Hollywood Animal (58 page)

January 19, 1992

All of Evans’s bank accounts were frozen this week by the state of California due to the $33,000 he owes in state taxes. He spent the week running around planning his son Josh’s twenty-first birthday party, paying no heed to either his financial or business issues.

January 27, 1992

Evans is busy moving pieces of furniture from his home, just in case the IRS shows up.

February 1, 1992

Evans broke out in hives in the office today and felt very dizzy. Bill thought Bob was having a heart attack, but he wasn’t.

February 18, 1992

I heard today that Arthur, Bob’s Polish butler, is writing screenplays and trying to sell them to Paramount.

February 19, 1992

Evans got Stanley Jaffe, the Paramount head honcho, to agree to use Billy Friedkin to direct
The Saint
.

Everyone’s furious because: A. Billy Friedkin hasn’t had a hit in years;
B
. They won’t be able to attract any big name actors if Friedkin directs.

Goldwyn went into Evans’s office literally screaming. Evans hemmed and hawed and didn’t have much to say in his defense.

Joe Eszterhas has been working on another script,
Nowhere to Run
, while he’s under contract to Paramount to do
Sliver
. Instead of handling it diplomatically, Evans called Eszterhas half stoned at 9:30
A.M
.
Evans provoked Joe to such a degree, Joe hung up on him and called Bill to say: “I’m sending back the half-million-dollar
Sliver
advance and burning what I’ve written so far!” Bill somehow calmed him down and Joe has agreed to stay on the project.

February 20, 1992

Joe Eszterhas called Bill, laughing about a letter of apology he got from Evans. Evans sent him some thirty scented candles with a letter that said something like “to light up your abode with prayer … to conquer the surrounding darkness.” And ending with “I’m sending prayers to whoever’s up there.”

The IRS wants $250,000 from Evans in three days. So what does Evans do? He gets on a plane for Mexico. He says he’s going to work on his autobiography.

February 24, 1992

Evans was screaming at everyone in the office on Friday because he was trying to dictate a congratulatory letter to Jack Nicholson, who recently had another child. The letter made reference to the penis size of the baby.

A sheriff’s deputy was at Bob’s house inquiring about an unpaid florist bill. Bob thinks it was really the IRS taking a peek around at the furniture.

February 25, 1992

Every few months at Evans’s house there appears a new “honeybee,” a term I use to describe a very young, pretty girl flitting around. Evans will soon start to talk about how “important” she is to him and how he couldn’t have imagined life before she came along, and she then becomes the “Queen Bee.” Sometimes Helmut Newton even takes nude pictures of her.

She then is the “lady of the house” and attends all functions with Bob, helps with dinner parties, decorates the tree (depending on the time of year) and becomes a permanent fixture. Before long, a new honeybee appears.

The Queen Bee accepts cohabitation with this new beauty, a little wary but still thinking her position is sound.

Suddenly the Queen Bee is gone, the new honeybee assumes her role, and the cycle starts again. It never fails. Anytime I go up I can usually spot the new one.

One time Margaux Hemingway became the Queen Bee (she never entered as a honeybee, she just swooped in as Queen). Bob even redecorated the guest bedroom for her. But then, alas, a honeybee buzzed in one day (I think her name was Brandy).

Bob was frantic. He said to Bill “I just don’t know how to get rid of Margaux …” Then he had a brainstorm. He sent her to New York to have all her teeth done. He was very pleased with this bit of ingenuity.

She left for New York happy and starry-eyed, her cozy guest room awaiting her return. I never saw Margaux again.

February 28, 1992

Evans spent the day yesterday writing a letter to the archbishop of New Orleans which was completely unintelligible.

It seems that Bob has done such a superb job promoting and hyping his cocaine-conviction court-ordered documentary about Pope John Paul II that the Catholic Church now wants a piece of the action. (Because the Church believes, erroneously, that money was made.)

March 2, 1992

Our weekend with the Eszterhases in Marin was fabulous. Joe Eszterhas and his wife, Gerri, are great people. Both are from Ohio, she from a small steel town. While “the men” talked business, the “wives” went to Stinson Beach to view the latest Eszterhas purchase—a splendid old Victorian near the beach. Bill was his wonderful usual self and I think both Joe and Gerri liked me, too.

March 4, 1992

Ever since Bill asked Gabrielle Kelly to read the letter Bob had written to the archbishop of New Orleans out loud (Gabrielle has a lilting Irish brogue), Bob has been cornering her to read everything aloud to him. This galls Gabrielle horribly.

Yesterday Evans had an author in his office and Bob’s brother, Charles, was there. Of course Bob had never read the visiting author’s book but called Gabrielle in to read a passage out loud which referred to him.

As Gabrielle began to read, she became more and more appalled at the way the author (who was in the room!) described both Bob and Charles. Gabrielle refused to go on.

Bob and Charles were both so out of it they didn’t even comprehend how bad the descriptions were.

March 8, 1992

Evans looked at his desk and said, “What I don’t understand is what
everybody is doing?
Look at my desk! There’s nothing on it but some pictures of some women, a letter to the archbishop, and Tootsie Rolls. I don’t understand it! I should have some important books and papers on this desk!”

March 12, 1992

Evans showed up at work Monday wearing worn flannel pants, his shoes from the movie he never played in,
The Two Jakes
, and a soiled white shirt with brown stains all over the front of it.

He had his hair slicked back and he was wearing his
Saint
bolo tie. The staff now calls him “the Lizard King.”

He is meeting every day with Charles Michener, the ghostwriter of his autobiography. Michener is a Princeton grad and a historian and Bob hadn’t read a word he’d written before he hired him. He hired him because he was told that Michener was “a hot ghostwriter.”

When Bob read what Michener had written, he called Bill in and said, “What is it with this guy? He writes like some stuffy Harvard graduate.”

Bill said, “Princeton, Bob.”

Bob said, “Well, I told him that when I was sixteen, I used to hang out in bars in Harlem because the waitresses there could pick tips off the table with their cunts. He changed it! He uses the word ‘vagina’ all the time. I’ve never used that word in my life. Now I’ve got to go back and change all of Michener’s
vaginas
to my
cunts
.”

March 18, 1992

Evans is now calling Sigourney Weaver to try to get her into some old script Charles, his brother, had commissioned ten years ago.

Charles recently bid against
himself
on a home he wants to buy. He forgot that he’d made a bid, then he heard about another bid, forgot that that was his bid, and topped it with another bid.

April 27, 1992

Bill met for three hours with Joe Eszterhas in San Francisco—they discussed Bill’s next career stops. Joe says that Bill must establish relationships at other studios and set up projects there. He said that within the Industry a lot of people think he is a former CIA guy or a drug dealer.

Why else would a bright, educated guy be this diligent in his efforts for Evans, a known drug addict? Bill’s import-export background reinforces these rumors. Joe said that if Evans is busted for drugs or drops dead, Bill should be prepared with other projects or he risks going down with Bob.

May 1, 1992

A smoky haze fills the air this morning. Four thousand National Guardsmen have been deployed in the city.

Bill met with Brad Pitt, a potential candidate to play
The Saint
.

On the way home, Bill was terrified as he drove through smoky streets, rioters, and screaming sirens.

When someone was shot three blocks from the Paramount lot, all employees were ordered to go home.

Evans insisted that his staff stay to write a memo to John Goldwyn.

May 14, 1992

Yesterday Evans was making a point by waving his hand around and in his hand he was unconsciously holding a vial of coke. In the office!

He was dictating a letter to his secretary and he said, “Now let’s get this straight. I’m crossing my fingers and toes and balls for good luck.”

Then he dictated a memo to the director Larry Kasdan and he said, “I’d give up a blow job to direct this picture myself.”

May 18, 1992

Evans has a new girlfriend named April. She came into the office in her underwear.

Larry Kasdan was so offended by Evans’s memo that his agent called Bill to tell him Kasdan will never work with Evans.

May 22, 1992

When Bill got to work on Friday morning, everyone was in a frenzy. Rumors were floating about that Eszterhas was not
going
to deliver the
Sliver
script that day as planned—that he was going to miss the deadline. Bill told everyone to calm down and he called Joe. As it turned out, the script was being typed and did arrive as scheduled.

June 6, 1992

When Bill arrived in the morning to pick him up for work, Bob was meeting some “potential investors.” Apparently they are also very religious.

They suggested that perhaps it would be good to pray for guidance. So there is Evans (in his slippers) kneeling with his head bowed in the living room with these holy rollers.

As they pray, two bimbos come out of Bob’s bedroom and go tiptoeing past behind them. One is wearing only a pajama top, the other only the bottoms.

They hold their fingers to their lips and stifle giggles as they pass by Bill. They get a glass of juice from the kitchen and go tiptoeing back, as God is invoked by the investors.

June 11, 1992

Evans called one of Sharon Stone’s agents and offered her the lead part in
Sliver
. The agent called Bill back and said, “Sharon says—‘I’ll never work for that slime Evans and I’m not showing my pussy for Joe Eszterhas anymore.’”

July 8, 1992

At his first meeting with a writer yesterday, Evans fell asleep and proceeded to snore. Bill, Gabrielle Kelly, Bobby Jaffe (Stanley’s son), and John Goldwyn were all there.

Bill kept coughing and dropping things to try to wake Evans up. Gabrielle nervously tapped her pencil to try to rouse him—to no avail.

The entire scene climaxed when the writer, courteously trying to ignore the snoring Evans, said, “Well, as Bob said earlier …”

And all heads turned to look at Bob, who sat slumped and snoring in his chair.

At the end of the meeting, John Goldwyn said, “If someone will please wake Mr. Evans, we will adjourn.”

August 4, 1992

The word around Paramount about why Sharon Stone agreed to star in
Sliver
is that Eszterhas “convinced” her. I hear they’re “close” but I don’t know what that means.