Party Animals

by Robert Hofler

  “Wow! Our very own Hollywood party!” exclaimed David Hodo, who had his hardhat wired to pulse visually to the beat coming from Don Blanton’s DJ booth. Allan insisted that all six Village People stay in costume for his party. “Makes for better photos,” he believed. And photos galore were taken in the poolside tent, its ceiling festooned with multicolored balloons like a children’s birthday party on triple-sugar-overload.

  Marvin Hamlisch thought it was all a bit too costumey, especially when the party population threatened to violate fire regulations. “Take off your headdress!” he told Felipe Rose. “It’s in my way.”

  Rose growled back, “It’s my party!”

  “There was a Hawaiian theme thing,” recalls Steve Guttenberg. “Man, Allan made it like heaven. He knew how to treat people—spectacular food, incredible music, pretty people. There was something for everybody, every sexual orientation, you could get what you wanted at that party.” And that included, on the buffet table, a scantily clad boy and girl whose bodies were otherwise covered with edible tidbits.

  Even the claustrophobic basement disco impressed Guttenberg. “Yeah, it was small, the disco. But it was cool. It was like getting on a private jet—they’re small but cool.”

  If there was any restriction on indulging yourself sexually or pharmaceutically, it came courtesy of Allan’s one hundred friends in the Fourth Estate. “Allan always made sure the press was there,” says Guttenberg. “There was a reason for the madness. He was crazy like a fox.”

  At 2 a.m., Felipe Rose let out a series of war signals as his long feather earrings began to droop in the early morning mist, otherwise known as June gloom. Rose’s cry was a call of the wild, as if to announce that there was not a movie star or a heterosexual to be found on the premises, and that included Steve Guttenberg. As if on cue, what happened is what always happened at a certain hour at Allan’s parties.

  As producer Craig Zadan explained the general scene, “It would be late at night and when the movie stars had left, you would look around the living room and think, ‘Where has everyone gone?’ And then out there in the hot tub, the guys were having sex.”

  Sometimes hetero stragglers got caught in the gay melee. “Robin Williams came into the DJ booth to hide,” says Don Blanton.

  Tired as they were, the Village People booked one more gig before filming began. At the request of the U.S. Navy, they performed their hit song “In the Navy” on the USS San Diego in front of an audience that included Bob Hope, Henry Kissinger, and over 2,000 sailors. “They gave us everything we wanted,” says Henri Belolo, who, in return, requested that the Navy pick up the cost of filming the music video. “They were going to use it as a recruiting advertisement.”

  The brief concert went off without a hitch. Bob Hope even joined the Village People onstage to reprise “In the Navy.” All that free publicity was for naught, however, as soon as conservative pundits chastised the armed services for consorting with homosexuals. The Village People’s military promo never left the cutting room.

  It was a minor blip, and filming on Discoland began, only a few days late, on August 20, 1979, in New York City. A major bump, however, took form in the person of Victor Willis, who never got around to making his film debut in Discoland . He unexpectedly quit the Village People, tired of performing with them. Allan wasn’t unhappy to see him go. After Willis nodded off during a reading of his Discoland script, Allan wanted him fired, but the singer beat him to it and left the group. Allan did get to indulge his urge to ax somebody, however. When Ray Simpson replaced Willis, Allan saw no reason to indulge Mrs. Willis and unceremoniously dumped Phylicia Rashad from Discoland. She was replaced by Sammy Davis Jr.’s wife, Altovise Davis.

  fourteen

  Can’t Stand the Music

  The streets of Manhattan were hotter than normal that August, not because of the usual summer-in-the-city temps but because of the sociopolitical climate in Greenwich Village. Director William Friedkin preceded Allan in taking to the Gotham streets to film his crime story Cruising, and the Village Voice’s gay journalist Arthur Bell used his column, “Bell Tells,” to rally the homosexual community against the production. Having secured a purloined copy of the Cruising script, Bell proclaimed it wildly homophobic for its portrayal of an undercover cop, played by Al Pacino, who infiltrates the gay underworld of S&M clubs to solve a series of murders. Gay activists, spurred on by Bell, papered Greenwich Village with leaflets protesting the movie, and threatened boycotts of any bars or businesses that cooperated with Friedkin. Busloads of leather-encrusted movie extras were brought to the street scene, only to be splattered with eggs and epithets of “traitors” and “sellouts.” The production called in extra cops for protection, and when the police barricades kept the public out of eyeshot of the filming, the protesters quickly adopted a technique that made it impossible for the filmmakers to acquire any usable sound recording: They distributed hundreds of plastic whistles, and from dusk to dawn, a collective high-pitched squeal turned the streets of Barrow, Bleecker, and Washington into an aural hell for Friedkin and company, as well as anyone living there.

  Into this cauldron of unrest and provocation dropped Allan Carr’s sweet, innocuous, and quasi-gay celluloid marshmallow, Discoland. On the first day of filming, which happened to be on Sixth Avenue and Waverly Place (only a few blocks east of Friedkin’s camp), the police cautioned Allan, “You’d better be out of here before dark. We’ve got this Cruising movie going on, and it might not be safe for you.”

  It didn’t matter that Cruising was primarily a night shoot and sunny Discoland filmed most of its exteriors during the day. Even at twelve noon, protesters often confused the two productions. More than once, Allan felt compelled to hoist his chubby frame unto a crane, and through a bullhorn, he politely chastised the activists, “No, we’re the good guys. We’re the good gay movie. Cruising is filming three blocks that way!” And he would point in the direction of the meatpacking district and the Hudson River.

  Gotham’s denizens rarely got to see many movie people, so it was understandable that some pissed-off homosexuals never understood the difference. On the second day of shooting, one man found his way past the police cordon surrounding the Discoland production, and confronted Valerie Perrine. “You should be ashamed of yourself for making a film like Cruising!” he screamed. “Shame on you!” He spit a big wet wad of gunk in her face.

  “Cruising?” Allan screamed back. “This is Discoland!”

  Stunned, Perrine wiped the man’s spittle away with the back of her hand. “A good old New York cop took him away,” she recalls.

  Although it was only the second day of production, irate homosexuals were already the least of Perrine’s problems. Even under the very controlled environment of a Hollywood soundstage, directing one’s first movie is a difficult, formidable task. Confronting the chaotic street life of Greenwich Village, Nancy Walker crumbled. Completely. Then her leading lady got slimed.

  “This guy spitting at Valerie happens in the middle of a scene,” Bruce Jenner recalls. “Nancy Walker was just overwhelmed by it all.” The four-foot-eleven director kept telling herself, “I will be OK. I will be OK. I will be OK.”

  And that was only Day 2.

  By Day 4, Perrine barely remembered the spit in her face. The bigger problem, she believed, was Nancy Walker. The actress had already started relying on Bill Butler for direction, and for good reason. In one street scene, the cinematographer set up his camera and an assistant sounded the clack board: “Take one!” Several seconds into the scene, Walker yelled out, “Cut!” and turned to Perrine. “Would you shut up?! Don’t you know not to talk during a take?!”

  “But the camera’s rolling,” Perrine replied.

  “So shut up!”

  “But it’s my scene. I’m acting!”

  When Walker repeated the tirade the following day, Perrine let it be known. “Nancy,” she said, “no matter how hard you scream and yell at me, my tits are real and I’ll always be taller than you!�
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  Allan, who had busied himself directing gay protesters to the meatpacking district where Cruising had taken up residence, ordered Perrine and Walker into his stretch limousine parked over on Carmine and Bleecker Streets. At first, it looked as though Allan was going to ply them with kindness. But soon, “The car was rocking,” says David Hodo. He and other cast members gathered around to listen as Allan brayed at the guests in his limo, “If you two cunts don’t start getting along, I’m going to publish it in every magazine and newspaper in America!”

  But it wasn’t all rancor that first week of production. Allan immediately gratified his Steve Guttenberg obsession by shooting the title sequence—an exercise in minimalism that focused exclusively on the now-buff actor, poured into T-shirt and cutoffs, skating through the streets of New York for no fewer than four minutes of screen time. For further release, Allan led his cast on nightly pilgrimages uptown to Studio 54, that temple of lust and coke dust. Or, as Perrine described the joint, “They used to say that if you remember going to Studio 54, you didn’t have a good time there.”

  In the two weeks they filmed in New York City, Bruce Jenner conscientiously resisted all invitations to Steve Rubell’s pleasure dome. But his wholesome Wheaties image could endure only so much polishing, and after much persuasion, Allan finally convinced his uptight athlete-turned-movie-actor to indulge himself and attend the famed disco on the last night of location filming in Manhattan.

  “Hey, the whole cast and crew are going,” Allan told his reluctant star, who had to mull the proposal for days. Being seen out with the notorious Village People was one thing, but Jenner found safety in the fact that the film’s female contingent—Valerie Perrine, Nancy Walker, and the very pregnant choreographer Arlene Phillips—would also be along for the ride.

  For the Discoland cast’s final night in Manhattan, one grand entrance did not suffice. Allan wanted several entrances, and ordered up a whole fleet of limousines, one for each of his people, Village and otherwise. “Allan made a big deal of getting everyone into Studio 54,” says Jenner. He especially played up his close-close relationship with owner Steve Rubell, and let the long line of would-be patrons on the street know, “Make way for the stars of Discoland!” as the limo flotilla, one by one, discharged its starry cargo at 254 West 54th Street.

  Inside, Bruce Jenner took several deep breaths as socialites, drag queens, beautiful girls in bikinis, and muscled boys in jockstraps danced by him like so many moths on their way to a lightbulb electrocution. The painted wood cutout of the man-in-the-moon dangled overhead, its face winking as a big spoon miraculously filled with white powder. It signaled all revelers to follow suit while a metal Aztec sun god spewed smoke across the 5,400-square-foot dance floor. “This is not your Wheaties crowd!” Jenner told his host, who luxuriated in the expression of shock on his cereal-box cover boy. “This is obviously where you go to look at people,” Jenner added, gulping for air.

  The one thing Allan liked better than shocking heterosexual men was introducing famous people to even more famous people, and he beelined his way right to the first one he saw at the bar. “Mischa!” cried Allan, giving Mikhail Baryshnikov a big hug. “You must meet my good friend Bruce!” Two years earlier, the Russian émigré danseur had enjoyed a great success in the movies, playing a Russian émigré danseur in Turning Point. Hollywood even honored him with an Oscar nomination for his effort at playing himself. Allan wanted to follow up that success with another Baryshnikov headliner, an original MGM musical called Riviera to costar Grace Jones.

  “Mischa, darling! Bruce is making a movie, Discoland, with me!” Allan took both men by the arm and led them to one of the banquettes. Since Jenner had been to the Soviet Union a number of times, he tried to make polite conversation by asking Baryshnikov about his homeland and, in turn, Baryshnikov asked Jenner about winning the triathlon at the Olympics. But Studio 54 was not designed for conversations, and even as intriguing as the Bruce and Mischa tête-à-tête might have been, it soon turned into a trial of disco din over polite words from their respective résumés. Baryshnikov gave up making small talk. “Bruce, do you want to dance?” he asked.

  Jenner choked. “Uh, uh, no, but thanks.” Having never confronted this situation before, he didn’t quite know how to turn down another man’s invitation to boogie.

  Allan looked on, bemused. “You’re turning him down? You’re turning down the opportunity to dance with Mikhail Baryshnikov? You’re turning down a dance with the greatest dancer in the world!?”

  Jenner’s smile tightened. “At least it’s Baryshnikov asking me to dance.”

  Ultraprotective of his all-American image, Jenner got squeamish when it came to homosexuality. The other big taboo was drugs, and he could only envision tomorrow’s New York Post, its cover emblazoned with a photo of a coke spoon up his nose or of him dancing with another man. It didn’t take much imagination to envision the morals clause of his Wheaties contract as it burst into tabloid flames.

  And so the Discoland production completed its two-week shoot in New York with a two-week hiatus. Cast and crew were happy to leave the hectic city streets to move west to the more controlled environs of the grand old MGM studio in Culver City, California. The break was especially appreciated by the film’s British choreographer, Arlene Phillips. While everyone else used the time to relax and set up camp in Los Angeles, Phillips went into labor to give birth to her first child, a baby girl, whom she named Alana in honor of her current, beloved movie producer.

  Allan had met the young Brit when he was doing publicity chores for Grease in London. Phillips had never choreographed a movie or a major stage production before, but her dance group, Hot Gossip, did perform at a prelaunch party for Grease at the Embassy Club on Bond Street. Olivia Newton-John came with Allan, and singer Sarah Brightman, who would later marry Andrew Lloyd Webber (and then divorce him, but not before he tried to make her a star with The Phantom of the Opera), performed with Hot Gossip. It wasn’t your usual dance troupe. For starters, both the men and the women in Hot Gossip wore garters and stockings and bras—“sex shop clothes,” as Phillips describes it—that were made out of plastic, rubber, and torn fabric, and Phillips’s dance moves sometimes simulated various sex acts. In other words, “This is exactly the kind of choreography I need for Discoland!” Allan gushed to Phillips after seeing her dancers perform. “You must come to the Grease premiere next week. You must come to America to choreograph Discoland!”

  As was often the case with Allan, the hire was just that quick and easy.

  But there were complications. Shortly after Phillips signed the contract, she learned of her pregnancy. She checked the production schedule and noted that between the shoots in New York and Los Angeles, there was a two-week hiatus beginning September 3. The baby was due September 3.

  Phillips knew she had no choice. She phoned her new boss. “Allan, this is the most unforgivable thing: Can I have a week off during the September hiatus?” she asked.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “I’m going to have a baby then.”

  “Sure. Fine. Whatever you need.”

  Fortunately, Alana arrived right on schedule, September 3, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, and when Phillips got back from the delivery room, she found her hospital room filled with literally hundreds of flowers, courtesy of Allan.

  “His generosity didn’t stop there,” says Phillips. When production started on the MGM lot, he ordered up a nanny and a Winnebago large enough to satisfy any star’s ego. “Sometimes Allan’s exterior could be harsh,” says Phillips, “and then there would be these immense acts of generosity that just couldn’t be believed.”

  Allan always chose to show his best side to family people. Like his production manager, Neil Machlis, who confronted his own major crisis that summer. “It was a bad time for me. My two-year-old son had cancer. I was on the set, in the hospital, on the set, in the hospital. Allan was great,” says Machlis.

  While Phillips and Machlis
grew to adore Allan, they sometimes glimpsed another side of the man. This “other” Allan first made his appearance at the MGM studios when Phillips began rehearsals for one of the movie’s big production numbers, “Red,” which featured several female dancers from her Hot Gossip troupe. “They couldn’t give all of the Village People girlfriends,” jokes Phillips, “so they just surrounded them with women.” One of those girls was chunkier than the others. “Allan couldn’t stand her. He hated her,” says the choreographer.

  During rehearsals one morning, Allan shot up from his director’s chair and pointed at the girl. “Put her in the back!” he yelled at Phillips. “Hide her waaaaaay in the back!” It didn’t matter that the zaftig dancer stood right beside Phillips and Allan’s finger nearly poked her in the nostrils.

  In the homosexual community of Discoland, Phillips became the production’s unofficial female mascot, which made her more privy to the overload of drugs on the set than some of the other straight participants.

  “There were a lot of drugs around,” says Phillips, who developed such a gay rapport that Discoland screenwriter Bronte Woodard invited her to his otherwise all-male parties at his Hollywood Hills home on Mulholland Drive. “I’d be the only woman there. They were just chock full of young boys and drugs. Cocaine right, left, and center. The party started at the swimming pool and ended up in the bedroom.”

  They were quite the A-list orgies. “Bronte was into Falcon models, Al Parker, among others,” says celebrity photographer Greg Gorman, who scored one of his first major assignments with the Discoland production. “Bronte lived larger than life.” Woodard cultivated his thick Georgia accent and wore white broadband hats. Having written the southern romance Meet Me at the Melba, he considered himself another Truman Capote or Tennessee Williams. But late in the Discoland production, Woodard’s energy began to wane, and he often had to cancel some of the weekend fetes at his house or simply not show up for them. Then he stopped coming to the set altogether. Allan told people, “Bronte’s not feeling well.”