A FRIEND IN THE MOVIES - 2016

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.

June 1, 1955 - Jamaica Plains

My Nana in Jamaica Plains 1955. A two year old in her living arms. Today is my birthday. I have been trying to resurrect ancient birthdays. Nothing early as this foto, but I can recall my sister Pam's birth on June 1, 1956. Three days after my fourth birthday. Frank and I were standing outside my Nana's house on St. Joseph's Street in JP. My father led my mother into the house. She carried a tiny baby. Pam. Frank looked at me and said, "I guess that explains why you didn't get a pony for your birthday." ps I remember the Ragman wandering JP ie Jamaica Plains on his horse-drawn wagon mournfully calling for people to bring out their rags. As if he had learned in the Plague Years "Bring out the dead." Terrifying.

October Crow Screening

Dr Neil Nepola.

Three nights ago an audience of fifty young peple showed up for the first screening of OCTOBER CROW. The crowd were mostly tgere for Brigette who is a star. But my dear friend of fifty-four years was drivinf from Staten Island. He was running late.

To stall tge impatience of the young, I regaled the audience with a tale of how Neil and I had hitchhiked across the USA in late August 1973, ending up trying to catch a ride to the East Coast on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. Scores of hippies bound for colleges across America after another Summer of Love in the Bay Area competed for a lift. Cars and vans stopped every thirty minutes to pick up a traveler. Once a math major in university I calculated our waiting time. At least a day. My first economics class at Boston College started in four days. Getting there on time looked unlikely. I only had $23. Neil, could have flown, but he hadn't wanted to abandon me.

A few hours later a crapped out Pinto driven by a frazzled mother with a young daughter crammed in a backseat packed with what looked like all their possessions stopped and asked if one of us wanted a ride to Denver. Neil shrugged and said, "You go. You have to finish college."

"Are you sure?"

Neil was leaving the States for med school in the Phillipines two weeks later.

"Yeah, I'll see you in Boston,"

I jumped in the Pinto and we drove East. Marilyn had left her husband, a dancer in the Cockettes, a transvestite dance troupe. She had a friend in Denver. I took over the wheel. Her daughter was quiet in the back. Once she fell asleep, Marilyn joined her and I drove through the night, stopping once for gas in Reno. When we reached the Bonneville Salt Flats, I stopped at a desolate rest area. Neither had anymore drive in us. Her daughter asleep in the Pinto, we crashed in my sleeping bag. That night we made hippie love. At sunrise we awoke veneered by the dead lake's brine. Hours later we showered in Little America. Later that afternoon Marilyn dropped me in Cheyenne and turned south to Denver, saying she'd meet me in Boston.

Doctor Nepola showed up a day later at my house in Bug Village.

"So?"

"Yes."

"Good, because I would have been really pissed if you hadn't."

Forever friends.

ps Marilyn showed two weeks later.

With her daughter. I thought hell yeah. Instant hippie family, except my next door neighbors called her name. They had gone to college together. Shocked she and her boyfriend Andy was there. Shocked was I when she accepted their offer to crash with them, realizing I had been cock blocked. The young audience were gobsmacked by the tale.

Last night Andy's son was in attendance.

Neil was greeted with a standing O.

A small word and a long life.

ps the screening was a success.

Several minutes later when I introduced Neil the audience rousing applauded as my medical saviour and legendary traveler. Then the lights dimmed and the screen filled with the image of Alex standing by a grave.

The first seconds of October Crow.

Seventy nine minutes to go.

ps everyone loved the movie. Even Doctor Nepola. Then again what was there not to like.

BLOOD AND MUSCLES @ CBGBs – 1978

1978
CBGBs.
A rough Bowery bar.
The Hell's Angels home
Away from the clubhouse
No one challenged their claim
To the punk rock venue.
The Angels scared off other asshole bikers
Although not every night.
The Cramps
From Memphis
First show in NYC
A packed house
Garage rock fans and some Jersey bikers.
Rocking,
As if the world was diving
Into the sun tomorrow.
Rocking
I Was a Teenage Werewolf, Strychnine, The Way I Walk.
My hillbilly girlfriend hip-shimmying
Like a drunk cheerleader.
I so loved her.
A hillbilly Alice was
Baptized by moonshine
In West Virginia
Her home
Not far from the coal-mining hollows.
She was as hillbilly
As hillbilly gets in New York
She loved the Cramps.
During the encore
Two Jersey biker chicks jumped the stage
Obviously go-go dancers
James Chance, a man of danger,
Joined the two tramps
Fondling their stripper breasts.
Their boyfriends in the front row.
The saxist stuck out his tongue.
The girls thought him funny.
Not so the bikers.
They jumped onto the stage.
Chance was skin and bones
Versus
The bikers’ motrocycle muscle.
A solid right on Chance's nose.
Blood spurt onto his dirty white shirt
A B-movie actor
The star of BLANK GENERATION
Eric Mitchell.
Onto the stage
The half-Pawnee stepped between the bikers and Chance.
The band played another chorus of Surfing Bird.
Alice grabbed my arm.
"Not your fight."
The biker looped a slow overhead right.
His fist impacted on the actor’s nose.
Bone on bone.
A crack louder than Surfing Bird
Blood splattered everywhere.
Eric somehow did not go down
After all he was half-Pawnee
They left without a struggle.
The 6-6 doorman
A punk version of the Addams Family’s Lurch.
Even the Angels feared Merv.
The next night Eric entered the bar with a black eye.
Chance sported a double badge of honor.
That night the two
Everyone’s darlings,
Because at CBGBS
There was never any shame in losing.

May 12, 1978 - East Village - Journal

Last night I drank a lot of bourbon waiting for Ro to show and accompany me to my friend's art opening. Thankfully Mike Selbach was there with his wife. Cheryl kept ribbing me, as if she wanted to see my cruel side. Mike had enough of this at hime and went o get beers at the bar. The lanky blonde leaned over and said, "I bet that you can't say anything they will hurt me."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes." She smiled, hiding her crooked bottom teeth, but everyone has a flaw, even Cheryl so confident of her beauty. Model thin, emerald green eyes. The teeth were her only flaw, but I said, "You're as flat as an altar boy."

She laughed once. I had hit the nail on the head. I could have gone on. It was obvious she was a masochist. Silent, she smirked and said, "You're all talk."

She joined Mike at the bar.

I know Michael a couple of years. He had worked with Ro at David's Potbelly on Christopher Street. A late-night gay eaterie. Mike had been the cook. I sat in the alley eating omelettes. He was a good man and I like his dog, a mutt called Merlin. Mike saw me and tapped his watch. I shrugged. Ro was late. So were we. At David Mills on Bleecker Street I decided I like Mike's sculpture. I couldn't see anyone else in them. Cheryl brushed against me as a tease. I left without saying goodbye.

When I returned to CBGBs, the Sic Fucks were on stage, playing 'Take Me To The Bridge. Russell Wollinsky singing with Snooky and Tish as slutty back-ups. I can't understand a single word outside the chorus, but I love them. 100% punk, unlike the uncool Talking Heads.

Gerard Pas was playing Pinball with Roxy. She hasn't been here for months. I heard she was a groupie for some stadium band. She looked healthy and not on drugs. She asked for astrological love advice with a Scorpio. I had no idea how to help her and said, "Do what you think is best."

Home Alone no man

Later

Yesterday I went up to the Upper East Side what a shithole. Rich clean, luxury. I never want to go up there again and I told Anthony Scibelli how Tim Dunleavy accused me a stealing from him.

"I haven't been in your apartment, since the blackout."

"It was probably Andy Reese. He has a drug problem. So does Frank."

The two ex-ballet dancers tricked out of Cowboys on East 53rd. I liked them. They had introduced me to Alice., but this information meant keeping my distance. Leaving I stopped into Serendipity 3. Big Bird, William Lively, and all the other boys cooed hellos. Mr. Bruce the owner, said, "You are so rough trade."

A flaming queen. I so love him. He protects the boys. Jancy Stephenson wasn't in the upstairs store. I left at her birthday party with Alice adn her lesbo girlfriend. That must have hurt.

I was a bad man

I ran into Andy Reese outside the Subway Inn. He didn't look like a coke fiend. Glancing across the street he said, "You are always talking about destroying the Upper East Side. Sure, great idea. Two months later there'll be a Bloomingdale's in Union Square. Bigger and taller and blocking out the Ed Watchtower and then it would be the Chic Lower East Side. I'll keep the Slime up here. We'll keep the village for ourselves."

I went to a disco party at Les Mouches. Marc Stevens was wearing only a jock strap. He wanted coke. "Two truckloads to get me hard."

Mr 10 and a half was never hard. Too much coke.

Kim wanted to get him some coke. She want to see his cock hard. Everyone does. It's his best talent, otherwise it's kind of dumb, But he's famous and with good reason I would hate to see what would happen to him it wasn't big

Who else can I slam?

Ro finally showed at CBGBs. She had been at work. I escorted her to the party but I didn't stay as they had been fairly lame and they were too many lesbians who clocked me for not being queer. Lesbians have the worst time of it, because straight men keep on saying oh I want to watch two chicks and I want to be with two chicks or I'm a lesbian too. I don't want to say I want to see two guys fucking my ass, because they really don't like macho.

Later

Alice's grandmother died last night. Off for West Virginia for the funeral. My Nana dead since 1968. My grandmother Edith 1972. I never met any either of my grandfathers, except as photos. Both dead in their their late fifties or sixties. I hope my father lives forever. My great-aunt Bert lived to be 103 and sailed around the world with her father hunting whales off Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. I can deal with the idea of dying

Although most male egos can't deal with a threat of death, of not having achieved anything. They want to die in a blaze of glory or in a car crash. Live fast die fast, I want to piss off everybody by never dying. I'll settle into the old age, although it might be hard to take the loss of memory, I'll always have my soul

Later

Alice is leaving for Charleston with a heavy heart. "I've cried all morning and I'm crying now. It could have been worse, but I've been working so hard."

She has been crying in her sleep, when she doesn't have nightmares.

Gerard Pas invited me to a party and he explained that his leg was fucked up because of polio. It doesn't bother me, but I knew a girl in Boston. Peggy had a withered leg. Polio as a child. She went to an all-girls high school. One afternoon I saw her crying on Dot Avenue. I asked, "What's wrong?"

"Nobody will take me to the prom."

"I will why didn't you invite me."

"I didn't think you'd accept but take me.

"Hell yeah. Let's go." She was so happy and we had a good time. Peggy was a good dancer.

. Death death death rips through relatives and friends. I never go to the doctor. The only time I've been to the hospital was birth. I feel like I can live forever, but I'm delusional. Fine one second. The next a piano drops on your head. Flash life gone. Flash lying on the sidewalk. Flash blood breaking through a pavement to drowned the land

. Mort death tote. Our final destination We are not Jesus We are not Lazarus We do not rise from the dead And the dead Do not dream But before dead We can go to Spain Mexico Hawaii Cuba France England Asia When we live we live When we die we still live But not in this now And death chooses everyone The Good the Bad and the in-between. Okay

Oysters On The Hudson

Every summer the Lenape traveled with the seaward tide to harvest the oysters from the Muhheakantuck or the River that flows both ways. The middens of discard shells created large mounds and the Dutch named a path Pearl Street for the luminous nacres. PS the name Manhattan means "place of inebriation.

Judy Nylon wrote The story of oysters is their indispensable role in nurturing our coastal ecosystems. "The Billion Oyster Project" and the powerful non-profit, Everglades Foundation, who are set up for conservation insights, should of course include input from Muscogee Nation of Florida on water ecosystems. The oral history of the local tribe, caretaking, saved the Everglades when it was almost destroyed in the 1960s (when I lived there). In the frame of 'ocean preservation 'science and tribal experience are not oppositional. OYSTERS clean the water networks.

Hong Kong Gone

The Luk Kwok Hotel in Wan Chai was the inspiration for the setting of THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG.

The fictional Nam Kok Hotel was a sailors' brothel at which the film's hero, Robert Lomax, decided to stay and paint the neighborhood and the women of the downstairs bar.

The artist met Mee Ling on the Star Ferry.

She accused him of robbing her purse.

At the Nam Kok Hotel bar as Suzie Wong.

Suzie danced with any man for a drink.

She slept with them for money.

Some of them fell in love.

William Holden's character was one of them.

Happiness was not easy to find in Wan Chai.

It was a game for Suzie. She never lost.

This was Hong Kong.

It is gone now.

Like everywhere else.