Babylon Confidential

as well. He was much younger than I, and when we’d go toe to toe at clubs and parties I’d always come off much worse the next morning.

When it became clear that Taylor wasn’t making any effort to find work I decided that I wasn’t going to keep on supporting his new career as a houseboy and drinking buddy, so I sent him on his way.

I didn’t need a partner, my face was fixed, I had the house of my dreams, and I’d put my darkness behind me. The monster’s power play had failed, and she had been kicked out of the driver’s seat, demoted back to passenger status. What I didn’t realize was that the monster was in it for the long haul. She hadn’t disappeared, only retreated as a tactical gambit. She’d given up the battle with the idea of winning the war. The incident with Lucy had nearly sent me so far under that I hadn’t been able to surface in time, but the good news about my facial reconstruction had been like a life preserver, allowing me to pull myself back up to the surface. But now, with every single sip, neurological pathways were beginning to form, and before long those pathways would become an eight- lane expressway. Alcohol addiction is a learned behavior, and the lesson I’d learned was to turn to the bottle when things got tough.

And so the monster sat, and she waited and watched. She waited for another dark wave, one that would wash over me and send me so far under that I’d never be able to get back up for air in time. She’d be waiting for me, down in the darkness, when my strength ran out.

The monster knew me better than I knew myself. She saw the extreme ebb and flow of my life, the pattern formed by my genetics and my circumstances and my personal choices. She knew she wouldn’t have to wait long.

11. WHITE BUFFALO MEDICINE

The White Buffalo was a script I’d written in 1996. My career was then on the rise with Babylon 5, and I was creatively charged. One night I’d read an article about Miracle, the first white buffalo to be born since 1933. When I went to bed, I had very vivid dreams and woke up at 2 a.m. with the whole story worked out in my mind. I’d never written a script before, but I’d worked on them from the other side of the fence for so long that I had some sense of storytelling and knew how to format the thing to make it look right. Inspired, I wrote the story out in under a week in short, intense bursts.

The Lakota have a legend about the White Buffalo Calf Woman. To them, she is a prophet or even a messiah. And they believe that when a white buffalo is born, it’s strong medicine—a sign from Mother Earth and the universe that things will change, that powerful magic is in the air.

And by 2002, that’s exactly what I needed. On some level I could sense that I was walking a tightrope. Beneath me was my monster, constantly probing me for weaknesses and calling out for me to slip. I was wary but not frightened, because I was going to keep putting one foot in front of the other until I reached the other side. Waiting there for me was The White Buffalo. I’d spent seven years working on it, tinkering with the script, schlepping it around trying to drum up interest, and all of a sudden it started gathering momentum. I could see it, just in front of me, beyond my reach but clearly visible—the story closest to my heart completely produced and projected onto a forty-foot screen.

It’s a sweet family movie about a young boy whose parents get divorced. His father goes off with a new partner. His mother travels to India to “find herself,” and dumps the kid on a ranch with an uncle he’s never met. A white buffalo is born, and Native Americans from around the area gather at the ranch. They dance and pray and hang medicine bundles on the fence. The bank is about to foreclose on the ranch, and a conflict arises between the uncle, who wants to sell the buffalo; the kid, who forms a bond with it; the Indians, who want to claim it as a sacred symbol; and some Hollywood investors who want to turn it into a circus attraction.

The project was my baby. I’d been growing it for seven years, and now I knew the time was right. I was going to bring this thing into the world and make it live. The White Buffalo was hope, and it kept me moving forward and positive.

I showed the script to my Hollywood friends, and everyone who read it loved it. I was convinced that it would get made. I just needed backing of some kind to get the ball rolling. You know what they say, ask and ye shall receive. Well I did ask and the money came, but it was in a most disgusting and unexpected way.

* * *

I was doing this piece-of-shit movie called Nightmare Boulevard (also released as Quiet Kill), and I’m telling you, it was aptly titled. I was starring with Corbin Bernsen and Ron “Hellboy” Perlman, and the whole thing was financed by this sleazy-looking Chicago car dealer with hair plugs who’d decided he was an actor. I played Corbin’s wife, and the story was that I’d become bored with him and started having an affair with my tennis coach, who was played by (surprise, surprise) the Chicago car dealer.

The nightmare began with the bedroom scene I was in with Mr. L.A. Law. I was wearing pajamas, and he was wearing boxers. It wasn’t a sex scene—the movie didn’t have any. We were just sitting up in bed while the crew set up the lighting, the budget being too tiny for anything as glamorous as stand- ins. Then, right out of the blue and in front of everyone, Corbin leans over and grabs one of my breasts and says, “Oh, they’re real.” Then he reaches under the sheets, into his boxers, and pulls out a hand covered in sticky, white goo and holds it up in front of my face.

“Oh my god!” I reeled back. I was in total shock.

He grinned and said, “See what us stars can get away with?”

So the guy with one of the world’s biggest snow globe collections (yes, you read that right) turns out to be a total, masturbating misogynist.

I jumped out of bed, yelled at Corbin, then at the producers, and then I quit. The producers came running after me as I was leaving the set, my bags in hand. I gritted my teeth, readying myself for a fight. Honestly, what was there to say? There were thirty people on the set when it happened—they didn’t have a leg to stand on. But it turned out they didn’t want a fight.

“What do you want? Just name it. We want to make this up to you. We want to keep you on this movie.”

It turned out that they were almost as mortified as I was about what had happened. They didn’t want word getting around about what had happened on their set. I’ve never had a producer offer me carte blanche before or since, so I didn’t miss a beat in replying.

“You’re going to have to option my next film. It’s called The White Buffalo.”

So I walked out of Nightmare Boulevard with a movie deal and some up-front cash, and if you ever wanted proof that there’s such a thing as instant karma, Corbin Bernsen walked off the set at the end of that day only to discover that his brand-new BMW had been totally vandalized. The windows were smashed in, the hood and side panels dented beyond repair. I was pleasantly surprised. I guess stars can’t get away with as much as they’d like to think they can.

* * *

Not long after that, my friend Hilary Saltzman read the script and decided to help produce the movie. I was set to direct it. I’d written the male lead for Sam Elliott and then shown it to Bruce Boxleitner, who’s a big fan of Westerns. We’d done table readings and castings, we’d gone to the Disney ranch to scout locations, and we had a crew. I was still on good terms with John Flinn, my lover during Babylon 5, and he was going to be the director of photography. Treat Williams had read the script and liked it; it was underway.

Hilary was doing a great job. She even found somebody who knew the Native American keeper of the white buffaloes. By that time two more had been born, and these were very special. They neither shed their coats nor changed color as they got older. They were the real deal, and they’d been shipped to a secret location in Santa Ynez so they wouldn’t be killed. While the white buffalo is a sacred symbol of hope to the Lakota, people are people, and for a very few the white buffalo seems a form of medicine so powerful that they’d kill the animal to possess it.

What I’m going to tell you next really happened, I bullshit you not. If I had been alone I’d have had doubts, but there were three of us—myself, Hilary, and Alan, who was one of the other producers.

We drove to Santa Ynez and pulled up at a fenced-in pen. There was a partly Native American guy waiting