The Last Love Song

by Tracy Daugherty

  “I found earthquakes”: ibid.

  “What I have made for myself”: Didion, The White Album, 208.

  “couldn’t do that to him”: Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking: A Play (New York: Vintage, 2007), 19.

  “lit a joint”: Dunne, Vegas, 231–32.

  “I stopped”: Didion, Where I Was From, 218.

  “the weather”: Dunne, Vegas, 169–70.

  “Halfway home”: Jonathan Yardley, “John Gregory Dunne,” Washington Post, January 22, 2006; available at washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/19/AR2006011902698.html.

  “Frank E. Campbell”: Dunne, Vegas, 13.

  “[S]he was lonely and depressed”: ibid., 174–75.

  “living with [a] piranha”: ibid., 11.

  “It was like all those terrible parties”: ibid., 232.

  “kilo of marijuana”: ibid.

  “[w]hatever minimal impulse I had”: ibid., 246.

  “When are you coming home?”: ibid., 269.

  “bad season … was over”: ibid., 287.

  “He has on a blue work shirt”: Didion, Blue Nights, 51.

  “Don’t let the Broken Man catch me”: Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 51.

  “I realized my fear of The Broken Man”: Didion, Blue Nights, 52.

  “the hall porter”: Dunne, Regards, 24–25.

  “To me” and Dominick Dunne’s subsequent remarks: John J. Massaro, “Dunne Film Is Cannes Festival Entry,” Hartford Courant, December 22, 1970.

  “disappointing”: “The Panic in Needle Park,” Women’s Wear Daily, May 15, 1971.

  “Are you doing the hard stuff?”: Film Forum podcast on The Panic in Needle Park.

  “[I]t must be considered”: Archer Winster, “The New Movies,” New York Post, July 14, 1971.

  “When a reporter”: Kitty Winn quoted in “The Midnight Earl” syndicated newspaper column; available at zebradelic.blogspot.com/2012/01/kitty-winn-1971-press-coverage.html.

  “The idea of stardom I find frightening”: Kitty Winn quoted in William Otterburn-Hall, “Actress Wants Own Life Style”; available at ibid.

  CHAPTER 20

  “a cold leek soup”: John Gregory Dunne, Regards: The Selected Nonfiction of John Gregory Dunne (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006), 27.

  “listen to Joan Didion”: Leslie Caron, Thank Heaven: A Memoir (New York: Penguin, 2009); available at books-google.com/books?id=0dp-ycQ01ocC&pg=p.

  “very heady”: Joseph McBride, Steven Spielberg: A Biography (London: Faber and Faber, 2012), unpaginated; available at books-google.com/books?isbn-0571280552.

  “[T]he spirit of the place”: Joan Didion, The White Album (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), 222.

  “acid yellow”: ibid., 157.

  “last stable society”: ibid., 155.

  “hangover”: ibid., 159.

  “all the terrific 22-year-old directors”: ibid.

  “looking for the action”: ibid.

  “a personality before she was entirely a person”: Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968), 47.

  “invention of women as a ‘class’” and “To make an omelette”: Didion, The White Album, 109–110.

  “Her attitudes pose a problem”: Catharine Stimpson, “The Case of Miss Joan Didion,” Ms., January 1973, 36–40.

  “The idea that fiction”: Didion, The White Album, 112.

  “I think sex”: Trudy Owelt, “Three Interviews by Trudy Owelt,” New York, February 15, 1971, 40.

  “I agree”: ibid.

  “Everywoman”: Didion, The White Album, 114–15.

  “fine time for writers in Hollywood”: Tim Steele in conversation with the author, April 29, 2013.

  “an extension of The Graduate”: Dunne, Regards, 30.

  “Write me a Western”: ibid., 31–32.

  “hot idea”: ibid., 30.

  “What if”: ibid., 27.

  “attraction of borrowed luxury”: ibid., 32.

  “Hollywood is largely a boy’s club” and “[F]or years Joan was tolerated”: Dunne, Regards, 77.

  “You’re a Mel”: ibid., 27–28.

  “She was perched”: ibid., 251.

  “She had despised”: ibid., 252.

  “circled each other warily”: ibid.

  During the course: Brian Kellow, Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark (New York: Viking, 2011), 194–95.

  “studios reacted to Sam’s”: ibid.

  “the most important voice writing in English”: Anitra Earle, “Director’s Appraisal of Joan Didion,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 21, 1971.

  “ultimate princess fantasy” and subsequent quotes from Kael: Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema: Anarchic Laughter,” The New Yorker, November 11, 1972, 155–58.

  “ludicrous”: Dunne, Regards, 252.

  “The four of us”: Roger Ebert interview with Frank Perry, cited at Alt Screen, “Wednesday Editor’s Pick: Play It As It Lays (1972)”; available at altscreen.com/09/15/2011/wednesday-editors-pick-play-it-as-it-lays-1972/.

  “cutting”: ibid.

  “mosaic”: “Perry Will Shoot ‘Play It As It Lays’ in Mosaic Fashion” Variety, November 19, 1971.

  “dreadful Los Angeles freeway”: Vincent Canby, “‘Play It As It Lays’ Comes to the Screen,” New York Times, October 30, 1972; available at www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9D02EFDB173FE53ABC4850DFB6678389669EDE.

  “I wanted Lichtenstein”: Paul Gardner, “Perry Making Hollywood Film—His Way,” New York Times, February 10, 1972.

  “[W]e had a studio chief”: posted at Hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/08/as-dominick-dun/.

  “I know what nothing is”: Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970), 216.

  “a lot of puckers”: Kael, “The Current Cinema,” 157.

  “incredibly essential statement[s]”: Earle, “Director’s Appraisal of Joan Didion.”

  “pretentious”: Stanley Kauffmann, “Play It As It Lays,” The New Republic, December 9, 1972, 22.

  “the year’s most effective capturing”: Charles Champlin, “Top 10 Films—and Then Some—in an Actor’s Year,” Los Angeles Times, December 31, 1972.

  “profound”: Rex Reed, “The Goodies and Baddies of ’72 Films,” New York Daily News, December 31, 1972.

  “his mother and my grandmother”: Jon Carroll in conversation with the author, April 1, 2013.

  “Jann Wenner gave me a copy”: Ricky Fedora, “The Uncool Exclusive Interview with Cameron Crowe,” posted at theuncool.com/press/the-uncool-exclusive-interview/.

  “with rock stars” and “broke our hearts”: Jon Carroll quoted in Robert Draper, Rolling Stone Magazine: The Uncensored History (New York: HarperPerennial, 1991), 15.

  “I left Rolling Stone”: Jon Carroll in conversation with the author, April 1, 2013.

  “finish each other’s sentences”: Sara Davidson, Joan: Forty Years of Life, Loss, and Friendship with Joan Didion (San Francisco: Byliner, 2011).

  “the Didion-Dunnes”: Eve Babitz, Eve’s Hollywood (New York: Delacorte Press, 1974), dedication page.

  “Before Quintana was born”: Stephen Nessen, “Joan Didion Explores the Death of a Daughter in ‘Blue Nights,’” WNYC News, November 2, 2011; available at wnyc.org/story/168270-joan-didion-explores-death-daughter/.

  “I wish I could have stopped Quintana”: Jeff Glor, “Blue Nights by Joan Didion,” Author Talk, CBS News, January 28, 2012; available at cbsnews.com/videos/author-talk-blue-nights-by-joan-didion.

  “already a health worry”: Caron, Thank Heaven.

  “dizzying alterations”: Joan Didion, Blue Nights (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 83.

  “strenuousness”: ibid., 88.

  “sundries”: ibid., 83.

  “projection room”: ibid., 85–86.

  “I just noticed I have cancer”: ibid., 84.

  “quicksilver changes of mood”: ibid., 36.

  “th
e hospital in which Charlie Parker once detoxed”: ibid., 40.

  “was always very sweet”: Josh Greenfeld in conversation with the author, April 6, 2013.

  “[We] would sit on the couch”: James Oakley, “Susan Traylor’s LA Story,” Interview, July 11, 2012; available at interviewmagazine.com/film/susan-traylor-the-casserole-club.

  “I’ve loved Donny Osmond”: Davidson, Joan.

  “Who drew it”: Didion, The White Album, 126.

  “Brush your teeth”: Didion, Blue Nights, 35.

  “Mom’s Sayings”: ibid., 36.

  “Dear Mom”: Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 88.

  “Roses are red”: ibid., 148.

  “The world”: Didion, Blue Nights, 38.

  “Dry winds and dust”: Joan Didion, After Henry (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 218.

  “Joan was trying to finish a book”: Dunne quoted in Didion, Blue Nights, 28–29.

  “was already a person”: ibid., 41.

  “apprehensive about everything”: “The Female Angst: Anaïs Nin, Joan Didion, and Dory Previn,” interview by Sally Davis, Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project, KPFK, February 1, 1972; available at www.pacificaradioarchives.org/recordings/bc0611.

  “She was pregnant”: Didion quoted in Chris Chase, “The Uncommon Joan Didion,” Chicago Tribune, April 3, 1977.

  “I was not one who learned my lesson”: Dominick Dunne, The Way We Lived Then: Recollections of a Well-Known Name Dropper (New York: Crown, 1999), 183.

  “stranger’s closet”: ibid., 184.

  “rose too high”: Dominick Dunne: After the Party, directed and produced by Kirsty de Garis and Timothy Jolley (Mercury Media/Road Trip Film/Films Art Docco, 2008), film documentary.

  “written … with all the fearlessness”: Vincent Canby, “Ash Wednesday,” New York Times, November 22, 1973; available at www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9A04EFDA1F3CE13BBC4A51DFB7678388669EDE.

  “the most powerful woman in Hollywood”: ibid., 161.

  “It’s a minor film”: C. David Heymann, Liz: An Intimate Biography of Elizabeth Taylor (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 336.

  “If the history of this movie”: Dominick Dunne: After the Party, de Garis and Jolley, film documentary.

  “He just said to me”: ibid.

  “Joan Didion’s brother-in-law”: Dominick Dunne, The Way We Lived Then, 186.

  “I don’t remember”: ibid.

  “I was flattered”: ibid.

  “John Woolf jewel”: Graydon Carter, “Remembering Sue Mengers: Everybody Came to Sue’s,” Vanity Fair, October 18, 2011; available at www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/10/sue-mengers-in-memoriam.

  “What do you think of fidelity in marriage?”: Dunne, Regards, 41.

  “sort of new for the movie world”: Susanna Rustin, “Legends of the Fall,” The Guardian, May 21, 2005; available at www.theguardian.com/books.2005/may/21/usnationalbookawards.society.

  “In the background”: Dunne, Regards, 371.

  “Someday I’m going to kill that kid”: Josh Greenfeld quoted in John Gregory Dunne, Quintana & Friends (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978), 52.

  “When John got too loud”: Eve Babitz in conversation with the author, March 30, 2013.

  “Writers don’t compete with each other”: Josh Greenfeld in conversation with the author, April 6, 2013.

  “shack on the Pacific”: Patricia Craig, Brian Moore: A Biography (London: Bloomsbury, 2002), 196.

  “show-business people”: Denis Sampson, Brian Moore: The Chameleon Novelist (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1999), 139.

  “abruptly became a shambles”: Joan Didion, “An Introduction,” in Tony Richardson, The Long-Distance Runner: A Memoir (New York: William Morrow, 1993), 15.

  “I remember the first time”: Julia Phillips, You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again (New York: Signet Books, 1991), xx.

  “All prescribed (in vain)”: Dunne, Regards, 268.

  “I recall invoking”: Joan Didion, “Why I Write,” originally published in New York Times Book Review, December 5, 1976, reprinted in Joan Didion: Essays and Conversations, ed. Ellen G. Friedman (Princeton, N.J.: Ontario Review Press, 1984), 8.

  “Why had the American film industry”: Didion, The White Album, 192.

  “[I] bought a paper”: ibid., 188.

  “whole history of the place”: ibid.

  “room service and Xerox rápido”: ibid., 187.

  “dislocation of time”: ibid., 190.

  “I was aware of being an American”: ibid., 191.

  “local color”: ibid., 190.

  three whiskies and a coco martinique: receipt in Joan Didion Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.

  “That was what she had to know”: Didion, Blue Nights, 99.

  “I [made] graphs”: Leslie Garis, “Didion and Dunne: The Rewards of a Literary Marriage,” New York Times Magazine, February 8, 1987; available at www.nytimes.com/1987/02/08/magazine/didion-dunne-the-rewards-of-a-literary-marriage.html.

  “I love Joan’s work!”: Josh Greenfeld in conversation with the author, April 6, 2013.

  “sixteen words”: Dunne, Regards, 37.

  “James Taylor and Carly Simon”: ibid.

  CHAPTER 21

  “a parable for the period”: Joan Didion, After Henry (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 96.

  The facts were improbable and bizarre: For the Patty Hearst backstory, I have drawn upon the following sources, in addition to others listed below: David Talbot, Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror, and Deliverance in the City of Love (New York: Free Press, 2012), 169–203; Paul Morantz, “Escape from the SLA,” posted at paulmorantz.com/cult/escape-from-the-sla/; Paul Krassner, “Symbionese Liberation Army: Historical Essay,” posted at foundsf.org/index.php?title=Symbionese_Liberation_Army; Paul Krassner, “The Parts Left Out of the Patty Hearst Trial, Part Two,” posted at disinfo.com/2013/01/the-parts-left-out-of-the-patty-hearst-trial-part-2; “Who Were the Symbionese, and Were They Ever Liberated?”, posted at straightdope.com/columns/read/2004/who-were-the-Symbionese-and-were-they-ever-liberated; American Experience segment, “Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst,” posted at pbs.org/wgbh/amex/guerrilla/peopleevents/e_kidnapping.html.

  “an unusually high number of savage murders”: Barry Farrell, How I Got to Be This Hip, ed. Steve Hawk (New York: Washington Square Press, 1999), 94–95.

  “overkills”: ibid., 95.

  “curse of the Donner Party”: ibid., 91.

  “nation’s most dysfunctional prison system”: Talbot, Season of the Witch, 170.

  “spying on law-abiding individuals”: David Johnston, “L.A. Police Officials Allegedly Hid Crimes; An Ex-Officer’s Book Says a Spy Unit Also Looked into the Sex Lives of State Officials,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 13, 1992, available at articles.philly.com/1992-07-13/news/26026052_1_organized-crime-intelligence-division. See also “A Timeline of LAPD Spying and Surveillance,” posted at stoplapdspying.org; and David Cay Johnston, “Daryl Gates’ Real Legacy,” posted at laobserved.com/visiting/2010/04/daryl_gates_secret_legacy.php.

  “incidents of conspiracy to commit murder”: Johnston, “L.A. Police Officials Allegedly Hid Crimes.”

  “government agent”: Krassner, “Symbionese Liberation Army.”

  “tried to keep his military”: Talbot, Season of the Witch, 173.

  “the gentlest, most beautiful man”: Patty Hearst quoted in Krassner, “Symbionese Liberation Army.”

  Lake Headley: Talbot, Season of the Witch, 193–95.

  “kind, honest person”: Sara Davidson, “Patty Hearst in the Land of the Cobra,” New York Times Magazine, June 2, 1974; available at www.saradavidson.com/articleD3.html.

  “[T]he name ‘symbionese’”: “Who Were the Symbionese, and Were They Ever Liberated?”

  “[d]iscussions were held”: Krassner, “The Parts Left Out of the Patty Hearst Trial, Part Two.”

  “Declaration of Revolut
ionary War”: “Who Were the Symbionese, and Were They Ever Liberated?”

  “hatred, fear and disunity”: Talbot, Season of the Witch, 179.

  “palsy-walsy with everybody in the glass house”: The Jonestown Institute, Jonestown Audiotape Primary Project, tape number Q 622, transcribed by Fielding M. McGehee III; available at jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page-id-27498.

  “brilliant” and “leader”: Talbot, Season of the Witch, 182.

  “shot on sight”: ibid.

  “extortion”: ibid., 185.

  “75% slop”: Mae Brussell, “Why Was Patty Hearst Kidnapped?” The Realist, July 1974; available at prouty.org/brussell/hearst_1.html.

  “hog feed”: Linda Kramer, “Progress Report Due on Hearst Kidnapping,” Nashua Telegram (Associated Press), March 18, 1975.

  “It’s just too bad”: Calvin Welch, “The Legacy of the SLA,” posted at foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_Legacy_of_the_SLA.

  “I have been given the name Tania”: Morantz, “Escape from the SLA.”

  “One thing I learned”: Talbot, Season of the Witch, 191.

  “We love you Tania”: ibid.

  “one California busy being born”: Didion, After Henry, 98.

  “looking for a stake”: ibid., 99.

  one of the strangest proposals: Joan Didion letter to Jann Wenner, October 20, 1975, Lois Wallace Literary Agency Records, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

  “California experience” and subsequent quotes from letter: Lois Wallace letter to James Silberman, October 20, 1975; in ibid.

  Cinque was the nation’s first black Lee Harvey Oswald: Stephanie Caruana, “About Women…” Playgirl, August 1974; available at prouty.org/brussell/playgirl.html.

  “He’ll be killed, probably in a shootout”: Talbot, Season of the Witch, 194.

  “an art form”: Mae Brussell, “From Monterey Pop to Altamont: Operation Chaos, the CIA’s War Against the Sixties Counter-Culture,” November 1976 (unpublished); available at maebrussell.com/Mae%20Brussell%20Articles/Operation%20Chaos.html.

  “abrupt sloughing of the past”: Didion, After Henry, 102.

  “Don’t examine your feelings”: ibid., 103.

  “seemed to project an emotional distance”: ibid., 104.

  “This was a California girl”: ibid., 107–108.

  “happened” and “minister”: ibid., 108–109.

  an anecdote that Lewis Lapham: Joan Didion letter to Jann Wenner, January 7, 1976, Lois Wallace Literary Agency Records, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.