The Masked Man: A Memoir And Fantasy Of Hollywood

by Tom Wilson

  His group was called "The Soapers," but was nicknamed the "Kinison Youth" by the other groups of performers who waited in the dark behind the curtains until Sam was finished, which began to stretch their twenty minute set to an hour or more, clearing the room of patrons before anyone else took their turn. The complaints from the other performers became a drumbeat until Sam was warned, and begged, cajoled and threatened, but he never got offstage before he was ready and had completed his final sketch, cackling as satan and dragging an innocent child to hell.

  Brian Bradley, an improv performer of wide experience, and the emcee of the show, approached me in the dark backstage.

  "Tom, they've told me that if they go on for too long again, we have to turn off the mikes and force them offstage."

  "Great," I said, "It's about time."

  "Well," Brian said nervously, "the last time we told him that we were going to do it, Sam said if we did it he would break my legs."

  "He said what?"

  "He's supposed to have broken some guy's legs in Texas," he said, chuckling for a moment before gulping air.

  "He's not going to break your legs," I said.

  "Will you just stand next to me when I tell him?"

  "No problem," I said.

  "Make sure he doesn't hit me?"

  "He's not going to hit you, and he's not going to break your legs."

  "You'll stand here?"

  "No problem."

  Behind the curtains, where performers lined the walls waiting for their turn, our conversation spread the gleeful news like wildfire, and the tiny space became crammed with wimpy improv actors ready to witness violent backstage drama. I walked back to my improv group members, smiling. "We'll be on soon," I said, "They're going to turn off the mikes and get him offstage."

  Brian the emcee tip-toed to the opening between the curtains, listening through the velvet folds for a weak smattering of applause that marked the end of a sketch. At the first weak clap, he swept open the black velvet, revealing the curious army waiting backstage and yelling "The Soapers! Ladies and gentlemen…hey, give it up for…The Soapers! Thank you!!"

  Sam went to the microphone to talk over him and send him back where he came from, and it was silent. He shouted into the inert metal cylinder "We're not done! Get off!"

  "The Soapers! Thank you!" Brian said, sweeping his arm to direct them offstage. Kinison turned beet red in an instant and screamed in front of the customers "WHO DID THIS?! WHO DID IT?!!!"

  "Give a big hand for The Soapers! What a group!" Brian repeated, smiling and fearful.

  Sam waddled across the stage and flung the metal mike stand across the stage, spinning it end over end and clattering inches from a lady in the front row, silencing the crowd, now unsure if they were watching actual rage, or one of those Andy Kaufman performance art things that they were supposed to like even better than good comedy. Sam took center stage under the big spotlight, pointed a chubby finger at Brian, and fumed. "We got some talkin' to do backstage!!" He launched a barstool across the stage in the other direction and stormed through the curtains, where a fawning crowd of Kinison youth were waiting for him, as long as Charles Manson kept getting his parole denied.

  He picked up another chair backstage and heaved it into a wall, cracking plaster and screaming venom. Brian introduced the next group for their set, but I stayed behind, since Sam did seem like a guy about to break somebody's legs.

  "Sam, this came right from Mitzi, you're going way too long," Brian calmly said, walking through the curtain toward us. Sam clearly didn't believe him, since he kept screaming rage and threats. I stood next to Brian silently, listening to the bottomless pit of raging poison, until he was peaking in intensity and volume, ready to start snapping legs.

  "Hey, Sam," I broke in, Mr. Calm, "Listen, it's just that there are other performers here, and it's their turn to get on."

  "Shut up, Wilson," he spat.

  "The sets are twenty minutes, and--"

  "Shut up, you f--"

  It was then that I gave up the futile peacemaker approach.

  "No," I said, taking the baton from Brian, "I don't shut up. You're doing an hour in a twenty minute spot and that's not right."

  "Shut up, Wilson."

  "Come on, Sam."

  "Don't get in my face," he said, "We do important work. Not the crap that you do."

  I back-tracked to the original "Mr. Calm pacifies the insane guy" mode and tried again. "I don't care what you call it. You've got twenty minutes to do it in."

  He turned from red to flushed magenta and his eyes sunk deeper into their sockets. He lowered his head toward me, growling "Don't get in my face."

  "Come on, Sam, it's over now, why not just take the coven and go?" I said.

  The growl turned as deadly as he could possibly muster. "Don't get in my face, Wilson."

  "Take it outside, Sam. There are people onstage."

  "Don't get in my face!" he spat, vibrating with hatred and very close to being a stroke victim.

  "Too late, Sam. I'm in your face, okay?"

  "DON'T GET IN MY FACE!!"

  "We've covered that," I said, as the crowd backstage gathered around, ready for flying chairs and tearing curtains, and since Sam was involved, maybe a guest appearance by Beelzebub himself.

  "DON'T GET IN MY FACE!!"

  "We're past that, Sam. I'm in your face. Does something happen now?"

  "DON'T--"

  "Get in your face? Is that what you're trying to get across to me?"

  The surrounding actors stood like statues, until somebody felt they had to mumble "Come on, you guys" while praying for a brawl they could re-enact at Canter's Deli down the street until at least five in the morning.

  "Don't get in my face," he spat yet again, darkening visibly with a lowered brow and a bead of sweat jumping from his bald pate.

  "We've covered this already, Sam. Does something happen now?"

  And something did happen. He took a step toward me and became a red, quaking sphere, whispering a hoarse threat from the netherworld. He actually choked out the words "DON'T…UNLEASH ME."

  "What?"

  "Don't unleash me," he said, repeating it several times just like the getting in his face thing a few seconds before.

  "Don't unleash you?!"

  "That's what I said. Don't unleash me, Wilson. You don't know what your dealing with."

  And that was it for me. The asthmatic kid pummeled by bullies was now six foot three, over two hundred pounds, and really very, very tired of this fat, evil asshole. God rest his soul. I'm a Catholic, and we can say things that are true as long as they're followed by "God rest his soul."

  I took a step toward him for a nose full of acrid breath, spewing hellfire and petulance.

  "You're unleashed. I unleash you. I'm in your face. Right in it, Sam."

  "DON'T GET IN MY FACE," he thundered powerlessly for the last time.

  "We've established everything we need to know," I said, ready to block a punch and throw him into his knot of gang members, all of them saucer-eyed and waiting for Sam to twitch an order.

  "Sam," I said, "I'm unleashing you. I'm in your face. Now, either something happens, or you walk away."

  He almost went back to the old getting in his face routine again, but he'd said it way too many times already, and it didn't work nearly as effectively as he thought it might. He stammered and reeled in the darkness, and I still thought that it might happen. I expected one of his tranquilized thugs to take a shot at me, throw a chair or swing a mike stand, or maybe some multi-generational curse involving animal sacrifice.

  He swallowed hard and stomped by me down the hallway, screaming bile and throwing another chair past the head of a shocked bystander, his simmering sycophants in tow, staring daggers at me as they slunk away.

  I prayed for him as he walked away. It's true. I don't know why, I don't know how it even started, but he was walking away from me, and I began praying for him - the guy who's fat bag of skin I wouldn't have mind
ed kicking through a door fifteen seconds before. As I began to pray for him, silently intoning a surrendered "Shouldaboughtahonda" for his fevered soul, his back stiffened and he turned around again, eyes freshly enflamed. He stepped back toward me, and my hand lifted into the air. I was ready to make a fist and knock him out, but my hand raised openly, facing him and signaling stop. From somewhere deep and unknowable, ringing in my head was the sounds of hundreds, maybe thousands of people, maybe in my memory or maybe right there with me, praying "chickala-chickala" as tongues of fire seared their radiant souls.

  "God bless you, Sam," I said, even meaning it a little. He stared at me for another acid moment, and threw another chair before walking out onto Sunset Boulevard.

  Yes, I wanted God to bless him, and knock him blind on the road to his own Damascus, but just in case, after that night, like any good Christian, I started to carry brass knuckles in my pocket and told his henchmen that if he threatened me again I would rip his fat head right off his shoulders. And I would have. God rest his soul. After that showdown, Sam decided to leave L.A. for a while and go on the road as a preacher in evangelical tent revivals down south, where the real money is.

  "He said what?" Andrew Clay, newly minted as "The Dice Man" chuckled during a breakfast at our hangout, "Schwab's Drug Store," on Sunset Boulevard, where old Hollywood ate breakfast and pancakes were flipped within earshot of Colonel Klink from "Hogan's Heroes" or Lenny Bruce's elderly mother, Sally, who changed her name to match her son's stage name and loved to hold court by the picture window facing the street.

  "He said "Don't unleash me." Seriously," I said.

  "Don't unleash me? Who says that?" Dice said.

  "I don't know, but I unleashed him."

  "What happened?"

  "Nothing. He left."

  "Oh my God, no tables," an old lady said, carrying a giant pocketbook and fiddling with clattering jewelry and sunglasses, walking by us dejectedly. "Nowhere to sit."

  Colonel Klink didn't exactly bolt out of his booth to give up his table or anything, and Sally Bruce was telling a story that was related very closely to the story she'd been telling at the same table since the Eisenhower administration.

  "Andy," I whispered, "That's Shelley Winters."

  "Who?"

  "Shelley Winters? The Poseidon Adventure? You know? The actress?"

  He stared at her again, and his jaw dropped. "She played Elvis's mother!"

  "She did?"

  "Yeah! With Kurt Russell! Unbelievable!"

  Andrew stood up amidst the supporting actors and toasted bagels to bellow, "Hey, Shel, you could sit 'wid us!"

  She turned to face us, a two time Academy Award winner staring at two scrubby guys in their early twenties, our half eaten pancakes and spilled coffee on the ancient linoleum table. She played with her sunglasses for a moment, looked around for better offers, and finally squeezed in next to us, eating some eggs, telling us all about Elvis, and the Oscars, and how the Poseidon Adventure set turned upside down. She told Andy he reminded her of Al Pacino, and as he fought back sentimental tears of appreciation, I told her a crazy story about working in nightclubs at all hours and unleashing Sam Kinison.

  "That sounds crazy," Shelley Winters whined.

  "You don't know Kinison, Shel," Andrew said, "That's the tip o' the iceberg! Like the Poseidon Adventure! Ha!"

  "The Poseidon was hit by a giant wave, Andy," I said.

  "Whatevah."

  FIFTEEN

  I have been to my agent's office only one time, and that was to meet him and decide to let him hold my career in his carefully cupped hands, careful not to drop and break it, since it's always been somewhat fragile. That was it as far as face time goes, since signing the contracts is done by mail, messenger, and fax, without a popped champagne cork or slap on the back from anybody. Just a phone call from an agent's assistant telling you to drive across town tomorrow, park the car, go inside and pretend you're a cop, then drive to another place, park again and pretend you're a different cop on another show. I hadn't been to the agent's office in so long that I forgot where exactly he does business, or even what he looked like. We spend some time on the phone together now and then, but after a while my memory glommed his face onto a kid I went to high school with, combined with a fantasy composite I'd dreamed up of a character in a novel I'd just finished.

  I swept open the glass doors to the Beverly Hills office tower on Wilshire Boulevard and jogged to the security desk, shouting "Sir, have you seen a masked man on a white horse come in here?"

  The elderly man looked up at me, surrounded by sign-in sheets, chewed pens, unclaimed mail and one of the monitors in front of him playing an episode of "The Beverly Hillbillies."

  "What? How can I help you?" he said.

  "Has a man been in here on a white horse?" I asked, "A cowboy guy with a mask?"

  He didn't look surprised, fumbling with the register looking for cowboy signatures. "No," he said, "I don't think…uh."

  "You didn't see anything?"

  Between the words "see" and "anything," I lost him, staring back at Jed Clampett on T.V., so I headed to the elevators.

  The thing about offices in Hollywood is they're always full of new stuff. Everything is right out of the box, unblemished by fingerprints. Blinding sunshine is tamed by floor to ceiling tinted windows, and glass tabletops without a smudge hold souvenir crystal goblets with the Karate Kid movie logo filled with sourballs. They've got brand new electronics equipment in there with faster phone number dialing, or better email, or a wireless alarm for the black on black on black new car parked in a reserved space downstairs. The only old stuff in Hollywood is the freshly hip antique. The new old, accepted as hip for the moment until they go to another office and don't find one, when they either throw it out or wait for Christmas and give it to someone they hate. Hollywood is a monument to the new. Buffed, waxed, and dusted yes, but it's all more than clean, it's new. The last thing I felt on the elevator ride to my agent's office was new. After a bad audition for a car battery, I felt old. No, not hip, Jack Nicholson old, I felt bad old, game show host old.

  The Ranger was sitting on a sofa next to the reception desk when I opened the door.

  "The man himself!" he said, "I knew you'd come around!"

  The receptionist, a sneering young man with a constellation of beads pierced through his ears faked a smile and said "May I help you?"

  "I told you not to come here," I said.

  "May I help you, sir?" the receptionist repeated.

  "I'm Tom Wilson," I said, pointing at the Ranger, "Does he have an appointment?"

  "But you, sir. How can I help you?"

  "I'm a client here," I said, "Tom Wilson?"

  "Oh, okay, yes," he said, adjusting his head set, "Do you have an appointment?"

  "No, I don't, but does he?"

  "I was just talking to Alan about his ears," the Ranger said, "Do you know he's had them pierced eight times? I've seen that from some tribal friends, but wow! Here in good old Beverly Hills!"

  "Alan? Who's Alan?"

  The receptionist jingled his ears and smiled.

  "Hi, Alan," I said, collapsing onto the leather sofa next to the Ranger. "What are you doing here?" I asked.

  "I told you. I've been in this business for a while, and I've had my share of agents, managers, and so forth."

  "Now listen," I hissed, grabbing his arm, "We're leaving. Follow me."

  A polished maple door swung open, and Justin Gold stepped into the lobby, checking his tie in the wall to wall mirrors before staring at me for a moment of confused recognition. The he looked at the Ranger standing up to meet him and went blank.

  "What the hell is this?" he asked.

  The Ranger expended his hand. "Mister Gold? I am the One Ranger and I wanted to have a little pow wow to discuss something of great importance."

  "No, he doesn't" I said.

  "Tom, what are you doing here? Did you go to the car battery thing?"

  "I…I" I stamm
ered, trying to think up a reason for being there. Dropping off new promo shots? Here to make a few phone calls? Got lost in Beverly Hills and needed a parking validation sticker and directions?

  "He's with me," the Ranger said, "And, truth be told, it involves him. Can we talk?"

  I brought my hands to my mouth as Justin opened the door and waved us in. "Let's go, fellas. I've got a couple minutes."

  His office was just as I remember it, or maybe exactly like every other agent's office I've ever seen, filled with a phone, a desk, and a basketball hoop against the wall that says "I am creative. I brainstorm." As soon as he closed the door behind us, Justin hugged me, a Hollywood tradition that usually comes right before being strangled by piano wire by a guy in the back seat of the car. His clothes were perfect and sharp, with new eyeglasses that reflected my forced smile in convex clarity. "Come on in!" he said to us, pointing to a muffin shaped chair in the corner.

  "Mister Gold," the Ranger blurted," I just wanted to take a minute of your time to ask what I might be able to do to help you understand the talent you've got right here under your nose."

  "Ranger, please don't do this."

  "What are you talking about? Is this a character piece you're working on? What's up?" Justin said, rounding the corner of his desk and putting his headset back on.

  "He's not talking about anything, Justin," I said.

  "What's under my nose?"

  "Justin," I said, leaning into the front of his desk, "This is my…uncle Clayton."

  "I'm not related to this fellow at all," the Ranger chuckled, clearing his throat seriously to add "though we are brothers in an eternal sense."

  Justin looked at me, but turned away just as I brought my index finger close to my temple to spin it around my ear for the "This guy's nuts" signal. He stared at the Ranger's guns.

  "How'd you get those in here?" he asked.

  "They're Peacemakers," the Ranger said.

  Justin looked at me, so I brought my finger toward my head again, until the Ranger looked at me and I had to drop it to my side.