Ben Stein's Diary I Requiem for a Madam
Stein, Benjamin J.
Requiem for a Madam by Benjamin J. Stein Saturday 4 4 t doesn't get much better than / this," my sister said as we started up the Bull River Parkway in Western Montana. She was referring to the...
...But she was already giving other instructions to other people...
...Past is prologue...
...I figured I had found the raw material of a story about how Los Angeles works...
...What gets things done is not ideology but personal feelings and connections...
...I had message after message from my wife asking if I was all right, and then a call from my parents asking the same thing...
...He's naturally funny, the kind of guy Tommy could learn a lot from if he chose to watch...
...If the fires go on much longer, all of those jealous people in New York will get their secret wish...
...I didn't forget," I said...
...To the northwest, there was a solid wall of smoke, from the mountains to the highest point of sky...
...Miss Staci, a new assistant, arrived...
...The cars raced by...
...A clever arsonist, I figured, had set that fire just to taunt and screw up the fire department...
...I can't go back to a normal life after this glamour...
...I never gave her anything except postcards from Idaho and Ireland...
...Then I called Terri, the English bombshell...
...I stopped to vote for school vouchers and for more police...
...I loved it," I said, "but on Monday, when I'm all by myself in my house far from anywhere or anybody, I'm going to be pretty damned lonely...
...Thursday I had an eight o'clock call this morning for "Hearts Afire...
...As I got to Cahuenga, I heard on the car radio that there was a brushfire burning out of control in Calabasas...
...It worked...
...So, I stayed and read the part and got it...
...This is how the world ends...
...I think I'm going to get along really well with this young woman...
...I turned on my sprinklers and ate a hearty breakfast (orange juice, toast, and a banana...
...You could taste their exhaust...
...The announcer also said that the fire had marched thirty miles already and was at the ocean and heading north and south...
...American Spectator January 1994 I went to my phone machine...
...I am not sure how much Harry and I would agree about a number of political issues, but he's incredibly nice to me on the set, praising my "work" and also my writing...
...Good-bye, house...
...Her name is Maddie Winik...
...Tuesday A call from my agent telling me that I was wanted right away over in Universal City for a Pepsi audition...
...It has to do with a lot of things that are extremely hard to put into words...
...Check it out...
...There was no one else in the plywood waiting room, but there was a sign saying "Don't worry...
...She would make common cause with Joan Rivers and somehow she and Joan would "get" me...
...Then mine for Pepsi...
...The winds had died down, and my answering machine was still working, which meant that my house was still there...
...There was just one plywood room, leading to another alley, leading to a basement room, and that's where the audition was...
...B ack to the set for another run-through...
...Wednesday D ies irae...
...Come out here, make connections, and write how you feel in your heart, and eventually it will see daylight...
...Everyone knew about the fire before I did (although my cagey unconscious knew about it before my plodding conscious did...
...In a pool house/projection room, tall blonde women glided in and out, sat sipping champagne, told me they spent all day exercising, talked about travel to France and England and Japan and Hong Kong, and looked weirdly detached from life...
...I lay down on my couch and read the Wall Street Journal...
...There were incredible throngs of fire engines, borate bombers, water-dumping copters, and nothing could stop those fires...
...Inside the Egg Company, though, where the audition was, was a Fellini-esque sight (and what a genius we have lost...
...She wants to take you to lunch...
...They are very near the Getty Museum, near where Sunset hits Pacific Coast Highway, near where urban life begins...
...Watch the skies," said some old movie, and it made sense...
...We've rehearsed it over and over...
...The vibe was what I imagine it would be if an enemy army were on the outskirts of town awaiting the chance to attack, but with a good chance that the home troops would push them back...
...I'm going to be dead soon, and then you won't have anyone to call you in Ireland...
...My fellow players are all fabulous actors...
...M addle had at one time been an actress, but had given it up because it was too tough...
...46 The...
...A certain edge of alertness kept me up...
...Oh, boy, I thought...
...I also sat with the beautiful Beth Broderick, a regular (that most gleaming of words) who spends most of her life trying to ease the difficult hours of AIDS patients...
...She told me she knew of my writing about Michael Milken, and she herself admired Milken, but was open to discussion about it...
...She insisted that the north leg of the fire, the one that had menaced my house last week, had flared up again...
...The part was that of a crotchety, slightly crazed high school principal...
...Well, I thought, good-bye, house...
...She thought detectives were in the hall...
...I'm sure she's left the country...
...One was running for a directorship of the Screen Actors' Guild...
...Tommy, my boy, it's really hard to put into words, but I'll get a book on humor for you, and maybe we'll try to figure it out together...
...I asked...
...We wet everything down, and hope for the best...
...But late that night, Kerry, a loyal aide, volunteered to go out to the house and—if it was safe—to get my financial files so I could do my income tax...
...Barron talked about airplanes with Harry Thomason, who seems to know a great deal about them...
...Fame...
...She also truly loved the telephone...
...A Nixon Republican," I said proudly...
...That way," she told me, "they'll be able to get in and out of the building without using my phone number and the people who are tapping my line will never know...
...I am getting a mad crush on her, although from a worshipful distance, to be sure...
...At about midnight, Maddie reappeared and asked me to drive her home...
...Friday T ora, Tora, bora...
...No," I said...
...She arrived in West Hollywood with the news that she could see the flames on the next ridge from my house...
...John himself is a major star who played for years in "Three's Company...
...There's John Ritter, son of Tex Ritter, who sang the theme from "High Noon...
...I went back into my house...
...It's on the next ridge," she said, and then said it again and again for the next several hours...
...The electric hotwire of fame, dangling above my head, and all I have to do is reach up and grab it...
...Anyway, she would tell me, she couldn't quit...
...It's to play in a very funny script called "Wagons East," about settlers who decide to ride a wagon train back to St...
...I'm done...
...I don't think he had anything invested in the market, or at least not much, but he enjoyed the action, the vicarious thrill of the movement of money...
...I could actually see flames from Mulholland in Beverly Hills, at least fifteen miles away...
...What to do...
...Maddie was a subdued, sniffling woman in her thirties whose first words were, "Too bad for you, but I'm Maddie...
...I walked back to my car preparatory to driving across the street to have lunch at Universal with my old pal, Michael Chinich...
...He moved effortlessly, silently, in a straight line, with a fixed look of bliss on his face...
...The one in Laguna Beach was far worse than the one in Malibu...
...When I got home, I told Little Desi Arnaz about it...
...Some of the men were well-known actors...
...Besides "Hearts Afire," Harry Thomason produces "Evening Shade" (named for a town in Arkansas right near where my father-in-law lives...
...Their basic message was that I would just have to wait until they had dealt with murders and rapes and armed robberies, 48 The American Spectator January 1994 and then we could talk about their paying Maddie a call...
...I have enough...
...Oh, boy...
...Just then, right in front of my kitchen window, a sheet of flame leapt up about a quarter mile in front of my home, right at the empty lot next to the western Malibu fire station...
...he asked...
...Tuesday A call from my agent...
...She had a lot of suggestions and I followed them...
...Occasionally he disappeared with his huge plate of salmon, and then reappeared with still more salmon...
...I felt sick...
...We have many things that are dear to us here," Gertrude said...
...Angry and frustrated about losing hubby and lifestyle, she had somehow—it was never exactly clear how—become a madam...
...She didn't say how the imaginary detectives in the hall would be fooled, but I completely squashed her idea in an extreme hurry...
...Conservatives keep asking me how they can influence Hollywood...
...I have to say that I didn't mind the by-play...
...I parked a few blocks from the audition...
...Will you throw rotten fruit at me...
...I had to tell them you were my Dad and I was picking you up because Mom had left you without a car...
...Ben," Linda asked, "are you a Republican or a Democrat...
...I thought so," she said...
...Then we all sat on the set and talked more...
...The fires were everywhere...
...I think it was when she asked me if any of the rich men I knew would ever like to meet some girls...
...I got up from my desk and looked out at the sky...
...My neighbors were out there watering and watching...
...So you can see the problem right away...
...At two o'clock, the radio said it was getting very dicey, and residents were leaving western Malibu...
...The fires are still not out...
...The party was one of the strangest gatherings I have ever attended...
...The audition was in the back of an alley between Book Soup and a Greek restaurant...
...Fame...
...The host spent most of the evening slicing a salmon and passing out pieces of it to the guests...
...It's personal...
...he asked...
...Then there's Markie Post, a beautiful woman who starred for many years on "Night Court," and who is not only a good actor—but also very kind and encouraging to me...
...Wahhhh...
...If I didn't think I'd get you out of it altogether someday soon, I'd stop talking to you altogether...
...Then another one for women's athletic equipment...
...I was stunned when I entered the casting room...
...She would get together with Michael Milken (whom I am certain she never met) and would somehow ruin my life...
...But I miss Maddie, the Madam...
...She could be soft and cooing to a client on one line, insistent to another about paying a bill (yes, she extended credit), and then actually commanding to a girl about making sure she showed up on time for her next appointment...
...Tommy fidgeted in the back seat while I took more photos of the scenery, and bathed in its perfection...
...I sat next to an extremely muscular assistant director named Mike, who used to be Tarzan in many movies of that name...
...In fact, the wind is still blowing, and the fires are moving south towards town...
...I played a guide at a marine park...
...There were eight other men there, with two more right behind me, all waiting to try out for the part...
...Ashes were raining everywhere...
...Before I could discuss any of this further with her, she also disappeared...
...I'm not at all sure I got this part...
...This is it...
...It was perfect for me except that the character description called for a man in his "mid-sixties...
...It's time for the show...
...I found myself next to a fireplace, talking to a startlingly muscular woman named Heidi Fleiss...
...You'll get some material for an article about it...
...Could I hurriedly come over to Studio City to try out for a part in a very funny sitcom called "Hearts Afire...
...After all, if the winds kept blowing, how long until the fire reached Beverly Hills and West Hollywood...
...There were ashes everywhere...
...I am a veryyouthful 48...
...Then we did the show...
...he asked...
...Well, how do you know when you're being funny...
...I know my part by heart, mostly because the dialogue coach, Dennis, and I have walked all around the lot practicing it...
...T his evening, I got a call from a friend in the building...
...Louis...
...She figured she had found someone to listen to her endless stories about girlswho didn't show up, about sheikhs who paid ten thousand dollars to have girls nearby while they blew cocaine in Malibu, about quarrels with other women in the building, about calls from London to send over a beautiful girl on the Concorde, about movie stars who said they didn't pay to have the girls come over but to have them leave, about the other madams she competed with, about how much she hated being alive...
...By evening, there were terrifying pictures on TV of the fire burning down towards Pacific Coast Highway...
...Last night I ate at Morton's with Barron...
...I'm happy to cheer you up and listen to you...
...The fire grew crazily for about ten minutes, and then a swarm of fire-trucks appeared and the fire was put out...
...Maybe it's something like that, passing through the generations...
...Fame...
...I have to figure out what's funny so I can get a cigarette boat" "Well, maybe you could figure it out by watching me...
...Because it's never happened before...
...She's losing muscle mass," he said, "but I don't think she's in pain...
...Then I drove all the way out to my house in the far western end of Malibu...
...Your griefs set up, do not pluck my griefs down...
...From the Universal City Walk, I could see the fire getting worse...
...She had also learned that her husband, although forty years her senior, had been having a number of affairs...
...I reassured them all, but then when I walked around my yard, I felt scared...
...Linda gave me a part, and that's a lot more than I had before I met her...
...Want to know how I know that...
...What was your first clue...
...Anyway, at about noon, I fell asleep for an hour as I listened to Mozart's Requiem, the greatest work of art ever struck off by the human brain...
...I guess it has to do with genetics...
...Afterwards I headed to lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe (of which I own .2 percent, more or less), and called my agent...
...I shall miss your clean lines and your wonderful view...
...Staci and I packed my photo of my father with Nixon in the Oval Office on the day he and Nixon were talking about soybeans and inflation (and John Dean was telling RN that there was a "cancer" on the presidency), two old photos of my beloved dog Mary, now in Heaven, a photo of my mother and father at the Watergate, and then an album of photos of me as a child...
...Wednesday 0 n the job...
...As the year wore on, she gradually became more addicted to cocaine and more depressed...
...Thewhole city was on edge, watching the sky, watching the nonstop coverage on TV, watching with a feeling of dread...
...No," Fred said...
...I can't compete with all these people...
...Will you take her call...
...They did—eventually...
...Well," she said, "that woman you were talking to, Heidi Fleiss, is a big-time madam, and those were some of her girls...
...We ran through the scene, and were directed by Harry Thomason, who's also a great pal of Bill and Hillary, and seems to be able to do a lot of things in a day...
...A pellucid blue, with a hot, dry breeze blowing out of the Northwest...
...She would send her friends from the Crips to get me...
...We had just passed the Clark Fork, a roaring river near Hope, Idaho, and visited the Cabinet Gorge Power Plant, set in a vast canyon of the river...
...This is Tern, and she's taken...
...Through the night, the fire got worse...
...Linda Thomason was at this one...
...Will you watch me when I'm on- TV...
...In fact, I'm sure that's when it was...
...Not long...
...Miracle...
...No, but it's not funny," I said...
...We saw the usual suspects—the producer-manager Sandy Gallin, the director Joel Schumacher, a buzzing crowd of agents going kiss-kiss, and various tough-looking men and women who arrived in Rolls-Royces...
...I turned on the air-conditioner, pulled the covers up over my head, and still could not sleep until 3 a.m...
...I told her that I really didn't think so, but that I would bear her in mind...
...Not a chance...
...She thought her phone was tapped...
...I told her how strange I thought the party was...
...It wasn't there twenty minutes ago...
...A message on her machine said she had left town...
...I could return to my dressing room and vamp for several hours...
...Wednesday F ire...
...We'll come get you eventually...
...My wife (estranged but still wonderful) and I drove along Mulholland to see the flames...
...Anyway, I figured it was a chance to meet people, so I sent my little self over there...
...But she felt so thin in my arms, so frail, so much like a dog on her way to eternity, her eyes so full of questions...
...Rugged, handsome men...
...This is our house...
...I appeared at the set at ten, ate a few bananas, on the theory that people think monkeys are funny, and then had a run-through of my scene...
...Richard II said that, and he was right...
...I just wish I could get some sleep...
...got dressed and rushed out to the street to scan the skies...
...Then others for firemen and for forest rangers...
...Besides, the fire will not burn down L.A...
...I don't know," I said...
...I agreed to go...
...I sat stunned for a while...
...Frankly, I didn't see anyone leaving, but I decided I had better scram anyway...
...I would give her my best pep talk about her life, my very most powerful windup to get her to a 12-step program, my most fervent pleas to stop taking drugs and start living...
...My pal Barron has flown in from Phoenix to watch me...
...It's on camera, and it could be real money and they asked for me by name, and that's bitchin', as we say here in Southern California...
...Benjamin J. Stein is a writer, lawyer, economist, and actor living in Malibu, California...
...I hear the fire is already at Decker," she said, referring to the next canyon over...
...Burning wildly towards Malibu and towards Topanga Canyon...
...The fire in Malibu had stalled...
...In the back seat, Little Sid Caesar was telling us jokes...
...We filed for a few hours, and I kept looking for a dead mouse until I found it, and then we turned on the radio...
...How long...
...Oh, that kid...
...And for some reason, that had started Little Jack Benny thinking about humor...
...She also said her car was broken and asked if I would give her a ride home, She said she was a real estate agent and would like to sell me a house...
...But that's wa-a-a-y out in the Valley near my dentist...
...My paternal grandfather used to go to stock brokerages, even in the worst of the Great Depression, and watch the quotes being put up on the board...
...The office was right next to the Hollywood Freeway...
...Crammed...
...Maddie likewise disappeared for a long time...
...I told her my true story about noting that Bill Clinton, while obviously one of history's great statesmen, had rather inadequate neckties, and then sending him a beautiful Hermes tie, for which he sent me a thank-you note...
...She started leaving insane angry messages threatening me...
...I picked her up in the lobby along with a friend...
...Hmmm...
...That area was crammed with beautiful girls...
...Daddy," he said, "don't worry, because you were trying to sell the house, or did you forget...
...That isn't funny," I said...
...The air itself was a frightening orange...
...She would sometimes leave thirty messages on my machine in a day, and I began to call the West Hollywood Sheriff's station to ask what I could do...
...Because nine ten eleven," he said...
...Somehow, on the way home, it became clear to me that Maddie was also probably a madam...
...Well," Tommy wanted to know, "what makes something funny...
...For some reason that science has not discovered, I could not sleep...
...That stung Maddie, and she was never anything but hostile to me again...
...The other actors, true stars, were extremely encouraging, and it was wonderful to get Markie Post's wink, and her whisper that she knew "many really nice people who are Republicans...
...Friday A bout a year ago, in October 1992, as I was walking, my dog Trixie (she could still walk), a neighbor from my apartment building in West Hollywood approached me...
...By morning, I knew why...
...She told me in a cheery voice that I had not gotten the Pepsi spot...
...Didn't you love that...
...I said I would, but it was months later when she called...
...I asked for a fax of the script...
...In an interesting way, she had put her acting talents to work in her new occupation...
...She always listened, but never went a day withoutbeing high...
...Then she would add, "But I get so tired...
...Maybe you'll be a house in Heaven for some lucky saint...
...When work took me to Ireland for about three weeks last spring and summer, Maddie called several times a day, and was always happy to take a call, no matter at what time of day...
...She passed over last night...
...Fanned by gale-force winds...
...She had no hesitation to use the phone, even for calls to faraway places...
...Now, I just take the insurance money, heh-heh, and move to Idaho...
...Amazingly, just two miles away, at the bank and the travel agency, it was business as usual...
...Nope, that's not mine, not today...
...Then we left...
...With a brushfire burning up all my files on Michael Milken...
...She took to leaving weird messages at the front desk of the building, thanking me for gifts I had never given her...
...That I was a speechwriter for him...
...Nothing else would ever be as much fun...
...Because seven eight nine," he said...
...This is the one...
...Then she had been a paralegal, and then she had married a wealthy lawyer many decades her senior...
...When the tape was ended, I stood up and walked to the window of my dressing room...
...I love the glamour of it...
...Overdose...
...I asked him...
...But there was a strange, edgy vibe in the room...
...Out of my faithful Panafax came a torrent of pages...
...I got a phone call from Jennie, my friend in Malibu...
...I hate to live," she told me...
...I even got to meet the producer and chief writer, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, pal of Bill and Hillary...
...As soon as I stepped out the door, I was in an inferno of wind, heat, and ashes...
...I asked my neighbor Fred, a retired émigré from Germany, and his wife Gertrude, if they were leaving...
...It'll just be a few people to have cocktails and watch a movie," she said...
...From my deck, I could see surfers paddling out to catch waves just a few feet from where fire engines were marshaling near the Encinal Canyon fire station...
...There was one for 10month-old babies...
...B y the late summer, she had the clear and clearly paranoid impression that she was being followed, that certain enemies were conspiring with other enemies to take away her girls, especially her best girl, the English bombshell, Tern, and to turn her over to the police...
...The friend was a heart-stoppingly beautiful English girl named Terri...
...Then I got a call from my pal Jennifer near my house...
...Come back, Maddie, and tell me more stories...
...Should I go and save a few things for you...
...I took her back to Alex's and we all watched TV together...
...A friend of mine in the building is a huge fan of yours," she said...
...That's the answer...
...I called my agent...
...In West Hollywood, though, the town was jazzed...
...We had dinner in a stage...
...Then I thought about the people losing their homes in Malibu, and you know what...
...The part is tiny, but I love auditions, so off I went...
...I have to go back to my pumpkin...
...I don't get investment ideas from it and it certainly misses the really big stories in finance on a startlingly consistent basis...
...She thought that outside her apartment the whole world was waiting to get her...
...I don't know," I said...
...I thought about that, thought about the magnificence of Montana, about what it might be like to be there all alone in the middle of winter...
...I'm sure she never met Joan Rivers, either...
...Then, to my extreme dismay, the director, Harry, and the producer-writer, Linda, said we had my scene and didn't need to do it anymore...
...She was referring to the vista of a clear river, towering mountains, a vast meadow, and sunlight mixed with shadow hitting the whole schmeer...
...At the Point Dume Chinese Restaurant, the best bargain in America, there was the usual laughter with Tony the Chinese waiter about my order for Chinese chicken salad, hold the chicken...
...I went over to play with Trixie and to take her to the vet...
...This is it, I thought...
...My family had gone away to the east, and I was alone...
...But when I appeared, I learned that the order of rehearsal had been changed...
...I don't want to stop being a madam," she used to say to me...
...Across from me was the script supervisor, Alvin, who played the little kid in "Miracle on Thirty-Fourth Street...
...Then there's Billy Bob Thornton, from Malverne, Arkansas, an incredibly funny guy who also plays heavies in movies he writes himself, and just seems to have talent exploding out of his pores...
...or Malibu or even a lot of it...
...It said that Pacific Coast Highway was blocked at Encinal Canyon—which is just where I live—because of the danger of the firereaching that neighborhood...
...Very clever," I admitted as we passed by one staggering vista after another...
...It's the longest scene The American Spectator January 1994 45 I've ever had, and I have to really be smart around it...
...He had died, and somehow she had been cut out of the will...
...It's a drug...
...Great gusts of wind threw ashes onto my house...
...Life is about making jokes and jabs...
...I love it when that happens...
...That's why...
...No, Daddy," he said...
...She told me fantastic stories about hiring Crips and Bloods to be her bodyguards, about having someone from the Crips collect money owed to her, about ways and means of getting the sheriff on her side...
...Another was for a women's shampoo...
...Maybe," he said...
...I still felt sick...
...There were eight casting sessions going on at once...
...Barron asked...
...Acting is not a job...
...I said, "but I don't want at all to be part of your business...
...I had to get through a police roadblock," she said...
...Over the next few months, I got to talk with her at least a few times per day...
...With the choral magnificence of the last movement's praise to God ringing in my ears I saw a sight...
...He sells airplanes, but wants to be a star...
...He also knows how to fly a jet airplane and apparently owns a few of them...
...It was the night before Christmas, in fact, when she called to invite me to a party at a famous producThe American Spectator January 1994 47 er's house...
...We have seen a lot of fires here," Fred added...
...One was for plump middle-aged men...
...But as part of my new regime, I don't throw fits or act like a prima donna...
...It has to do with surprise, with familiarity, with embarrassment, with cruelty, with venting tension, with plays on words...
...She was rarely without it in her hand, even when she,wasn't talking on it...
...1 The American Spectator January 1994 49...
...Very, very clever...
...Is the Pope Polish...
...I drove over to see Tommy...
...I read my part well, I thought...
...Maddie's sister came to clean out the apartment, and Maddie was gone...
...I think she said her parents "used to be" Republicans...
...For all I know, she's in Cuba now...
...I was told to report for work at 10 a.m.—gentlemen's hours—the next day...
...Why is eight afraid of nine...
...I loved doing my scene...
...On the car radio, the bad news: the Calabasas fire was out of control...
...Western Malibu was burning...
...There on a skateboard, gliding along an empty avenue on the lot, holding a script, wearing jeans, an oxford cloth shirt, and white Nikes, was America's current godhead, Jerry Seinfeld...
...He loves Hollywood—the lights, the buzz, the possibility of fame...
...Then she had the incredible idea that she would start using my apartment to interview girls to be prospective employees...
...Besides, Idon't want to be a professional victim...
...What is that mushroom cloud doing out there towards Calabasas...
...I'm not sure why I read it any longer...
...She took a stunning variety of mind-altering drugs, almost all prescribed, usually to get her to sleep after her cocaine, all of which measurably eroded her brain...
...Linda Was amused...
...Why is six afraid of seven...
...At six in the morning, I woke up and turned on the TV...
...Condolences on your pal Maddie," said the friend...
...She loved the action: the drugs, the girls, the rich men...
...Tommy asked...
...I might as well leave, I said to myself...
...Let's wait a week before we consider euthanasia...
...When I got there I went through my mountain of mail, delightedly took out the few residuals, and then went to bed...
...Life is personal, as my pal Wlady says...
...She had a facility with voicework that I could only envy...
...I got a call to go for an audition right near my apartment...
...That would be good," he said, "because Mommy told me that I could make enough money to buy a one-man submarine if I was really funny...
Vol. 27 • January 1994 • No. 1
