by George Wayne
GW:
How soon after starting to work for Warhol did you come to realize that maybe you could write a book about that experience one day?
BC:
I have been keeping journals since 1967, notebooks on my experiences, so I was always keeping a diary when I first met Andy.
GW:
How did the title Holy Terror come about?
BC:
I interviewed a lot of people in Pittsburgh, which is where Andy was born: his brothers, many of his cousins, some of his neighbors. And one neighbor, whose parents rented Andy’s parents’ apartment where Andy was born said, “Oh, Andy was a real holy terror when he was two or three years old. He used to kick his mother in the shins.” And I just thought that Andy was a holy terror even as a grown-up. Then there is also the religious imagery. Andy went to church every Sunday as an adult. That was the holy part.
GW:
What’s some of the juicier stuff that got cut out of the book?
BC:
A lot of what was cut was just funny stories that basically made the same point about other funny stories. So we tried to choose the funniest. Sylvia Miles and Joe Dallesandro at the Cartagena Film Festival with Joe threatening to walk into the Atlantic because Sylvia wouldn’t come into his room.
GW:
You mean Sylvia wouldn’t do it with Joe? She spurned the gorgeous Joe Dallesandro?!
BC:
Sylvia is quite respectable under that bohemian image of hers. A lot of what we cut was stuff that was too much about other people and not enough about Andy. Grace Jones’s alleged affair with Glenn O’Brien was also cut out of the book.
GW:
This book seems tailor-made for celluloid.
BC:
No, it wasn’t actually, although a big-name producer did approach me and offer to option the book if I said that Andy was straight before Edie [Sedgwick] died. That was the Hollywood approach. I couldn’t think about doing that.
GW:
Who would you want to play you if there was ever a Hollywood movie version of your Holy Terror?
BC:
Tom Cruise. I think there are two people who could play Andy well . . . Willem Dafoe and John Malkovich.
GW:
I think Crispin Glover would have the upper hand since he is playing Andy Warhol in the upcoming Oliver Stone movie about The Doors.
BC:
Fred [Hughes] also wants Tom Cruise to play him in the movie. We would have to fight it out!
GW:
I have only one disappointment with the book. You still didn’t tell us how Andy’s everlasting quote, “Everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes,” ever came about.
BC:
Well, I wasn’t there when it came about. It comes from a 1967 interview that Andy did in Sweden. But when Andy did interviews in the seventies, he would always have Fred or me or somebody sitting next to him, to help him with his answers. So, for all I know, those words could have come from Gerard Malanga. Most of Andy’s interviews were done with someone sitting by his side helping him out.
IAN SCHRAGER
JUNE 1998
Ian Schrager—the visionary impresario who created Studio 54 (with his partner Steve Rubell) and then reinvented and created the concept of the boutique hotel—was in the middle of yet another fabulous party that he orchestrated. He had just transformed the lobby of his Paramount Hotel in midtown Manhattan into an elegant dining hall and was hosting a party with Anna Wintour of Vogue fame for three of Europe’s leading fashion designers: Christian Lacroix, Karl Lagerfeld, and Gianni Versace.
It had been the most buzzed-about party amongst the Manhattan bon chic, bon genre for weeks. And as they swanned in to the Paramount Hotel that night, the first person they saw was the legendary impresario himself who stood at the entrance to greet all the fashion bessies.
“I am an entertainer who doesn’t entertain, a fashion designer who doesn’t make clothes,” were his first few words as I moved in to say hello. “I am always trying to inspire the tastemakers,” he followed in that familiar Brooklynese lisp of an accent.
Ian Schrager gave up his law profession to open a nightclub in 1977, and now more than twenty years later he was cooing about his latest jewel “and the first luxury hotel at popular prices” in the world. The opening of the Paramount had completed the troika of the first chic boutique hotels in New York City. That is, Morgans, the Royalton, and now the Paramount.
“Nightclubs were the center of social activity in New York in the nineteen-seventies,” he reasoned. “Restaurants served that function in the eighties, and hotel lobbies are going to be the definitive social hub of the nineteen-nineties.” Today, in 2017, he opens his first hotel and condominium bearing his name. But back in 1994, he was very much at the vanguard of this new movement . . . the boutique hotel concept.
GW:
I cannot believe that you haven’t been asked to be in one of those GAP print ads?
IS:
[Laughs] I have been asked three times to be in the GAP campaign and I have said no each time. Herb Ritts himself called me a couple of weeks ago to do one. But the only reason I go out in public is to talk about my work. I don’t want to be a public persona. I only talk about myself because I am talking about my work.
GW:
Isn’t this new hotel of yours going to cannibalize the Royalton, which is only minutes away by taxicab.
IS:
No. The Royalton and Morgans are my apples and this is my orange. This is a six-hundred-room hotel and some people don’t want to stay in a six-hundred-room hotel. The Royalton is a small luxury hotel and the Paramount is a big, dynamic hotel.
GW:
Can you remember the first time you met Steve Rubell?
IS:
I remember it precisely. I met him when I went to college in 1964 at Syracuse University. I was having an underwear fight, wrestling another guy by the name of Marty Goldstein. We were both horsing around in our underwear. Steve was a senior and I was a freshman. So I was having this underwear fight and I was losing but I wouldn’t give up, and I think Steve took note of that. And we just became friendly and we were friends from that day forward in the fall of 1964.
GW:
What are some of the plans involving Paramount that will come to define the new cool scene here?
IS:
We will have a Brian McNally restaurant and a collaboration with the famous Les Bains Douches nightclub in Paris. It’s going to be an elegant supper club, not a dance club. I don’t want a million kids waiting outside to get in. I do want it to restart New York nightlife again because the city needs it.
GW:
I was just about to get on that subject. New York City nightlife seems moribund. What the hell has happened to the great NYC nightlife? Do you think the mayor [Dinkins] is killing nightlife in the city?
IS:
There are problems with drugs and crime but they are not responding in the right way. Nightlife is important to a great city. Every great city has great nightlife. Barcelona has a stylish bar on every corner and the same with Hong Kong. New York used to be like that but not anymore. If you take away the nightlife of New York City, then you take away one of the great, essential ingredients about the city, so this Dinkins administration does have to be a bit more sensitive. And secondly, the young promoters coming up, the young impresarios must not be afraid or apprehensive about creating and opening nightclubs.
GW:
What nightclubs have you been to recently?
IS:
The other night I went to almost all of them. I needed to see the scene elsewhere. I went to Le Palace and I went to Rex and The Building.
GW:
Which one did you like the best?
IS:
I liked The Building on Sixth Avenue. But you know there was no glamor, no mix. I didn’t see the tuxedos dancing next to those in jeans or jeans dancing with ballgowns.
GW:
How did the passing of Stev
e Rubell affect you?
IS:
It was a big loss but so was losing my father and my mother and my sister. Losing Steve was a big loss. He was my best friend and I will never get over these losses.
GW:
Was he sick before he went into the hospital?
IS:
No, he wasn’t. Steve went into the hospital with every intention of coming out of there. It’s unfortunate that in this day and age that if you are under ninety and die that everyone thinks you died of AIDS.
GW:
Are you saying that you don’t believe that Steve Rubell died of AIDS?
IS:
Precisely! I knew everything about Steve Rubell. If he had AIDS, there would be no reason for me to say that he didn’t die from it.
GW:
What do you think about Donald Trump?
IS:
I’m a big fan of Donald Trump. I think he is brilliant. What he does is not my individual taste, but he was good for New York, and he was larger-than-life and New York needs more Donald Trumps, not less Donald Trumps. I am a big fan of his. It’s great having a lot of talented, flamboyant people doing great things in a big city.
GW:
What did you learn from your experience in jail. You spent thirteen months in jail for tax problems.
IS:
Well, I learnt that I am thankful for having been given the opportunity for another chance. I learnt that the system works, and I am not an outlaw anymore. I’m not a crook. I’ve learnt that you can play by the rules and it won’t stifle your creativity. But basically, it taught me humility. And it has given me more enthusiasm. I have learnt how to deal with success and failure. And let me tell you—l much prefer dealing with the success.
GW:
Are you a restless individual?
IS:
I am. I have a fire inside but I have been getting more at peace with myself as I grow older. I have mellowed. It used to be I was only happy when I was working but that is not the case anymore.
TONY CURTIS
JUNE 2002
I remember being thrilled to bits the day I interviewed Tony Curtis back in the early years of the twenty-first century. That very same morning, I picked up the New York Daily News, only to find myself reading about myself in an especially fabulous Liz Smith syndicated column.
“George Wayne, whose monthly Q&A in Vanity Fair has caused stars to curse, hang up, threaten Wayne’s life and otherwise wonder what the hell they got themselves into . . .” she wrote. Thank God Liz forgot to send Tony Curtis the memo, I thought to myself later that afternoon as I sat to speak with yet another Hollywood legend. This Tony Curtis, the well-noted Hollywood boulevardier, the actor who was married three times. The actor who will live in celluloid history for his most famous role, dressing in drag to land Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot.
GW:
Where did you get that nickname “Bonnie” from?
TC:
Sinatra gave me the name.
GW:
They could open a library to house all the movies you’ve appeared in.
TC:
One hundred and twenty.
GW:
I thought it was one hundred and thirty.
TC:
Fifteen of those were child-support payments.
GW:
Most of them are unwatchable. Which are your all-time favorites?
TC:
Some Like It Hot, Sweet Smell of Success, Spartacus, The Outsider, The Vikings, The Boston Strangler.
GW:
What was the last movie you were in?
TW:
It was called The Continued Adventures of Reptile Man, about two years ago, but it didn’t get much distribution. I’m not that interested in films anymore.
GW:
You got lucky with your career. Did you really want to be an actor?
TC:
I wanted to be in the movies. I wanted to be a movie star. And it happened for me. Isn’t that fabulous?
GW:
A career that spanned decades.
TC:
I’ve always dedicated myself to my profession. I love being a movie star. I’m as privileged as anybody in the world can be. I’m handsome, I’m wealthy, and I have a beautiful thirty-year-old wife. And now I have this opportunity to do a play. Can you imagine, at seventy-seven years old? I’m starting out on a brand-new career.
GW:
The Library of Congress has called Some Like It Hot a national treasure.
TC:
I can be candid with you—it is.
GW:
I read somewhere that you said, “Kissing Marilyn Monroe was like kissing Hitler.”
TC:
Never said it! It’s all bullshit. It all happened when Marilyn was at her most difficult time. And the studio was so angry with her they put her on suspension. Marilyn and I were lovers in 1950. She went much too quickly. The biggest woman star in the business and she was living like a bag woman. There was no one to look after her. Where were all her friends? Why wasn’t anyone with her after she had tried to kill herself a few times before?
GW:
So you did make whoopee with Marilyn!
TC:
Yes. We were on for a few months. We were in our twenties. There was nothing special or unique about it.
GW:
How many of the leading ladies did you bed?
TC:
I bedded every leading lady except one—Jack Lemmon.
GW:
Didn’t you do Cary Grant?
TC:
No, no, I did not. There was no carnal relationship at all.
GW:
You’ve been a Hollywood stud for decades and you never had a homo affair?
TC:
What are you talking about? No, no, never did. I attracted a lot of gay friends, but I never had any inclination. Rock Hudson was a great friend; he and I started at Universal together. That just never happened. I was what you call pussy-whipped.
GW:
Tony, what’s the first thing to go at seventy-five? Have you had a testicle tuck?
TC:
No, no, I have had nothing tucked. In a year or two I plan to do a little facial work. I had to have some work done to my nose, but that was for a deviated septum from too much cocaine.
GW:
What’s breakfast like for Tony Curtis?
TC:
Going to McDonald’s and having a bagel with sausage, egg, and cheese. Once in a while I do that. Usually it’s a grapefruit and cereal. At dinnertime I love to take my beautiful wife out and really live it up.
GW:
I was just about to ask you about the glamazon. Where did you meet this fifth wife?
TC:
Having dinner with some guy. I went up and introduced myself to the guy. I never looked at her until halfway through the conversation. She told me she was an equestrian with a riding school. And I asked her where her stable was, “May I have your number?” Right under this guy’s nose.
GW:
Most of your peers are six feet under.
TC:
That makes me so sad. Grant, Gable, Lancaster. Gary Cooper was a wonderful man to be around. Marilyn, Rosalind Russell, Natalie Wood. We would all call each other, and have dinner occasionally. I don’t see that or hear that anymore, and it makes me sad.
GW:
Whom do you miss the most?
TC:
Jack Lemmon was the best fucking man.
GW:
Well, what can I say: What becomes a legend most? You, Tony Curtis!
CHARLTON HESTON
SEPTEMBER 1994
Take your paws off me, you damn dirty ape!” That is all I kept thinking to myself in this classic GW Q&A with the LEGEND of Hollywood legends! The one and only Charlton Heston. The thought came on as he rambled on. And those, of course, were the classic words he uttered so unforgettably in the 1968 legend called Planet of the Apes. Charlton Heston has starred in some of
the greatest and most celebrated Hollywood movies of all time. Playing grand over-the-top titans like God and Moses and an alpha-male gladiator. So GW got to interview God in early 1994. And to this day, I consider this interview with Charlton Heston the greatest “get” of my career.
GW:
Mr. Heston, do you mind if I call you Chuck?
CH:
By all means . . .
GW:
You’ve always been known for your larger-than-life roles: Moses, Ben-Hur, El Cid . . .
CH:
Well, I challenge “larger-than-life.” Most of those roles have been about specific historical individuals—Michelangelo, Richelieu, Moses. To call them larger-than-life means they are not real people.
GW:
But were you not the first action hero—before Stallone or Schwarzenegger?
CH:
I guess you could describe Ben-Hur as an action film. In a sense, I think the action film has developed as a genre. El Cid was certainly an action film. No, I take back what I said about El Cid. Both El Cid and Ben-Hur are epics. That’s the proper definition of those films.
