Gregor Collins - The Accidental Caregiver: How I Met, Loved, and Lost Legendary Holocaust Refugee Maria Altmann

The Accidental Caregiver

The

Accidental

Caregiver

How I Met, Loved, and Lost
Legendary Holocaust Refugee
Maria Altmann

a memoir

GREGOR COLLINS

Copyright 2012 by Gregor Collins

The characters and events in this book are real. Any similarity to fictitious persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

The accidental caregiver: how I met, loved, and lost legendary Holocaust refugee Maria Altmann / by Gregor Collins1st U.S. edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from Bloch-Bauer Books.

Edited by Jessica Swift

Book Cover and Interior Design by Sara Dismukes

ISBN: 978-0-9858654-0-5

Published by Bloch-Bauer Books

www.TheAccidentalCaregiver.com

To Maria

There are only two ways to live your life:

One is as though nothing is a miracle.

The other is as though everything is a miracle.

Albert Einstein

CONTENTS

The Days Before

Will it ever get better?

January 30, 2008

A date with destiny.

2009

Right where Im supposed to be.

2010

Nothing can stop us.

2011

Death.

Epilogue

The Golden Trip.

Cast of Characters

Glossary of family, friends and famous people
who have influenced Maria since childhood.

January 30, 2008

Hollywood, CA

Gregor: Yo.

Archie: Yo.

Gregor: I met a girl.

Archie: No you didnt.

Gregor: Shes Austrian.

Archie: Austrian? Whered you meet her?

Gregor: Craigslist.

Archie: I gotta get on Craigslist. Is she over 18?

Gregor: Very.

Archie: How old is she? (beat) Hello? You still there?

Gregor: Dude, youre breaking up. Hello? Im running to an audition anyway, Ill call you later!

So I went to that audition unable to shake this girl from my head. Meeting her was like being in Paris for the first time, or eating peanut butter and chocolate ice cream on an empty stomach. It was a game-changer: I was officially in love with someone other than myself. And though I didnt realize it then, I would never leave her. I was hers. Forever.

But even in those first magical moments in that Beverly Hills kitchen, there are things we would never know. We never knew we would spend the next three years together intimatelythat we would be transported to Vienna in its heyday, and that we would be forced to leave it behind to escape the Nazis; that we would barely make it to Holland; then to England; then to Massachusetts; then to Californiawhere wed work, raise a family, and live out the rest of our lives in Los Angeles. And we would never know it would all end at her funeral, where I would be pulled aside and told I was the last great love of her life. No, we would never know the heights we would reach together before it ended.

But Im getting ahead of myself. For one, I was an actor, not a caregiver, and, frankly, I needed an old lady like I needed a hole in the head

October 31, 2007

Im Seventies Guy for the tenth year in a rowtie-dye t-shirt, fluorescent-green bellbottoms, black combat boots. Its a lame costume, I get it, but Im a virile 32-year-old man who understands that the prevailing point of Halloween is to meet women. When youre donning a massive mask, or a clunky one-piece suit that monopolizes your entire body, youre not only squandering prime opportunities to show these women what you look like on October 30 and November 1, but youre indubitably spending more time sweating in the corner and less time flirting on the dance floor. And in the wee hours of the morning with, presumably, a girl or two on your shoulder, whos really thinking about how much thought you put into your costume? Anyway. This is how Ive felt about Halloween for most of my adult life. Its probably why Im still single.

Im an actor. Im sort of like Blythe Danner or Tilda Swinton or Christopher Plummer, in that Ive never had one person think I wasnt good at it. The only reason you havent heard of me is because I havent gotten my big break yet. Everyone says Im going places. My agent and my manager do, my peers all do, and even my brother and mother do, who once both made me cry at an Olive Garden in Virginia because I couldnt tell them the precise date I was going to start making a living as an actor. That was a real low point for all three of us. But its gotten better.

Im coming off a starring role in an independent feature called Night Before the Wedding , set for a spring 2008 release. After nearly a decade in Hollywood I finally feel my career taking off. Ive paid my dues. Ive done virtually everything there is to do behind the camera save craft service, hair, and makeup. Ive been an intern, an executive assistant, a tape librarian, a production assistant, and a producer. Ive even supervised a Girls Gone Wild Tour (Sorry, Mom, it was only partially true that I was working on a nature show in Key West).

Acting found me , which is why I knew I couldnt ignore it. It was early 2004. Id spent the previous five years in reality television. My last job in reality was at E! Entertainment producing the red carpet segments for the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards. The gig ended, and the phone calls just stopped. I went from a busy producer to a busy sleeper, in a twelve-hour period. I was suddenly at a major creative standstill in my life, for the first time forced to confront what I could really offer Hollywood. Weeksmonths of unemployment ensued. I grew my first beard ever (turns out it has a reddish tint), and I made a Double Kingburger from Fatburger magically disappear every other day. I was at my heaviest. What the hell was I meant to be doing? My best friend Archie suggested I try an acting class. I took his advice.

In my first class I performed one of David Mamets first plays, Sexual Perversity in Chicago . When my partner and I finished what felt like torture, I was certain I was as ineffectual as an audience member sitting there watching it, and that I had no acting talent whatsoever. I couldnt wait to get out of that class. I was humiliated, sitting there facing a theater full of strangers judging me. Then the teacher, Darryl, asked me how long Id been acting. I looked down at my watch and said, Two minutes. He was shocked. I would have guessed youd been acting for years.

I strutted out of that class like I was already a movie star. I booked the first film I ever auditioned fora comedic short called Bagel Time and within six months I was guest starring on the soap opera Passions . It had come! After 28 years of stumbling around life as if it were a moon bounce at a kids birthday party, I was suddenly standing firmly on solid ground able to proudly state my lifes purpose: to regale the world with my acting . I had finally found something worth fighting for.

Sure, there have been ups and downs since Bagel Time , but, despite what you might think, nothing ever happens overnight in Hollywood. If Malcolm Gladwells rightthat it takes ten years or ten thousand hours to become successful at somethingthen Im due any day now.

So this Halloween party. I picked up Archie, who was dressed as Indiana Jones (and just so you know he and I share the same Halloween philosophy), my friend Paul, who was dressed as some sort of head-to-toe vampire/zombie amalgam, and my friend Jeff, a priest with a choirboy stapled to his crotch. I know what youre thinkingthe vampire/zombie costume went a little too far.

I met all three guys on the dating show, Blind Date . It was our first job in Los Angeles, and we became family. I was a tape librarian, Paul wasand still isan editor, Jeff wasand still isa producer, and Archiea writer/filmmaker/executive producerwrote the thought-bubbles above the two people who went on a filmed date. Archie and I became an unlikely pairhe was a 32-year-old, short, skinny, wisecracking Jewish guy from New York, and I was a 24-year-old, tall, muscular, reserved gentile from Virginia. Not much has changed in eight years. Were like Arnold and Danny from the movie Twins : He lures the girls in with his jokes, and I keep them around with my looks. Just dont tell him I said that.