-star Gary Grimes (the young lad from The Summer of ’42), apparently Grimes’s lo
ok or age or both brought to mind a young soldier Marvin killed during the war. The Oscar-winning tough guy sat in his trailer and drank himself into a stupor in order to have the courage to face what he had done and what he must now pretend to do. And the proof is in the pudding. The rest of The Spikes Gang is an okay seventies’ western. Enjoyable enough to watch, but not memorable enough to stay in the mind. Except for that climactic violent shoot-out and the vicious expression on Marvin’s totem-pole face.
In George C. Scott’s leading-man actor’s contract was a stipulation that three days of the production would be lost due to the actor’s alcoholism.
Before he practically became a skid-row case in the seventies, even Aldo Ray’s excessive drinking was somewhat tolerated by film production companies.
Rick Dalton has no such excuses. His drinking is caused by a three-way combination of self-loathing, self-pity, and boredom.
Rick grabs Caleb’s hat, slides into Caleb’s brown rawhide fringe jacket, and exits the trailer, making sure the second-second AD doesn’t get a good look at the mess he made out of his acting trailer. As the crew hustles and bustles and horses clop their hooves in the dirt, Rick is led down the main street of the Royo del Oro western-town movie set and delivered back to Caleb DeCoteau headquarters, the Gilded Lily saloon. As Rick walks through the batwing doors, he sees the crew setting up the camera on one side of the set. Opposite the 35mm camera lens stands Sam Wanamaker by himself, next to a handsome high-back mahogany chair. His director summons him over with a hand gesture. “Hey, Rick, come over here a minute, I want to show you something.”
“Sure thing, Sam,” Rick says, as he double-times it over to Mr. Wanamaker.
Sam stands behind the sturdy wooden chair, lays his hands on the back of it, and says, “Rick, this is the chair from which you’ll make your ransom demands for Mirabella.”
“Well, great, Sam,” Rick drawls. “That’s a damn good-lookin’ chair.”
“But I don’t want you to think of it as a chair,” Sam corrects.
“You don’t want me to think of it as a chair?” a perplexed Rick repeats.
“No, I do not,” Sam says.
“What do you want me to think of it as?” Rick questions.
“I want you to think of it as a throne. The throne of Denmark!” he concludes.
Having not read Hamlet, Rick has no idea Hamlet was Danish, so he doesn’t comprehend the “throne of Denmark” reference.
He repeats to his director, somewhat incredulously, “The throne of Denmark?”
“And you are a sexy evil Hamlet,” Sam says with flourish.
Oh Christ, this fucking Hamlet horseshit again, Rick thinks.
But instead of saying that, he just repeats what Sam said. “Sexy evil Hamlet.”
Sam points at him with a strong index finger and says, “Ex-act-ly,” as if he’s saying, Eureka! Then Sam continues with his own Shakespearean performance. “And little Mirabella is your pint-sized Ophelia.”
Rick’s not sure who Ophelia is, but he assumes she’s a character in Hamlet, so he just nods along as Sam continues his subtextual Hamlet web-spinning. “Caleb, Hamlet. Both in control. Both in power.”
“Both in power,” Rick repeats.
“Both mad,” Sam says.
“Both mad?” Rick asks.
Sam nods his head yes. “In Hamlet’s case, due to the murder of his father at the hands of his uncle.” Then, as an aside adds, “Who’s also fucking his mother.”
“Actually, I didn’t know that,” Rick mumbles under his breath.
“And in Caleb’s case—syphilis,” Sam says.
“Syphilis?” Rick says, surprised. “I got syphilis? I’m crazy?”
Sam nods his head in the affirmative to each question.
“Look, Sam,” Rick reminds him, “I told you I ain’t read much Shakespeare.”
With a dismissive wave of his hand, Sam assures Rick, “That’s not important. All you have to do is seize the throne.”
“Seize the throne?” Ricks repeats.
“You’ve got to rule Denmark,” Sam declares.
I guess Hamlet is Danish, Rick thinks.
And Sam finishes his Prince of Denmark analogy: “And you’re going to rule it violent, rule it cruel, you’re going to rule it like a cowboy De Sade, but you’re going to rule!”
De Sade? Who’s that, wonders Rick, another character from Hamlet?
Sam continues with his directorial pep-talk performance. “Mirabella is the most precious thing in the world to these Lancer men.”
“She’s a beautiful girl,” Rick interjects.
“She’s purity personified,” Sam counters. “And these hard men, who’ve lived these hard lives, worship this little girl. And now the worst thing that can possibly happen has happened. You, an unscrupulous scoundrel, have taken the most precious shining jewel of their lives! And now you must impress upon them beyond a shadow of a doubt that you will kill her like that”—Sam snaps his fingers, and Rick snaps his fingers in response—“unless they dance to your tune. Got it?” the director asks his actor.
“Got it!” the actor answers.
Then, with one final theatrical gesture, Sam points at the wooden chair. “Caleb, assume the throne of Denmark.”
Rick steps past his director and lowers himself into the seat of the chair, then, once seated, grips the arms of the chair with his hands, straightens his spine, and does his best to mimic the posture of a king on a throne.
Sam’s face lights up, as he declares to the set and the crew, “Behold, Prince Hamlet!”
Rick doesn’t understand three-quarters of what Sam just said, but he appreciates Sam’s enthusiasm. And apparently Sam has forgotten Rick’s fumbling with his lines earlier. The director turns away to deal with his crew, while Rick sits on his throne, goes over the lines in his head, and tries to think of himself as the Prince of Denmark.
The eight-year-old actress playing Mirabella enters the saloon, eating an onion bagel slathered in white fluffy cream cheese, which smears all over her face every time she takes a bite.
“I thought you said you didn’t eat on set?” Rick asks her.
“I said I don’t eat lunch when I have a scene after lunch, because it makes me sluggish,” she corrects, “but by three or four I hafta eat something or my power will crash.”
“Well, you ain’t sittin’ in my lap till you finish eating that monstrosity and wipe your fingers,” he tells her. “I don’t want you getting that white shit in my wig.”
“You’re just jealous you can’t have a bite,” she teases.
“No shit,” he says. “I ain’t been able to eat all fuckin’ day with this Cowardly Lion shit all over my face. Every bite of chicken I ate during that earlier scene was coated in hair.”
That makes the little girl giggle.
“But I gotta admit—that not-eating-lunch idea, especially when you have a scene later when you hafta eat, that ended up being a strong choice.”
“See, I told ya.”
The 1st AD, Norman, walks over to the two thespians and instructs Mirabella to sit in Rick’s lap. She ditches the bagel and climbs aboard. Then hair and wardrobe come by and start fussing and adjusting both actors, preparing them for the take. After vanity sciences finish their priming and shove off, the two actors wait for Sam to finish talking to the crew and give them the cue to start the scene. However, there’s a problem with the harsh daylight coming in through the big saloon picture window. So the director holds up the scene while one of the grips tapes a tan gel to the window to cut down the harshness of the afternoon sun.
While the little girl sits in Rick’s lap, waiting to perform their first scene together, she asks her scene partner, “Caleb . . . can I ask you a question?”
“Shoot,” he says.
“If Murdock Lancer doesn’t pay the ransom, or if something happens to the money,” she asks, “would you really kill me?”
“But he does pay the money,” Rick says matter-of-factly.
“Jeez Louise,” she rolls her eyes and says in exasperation, “I’m not talking to Rick, who’s read the script, I’m talking to Caleb, who doesn’t know what’s going to happen till it happens. So again, Caleb, if Murdock Lancer doesn’t pay the ransom, would you kill me?”
“Absolutely,” he answers immediately.
She’s a little surprised by the lack of hesitation in his answer. “Really? Absolutely? No question, no hesitation?”
“None whatsoever,” he answers. “That’s my thing when I play villains. I make them no-bullshit, real, real bad guys. Like, I did that horseshit Tarzan show with Ron Ely. Now, that show’s horseshit, but the guy I played was a real bastard. I played a poacher—you know what a poacher is?” he asks the child.
She shakes her head no.
“It’s a guy who kills wild animals he shouldn’t,” he explains. “So I enter the show carrying a flamethrower, setting the jungle on fire so I can stampede the animals to the area where I can kill ’em. Like I said, that show ain’t shit, but I dug playing that fuckin’ bastard. And same thing here. I commit to Caleb’s cruelty. I think it’s a strong choice.”
Listening to his explanation, she nods her head; then, when he’s finished, she offers up her interpretation.
“Well, naturally I understand what you’re talking about. I mean, you are the villain of the piece, so your character has storytelling concerns that my character doesn’t have. But putting aside the label ‘villain,’” she makes air quotes around the word “villain” and continues, “you’re still a character, and characters can be affected by a wide array of things that can cause them to act out of character.”
This is an interesting train of thought, Rick thinks, and he twists his upper body a little closer to her, to indicate he’s giving her his full attention.
She gives an example of where she’s coming from. “I mean, the way you talk in our big scene we’re doing tomorrow, it sounds like you kinda like me. Not this scene,” she quickly clarifies. “This scene you don’t know me yet. I’m still just Murdock Lancer’s little girl. But in our big last scene, we seem to know each other more.”
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Page 26