The Masked Man: A Memoir And Fantasy Of Hollywood

by Tom Wilson

  "This man here is a talent," the Ranger said, grabbing my shoulder, "And talent, my friend, is a rare commodity, but I don't need to tell you that, the business you're in."

  As Justin cleared his throat to answer, I spoke quickly over both of them. "Uncle Clayton here is trying to pitch a show about the west, and he loves to dress up this way to sell it! Isn't that great? You've got to hand it to him, though! It takes guts to go out there and do whatever it takes to make it happen!"

  "I'm not pitching--"

  "Whoo! Eye of the tiger!!" I said, offering a high five to the Ranger, which he didn't take me up on. "The thing is, he wants me to be in the show. Hey, it'd be great to be in a series right now, but here's a question; Who's doing a western? Huh? We'd better go…"

  "I'm not talking about a western at all," the Ranger said evenly, "I've been in enough of those, I'm talking about your client and his future."

  Silence.

  Justin spun a knot of phone cord in circles, staring at both of us and biting his lower lip. "Where has this been pitched?" he asked.

  "Nowhere," the Ranger said, "it's not a show."

  "It's really rough right now," I said, "First draft needs a rewrite."

  "Listen fellas," Justin sighed, standing up, "Thanks for stopping by. I'm not really sure you've got it down yet, so I wouldn't go out with it until you do a rewrite, or a treatment, or something I can look at."

  The Ranger pointed at me as Justin rounded his desk and opened the door. "This man right here is something special, and I wonder if you have any idea what you've got in your stable of performers."

  "Are you kidding? Of course I do!" Justin said, guiding us toward the door, "Tommy," he said, using the nickname that only my mother, my Aunt Adele, and Dennis Miller have used since the sixties, "Great to see you, you look great, and by the way, thank you for those autographed Back To The Future pictures, which I'm sure my nephews loved."

  "I appreciate the time you've taken with me today, Mr. Gold," the Ranger said, "but if it doesn't inconvenience you too much, I wish you'd give me a moment to talk to my friend here."

  "What are you talking about?" Justin said.

  "I'd like to talk to Tom alone for a moment."

  "This is my office," Justin said.

  "It's rather urgent."

  "Talk to him in the elevator!"

  "Do you know what he thinks of you?" the Ranger said with blank honesty, not leaning close to tell me a secret, or a guilty wink before sharing a piece of gossip. He said it simply, as if he knew the answer perfectly. He knew precisely what Justin thought of me, and was willing to share it in front of him if I really wanted to know.

  "Do you want to know?"

  "I don't know," I said, "Do I?"

  "Does he what?" Justin said again, looking at both of us and waving his arm out the door to lead us out.

  I leaned into the doorframe for support, and whispered "Okay. What does he think of me?"

  The Ranger stood still, unblinking, and true. "He thinks that your career is over, and that makes him feel sad and powerless."

  "What the hell are you talking about?!" my agent fumed. "This is my office!" he said, "You didn't even have an appointment!"

  The Ranger stepped toward me, speaking about Justin, now holding his breath and turning pink, as if he wasn't there.

  "He isn't a bad man, he's actually interested in helping you, but has become frustrated because everyone he speaks with about you is overwhelmed by a picture in their head they can't erase no matter how hard they try. It's a good picture. A pleasant one. They think you're fantastically talented, memorable and professional, kind and friendly, but not for them. Not for this job, or that one, or the one after that. No, he thinks you're great, but he's trapped in his own fear for himself."

  "That's! ….That's! …not…" Justin said.

  "He is filled with fear for his reputation and income, and has lost faith in his ability to have you seen as more than what they think of you."

  "Why are you telling me this, Clayton?"

  "Because it's true."

  "Get him out of this building!!" Justin screamed at me.

  "I thought it would help to clear the air, Mr. Gold," he said, "You're a businessman about to cast off my friend and not return his phone calls, and I just thought you might give another thought to a great talent here in your stable of performers."

  Justin staggered over to his desk and collapsed into his chair, hitting his intercom button, but unable to speak.

  "I thought that everybody might appreciate some straight shooting here today, but I was just as wrong as wrong could be, so I bid you good day," The Ranger said, leaning across his desk and extending a hand.

  "A pleasure to meet you, sir," he said.

  Justin said nothing, and stared at me, his confusion turning to rage. "Right-o," the Ranger said, tipping his hat, and jerking it toward the door to signal me after him.

  I followed him out the door. I didn't feel I had an option. I had to stop myself from running past him while tearing out my hair.

  Justin grabbed the corners of his desk to pull himself to his feet and staggered to the doorway yelling after us.

  "Who is the guy with the mask?"

  I caught my breath in the elevator and sprained my finger punching the "P-1" button as hard as I could. The Ranger turned to me and almost spoke before I lifted my throbbing finger to shut him up.

  "Don't," I said, "just don't."

  He followed me into the cool echoes of the parking garage toward my car, and I turned to stop him. "Why did you say that to him? Why?"

  "I was trying to talk turkey," he said.

  I spun on him, and boomed echoes off the walls. "It's none of your business!" I said, stomping across the parking spaces. "I've been through a lot lately, but you don't seem to understand that I'm barely hanging on here. I don't need your help."

  He stood in front of me, clicking his boots on the greasy cement and squinting in the fluorescent lights. "I was being honest," he said, "but it was ungentlemanly not to ask your permission."

  A couple bantered happily as they walked to their car, quickly sensing the intense vibe and avoiding eye contact as they passed by.

  He stared at me, waiting for a blue convertible to screech around the corner toward the exit. "What do you think, Tom? Do you care what they think of you?"

  "Look, man, I've had it with the mystery quizzes and appearing horses. I'm done."

  He put his hands on his hips and leaned toward me. "Do you care what they think of you? Because I know what to think," he said, "and the first thing to think is "I don't care what anybody else thinks. Who cares what he thinks? Maybe he doesn't know what he's talking about, ever think of that?"

  "He represents me, Ranger, and--"

  "Tom, I don't talk in riddles. I'm saying his opinion doesn't mean a hill of beans."

  I walked to my car, the Ranger clicking echoes behind me.

  "Tom, I'm going to ask you something."

  He drew himself straight, casting a tall shadow across the line of cars surrounding us.

  "What do you want?" he said.

  I jingled car keys in my right hand, and shrugged powerlessly with my left.

  "Take care of yourself," I said, "See ya."

  "Tom," he said, "What do you want?"

  "Why do you want to know? Huh? Because you're the magic cowboy actor who can make things happen? You can make horses appear and you can pop into agent's offices?" I said, walking past him to my car "Please. Gimme a break. I've got to go. Get lost."

  "What do you want, Tom?" he called after me, "Is it money?"

  "Who cares? I wouldn't know what money looked like."

  "What do you want?" he said, walking toward me, "Fame?"

  "You've got to be kidding,"

  "What do you want?"

  I threw my backpack of notebooks and wrinkled publicity photos of myself across three cars, and screamed at him in a voice I didn't recognize, but in a state of mind that I did. "I want you
to make it so my wife didn't have cancer!! I want you to go back and make it so my kids didn't have to go through that!! I want you to do something that means something!"

  "I can't do that," he said.

  "Obviously! Of course you can't! That would actually be helpful!! I want you to make some house payments when the bank is calling and the kids don't know what's going on!! I want you to get on the phone to the hospital, the doctor's office, and the insurance company and tell them to back off and let me breathe! I want you to--"

  "Wait!" the Ranger said, "Hold on, Tom…"

  "No, I'm not gonna hold on, if you can't do any of that then what good are you?" I said, picking up my back pack and shoving in the paper and headphones that had fallen out.

  "I'm trying to be your friend," he said

  "Then tell me something, friend," I said, "Tell me something that means something. Right now."

  "I'm a friend."

  "You said that. Thanks. Tell me something else."

  "Never quit," he answered.

  "That's it? Never quit?"

  "Never quit. That means something."

  "Seriously, that's it? That's what you tell me?"

  "That's enough."

  "That's not enough, Ranger," I said, "It's not enough. Tell me she's going to be fine and she won't get cancer again. Tell me that."

  "I can't tell you that."

  "Then what good are you? Get lost."

  "Tom, I can't tell you that."

  I let a car roll by and drive across a few of my photos, leaving tire marks across the tranquil face staring up at us.

  He walked up to me and his eyes glistened with tears through the holes in his mask. "That's not for me, or you, or anybody to know. That's the way it is. I don't know the answer to that," he said.

  "Yeah, I figured that out a while ago."

  " But I know what it is," he said.

  "What what is?"

  "I know what it is."

  He took my shoulders in his hands and spoke as if he were carving the words in stone.

  "I know what you want, I know what you need, and I'm going to get it for you."

  "You're going to talk to the insurance company?"

  "No, not that. It's better than that," he said, "It's what you want, and I'm going to get it for you. I promise."

  "You promise?" I said.

  "Do you trust me?"

  "No."

  He chuckled at that, and an emotion washed over him that felt like a cloud of truth. I was leaning against my car when he asked me a simple question.

  "Am I your friend?"

  He was. I couldn't lie about that. He asked me again.

  "Am I your friend?"

  "Yes, you're my friend."

  "Do you trust me?"

  "No."

  "I'm going to get you what you want," he said, "I promise."

  He placed his hand over his heart and traced a cross onto his perfectly pressed shirt.

  "I promise," he said.

  SIXTEEN

  My brother Geoff was a crazy kid, and used to "go for it" long after everybody else had decided that maybe it wasn't the best idea to put an eight foot ladder next to a one foot blow-up pool and jump in from the teetering top step. Geoff jumped, in fact he flipped, doing a complete somersault and landing square on his back in the shallow pool, rising triumphantly to shocked applause, and my mother's screams from her vantage point through a window inside the house. Geoff's passionate approach to everything from wiffle ball to "who was the real owner of that packet of SweetTarts" would often lead to arguments and fighting, and, in extreme cases, what we called "snapping out," a hysterical breakdown that caused his eyes to roll back, fists to swing wildly at the end of windmill arms, and everyone near him yelling "Snap out!" then running away and hiding in the garage for a while until the storm passed.

  Geoff reminds me a lot of the movie Back To The Future, because it too was a crazy, passionate behemoth that inspired thrills and applause, and finally completely snapped out and started wrecking everything, causing me to run and hide in the garage.

  The main thing that people want out of me when we meet at a party, or a doctor's office, or - trust me, anywhere - a cop giving me a ticket, you get the picture - the pop cultural reason for my existence is to supply funny and revealing stories from behind the scenes on the set of the classic movie Back To The Future. And I always fail at that lofty mission, because I don't remember anything funny or revealing happening. The thing is, I spent most of my time in Back To The Future showing up prepared, working hard, and laying low, because if the people making it didn't like the way I was acting in it, they could fire me just like they did to the kid they'd hired to play Marty McFly, an actor named Eric Stoltz. They'd even fired the actress hired to play his girlfriend, dumped because she was too tall to play the girlfriend of the new actor coming on to replace Eric, T.V. star Michael J. Fox. The new guy wasn't nearly as tall as the average sized Eric, so she would either have to have surgery to remove her calves, walk in a ditch dug next to him, or they'd get rid of her and hire a shorter actress, which is what ended up happening.

  In his deep and mysterious and method-actingy preparation for his performance as Marty, Eric had asked everyone in the cast to always call him by his character's name, Marty McFly, but I kept forgetting, thinking that he wanted to be called Marty when we were acting in a scene, but called his real name when we were just actors having lunch. I was wrong about that. Early in the rehearsal period when we met at Steven Spielberg's offices to go over the script, I sauntered over to him, trying to break the ice. "Hey, wanna go get some lunch, Eric?" I asked, giving a playful jab.

  He stared at me blankly.

  "Uh, oh, sorry. Want some lunch there, Marty?"

  He looked away with a sneer and walked the other way.

  "Okee Dokee, then. No lunch with Eric/Marty."

  He was a consummate method actor, demanding that I call Him Marty, treating me with derision, and making a grand show of his theatrical gravitas in the way that all method actors do, acting like a jerk, making up ridiculous rules of engagement before they speak to anyone, and suspending every one of the rules to pick up women, in this case Lea Thompson, the actress playing Marty's own mother, whom he nuzzled every chance he got, I'm sure in some Oedipal method acting preparation that only he completely understood. But I was thrilled to be there, obeying Marty's rules of engagement, and actually acting in a movie, reporting home with news from the set of my first real movie. "And they had a lunch there that was free! And I have to call this guy Marty all the time even though that' s not really his name! I know! It sounds weird to me, too, but it must make him a better actor!"

  "Wow!" friends said through the phone lines from back east, "You're in a movie!"

  Though I've never seen the footage that was shot with Eric, I mean, that was shot with Marty as Marty, I would be shocked if any of the shots are in focus or lit well, since the crew spent so much of their time rolling their eyes behind his back it would be impossible to have photographed it correctly. The set was always tense with Marty on it. He was very quiet, since he'd made such a big deal about everyone calling him Marty, most people decided to stop calling him anything at all, allowing him room for his acting process. Whether the cameras were rolling or not, his acting process included staring at me across the set with a toxic hatred, which unnerved me for the first few days until I found it funny and started calling him Eric all the time.

  "Hey, Eric!" I'd say, as he nuzzled his makeup covered nose into the back of Lea

  Thompson's neck, "Isn't that your mom? Just asking."

  A few days after we'd started, a complicated scene came up in the high school lunchroom where several things were taking place at the same time; Marty McFly talks to George about the school dance, Biff coarsely propositions Lorraine, she slaps his face, and Marty confronts Biff while Biff threatens Marty. With three separate sections of the scene, it was going to take a couple of days to complete the work.

  I
ambled into the lunchroom for the second day of shooting, eating complimentary Frosted Flakes out of a styrofoam bowl, stepping over miles of electrical cable, walking into what felt like a war zone. Inert cameras pointed at the ground, abandoned by the cameramen who sipped coffee and scratched their heads. People were pacing, producers were incredulous, and electricians whispered to one another in stunned shock. The set was on hold, and nothing was happening.

  Since Frosted Flakes lose crunch pretty quickly, I shoveled plastic spoonfuls into my mouth, walking by the stunned crew people. "What's going on?"

  "Mmmm…" they replied, shaking their heads with sorrow.

  Walking to the lunch tables, I asked a few more people who shrugged dejectedly.

  I gulped down sugary milk as a kid with a walkie-talkie came over to say hello. Production assistants, "P.A.'s", are an army of young people who have accepted Hollywood as their personal savior. Slaves of the director, sprinters, gofers, scapegoats, drones with inside information, they run the set. They know everything. Just ask them.

  "What's up?" I asked.

  "Crispin got a haircut." he said.

  "He what?" I said, emptying the bowl into my mouth.

  "The scene isn't even done. He went home last night and got a haircut. It won't match anything we shot yesterday," he said.

  "Are you kidding?" I said.

  The kid looked at me until I said "Oh yeah…We're talking about Crispin."

  "He went home and got a haircut on his own," he said, "He wanted to do something different with the character."

  "With different hair?" I said, "We shot half of it already!"

  "I guess so. They're having a meeting in the kitchen over there."

  "Who's having a meeting?"

  "Crispin and the producers. Can I get you more cereal?"

  "No thanks."

  "Crispin's a little out there, huh?"

  "A little?" I asked, "Have you seen his apartment?"

  "AAAARRRGGGGG!!!!!!!!" a muffled shriek pierced through the wall, and the kitchen door flew open. Crispin Glover staggered out of the kitchen, red faced and choking out sobs under his new haircut, screaming after being taken into the room to be throttled by a producer. "IIIIIIeeeeeeee!!!" he shrieked, tripping through a crowd of crew members and extras who were trying to avert their gaze just enough to check out the whole "snap out" in their peripheral vision.