When I Stop Talking You (17 page)

I said, "Buying what? There's no story."

He said, "Well, go and make one up. We're doing this movie."

We went into the meeting, sat at the big table with the food piled in front of us. Ted Ashley and Frank Wells, the chairman and vice chairman of the company, were both in the room. For the first thirty minutes, it was just me, telling Sinatra stories, telling Elvis stories, telling Dean Martin stories, the whole routine.

Frank Wells finally turned to Billy and said, "Okay, Billy, why don't you tell us about your movie?"

Billy bumbled around a bit, then said, "We open in the hills of West Virginia, and the camera comes over the hills and we see a field of dead cows. The camera continues over a hill, and we see Washington, D.C., Georgetown, go up the steps and into a church, then we see a head, severed and bloody, roll out of the confessional."

He turned to Blatty, then said, "Take it, Bill."

"Well, yes," said Blatty, "but I am not sure about the cows."

Then it was over. As we were getting ready to leave, Frank Wells helped me on with my coat. "We're excited," he told me. "We can't wait to make this movie."

"What movie?" I asked him. "There is no movie. That was bullshit."

"No, no, we love it," he said. "We want to do it."

"There is nothing to do," I said. "I'm going to give back your money."

"No, hang on to it," he said. "Think about it."

Well, I did think about it, and the more I thought about it, the more I knew there was no movie. I sent back the money with a note: "Next time." Taking money for a movie you know you will never make is a bad habit. It's cocaine, it revs you up, and you have some fun, but in the end, you're in a worse place than you were when you started.

Around this time, my parents visited Beverly Hills. This was rare, as my mother did not like to fly. Usually I visited them in New York. The trip was therefore a big deal, a chance to show off what I had accomplished. I picked them up at LAX in my chauffer-driven Rolls-Royce. My mother slid in slowly, beaming, but my father looked skeptical. He stared out the window as we drove, now and then asking things like, "How long have you had this car, Jerry?" "What's the miles per gallon?" We finally reached the house, the mansion in Beverly Hills, with the swimming pool and tennis court and gardens and flowers. We sat in the living room. Out came the champagne. Out came the caviar. My mother was enjoying every minute. My father was reserved, pensive. He was a warm and beautiful man. I handed him a Cuban cigar, a Cohiba, his favorite. He puffed at it, looking at the smoke.

"Go get ready," I said. "I have a dinner planned. I am taking you to the best place in town, where the stars hang out."

This went on for a few days-me giving my parents the business, ushering them to the front of lines, through crowds, to the best tables and shows, and so on-until my father finally said, "Okay, listen, Jerry, I want to talk to you. Let's go outside."

Before we got halfway down the front steps, he tapped my chest with his finger and said, "I want to ask you a question, and I want you to tell me the truth, no bullshit from you. Are you in the Mafia? How did you get all this? You were never that smart.' "

I stammered. "Uh, no, Dad, I'm creative. I did it."

"Well, where's your inventory?" he asked. "How can you have this much money and not have an inventory? It doesn't make sense to me."

I laughed and pointed at my head. "It's up here," I said. "All the inventory is right up here."

Then he laughed, too, saying, "Well, I guess there was always a lot of space for it, anyway."

That trip was mostly about impressing my mother, showing her a good time, thanking her. It was my mother who instilled the confidence and belief that made my success possible. My mother had two great passions in her life (other than her family, I mean): Cary Grant and horse races. So one afternoon, a week into the trip, I tell her to get ready, we're going somewhere-I won't say where. Thirty minutes later, the Rolls drops us off at the Hollywood Park Race Track. As we're getting out, who does she spot but Cary Grant, elegant as always, standing in front of the ticket window. "Oh, my," says my mother, grabbing my sleeve. "Look who it is." Before she can get his name out, Cary hurries over and slips his hand through my mother's arm and says, "Hello, Rose, will you be my date this afternoon?"

By then, Cary and I had become friends. I must have told my parents this on the phone, but they probably did not believe me. My mother was walking on air. They sat together in the clubhouse, reading through the racing form. Cary made her bets. They watched the ponies through binoculars.

I threw a dinner party that night at the house. I was sitting at the bar, having a drink with my mother, when Sinatra came in. There was always a stir, a happy little party, whenever Frank entered a room. He threw off his coat and came up, smiling, with his arms outstretched. "Hi ya, Rose," he said, "I heard you had a great date for lunch today."

"Yes, I did," she told him-and this part chokes me up, because my parents, well, that was a real love affair, "but I like my Sammy better."

My mother, as I said, was one of those ladies you would see weeping in a dark theater on the Grand Concourse. She loved the movies. In 1986, I actually had a chance to take her out of the seats and put her up on screen. My parents had come to visit me in Florida, where I was making a movie called Happy New Year with Peter Falk, Tom Courtenay, and Charles Durning.

After the director, John Avildsen, met my mother, he said, "Hey, Jerry, why don't you put her in the movie?"

The picture was about a jewelry store robbery, and I built the store on set. Avildsen thought I should have her in the scene in which Falk cases the joint. She would be a customer, walking by with Courtenay, the store manager.

"Not a good idea," I told Avildsen.

"Why?"

"It's my mother," I said. "Believe me. It's not a good idea."

"Come on, Jerry, she'll enjoy herself."

Falk and Avildsen kidded me into it.

So I went over and said, "Mom, do you want to be in the scene, you could be an extra."

"No," she said. "I'm no actress."

"Okay," I said, "understood." And I walked away.

A minute later, she called me back.

"What is it, Ma?

"Jerry," she said, "if you need me, I'll do it."

(She was a real Jewish mother.)

I said, "No, no, it's okay."

She said, "Just look at you. I can tell you need me. Fine. I'll do it. But I don't have a dress, look at what I'm wearing. And my hair…"

I said, "Ma, I got a wardrobe truck, I got hairdressers, I got makeup people. You'll be fine."

"Oh, you're going to do all that?"

Yes.

She said, "All right, I'll do it for you."

So she goes in, is treated like a queen, like she's Julia Roberts or Marilyn Monroe. The hairdresser, the makeup people, they're all working on her. Now comes time for her scene. She comes out in the background and is supposed to walk out the door. So Avildsen says to me, "Why don't you direct it? It's your mother."

I said, "No, don't be crazy."

He said, "What do you have to do? Say 'action'? Say 'cut'? Everything is set up, don't worry. It'll be fun for her."

I said, "Okay, okay."

Then: "Action!"

My mother and Tom Courtenay start walking. She's supposed to go from here to there. But as she passes, she turns to Courtenay and says, "I don't like that piece of jewelry."

I yelled, "Cut! Cut! Cut!"

I said, "Ma, what are you doing? There's no lines. You just walk."

"Well that's stupid," she said. "If your father was showing some jewelry to somebody and she didn't like it, she'd tell him."

"Well, in this case, you don't tell him anything," I said. "You just walk."

"It's stupid," she told me. "I wouldn't do it that way."

"But it's not about you, Ma. It's about Peter Falk."

Meanwhile, Peter Falk and John Avildsen, and all the Teamsters, are standing around, watching me, laughing their asses off.

So I went back, and said, "Okay, let's do it again. Action."

She started walking, then, just as she passed the camera, she turned, looked right into the lens, and smiled like a bandit.

"Cut! Cut! Cut!"

"What's the matter now?" she asked.

I said, "Ma, you're embarrassing me."

I'm talking quietly because I don't want everybody to hear. They are all looking, and they know I'm screwed. No way I'm getting out of this without pain.

I said, "Ma, listen to me, please. I feel like I'm back in sixth grade. You're killing me. I'm supposed to be in charge and you're making me a child. My mother, standing on the set, telling me I'm stupid, telling me what to do. You can't do that."

She said, "Well, it doesn't make sense."

I said, "Ma, do me a favor, please? Just walk from there to there. Don't look at the camera, don't say anything, just walk."

"Fine," she said, "I was doing this for you but it's not right.

We finally finished. I was exhausted. It took all day. We got back to the hotel. Jane said, "You know, you should invite your mom to the dailies."

"No, not a good idea."

"Oh, come on," said Jane. "Let her see herself. It will be a thrill."

So I called. "Ma, do you want to watch the dailies in the morning?"

"What's dailies?"

"It's everything we shot today," I told her. "We take a look at it. Your film will be on the screen. You want to see it?"

"You want me to come to dailies?" she said. "No. I don't want to see myself, I don't care about that, it's silly."

I said, "Okay, good night."

Hung up.

A minute later, the phone rang. "All right, if you need me to come, I'll come," she said. "And I can see that you need me."

She brought my father. Peter Falk found out and he came, too. Same with John Avildsen, Tom Courtenay, and Charlie Durning-they were all there. My mother was sitting next to me. When she came on screen, she yelled out, "I look great!"

In the end, she loved it, mostly because she got residual checks from the film-$3, $27, $41-for years and years.

By 1977, John Denver was the biggest star in the world. This was no accident. It was, in fact, the result of a carefully orchestrated campaign to package and sell him, as I had packaged and sold weekend getaways in the window of the Sachs Men's Shop in Fairbanks. I tried everything with John, sold him in every way I knew how. One year, for example, he was late with an album, had missed a deadline for Christmas, which infuriated the executives at RCA. They wanted their record or their money. It was John's ass. "Jerry," he said, "what can we do?"

"Don't worry," I told him. "We'll fix it."

I designed an album cover, pasted it on envelopes, and sent it to record stores. You bought the envelope, which could be traded for the album, making you an inside player, an investor in Denver 's career. It was a gimmick that worked. The envelopes sold like mad-a perfect gift for the John Denver fan in your life. The record went gold before it even existed. I went to RCA and said, "Look, you've had your Christmas, now where's our money?"

And yet, for various reasons, John began to lose his bearings. It's a danger of success: You're a kid, and want only to be heard; then you are heard, by everybody, all the time, but your thought is, either, "Well, yeah, great, but now what?" or "Yes, they hear me, but it's not the real me, not the voice I have in my head, or the person I want to be."

There were portents and signs. John started talking about ditching his glasses, his earnest and trustworthy glasses. He wanted to change his hair, too, which would be like Nike ditching its swoop. His hair and his glasses were known and loved everywhere on earth. Probably even the Bushmen of Africa could hum a few bars of "Rocky Mountain High." Then, coming off the huge success of Oh, God!, which set him up for a major career in film, I developed a follow-up, An Officer and a Gentleman, which John turned down. He said it was a B movie, and not good enough for him with its seedy backdrop of desolate airstrips and Panhandle bars. Of course, An Officer and a Gentleman was not only a great film, but also the movie that really launched the career of Richard Gere.

Much of this confusion had to do with problems in his own life, ways in which, so it seemed to him, everything was coming apart. First of all, his marriage had ended. He had split with Annie, who wasn't just his childhood sweetheart, but his muse. Much of his desire for her, the chase and courtship, could be heard, sublimated, in his best songs. The end of the marriage was the end of his life, the first life he lived from the time he left home. Then his father died. He had trouble with his father, but they had been close at the end. These losses hit him hard. In fact, the only person left from his old life was me. Which explains a lot. The man was trying to reinvent himself, start again by forgetting. This is when I began to hear rumors: John is upset. John is unhappy. John wants to leave you.

I discounted these, because, I mean, look what we had done together: in the ten years since I found him, this obscure, underpaid nightclub singer had become one of the biggest stars in the world, with hit records and shows and a big movie career before him, and money pouring in. But I did not realize how troubled he was, how insecure, and how badly he ached to be free. This was my friend, the executor of my will, the caretaker of my (God forbid) orphaned children, yet I knew nothing about him. That you know a person, does not mean you know a person.

So one morning, I was sitting in my office on Wilshire Boulevard -I had a huge office, with a million-dollar view of the hills-when John came storming in, unannounced and unplanned, a freight train with a head of steam.

"We have to talk, Jerry."

"Hey, John," I said, "great to see you. How're you doing?"

"Fine, fine," he said. "I've got something to tell you."

"Okay, good, tell me."

"I'm firing you."

I sat back and looked at him. I was infuriated, enraged. Look at this guy. Look where he was and look where he is. And now he comes here like this, not even sitting, not even talking and explaining, to tell me it's over and we are done. At such moments, I don't know why, my gut instinct is, Hey, fuck you!

"What did you say?" I asked.

"I'm firing you."

"Can you repeat that?"

"I'm firing you, Jerry."

I came out from behind the desk, came at him like you would come at someone on a basketball court. I was really hot. "Say it again," I told him. "I want to hear you say it again."

"I'm firing you."

"I don't ever want to see your face again," I told him. "Get out of my office. Who the fuck do you think you are?"

"Don't you want to know why I'm firing you?" he asked.

"I don't care why, what, where, or how," I said. "Don't ever say my name again in your lifetime; get out of here."

I threw him out. I went over to the window and stared at the hills without seeing, the blood pulsing in my face.

Later that afternoon, John's business manager called to tell me that all the things I owned with John-we were partners on every show and record-no longer belonged to me, as I had been booking his shows while also working as a producer, which was not permitted, or some such mumbo jumbo. I could hardly follow him, and I did not care. I was angry, heartbroken as well. "What's the point of this conversation?" I asked. "Just tell me what you're trying to tell me."

He said, "You don't own anything with John anymore."

I said, "I don't want to own anything with John. You can keep it all." And I hung the phone up.

I was depressed for weeks. Not about losing a client but about losing a friend, somebody to whom I had given so much of myself.

Things did not go well for John after that. RCA dropped him, his talent agency dropped him, most of the other people he worked with dropped him. I knew all of them and they understood how the operation functioned. What we created with John, the persona, the mood, simply was not real; we invented it. We were so interwoven, there was simply no way you could have Denver without Weintraub-not as John Denver had been in the seventies. It was his talent, but it was also my maneuvering. I was really his partner in everything. I did all the marketing and press. I packaged and sold him and turned him into a star. I put in a lot of my own money and all of my effort and ingenuity, because he was so talented and because I loved him. I still do. I miss him even now. When John died-in 1997, he crashed an experimental aircraft off the California coast-there was still so much left to do, to forgive and to be forgiven for, but who knows. As the poets say, death is not a period, it's an ellipsis.

John and I did not talk for years. He was just another star dimming in the glassy firmament, another face on TV. I wanted to forget him. Because he had been such a good friend, because the end had been so traumatic, because he had hurt me. I buried it and moved on. I did not see him again until 1984, in a restaurant at the Olympics in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. We exchanged polite hellos. Cordial, but cold.

"Hey, Jerry," he asked, "now do you want to hear why I fired you?"

"No, John," I told him, "I honestly don't give a fuck."

Then, finally, about ten years after that, we ran into each other again and this time, probably because so many years had gone by, we could finally talk calmly.

"Now do you want to hear why I fired you?" he asked.

"No, not really," I said, "because I don't think there can be a good reason, but if you have something you need to say, then just say it."

"Then I will tell you why I fired you," he said. "Because finally, after the death of my father and the end of my marriage, I wanted to take charge of my own life. I knew I could never do that while you were running my affairs. More than a manager and a friend, you were a father. And I had to see if I could live a life without fathers. I mean, Jerry, you ran my whole life!"

I clapped him on the shoulder and I said, "Yeah, but did I really do such a bad job of it? Was it really so terrible?"