It's Only a Movie: Reel Life Adventures of a Film Obsessive (21 page)

According to legend, at the height of all this insanity the police even sent a special agent round to live with Blair to protect her from the unwanted attentions of whackjobs. To this day, there are still people who believe (and indeed
report
) that Blair went mad as a result of appearing in
The Exorcist
– that she ended up in an asylum and her mother was struck by lightning. So the last thing she needed right now was yet another fruitcake on her case – albeit a fruitcake with an English accent.

In the silence that followed, I realised that I had almost certainly blown it. Might as well just hang up.
Yet Blair’s agent (who used to work in fashion – who would’ve guessed?) was seemingly unaware of this paranoia-inducing area of his client’s past.

‘Well, that’s just
great
!’ he burbled happily.’When would you like to meet?’

I was thrown. Completely sideswiped. I never expected him to say
yes
. OK, so Craven and Raimi both agreed quickly enough, but this was different. Blair was … a star!

‘Er, hello?’

‘Yes, hello. Sorry. What?’

‘I said, when would you like to meet? Can’t do tomorrow – busy, busy, busy. How about Thursday?’

‘Thursday?’ I attempted to affect an air of casual disregard, like that one Tony Curtis uses after Marilyn Monroe snogs him on a yacht in
Some Like It Hot
. I failed – I sounded more like Dick Van Dyke.

‘Yes, I believe I
might
be able to “do” Thursday.’

‘Well, that’s just
great
!’ he said for the second time.’Whereabouts?’

I floundered. Raimi and Craven both just told me to come to their offices. Easy. But now suddenly I had to suggest a ‘whereabouts’. Where does one usually have a ‘whereabouts’? Hereabouts?

‘Um, how about Tim and Jenny’s place?’ I blurted.

‘“Tim and Jenny’s Place” ? Haven’t heard of it. What food do they serve? Linda’s vegan, you know.’

‘Oh that’s OK,’ I laughed.’It’s not a restaurant. It’s just my friend’s flat. Sorry, “apartment”. It’s great – it’s just off Sunset and —’

‘
Whhhhaaaaat?
’ shrieked the man on the end of the phone who had suddenly hit the correctly protective tone towards his client which I thought would have been appropriate about two minutes ago.’I am
not
going to send Linda Blair to someone’s
apartment
. Are you
mad
?’

Apparently so. Of course I was mad. What the hell was I thinking? I’d blown it again.

Damn.

Bugger.

Bollocks.

But no …

‘
Sooo
… how about the Riverside Café, Riverside and Cahuenga? You know it?’

‘Oh yes!’ I lied.’Good choice!’

‘Well, that’s just
great
! She’ll see you there at 5 p.m. Thursday!’

And with that he was gone.

I arrived at the Riverside Café at 4 p.m., a full hour before the appointed time, terrified that I wouldn’t be able to find the place, and convinced that this was all going to end badly. In an effort to appear less strung out than I clearly was, I drove around the block a few times, hoping to make myself fashionably late, allowing me to rush in as if hot-foot from some equally prestigious assignment, babbling apologies for my tardiness.

Finally I parked (horribly) and stepped into the
restaurant. I looked at the clock. It was 4.03 p.m. Bother. I considered going out and coming in again, but that smacked of Michael Palin in Monty Python’s Spanish Inquisition sketch and that’s
not
what I was aiming for at all. So instead I just stood there like a lemon.

The restaurant looked like a set.
Everything
in that town looked like a set. Those weren’t real customers over there – they were
extras
. And they weren’t
eating
. They were just fiddling around with fake lettuce. In fact, if you listened close enough, you could hear that they weren’t even really
talking
– they were just going ‘rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb’ (you only get paid full SAG rates if you say ‘real words’) in what the script presumably described as ‘background mumbling’.

‘Table for one?’ smiled the actress-slash-waitress, who I hadn’t seen sweeping up silently behind me, cleverly cutting off my escape route.

‘Er, no.
Two!
’ I replied, forcefully.

‘Two?’ she repeated with smirking derision. She knew I was lying. She knew there was no way that a sad sack like me could possibly be dining with anyone
else
. She’d got my number.

‘Yes,’ I said again, attempting to stand up straight and tall.’Yes, I will need a table for
two
persons because I have an appointment here with …’ (let’s see how she likes
this
) ‘with …
Linda Blair
!’

She looked at me blankly, still smiling.

‘The famous movie star!’ I added, perhaps perfunctorily.

She kept smiling serenely.

‘The famous star of not only
The Exorcist
(of course),
but also of many other hits (some of them straight-to-video) including
Roller Boogie
,
Hell Night
,
Wild Horse Hank
,
Sarah T: Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic
,
Witchery
,
Born Innocent
,
Up Your Alley
,
Airport 75
,
Exorcist II: The Heretic
,
Chained Heat
,
Red Heat
,
Savage Streets
,
Savage Island
…’

She dropped the smile.

‘Yeah, I know who Linda Blair is. She’s not here yet. Take a seat.’

And with that she turned and walked away.

I really needed to stop doing that.

I found my own way to a table which was clearly set for at least five people. I figured this was about right. A table for two would be … well, creepy. I wanted to establish right away that I was
not
a stalker. I was a proper English film journalist with an enthusiastic regard for Blair’s whole cinematic
oeuvre
. I was polite and well mannered, and I cared only about the
work
. Which was entirely true. It’s just that I cared about the work
a lot
.

My waitress returned, observed the gigantic size of the table I had chosen, and said something indecipherable under her breath. Then she pulled a pencil out from behind her ear.

‘Can I getcha anything while you’re waiting? For the other
four
people.’

I decided not to rise to this.

‘Yes,’ I said firmly.’I will have a bottle of beer please. A cold one, if you have it.’

The pencil went back behind the ear.

‘What type of beer would you like, sir? They’re
all
cold.’

‘What have you got?’

Bad question.

‘Amstel, Heineken, Bud, Bud Light, Coors, Coors Lite, Miller, Miller Lite, Pabst Blue Ribbon —’

‘
That one!
’

‘Which one?’

‘The ribbon one.’

‘Pabst?’

‘Yes. Pabb.’

‘Pabb …ST.’

‘That’s what I said.’

She really didn’t like me. Also, she was
on
to me. She knew I’d never drunk Pabst Blue Ribbon in my life. She
knew
that I only chose it because of that scene in
Blue Velvet
where Dennis Hopper out-cools Kyle MacLachlan by yelling ‘Heineken? Fuck that shit!
Pabst Blue Ribbon!
’

I needed to reassert my authority. I needed to shape up. I needed to start acting like I knew what the hell I was doing. What would Jason Isaacs have done? In a move which I find inexplicable to this day, I decided to take everything I owned out of my bag and place it on display on the table in front of me. By the time my waitress came back, I had effectively occupied the entire tabletop with cassettes, batteries, notebooks, maps and bits of string, like someone attempting to play a swift round of makeshift
Risk
without pieces or a playing board.

There was hardly anywhere to put the beer, so she perched it on the far end of the table and then gave me a supercilious smirk. I smirked back, although her smirk was a lot more practised than mine. After she left, I got up from
my chair, walked round the vast table to collect my beer, then walked it back to my seat, to the silent hilarity of the restaurant’s few other patrons. Clearly, they were used to this sort of thing.

The Pabst Blue Ribbon was really very good and was swiftly really very
gone
. So I ordered another one. When my waitress returned to the table, I did not even deign to look up. I had got the measure of this game. I was not even going to acknowledge her. Ha!

‘Mark?’

I looked up.

Blimey Charlie, it’s Linda Blair.

I was thunderstruck. Shocked. Speechless. The last time I saw her, she was levitating effortlessly over a thumping, shaking bed, being doused in holy water by petrified Catholic priests while a packed late-night cinema audience quivered and quaked in awe. And now she was right
here
. Right
now
. Right
real
.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said politely.’Are you Mark?’

‘Yes, I am Mark, exciting yet trustworthy international film journalist, working for a host of important publications including London’s prestigious
Time Out
magazine. How nice to meet you, Linda Blair, versatile and talented actress. I have seen all of your movies and look forward to discussing them with you. Please sit down.’

This is what the voice
inside
my head said. Unfortunately, the voice
outside
my head – the one that everyone in the ‘real world’ can hear – failed to respond, largely because my face had stopped functioning. I looked like a dead person.

‘Sorry,’ Blair said again.’My mistake.’ And she started to walk away.

With gargantuan effort, my brain
commanded
my mouth to snap to attention, get a grip, and resume normal communications with the outside world. As Blair headed off into the restaurant, I summoned up what it was left of my
savoir faire
, and launched into the verbal void.

‘Isssssaahhmmurkkk!’ I announced in something approaching a yell. She turned round again.

‘Sorry?’

‘Yes, I am Mark,’ I grunted torturously, presumably with the expression of someone solving a complicated quantum physics equation while simultaneously passing a particularly large kidney stone.

‘Oh. Hey. I’m Linda Blair.’

And indeed she was. I gestured wildly at the table in front of me, where I seemed to be having a front-lawn sale of everything I owned in the world. She surveyed the carnage, smiled (ironically?) and took a seat at the far end of the table. Clearly it was a good choice going for the five-seater. She didn’t want to get any closer than that, and frankly I couldn’t blame her. If I were in her shoes, and I had been sent to meet
me
, I would have gone straight home and fired my agent, before ringing the police department and asking if that nice officer was still available for house duty.

But, whether out of pity or professionalism, she settled herself down, ordered a salad from the waitress (‘Oh hi Linda, how ya doin? The usual?’ – all sunshine and light now, the double-crossing bastard), took a deep breath and said,
‘So, whaddya wanna know?’

And for the next ninety minutes I interviewed Linda Blair. And she was great. Funny, intelligent, self-effacing, full of quotable stories, always ready to laugh at herself, profoundly aware of her own limitations, and just genuinely really nice. Despite my wobbly start, she put me at my ease, and together we meandered conversationally through the highs and lows of her career. With no hint of self-pity she told me about the weird life she had led in the wake of
The Exorcist
, recalling how people would recognise her in supermarkets and run screaming into the street.’I was a normal kid,’ she said, ‘and I wanted to be pretty. But all people ever said to me was, “Wow, can you really spin your head around and throw up?”’ She talked openly about some of the less than splendid straight-to-video sleaze she had made in the eighties (‘we were filming
Red Heat
in a sewer and the camera tripod had one foot in the river of poop’) and even apologised for
Savage Island
– an Italian women-in-chains cheapie for which she had recorded wraparound intro-outro scenes which allowed the makers to market it (spuriously) as ‘starring Linda Blair’. Now she was branching out into comedy, and had great hopes for the forthcoming
Exorcist
spoof
Repossessed
in which she co-starred with her funnyman idol Leslie Nielsen, but which, heartbreakingly, would turn out to be utter pants. Hey-ho.

As the interview drew to a close, I asked her what
The Exorcist
meant to her after all these years, and she shrugged and said, ‘Well, you know, there isn’t a day goes by that someone doesn’t ask me about that film. So to me, it’s like my left arm – it’s just
there
.’

As we parted, she said that she’d really enjoyed the interview and hoped I wouldn’t write another one of those stories about her going mad and being sent to an asylum and her mother being struck by lightning. Then she gave me a signed photograph of herself, in a swimming pool, in an affectionate embrace with a dolphin. She looked really happy in the picture – presumably dolphins don’t care about the bloody
Exorcist
.

‘Oh, and my agent said something about you staying with some people called Tim and Jenny?’ she added.

‘Er, yes,’ I replied sheepishly.’Sorry about that, it’s just that —’

‘So I got these for them too!’ she said brightly, handing over two more photos of her and the friendly sea mammal for my hosts.’Send me a copy of the article!’

Which I did.

Back in London, I filed the interview for
Time Out
’s newly launched monthly magazine
20/20
, where it made a good-looking double-page splash. She came out of the interview very well, and everyone in the office commented on how surprised they were by what a smart, self-effacing woman she seemed to be, particularly since they’d all heard that she went mad and wound up in an asylum after her mother got struck by lightning.

I would meet Blair again in 1998 when filming
The Fear of God
, the first documentary I ever made for BBC TV. She remembered me (or at least she
said
she did) and seemed pleasantly surprised that the weird-looking befuddled hack she’d talked to all those years ago in the Riverside Café had
somehow managed to carve himself out a career
on camera
with a reputable broadcaster.