by Rob Lowe
We file back into the bus and roll out. They say politics is retail. We just made our first sale.
We roll into the towns and hold our rallies. The crowds are massive and vocal. Sometimes Mike and I have to retreat back to our perch on the roof of the bus to get out of the frenzy. These communities are a million light-years away from the Hollywood universe and they’ve never seen this kind of celebrity activism before. And in spite of the several unintentionally comic moments (like sitcom stars telling lifelong farmers how to grow “safer” crops), it feels good to be in service of a cause greater than my own self-interests, a cause that adds some substance and humanity to my increasingly rarefied existence. I enjoy the moments when I can connect with people in their world and on terms that are related to their own lives.
Soon enough I will have more perspective on the complicated relationship between Hollywood activism and its effectiveness, as well as its true intentions, but for now it gives me a much-needed way to channel all this personal attention into something I hope is meaningful.
The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act will pass with a huge margin, despite being massively outspent by the opposition. Its success will usher in the ballot-initiative-movement phenomenon that is now out of control in California. (One would hope the government wouldn’t need its citizens to take matters into their own hands; making laws is their job—they should be better at it.) Today it is a crime to knowingly expose the public to carcinogens in the workplace or in the public food or water supply, without notification. You can still see our Prop 65 notices of such dangers posted in public spaces throughout California.
* * *
The cliffs are windswept and brutally tall. The beach before them is so wide, it’s clear that there was nowhere to hide. The young men who were shot dead here would’ve been exactly my age, dying alone and unprotected, giving “the last full measure of devotion,” in the lonely, cold mist of an early June morning.
I am standing at the German gun emplacements of Pointe du Hoc, where so many fell. On my left there is the beautiful and appalling field of crosses and Stars of David for the heroes whom, until today, I had never seriously considered. Brokaw would eventually write his book and Spielberg would one day make his movie, but in the early fall of 1986, nothing has prepared me for the emotion of this great battlefield on France’s Normandy coast.
I’ve come to nearby Deauville for its film festival, to promote the European release of About Last Night. Ed Zwick and Jim Belushi are back at the hotel. I’ve come on a whim to see the sights with a new friend who has led me to this desolate overlook.
Glenn Souham’s security company is handling our needs while in France, and he and I have become friendly during the dull black-tie dinners and long press junkets. Glenn is Franco-American, tall, sandy haired, and athletic, from a renowned family whose war exploits earned them an emblazonment on the Arc de Triomphe. After walking me through a tutorial of the events of D-Day, he leaves me alone to take it all in.
I’m twenty-two years old. I’ve never known for want. There’s always been food on the table and the sweet smell of possibility, of a horizon free of impediment. I had opportunity, worked hard, and made my dreams come true. Here’s a guy on a plaque, eighteen years old, from Iowa. Another is twenty-two and from a town in northern Michigan. A door lowered; they ran into raging fire; if they lived they tried to climb those terrible cliffs, hand over hand, wide open to the barrages from above. If they got there, some fought, some charged into the maw of the .50 cals, anything to silence the howling guns, to save their brothers and achieve the objective. To do the job. To save our country. All the training, all the planning, all the money, all the strategy, finally and simply came down to that. When the door was lowered, could the twenty-two-year-old from Michigan step out and face the job at hand?
A stiff wind is blowing off the English Channel and it’s making my eyes water. Glenn stands back with the big, black Mercedes and the chauffeur. There’s another black-tie dinner and it’s a long drive back to the resort. I need to get going. People have paid money to see me, to meet me, and to congratulate me on the achievement of the film. I walk back to the car, past the graves and the flags, past the boys from the United States who never came home. I hop in the back, shut the door, and drive away.
The dinner is held in an ornate seventeenth-century ballroom. There are beautiful women. There’s a lot of wine. But I’m quiet. Someone asks me if I have something on my mind. I say no, but I do. It’s a twenty-two-year-old marine from a town in northern Michigan.
* * *
About Last Night is well received at both the Deauville and Venice film festivals. Sex, love, and commitment are story lines that travel well.
At one of the hotels on my press tour I stop by the magazine shop with my new pal Glenn.
“Rob, I noticed you looking at Princess Stephanie of Monaco on the cover of Vogue.”
“Yeah, I think she’s beautiful! It’s a great cover shot of her.”
“Have you ever met her?”
“No. Never. Oxford Blues was sort of based on her and we asked if she wanted to try acting. I’m actually hosting a charity event for the Princess Grace Foundation in a few months just to meet her,” I say. It’s true. The chance to finally meet Princess Stephanie is the only reason I agreed to host the event, to be held later in the year in Dallas, Texas.
“My company provides security for the Grimaldi royal family. Would you like me to introduce you?”
“Sure.”
“I will inquire then.”
Within a few days, Glenn has the go-ahead. Now we are back in Paris, and I say good-bye to the About Last Night gang.
“I’m going to stick around, have some fun,” I explain.
“Whaddya got, a hot date?” jokes Belushi.
“Maybe,” I say with a smile, and we hug.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” says Belushi.
I never told Jim that I had met his brother so many years ago and that when I did, his one piece of advice was “Stay out of the clubs.” Now I was about to begin a whirlwind romance that would end with me never wanting to see another club as long as I lived.
The doorman at my hotel is grim-faced when I return. “I’m sorry, monsieur. You cannot go outside, there has been another bomb.”
I try to sneak a peek but can see nothing; in the distance, sirens howl. This is the third blast in the last week and Paris is becoming increasingly and rightfully paranoid. It is at the point where it would surprise no one if the Eiffel Tower were blown up.
I look across the lobby and see Irwin and Margo Winkler, parents of a friend of mine. Irwin produced Rocky and many other great movies. They invite me to see a “very rough cut” of Irwin’s latest movie the next day. Figuring that during a siege there’s not much else to be done, I say yes.
The next afternoon I’m sitting down with the Winklers in a private screening room. I don’t know what movie this is or what it’s about. The lights go down. I’m about to have the greatest movie-watching experience of my life.
The print is indeed rough. There are no titles; in fact, it jumps awkwardly into the first scene. I can hear poor temp sound. Two men are driving a ’70s-era car. Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci. Cool! I loved them in Raging Bull. They banter. They are menacing and somehow funny at the same time. They pull the car over, go to the back, and open the trunk. There’s a man inside, bloody, begging for his life. They look at each other, pull a gun, and shoot him in the face. Freeze frame.
Goodfellas, even without dissolves or color correction, and with missing scenes, blew my doors off. The seven-minute, uninterrupted tracking shot through the Copacabana alone was groundbreaking. (Years later, we would do similar elaborate tracking shots in The West Wing.) But when Scorsese threw down “Layla” on top of the sequence, when they find all the dead bodies, I knew I was seeing the future template of storytelling. And, indeed, now every TV show has to have a classic song punctuating a big scene in a dramatic, coun
terintuitive way.
The lights come up and even Irwin, I think, is stunned.
“Maybe this will work after all. Who knows?” he says, looking dazed.
Outside the screening room there is chaos. Cars are careening around and sirens once again fill the air. It’s another bombing and panic is building. Suddenly Glenn appears out of nowhere.
“Get in my car now! All of you,” he orders.
We pile into his Mercedes. He places a blue police siren on the roof and pulls the car up onto the sidewalk. Then he guns it.
No one speaks.
After a hair-raising ride, he drops us back at the hotel.
“You’ll be safe here. If you ever get into trouble in Paris, the George V is the safest hotel to be in.” I want to ask why and how he knows this, but I don’t. The Winklers gratefully say good-bye and make their way into the lobby.
“Oh, and I will come for you tomorrow to meet the princess. Call me at this number at noon,” he says, looking for a piece of paper to write on. He pulls a card from his wallet and scribbles the number.
“Don’t worry. It’s safe now,” he says as he drives off.
Walking away, I look at the card. On it is the cell number he’s written, but embossed on the card itself are three words in familiar, official font that make my breath catch: The White House.
Who the hell is this guy?
High noon finds me in the Mercedes headed for Trocadero, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower. Glenn is running through the protocol for meeting the princess. Being a true-blue American, I am feeling our hallmark mixture of romantic fascination and eye-rolling impatience.
“If it’s a formal setting, she is to be addressed as Her Serene Highness. If members of the palace are present, the protocol will be stricter. You will be presented to her, and then you may introduce yourself. At that time, she can respond.”
He pulls to the curb, without warning. “We must change cars now. Quickly,” he instructs, and we hustle to another waiting sedan. Now we reverse direction. Glenn casually eyes the rearview mirror.
“Okay. We are a go.”
“Nice car,” I say, looking at a strange grouping of multiple cell phones (this in an era when they were huge and built into the dashboard).
“Why do you have so many phones?” I ask.
“They are for different purposes,” he answers mildly.
I wait for further explanations, but get none.
“You gave me a White House card yesterday—where did you get it?”
“Oh, sorry, I ran out of my own cards.”
Again I wait for more, but there’s nothing.
This time I press.
“So, you just happen to have official White House business cards? You have a siren that lets you drive on sidewalks and multiple secret phones in your cars? What exactly is the deal?”
Glenn drives for a couple of blocks as if forming an answer that will have the proper combination of authenticity and casual, friendly subterfuge. Finally he answers.
“I have many different areas in my life. I am in different countries; I help many kinds of people. I get to see many, many things. Things you would never imagine.”
“Do you work for the French government?” I ask.
“No.”
“Do you work for the White House?”
“No, but obviously they know me and I know them.”
Before I can continue to pry, we have pulled inside a grand apartment building on a gorgeous residential avenue.
“We are here.”
Glenn rings the doorbell on a beautiful mahogany entry and we wait. I don’t know what the official purpose of this meeting is, have no idea what she’s been told about me or why she’s agreed to meet me. I assume there will be a discussion about our cohosting the upcoming charity event. As footsteps come up behind the door, I have one last thought before it opens: I hope Glenn didn’t tell anyone I have a crush on this girl.
With the entire preamble about protocol, I expected a palace representative to greet us. But the door opens to reveal a surprisingly soft and vulnerable-looking version of the Princess Stephanie from the cover of Vogue. This in-the-flesh incarnation is also much prettier, with a delicate quality that is clearly lost in pictures. Her eyes are an intriguing mix of twinkling mischief and deep and profound sadness. They may be the bluest eyes I have ever seen. I know at once, I’m hooked.
“Hi, I’m Stephanie.” Her voice is scratchy and low, but with a crystal finish. “Come on in.”
We do. Stephanie is barefoot, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. She leads us into a large living room where an exotic-looking Mauritian girl is watching TV and eating potato chips.
“This is my roommate. Would you like something to eat?” she says, gesturing to a platter of hors d’oeuvres.
Glenn takes this moment to excuse himself; clearly this is no formal meeting. It’s more like walking into a blue-blood heiress’s apartment and hanging with her and her pal.
The three of us sit and chat. No one brings up the charity, and in fact, no one talks of why we have gotten together at all. It’s as if she’s been expecting me to come, like a friend she hadn’t seen in a while.
I watch her as we talk. She’s funny (an absolute necessity for me) and she stretches like a cat. Her roommate doesn’t say much, which is just as well. Stephanie and I chat about nothing in particular; it’s easy and relaxed. I agree to go to a dinner with a group she is putting together.
By the time the entrées arrive, she is sitting on my lap. By dessert, neither of us is interested in anything other than getting the hell out of there and back to her apartment. Only later will I realize what a “closer” Her Serene Highness is, when I discover that between courses she excuses herself to call the butler at the apartment to pack up the current boyfriend’s clothes and remove them before we return from dinner. It really is a wonder what can be done with the proper foresight and staffing.
If I feel a little thrown by the velocity and heat from the first meeting, I don’t let it slow me down. The next morning, I check out of my hotel and move in.
I become so immersed in the princess’s hermetically sealed exotic lifestyle that I might as well be in the Witness Protection Program. In Paris, our days begin at noon at the earliest, then possibly we do some official business, running around the city exploring and shopping, then drinks back at the apartment, dinner at nine or ten at night with a group that is never less than eight, enough vodka and tonics to float the battleship Bismarck, then dancing at the nightclubs till four or five in the morning.
My dad, whenever he got frustrated by disinterest in the grunt work of daily life, used to always say, “You better become either a movie star or a prince.” Who knows, maybe I’ll go two for two.
“How did your family come to rule Monaco?” I ask Stephanie one day. It seems like something I should know.
“Hundreds of years ago, my family and some others knocked on the village gates dressed as monks. When they were let inside, they killed who they had to and took over. We’ve been there ever since,” she answers, sipping her vodka tonic.
After a few weeks I am getting restless in Paris. Although Stephanie is working on a recording career, there is a profound lack of work ethic in her circle. And while I can party and drink with the best of them, even I need a day off from time to time. Not an option with this group. So I begin waking up before Stephanie and working out with Glenn, who is a champion martial artist.
“Rob, if they were to rip my heart out, I would still walk; if they were to tear me open, I would keep coming. If they pull my insides out, I will still be crawling,” says Glenn one day, apropos of nothing.
“Is that what they teach you in martial arts?” I ask.
“No. It’s just who I am.”
“Okaaaay,” I say, not sure of his point. “Good to know.”
With consecutive hit films behind me, I’m getting antsy to go home and take care of business. (The life of idle leisure is proving to be more taxin
g than I thought it would be.) My agents are putting together my next movie, and with my new profile as a romantic leading man, it has a lot riding on it. I tell Stephanie, who understands. She will come to L.A. in the next few weeks for a meeting on a record deal. I begin to pack my things.
I come across a magazine under a stack in Stephanie’s closet. It’s French, from six months ago, and I’m on the cover.
“Look what I found!” I say to her. She blushes.
“I put it away when I finally met you. I kept it on my nightstand for months,” she says.
* * *
Glenn drives me to the airport. I’ve had to leave on even shorter notice to make a meeting, but all flights are full. Glenn, however, always keeps two seats reserved on every Concord flight out of France. I use one to go home. But now the autoroute is in total gridlock. There is no way I’ll make the flight. Glenn wheels the car onto the side of the road, hits the blue siren, and drives the entire way on the shoulder of the freeway. Every once in a while we clip a car’s side-view mirror and it shatters with a bang. Glenn is unfazed.
As we pull up to de Gaulle, I am overwhelmed by a sense of finality. A very romantic, chaotic, exotic, bomb-filled month or so is coming to an end. In a life of extraordinary moments, even I know this one was remarkable.
“Good-bye, Glenn. I can’t thank you enough for all your help. For taking such good care of me, and for the fun and friendship.”
“And for Stephanie?” he smiles.
“Glenn, I’ve been around you almost every day for weeks and I’ve never heard you even attempt a joke. Until now.”
“I am learning from you. I want to have more fun in my life. I admire your ability to do that,” he says, looking almost wistful.
“Well, I admire you, too. Even if I don’t know what the fuck you’re really up to!”
He smiles and looks down. I head for the gorgeous needle-nose jet glinting in the morning sun.
I have my lunch meeting at the Russian Tea Room in Manhattan, fly home, and eat dinner alone at McDonald’s in Malibu. I am transitioning back to reality.