Evans - The Fat Lady Sang

For

Jackson Saint Evans.

Welcome to the family.

CONTENTS

His name, Graydon Carter. Head honcho of Vanity Fair and the epitome of style throughout the world, putting his entire being into resurrecting filmlands highly controversial bandito.

Reciprocity? Never a factor. There was nothing I could ever offer him in return.

What allured him to the tale of my bizarre trek? Was it a shared irreverence for the rules of the game? Doubt it! Whatever it was, his embrace never ceased to boggle my mind.

It was New Years Eve, 2004. St. Barths at its glamorous best. More than two hundred international luminaries partied away on Ron Perelmans ocean liner, worthy of a sultan. As midnight approached, my eye caught the silhouette of the man whose presence in my life caused me to be there that evening. There, with his back to me, leaning on the rail, watching the fireworks as they lit up the sky, was Graydon... alone. I walked over toward him, and, though I knew he couldnt see me, I heard him utter:

I know your footsteps by heart, Evans. Remember the night of The Kids premiere at the Odeon, in Leicester Square? I told the audience, Ive spent so much time researching this man that, when I die, Robert Evanss life will pass before my eyes.

I remember it well, Graydon, I said. But here was my chance to ask him what Id been asking myself for years: Why me?

With a wide New Years Eve grin: Because I love ya, Kid.

Date: May 6, 1998

Place: 1033 Woodland Drive, Beverly Hills

Time: 8:06 P.M.

W es Craven has just arrived, Mr. Evans, whispered my major domo through the intercom. Shall I escort him to the projection room?

Try to stall him. Im running late. Give him the A tour of the houseanything. Im on the phone with my fucking agent. There are three offers for the book and hes pressing me to take one of them. Hes got the wrong authorI dont like any of em. Im holding aces, not deuces. And if he doesnt agree, its divorce time. Get me on an eight oclock flight to New York tomorrow morning.

I made my entrance into the projection room, where dinner was to be serveda full half hour late. Perfect way to start with the wrong foot forward.

There awaiting me was the King of Scream himself, Wes Craven. Bellinis were served. Apologizing for my late arrival, I lifted my glass and made a toast to my guest.

To you, Wes, one of the few directors in town who is an above-the-title star. Welcome to Woodland.

A bolt of lightning shot through my body. Like a pyramid of wooden matchsticks, I crumbled to the floor.

I was dying.

Lying flat, my head facing the ceiling, I wasnt scared at all. Not in pain. No, I was smiling. In the distance, Ella Fitzgerald echoed: Its a Wonderful World.

Wes stood over me, ashen. The King of Scream? He was scared shitless. As he bent down to my motionless body, my eyes opened. Told you, Wes, I slurred in his ear. It aint ever dull around here. Then I passed out.

It was only a matter of minutes before I was awakened by a barrage of paramedics. With my blood pressure hitting the lottery, 287 over 140, I knew this wasnt fly me to the moon time. Rather, it was looking like fly me to Heaven .

In the ambulance, one of the attendants screamed to the driver: That traffics gotta move to the side! Put the goddamn sirens on! If we dont get to Cedars ASAP, we got a DOA on our hands.

The multicolored flashing light began blasting away. Moments ago I had heard the fat lady sing. Now, strapped to the ambulance stretcher, I was mesmerized by that flashing light. Through it, I saw the white light zoom toward the sky.

Im on my way, I thought. At last Ive achieved what Ive been looking for all my life: Peace of Mind.

Hours later, I awakened. Was I in Heaven? No. I was only half right. I did not die. I was reborn. Not Robert Evans, rather Quasimodo, the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

The hours that followed were ER at its best. Hallucinogenic, certainly. I knew that Robert Evanss life, as it had been, was one of the past. White coats by the droves came and went. I was totally immobile, a statue on a marble slab. Not a smile graced a face. It was only a matter of time.

Suddenly, the scan graphs surrounding my cot started oscillating.

A second stroke attacked my brain.

Most think, Why did this have to happen to me?

Not me! I was thinking, Why didnt this happen to me sooner?

Like a shot out of Hell, my mind flashed back almost a half century, to the day.

I was not in Cedars in Los Angeles, but rather at St. Marys Hospital in West Palm Beach, Florida, a scrappy, hell-bent kid actor not yet touching his eighteenth birthday. This was no bad dream, but a living nightmare coming back to haunt me.

At that moment, in May 1998, I was lying supine, eyes to the ceiling, in the exact position Id been fifty years earlier, in May 1948.

I t was life-or-death time. My left lung had collapsed. Medically termed a spontaneous pneumothorax, what Id experienced was not a disease of the lung, rather a freak occurrence, caused from overstraining the outer pleura of the lung tissue. A bubble bursts, andlike a balloonso does the lung. Invariably, its tagged to young Olympians, zealously overtraining in hopes of bringing home the gold.

Mine, too, popped from overtraining. Not for the Olympics, but for every vice I could manage, from gambling to broads. I was on full-blast overtrain! The doctors told my parents that without oxygen professional-style, my lights would have gone out for good. There I was, copping my first part in flicks, and my fuckin lung popsfrom fuckin! Instead of traveling west, waitin for my close-up, Im lying horizontally, waitin for my lung to fill up.

I never made my high school graduation. Couldnt have cared less. From my junior year on, Id been given constant demerits for bursting into laughter in the middle of class. They thought I was laughing at themand I was! Just thinkin about my double lifea high school junior, kept by three of New Yorks top showgirls, all beautiful... and all double my age. If theyd sent me to a shrink then and there, delusionary would have been the call of the day... followed by an express train to the nearest psychiatric ward. One full confessional and I would have been first in line for electric shock treatment. Wouldnt blame the shrinkId do the same if I were him. Some punk kid, claiming hes known on Broadway as the between-shows fuck of the year?

But it was all true. From the Latin Quarter, to Billy Roses Diamond Horseshoe, to the Copacabana, the stages of New York City back then were filled with long-stem showgirls. They were looked upon with the same awe that celebrity models are looked upon today. They didnt make the same bread: Two hundred fifty buckaroos a week was the norm. Thats for doin two shows a night, six nights a week, with two hours off between shows. Strange, they all sported mink coats, drove stylish convertibles, and lived in duplex apartments. On two-fifty a week? Well... thats where the hitch hitched in.

All of em had wealthy daddies. Those daddies sure in hell werent married to those mommies. They were married, though, and that meant they didnt get many nights off to water them long-stemmers. Thats where I came in.

What separates a good deal from a great deal is that there are no losers in a great deal. This was a great deal! Good for the daddy, good for the long-stemmer, and great for the Kid.

Where did we meet? At auditions, where else? My pal Dickie Van Patten and I couldnt sing or dance, but with purpose we trolled the auditions for every Broadway audition castin them long-stemmers. Between the two of us, we never copped a part in a musical. Never wanted to! But we never missed out on coppin a phone number. We scored zero with the ones who werent workin the Broadway circuit. They were in the market for Daddy Warbucks, not some teenager. But there were enough showgirls out there for our dance cards to stay full.