Blind Item #8 - Letters Part Two - A Dancing Boy Blind

(What follows are the recollections of my friend and correspondent, edited for style by us both. Any personal observations are noted as such.)

Like the dancing boy, I never meant to go to Hollywood. In fact, I never even meant to go to Los Angeles. I grew up in one of those midwest capitals where practically everyone works for the state, or at the college, and most people stick around as adults.

But my senior year in high school my dad had a heart attack, and nearly died. His insurance didn't cover all the bills. Paying for even in-state tuition was out of the question. So I reluctantly accepted a scholarship to USC.

I expected it to be all sorority girls in squishy socks with BMWs, and of course there was all that. But it's a big enough place that even a shy, bookish girl like me could make friends, and have fun. (Although try living in LA without a car. It's like being trapped on an island.)

I was an English major, but also a big movie fan. In between classes, I'd hang out at CNTV (what the School of Cinematic Arts was called back then) hoping to meet or at least see someone from Hollywood. I did get to meet George Lucas once at a reception after his lecture. I asked him what he was working on, now that the Star Wars saga was done. He corrected me, saying that the plan was for nine movies, plus three others. He also said though that he was working on a new movie. "What's it about?" I asked. "A duck," he said. "I think it's gonna be big."

I also got to meet John Huston, who didn't look well, and was there I think because they were hitting him up for money. He put his hand on my cheek and told me I had "the eyes of a starlet." I'm sure it made me blush, but it kind of creeps me out now. Did you hear about those accusations against him, and his LA doctor friend? They go back to the forties or fifties, I think. The story is they both gang raped this young girl, about twelve, on the kitchen floor. She was the doctor's daughter. The son believes his father is the black dahlia murderer. She had "the eyes of a starlet" too.

Once, while waiting outside a classroom to get Ron Howard's autograph (he stopped by sometimes as a kind of celebrity teaching assistant), I started reading the bulletin board postings for jobs and things. (Never got the autograph btw. He was whisked off by security at the end of the class because one of his stalkers since childhood was spotted on campus.) In between the ones seeking "attractive young models" and people wanting help with their student movies, there was a notice about internships at this one studio. I copied the information down, and much to my surprise got a call back, then an interview. Somehow, I got the job.

Cut, now, to a few months later. I had spent most of my days shuttling memos between various executives, and others, and bringing them lunch from the commissary. The execs were mostly nice, if they noticed you at all, but I came to resent the smell of sushi. To this day, it is the smell of unpaid labor.

So it came as a great relief when my boss pulled up in his golf cart and told me to get in. There was this audition, he said, and they needed someone to check the actors in.

"What's it for?" I asked.

"A movie," he said. "It isn't ours." He told me the name of the producer, which I recognized, but I'm sure at the time couldn't name a single credit. As if reading my mind, and probably to save me embarrassment, he listed some of his recent movies, which included more than a couple adaptations from a big time novelist.

When we got to the place, one of the numbered stages on the lot, a woman came out and approached the cart.

"Is this the person?" the woman said. Yes, she was told. "Congratulations. You're the third one in almost as many days." She handed me a folder stuffed with files, a blue ink pad, and a star-shaped rubber stamp. "The kids are all here," she said. "Or at least we hope they are. Your job is to check them in." The woman got into the cart, and as they drove off my boss waved his hand at me, wishing me luck. I could hear the woman say, "she's gonna need it."

I went inside, where two men in folding chairs were going over head shots. One of them, I'd later learn, was a consultant known about town as a fixer. The other would be the cameraman for the audition, but he was known primarily - including now to you all - as a photographer. His favorite subject? Surprise! He is now deceased, and has been the subject of at least one past blind. The third person present, a casting assistant, came over to let me know that the actors were gathered outside, and that "they" wanted to get started in "ten" (all fingers raised).

She escorted me to the opposite end of the building, and opened the door to a chaos of boys, almost all of them blond and blue eyed. There were tweens and teens, and all were dressed like surfer kids. One of the boys had brought a boom box and was blasting 7 Seconds' "99 Red Balloons." A group of ten or twelve were gathered around him, slam dancing, a plume of pot smoke rising from the eye of the storm. Another couple kids were kicking a soccer ball against the big door of the opposite stage,  where the bell lights signaled a shoot in progress. There was drinking, and smoking, and needless to say, barely an adult in sight.

Sizing things up, I knew I had to take care of the kickball kids first. "Could you please not do that?" I said to them. Neither listened. I went over and tried to grab the ball. The boy with it fought back. The other one said, "What are you doing lady? He's a big star." (It turned out his stardom rested on a role in...an Atari ad - Cosmic Ark I think it was.) Finally, I wrestled the ball away from him. "You'll get it back after the audition."

"As for the rest of you," I shouted, "you are all in trouble." No one turned around. And, just then, a cart screeched around the corner at top speed, briefly riding on two wheels, and nearly plowing into the crowd. The two boys, both twelve, had stolen it. The one in the passenger seat? At the time he had a role in an episode of a long running family series - one where a number of young actors got their start. He would go on though to become an adult star with a taste for danger. It's hard not to look back at that day and say you couldn't see it coming.

(The only one I recognized, and this was only in retrospect, would have a breakout role on a series a few years later. His sibling on that series would have a major role in another one before long - this was a big hit. He was one of the few obviously nice kids there, sitting against the wall of the stage doing his homework, and eating a banana. I think he was passed over for this one because they saw him as too young. I'm guessing he's probably grateful for that, or should be.)

I stormed back inside and grabbed a bullhorn and some half milk crates from a stage cart, finally ready for crowd control. By the time I got back outside though, the production across the way had been halted, and the director - there to do green screen work for a sci-fi movie filmed in the UK - was standing there, red-faced with anger. Just as he was about to say something though the movie's female star appeared, in costume, and one by one the boys stopped what they were doing, and turned to look at her. Her icy stare, and bad a** image, was enough - like if mom was also an action hero.  The boys began dropping their cigarettes, crushing them with the soles of their shoes, and pouring out their beers.

Then she summoned me over with her finger. I was terrified. When I got there I could barely speak, but nervously explained that it was my first day, and had never done anything like this before. She took my hand and said, soothingly, "if you need any more help with them just let me know." I thanked her, and she and the director went back inside.

With a surge of confidence, I took up the bull horn and told the boys that they would be searched by security before entering the stage, and that if any contraband was found they would be sent home or to juvie. By the end of it, I had several crates full: not just the boom box, bong, and soccer ball, but a Gremlins lunch box with a flask full of whiskey, several bags of cocaine (along with a freebase pipe), cigarettes galore, cans of beer, even a copy of "Hustler" magazine. "Where did you get this?" I asked the boy. "My agent buys it for me," he said. Who was his agent? I think you can guess the answer. 

I had them all line up, single file, military style, and one by one I checked them in, stamping their file and the top of one hand with a blue star, and highlighting their name on the list. Then I went over the list to see if anyone was absent. Sure enough, just one. I didn't recognize the absent boy's name but there was an accompanying head shot for each actor, so if I had to go looking for him at least I would know who I was looking for.  (Of course, it's all coming out now how negligent and even complicit Hollywood gatekeepers could be about not protecting kids from abuse. But this being the 80s, when missing children were all over the news, as well as milk cartons, Hollywood had to seem like it had at least a nominal concern about literally not losing people's children.)

I left the boys with a casting assistant, then called his agent first though to see if he had maybe just bailed on the audition. The woman who answered was rude to me, apparently offended that she had to take time out of her day to help find a missing child, and even more so to be talking to an intern about it. After being on hold for at least ten minutes, she told me the boy had been dropped off at the studio a half hour earlier.

"Do you know where?" I asked her, or something like that.

"And how would I know that?"

"He's your client."

"He's your problem now," she said, and hung up. I took the cart that the two boys had been driving, and a walkie talkie, and made the rounds of the backlot. Finally, a tip came in: someone had reported two llamas loose on the lot. I knew it had to be him.

When I got there, he was talking to the animals, and sharing his slurpee with them.

"*****," I asked.

"Yeah?"

"This is not a petting zoo," I said.

"They looked sad," he replied.

"I think you're supposed to be at an audition," I said.

"Couldn't find it," he said.

I asked why he didn't ask someone for directions.

He joked, in reply, that he was practicing as lost boy for the eventual role of lost man, in which he wouldn't ask for directions even if his life depended on it.

"You know you're in a lot of trouble now," I told him.

"How come?"

"These animals don't belong to you. You let them out of their trailer."

"I liberated them," he said.

I grabbed him by the ear, and pulled him into the cart. Just then though the posse arrived: security, the studio shrink, and the owner of the llamas himself...

Stay tuned for the final part...coming on Monday!