Easy Street (The Hard Way) A Memoir Page 14

  After Scotland we went to Nairobi. The location was a two-and-a-half-hour drive from the nearest anything, right in the middle of Tsavo National Park. It wasn’t until we arrived there that we were told there were no telephones—hell, the computer hadn’t been invented yet, nor had the cell phone, so forget about worrying about a signal. There weren’t even any land lines. No telegraphs, fax machines, coke dispensers—nada! There was simply no way to communicate back to civilization. For five weeks! And they didn’t tell us that until we arrived there. So we got really paranoid that our families were going to wonder what the fuck happened to us. Anyway, we not only get through it, but Africa proved to yield the singular most unique experience of my life—spiritual even, like going back as close to the Garden of Eden as exists on this earth. And I discovered that the more intense the elements and conditions of a movie set are, the deeper the bond that forges within the family who is the cast and crew. For these are memories that remain as vivid to me as if they just occurred.

  The African section of filming took us right up to the Christmas holiday, which traditionally means that the company would break for two weeks and resume right after New Year. But in the case of this rejiggered production of Quest, our next location for the final section of filming needed to be Canada. And because it was simply too cold to shoot in Northern Ontario until at least the end of March, we were all about to disperse for around three and a half months.

  So there I was, riding on this huge crest of starring for 20th Century Fox, a major studio, in an extremely esoteric production that’s going to leave me with nothing less than some really serious bragging rights. And I was feeling good. I was on a high, and I had a few bucks in my pocket. I’m living a little bit, well, not real large, but enough to fly Opal to meet me in London and spend two weeks traveling the UK and then France.

  I’m so close with Jean-Jacques by this point that we even went to visit him and spent a couple of nights with him at his country house just outside of Paris. Opal and I have this magical vacation together. Once we were back in the States in about early February I said to her, “Fuck it. Let’s get married.”

  “What?”

  “Let’s get married, and let’s do it on Valentine’s Day, ’cuz that’s five years to the day from our first date. So it’ll be an easy anniversary to remember.”

  She said, “How does one get married on Valentine’s Day when nothing has been planned and it’s February 11?”

  “I just want to fucking elope. I just want to get the blessing of your mom and my mom, take my best pal Burton and your favorite sister or two, go up to some fucking justice of the peace, and come home, married. ’Cuz all it is, is an extension of what we’ve already been doing. We’ve metaphorically been married anyway for five years.”

  “Well, you crazy-ass motherfucker, okay, YES! Absolutely.” And so I got the Yellow Pages out for justices of the peace, and there was only one listing. It was in Spring Valley, which is just on the other side of the Tappan Zee Bridge up in Westchester County, but it was supposed to be a chapel with a scenic view of New York’s skyline.

  I called the pastor, or whatever the fuck he’s called, to book an appointment, and he said, “Well, I’m very busy on Valentine’s Day, but I can slip you in between 1:30 and 2 o’clock.” We drove up there—it’s fucking freezing. My best buddy, Burton, along with Burton’s girlfriend and Opal’s sisters, Janice and Sharon, came along to watch us get hitched. Once there, it wasn’t so glamorous or quaint; the guy simply performed services on his front lawn in this suburban neighborhood. Fuck, we coulda been in Akron.

  I said, “Not for nuthin, but didn’t it say view of the New York skyline in your ad?”

  “No, you can see it,” he said, “but you have to get on the roof, and if you hold on to the antennae and lean out as far as you can, you can actually see the skyline of New York. Trust me—it’s gorgeous!”

  Well anyway, metaphorically at least, we had this very kind of bucolic country version of this elopement that was as romantic as I possibly could have made it, given the fact that we didn’t even leave time for blood tests and all the other shit you gotta do to get a marriage license. We just made it in by the skin of our teeth so we could make the Valentine’s Day date. But at the time I was romantic enough to say that this was important: I want to do this on Valentine’s Day. What the fuck good is a holiday like that if you can’t commit to the one you love? I also like the symmetry of getting married five years to the date, like the circles I talked about. Because, shit, marriage is really a fucking big casino. It’s not for the faint of heart, and whatever good omen I could put into it, I wanted to do.

  About a month later I went up to Owen Sound in northern Ontario. It’s about a hundred miles due north of Toronto. It was a magnificent location, just a stone’s throw from Lake Ontario. The Great Lakes are like fucking oceans. Freezing my ass off, freezing my kishkes off, and shooting the beginning and the end of Quest for Fire. All of the stuff that was to depict our tribal life was to be shot at these cave locations. There was the film’s opening, during which we depicted this epic battle between our tribe and that of a warring neighbor and in which our fire is lost. And then there is the film’s end, which consists of our triumphant return, complete with fire back in its cage. And to my surprise and delight, Jean-Jacques had decided to use one of the changes at the end of the script that one time, months before, I had offered him when he was in New York before shooting began.

  The end of the movie consisted of a montage of various vignettes of our hero’s tribe now that, through the miracle of fire, life has regained its stability and has, indeed, been advanced. My suggestion to Jean-Jacques was that this little visual exploration include the sitting around the campfire and the regaling of the stories of our quest, almost as if this discovery brought with it the dawn of storytelling, as if the telling of these stories, these sagas, these adventures, were part of our DNA, thus making us more human, and that the story should be like the first fish story ever told—you know, like when you catch a four-pound fish but by the time you tell your buddies about it, that fish is sixteen pounds. Jean-Jacques included that moment in the montage, with the story being told by none other than yours truly. My mom and I were so proud!

  Literature is nothing more than the expansion of storytelling. Storytelling is obviously the impulse to chronicle something you’ve been through in order to give it its due, to have a catharsis. Like, “Holy crap, I’ve been through this experience, and it was a life-or-death experience, and I made it through, so there’s a huge amount to be learned from it. Aside from this adrenaline rush, it had to be the most instructive moment a man can have. And I absolutely need to chronicle that not only to make note of it for myself but also to assert the fact that I’ve been here, that I have done this and I have had this experience. But perhaps by chronicling it I can share this experience with the people who immediately surround me and then expand the notion of community through a shared experience, forming what is at the root of our collective consciousness.

  Tapping into this ancient collective consciousness is what drives me to perfect my passion as a filmmaker. Once I became aware of the fact that everybody’s looking for the reason we’re all here, I understood the purpose of what storytelling, literature, theater, and, thus, film is all about. The reason we’re here is to talk about what we did. And if you talk about what you did in a way in which it resonates with every other person who’s ever been here before or is ever going to be here again, no matter what their race, creed, ethnic background, ability to speak or not speak language, well, then you’ve left a mark. It resonates on such a level that it’s completely universal. That is collective consciousness, and as close as we can all come to that—that’s what we strive for in making movies. And that’s the meaning of life. It’s to know you’re not in this alone, that there are a gazillion of us who have come and gone and who feel the same things you’re feeling, and in knowing this comes solace, peace, a degree of resignation. That no ma
tter what it is I’m going through, I’m not the first one, and I’m not gonna be the last.

  Quest for Fire was released in February 1982. In its first year it grossed $20 million, a lot for the time. It got great reviews and was well received, eventually winning an Oscar for best makeup. While waiting for it to come out, I was pumped and ready for the next major project, but as was to become a pattern I could not begin to imagine, it led to nothing. Even as it was playing in theaters, with all this wonderful noise about it and with many reviewers positively mentioning my performance, I started to get this unsettling feeling. It wasn’t as if there were a dozen new caveman movies waiting to be made—where do I go from here? ’Cuz certainly the phone ain’t ringing off the hook with life-altering offers! Not only would the next few years bring about more of what I’d been through before, but now there was also an added element: I was creeping closer to the edge of this black hole, just like my brother, a hole in which only one of us was to barely make it out alive.

  (CHAPTER 10)

  Get a Real Job

  Prior to the release of Quest the buzz was great. Everyone expected the movie to do well, and 20th Century Fox was reasonably sure they had a hit on their hands, which they did, although a modest one. I believed I had just finished a dramatic touchstone in my career and certainly one that would be a life-changer for me. At long last my enduring dream, a life on “Easy Street,” was moments away from becoming a reality. The film, after all, was for a major studio. It was made by an Academy Award–winning director, with the most distinguished people on the scene, including, as I mentioned, Anthony Burgess, Desmond Morris, and Claude Agostini, the DP (director of photography), who was an award-winning camera man. The insiders were heralding my performance before the public even got a glimpse, and all this was leading up to me acquiring my first Hollywood agent, a development that only furthered my conviction that my time had finally arrived.

  Coming back to “normal” life, even if I didn’t have to deal with freezing my ass off anymore, took some adjustment. I didn’t make enough money from the role to dramatically change anything financially. I still needed to pay the rent month by month, keep the phone and electricity on, and take my new bride out to an occasional dinner, or whatever. Fuck, I had hoped something would’ve immediately emanated right then and there from the experience, but it didn’t. There was part of my ego that made it very difficult for me to square up the fact that I needed to go back to the same day job I had before I had left. Back to selling handbags and jewelry on Eighth Street and MacDougal at Burton’s place. He welcomed me, of course, but to me it was like going back to him with my tail between my legs. It was, “Yeah, I’m a movie actor but I still need a fuckin’ day gig for an hourly wage.” What ensued wasn’t a total downer because, as the months rolled closer to Quest’s release, there were more and more positive vibes coming my way, enough to make me believe that, upon premiere, new doors would fling open.

  About three months before the film came out they started showing it around at special screenings in Hollywood. One guy, a classy, brash agent by the name of Robert Littman watched it and thought this would be my breakout film. Bobby was as colorful a guy as I’ve ever met in this business. He was a British Jew who talked at the top of his voice at all times of the day and night, was a wellspring of stories, and as magnificent a natural raconteur as I had ever met (only topped by my dad and Ralph Arzoomanian). It was about eight o’clock in the evening, and I remember sitting down in my New York apartment to make myself a drink when my phone rings. I hear this guy just yelling and screaming at the top of his voice: “IS THIS RON PERLMAN?!”

  “Uh, yes it is. Who’s calling?”

  “YOU DON’T KNOW ME, BUT I’M YOUR NEXT AGENT.”

  I had to hold the phone a few inches from my ear so as to protect myself from injury. I said, “Congratulations. You couldn’t have picked a nicer guy.”

  “MY NAME IS ROBERT LITTMAN, AND I REPRESENT SIX ACTORS.”

  And I said, “Oh, I guess business is slow?”

  He finally tones down his volume: “No, I have six, I don’t need any more.”

  “Who are they, just out of curiosity?”

  “Alan Bates, James Coburn, Gene Wilder, Elizabeth Montgomery,” and he names one more icon of the day, I can’t remember who. And then there’s this awkward pause after he names the fifth one, and he says, “Oh, I forgot, my sixth one died.”

  “Sorry to hear that. Who was he?”

  “Lee J. Cobb.” And I said, “So you’re calling me because you have an opening?”

  “They told me you were funny, but I didn’t expect you to be . . . well, funny. I’m calling because I want you to sign with me. I’m coming to New York right now. Where are you?”

  “I’m in my house, in my tighty whities, pouring myself a nice cocktail.”

  “Well, I can’t get there that quickly. I’m in Hollywood.”

  He flew in the next day, and we went out for dinner at some fancy place with a lot of showbiz people at the other tables. I could see from the moment we entered the joint that the guy knew everybody and everybody knew him. He was definitely seriously connected to all of my heroes and icons, and on a first-name basis. So I took the bit and worked out an arrangement with Pat and Shirley for them to be my New York agents while Littman would represent me in Hollywood. He told me I would need to come out to Hollywood so he could introduce me around so as to start building the myth. Once he was back in LA he’d call and ask when I was coming out so he could work his magic. I wanted to go, but I was reticent because . . . well, I didn’t have any fuckin’ money. I didn’t have the extra cash I needed to pay for the plane ticket or a hotel room.

  “Yeah, I’ll be out there,” and I kept putting it off, and putting it off.

  Eventually the official press tour for the film happened. We did talk shows; we did the LA Times, New York Times, CBS Evening News; we did Letterman (this was when he had his original show on NBC after Carson). We’re doing all kinds of press, and we’re going from place to place in limousines. That’s the first time I’d ever been in a limousine in my life. When they sent us out to the West Coast for a week or so I met up with Littman, and he brought me to parties hosted or attended by celebrities every night. I was at Jimmy Caan’s house one night, Alan Ladd Jr.’s house the next night. I’m just partying with nothing but people who keep my mouth agape for the entire seven days I was there. At the time there was an executive chef at a place called Spago, which was kind of like this parking lot they had converted to a restaurant, and it became the quintessential Hollywood hangout. I was eating lunch every day there, doing press interviews from there. Orson Welles was coming and going, Kirk Douglas was coming and going, and Jack Lemmon was coming and going. I mean, I suddenly felt as though the Earth had shifted under my feet, and . . . well, I’m for sure not in Kansas anymore, Toto. I was buying into what everyone was telling me: I was surely among this next wave of the new celebrated generation of actors.

  That was where my head was at opening night. But as the weeks went by I slowly began to see that all of it was leading to nothing: no calls, no roles, no offers. This crescendo is quickly followed by the blackest hole I’ve ever been in. I began to seriously wonder what was in store for me. Clearly, cause and effect meant nothing. If you do A, B, C, and D in the movie industry, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to lead to E, F, G, and H. Whereas maybe in other industries it would, but this particular business there are other forces at work. In reality, even as I sat in a theater one night a few weeks later and watched the film once again by myself, I came to understand that Quest was a one-off. My performance was the creation of a very, very esoteric, specific kind of behavior, completely covered up by makeup and costume, such that the acting never even showed through physically, much less emotionally. It was a very abstract performance. There was no real set of clues left behind. No forensics blurting forth, “This is the guy, and we know exactly who the fuck he is and what the fuck he’s gonna do to set
Hollywood on its ass.”

  In short, I had been on the highest waves of expectation that a man could possibly be on that my life was going to change completely, patently, and for all time because I was a part of this amazing achievement, because, as I was being told, of my personal contribution to the film’s success. “Your life is gonna fucking change, dude. You’re about to become a movie star, son. You’re gonna be rich, you’re gonna be famous.” Full stop! This is what I was told—actual fucking words that came out of people’s fucking lips, not mine. And then . . .

  When I left the theater that night it was as if I had become possessed by some dark force, almost like a del Torian demon spirit had suddenly taken over my mind. Everything began to seem pointless. Opal tried to cushion the blow by telling me something else would come, but this depression was so personal and so profound that I was immune to consolation, and to this day neither Opal nor, indeed, any living person knows how far I fell and to what degree. What I am about to describe has never been told. And it all happened while fucking Quest for Fire was still in the fucking theaters.

  What I’m telling you is that for a kid who came from the background that I came from, who had nothing, who never had any reason to really imagine that he would ever be able to depart dramatically from the die that was originally cast on the whole Perlman thing—to have this in front of me, dangling this carrot, it was seductive. It played tricks with my mind, and I began to buy into the belief that I’m going to wake up and my life is going to be different. I was going to be living in a fucking penthouse and fielding phone calls from agents, producers—hell, studio heads. I was going to be choosing what fucking movie I was gonna be doing next. I was gonna be deciding whether I want to work with the Bette Davises of the day. More importantly, I was going to be able to finally do something significant with my acting—to create and contribute whatever I could to our culture. I was gonna make a difference, a mark. There was all kinds of fucking weird shit rollin’ around in my noggin. The fact of the matter is, nothing happened. I mean, Nothing, with a capital Nuth. The silence was profound. And deafening. And devastating!