The role called for me to play a 1940s-era drummer, lip-synch a song to a playback, and then deliver some hipster banter back and forth with the sax player—all of this while pretending to cut a track in a recording studio. The film was called Bird. It was a biopic about Charlie Parker, whose music I knew and loved. I’d be playing his drummer and part-time pal. No problem; I could handle this. Lost on me for the moment was the fact that the sax player was Forest Whitaker and the director was Clint Eastwood.
The day came, and I made my way to the location. It was in a recording studio called Electro-Vox Studios on Melrose near Gower, across the street from the Paramount movie lot, a little mom-and-pop storefront right out of old Hollywood that I’d driven past a thousand times but had never noticed. It turned out to be the oldest privately operating recording studio in the world. It opened in 1936 and had hosted old-time radio shows and countless sessions for film scores and records. Nat King Cole and the real Charlie Parker had recorded there. It didn’t seem like it had been operating lately. It was 1987, and the retro technology trend in the recording industry hadn’t happened yet. It was just a plain-old dusty studio with old gear, not quite vintage yet. I’m surprised that the Stray Cats had never recorded there, because we used to seek out those old studios. At this time, the place was really under the radar; whoever did the research and scouted the location did a really nice job.
There was a lot of activity around this little one-story nondescript brick building. Trailers and equipment trucks were parked all around the surrounding side streets, and there were people milling about in front. A typical location movie shoot, that if you live in LA, you drive past every day without ever really knowing what’s going on behind the scenes. I was met by a slightly frantic, clipboard-armed assistant and led to one of the trailers that was being used for makeup and wardrobe. My outfit consisted of pleated baggy pants, an argyle sweater vest, and a tie, and I had my hair slicked back, a bit more square looking than normal. I brought my own pointy shoes. A more or less classic, conservative rockabilly-style look that I could pull off and feel comfortable in.
I had become very nervous about doing the acting part of this job. It hit me all at once that I’d never done this before. I was never particularly nervous about going onstage; I’d done that a million times and always had at least another musician there to lean on. This was a first, and I started thinking that I’d gotten myself into something I couldn’t do. All of it was mitigated by the fact that with this one job, I could join the Screen Actors Guild, and the pay was enough to activate the health insurance that the guild offered. Back then, it was regarded as the world’s best health insurance, and it was a real coup to get it. It also meant that between Britt’s insurance with the same union and my new membership, TJ’s birth would be covered by our combined insurance. So the bottom line was that I had to get through this.
I had been assigned my own trailer, which helped fuel the whole loneliness aspect of the moment. The scene called for an entire orchestra with strings, and there were dozens of musicians sharing smaller trailers and being ushered back and forth from the makeup trailer to the set, which was around the corner. I would have preferred some company to take my mind off the full-blown fear that I had now developed. Anyone driving past would have seen a whole bunch of people dressed in 1940s clothes, carrying violins. I had successfully gotten dressed and was sitting in my trailer, staring at my faxed script, pacing the tiny trailer and repeating the lines in my head over and over again. There was a knock on the trailer door, and I said, “C’mon in.”
It was Forest Whitaker, holding a saxophone, looking really cool, dressed in an old suit and looking like the spitting image of Charlie Parker. He had the whole hepcat vibe down pat. It seemed very natural on him. I recognized him from Fast Times at Ridgemont High—it’s one of my favorite films of all time; it launched ten movie stars, and he convincingly played a tough, no-nonsense, slightly scary football player. He knew the Stray Cats from MTV and the radio. He said he listened to the record after he found out it would be me in the scene with him. He’s a good guy, and I could tell right away that he was trying to put me at ease. He didn’t display any doubt in my ability to pull this off.
We were both standing together in this little trailer dressed up like 1940s hipster musicians, about to film a scene directed by Clint Eastwood. I was nervous about it; he was not. He’s a professional actor; I’m not. He would be miming on the saxophone, pretending to play; he had studied old film and learned how to move his fingers perfectly in sync with the original Parker recordings. We sat and talked a while, and I was feeling good about it. I told him I had rehearsed the lines a million times, and I asked him if he wanted to practice the script with me. He told me not to worry.
“Let’s save it for the take, man,” he said.
“Okay, man,” I answered. I could relate to that. I still wanted to run the lines, but I didn’t let on. Then he said the last thing on earth I would have imagined he was going to say.
“You wanna smoke a joint?” he asked.
I thought about it for maybe two seconds. The practical side of my brain lost very quickly. Out of habit, I simply answered, “Sure, man. What do you got?”
Forest produced a joint from his pack of Camels unfiltered coffin nails. I figured he was smoking them to help get in character. It was super old-timey and a very jazz cat thing to smoke them. So we sat in my little trailer chatting while we puffed away on a joint. There must have been a lot of smoke pouring out of the cracks of the window and door, and the surrounding area must’ve really smelled like weed, but we didn’t think about it, and no one said anything. After all, we were making a movie about jazz musicians, and this was getting us in the authentic mood. Afterward, Forest excused himself and left to go to the set.
“See you out there, man.”
“Yeah, cool,” I replied.
The second he left, I knew I had made a mistake. I immediately couldn’t remember my own name, let alone even one of the lines. I was overwhelmed by that pot-smoking paranoia I had heard about but had never really experienced myself. I was a regular weed smoker but wouldn’t have chosen that exact moment to blaze up. It was a situation that maybe called for a nerve-settling shot of booze, but not a joint. Anyhow, now I was stoned, quietly panicking, and more than slightly regretting the whole thing when there was another knock at the door. This time, it was the production assistant coming to walk me around the corner to the recording studio set.
Now, it was the middle of the day in LA, so when we entered the front door to the studio, I was hit by the film-lit set and the hundred people crammed into this tiny room. It’s a controlled bedlam like a rock show or video shoot, but in those cases, I have a little experience. This place was ancient, perfectly preserved by accident, not design. I dug the place and made a note to come back someday and poke around to look at the old gear. Linoleum covered the floors, and that old-fashioned heavy pegboard covered the walls. There were camera people, sound people, various headphone-wearing film crew, and twenty-five musicians all sitting in chairs with sheet music on stands in front of them. The film company must’ve used the Local 47 Musicians Union of Hollywood to cast the orchestra extras. These were real old-school session musicians, all dressed up in period suits waiting to be told what to do. Forest was standing in the middle and winked when he saw me come in. There was an ocean of wires and cables to step over on the floor. I was led to a drum kit that was my oasis. I sat down behind the drums and right away felt better, more in control of the situation.
The place was buzzing, everyone talking at once, the musicians plucking on their violins when I saw the flash of light from outside, and the door to the street was opened again. The place got real quiet like when the fastest gun in the west walks into the saloon. It was Clint Eastwood. He is quite tall and lean and definitely had a commanding presence. Most people agree that by 1987, Clint had been the coolest guy in the world for at least ten years already. Everybody knew him and had seen his mov
ies. I’ve always been a fan and knew all the Sergio Leone movies inside out. I had watched Rawhide on reruns after school. Clint was wearing jeans, sneakers, and a sweatshirt but was every bit as intimidating as if he were in a military uniform or western gear. He stopped and talked to most of the technicians. It took a few minutes for him to make his way over to Forest to discuss the scene. I just sat behind the drums waiting for something to happen. As I understood it, there would be a playback of the classic Charlie Parker recording of “Laura,” and we would play along to the track. We had done dozens of playback TV shows with the Cats, so I knew how to seem cool while making it look like I was actually playing the song. Then I would start tearing down the drum kit like I would at a real session while doing my lines with Forest. It was conversation about the song we just played and about his wife. So I had the length of the song to run over the lines in my head. The trick was to wait until the music faded before starting to talk. I was even more relaxed when I realized that tearing the drums down, unscrewing the wing nuts off the tops of the cymbals stands, gave me something to do that I felt comfortable doing, and the lines came out more like conversation with another musician than a movie script.
We rehearsed the track a few times. It’s a pretty long song, and they played the whole thing on every take. A couple of times, the scene was stopped before the song ended when Clint called “Cut” and a light was adjusted or a microphone moved. After a few more rehearsals, Clint told the musicians to take five but not go far while the crew moved the camera to set up for a different angle. This time, we’d go through the whole thing and do the dialogue between Forest and me after the song stopped playing. I was standing off to the side while they were moving the lights behind the drum kit. An assistant director bumped into me; I was in the way, and he was asking me to move.
“Hey, kid, can you stand over here while we’re moving this stuff? What’s your name again, kid?” the assistant director asked in a polite but impatient tone.
Clint saw and heard this and moseyed on over. Mind you, I hadn’t spoken one word to the man yet.
“Don’t you know who that is?” he said to the assistant director in his best menacing but still friendly, soft-spoken strong whisper. “That’s Slim Jim.”
“Thanks, Mr. Eastwood,” I half stammered in a thankful voice.
“Call me Clint,” he responded in that same tone, looking at me with the famous half-squinting eyes and extending a big friendly paw.
“Thanks, Clint,” I answered more confidently, and I took his hand. I was now buddies with Clint Eastwood.
I was pretty confident that I could do the scene. Clint hadn’t stopped me during any of the rehearsals, so I figured I was doing okay. I tried to do it the same way every time. I’d nail it when it’s time to do it for real.
“Here we go,” said Clint. “Let’s go for a take. Action!”
The playback came on the big speakers, and we made a convincing performance of recording “Laura.” The violinists were drawing their bows across the strings enough to make it look real but not loud enough to drown out the playback. Forest was moving his fingers up and down the sax, seemingly hitting all the right notes and puffing out his cheeks in all the right places where Parker would’ve drawn a breath, and I was playing along with brushes. It all must have looked good in the camera, because we just kept going until the end of the song. We hit the last note and let it fade. I started my dialogue with Forest. I was into the third line, and I must have been doing well because no one was stopping me. Then a squeaky voice croaked, “Cut, cut, cut.”
It was not Clint’s voice, and any fool knows that only the director can call “action” or “cut.” The call came from a little guy playing the fiddle in the front row of violinists. He looked like Larry from The Three Stooges with glasses. He was tapping his bow on the music stand while calling, “Cut!” Everyone was flabbergasted. This had to be uncharted waters for a professional crew that worked with this director all the time. I was stunned and just plain mad, because he interrupted my take, and I might not get it right again. Clint walked over to him and bent over just a little to make the point.
“Yes, what is it?” he asked softly but firmly.
“Well, Clint—you don’t mind if I call you Clint, do you?”
“No, go ahead,” Clint answered with his steely, flinty voice.
“Okay, Clint, this sheet music says the song is in the key of G when clearly upon listening it is in the key of G flat—do you understand? The score is wrong; the music doesn’t coincide,” the fiddle player whined. I was waiting for him to say, “Oy vey.”
“It doesn’t matter; the music is prerecorded—no one will hear what you’re doing here. We’re just trying to make it look like we are recording the song. It’s okay. Don’t worry about it; just make it seem like you’re really playing,” Clint answered the annoying character, really keeping his cool in a measured response.
“Okay, okay. Action, everybody,” the violinist answered back.
Clint ignored this one and turned to the rest of us and the crew and called for playback and action. We got through the song again, and it was time for the dialogue between Forest and me. I began, and it was going well for a few lines, and then it happened again—that now all-too-familiar sound of the violin bow tapping on the music stand accompanied by the whiny call to cut from an unwanted source. It was the same guy doing the same thing. This was shocking, and a few of the crew members started walking in toward the guy like they were about to throw him out. Clint coolly stepped in.
“What is it now?” he half hissed.
“Well, Clint, I’m looking down, and I notice that the wardrobe people gave me brown shoes.” He pointed with his bow toward his shoes.
“Yes, so what?” Clint responded quietly.
“Well, I’m wearing blue trousers, and we all know that you can’t wear brown shoes with blue trousers.” He said this like it was a punch line in a Woody Allen sketch.
I don’t think I was the only person in this room who was expecting Clint to pull out a .44 Magnum and blow this fiddler’s head all over the incorrect sheet music. I would’ve done it if I had had a gun.
“Don’t worry about it; the camera isn’t going to a full-length shot on you. When it goes over the string section, I’m in a half-length shot, so your shoes don’t come into the picture.” Clint explained this all in a very professional, measured, calm sotto voce. No one could believe how cool he was. Then he leaned over, almost whispering in the guy’s ear, “Don’t do it again.” There it was: Dirty Harry came out. It was perfect. He became Harry Callahan when he needed to. The little fiddle player was scared out of his wits, and everyone in the room felt a little fear. Clint called for playback and action, and I nailed my lines with Forest a few times in a row without incident. No way was I going to mess up after that. Clint called a wrap.
The crew got busy very fast in breaking down and loading up the massive amount of equipment onto the trucks parked out front on Melrose. I’m sure Electro-Vox Studios was empty and back to its faded glory within an hour or so. The musicians packed their instruments in their cases and left. I didn’t see where the annoying fiddle player went. He probably went home to annoy his wife at dinner. I talked a bit to some of the crew and headed out. I looked back in the room, and Clint noticed I was leaving.
“Take it easy, Slim Jim; you did good,” Clint said with a wry smile.
“Thanks, Mr.—um, er, Clint!”
There was another scene in a bar in downtown LA that we shot a few days later. That day was unmemorable. I was an old pro by then. That was that—my first, last, and only appearance in a major Hollywood motion picture. The film came out the next year to great critical acclaim. Forest Whitaker was amazing, and he would go on to win his Oscar a few years later. We stayed friendly for a while. He had a loft in Chinatown before it was trendy to move to that part of town. He’s a cool guy, and I go to his movies whenever he does a new one. I’ve learned that Clint really loves all music and jazz i
n particular. It shows in Bird. I could tell he knew about and dug Charlie Parker’s music. I’m thrilled that my one IMDb credit is acting in a scene with and being directed by these very talented Academy Award–winning cats. TJ was born courtesy of SAG insurance, and I’ve kept my dues current; I’m still a card-carrying member. Bird is shown on cable, and I get a check for forty-seven dollars once in a while. I think I was pretty good for a first timer. I’m ready for my close-up now, Mr. Eastwood.
14
A Quick Flight with John Lee Hooker
We were in San Francisco. Britt was doing the morning city show, and I had tagged along for the night and went to the taping. I left back for LA after the show, and she stayed for another afternoon show. I think she was promoting a book. We did these kinds of little trips a lot. Any time she had an appearance, we’d ask for two tickets and make a mini vacation out of it. Those promo people gave good hotel, and if I was off the road, why not? I’d always liked San Fran. We would walk around and go to the art galleries, eat somewhere nice with some drinks, maybe see a gig, sometimes just go to the hotel. San Fran and Vegas are fun overnight trips when you’re in LA. Paris from London is a good one. We used to go all the time.
So I was on the morning flight back home carrying a painting we had bought, and there was a long holdup getting on the plane. I was a little hungover, not so bad after an airport beer. As I stepped onto the plane and walked toward the first row of seats, a cane blocked my way. The cane was attached to a hand with rings and a gold watch, attached to an arm in a ruffled-sleeve shirt, attached to an orange suit, and inside this fantastic outfit was sitting John Lee Hooker. I had originally been really into the blues, and I admired John Lee as one of the legends. You don’t often get a chance to meet one of those cats, so any chance encounter is cool. He wore his signature big hat and sunglasses, patent leather shoes, and neon socks. He looked exactly how he was supposed to. The whole ensemble was complemented by a wildly patterned wide tie and gold chain around his neck. As I was taking in this scene and wondering why he was blocking my path with his cane, the whole planeload of people being held up behind me was starting to get impatient and grumble. While I was trying to figure it all out, I couldn’t help but notice a huge gravy stain right smack in the middle of his tie. He finally spoke, like a Buddha:
A Stray Cat Struts Page 14
