The Art of Men (I Prefer Mine Al Dente) (22 page)

My car phone rang. It was Woody. “Hey, Kirst, how ya doing?”

“I’m great! I just bought twenty pairs of shoes! How are you?” I asked.

“Um, Kirst, where are you?”

“Beverly Hills, fool!”

“Um, Kirst, um, you wanna come into work today?” he asked in this lazy, laid-back manner.

“Woody, fool, it’s Saturday. Why the hell would I come to work?”

“Um, Kirst, um, because it’s Friday and we’re all waiting for you.”

Woody is a cross between Brando, James Dean, and Tommy Lee Jones—a glorious actor, a rare individual, and one of the loves of my life.

  •  •  •  

Ted, Kelsey, George, John, Woody. If they could have been my “brother-husbands,” I would have married them all.

Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.

—KATHARINE HEPBURN

The Art of
Alarm Clocks

O
H LORD, my assistant Jim and I had our glory years together. We lived through the last several years of
Cheers
, movies on hiatus from
Cheers
, money rolling in, and wild, raucous, crazy freedom. Jim was a midwestern boy from Detroit who looked like a clone of John-Boy Walton except blonder, bluer-eyed, and sans the birthmark. I have no idea how I met Jim, either he came on board as an intern at Paramount or he applied to me directly. Jim seems to have dropped from outer space, as I can’t for the life of me remember where he came from.

Jim and I were a jolly pair, and we were sort of alike in many ways. He and I found most things hilarious, even when other people would have panicked. My favorite Jim moments were when he became tortured by a psycho fan of mine named “Remy.”

To let you know just how psycho Remy was, he was in a wheelchair because he’d driven 120 miles an hour into a brick wall—intentionally—“to see what it would feel like.”

Remy called Jim many times a day to demand things. I shared an office space with Woody Harrelson on the Paramount lot, a stone’s throw from the
Cheers
set. I ran over to the office every break I had to hear the stupid Remy stories from Jim. If I got
really
lucky, Jim would be talking to Remy on the phone when I arrived. Jim always put his hand over the phone and mouthed “Remy” so that I wouldn’t speak.

“I know, Remy . . . I know you think you’re married to her. Uh, huh, right, but see, Remy, TV people are characters, Rebecca Howe isn’t a real person. Okay, okay, stop screaming, Remy, I can’t hear you when you yell, uh, huh, no, she won’t be coming home soon, oh yes, I do believe you when you say she’s speaking directly to you during the shows, yes, many people feel that way, Remy, she’s a good actress and playing a CHARACTER. Remy? Remy? Remy? I have to go now. I have to hang up. Uh, huh, yes, I’ll let her know she’s late for dinner.”

Jeez, Jim talked to Remy several times a day over the years. How he was so patient, I’ll never understand, but it did provide us with a constant stream of hilarity. Jim would get off the phone and relay all of Remy’s hallucinations. Of course we had a private investigator, Gavin de Becker, check him out. Of course Remy had been in and out of institutions, and clearly he’d used a plethora of drugs, but he
was
funny.

“Jim, Jim, get her on the phone Jim! Now! She’s my wife, Jim! Do you hear me Jim? Come on Jim!! Put her on the dang phone Jim.” Remy’s demands always had Jim’s name in them. Every single sentence like a bad soap opera. “Jim! I didn’t like her hair last night. She’s getting too skinny, Jim.”

Usually when you have such a psychotic stalker, you
never
speak to them. Jim and I figured Remy would have to roll his wheelchair to my location to murder me, so we would probably see him coming, IF his arms worked. I mean—120 miles an hour into a brick wall?

This was a good example of my relationship with Jim. He wasn’t a serious guy, he was like my brother. We fought with each other and did multitudes of sibling stuff, but mostly we laughed at everything and everyone. We were bad and bratty. We spent endless hours together.

When I was filming a movie, Jim traveled with me for months. There was not an ounce of flirtation between us, eeeew, it woulda been like coming on to my real brother. But clearly we were a match made in prankster heaven.

Somehow Jim and I had gotten this chicken alarm clock that was really loud and would yell, “Hey baby wake up, get outta that bed,” or something stupid like that. Over and over and over and over until it hit the wall. Jim and I would hide it under each other’s bed or in a dresser or in a pillow just to screw with the other one. Endlessly, I tell you! This went on for years! This chicken would show up in Maine, LA, Canada, Wichita. It was so freaking irritating! When I did it to him, it was hilarious. And that’s how Jim and I were most alike, in our love of pranks. Most people get tired of pranks and knock it off after a few days. Our pranks lasted years!!

Jim was so handsome and so preppy-looking. But lurking inside was a lunatic.

My kids adored Jim. He was great with them, too. Before True came to us the paparazzi were swarming my house. Hanging on the fences, hiding in the trees, endlessly. Remember, I’d had a miscarriage not long before, and the hospital leaked it to the paps. Anyway, they were on me like black on night.

Jim and I came up with an amazing scheme. I told Jim to tip the paps off that something big was going to happen and that he wanted $75,000 for the exclusive on it. They agreed if “it was big enough.” “Oh, it’s big enough. Kirstie and Parker are adopting a baby and he arrives next Friday.” Ahhh—the eager wolves had blood dripping from their lips. Photos of me have always brought the paps a lot of money, and that’s why they’re on me nonstop. But $75,000 for a photo in 1992 was big time.

Jim and I giggled nonstop at every “leak/source” call he made to the rags. In the United States, a story does NOT have to be true. There just has to be a source. So basically your sisters, friends, mothers, and aunts could be a source, even if she’s never met you. There is no law that the data must be researched or checked out for truth. It’s different in the UK. There, the story, legally, must be true and best efforts must be made to prove its truth. That’s why in many cases, the same story from the United States will not run in the UK. If you prove somebody in the UK ran a false story, it’s grounds for a lawsuit that you WILL win.

In the United States, because a story doesn’t have to have a thread of truth, it is very difficult to sue and win. By US law, sources are protected and don’t have to be revealed. It’s why you rarely see celebs sue. The rag mags are big business making big money. It could cost a celeb into the hundreds of thousands to sue them, and even
if
they win, the apology would end up on the last page of the rag, buried.

Anyway, these roaches had followed me home from the hospital after I expelled my dead baby. They’d snapped shots of me crying on my porch. It
was
payback time!

I made a call to a friend of mine and said, “Can I borrow your baby?”

“Hell, yes!” she said. She had a three-day-old baby boy. Jim cut the deal. On that next Friday I walked out of my Encino mansion and sat in the yard with my “new baby.” It was well acted. First Jim and I walked out the door and scoured the area, something I used to do with each exit, spotting the thieves of souls. I sat with “my” baby close to the house. I kept looking around like a robin, looking for a predator. This was perhaps my finest performance to date. Jim was sitting across from me in the grass. He had a camera.

“Do you mind if I shoot a pic with your fake baby?” he asked.

“Why no, Jim, fire away,” and those were the shots he sold to the rags for $75,000. After all, the story didn’t have to be true, right? It goes both ways, right? It just had to be a source.

Jim handed over the photos, they handed over the money. Jim and I donated it to children’s charities. The way I see it, everyone won! When I think of Jim I think of how much work we did in between laughing. Everything made us laugh.

On one occasion, about two years later, Jim was not laughing. I had flown with the kids to Maine after filming a movie in Vancouver. I wasn’t willing to fly my cat Trixie in cargo, and the airline wouldn’t allow her under my seat. I also wanted my SUV in Maine, as I was going to spend three months there. I asked—hahaha—told Jim to drive Trixie in my SUV to Maine, which was 4,000 miles away from Vancouver. He wasn’t a happy camper. I didn’t blame him. But I wanted my car and my cat. Jim would give me a nightly update on his cross-country cat trip. I made him put the phone up to Trixie’s 16-year-old ears. “Hi Trixie . . . goo goo goo goo goo . . . you’re almost home . . . kiss kiss kiss . . . be good for Uncle Jimmy . . . kiss kiss.” I’m sure that kind of shit made Jim’s blood boil. The duet was halfway across the country when Jim stopped calling. He didn’t answer my calls, either. I began to get worried.

Here’s what had happened. Jim was cruising along down the highway through a construction zone. A rock popped up, hit the window, and like a bomb blew out the back windshield. Trixie, who wasn’t in a kennel, wigged out and jumped out of the car going 70 miles an hour. Trixie was already old by most standards. She was 16. I think that’s 340 in cat years. So there 16-year-old Trixie flew—rapidly—into the abyss of a dark, rainy, highway. Jim immediately pulled over. He didn’t see Trixie splattered on the pavement as he expected. It was getting late, and wheat fields lined both sides of the highway. The wheat was hip high. The rain was drizzling down. Jim could see a train passing in the distance. The sound was haunting. He called to Trixie but got no response. He couldn’t hear her meow, so he began to traverse the wheat fields, calling for Trixie as he sloshed through the muddy ocean of wheat. He kept at it for hours. He sat in the middle of the field and was ready to cry. He was tired. He was freezing.

He had a choice to make. Look for god knows how much longer to probably find a dead cat lying in wet wheat, or to give up, and call me with the tragic news. There are really only two things you can do to make me go berserk. Fuck with my kids. Or fuck with my animals. He chose to keep searching. About two hours later, over by the train tracks, just before night fell, he heard a tiny meow from within the wheat. TRIXIE?? TRIXIE?? TRIXIE!!!!!!!! She was lying there, unable to move. He scooped her up, drove to the nearest town and found a vet. Trixie had a broken pelvis. Luckily it was a clean break. The doctor told Jim that if she could still poop, she would probably live. Jim called me and told me what happened. He showed up with Trixie 10 hours later. I rushed to her, scooped her up, and lay her on the bed I’d made for her. Two days later, she pooped. Ahhh, I could finally sleep!

The morning after her bowel movement I was jolted out of my sweet sleep.

“Hey baby wake up, get outta that bed,” screamed the chicken alarm clock hidden beneath my pillow. Touché, Jim, touché.

The great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is “what does a woman want.”

—SIGMUND FREUD

The Art of
Transcending Love

W
ITH MY best friend Kelly Preston’s blessing, I’ll tell you the love story between John Travolta and me. He probably remains the greatest love of my life. This love has spanned over 24 years and has had to go through numerous transformations. With the freedom to articulate, I’ll tell you the tale.

Before my pilgrimage to California to pursue Scientology I wasn’t aware that I would end up pursuing acting. It was a dream long since buried. At that time I only knew two Scientologists but had heard John was one, too. This was all pre-Internet and social media, so I guess I’d read it in a magazine somewhere. But in the back of my mind I thought, “Well, if I become a Scientologist, who better to marry than John Travolta?” It didn’t register that millions of women across the world were thinking the same thing, except for the Scientology part. People seem to think that all Scientologists know each other, and are besties. Kinda like saying, “Oh, you’re a Mormon, are you friends with Mitt Romney?” I supposed there were tens of millions of Scientologists out there, but statistics never scare me. SOMEONE had to marry John Travolta. It might as well be me.

I never thought about the prospect of John again until I was sitting across the room from him, ten years later, in my agent Chris Barrett’s living room. By this time I was married to Parker. I was supercocky and confident. I had movies under my belt. I’d worked with film greats and just happened to be starring in the number one TV show in the country. I was wearing jeans, high-heeled gray boots, a thin charcoal-gray cashmere turtleneck sweater, and my favorite jacket, a green-and-gray sort of tweed blazer that I’d picked up at a store called Sax Fifth Off, for $3. He had coal-black dyed hair because he was in the middle of filming a movie. He wore a white shirt, jeans, and boots that looked Italian. The writer/director of the movie, Amy Heckerling, was also in the eclectic living room of my agent. Because I was so full of myself, I wasn’t starstruck. I was more concerned as to whether I was willing to spend the majority of my summer hiatus from
Cheers
working on a movie instead of going to Maine for vacation.

The movie being pitched was
Look Who’s Talking
, a low-budget $8 million movie about a talking baby. It sounded awfully stupid and at the time was titled
Baby Talk
. But John was attached so I wanted to check it out.

John has an uncanny ability to make anyone seem like they are the only person in existence. He looks directly at you, not only at you, but through you. This is not a gimmick, it’s his nature. John bestows authentic interest and genuine attention on whomever he’s speaking to. Unlike me, who “works” the room in a meeting. He was calm and sincere, and gave you no choice but to realize you’re in the company of something unique and powerful. I felt myself drawn to his irresistible candor.