Saturday, September 09, 2006

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Thursday, April 11, 1985

Somebody came by the office and was telling me about the book Dotson Rader wrote on Tennessee Williams so I sent Michael Walsh out to get it ($18.75). And he had all this made up stuff in it, like that Edie was giving a blow job to somebody and also eating a girl's pussy, which would never be true. And then he said that Tennessee just loved Joe Dellesandro so when Joe went up to see him Tennessee did his fainting number so Joe would have to hold him in his arms. God, I just always thought Dotson Rader was a CIA person. Just that creepy type. And now he's gone from the Carters to walking Pal Lawford. I mean, how we met him in '69, was he took Blowjob up to screen at Columbia where he said he was going to school. But even then he looked too old to be a student, so it always made me wonder.

And there's a radiologist in the building next door to me. He just bought a million-dollar machine and they had to knock a wall out to get it in, and I keep wondering if the radium stuff can get to me, because we share steam heat. Everybody says the machines are "foolproof." Sure. And the Polish Embassy next door, now they want $4 million for it. I guess I should've bought it, when then were asking $1.3.

Had to leave early, cabbed to Radio City Music Hall ($6). The guy writing the book on Liberace was next to us and he said that Liberace was really in love with that chauffeur who gave all the interviews to the National Enquirer and that it really crushed him--Scott Thorsen. Now he has a new chauffeur. And the show is just magnificent. A rhinestone cape that shined to the stars. Lots of gay jokes and dirty jokes, and he has all these little kids who are his protégés who play the piano while he goes on a break. And the little boys he introduces as "my dear little friend, my best little friend..." but not the little girls. And he showed a film of his fingers and talked about each ring.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Tuesday, March 26, 2985

Got up really early. The paper had me as the big star at Swifty's. Got picked up to go to The Love Boat set. Had to do my "Hello, Mary" line, and the gay director is saying, "Give it som pizzazz--Hel-lo, Mary!" And I said, "Hel-lo, Mary."

PH met me there and we sat in the dressing room for a couple of hours while they rearranged the lights or whatever they do. My Stephen Sprouse jackets were there on the wardrobe rack and when I wear them, I think I finally look like people want Andy Warhol to look again, and now I'm thinking I should've worn the silver one the night before to Spago and that when I'm out of New York I should forget all this black-tie stuff and just go for flash. Talked with PH about movies and abstract ways ot do scripts.

Made a phone call to Jon and he said that Shirley MacLaine was trying to call me because she was really upset about the little banner headline on the interview he did with her in the Health issue. It said: "Metaphysical Madam." And Jon shouldn't have gone over to her and said, "It's not my fault," because that's the wrong negative thing to do. She never would've even noticed it or thought about it, probably, and now she's up in arms. I don't even know why. What does "Madam" mean? I mean, it's just a regular word. And the introduction I guess Gael wrote, and it's just all stuff from other places. Jon wrote one and they didn't like it, they said it had too much of himself in it--Gael told him, "You are not Arianna Stassinopoulos."

Went back to the Bel Air and had dinner there with Vincent and Andrew Friendly, Fred Friendly's son, who's trying to sell out TV show. And he talks about his "lady" and who in their right mind would talk that way. It was a good dinner and he paid.

And Joanna Carson came over to say hello and she's so beautiful. We talked about her son and his career.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Sunday, March 24, 1985--New York--Los Angeles

Placido Domingo was on our plane and he was nice, he came over and talked (newspapers $6). Beverly Sills was on, too. And Fred said Alan King was on and said hello but I didn't see him. Then a white limousine picked us up and took us to the Bel Air Hotel. And as we were going in Philip Johnson and David Whitney were walking out. Philip's here to give a lecture at one of the colleges. Went to the Beverly Hills Hotel pool, and everybody from New York was there--Laura Landro who writes the movie stuff for the Wall Street Journal and Susan Mulcahy, and Ahmet Ertegun and Mark Goodson.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Monday, March 18. 1985

I'm getting more nervous by the minute about being on The Love Boat. It turns out I'm going to be there for ten days. Now that Jon's working in L.A. most of the time, he's buying Joan Hackett's old house on Angelo Drive in Benedict Canyon. It's cheap for Beverly Hills, only $100,000, nest to really expensive ones--Jon said the son of Charles Bludhorn, the chairman of Gulf + Western, got one on the same block for $1.2 million.

Time magazine sent down the lacocca picture, and if I can only make a great portrait out of this picture then I could get a lot of corporation presidents. if they use it they have to pay a lot, but if they don't use it they just pay a little bit.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Tuesday, February 26, 1985

I don't understand why Jackie O. thinks she's so grand that she doesn't owe it to the public to have another great marriage to somebody big. You'd think she'd want to scheme and connive to get into history again.

And Gale had a fight with Glenn O'Brien because he sold the same interview he did for Interview to the new magazine, Spin, that bob Guccione's son is doing that's competing with Rolling Stone, and Glenn's telling her it was all the stuff that she had cut out, so what difference did it make.

I invited Benjamin to this Forbes opening at their building on 13th and Fifth Avenue now that they've turned the lobby into a museum (cab $4). Malcolm Forbes was there and I gave him a Dollar Sign painting and he was thrilled, he loved it. Talked to a kid who worked there and told him that what I wanted for Christmas was Malcolm Forbes's junk mail, and he said he'd get me some. I wish Truman had given me his junk mail like he promised he would.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Wednesday, February 20, 1985

This life insurance doctor came to examine me. Another one of those weird doctors giving me a weird insurance exam. The same old questions about your mother and your father and I lie all the time, I always give them different answers. And he asked me my age and I said I couldn't face saying my age, that I would leave the room and he could ask Vincent. Then I noticed that he was wearing a bracelet and I said, "Why are you wearing a bracelet?" and he said, "Well, I will tell you why I am wearing a bracelet." And then he started this long thing about how in 1592 something happened, and how this is somehow related to why the pope was shot, and why the Russians shot down the Koreans airliner because they'd lost 200 people in some Siberian explosion, and all this went on for twenty minutes. And then I asked him where he got his bracelet, and he said "Teepee Town." and I said, "Teepee Town went out of business." And he said, "No, it just moved off 42nd Street--now it's in the Port Authority bus terminal." And then he told me to put my urine in this little bottle. And I just could think that he probably goes to the Port Authority and collects urine in bottles. He's about 6'6" and his eyes are weird, like a little brain-damaged or milky. He took my blood pressure and did my heart. It was the most fun part of the day. Worked till 7:30.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Friday, January 25, 1985

Cabbed to 74th Street ($2)to see Dr. Bernsohn and he was going on about his phones being tapped by the FBI. Are these crystal things real or not? Dr. Reese is from near Kansas City. He's a chiropractor and so is Dr. Bernsohn. And the crystals come from Arkansas, and they're supposed to heal you. The Czech cut-glass one that I wear is to protect me. It's a "third eye" (cab $6).

Had to meet a lady for her portrait. she's just somebody who saw somebody else's. I don't know her name. She was pretty. And Jon interviewed Shirley MacLaine for the cover of Interview's Health issue, he's transcribing it himself so he can edit it, I guess, before he gives it in.

It was a day of running up and down stairs. I was looking at Fred to see if he still had a hangover, to see if he could still do the business. I don't know. I was going to tell him that his facel fell.