My hillbilly girlfriend and I moved to the East Village in 1978. The twenty-two year-old blonde actress came from West Virginia and I hailed from New England. Alice was in the theater like Bill, our upstairs neighbor. I wrote poetry. One day Bill announced that he had been cast in a western called HEAVEN'S GATE.
"A small role."
"Better than no role."
I was happy for Bill and wished him luck.
Michael Cimino's tale of the West was based on the 1982 Johnson County War. The epic film sprawled across the silver screen. Viewing the momumental flop, I tried to spot Bill. I didn't see his face once and he later told me, "My scenes ended up on the floor, but I have another gig."
"As what?"
"As a biker."
"A biker?" I loved motorcycles, even though I had only driven a Vespa once down to Tony's Fried Clams on Wollaston Beach.
"Yeah, down in Georgia."
"EASY RIDER country."
Billy and Captain America from Dennis Hopper's road movie had ended up badly in Dixie.
"Ill be fine, plus EAST RIDER was just a movie."
"And life stranger than fiction.
Bill starred as Vince in THE LOVELESS directed by Katherine BIgelow..
I like it a lot.
Alice and I broke up in 1979.
In 1983 she was cast as a hapless victim opposite David Bowie's vampire in THE HUNGER. Bill was also in the movie. She died in the first scene and I once more hadn't spotted Bill's face from the first frame to the last..
I saw the movie in Paris, where I worked as a doorman at a nightclub.
New York wasn't my city that decade.
A year later Bill played an evil biker in STREETS OF FIRE.
I had a 150cc Vespa scooter in Paris.
I wasn't a biker, but I was an outlaw in many ways.
STREETS OF FIRE remains my older brother's favorite film and Frunk is a lawyer.
Bill had a feel for outlaw roles.
Over the next few years he played an LA counterfeiter, a Viet-Nam War sergeant, a military investigator in Sai-Gon, the Messiah, a Concentration Camp boxer, and a Viet-Nam War cripple.
"You died three times. How did that feel?" I asked on his passage through Paris between films.
"Not so bad, plus I rose from the dead in the Jesus one."
"Only to be crucified again."
"Never felt a thing." He showed me his hands.
In the 1990s I quit the nightlife and worked selling diamonds on Manhattan's West 47th Street.
The Shabbas Goy, but I was really a sheygutz to the Hassidim.
A shifty gentile.
Bill and I didn't see each other too much.
He had a wife, a kid, a career on screen and the stage.
Bill had acted in twenty-one movies during that decade. VICTORY a tale from Joseph Conrad had been shot in Java. Each year I spent six months in the Orient writing novels. I lived all over Indonesia from the far East in Irian Jaya to Banda Aceh at the western tip of Sumatra. I had hoped to run into Bill out there, but our paths didn't cross, until we met in Maine 1995.
My family came from outside Portland. Falmouth Foresides. My grandfather and his friends had dammed a stream to create Watchic Pond. To the north on Route 11 Bill had a camp on a Thompson Lake, which was much bigger than Watchic Pond. His wife had spent her childhood summers at their camp. A big camp for kids. She wasn't from Maine, but like all summer people she loved the Pine Tree State. After dinner Bill and I went fishing at night. He had grown up on the Great Lakes. this was my first time fishing. He fished for bass nin the darkness and I drank Gansetts. We didn't speak much. Even I knew talking wasn't good for the fish. In the silence I realized we had been friends a long time. I said nothing and the next day drove up to Washington County, the last place created by God according to my Aunt Jane, no destination in mind.
In 2000 Bill was nominated a second time for an Oscar. He had nailed the role of Nosferatu in SHADOW OF A VAMPIRE. The stench of the grave wafted through the cinema whenever he was on the screen. He was a presence unlike HEAEN'S GATE, but he onfinished out of the running at the Academy Awards ceremony.
I watched the show from Thailand. My girlfriend Porn had won Worst Girlfriend of the Year in Pattaya and I thought Bill and her looked the same, even if he had been bald in the movie.
Later that year I escaped her vampire hold, but only just.
After 9/11 I left the USA. Thailand became my home. I had a baby with Nu. We lived along the Gulf of Siam and I ran a fake F1 merchandise website, which was # 1 in Google and this was not a good thing. I drive a 400cc Honda. It was plenty fast.
Bill came out there with his new wife to judge a Bangkok film festival. She was sweet. Bill knew how to make a scary face. He scared my daughter.
After all he had been a vampire.
I was scary other ways.
Bill never asked how.
Bill made even more films in the 00s. He was praised as 'the actors' actor'. I didn't see much of his work. Thailand had its own cinema; ghosts, soap operas, and slapstick comedies.
They liked things simple like the laughter scene in SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS.
The Thai cyper-Police arrested me in 2008.
For the crime of copyright infringement.
Ferrari had hoped for me to do time in the monkey house.
The Thai court fined me $100.
In their eyes I was a good farang.
Bill was no criminal.
He spoke with directors, cameramen, soundpeople, and everyone else in that industry and they loved him for being Bill.
I drove a 1970 400cc Yamaha. It had no papers. In Thailand that wasn't a crime.
My first wife left me. I found someone else. We had a baby too.
I had two families now.
That April I flew back to the States.
Bill invited me to a premiere at Lincoln Center.
I was exhausted by the trans-oceanic flight. I slept through the entire film.
It was a good film for me. I like sleeping and only bad films wake me.
I liked sleep almost as much as motorcycles.
Work was getting scarce after the Crash.
Bill was in a bunch of films.
Some of them I liked.
I loved THE HUNTER and said, "It's the first time I've ever seen you in a film."
"Really?"
"Yes."
At least he didn't ask how, but we are old friends.
Never on the screen.
Never on the stage.
Just in real life.
Bill's a grandfather now.
Seems like only twenty years ago that his son was young in Maine.
And my family is ever bigger, because at the end of the day or night family matters.
It's the way of the world, both here and everywhere.
One more small thing.
Bill looks good in a cowboy hat.
But so does everyone else.
Especially when you have friends in the movies.
