The Last Love Song (113 page)

“I realized my fear of The Broken Man”: Didion,
Blue Nights,
52.

“the hall porter”: Dunne,
Regards,
24–25.

“To me” and Dominick Dunne's subsequent remarks: John J. Massaro, “Dunne Film Is Cannes Festival Entry,”
Hartford Courant,
December 22, 1970.

“disappointing”: “The Panic in Needle Park,”
Women's Wear Daily,
May 15, 1971.

“Are you doing the hard stuff?”: Film Forum podcast on
The Panic in Needle Park.

“[I]t must be considered”: Archer Winster, “The New Movies,”
New York Post,
July 14, 1971.

“When a reporter”: Kitty Winn quoted in “The Midnight Earl” syndicated newspaper column; available at
zebradelic.blogspot.com/2012/01/kitty-winn-1971-press-coverage.html
.

“The idea of stardom I find frightening”: Kitty Winn quoted in William Otterburn-Hall, “Actress Wants Own Life Style”; available at ibid.

CHAPTER 20

“a cold leek soup”: John Gregory Dunne,
Regards:
The Selected Nonfiction of John Gregory Dunne
(New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2006), 27.

“listen to Joan Didion”: Leslie Caron,
Thank Heaven: A Memoir
(New York: Penguin, 2009); available at
books-google.com/books?id=0dp-ycQ01ocC&pg=p
.

“very heady”: Joseph McBride,
Steven Spielberg: A Biography
(London: Faber and Faber, 2012), unpaginated; available at
books-google.com/books?isbn-0571280552
.

“[T]he spirit of the place”: Joan Didion,
The White Album
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), 222.

“acid yellow”: ibid., 157.

“last stable society”: ibid., 155.

“hangover”: ibid., 159.

“all the terrific 22-year-old directors”: ibid.

“looking for the action”: ibid.

“a personality before she was entirely a person”: Joan Didion,
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968), 47.

“invention of women as a ‘class'” and “To make an omelette”: Didion,
The White Album,
109–110.

“Her attitudes pose a problem”: Catharine Stimpson, “The Case of Miss Joan Didion,”
Ms.,
January 1973, 36–40.

“The idea that fiction”: Didion,
The White Album,
112.

“I think sex”: Trudy Owelt, “Three Interviews by Trudy Owelt,”
New York,
February 15, 1971, 40.

“I agree”: ibid.

“Everywoman”: Didion,
The White Album,
114–15.

“fine time for writers in Hollywood”: Tim Steele in conversation with the author, April 29, 2013.

“an extension of
The Graduate
”: Dunne,
Regards,
30.

“Write me a Western”: ibid., 31–32.

“hot idea”: ibid., 30.

“What if”: ibid., 27.

“attraction of borrowed luxury”: ibid., 32.

“Hollywood is largely a boy's club” and “[F]or years Joan was tolerated”: Dunne,
Regards,
77.

“You're a Mel”: ibid., 27–28.

“She was perched”: ibid., 251.

“She had despised”: ibid., 252.

“circled each other warily”: ibid.

During the course: Brian Kellow,
Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark
(New York: Viking, 2011), 194–95.

“studios reacted to Sam's”: ibid.

“the most important voice writing in English”: Anitra Earle, “Director's Appraisal of Joan Didion,”
San Francisco Chronicle,
December 21, 1971.

“ultimate princess fantasy” and subsequent quotes from Kael: Pauline Kael, “The Current Cinema: Anarchic Laughter,”
The New Yorker,
November 11, 1972, 155–58.

“ludicrous”: Dunne,
Regards,
252.

“The four of us”: Roger Ebert interview with Frank Perry, cited at Alt Screen, “Wednesday Editor's Pick: Play It As It Lays (1972)”; available at
altscreen.com/09/15/2011/wednesday-editors-pick-play-it-as-it-lays-1972/
.

“cutting”: ibid.

“mosaic”: “Perry Will Shoot ‘Play It As It Lays' in Mosaic Fashion”
Variety,
November 19, 1971.

“dreadful Los Angeles freeway”: Vincent Canby, “‘Play It As It Lays' Comes to the Screen,”
New York Times,
October 30, 1972; available at
www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9D02EFDB173FE53ABC4850DFB6678389669EDE
.

“I wanted Lichtenstein”: Paul Gardner, “Perry Making Hollywood Film—His Way,”
New York Times,
February 10, 1972.

“[W]e had a studio chief”: posted at
Hollywood-elsewhere.com/2009/08/as-dominick-dun/
.

“I know what nothing is”: Joan Didion,
Play It As It Lays
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970), 216.

“a lot of puckers”: Kael, “The Current Cinema,” 157.

“incredibly essential statement[s]”: Earle, “Director's Appraisal of Joan Didion.”

“pretentious”: Stanley Kauffmann, “Play It As It Lays,”
The New Republic,
December 9, 1972, 22.

“the year's most effective capturing”: Charles Champlin, “Top 10 Films—and Then Some—in an Actor's Year,”
Los Angeles Times,
December 31, 1972.

“profound”: Rex Reed, “The Goodies and Baddies of '72 Films,” New York
Daily News,
December 31, 1972.

“his mother and my grandmother”: Jon Carroll in conversation with the author, April 1, 2013.

“Jann Wenner gave me a copy”: Ricky Fedora, “The Uncool Exclusive Interview with Cameron Crowe,” posted at
theuncool.com/press/the-uncool-exclusive-interview/
.

“with rock stars” and “broke our hearts”: Jon Carroll quoted in Robert Draper,
Rolling Stone Magazine: The Uncensored History
(New York: HarperPerennial, 1991), 15.

“I left
Rolling Stone
”: Jon Carroll in conversation with the author, April 1, 2013.

“finish each other's sentences”: Sara Davidson,
Joan: Forty Years of Life, Loss, and Friendship with Joan Didion
(San Francisco: Byliner, 2011).

“the Didion-Dunnes”: Eve Babitz,
Eve's Hollywood
(New York: Delacorte Press, 1974), dedication page.

“Before Quintana was born”: Stephen Nessen, “Joan Didion Explores the Death of a Daughter in ‘Blue Nights,'” WNYC News, November 2, 2011; available at
wnyc.org/story/168270-joan-didion-explores-death-daughter/
.

“I wish I could have stopped Quintana”: Jeff Glor, “
Blue Nights
by Joan Didion,”
Author Talk,
CBS News, January 28, 2012; available at
cbsnews.com/videos/author-talk-blue-nights-by-joan-didion
.

“already a health worry”: Caron,
Thank Heaven.

“dizzying alterations”: Joan Didion,
Blue Nights
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 83.

“strenuousness”: ibid., 88.

“sundries”: ibid., 83.

“projection room”: ibid., 85–86.

“I just noticed I have cancer”: ibid., 84.

“quicksilver changes of mood”: ibid., 36.

“the hospital in which Charlie Parker once detoxed”: ibid., 40.

“was always very sweet”: Josh Greenfeld in conversation with the author, April 6, 2013.

“[We] would sit on the couch”: James Oakley, “Susan Traylor's LA Story,”
Interview,
July 11, 2012; available at
interviewmagazine.com/film/susan-traylor-the-casserole-club
.

“I've loved Donny Osmond”: Davidson,
Joan.

“Who drew it”: Didion,
The White Album,
126.

“
Brush your teeth
”: Didion,
Blue Nights,
35.

“Mom's Sayings”: ibid., 36.

“
Dear Mom
”: Joan Didion,
The Year of Magical Thinking
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 88.

“
Roses are red
”: ibid., 148.

“The world”: Didion,
Blue Nights,
38.

“Dry winds and dust”: Joan Didion,
After Henry
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 218.

“Joan was trying to finish a book”: Dunne quoted in Didion,
Blue Nights,
28–29.

“was already a person”: ibid., 41.

“apprehensive about everything”: “The Female Angst: Anaïs Nin, Joan Didion, and Dory Previn,” interview by Sally Davis, Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project, KPFK, February 1, 1972; available at
www.pacificaradioarchives.org/recordings/bc0611
.

“She was pregnant”: Didion quoted in Chris Chase, “The Uncommon Joan Didion,”
Chicago Tribune,
April 3, 1977.

“I was not one who learned my lesson”: Dominick Dunne,
The Way We Lived Then
:
Recollections of a Well-Known Name Dropper
(New York: Crown, 1999), 183.

“stranger's closet”: ibid., 184.

“rose too high”:
Dominick Dunne: After the Party,
directed and produced by Kirsty de Garis and Timothy Jolley (Mercury Media/Road Trip Film/Films Art Docco, 2008), film documentary.

“written … with all the fearlessness”: Vincent Canby, “Ash Wednesday,”
New York Times,
November 22, 1973; available at
www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9A04EFDA1F3CE13BBC4A51DFB7678388669EDE
.

“the most powerful woman in Hollywood”: ibid., 161.

“It's a minor film”: C. David Heymann,
Liz: An Intimate Biography of Elizabeth Taylor
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 336.

“If the history of this movie”:
Dominick Dunne: After the Party,
de Garis and Jolley, film documentary.

“He just said to me”: ibid.

“Joan Didion's brother-in-law”: Dominick Dunne,
The Way We Lived Then,
186.

“I don't remember”: ibid.

“I was flattered”: ibid.

“John Woolf jewel”: Graydon Carter, “Remembering Sue Mengers: Everybody Came to Sue's,”
Vanity Fair
, October 18, 2011; available at
www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/10/sue-mengers-in-memoriam
.

“What do you think of fidelity in marriage?”: Dunne,
Regards,
41.

“sort of new for the movie world”: Susanna Rustin, “Legends of the Fall,”
The Guardian,
May 21, 2005; available at
www.theguardian.com/books.2005/may/21/usnationalbookawards.society
.

“In the background”: Dunne,
Regards,
371.

“Someday I'm going to kill that kid”: Josh Greenfeld quoted in John Gregory Dunne,
Quintana & Friends
(New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978), 52.

“When John got too loud”: Eve Babitz in conversation with the author, March 30, 2013.

“Writers don't compete with each other”: Josh Greenfeld in conversation with the author, April 6, 2013.

“shack on the Pacific”: Patricia Craig,
Brian Moore: A Biography
(London: Bloomsbury, 2002), 196.

“show-business people”: Denis Sampson,
Brian Moore: The Chameleon Novelist
(Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1999), 139.

“abruptly became a shambles”: Joan Didion, “An Introduction,” in Tony Richardson,
The Long-Distance Runner: A Memoir
(New York: William Morrow, 1993), 15.

“I remember the first time”: Julia Phillips,
You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again
(New York: Signet Books, 1991), xx.

“All prescribed (in vain)”: Dunne,
Regards,
268.

“I recall invoking”: Joan Didion, “Why I Write,” originally published in
New York Times Book Review,
December 5, 1976, reprinted in
Joan Didion: Essays and Conversations,
ed. Ellen G. Friedman (Princeton, N.J.: Ontario Review Press, 1984), 8.

“Why had the American film industry”: Didion,
The White Album,
192.

“[I] bought a paper”: ibid., 188.

“whole history of the place”: ibid.

“room service and Xerox
rápido
”: ibid., 187.

“dislocation of time”: ibid., 190.

“I was aware of being an American”: ibid., 191.

“local color”: ibid., 190.

three whiskies and a coco martinique: receipt in Joan Didion Papers, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.

“That was what she
had to know
”: Didion,
Blue Nights,
99.

“I [made] graphs”: Leslie Garis, “Didion and Dunne: The Rewards of a Literary Marriage,”
New York Times Magazine,
February 8, 1987; available at
www.nytimes.com/1987/02/08/magazine/didion-dunne-the-rewards-of-a-literary-marriage.html
.

“I love Joan's work!”: Josh Greenfeld in conversation with the author, April 6, 2013.

“sixteen words”: Dunne,
Regards,
37.

“James Taylor and Carly Simon”: ibid.

CHAPTER 21

“a parable for the period”: Joan Didion,
After Henry
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 96.

The facts were improbable and bizarre: For the Patty Hearst backstory, I have drawn upon the following sources, in addition to others listed below: David Talbot,
Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror, and Deliverance in the City of Love
(New York: Free Press, 2012), 169–203; Paul Morantz, “Escape from the SLA,” posted at
paulmorantz.com/cult/escape-from-the-sla/
; Paul Krassner, “Symbionese Liberation Army: Historical Essay,” posted at
foundsf.org/index.php?title=Symbionese_Liberation_Army
; Paul Krassner, “The Parts Left Out of the Patty Hearst Trial, Part Two,” posted at
disinfo.com/2013/01/the-parts-left-out-of-the-patty-hearst-trial-part-2
; “Who Were the Symbionese, and Were They Ever Liberated?”, posted at
straightdope.com/columns/read/2004/who-were-the-Symbionese-and-were-they-ever-liberated
;
American Experience
segment, “Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst,” posted at
pbs.org/wgbh/amex/guerrilla/peopleevents/e_kidnapping.html
.