Sex, Drugs & Gefilte Fish

by Shana Liebman

  17. Contemplating his death.

  18. Dead.

  Approaching a Lunatic

  By Adam Lowitt

  CELEBRITY SIGHTINGS ARE JUST LIKE BREASTS. Entire magazines are devoted to them but when you actually see them in public, staring is not polite. Living in Manhattan, I have had numerous opportunities to gawk at the elite. And with that, let the facetious name-dropping begin.

  Once, strolling through Greenwich Village on a beautiful spring day, I passed by formerly televised Superman Dean Cain wearing a pair of sleek sunglasses and judiciously picking through a bowl of pasta. Apparently the rumors are true, Alfredo sauce is impervious to X-ray vision. Years ago, emerging from a subway station in SoHo, completely lost and confused as to my location, I consulted a man smoking a cigarette outside a wine bar for directions. He confidently gave me various routes to travel depending on my scenic desires. That man? MTV news dad, and horrible direction informer, Kurt Loder.

  At a bar in Hell’s Kitchen, one so financially secure they offer free hot dogs with every drink purchase yet still so financially strapped they cannot eradicate the prominent aroma of urine that occupies their space, I drunkenly spilled my beer on 1992’s My Girl star Anna Chlumsky. Luckily, I was just sober enough to stop myself from singing my apology, “My fault, my fault, my fault. That was m-y-y-y fault… my fault!”

  Others have been spotted and admired from afar, but those are the A listers. And although the list continues to grow, one man lives at the top.

  It happened a few years ago when my parents came up from Florida for a visit. They were staying at a hotel near my apartment. I walked over to meet them for dinner, mentally preparing myself for the standard five-hour deliberation over which restaurant to eat at. Three passive-aggressive Lowitts, huddled over a Zagat guide, conceding suggestion after suggestion until my mom proposed we take this conundrum to the streets and find something as we walked. Passing through the lobby, I noticed a man checking in who looked extremely familiar. Tall, very thin, refined salt-and-pepper haircut, rounded glasses, and most importantly, clad in a suit covered in question marks.

  I am aware that most people don’t know this man by name; usually he is referred to as “that guy on TV around one-thirty in the morning, screaming from the Capitol steps, ‘You can get free money!’ ” I however knew immediately that this was Matthew Lesko.

  My affinity for Mr. Lesko could be traced back to his catchphrase, a saying I had heard, albeit in a much softer tone, on the night before my Bar Mitzvah. My dad, in an attempt to make the religious service a little more interesting, had bet me a hundred dollars to put on a pair of earmuffs before my Torah portion, and in the voice of an old Yiddish Jew, say, “Oy it’s freezing in here, turn down the air conditioning.”

  I had begrudgingly practiced my Torah portion for the previous nine months, as well as doing push-ups every day so I could carry that Torah around the synagogue like a man. And now, on the eve of entering manhood, my biggest concern had become how to securely pre-place earmuffs on the bima without getting caught.

  “All you have to do is say it and you can get free money,” my father said.

  Besides my dad, uncle and one or two cousins, no one was expecting anything other than Talmudic drivel from me on my big day. (Note to self: Talmudic Drivel is a great name for an Israeli prog-rock band.) Still, I put the earmuffs on, nervously uttered the line, and, like most comedy performed by 13-year-olds, it was not funny. My delivery was terrible; timing was poor. I was handed a hundred-dollar bill the next day. I remember staring at that bill deciding what type of frame I would put it in. The day after that, I hung a photocopy of it up in my room and bought seven CDs and some T-shirts.

  Obviously the experience resonated. And that day, while my parents were standing outside the hotel, still trying decide on Italian or Spanish, I tried to convey the enormity of a Lesko-spotting to them. They were not interested so I walked back through the large glass doors into an overly carpeted lobby to speak to Lesko. I was nervous. This was not only the first celebrity I’d approached in a long time, but the first I’d ever approached ironically. I took comfort, however, in the realization that there is no delicate way to approach a lunatic.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Lesko, I’d just like to say that I’m a huge fan of your work.”

  To which he responded, in a volume I thought was purely reserved for the airwaves, “Oh yeah!” Then while I was holding back my laughter, he issued a follow-up statement. “You know the government is suing me for libel!”

  Amazingly, this high-pitched man in a suit covered in question marks had taken me by surprise.

  “Really?”

  Lesko immediately delved into his personal life, educated/confused me about his business and even felt comfortable enough to describe his recent divorce. My mind started to wander, enamored by this chance occurrence and yet growing extremely bored with the actual conversation. I kept coaching myself to focus, with the overarching reality that this encounter would never happen again.

  By now my parents had come inside and were silently hovering around us. The audacity, I thought, to pretend to care about my celebrity they were clueless about ten minutes ago.

  It was not long before everyone was introduced, fully transforming the conversation into an uncomfortable parent-teacher conference. Now they were chatting and I desperately wanted to go.

  Before we left, Matthew Lesko gave me what I now consider my most prized possession: his business card. I proudly carry it around in my wallet like most parents do with photos of their children, showing it off to old friends and strangers at parties. It is a picture of him, riding a child’s bicycle with a basket full of cash. I will say that for the brief interaction I had with him, he seemed like a nice enough guy, very polite and gracious to speak with, but it occurred to me that if your on-camera personality screams pedophilia, you might want to pick a different mode of transportation to put on your business card. I think it would be a wise investment to make with your free money.

  Hollywood Sucks

  By Darin Strauss

  BECAUSE THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY is dependent on luck—combined with a bit of talent and more salesman-unsavoriness than anyone likes to admit—my first novel had done well, and they (publishers, a movie agent) had flown me out to hawk my book to Movietown. It would not be an easy sell, they said. But no one could convince me of that back then.

  I had been very lucky so far. My book Cheng and Eng was a bestseller right out of the gate. A writer friend of mine calls the period before one’s first book comes out “the calm before the calm.” So I felt blessed to have gotten any attention at all. And I guess my having had a bit of early success led me to believe that my professional life would just start going according to plan from here on out. Everyone, I was sure, would kill to make a movie about conjoined brothers from Siam who lived in the 1800s and had weird sex.

  I had a room at the Beverly Wilshire hotel—my first time being put up in style. I was afraid to order anything, to unscrew the nuts next to the TV, even to open the fridge. The carpet that led from the door to the far window was so soft that I took my shoes off, like a guest in a rich person’s house.

  Meetings were set up, by whom and how I couldn’t say. The first guy I met was a cinematographer who had just been named the “must-have” cameraman in Hollywood by Entertainment Weekly magazine. He was being offered a studio deal to direct, and we met at a restaurant where I’d have seven lunch meetings that week. (Apparently, all movie people have a go-to restaurant when they want to take a non-famous possible collaborator out for a bite.) It was an Italian place with what Manhattanites would call an uptown vibe—mirrored walls, expensive but overdone lighting. I sat across from Bob Balaban and near Alan Arkin.

  My cinematographer had a smile lit by the first glimmers of real success, and he ended our quick meeting with a handshake and a: “Great—now let’s go make a movie!” I was elated. But two days later I heard that he’d just used my meeting to scare the studio i
nto giving him control of another project he’d wanted. It was impressively Machiavellian—a silky bit of quiet knife work. That’s how the business works sometimes, I was told. But not to worry, my agent said. There were still more meetings.

  The second guy I met with—at the same restaurant—was short and fat and had a blunt way of talking that matched his build. “I want to make this movie,” he said.

  “Great,” I said.

  “Chang and Eng, the Siamese twins. What could be a better story?” he said. “One problem, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “They’re Asian and they’re attached.”

  “That’s two problems,” I said.

  “We’ll have to work around it.”

  It seemed like maybe he was hoping to make a Jackie Chan/Chris Tucker buddy movie. I pulled the plug on that one.

  The third guy told me, in that same restaurant, that he wanted to make my book into a movie too—and he wanted to use his mentor as producer. (This time, Peter Riegert, the guy who played Boon in Animal House, was three tables away, probably being promised the lead in Titanic.)

  “Wonderful,” I told my meeting partner, and I meant it. This guy not only wanted to make the movie, but seemed like a normal person. I felt we might actually oscillate along the same wavelength. He was smart about the book, funny, warm; he could have been a friend, in another circumstance—a circumstance where he didn’t hold my future in his hands.

  “So,” I said, “who’s your mentor?”

  “He’s the dude who produced all the Police Academy movies.” His chin rose a few rungs of pride. “After Guttenberg left the franchise.” I hadn’t even known there were post-Guttenberg Police Academys. I ended that meeting.

  Finally, after more days of defeat (an allergy attack at Scott Rudin’s office, a pointless “get-to-know-you” meeting at National Geographic), I met someone at Disney. He and I connected quite well—as best as someone on the fulcrum of such a strange world and a guy on the outside of that world’s arc can ever really connect.

  He bought the book, hired me to write the script (which I did with a friend’s help), and attached Julie Taymor—of Broadway’s The Lion King—to direct. That was when things fell apart. Taymor was, shall we say, not helpful. I talked to her often—I called a lot about the script I was going to write, and her assistant always put me through to her; after a few weeks, I talked to her assistant more often; and then I got put through to no one. The script moldered on the shelf.

  Years later, the book has been optioned five times, and I’m still hopeful. I’m working now with Gary Oldman, who is a genius and who initially found me, though we were both at CAA, by looking me up in the Brooklyn phone book. The script we’re writing is great, at least I think it is. But you never know. Hollywood is a tough town to conquer. But then, you probably knew that already.

  YOUTH

  Baruch Atah Nathaniel

  By Simon Rich

  AFTER MY PARENTS GOT DIVORCED and my mom went back to work, my brother, Nathaniel, and I spent a lot of time alone in our apartment. Every afternoon, CBS aired four consecutive episodes of The Price Is Right. We usually watched all four episodes, but one day, in the middle of episode three, my brother inexplicably turned off the television.

  “Follow me,” he said, walking over to the window. “I want to show you something.”

  I shook my head. The only things my brother ever wanted to show me were new varieties of wrestling.

  “Come on,” he said. “I promise it’s not wrestling.”

  “Is it the thing with the pillows under the shirt?” I asked. “Sumo?”

  “No,” he said. “It’s a secret.”

  I got off the couch and followed him over to the window.

  “If I tell you something important,” he said, “will you promise not to tell anyone?”

  “OK,” I said.

  He clasped his hands around the back of my head and pulled my face up close to his. His bottom braces were clogged with Doritos. He had just started getting pimples, and I could see a few oily cavities on his chin, where he had popped some.

  “I am God,” he said.

  I waited for him to make some sort of argument, but he didn’t seem to think he needed to.

  “No you’re not,” I said.

  He shrugged.

  “You don’t have to believe me,” he said. “That’s the whole secret. You can turn The Price Is Right back on.”

  I started to walk back to the couch, but something about his tone stopped me. He was acting overly casual—like there was more to the secret that he wasn’t telling me.

  “OK,” I said. “If you’re God, then prove it.”

  He pointed out the window, at the grid of honking cars and tiny people.

  “Do you see that van?” he asked. “The white one that just stopped at the red light?”

  I nodded.

  “It’s going to turn right,” he said.

  As soon as the words left his mouth, the stoplight turned green and the car turned right. My brother smiled at me and nodded, like nothing crazy had just happened. I tried to come up with a logical explanation for what I had just witnessed. But there was none.

  “Do another,” I said, nervously.

  “The blue truck,” he said, pointing. “The one at the light. It’s going to turn left.”

  I discreetly made an L with my left hand to remind myself which way left was. Then I looked up—and watched the truck begin to turn.

  “You’re just getting lucky,” I stammered. “I could probably guess two in a row.”

  He pointed down at the traffic going by.

  “Right… right… straight… right… straight… and… straight.”

  I watched in terrified silence as everything my brother had predicted came to pass.

  “How… are you doing this?”

  “I already told you,” he said, his voice slightly deeper all of a sudden. “I am the Lord thy God.”

  I shook my head in amazement.

  “Does anyone else know?”

  “No,” he said. “You are the only one I have revealed myself unto.”

  “Can I tell Mom?”

  “You can tell whoever you want,” he said. “But I should warn you: If you spreadeth my secret, it might cause me to become displeased.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He pointed down the avenue at a cluster of flashing ambulances. There had been an accident on 52nd and three men were wheeling a bandaged woman out of the wreckage.

  “Did that woman… displease you?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, she did.”

  “What did she do?” I asked.

  My brother hesitated.

  “That’s between me and her,” he said, finally.

  “I won’t tell anyone,” I whispered. “I promise.”

  Within 40 minutes, my brother was lying in front of the TV on a shrine I had built for him by collecting all of the pillows in the apartment.

  “I am displeased,” he intoned. “I desire Nutter Butters.”

  His face and neck were covered in orange crumbs and he was breathing extremely heavily. This was the seventh or eighth time he had desired Nutter Butters that afternoon.

  “How many do you desire?” I asked.

  He deliberated for a moment and then held up four fingers. I hopped off the couch and sprinted toward the kitchen.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” he called out.

  “Baruch atah Nathaniel!”

  “Good,” he said. “Your faith pleases me. Now, bring me the offering.”

  That night, when we were watching Married with Children, I asked my brother some questions that had been bothering me lately.

  “Why do people get sick?”

  “Because they have sinned against me,” he said.

  “But how do you know when someone’s sinned? How do you watch everybody at the same time?”

  “I have a special TV that shows it all.”

  “Re
ally? Like the one at the Wiz? With the small screen inside the big screen?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “No.”

  “If you’re God,” I said, “then why are you having a Bar Mitzvah?”

  “I don’t want anyone to get suspicious.”

  “What about the rabbis?” I asked. “Can’t they tell?”

  My brother shook his head. “They know something strange is going on, but they can’t quite put their finger on it.”

  “What happens when people die?” I asked.

  My brother hesitated for a moment.

  “Do ten Hail Marys,” he said.

  “Which one’s that again?” I asked.

  “That’s the one where you stand on the couch with your arms behind your back and fall down, onto your face. Then you say, ‘Hail Mary.’ ”

  I nodded and got started on the Hail Marys. After about seven or eight, he started to laugh.

  “That’s enough,” he said. “I am pleased.”

  The truth is: I had always suspected that my brother was God, or at the very least, that he had magical powers. Sometimes when we were watching the Knicks, he’d say: “They’re going to put in Mason.” And sure enough, within two minutes, Anthony Mason would be tearing off his warm-ups and running onto the court. My brother wouldn’t say anything. He would just nod a couple of times, like the TV had confirmed something he already knew.

  That’s not all: Whenever my brother wanted to, he could magically cause my mother to order in pizza. He usually did it on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when my mother worked overtime. She’d come home at around 6:30, kiss us on the foreheads and toss her small brown bag onto the floor.