by Tom Vitale
“Look at that woman, she’s amazing,” Bill said, completely fixated.
The traffic started moving, and we caught up to the woman in pink, at which point Bill slowed down to Rollerblade speed and lowered his window.
“What’s in all those bags?” he asked.
“My food,” she said with a thick accent.
“Is it good?” Bill asked. “Can I try some?”
“No, it’s my food!” The woman said before the recognition flashed across her face. “Wait… You’re a movie star! You’re a movie star!”
“Who? Me? Nooo,” Bill said in mock surprise.
Punching the accelerator, we launched across Fifth Avenue, just making the light. He yanked the wheel, pulling off a ninety-degree turn onto Park Avenue at what felt like forty miles an hour, and screeched to a halt.
“Thanks for the ride!” Bill said, stepping out of the car.
We sat there, not moving, in stunned silence, for a minute or two listening to the engine chug and wheeze. Tony finally turned around to face me and broke the silence saying, “Okay, we can die now.”
Chapter Ten
JAMAICA ME CRAZY
OUT THE WINDOW THERE WAS NOTHING BUT GRAY. THE STEELY WINTER sky reflected in the sober expanse of the Hudson River. But inside was a kite from Bali, an antique map of the Sarawak, a commedia dell’arte mask from Rome, a Russian fur hat, an alligator-skin flask, a delicate Vietnamese paper lantern, and a totally bizarre Holstein cow briefcase from Medellín, to name a very few. After years of traveling, I’d curated quite a collection of memorabilia, each item a physical manifestation of a memory, and my house had become a museum of these souvenirs from an alternate universe.
A decade before, when I had traded my apartment in Chinatown for a rambling old clapboard house upriver, I had something to get away from. I loved the tall ceilings, warrens, unexplained noises, and steeply pitched gables draped beneath a cobweb of gingerbread. In the right light, the house looked mysterious, and proud. Other times its weathered façade looked like what it was, run-down.
On a half broken mantel sat a carved wood dog with a broken foot named Mr. Papers. He stared at me with an “I told you so” expression, a reminder that June 2014 had been one of the most bizarre months of my life. It began with my thirty-fourth birthday in Iran and ended with Tony’s fifty-eighth in Jamaica. A lot happened in the time in between.
AFTER A WEEK IN IRAN, I was feeling emotional and a little confused. While we were filming festivities honoring Ayatollah Khomeini—founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran—a group of women clad in full-length black chadors smiled and waved. They’d been sitting in the shade until prompted, when they stood up for the cameras and began chanting, “Down with America! Down with Israel! Nuclear energy is our inalienable right!” In between, one of them said, “Do you speak English?” Another called, “I love you!” Iran was just that sort of place. The Persians themselves—at least the ones we met—had been pretty fucking cool, shockingly friendly, and welcoming to us as Americans, and also open about their likes and dislikes and even feelings regarding their government. We’d all been surprised about what a good time we were having on this trip.
Iran was also a paranoid and closed-off country that had proven a somewhat challenging location to make a TV show. It might best be described as a constant balancing act, walking a treacherous political tightrope, never more than one misstep away from catastrophe. Highlights included repeated threats by the government of confiscating our footage, losing a valuable production day while half the crew was held hostage by the Bisaj (Iran’s ultra-right religious youth), not to mention that getting to Iran in the first place had required several years of trying, a mountain of paperwork, as well as an act of Congress to approve the trip. These were all actually indications it was going to be a good show. After many years spent traveling with Tony, inconveniences of this sort amounted to “just another day at the office.” In fact, to refer to the Iran shoot as “pretty good” is something of a grotesque understatement.
Tony, however, was furious. The production company, in a misguided attempt to turn a profit, had released a fox into the henhouse and hired a new line producer who’d been cutting back everywhere she could, including the quality of accommodation. Tony essentially lived in hotels, and after a long string of sheets of questionable thread count and infinite varieties of bad plumbing, Tony had finally reached his breaking point. A self-proclaimed “hotel whore,” he described our Tehran home-away-from-home as “only slightly less soul-destroying than the Soviet equivalent of a midrange Hilton.” And it wasn’t even much worse than the last several.
Tony knew the accountant was the problem, but he couldn’t understand why we didn’t just push back harder. Problem was, Greta was really good at her job. She was a vaguely European line producer who spoke with an accent that landed somewhere between “German war criminal” and “Stalinist henchman.” After a glorious decade of laissez-faire accounting, Greta began making outrageous demands, like we needed to file production insurance and it was now required to turn in receipts for petty cash. She had a penchant for fractions, and could sense the smallest discrepancy in currency conversion on an expense report before it was even submitted. I could go on, but suffice to say, above all, she was a formidable adversary.
Fortunately, Greta blundered the first battle of the Budget Wars. Speaking French, she went along on the shoot to Lyon to “keep an eye on the expenses” and do the accounting on the ground. On the first day of shooting—after a crew meal with Tony present— Greta got the bill, did a quick calculation, and asked everyone to contribute a percentage. Tony’s face went white.
“This is bullshit. You guys are winning all these awards. You deserve more, not less,” Tony said. He paid the bill, and Greta was banned from ever going on the road again.
But that barely slowed her down. Overnight Greta completely rewrote the rulebook. Previously we’d enjoyed a gloriously freewheeling approach to logistics and accounting that was ideally suited to the run-and-gun, chaotic nature of making a show in ever-changing locations with an ever-changing set of rules. So much of the way we’d made the show had been about good will, trust, and making friends. You’d be surprised how much having to ask someone to sign a receipt on the back of a leaf really killed the vibe.
Greta instituted a crippling policy of curtailing expenditures greater than $200 without prior authorization. Two hundred fucking dollars. Filming a single meal cost at least that much. It didn’t matter that we were always in sudden death lightning round with no time to explain; forget years of loyalty and success, if we wanted to spend $201, it was going through Greta. To her credit, despite the twelve-hour time difference Greta always answered her phone, even in the middle of the night. She also almost always denied the funding request. It was just so frustrating how the conversation had shifted from creativity to the bottom line, and these days it felt like we all spent half our time tripping over dollars to pick up pennies.
I’d never been purposely reckless with the budget, even if it might not always have been the first thing I’d thought about when making any given decision. But that was a big part of what made the show great. It was an ethic that came from the top. And, yes, true, I’d become accustomed to having large amounts of cash on hand to buy my way out of problems. But time is money, and the way I looked at it when it came to Tony, time was very valuable.
“I have run zee numbers unt discovered it vould be cheaper to canzel zee show,” Tony would joke, imitating Greta’s accent.
To be fair, Greta had expertly navigated the byzantine process of securing our Iran visas. I wasn’t kidding when I said it took an act of Congress. Due to the trade sanctions, we needed special permission to import items like our computers, phones, and of course the film equipment. Greta managed it, the State Department approved it, the IRS made an exemption, Congress voted, and under the Iran sanctions, we were exempted from prohibitions 31 C.F.R. §560.210(d).
Most Iranians we met were exc
ited to talk about how much they loved the USA. But the old hardline establishment still existed. The sinister sounding Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance controlled our access, permits, visas, as well as monitored our trip and what we filmed. We were warned that our hotel rooms and vehicles would likely be bugged, our phone calls recorded. Tehran was also a modern, cosmopolitan city of over 8 million that reminded me a lot of Los Angeles, as well as being perhaps the friendliest place I’d ever visited.
IF IRAN HAD DEFIED EXPECTATIONS, GoldenEye lived up to them perfectly. It was about as close to paradise as I’d ever seen. Sequestered on Jamaica’s wild, less touristy, northeast coast, this was a part of the island where old banana plantations mixed with dense jungle and spilled right down to waves breaking against coral cliffs. The historic seaside estate turned ultra-luxury hotel was once home and writing retreat of Sir Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond series. The entire complex was situated behind a phalanx of tall trees, gated, guarded, and absolutely private. The villa had gleaming white walls and an elegant hipped roofline, and sat between a large teal blue swimming pool and sunken garden framed by almond trees. But the location was the real selling point. Perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, a winding staircase led down sixty feet to a private beach that included a grotto. Our personal butler, Nicholas, provided a never-ending flow of delightful rum punches. Looking around, it made total sense that James Bond would be conceived at a place like this. But Tony’s adoration of Fleming and Bond wasn’t the reason we were staying there. As we had departed Iran, Tony made it extremely clear that the top priority for our next location—and last shoot of the season—was “some low-impact beach time” and accommodation of “unspeakable luxury.”
So, with only a week before the Jamaica shoot was to begin, Josh and I headed to Jamaica to scout out Tony’s “creative vision” for this trip. Out the window went the gritty and non-touristy capital city Kingston, along with our two months of research, careful pre-production, and planning. When we touched down on the Caribbean island synonymous with Rastafarians, white sand beaches, and mass-market tourism, we had our work cut out for us.
By the end of the season I was also a bit worse for wear. In the last six months I’d been to the Punjab, Himalayas, Bahia, Brazil, Thailand, Paraguay, Iran, and now Jamaica. There was the ever-present pressure to keep raising the bar creatively, and now, thanks to my new nemesis Greta the budget czar, there was the added complication of trying to economize at the same time.
Tony was right, it was time to take a stand, fight fire with fire. If Tony really wanted a five-star luxury episode, well, we all needed a little luxury more than we’d ever needed it before. The more I thought about it, the more I realized billing Greta for an all-expense-paid five-star shoot in Jamaica was the perfect act of budgetary disobedience. Every shoot I’d ever done to this point, all sixty or so of them, nearly every moment on the ground had been spent beating the show out of however many dead horses I could get my hands on. But not this time. I bought a carved wooden souvenir dog, named him Mr. Papers, and immediately put him in charge. He spoke with a cockney accent and took over when it came to the decision-making process, leaving me blissfully free to relax. I’d never really relaxed before. So this Jamaica scout was a completely alien experience, and my goodness, Josh and I were having so much fun.
Josh reconciled mutually exclusive mandates of finding “unspeakably luxurious” accommodations while staying within Greta’s restrictive hotel budget thanks to an extremely helpful Fifth Avenue public relations firm representing GoldenEye. From what I understood, Fleming’s original villa was sort of like the presidential suite of the larger hotel complex and rented for about $12,000 a night. In exchange for filming on the property, we’d been given an extremely generous media rate. It was arguably the most exclusive place to stay on the entire island of Jamaica, and Tony loved James Bond. It was perfect. Apparently GoldenEye’s owner, Chris Blackwell, had taken a special interest in us and was even flying down to Jamaica just for the shoot. In addition to being a hotelier, Blackwell was one of the most successful record producers of all time. He was responsible for bringing reggae music to the world outside Jamaica by discovering Bob Marley, among others, and had founded Island Records. Blackwell had instructed the hotel staff to do anything we wished in order to facilitate the logistics. We’d gratefully obliged, and much of what we planned on filming in the surrounding area was being arranged through our butler, Nicholas, who had turned out to be a treasure trove of good ideas. Nothing left to do but get stoned and pretend to scout for the show.
“What the fuck is that?” Josh said.
“It’s probably just a seed. I think I missed a few when I was rolling the joint,” I said.
“No, I mean we just drove past a sign with an arrow that read Dr. Hoe’s; what’s Dr. Hoe’s?” Josh asked.
“Let’s find out,” Carleene, our fixer, said as she wheeled the jeep around.
Turned out Dr. Hoe’s was a charming beachside rum bar where fishermen get a drink after returning from work. We ordered a steel bottom, rum and beer. Everyone was getting stoned. Obviously we had to film here. I mean not only was the place called Dr. Hoe’s but it was located on James Bond Beach. Strangely, Dr. Hoe’s and James Bond Beach hadn’t been suggested to us, even though it was literally adjacent to the GoldenEye property.
“Another steel bottom?” the bartender asked. We were recklessly racking up a pretty big bar tab, and the shoot hadn’t even begun yet.
“Greta said no alcohol, but she didn’t say anything about expensing weed,” I said. “I mean, it’s practically legal here. Clearly pot is going to factor into the shoot. We’re just scouting.”
“Technically true,” Josh agreed.
We worked long days, and it had always been an unwritten rule that, since we got no health insurance or overtime pay, we did get some perks, like a few drinks at the end of a long day. But now Greta had closed the bar, and the days weren’t getting any shorter. Tony found the new alcohol guidelines just as upsetting as the hotel situation, and he’d donated his per diem, about $1,000 per shoot, for crew drinks in what became known as the “Alligator Fund.” He also offered some accounting advice.
“It was fucking brilliant,” Tony said. “Nixon instructed Kissinger to nervously let slip that he was acting irrationally, completely obsessed with eradicating communism, crazy enough to launch a nuclear attack. Kissinger would ‘confidentially’ tell the Russian ambassador, ‘I’m worried about the president’s mental state. He’s got his finger on the button and I just don’t know what he’s capable of…’” Not responding to the uncomfortably confused look on my face—or perhaps feeding off it—Tony counseled me to call up the office and demand all sorts of crazy things. “Just say, ‘I don’t know what Tony’s going to do next. I’m the only one that can control him, so you better listen to me and approve the purchase of that gold-plated duck press Tony’s been raving on and on about.’”
I wasn’t comfortable with either the Nixon Madman Strategy or Tony’s alternate suggestion to plant flesh-eating bacteria on Greta’s computer keyboard. Between Tony, whatever surprises presented themselves in the field, and now the office, well, I didn’t think I could handle a three-front war. But like it or not, in the midst of a war is exactly where I found myself. As well as a cruise ship port of call.
As the “scout” continued, our jeep arrived at Ocho Rios, ground zero for the mass market commercial tourism “all-inclusive” set who swilled tropical drinks while stuffing themselves on nachos grandes. Walking around, I spotted a Margaritaville. I’d never been to one; all I knew was that the vacation-themed bar and restaurant chain was owned by Jimmy Buffett, who Tony had practically made a career of publicly trashing. Mr. Papers whispered that we should go there for lunch. Josh cheerfully agreed, though Carleene seemed a little less convinced. But believe it or not, Margaritaville was like the most fun place ever! I ate nachos and burgers; there was a waterslide, a giant shark where you
could take selfies in its jaws, a jukebox playing all the classics, and there was even a beach.
“Let’s get another round of margaritas!” I said, having the time of my life.
“Uggh. Greta just texted again,” Josh said. “She’s demanding an updated petty cash funding request. Again.”
“What? We’ve only been here a few days, and we’re starting almost from scratch!” I said, extremely pissed Greta was managing to cast rain clouds over my Margaritaville date with Josh and Carleene. Tony’s Nixon Madman was tempting, but it was just too insane. Then again, I was wearing a tie-dye T-shirt reading “BUMBO KLAAT” along with oversize novelty sunglasses, not to mention I was following orders from a carved wood dog who spoke with a cockney accent.
“You know what… Let’s really end the season with a bang,” I said. “Send Greta something so crazy she won’t know how to respond.”
Josh smiled, got out his laptop, and opened an email. “What did you have in mind?” he said.
“Let’s submit a PC funding request based on the most half-baked ideas we’ve been thinking about. Something that makes no sense whatsoever. I don’t know… like Tony has us pursuing a Jamaican cinema à la Harder They Come meets James Bond hybrid theme for the episode,” I said, getting inspired. “Let’s tell Greta Tony wants us to film a swinging Bond party requiring performers. So we’ll need a troupe of dancers for musical numbers that can be on call throughout the shoot. We’ll use them for a classic underwater Bond title sequence as well as a bus beat to reference 1970s-era Jamaican cinema. So we’ll also need to arrange a city bus as a picture car for the duration of the shoot.”
“Let’s tell Greta Tony is demanding a pirate ship so he can talk about the history of Errol Flynn and old Hollywood in Jamaica while on the water, because he says it wouldn’t be appropriate to have that discussion on shore…” Josh said. “If she denies the request, we’ll say we might be able to convince him to settle for a less expensive luxury yacht or catamaran.”