Dropped Names (28 page)

DOMINICK DUNNE

“I
never thought this would happen to me,” said Nick Dunne from the bed in which it did—just two days later.

I
received a call earlier in the day that he wanted to see me and could I come as soon as possible.

When I arrived at his chic and shabby cozy apartment on East 49th Street and Lexington Avenue in New York, he was asleep. Joan Didion was sitting on a straw chair in a small sunroom off the living room in which a hospital bed had been installed. Stephen Sondheim was standing at its foot. Nick's head was lolled back, his mouth wide open, one arm across his chest, the other, with the usual tube through which ran the usual sustenance from the usual hanging bag, lying along his side. A large black woman was sitting on a chair nearby reading a magazine.

“I have to go,” said Steve. “I really can't wait any longer. I need to be in Roxbury by six. Tell him I love him,” he told Nick's son, Griffin, who had come in from the sunroom to greet me. The black woman said she was going out to get something to eat.

“He's been asleep most of the afternoon,” said Griffin. “Come say hello to Joan.”

“I will,” I said. From where I stood I could see her comfortably sunk into her seat, her translucent skin stretched across toothpick bones, her gray white hair short with bangs barely covering a skeletal forehead. On the floor sat Griffin's best friend, Charlie Wessler, a film producer, smoking a cigarette and leaning in to catch what Joan was saying.

What else could any of them be doing? When death is clearly on his way up in the elevator, it's best to let him in and stay out of his way.

All the players in the room had had a much longer history with Nick than I. We had circled each other warily over the years. I resisted his style—his practiced reporter's skill at charming you, then trying to trip you up; getting you to reveal something you hadn't intended to. But I thought him an excellent writer and fearless investigator as I watched him cover the trials of Claus Von Bulow, O. J. Simpson, and Phil Spector, among others.

In 2008, I received a call from him about a small film I'd done called
Starting Out in the Evening
. It was the story of an aged writer who had not lived up to his early promise and was living alone on the Upper West Side of New York, but still writing every day.

Nick wanted to talk. It felt to me as if he were crying. “I watched it twice,” he said. “The relationship with the daughter. I love Lili Taylor. It was heartbreaking how that man threw his life away.”

“But he tries. He gets up every day and tries.”

“Well, I just wanted to tell you I thought it was great.”

“Thank you, Nick. It's a favorite film of mine.”

An awkward pause and I bit the bullet:

“Nick. We don't really know each other very well. I've always been a little on guard against you.”

“Yeah, well . . .”

“Would you like to have lunch?”

“Sure.”

We picked a date. He chose Michael's on West 55th Street, in which literally every table has been rested upon by the pampered elbows of New York's literary lions for many a season. I lunched there often but seldom have I witnessed the kind of homage that was paid to Nick from the arriving and departing celebrities.

In the center of the room at a table for eight sat an actress who had written yet another book about dramatic weight loss and early lack of self-esteem. Surrounded by publicists, managers, and agents, she looked but dared not approach.

“She'll be fat again in a year,” I joked. Nick didn't laugh.

“I've got cancer,” he said. “And I'm going to fight.”

“Well there's no time to waste,” I said. “Tell me everything.”

He spoke of a feud with Graydon Carter, editor of
Vanity Fair
, his writer's block on his latest book, and his never having recovered from his daughter's brutal murder by a crazed boyfriend decades earlier.

“Your movie knocked me for a loop. If this gets me I don't want to die with regrets.”

He told me he was having trouble resolving the finish of the book, mostly about his main character's coming to peace with his sexuality; and he also spoke of his still unresolved feelings about Graydon.

“Well, you have to call him,” I said.

“Yeah, I know. I'm a coward. No good at human relationships. Just can't do it. I failed with my sons too.”

Nick was closing in on eighty-three. I had just entered my seventies. There seemed nothing to lose.

“So, are you gay?” I asked.

“I'm nothing now. I've been celibate for twenty years. It just got too difficult for me to deal with.”

“What did?”

“Hiding it. Wanting it.”

“Have you ever talked about it with your sons?”

“God no! I just couldn't. I'm sure they know. Anyway it's too late now and I don't miss it anymore.”

“Why don't you sit down with Griffin and talk to him about it?”

“Oh he knows. What is there to talk about?”

“Give him the honor of sharing with him his father's true self.”

“No no no. I can't. I just can't.”

“I failed to communicate well with my son, too. So I understand. But it's the greatest gift you can bestow on your kids, trusting them and—”

Up to the table came a worshipper.

“Oh hi, . . . !”

“Do you know . . . ?”

“Of course!”

“Have you seen . . . ?”

“Did you hear . . . ?”

“Did you know . . . ?”

“Call me!”

H
e had no desire to return to our subject and we passed our lunch in the familiar territory of work and gossip. I walked him to his next appointment.

“I'm going to have to face Graydon,” he said, “or I won't be able to finish this book. I'm stuck.”

“Pick up the phone and call him.”

“I will.”

“Let's do this again, Nick.”

“Okay!”

And during the next year or more, as he fought his cancer, we would manage a dozen or so such conversations at Michael's, over the phone, and once in Los Angeles at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2009, when he was there covering the Oscars.

N
ick was a great reporter and a brilliant observer of human contradictions. He was ruthless in his hates, a voracious gossiper, and a self-admitted starfucker. Faced with cancer, he fought valiantly, doubling and redoubling his efforts to stay in the game.

His fight took him to a clinic in Germany for stem cell treatments. He rallied, lost ground, rallied again, and finally the disease won. Griffin went to get him and bring him home on a chartered plane to die in his tiny apartment surrounded by his books and momentary distractions from visiting celebrities.

It was near the end now as I stood over him, as close as I could get. Is he gone? I wondered. So still, so lifeless. I put my mouth up to his ear.

“Nick. It's Frank. Wake up.”

He did.

“Oh, Frank. You came.”

He lifted his arms up as if he wanted to be taken out of the bed and I leaned in close. Round my neck they went and I kissed his cheek, now firm against mine.

“Are you going to stay?” he said. “I've got something to tell you.”

“Yes.”

I kissed him back and circled round the bed, never letting go of his hand, and sat in a chair close to his right side. He closed his eyes again and fell back asleep.

Joan came in and laid her hand on his foot before Charlie took her downstairs, and Griffin and I talked quietly across his father's body. It was countdown time.

Soon a dark-haired woman arrived who would close in on his left. Once an editor of his, she talked of a feud they'd once had, explaining that it was all over now, and she loved him. His eyes flicked open. He had been listening.

“We worked it out, didn't we?” he said to her.

“Yes we did dear,” she replied.

It was clear she wasn't planning to leave his side, so I asked him in her presence what he wanted to talk to me about. If it were something personal, I assumed he'd ask her to give us a moment. But he looked up at me with a happy smile and said:

“Frank. I did it. I finished my book. Graydon and I made peace. I think it's good. I think it'll sell. I want you to see the new cover.”

He called to Griffin, who brought in a mock-up of the book, now named
Too Much Money.

“We changed the title,” he said.

As he talked about the cuts he'd made and the decisions over the title and the marketing for the book, the lady continued to hold his hand, nodding in agreement and approval. Griffin stood by the bed for a while, looking distracted, and then slowly backed out of the room onto the sunporch.

The mock-up lay on Nick's lap as he talked animatedly about the planned campaign, the marketing budget, and his hopes for sales.

“It's going to be a hit, I think, Frank,” he said. Toward the end of the book, a character called Gus, the fictionalized Nick, finally outs himself.

I got up when he wound down, leaned over, kissed him on the forehead, and told him I'd come see him again. His former editor held tight. As I reached the door, I looked into the sunporch and saw Griffin sitting alone, his back toward me, staring out the window. I decided not to invade his solitude.

Forty-eight hours later his father was gone. A man who, even on his deathbed, was unable to speak truth to a son sitting some twenty feet away but preferred rather to look at a mock-up of a new book title, discuss possible profits he would never enjoy, and have his hand held by a formerly estranged colleague. Nick left this earth sadly leaving behind two boys whom he had long since abandoned to carry on without him.

TONY CURTIS

T
ony Curtis took no prisoners. Whenever I was in his company over the course of some thirty years, apart from the absurdity of his desperate attempts to look cool, hip, and young, I found him always to be charming, instantly connected, and very funny. He was, as well, ruthlessly honest when he didn't like someone or something. A no-shit guy who had taken a lot of abuse, often challengingly bringing it upon himself.

One Saturday evening in Malibu in 1989 there were about a dozen of us at a dinner and a private screening at Blake Edwards and Julie Andrews's magnificent house near Paradise Cove. The conversation turned to a discussion of one of the world's most famous and beloved actors.

“He was one of my idols,” Tony said. “The guy turns out to be a fucking bore. He knew better than all of us where to put the camera, how to say the line, how to play the scene. He had no humor and no charm. I would do anything to avoid having lunch with him.”

I told Tony that Mel Brooks had told me the same thing about this actor. He said that one day the guy walked into his offices and said, “How do you do, Mr. Brooks? My offices are right next door to yours. I'm so looking forward to our having lunch together.” After the first lunch, Mel said, “I thought I'd kill myself if I had to eat a meal with this guy again. I told my secretary, if Cary Grant calls, I'm not in.”

“Yeah,” said Tony. “He sucked the air out of any room he was in.”

The film they made together was
Operation Petticoat
. It was directed by Blake Edwards and he concurred about Grant, but added, “It was a huge hit and I would have worked with him again anytime.”

That night the film we watched in Blake and Julie's screening room was
Mississippi Burning
. After the lights went up, there was much reverential talk about the subject matter, the direction, and the quality of the acting. Tony was sitting in the last row, silent and placid. After everyone else had had their say, he stood up and held forth for ten minutes, calling it a chickenshit worthless piece of crap.

“They played it so fucking safe. Lousy studio bullshit.”

W
atching Tony on television late one night in
Sweet Smell of Success
, I was impressed by the emotional power of his performance. He was playing a “cookie full of arsenic,” as Burt Lancaster's character referred to him, and he played his part, a bloodsucking desperate press agent, with unsparing truth and a real measure of dignity.

Thereafter, whenever I saw him in a film, I stopped and watched a little closer. His performances in
The Defiant Ones
,
Spartacus
, and
Some Like It Hot
were deeply committed, honest, and emotionally true. The fact that the overwhelming majority of his films were terrible doesn't erase the fact that in each of them he was a one hundred percent professional and determined to do his best. The look of him, the sheer overripe face, jet-black hair, and New York accent made him an easy actor to dismiss as just a pretty boy who got lucky. He didn't make it any easier with a publicly cultivated persona as a wisecracking ladies' man. But he seemed to me filled with immortal yearnings; acting, writing, painting, constantly creatively expressing himself and looking for validation.

O
ne evening, when I was sitting alone with him in a corner at Blake and Julie's, he held forth on the art of acting, and his understanding of the necessity to cover up any technique and appear spontaneous and, above all, truthful. “It's a moveable feast, Frank. You gotta go with the flow and live in the moment.”

Tony had a get-them-before-they-get-you frame of mind that got him in trouble in Hollywood and his handful of really sterling performances didn't seem enough to overcome the cocky swagger that lessened his reputation as an actor. But those performances are there as a testament to a boy named Schwartz from the Bronx who, in a profession with a staggering attrition rate, climbed to the top, hung in, and defiantly kept punching to the finish.