Instead of a reception we had a party at Donnelly’s house. A cute friend of Christine’s that I’d always had a crush on was there. Caring for Justine had brought a level of restraint to my drug and alcohol consumption, but now that she was gone the party was back on. So when we ran out of blow, I went for a drive with Christine’s friend to find some more, still wearing my wedding dress. We ended up buying some from a pack of young guys, did some lines with them and then drove back to the house party. When we got back no one had noticed our absence, so we snuck into the bathroom with the blow and started making out.
At the beginning of a marriage you’re filled with hope and optimism, and you can’t see the cards fate will deal you. It turned out that my cards were bad, but Gary got a worse hand. Within ten years he would die in mysterious circumstances, sparking a series of conspiracy theories and investigations that continues to this day.
I remember Gary saying to me, “Isn’t it funny that we’re married? You’re not my type at all. I like leggy blondes with big tits.”
Prior to me, Gary had had a long list of lovers including Season Hubley (Kurt Russell’s ex-wife), the producer and notorious cocaine addict Julia Phillips, and Priscilla Barnes, who’d played nurse Terri Alden in
Gary’s writer’s block started the same day a seven-figure IRS bill arrived in the mail, courtesy of another ex- lover, Maria Cole, Nat King Cole’s widow. When Gary was married to her he’d made the incredibly stupid decision to cosign some tax papers, which put him on the hook for millions of dollars of tax debt.
The only way for him to clear the debt was by writing more big-budget scripts, but the creativity needed to accomplish that was smothered by the depression that settled over him. He’d stare for hours at a blank monitor, type a few lines, and then delete them in frustration. I’d try to do nice things for him to cheer him up, but when he was in those moods he was an inconsolable asshole. After I got my head bitten off I stopped trying and would just leave him to stew until he came out of it on his own.
I pushed Gary to take antidepressants, but he gave up after a few weeks, claiming that he didn’t want to be addicted to anything. I switched tactics and suggested that we try ecstasy. He got some from Julia Phillips, I think, and it was really high-grade stuff. We made love and talked and cried. It was wonderful. On Monday morning he was back to being an asshole. Unfortunately, you can’t take ecstasy every day of your life.
Despite our money trouble and the stress that came with it, we did have our happy times, especially during our first year together. When the writing was going well and it looked like he might sell a script Gary would revert to the exciting, outgoing guy I’d married.
It was during one of these periods of relative marital calm that other turbulent relationships in my life would come to the fore.
One friend would betray my trust, while another bond that I thought was lost forever would be redeemed.
My relationship with Lana had always been a problematic one. After her performance at my wedding, which had all but ended my relationship with my friend Christine, Lana set her sights on Gary. I don’t know whether it was because she was still bitter about the wedding or whether she just wanted what I had, but when we’d attend the same parties she’d sidle on up to Gary and start flirting. Despite the fact that Lana was the leggy, blond, big-titted type, Gary was a faithful partner and when she didn’t take the repeated hints that he wasn’t interested, he told me.
For me, it was the last straw. I’d taken her to the South of France, let her live in my house rent-free, and loaned her thousands of dollars that she had never repaid. We’d starred in the same kinds of TV shows, we’d started out in our careers together, but Lana’s optimism, her dreams that she would make it as a big-time actress, hadn’t materialized to the point that she was self-sufficient. She was always relying on friends to prop her up. I told her to get lost. We stopped speaking.
The next time I saw Lana was at her funeral.
I’d heard that Lana was struggling. She’d broken both her wrists while entertaining at a children’s party, had been fighting an addiction to booze and painkillers, and was struggling to keep her apartment in Venice Beach. Worst of all, she’d turned forty. As far as Hollywood is concerned, the day a woman turns forty, she is magically transformed into Methuselah and is suddenly unemployable.
On February 3, 2003, after working a shift as a hostess at the House of Blues, Lana went home with Phil Spector, the intense, weasely-looking guy who’d produced records for a host of famous artists and bands: from early R&B groups like the Ronettes, the Crystals, and the Righteous Brothers to the Beatles, John Lennon, Tina Turner, the Ramones, and Leonard Cohen. In addition to being a total fucking nutcase Spector had a history of drink and drug problems as well as a penchant for guns. He’d previously threatened five women at gunpoint—Lana was the sixth.
He shot Lana with an unregistered blue-steel .38-caliber Colt revolver. When the police carried Lana’s body out of Pyrenees Castle (Spector’s mansion in Alhambra, California), they took with them Spector’s nine other guns, fragments of Lana’s teeth and fingernails, her leopard-print purse, and her false eyelashes.
At the time of arrest Spector was on seven different prescription drugs.
It was a horrible way to go. Even worse, the fame that she had sought in life found her in death, though not in a form that she would have hoped for.
Her name, her clips, and her photos were screened on news and entertainment programs around the world. They referred to her as a B movie actress, and instead of vilifying Spector, they cheapened her. Leaked photos of her dead body appeared on the Internet. HBO began developing a film about Spector’s prosecution that is being filmed at this writing, scripted and directed by David Mamet and starring Al Pacino as Spector and Helen Mirren as the prosecutor.
It’s like
Now for the redemption story.
Not long after I had my falling out with Lana, I was following the Gulf War on TV with Gary when I had a sort of psychic flash. I had an overwhelming urge to go to Hamlet Gardens, the upmarket spinoff of the Hamburger Hamlet restaurant chain.
Gary tagged along with me, somewhat bemused. We stood in the lobby for ten minutes.
“You still haven’t told me what this is all about. Why are we standing around like a couple of chumps? I should be home working on my script.”
“Just stand here with me. Wait with me.”
I could feel that something was going to happen. Spiritual currents run through my family; we’re an intuitive bunch, especially the women on my mother’s side.
After Patrick’s death, my mom and I would sometimes see him hovering above our beds. She’d see him as a little boy, I’d see him at the age he was when he died.
And when I was seventeen and moving up to L.A. for the first time, I had a bad accident, and the family gift reared its head again. I was in the fast lane on the 101 when some Mexican guys in a van pulled up beside me and started catcalling in a mix of Spanish and English. My family had spent a little time at my grandfather’s house in Cuernavaca, Mexico after Patrick’s death, and my brothers and I would go and hang out with the local kids. We learned how to sell iguanas on the roadside to make pocket money, along with the most important words in any
