Crane (44 page)

Scotty added, “Bob [Dad] essentially disowned Anne’s [Mom’s] children in his will.” That was the will that had had a codicil attached to it that eliminated my sisters and me from any inheritance. It was drawn up by his
financial manager/attorney Lloyd Vaughn, the guy Patti got cozy with when my dad was working out of town. I’ve never been completely convinced that Patti and Vaughn didn’t alter the will themselves without my dad’s knowledge or consent. I must add that this is the same Lloyd Vaughn who was later disbarred and sent to jail for, among other things, embezzling more than $100,000 from my dad’s bank accounts.

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also pontificated about my dad’s post-vasectomy sperm count to dissuade nasty rumors that Scotty was not my dad’s son. Scotty used the forum to address something that had long bothered him—that editors, writers, interviewers, producers, and directors often dubbed me Bob Crane Jr. As I have said before, I have never asked for or assumed that moniker on my own, but it irked Scotty no end when I was referenced that way. Patti often went on rants against my dad’s first family, my family, that were filled with inaccuracies, false accusations, and venom.

To add literary insult to injury, Scotty packaged more of the images his mother had turned over to him into a self-published coffee-table book that took the viewer briefly through my dad’s childhood, radio career, and
Hogan’s
but ended up portraying a lot of middle-aged, out-of-shape sex. I would say that it was a coffee-table book only if your coffee table was in the film
Boogie Nights.
The
Seattle Times
called it “a sad story”; the
New York Daily News
wrote that Scotty was “selling his family’s dirty laundry.” The whole enterprise reeked of a cheap reality show on a distant cable channel. When asked by the press for a reaction, I just shook my head and said, “This is not a celebration of my dad.”

In one of my dad’s unthinking, clueless states, he once showed me photographs of a threesome involving him, a willing Patti, and another woman. Those photographs were not in Scotty’s book or on his website. So there was some selective editing, I presume, by Patti, showing her unwillingness to share her real self with her son. Scotty, sadly, was being brainwashed by the Jim Jones of home porn sales.

I was outraged by both Patti and Scotty. It made me wonder, what was more sordid—the pornography or the flogging of the pornography? One thing for sure, Patti was the pimp. Scotty heard about life with Father through the skewed, angry, victimized point of view of his mother. Maybe Scotty secretly would have wished to be his half sister, Melissa, who got out of Dodge early and headed for Texas.

But I tried to keep my outrage in check. I was newly married, father
to a stepdaughter and a dog, trying to give my nascent family and rein-vigorated life my full attention. Leslie and I were in our second marriages and didn’t want to repeat past offenses. I wanted to move forward with all things familial, but my father’s life—and by consequence mine—was continually turning into messy and embarrassing tabloid fodder. I was like Michael Corleone in
The Godfather III:
“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”

44

I began 2001 with two priorities: to work hard at being a family man and to succeed as a freelance writer. However, on very short notice everything changed. While being that attentive husband, stepfather, and walker to, respectively, Leslie, Meagan, and Chloe, I was pulled back into a skirmish that I had hoped and prayed was over. The misinformation and tastelessness emanating from Patti and Scotty’s website, chat room, and book, coupled with the announcement in the
Hollywood Reporter
that a film based on Robert Graysmith’s book about the murder of my dad was in preproduction, propelled me into action.

I couldn’t do anything substantive regarding Patti and Scotty’s classless endeavors, but I could add my voice to
Auto Focus,
a $7 million film directed by Paul Schrader and written by first-time screenwriter Michael Gerbosi. The vitriol and ill feelings generated in me by Patti and her apostle Scotty had lain dormant for a number of years, but now they bubbled to the surface. Their words and actions roused this half-sleeping dog. It was bad enough that Graysmith, Schrader, and Gerbosi had never met my dad, but an inference in the trades that Patti and Scotty might be involved in the production literally kept me awake at night. The notion that no one from my dad’s first family would be represented really kick-started me.

On the selfish side, I also wanted to meet Paul Schrader, who had written or cowritten three of my favorite films,
Taxi Driver, Raging Bull,
and
The Yakuza
. In 1976 my dad and I had attended a screening of Martin Scorsese’s
Taxi Driver
at the Plaza Theatre in Westwood. At the time my dad was trying to get a part in another Scorsese picture, the big band–oriented
New York, New York.
We were both amazed by the intensity of
Taxi Driver,
but unfortunately my dad didn’t get the role in
New York, New York.

I cold-called Pat Dollard, one of eight producers or executive producers on the film. Dollard told me that Greg Kinnear had been signed to
play my dad. I had enjoyed his Oscar-nominated performance opposite Jack Nicholson in
As Good As It Gets
and was aware of the similarities between his career and my dad’s. They both started on the radio and then moved to television. Kinnear was a good actor: bright, funny, and handsome. He was perfect for the part, I thought. The intense and occasionally frightening Willem Dafoe was set to play John Henry Carpenter. I was impressed. This was going to be a first-class project. I had to meet Schrader.

It’s important to note that
Auto Focus
was going to be made with or without my participation, but I wanted to at least read the script. I met with Dollard, who arranged a meeting between Schrader and me at the Focus Puller Inc. production offices on North Gower Street in Hollywood, triangulated between the old Columbia Square home of KNX Radio; the former Columbia Pictures studio, home of
The Donna Reed Show
; and Paramount Pictures, where the first two seasons of
Hogan’s Heroes
were filmed. I was comfortable and at home in that neighborhood.

Schrader was lucid and serious, perhaps a reflection of his Calvinist upbringing. Comedy was not a part of his repertoire. I liked his dramatic side, but the man never laughed. I now understood that
Auto Focus
was going to be a sobering look at a sex-addicted television actor, but I was concerned because there didn’t seem to be any humor in the mix, and comedy was such an essential and important element in my dad’s life and career. Schrader told me he had been talking to Patti and Scotty, who had somehow managed to get hold of a copy of the script. They were trying to produce their own take on events with a script called “Take Off Your Clothes and Smile,” and their attorney, A. Lee Blackman, was bluntly communicating to Schrader and the producers that his clients were upset with what they’d read in
Auto Focus.
Word quickly spread through the offices that Patti and Scotty were intractable pains in the ass, representing the negative and certainly litigious branch of the Crane family tree.

Schrader loaned me a copy of the script and suggested I write notes addressing the “voice” of my dad. I immediately went through the pages, marking up all but a few. Schrader and Gerbosi were locked into the scenes and events, but I offered alternatives with regard to the way my dad would express himself, the words or phrases he would use, as well as the look and sound of his radio show. I gave them background on the filming of
Hogan’s Heroes,
conversations between my dad and me, and the look and sound of my family. I also suggested dialogue snippets, such as
my dad’s seeing new things like the color orange, which made it into the film but was transferred (by Schrader) from his real-life chat with Chuck to a cinematic scene between my dad and the twenty-year-old Bobby (me).

Leslie and I had dinner with Schrader one evening at his haunt Chateau Marmont off Sunset Boulevard. While we spooled pasta and polished off a bottle of pinot noir, we went through the script page by page. Schrader was very receptive to my insights. Besides seeing that the participation of Bob Crane’s first son brought authenticity and veracity to the piece, he appreciated that I loved film, was a fan of Schrader and Kinnear, and wished only the best for the production at hand. I might also add that I was easy to work with, had no hidden agenda, and am one hell of a nice guy. Whereas Patti and Scotty had tripped their own landmines, resulting in persona non grata status on the production. I was still concerned about the film, but at least I was sleeping better.

A less successful dinner meeting took place at another of Schrader’s favorite Old Hollywood locales, Musso and Frank’s Grill on Hollywood Boulevard. Leslie and I invited Schrader to meet my mom and Chuck. My mom viewed Schrader as an enemy, cruising for trouble, leaving depth charges in her calm, tranquil Tarzana sea. It was not a congenial evening, and it would be their sole meeting. Though she knew almost nothing about him, my mom did not feel safe with Paul Schrader.

On the other hand, when I told Mom of a phone call I had received from Rita Wilson, the actress who was to play my mom in the film, asking for a luncheon date with the former Anne Crane, she perked up noticeably. “Where and when?” she asked right away.

Mom loved Rita as an actress and thought lunch sounded like fun. In fact, Wilson was doing an actor’s research. She wanted to pick my mom’s brain, watch her conduct, listen to her speech patterns, get an insight into her clothing choices, smell her perfume. So Mrs. Tom Hanks and Mrs. Chuck Sloan spent a couple of enjoyable hours dining at Bistro Garden in Studio City. Whatever transpired at that lunch must have been significant, because onscreen Rita Wilson
is
my mom. With a minor assist from wardrobe, hair, and makeup, she uncannily inhabits Anne Crane. I found it almost eerie, but it reaffirmed my admiration for truly great actors. It’s a shame my mom never saw Rita’s performance. She would have gotten a kick out of her lunch date’s metamorphosis.

The character of John Henry Carpenter needed the same treatment I
had given my dad—the input of someone who had known him well—but it was up to Mark Dawson, son of
Hogan’s Heroes
costar Richard Dawson, the man who introduced Carpenter to my dad, to handle that job. He was hired for his insight into his friend Carpenter. Mark and I both became technical advisors on the film.

As part of my duties, I met with Greg Kinnear at a delicatessen in Santa Monica and shared photographs and memorabilia with him along with my thoughts and observations about my dad. I tried to give him a flavor for the way he spoke, his conscientious striving for likeability, his smile, his laugh, his quickness, the loudness of his voice, the way he carried himself. I offered Greg the use of Colonel Hogan’s leather jacket and khaki shirt for the
Hogan’s Heroes
sequences in the film. Kinnear was genuinely touched and honored.

I worked with Julie Weiss, the costume designer, suggesting the sort of clothes my dad wore. James Chinlund, the production designer, and I went through piles of photographs and tossed around ideas for the 1960s look of our home in Tarzana and the furniture that filled its rooms. Chinlund referred to the “accreditation of clutter.” My dad “got messier, tangled in more and more video cables” toward the end of his life.

I also assisted the Sony Pictures Entertainment legal department in the clarification of factual errors in the script. That same legal department was being hounded by Patti’s emissaries, and I felt it incumbent on me to add my voice to the cacophony in a constructive manner.*

I was helpful, serious, dedicated. I offered assistance to any department that requested it. I wasn’t hanging out at the craft service table downing M&Ms and drinking coffee. Any prejudgment the cast and crew might have had about Crane’s kid—“What’s he like? Does he have a chip on his shoulder? Is he an asshole? Is he a sex maniac?”—evaporated rapidly. I became an unexpected asset to the film. Schrader allowed me in, albeit at arm’s length because, after all, this was a Paul Schrader film. He operated on a lone-wolf premise, very much like my dad in the way he trusted only his own creative instincts. I was circumspect, participating in key scenes where I felt the “Welcome” mat was out and staying away from others, like those in the murder sequence. While I was the only person working on the film to have walked through the actual murder scene, this was to be Paul Schrader’s take on it, and therefore the look would represent Schrader’s own biases. Having seen the real thing, nothing was ever going to be worse than those images burned into my brain.

I had never been interested in being part of the actors’ club, but Kinnear and Dafoe heard about my interactions with many of the film’s
departments and also about my respect for their work. They both made me feel welcome and treated me as one of their own. They recognized that I wanted them to do great work.