Hollywood Animal (98 page)

I said, “You haven’t called
me
for years.”

“So you punish me by not calling me on mine?”

“Is treating you the same way that you treat me punishment?” I said.

He laughed and said, “
Touché
.”

I said, “Why don’t you call me on my birthday anymore?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “maybe I have Alzheimer’s.”

“You don’t have Alzheimer’s.”

“I know,” he said, “but can’t we pretend I do so you’ll feel sorry for me and forget me not calling you on your birthdays?”

He laughed.

“By the way,” he said, “happy birthday.”

I said, “It’s not my birthday.”

My father said, “I know, but store my best wishes away for when I don’t call you next year.”

I said, “Happy birthday to you, too.”

He said, “Thank you. That’s why I called you. To hear you say it. And now you did.”

He hung up.

Cathedral Latin’s alumni association wrote asking me to be their guest of honor at an alumni event.

Naomi wrote the president of the alumni association back.

We received your recent correspondence and I would like to reply by informing you that my husband does not remember you. As a matter of fact, the only memories he does have of Cathedral Latin School are painful ones he would rather forget. … While I certainly can’t hold you responsible for the treatment my husband was subjected to at your school, I strongly encourage you never to write to him again. Also, please communicate to other members of the alumni association that Joe Eszterhas wants nothing to do with your organization nor any of the people who may have attended school with him. Do not send him your newsletter nor solicit him for donations. Do not invite him to attend any other events
.

My husband has always loved Cleveland and has spoken many times publicly and privately of his deep affection for the people there. Unfortunately, those feelings do not extend to Cathedral Latin. Please do not continue to assume they do
.

I did the
Today
show with a Mormon video store owner from Utah who was editing sex, violence, and profanity out of the videos he was renting out. He even edited out Rhett Butler saying he didn’t give a damn in
Gone With the Wind
.

I said, “You have no right to do these things. You’re a vandal and you should be viewed as a vandal.”

He said, “And you’re a pornographer.”

I said, “You’re a terrorist.”

That night we met again on
The News with Brian Williams
.

He called me a pornographer again.

I said, “Mormon is only one letter away from moron.”

My kindergartner, Joey, came home one day all excited. One of his classmates had brought his daddy’s Oscar to class on “Share” day.

Joey had held the Oscar, had felt it, had liked the feel of it.

Joey wanted to see
my
Oscar, too.

I told him I didn’t have one.

Joey said, “How come?”

Those of us who lived in Point Dume had the bejesus scared out of us one night when it felt like the world was suddenly exploding. Car alarms rang, dogs howled, babies screamed while the adults ran around trying to figure out what had happened. It wasn’t an earthquake. It was louder than a sonic boom. It couldn’t have been fireworks since it wasn’t the Fourth of July.

We rocked the babies, shushed the dogs, turned off the car alarms, and called the cops. The cops told us there was nothing to fear. Brad and Jennifer were getting married down near the beach and their ceremony had gotten delayed and they had imported some super-megaton fireworks from Bali.

We forgave Brad and Jennifer. It was obviously an industry event and they were the new golden couple and we forgave them just like we forgave the helicopters and the sound trucks which were always down there below us on Westward Beach filming, keeping us awake.

We all fed off the Industry tit, so how could we complain about Brad and Jennifer or Jerry Bruckheimer re-creating Pearl Harbor right outside our bedroom balconies?

Two weeks later, though …

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Holy Jesus, the babies were screaming and the dogs going nuts and the car alarms screeching and the cops told us it was another wedding.

Two nobodies had read about Brad and Jennifer’s wedding, and decided to copycat it right down to the imported fireworks from Bali. Two people who didn’t work in the industry. Two civilians.

Two
civilians
? Waking us up? Making our babies cry and our dogs howl and our car batteries run down? The Malibu City Council passed a resolution the next week. All weddings with fireworks would have to be approved on an individual case-by-case basis by the City Council.

Naomi’s journal:

Our housekeeper, Aurora, whom I adore, was talking about
her
hair yesterday. It’s black, but the ends of it are red. She said she wished it were all one color.

“Why did you dye it? Did you want a change?” I asked.

She said, “Oh no. This lady I work for in Beverly Hills, she ask me to.”

I asked why.

She said “She tole me her cats are afraid of dark-hair peoples. She say if I dye it, she pay for it. So I did. Why not? Is free!” She smiled.

I said I couldn’t believe anyone would actually say that.

Then she told me about the time she used to have to sweep the Pacific Coast Highway. The woman she worked for didn’t like the sand that stirred up every time a car went by, so Aurora would wait for a lull in traffic, run out, and sweep as much as she could from the road in front of the house.

“I did that every day, for one year, and then one day she told me I was too fat, so I go.”

CAA, the agency formerly headed by Michael Ovitz, asked me to participate in a fifteen-minute comedy film that premiered at the agency’s annual company retreat.

“As you would probably expect,” said the agency’s letter to me, “the scene would make an allusion to the ‘foot soldiers’ incident that took place several years ago.”

I played myself.

I said, on camera, to a Michael Ovitz–type agent, “My foot soldiers who go up and down Zuma Beach will blow your brains out.”

The scene, I heard, was a big hit at the CAA company retreat.

Guy still couldn’t get the production deal he was looking for.

“You gotta know when to get off the stage,” our mutual friend Frank Price had told him, but Guy couldn’t
afford
to get off the damn stage, he had too many ex-wives and children.

Two young screenwriters he’d represented formed a television production company and they gave Guy an office and a salary.

He had been a titan in Hollywood, the head of three studios, an agent with superstar clients like Yul Brynner and Peter Sellers and Steve McQueen and Burt Reynolds and Jackie Bisset—all of whom, as far as Hollywood was concerned, were dead.

Here he was, in a little office in a building where he couldn’t even smoke for Christ’s sake.

He had to go down and stand
on the street
every couple of hours and hope
that
the two young screenwriters wouldn’t get upset that he was out of the office again.

Naomi’s journal:

We went to the Grille for lunch today. I love going there. We always sit at the bar. As we finished our meal I spotted Mark Canton coming toward us.

Someone from a booth stopped him so I said to Joe, “It’s Mark Canton! He’s seen us! And you’ve said all those nasty things about him in public!”

Joe says, “Be cool.”

I say, “But you’ve called him a
moron!
More than once!”

Joe says, “He won’t stop. He’s just heading out.”

I turn around and look in the mirror behind the bar. I can see him behind us. Sure enough, he looks up at us and heads right over.

He puts his hand out and says, “Joe! Good to see you!”

Joe shakes his hand and says, “Mark, you remember my wife, Naomi.” He says, “Nice to see you.” Then he says softly, “Hey, Joe, listen, I just want to thank you for all the kind words …”

He was totally guileless. He
wasn’t kidding
. No
hint
of sarcasm.

Joe says, “You’re welcome. Good to see you Mark,” and Mark says, “Great to see you, too. Take care,” with a big smile and walks out.

Steve gave Joey a shark tooth for his birthday that Steve had worn as a child.

Joey wore his shark tooth proudly everywhere he went.

Naomi and I had our fourth son, Luke. I could hear Carrie Rickey of the
Philadelphia Inquirer
saying, “He is so misogynistic that he impregnates his gun moll only with boys.”

Naomi’s journal:

I took the boys Christmas shopping in Beverly Hills. It was hovering at 90 degrees and we all had on shorts, but I tried to make it feel like Christmas.

We walked by a display window on Rodeo Drive. They had little pieces of Styrofoam blowing out of a snow-blower,
amid
woolly caps and gloves and coats. Joey screamed, “Snow! Snow!” And they all pressed their noses against the glass, marveling at something they’d never seen, but heard so much about.

Sometimes I ache that they won’t share my wonderful childhood memories. I try to tell them about it. But how can you explain how it feels to live in the seasons? To be buried in a mound of multicolored leaves? How the excited voices of the children burying you grow fainter and fainter as more handfuls are piled on, until you’re left with only the intoxicating smell of autumn leaves and a deafening, crunching wall of sound.

Or how it sounds to walk in the snow. Sort of squeaky. And sometimes, when it’s really, really cold, you can walk on top of it when you’re little. And once in a while it caves in and your heart leaps to your throat if it’s really deep. And the absolute rapture of rolling over in your bed as your mom says, “No school today, guys. Too much snow. Go back to sleep.” Or hearing the crickets and tree frogs announce spring, after the absolute silence and stillness of winter. Or how it feels to catch a lightning bug at dusk in early summer, and watch it glow in your cupped hands. Then set it free again by blowing on it until it flies blinking off into the night. Or massive thunderstorms that nearly rock and roll you out of bed.

Sometimes I feel like they live in a gilded cage. The ocean is there, but Point Dume is so treacherous they can’t even go in. The view is spectacular, but you can’t take off on your bike behind a gated wall. They know beauty, but they don’t know freedom.

As I watched them celebrate the snow I said, “That’s Styrofoam, guys. It’s not real snow.” They didn’t care. It was close enough.

I told Steve and Suzi about the things their grandfather had done in Hungary.

It didn’t matter to them. They remembered how he had played and drawn and colored with them while they were children.

They loved their grandfather.

Blood is thicker than spilled blood
.

CHAPTER 30

I Redeem Myself

RIZZO

Nobody hustles like a screenwriter hustles. Forget Sammy Glick. But remember that Sammy was
created
by a screenwriter.

An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn

I WROTE
MAGIC
Man
in the early eighties, twenty years after I left high school, to get even with all those snobs and elitist idiots who had made life so miserable when I was at Cathedral Latin.