Rick says back, “Oh, you do, do you?”
Emphasizing each word: “Yes-I-do.” Then she quickly adds, “If you don’t know your lines, I’m going to make you look bad in front of the crew.”
Why, this little bitch, he thinks.
He asks her, “Are you threatening me, you little punk?”
“No, I’m fucking with you. Dustin Hoffman does it all the time. Nevertheless, it’s not a threat, it’s a promise. Bye-bye.” She shuts the door before he can say anything back.
Trudi Frazer never did win an Academy Award.
But she was nominated three times. The first time was in 1980, when she was nineteen and she received a best-supporting-actress nomination for playing Timothy Hutton’s sort-of girlfriend in Robert Redford’s Ordinary People. She lost to Mary Steenburgen for Melvin and Howard.
Her second best-supporting-actress nomination was in 1985, when she was twenty-four, for the role of Sister Agnes in Norman Jewison’s Agnes of God. She lost the Academy Award to Anjelica Huston for Prizzi’s Honor, but she won the Golden Globe for best supporting actress. Frazer’s only nomination for the best-lead-actress Oscar was in Quentin Tarantino’s 1999 remake of the John Sayles script for the gangster epic The Lady in Red. Frazer played thirties’ brothel-prostitute-turned-bank-robbery-gang-leader Polly Franklyn, opposite Michael Madsen as public enemy number one, John Dillinger. Losing her last nomination to Hilary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry.
Rick rooted for her every time.
Forty minutes later, Rick has wiped the cold cream off his face, combed his hair back into a half-ass version of his normal pompadour, climbed into his street clothes, and cleaned up the trailer from his earlier temper tantrum. He lights up a Red Apple cigarette and is getting ready to find Norman, the 1st AD, and tell him a horseshit story about how he accidentally broke the window, when another knock happens against his trailer door. He figures it’s the 2nd AD, with tomorrow’s call sheet telling him what time he has to be here. So he’s a little surprised when he twists the doorknob and finds Jim Stacy standing outside his trailer.
“Oh, hey, man,” says Rick.
“Hey, Rick, great job with that last scene, man,” Jim Stacy says.
“Oh shit, well, you too, Jim,” Rick replies, “and congratulations on the first day of your new show.”
“First day of the pilot,” Jim corrects.
Rick waves away Stacy’s qualification. “Aw, horseshit, you know CBS is gonna pick it up. They wouldn’t be spendin’ so damn much money if they weren’t.”
“Famous last words,” reminds Stacy.
“And . . . it’s a good show,” Rick adds.
“Well, it’s definitely a better one after your two scenes,” Stacy says. “Hey, Rick, I was wonderin’, you wanna go out and get a drink tonight?”
“Well, shitfire!” Rick exclaims. “You know I do.”
Stacy smiles.
“Where ya thinkin’ ‘bout?” Rick questions.
“I got a little place by my house in San Gabriel,” Stacy explains. “They’re kinda expecting me to stop by and celebrate my first day. I hope that ain’t too far away for ya?”
“Shit, what’d I care,” Rick tells him. “My car’s in the shop, so my stunt double’s giving me a ride.”
“Will he mind?” Jim asks.
“No way, man,” Rick assures him. “He’s cool as hell, you should meet ’em.”
“Well, let me get changed, wipe this pancake off my face so people don’t think I’m some Kansas City faggot, and why don’t you follow me on my bike to the bar?”
With Rick in the passenger seat and Cliff behind the wheel, they follow behind Jim Stacy driving on his motorcycle till he pulls into the parking lot of a bar painted barn red, with the colorful name “the Drinker’s Hall of Fame.” Painted on the red walls are comic caricatures of famous Hollywood drunks. W. C. Fields, Humphrey Bogart, Buster Keaton, and a drawing of Lee Marvin from Cat Ballou.
Jim Stacy pulls his motorbike up the gravel-covered driveway, then cuts off the engine. Cliff pulls Rick’s Cadillac next to him. This is obviously one of James Stacy’s watering holes.
The three macho guys enter the establishment. At eight in the evening, the dark bar isn’t packed, but it’s packed with regulars. The Drinker’s Hall of Fame is a nostalgia-based cozy watering hole for San Gabriel locals, actors, and musicians. Memorabilia of famous Hollywood citizens who ruined their lives with booze litter the walls. The four biggest framed posters on the wall, the highest place of honor, are reserved for the bar’s four patron saints.
W. C. Fields in his gray top hat, looking at a poker hand. Humphrey Bogart, looking sexy in his trench coat and snap-brim fedora. John Barrymore during his handsome silent-film days, showing off his famous profile. And the great stone-face Buster Keaton in his flat pork pie hat and black vest from his silent-movie-star heyday.
Other famous drinkers line the upper area of the bar, over the shelves of bottles, in framed black-and-white eight-by-tens that have turned yellow or brown. Some are publicity shots, some are from specific movies, and some are signed personally to the bar. Lee Marvin in his Liberty Valance white shirt and black vest, giving the camera a grinning leer (signed by Lee to the Hall of Fame). Sam Peckinpah, fiery bandanna on his head, standing next to a movie camera, pointing at something (signed by Sam to the bar). Beefcake Aldo Ray in a sweaty wifebeater in a still from God’s Little Acre (signed by Aldo to the bartender, Maynard). A fairly recent photo of a big and jowly Lon Chaney Jr. (signed by Lon to the bar). Richard Harris from the movie Major Dundee (unsigned). “Big Mouth” Martha Raye staring at the camera with pop eyes and mouth wide open in a comic publicity still from the thirties (unsigned). And Richard Burton in a still from Night of the Iguana (unsigned).
Off in the left-hand corner of the bar, clustered around an old-fashioned typewriter, are four standing framed photographs of famous alcoholic authors: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and Dorothy Parker (all unsigned).
Other themed bric-a-brac nestled on the shelves behind the bar include a W. C. Fields lamp, which consists of a comic caricature of Fields leaning drunk against a lamppost.
An Aurora model kit of the Wolfman (Lon Chaney Jr.) sits by a tip jar on the bar.
Attached to the men’s room door is the Elaine Havelock psychedelic John Barrymore poster. On the ladies’ room door is the Elaine Havelock psychedelic poster of Jean Harlow.
In the piano section of the bar, on the wall behind the piano, is a large three sheet of the new film The Wild Bunch, directed by regular and Hall of Fame member Sam Peckinpah (signed to the Hall of Fame by Sam, William Holden, and Ernest Borgnine).
On the wall in the area where the pool table is located is the Elaine Havelock psychedelic poster of W. C. Fields and Mae West, a one-sheet for a new Lee Marvin movie called Sergeant Ryker, and that reprinted head-shop poster of the old Bogart flick All Through the Night.
Except for the four large posters of Fields, Bogart, Barrymore, and Keaton, none of the other posters are framed. They’re just stuck on the walls with thumb tacks.
As the three fellows walk through the door, they hear the piano player playing O. C. Smith’s Little Green Apples.
God didn’t make Little Green Apples
And it don’t rain in Indianapolis in the summertime
There’s no such thing as Dr. Seuss, no Disneyland,
no Mother Goose, no nursery rhymes
Jim Stacy gives the man behind the piano a wave, and the man behind the piano gives Jim a head nod of recognition. Stacy walks Rick and Cliff up to the bar area, where he greets the bartender with a warm handshake across the bar.
“How ya doin’, Maynard?”
The friendly barkeeper says, “How was your first day?”
Still clasping hands, Jim says, “Well, they want me back tomorrow, so I guess it coulda gone worse.” Turning toward his two new friends, Jim introduces them to the man to know at the Hall of Fame.
“Boys, this her
e is Maynard. Maynard”—gesturing toward Rick and Cliff—“these are the boys, Rick Dalton and his stunt double, Cliff.”
Maynard shakes hands with both, starting with Cliff. “Cliff.”
Cliff repeats the bartender’s name. “Maynard.”
Then Maynard lights up as he shakes Rick’s hand. “Oh hell, Jake Cahill himself. Good to meetcha, bounty hunter.”
Finishing the handshake, Rick says, “You too, Maynard. Is the doctor in session?”
Maynard guffaws, “The doctor is definitely in session. What can I get ya?”
Rick: “Whiskey sour.”
“How ’bout you, stuntman?” the bartender asks.
“What beer ya got?” Cliff inquires.
“Can: Pabst, Schlitz, Hamm’s, Coors. Bottle: Bud, Carlsberg, Miller High Life. Tap: Busch, Falstaff, Old Chattanooga, and Country Club.”
“Old Chattanooga,” says Cliff.
Maynard points a finger at Jim, the regular, and recites his order: “Brandy Alexander for Lancer over here.” Then the doctor moves off to service his patients.
Jim yells after him, “Make that Johnny Madrid to you, asshole!”
All three fellows chuckle.
Another San Gabriel actor saunters up to the three—a craggy-faced, so-ugly-he’s-sexy type, with shaggy, feathered-style sandy hair and a black leather jacket. The actor named Warren Vanders joins the three men, cradling a Pabst Blue Ribbon.
Jim and Warren greet each other warmly, then Jim looks to Rick and jerks a thumb back at Warren. “Rick, you know this guy?”
Rick gives a knowing grin. “Shit, you know I do.”
Rick and Warren shake hands knowingly, as Rick explains, “Vanders here musta done ’bout three Bounty Laws.”
“Four, you ungrateful bastard. Once a season I’d go down to Spahn Ranch and get my ass wiped by Rick Dalton,” Warren declares. “That’s four years Bounty Law kept me in cornflakes.”
The piano player goes into the instrumental Alley Cat.
As Maynard places the customers’ drinks down on the bar, the four men mount barstools. The bartender hangs out with them till he’s summoned by a thirsty patron.
Cliff and Warren are still working on their beers, but Rick has sucked his whiskey sour through his straw fairly quickly, and Jim has polished off his brandy Alexander.
The bartender returns and asks Jim and Rick, “Another one?”
“Yep,” says Jim.
“Whiskey sour,” repeats Rick.
The piano player, Curt Zastoupil, finishes up Alley Cat as Jim and his three friends, with drinks in their hands, saunter up to his piano station.
“Hey, Curt, how ya doin’?”
Taking a sip of his Harvey Wallbanger, Curt replies, “Just fine, Jim, how’s it goin’ with you?”
“Goin’ real good.” Jim tells him, “I did the first day on my pilot today.”
“Fuck, man, that’s great.” Curt begins playing Happy Days Are Here Again on the piano.
“Calm it down, Liberace,” Jim warns him. “Let’s finish the pilot first. Let’s see if it’s good. Let’s see if it makes the CBS fall lineup. Then ‘Happy Days Are Here Again.’ For a few weeks anyway.”
Jim introduces the piano-bar musician to his two new friends. Warren already knows Curt. In fact, Warren gave Curt’s son his first dog, named Baron. The actor and the stuntman shake hands with the piano man. Jim brags on his musician buddy: “Curt can play every song of the day on both piano and guitar. And he does a good job, especially on Me and Bobby McGee. He plays it like a country song—”
“It is a country song,” Curt explains.
“I know, but that’s not how everybody plays it,” Jim says.
“That’s ’cause they just do the Janis Joplin arrangement. But if you listen to the song, it’s best done on acoustic guitar, as a country song.” Then Curt clarifies, “Not Ernest Tubb country. But modern country.”
Jim continues to brag to Rick and Cliff about his musician friend, “I’m telling ya, if Curt did Me and Bobby McGee, he coulda had a hit with that. Good Creedence Clearwater too. Especially that ‘Doo Doo Doo’ song.”
Curt’s confused. “What’s the ‘Doo Doo Doo’ song?”
Jim reminds him, “You know that one.” The actor sings, “‘Doo doo doo, lookin’ out my back door.’”
Curt starts playing the opening of the song on the piano and sings:
Just got home from Illinois
Lock the front door, oh boy
Look at all the happy creatures
Dancing on the lawn
Dinosaur Victrola, listenin’ to Buck Owens
Singin’ doo doo doo, lookin’ out my back door
The four men applaud him. “Great,” Rick says.
“Well, not great, but not bad,” says Curt modestly, then adds, “My son likes that song. So I always do it for him when I’m at home practicing.”
“How old’s your son?” Cliff asks.
“He’s turning six next month,” Curt says.
Jim encourages the musician, “Get out from behind that piano and show ’em what you can do with a guitar.”
“Okay,” Curt agrees, picking up his guitar and putting it in his lap. As he tunes the neck, he tells Rick, “I gotta say, Rick, I’m a big fan. Loved Bounty Law. Bounty Law and The Rifleman are my two favorite shows of that time. I still watch ’em on TV. Also one of your western movies I loved.”
“Which one?” Rick asks. “Tanner? That’s the one most people dig.”
Still fiddling with the tuning, Curt asks, “Who else is in that?”
“Tanner’s me and Ralph Meeker,” says Rick.
“No, it wasn’t Meeker—I like Meeker, but it wasn’t him.” Curt thinks a moment, then it comes to him: “Glenn Ford!”
“Oh, Glenn Ford,” Rick says. “That’s Hellfire, Texas. Yeah, that one ain’t so bad. Me and Glenn didn’t get along so well. He was less committed to the picture than I was. I mean, you know, a fella can do too many movies, and that was Glenn’s problem. But, all in all, not a bad picture.”
Jim says to Curt, who’s finishing up getting his guitar ready to go, “Play somethin’ that shows you off a bit.”
Curt says, “Oh, so I’m selling myself. I didn’t realize that. Thanks for pointing that out.”
“Well, it’s only fair,” teases Rick. “You said you liked my shit. It’s only fair I get to judge you to see if I like your shit.”
Curt goes into the recognizable opening chord riff of Johnny Rivers’s The Secret Agent Man Theme. The other men smile in recognition. Then Curt starts singing the first verse:
There’s a man who leads a life of danger
To everyone he meets he stays a stranger
Be careful what you say, you’ll give yourself away
Odds are you won’t live to see tomorrow
Secret Agent Man
Secret Agent Man
They’ve given you a number and taken away your name
Curt stops and waits for the cheers he gets. “That’s another favorite of my son’s.” Then, looking at Rick, he asks, “So do we exist on a plane of mutual respect?”
“Abso-bloody-lutely.” Rick raises his whiskey sour. “Cheers to the troubadour.” They all raise their glasses and bottles and toast Curt.
“Also speakin’ of my son and of you, we’re both big fans of The Fourteen Fists of McCluskey,” Curt tells Rick.
“Well, that’s one of the good ones,” says Rick.
“You know when you watch a movie like that,” Curt explains, “about a team of guys doin’ some shit, you kinda pick your favorite dude and root for him through the whole movie, hoping he gets through it alive.”
The men all involuntarily nod their heads in agreement.
“Well, for my son, you were his favorite dude.”
“Aw, that’s nice to hear,” Rick says.
“In fact, I showed him a Bounty Law the other day on TV,” Curt explains. “It was on and I pointed at you and said, ‘Hey, Quint’—his name
is Quentin—‘hey, Quint, you know who that guy is?’ He said no, and I said, ‘You remember that guy from The Fourteen Fists of McCluskey with the eye patch and the flamethrower who burnt the shit outta all them Nazis?’ He said yeah and I said, ‘That’s the same guy.’” Asking rhetorically, “You know what he said? He said, ‘So that was back when he had two eyes?’”
They all laugh.
“Can I get you to sign him an autograph?” Curt asks.
“Sure,” Rick says. “Ya got a pen?” Curt doesn’t, but Warren Vanders does.
So Rick signs a Drinker’s Hall of Fame cocktail napkin to Curt’s son, Quentin, addressing it to “Private Quentin,” making sure to check the spelling, then writes, “Maj McCluskey and Sgt Lewis salute you.” Then signs his name, “Rick Dalton,” with “Sergeant Mike Lewis” written under it. And then he adds a little drawing of Sgt. Mike Lewis with an eye patch, wearing a shirt that says Quentin Is Cool, and then a p.s. with “Burn Nazi Burn!” underneath it.
Jim Stacy groans, “Ugh . . . Fourteen-fuckin’-Fists of McCluskey. Heartbreak. Kaz-fuckin’-Garas. Fuck that guy—sorry, probably a friend of yours,” he says to Rick. “But still—fuck him anyway.”
He explains to Curt, Cliff, and Warren Vanders how he almost got the Kaz Garas part in McCluskey. “It got down to three. Garas, Clint Ritchie, and me. But Garas had already starred in a movie for Henry Hathaway at the time. So Hathaway calls up the brass at Columbia to pitch for his boy, and that was all she wrote for me and Ritchie,” Stacy says with a sigh.
Warren Vanders asks, “What was the Hathaway picture Garas did?”
“Some African piece of shit with Stewart Granger,” Stacy says.
Rick says, “I did an African piece of shit with Stewart Granger.” Then adds, “Biggest prick I ever worked with.”
“Speaking of fuckin’ pricks,” Stacy interjects, “Henry Hathaway, that’s a fuckin’ prick!” Then, adding quickly, “I mean, he’s a good director, he makes good pictures. But he’s a fuckin’ yeller! And when he gets yellin’ an’ cussin’, he makes Sherman look like he marched through Georgia pickin’ posies.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Page 30
