by Ian Halperin
“Now, we all know for sure who some of the famous dykes are,” Lenny continues. He points to Jodie Foster, who for years had lived openly with her longtime girlfriend, though she had never officially acknowledged her sexuality. (Foster finally came out at the Golden Globes in 2013, long after this session.)
“And then there’s Rosie O’Donnell—a perfect example. When she started out, she was as far from a leading lady as you can get. She made absolutely no attempt to hide her sexuality. When she was starring in Grease on Broadway, she began a longtime relationship with one of her female costars. Then she’s hired to front a popular daytime talk show, watched by a lot of conservative Midwest housewives who wouldn’t be very keen on watching a dyke host. Suddenly, she starts talking about the crushes she has on various male actors. She constantly refers to one in particular as her ‘boyfriend.’ Then when her lesbian friends call her on this, she tells them she’s obviously joking, especially because the star in question is widely rumored to be gay. So the whole thing is an elaborate inside joke. Then [as the show is coming to an end], Rosie finally announces she is a lesbian.”
Then there’s the countless women who date or marry gay actors. “The most famous Hollywood beard today,” says Lenny, “is [well-known Oscar-nominated actress], who has been reported to be dating a number of different A-list actors over the years. Everybody in Hollywood knows she’s a dyke. You can be sure that if you see an item in the gossip columns reporting that she’s dating some actor, then that actor is a fag.” He shoots off the names of three famous actors, each of whom is reported to be a notorious womanizer. Sure enough, all three of them have ‘dated’ the actress in question within the previous few years.
“But what’s in it for her?” I ask.
“That’s easy,” says Lenny. “Just as the gay rumors get dispelled whenever these actors are reported to be dating a beautiful woman—or more often when they are photographed with her in public—she gets to look like a breeder whenever it’s reported she is dating this or that handsome actor. Meanwhile, she has been dating [another well-known Hollywood actress] for years with the public none the wiser. So, it’s basically a win-win situation for a lesbian actress to date or marry a gay actor. But then there’s another subject we can never agree on—bisexuality.”
“There’s no such thing!” yells out Karl.
“Oh, shut up,” Lenny replies. He explains that nobody really knows how many of these gay actors are simply dating and marrying beards, and how many of them are actually bisexual. This debate, he says, has been raging since the beginning of Hollywood.
He cites the example of Cary Grant, one of Hollywood’s greatest sex symbols. Grant, he says, was reportedly in love with the movie star Randolph Scott. “Literally everybody in Hollywood knew it. They would sit there in the Brown Derby till all hours, staring longingly into each other’s eyes and holding hands. They even shared a beach house together. Yet Grant was married five times. His wives had to have known about him and Scott, not to mention his lovers over the years. One book claimed that he even had an affair with Marlon Brando, another rumored bisexual. So why would anybody marry him in the first place? Were they lured by the promise of the fabulous glamorous Hollywood lifestyle and the money, or by the potential impact on their own acting careers? After all, three of his wives were struggling actresses.”
I actually remembered an incident in the early eighties when Tom Snyder interviewed Chevy Chase, and the former SNL star said of Grant, “I understand he’s a homo.” Grant sued him for slander and won, although details of the star’s many gay affairs later emerged after his death in 1986. It raises the question, how does anybody prove anybody’s actually gay, short of catching them in bed with someone of the same sex?
Karl mentions one of the world’s most famous sitcom stars, who is gay and married. “They live in this huge mansion, but according to people who have been there, he and his wife occupy half the mansion each and they never have anything to do with each other. Very convenient, but again, why did she marry him? I hear that the way these things work is the woman agrees to put in a certain amount of time before filing a divorce. In exchange, she is guaranteed a platinum credit card for the whole marriage and a generous settlement after the divorce. Hell, I’d marry some rich dyke looking for a beard. She wouldn’t have to ask me twice.
“Then there’s [recently married superstar actor], who’s a little too close to being outed publicly for his own comfort. The story goes that he actually interviewed a series of women and offered them a huge sum of money, not to mention prime roles, in exchange for staying married to him for a certain number of years.”
He continues, “The saddest part of the Hollywood closet for the gay stars who aren’t bisexual is that they live a life of perpetual sadness. They can never really have an open relationship, so they end up having sex with high-priced Hollywood call boys for two grand a night.”
“Unless Scientology gets its hands on them,” Lenny says.
The mere mention of Scientology piqued my interest, because I had already embarked on an investigation of the alleged cult for a previous version of my film and had managed to film a tour of their famed Celebrity Centre with an actress named Jennifer Holmes and a cameraman named Miles. The tour had been particularly interesting because of an incident that took place while the centre’s Vice President Greg LaClaire was showing us around.
As he extolled the virtues of the religion, a movement in the bushes distracted me. When I peered closer, I saw that there was a cameraman filming us, which resulted in the bizarre spectacle of our video cameras focusing on each in a surreal showdown. When I asked LaClaire what was going on, he seemed a little sheepish but had a ready explanation.
“He’s just my guy, because we might use this someday, somehow,” he explains, creeping me out.
Now, as the subject of Scientology comes up in this unlikely setting, I ask my host what the religion has to do with anything.
“Well, if you pay them enough money and you’re gay, they promise to convert you,” Lenny explains. “Or so I hear.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The moment of truth is at hand. On March 11, 2015, Dr. Phil McGraw was set to finally air the Nick Gordon interview he had conducted a few days earlier. The show had already leaked some of the details of what went down, and producers suggested that Gordon had been “out of control,” even violent, during the taping. Having arrived in Atlanta days earlier, I eagerly waited to see whether the interview would shed any new light into Nick’s persona or provide clues as to whether he was capable of the acts of which he was being accused. Would this be anything more than a ratings-grabbing publicity stunt? I had my doubts.
The episode, “Bobbi Kristina’s Boyfriend, Distraught and Out of Control: The Nick Gordon Intervention,” kicks off with an interview with Nick’s mother, who flew to Atlanta from her home in Orlando, Florida, supposedly unbeknownst to Nick. And almost right away Michelle Gordon clears up a falsehood that has been reported literally thousands of times since Bobbi ended up in the hospital.
The media had been reporting that Nick came to live with Whitney when he was twelve and Bobbi was eight. The story had it that she “raised” Nick as an adopted son and that he was like an older brother to Bobbi since childhood before the couple’s relationship turned romantic soon after Whitney’s death.
But to Dr. Phil, Michelle revealed that she kicked Nick, now twenty-four, out of the house when he was eighteen and that he came to live with Whitney some time after May 2008. Contrary to what has been widely reported, Michelle did not know Whitney. They were not “friends.” Rather, Michelle claims, Bobbi Kristina had met Nick and become friends with him in school.
Right away, this explains why I have been unable to find any evidence that Nick was raised by Whitney as her non-adopted son, despite weeks of attempting to track down details of this arrangement or witnesses who could confirm the unusual living arrangements. It simply isn’t true, nor is their subsequent romantic relationship a
s creepy or “incestuous” as the media has been portraying it for weeks.
Michelle proceeds to deliver another surprise. She reveals that Nick was in a nearby room when Whitney was found unconscious in her LA hotel bathtub in 2012. When he heard an assistant scream, he ran in and found Whitney on the bathroom floor, where she had been dragged out of the tub. “At that point, she was on the floor and he administered CPR to her,” Michelle says. “And he called me when he was standing in front of her body. And he just couldn’t understand why he couldn’t revive her. He said, ‘Why? Why couldn’t I do CPR on her? I couldn’t get the air in her lungs?’ ”
Not a single eyewitness account of the singer’s death ever mentioned the presence of Nick Gordon, so Michelle’s revelation comes as quite a shock, especially because three years later he supposedly performed CPR on Bobbi when she was found in a bathtub under similar circumstances.
When McGraw asks what Nick told her about the circumstances surrounding Bobbi, she says,
Krissi, Nick, and Max [Lomas] went out Friday night and they went to a party or a club and they were drinking. They got home very early in the morning on the Saturday. Krissi and Nick had an argument and Nick walked away from the argument, went to another bedroom to fall asleep and Krissi went up to her room and drew a bath, a bubble bath. From what I understand, what Nick’s telling me, the cable guy came over. Max let the cable guy in the house and he needed to enter into the bathroom for some kind of access. Max found her. He pulled her out of the tub and he doesn’t know how to do CPR. So he went to get Nicholas and Nicholas was able to do the CPR on her for fifteen minutes and police arrived and they didn’t help him.
“Nobody helped him until the [paramedics] got there, which I don’t understand,” she says, fighting back tears.
Asked whether Nick has shared with her how this has affected him, she says, “Nicholas continually expresses how much he failed Whitney because Whitney asked Nicholas to protect Krissi and Nicholas has always felt like he was a protector of Whitney and Krissi. He says if Krissi dies it’s going to be his fault because she should have survived due to his CPR. He blames himself for all of this.”
McGraw interrupts to explain he needs to know what’s in Nick’s head, because “he seems to be unraveling in a really bad way from what I’ve seen and understood.”
Michelle reveals that he has told her many times lately that he is going to kill himself and “he’s tried” by “taking pills” two weeks before. He had apparently shared this with his younger brother, Jack, and told him not to tell anybody. She then called the person with whom Nick has been staying and asked him to confiscate his stash of pills, including Xanax, for which he allegedly has a prescription.
The show then cuts to video footage somewhere in the same hotel of Nick, in an inebriated and likely drugged-up state, babbling to his “publicist.”
McGraw reveals that he has been “told” that Nick accompanied Whitney and Bobbi Kristina to rehab at least three times during her final years when she was seeking treatment for her drug problem.
“I believe Whitney wanted to keep them all together as a family so she took Nicholas. Everywhere her and Krissi went, Nick went. They were never separated. They were always together,” Michelle says. She maintains that her son didn’t have a problem at that time but that she assumed Bobbi Kristina did. Dr. Phil is astonished at this revelation.
“Wow, I’ve never heard of that,” he says. “I’ve been doing this for thirty-five years and I’ve never heard of anybody taking a posse to rehab.”
She claims that in recent phone conversations her son has sounded intoxicated and told her he wants to die.
“He’s just full of pain and hurt and he wants to see Krissi. He told her he just wants to hold her hand and rub her feet. He said he can’t take it anymore. He doesn’t want to live.”
Asked why she thinks he’s being blocked from seeing Bobbi, she responds, “It’s her father. His pride and selfishness. He won’t let Nicholas see Krissi because of his pride and his feelings toward Nick.”
Asked whether she believes the family believes he hurt her, she replies, “I don’t believe the Houston side believes that. I don’t know about the Browns. My son would never try and hurt Krissi. I don’t care what they think. My son would never hurt anyone.”
“From what I’ve seen, what I’ve tracked, what I’ve learned, I was scheduled to come here and interview Nick because he wanted his side of the story out,” announces McGraw. “He feels like he was being vilified in the press, he was being seen as some monster that had done terrible things and that he wanted to tell his side of the story. Why he wanted to be with her, wanted her to feel his presence, hear his voice if it could help in some way. He wanted to tell his story. And in the time between when that was scheduled and when we got here he has deteriorated so far, I don’t believe he is in a position to do that interview.”
The show cuts to footage of Nick curled up in a fetal position on the bed, crying, “I miss Krissi.”
Then McGraw reveals that in the last forty-eight hours, Nick has gone “exponentially downhill” to the point that he is in “this building screaming that he wants to die and he’s just out of control. At this point, I don’t think he has any chance of turning this around on his own.”
He then delivers the dramatic line that had been featured in previews all week leading up to the show:
“Your son, left to his own devices, will be dead within a week!”
Returning from a commercial, McGraw tells a distraught Michelle that he no longer intends to conduct an interview but “an intervention.” His life hangs in the balance, and Dr. Phil fears that he will either kill himself or drink himself to death if he doesn’t get help.
He announces that he intends to leave her for a few minutes and go find Nick in the hotel and “bring him down here one way or another.” When he gets here, he tells Michelle, their “one mission” is to get him to agree to go to an inpatient rehabilitation center.
“Everything is set up,” he tells her, “but you and I have to get him there and we don’t take no for an answer.”
Minutes later, McGraw enters Nick’s hotel room and asks him how he’s doing.
“I’m good, man,” he says, shaking the doctor’s hand. Leading him down the corridor, he asks the glassy-eyed young man whether he’s been drinking. Nick reveals that he has had “two shots.”
Asked how he’s feeling as they enter the elevator, Nick says, “I’m feeling like I miss Krissi and Whitney.” He rolls up his sleeve to show McGraw the tattoo of Bobbi’s name that he had done a few days after she went into the hospital.
Sobbing, he pleads, “Please don’t put this on TV. I’m weak.” Arriving back at the suite, he sees Michelle. “Mommy, oh my gosh, oh my gosh,” he exclaims as he throws his arms around her. “I’m so sorry for everything.”
Composing himself, he turns to McGraw and says, “Let’s do this. I’m good, I’m good, I’m good.” As his mother hugs him, he whimpers, “Momma, I would never hurt anybody. I love people. I love babies, everything.”
Steeling himself, he turns to the camera, rolls up his sleeves to display his tattoos, and says, “All right. Here we go.”
Before McGraw can begin the interview, Nick announces that he’s been drinking and doing Xanax but that he’s “been sober besides that.” He admits he’s been drinking a lot as the show cuts to footage of him in his hotel room, slurring his words.
He tells McGraw, “My heart hurts, I have panic attacks.” Reminded that he threatened suicide (on Twitter), he responds, “If anything happens to Krissi I will.”
The next ten minutes continue in this vein, with Nick periodically crying and storming out of the room, then returning moments later and talking about his pain over Krissi.
At one point, he rages, “I hate Bobby Brown. It’s to the point I’m getting frustrated.”
Finally, Dr. Phil brings in two men from Willingway rehab center, where Nick has agreed to go for treatment. “Pleas
e help me see Krissi,” he pleads. After he finally agrees to leave, he has one last change of heart. “What if Krissi calls my name and I’m like three hours away? My name will be the first she calls, so . . .”
McGraw pledges that “If that happens, I, Dr. Phil, will get a chopper on the ground at Willingway and we will fly you back to the facility. That’s my commitment to you.”
In response, Nick promises, “I’ll be sober. I’ll be clean. I’ll be a good person.” He then heads off to rehab.
It’s a compelling, albeit disturbing, hour of television that was definitely worth the wait. But after it was over, I was left with some thoughts. First, Nick managed to get through the entire show without ever being asked to explain what happened on the morning that Bobbi Kristina was found. Instead, his mother supplies the version of events he told her, giving no one the chance to question any contradictions or inconsistencies. It is clear from Dr. Phil’s narrative that Nick had never agreed to come on and talk about the events of that morning. Instead, “his side of the story” meant he would be allowed to deliver the same plea he has been issuing on Twitter for weeks—asking to see Bobbi. It makes sense, given the fact that his lawyers okayed his appearance, and they would likely never have given the green light to anything else, but it is disingenuous and even misleading to suggest he was ever going to give his side of the story.
The show marked the revelation that he now has a publicist, Josey Crews, who is pictured briefly in the broadcast and is undoubtedly the person who engineered this appearance. Crews is a former editorial producer for CNN and Good Morning America and now heads an obscure publicity agency in Atlanta. My guess is that he recently approached Nick, offering to do free publicity to improve his image. His name first appeared in connection with the case on March 3, just prior to the taping, when Nick tweeted, “I have the best publicist in the world.” Indeed, Crews appears to have done a masterful job, because Nick comes off as a sympathetic and tragic figure without ever having to explain himself or account for the events of January 31.