Somebody That I Used to Know

by Bunkie King

  We first fly to England. London is in the midst of a heatwave and I giggle when the newspapers make a huge issue of the fact that the Queen has to stop watering her gardens due to restrictions on water usage. Another less-funny incident happens when a London train breaks down in the Tube and people tear off their clothes and smash windows in an attempt to cool down. I am a bit disappointed — this is typical Australian weather, not English at all.

  After a few days catching up with Mother, other family and friends we depart for Dover to catch a hovercraft over the Channel, then a train to Paris. Jack tells the Paris Renault people that the advertising campaign he has appeared in, as the face of Renault in Australia, makes him honour-bound to be seen driving one while in Cannes. Nice score. We load up the sedan with a small two-man tent, sleeping bags and a tiny two-burner gas cooker.

  After the morning routine of stretching, jogging, showering and eating breakfast we rarely get on the road before 11 or 12. One of the stops we make between Paris and Cannes is Versailles, but I accidentally lock the keys in the car. By the time Jack opens the door with wire from a champagne cork — quite apt I think — everything is closing. Wow, I can now brag that I got to see the car park of Versailles.

  I am always the navigator when we travel by car, whether it’s to plot a course from Paris to Cannes, find a particular house in Melbourne, get from a location to an airport, or find a restaurant somewhere. It’s as though I’ve accidentally found a secret skill I didn’t know I possessed.

  We stay off the main highways and take picturesque side roads along the way to the south of France. It really is a magical journey. In villages we buy food from the quaint shops. Most of the camping sites are virtually empty as we’re travelling in the off-season. The shopkeepers don’t respond well to our lack of French but when they realise that we’re Australian, not English, and are camping, they’re forthcoming with information. We learn where the best sites are and how to find good cheap food. On Jack’s budget there is very little money and definitely no luxuries. Le and I have no money whatsoever; as far as we’re aware, neither does Jack.

  Jack and Le sleep in the tent, while I bed down in the car. I don’t sleep with Jack while on the road; he’s more comfortable in the tent. I prefer this; it alleviates some of my anxiety. I feel the unsatisfactory sex and lack of intimacy is probably my fault due to my lack of experience and basic inadequacy as a woman.

  I find a wonderful campsite in Grasse, located in the hills behind Cannes. It’s in an old olive grove on the side of a small terraced hill; the divine smell of lavender permeates the atmosphere. Grasse is the perfume capital of the region, specialising in lavender cologne, perfume, soap and all things aromatic. I’m sure the creek that runs through the bottom of the olive grove is polluted with the effluent from the perfume factories, but we ignore that environmental concern. Everything smells so beautiful.

  Each day we go down the hill to join the bizarre circus that is the Cannes Film Festival. Simply being seen is paramount, more important than the screenings. We find Cannes to be true to its dual reputation as a serious festival and a surreal, Fellini-esque carnival. One woman keeps flinging off her coat to reveal that she’s totally nude. When the paparazzi grab their cameras and run towards a cluster of people in front of the luxury Carlton hotel, it is to catch another show, possibly even Bridget Bardot, the famous French sex-kitten, who saunters along the beach walking her dogs.

  Australia has been notably absent from this glamorous and exotic bazaar. However, this is the year the Australian New Wave of filmmaking makes a big splash in Cannes with the screening of Mad Dog Morgan, The Devil’s Playground, Picnic at Hanging Rock and Caddie. Mad Dog Morgan stars Dennis Hopper as the notorious bushranger and is credited with being the first Australian film to score an American distribution deal at Cannes. The film goes on to open in 40 cinemas in New York and Los Angeles. Jack has parts in both Mad Dog Morgan and Caddie. Our cultural cringe is finally buried; our filmmakers take great pride in being Australian.

  Walking along the Croisette, the beachfront boulevard, the actor Oliver Tobias suddenly approaches us exclaiming, ‘You’re that guy! You’re Jack Thompson from Spyforce!’ The show screened on English television at one o’clock in the morning and actors working in theatre in London would go straight home after their performances to watch it. They love it; absolutely love it. Who’d have thought that Spyforce would get quite a cult showbiz following?

  Jack is also recognised by an actor-producer named Robert Paget, who visits Cannes every year. Bob extends an invitation to use the bathroom facilities in his unit whenever necessary.

  After Cannes we drive to Italy to stay with my eldest sister Julia, who married an Italian while working towards becoming a professoressa. From the age of 15 she absorbed the heady discussions with the various European migrants who came to our house and valued the way they thought. These far-ranging discussions had provided an escape from her child-minding and household chores.

  Back in London we attend the premiere of Sunday Too Far Away. Australian films are receiving a great response from critics overseas. Jack is well placed to be the new face of Australian cinema and becomes its unofficial spokesperson.

  On our way home we travel via Los Angeles where we stay with Joseph, the director of an American beer commercial that Jack did a couple of years earlier. Joseph and his family live in a wonderful Mexican-style villa on top of a hill above Topanga Canyon, a bohemian enclave, home to many artists and actors. I spend most of my time beside the swimming pool reading or sewing. I love LA. My time there is very laid back and I smoke lots of marijuana, even try some cocaine. I enjoy the cocaine rush. It makes me feel like I am alive and vibrant, but at the same time the feeling of being ‘all dressed up with nowhere to go’ is not terribly relaxing. I decide it would be a great party drug but not much good if you are sitting alone doing nothing in particular. Also, I realise it is highly addictive and expensive, so I don’t indulge very often.

  While staying with Joseph I look after the chickens that wander here and there. I refer to them as ‘chooks’, an unfamiliar term to most Americans. Everyone thinks it’s hilarious. From then on, I’m the ‘chook lady’.

  We also spend some time with the pint-sized Hervé Villechaize, who soon after becomes famous via the TV show Fantasy Island. (You know Hervé; he’s the one who cries out, ‘De plane! De plane!’) On a drive from Topanga to the beach, I sit in the back with the other ‘kids’, who are all a bit stunned when Hervé sparks up a Gauloise cigarette. Until then they had thought that because he was so small, Hervé was a child himself. On another visit to LA, Dennis takes us to spend some time with the legendary singer-songwriter Neil Young, who invites us to the studio where he’s making his latest album. (During our various stays in LA we meet such legends as actor Burt Lancaster, Australian entertainer Peter Allen, actress Lee Remick and singer Tina Turner. This really is the high life.)

  We also visit New York, where we stay with a female friend of Jack’s. One day, there’s a knock at the door. When I answer it, a guy I don’t know asks me something strange.

  ‘Have you noticed your window’s being shot at?’

  ‘You mean, with a gun?’ I ask incredulously.

  He nods a yes. I’m stunned; we all are — and we avoid going anywhere near any window from then on. Maybe we should have expected some New York weirdness; during the ride from the airport to the city, I had casually asked the driver about the size of Central Park. When he told me just how big it was, I sigh and replied, ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Never use the Lord’s name in vain,’ he snapped, his mood turning sour. I should have realised that religion and Americans can be a volatile combination.

  ***

  Our next trip to Cannes is in 1978 when The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith premieres. This film was shot in the same area as Mad Dog Morgan. Jack is sympathetic to the plight of the Aboriginal people and was deeply immersed in his portrayal of the religious Reverend Neville, who had educated the young
Jimmie.

  Dennis Hopper and Jack became great pals while shooting Mad Dog. Because the bushranger Dan Morgan was a confirmed drinker of rum, Jack introduced Dennis to Inner Circle overproof rum, which is potent. Dennis would swig it straight out of the bottle. He was drinking massive amounts of rum and beer every day, as well as using cocaine, and was a maniac on Mad Dog. The crew were afraid of him; even his co-star, David Gulpilil, was scared enough to go walkabout to talk to the spirits about how to survive working with him. But Jack respected the director and star of Easy Rider and was never fazed by Dennis or his antics.

  As a Method actor, Dennis remained intense for pretty much the entire shoot; he also loved to provoke people, something at which he excelled. To be fair, during Mad Dog he was playing a person being shattered by colonial society’s injustices, which was bound to have repercussions on him. Dennis and his girlfriend Mary, a reporter for Rolling Stone, spent some time with us at the farm after shooting finished.

  Dennis is also in Cannes in 1978 and invites us to stay in a two-storey villa perched atop a rocky outcrop down the coast after the festival. We have been staying in the same spot at Grasse where we camped on our first trip. The people who run the site are so pleased to see us a second time that they invite us to the grand opening of their new swimming pool. We mix easily and freely with the French people, feeling like locals, not tourists. This time we choose to stay in a 1950s-style caravan. One afternoon Peter Sumner, Jack’s old Spyforce buddy, drops in with his new girlfriend, Linda Stoner. It’s a peculiar place for a reunion.

  When we move on to Dennis’s place, a few friends are there with him; one of them is actor Dean Stockwell, who has known Dennis since the beginning of his Hollywood career in the 1950s. Dean is with Toni Basil, who played the part of a prostitute with Karen Black in Easy Rider — she later becomes a pop star, thanks to the song ‘Oh Mickey’. Dark haired with big eyes, Toni is stunningly beautiful; her porcelain-white skin is never exposed to the sun. Also staying at the villa is a tall, gorgeous Ghanaian, who was educated in England and has a penchant for aristocratic ladies. In his spare time he’s a cocaine dealer.

  One evening, the Ghanaian is cutting a large pile of coke into lines on the dining-room table. We all wander through and one by one snort our lines. Then Dean takes his turn. He grabs the rolled-up note and sticks one end up his nostril. As a joke, he aims the other end at the big pile. His bushy eyebrows raised, Dean looks up at the dealer who looks directly back at him and says, ‘I dare you.’

  Dean pretty well gets through the whole pile. There isn’t too much left by the time he finishes snorting.

  The dealer is astonished. ‘Aaaamaazzing!’

  For the first 24 hours Dean doesn’t make too much sense. He also doesn’t sleep for the next couple of days. He keeps buzzing around the villa like a mosquito.

  As for the Ghanaian, he’s busted for dealing soon after he arrives back in London and ends up in jail.

  Dennis invites us to visit him at his home in Taos, New Mexico. He meets us at Albuquerque airport and drives us to his sprawling three-storied adobe mansion. Mexican art and textiles cover the walls. He’d found the house when scouting locations for Easy Rider; the film ended up being so successful he could afford to buy it.

  The house originally belonged to wealthy arts patron Mabel Dodge Luhan, who hosted artists and intellectuals like Georgia O’Keefe, Aldous Huxley, Carl Jung and DH Lawrence. Dennis transformed the place into a post-production facility and spent a year there editing The Last Movie, his entirely self-indulgent, cocaine-fuelled follow-up to Easy Rider shot in Peru. The film destroyed his directorial career.

  We only stay a couple of hours in Taos before Dennis decides we should shift base to his cabin in the mountains, some three hours away. Jack and I sit in the tray of his bullet-riddled pick-up truck with the bags; Le and Mary, Dennis’s girlfriend, are in the cabin. Dennis drives like a maniac, slewing the truck from side to side and yelling ‘Yeehaa, whoohoo!!!’ Jack and I hold on like grim death, trying not to be thrown out. I’m so distressed that when we stop for petrol in the middle of nowhere I jump off the truck, grab my bag and start walking down the road. Jack runs after me.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I have no wish to die, to go out in a blaze of glory with Dennis Hopper! I am not getting back in that truck!’

  He persuades me to get back in by reassuring me that he’ll talk to Dennis. I ride in the cabin this time and Dennis keeps to his word; he drives sensibly, no longer acting like a drunken fool. I’m surprised and impressed at my first real act of assertiveness and begin to realise that a lot of Dennis is just a performance. I decide I like Dennis, despite his erratic behaviour.

  We arrive at the cabin perched on a precipice at the top of a mesa. At more than 2000 metres above sea level, the cabin overlooks a landscape of sparse vegetation. There’s nothing else for miles around. Taos is desert country near the Rio Grande Gorge. The interior of the cabin is quite spacious and decorated with Mexican artworks, rugs and pots. It’s eerily quiet; the only sound is the wind whistling through the oak trees. Dennis and Jack talk endlessly, having convoluted conversations about all manner of things, as they did on location during Mad Dog. Nothing is foreign or taboo to Jack. If Dennis wants to be outrageous, Jack can be outrageous. If Dennis wants to talk about high art, theatre and filmmaking, Jack can too.

  The constant travelling and lack of sleep is getting to me. I’m exhausted. In the heat of the day I sit on the edge of the precipice hoping to get some breeze coming up from the valley. Le and I tie sarongs to the bushes to make a shade canopy under which we spread cushions and rugs to read and catnap.

  Dennis drives us to ancient hot springs nearby and we walk down into the canyon below his cabin; here he shows us fossilised dinosaur footprints and ancient rock carvings. While at the springs, having a smoke, a local walks over and sits with us. When he speaks, we notice he has a gun strapped to his belt. It’s unavoidable. But he continues to talk casually, then stands up and walks off into the desert. Dennis isn’t fazed at all, but I’m very uncomfortable with Americans and their ‘right to bear arms’. It’s scary.

  I find Dennis to be an intelligent, well-informed individual who, when he wants, can be a sensitive, wonderful man. Possibly because of his reputation, he behaves maniacally when he thinks it is expected of him. I absolutely love the area and Dennis seems to be at peace here. Taos is his retreat from the fakery and cliquishness of Los Angeles; the cabin is his retreat from the madness of Taos.

  We stay at the cabin a few days. Dennis takes us on a tour of some of the original communes in the area. Because of his reputation and the success of Easy Rider, hippies have flocked to the area. The locals aren’t too impressed with the communes and the disruption to their traditional lifestyle and their peace and quiet. There are a lot of conflicts and many stories of the locals harassing, even shooting, the hippies. It makes me realise how authentic Easy Rider was. Seeing the rednecks beat up Jack Nicholson’s character, and Dennis and Peter Fonda’s characters getting shot doesn’t seem so far-fetched. In Australia we have rednecks but not the kind who think it’s OK to shoot people for having long hair.

  I’m impressed by the strength of the communities and the people’s commitment to make a go of it. Everyone works in the vegie patch — and there don’t seem to be many drugs around. People are there more for the arts, craft and the sustainable lifestyle, dedicated to leaving a small footprint, being self-sufficient. They have erected adobe buildings and houses, perfect weatherproof structures for the environment. Having grown up in a large family and then living in share houses for most of my adult life, I know how difficult it can be to live communally. It makes me respect these people even more. Even during our three to four months each year on the farm at Coffs, it can be hard to keep things harmonious with all the diverse people who stay. Communes can get really intense; they need organisation and rules, and there have to be regular meetings to work out issues. That takes major commit
ment.

  Jack’s farm is like a commune when we are there, but he likes to be able to come and go and use it as a retreat. The farm has more of a holiday-ish, laid-back atmosphere. We have working bees with the visitors and most of them participate in yarding the cattle, branding them, getting firewood, putting gravel on the driveway, things like that. We work for a couple of hours then stop for a joint and a cup of tea. Some of the visitors might go off to the cascades and have a swim while we continue working. I don’t object to having lots of people with us on the farm, I prefer it. It makes the atmosphere more light-hearted. The farm is my safe place, my haven.

  Chapter 14

  ‘You’ll have to leave!’

  I seem to follow the sun from the southern to the northern hemisphere. We spend two to four months living a very basic life on the farm, fetching water from the creek, cooking on log fires, milking the cow and riding horses. We bathe in crystal clear waters, read, talk and laugh, living with our toes in the dirt. Then we spend a few months filming in some interesting place, living in a world of privilege and pampering. The rest of the year we travel and visit people we know and respect.

  It’s a wonderful life, but not my own. It’s Jack’s. He’s driving the bus and if we want to sit in the back seat then that’s OK. We are his very own band of gypsies. I actually take on the name ‘Gypsy’ for a while. Whenever he needs to travel for a film there is no question that his ‘girls’ will accompany him.

  The emptiness of my life is brought home when we are invited to dine with Hollywood great Kirk Douglas. From his Beverley Hills address I anticipate an ostentatious mansion. Instead, the home of Kirk and Anne Douglas is a simple bungalow brimming with fresh flowers. When I’m alone with Anne I comment on their beauty and powerful perfume.