“Hey, buddy. It’s Slim Jim checking in.”
“Hey, man. You watching the Game Show Network?”
“Hold on a minute. I’m changing the channel now.”
“Well, get it on! Hurry up!”
“Okay, okay.”
“Call me back when you’ve got it on!”
Thirty-three seconds pass, and my phone rings.
“You got it?”
“Got it.”
“This guy is brilliant, one of the smartest guys I’ve ever seen. When he’s on, no one can beat him. He may be a genius!”
“I agree. He’s awesome!”
“What did you get for seven across?”
“Let me go back to the newspaper; I did the puzzle earlier, and I need to bring it back up.”
“Bring it back up! What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I do the crossword puzzle on the LA Times Web site. I’ve told you this before—it takes two seconds to reload the page.”
“Call me back. I just want to fill the motherfucker in; it’s taking too long today!”
Click. Twenty-seven seconds later, the phone rings again.
“Well?”
I give him the answer.
“That’s a made-up word!”
“I agree, but that’s the answer.”
“That’s bullshit. Where did they get that from?”
“It’s a pop culture term.”
“They’re really fucking stretching it!”
This goes on for an hour or so. There could be anywhere from ten to fifteen back-and-forth phone calls. The gravelly, three-pack-a-day-timbered voice belongs to Harry Dean Stanton. This is a conversation we’ve had a thousand times and could be from any time zone. If I’m out of town, the conversation is limited to just the crossword, as I can only get the Game Show Network when I’m home. We trace current world history not by who the president was but who the host of Family Feud was at any given time.
Harry has become a little trendy in recent years. His truly impressive career and personality have been acknowledged in a documentary. You’ll recognize Harry as the father in Pretty in Pink, and he’s had roles in Godfather, Part II and cult classic Repo Man. He has hundreds of credits. He’s been doing interviews for all sorts of magazines from all over the world. He loves the attention, and I’m happy for him. It barely scratches the surface, though. He’d much rather be doing the crossword puzzle over the phone with a few deep inside confidants than be at his own screening in Cannes. I feel flattered to be called. I’ve done the crossword with Harry over the phone from dressing rooms and hotels all over the world.
I first met Harry Dean in 1982 at On the Rox. He was very friendly with Lou Adler, and we became fast pals. We bonded over music and history, trivia and word games, and the love of just hanging out. The longer I know him, the more I find out. He is a brilliant actor who doesn’t have to do much on the screen to be effective. Whether it’s playing the drums or acting, less is more, and the best ones can say a lot without overdoing it. A lot of heavyweight actors, directors, and writers know this about Harry, and he’s rightfully one of the most respected guys in his game. I’ve spent a lot of time at his cabin in the canyon just watching TV, doing anagrams on his little 1980s Game Boy, and listening to music. Marlon Brando would call his house, and he would put him on the speakerphone while holding his finger up to his lips. They, like us, would talk about nothing with a few insightful, brilliant one-liners peppered in the conversation. We’d go to Dan Tana’s, the Roxy, the Mint, and sometimes Mouses’s, an old after-hours club down on Pico. He would come over when I lived in Stone Canyon, and we’d play pool and watch my fish tank. We would drink, but like all my real friendships, it turned out not to be based on getting wasted.
In 1992, we’d form a true cult classic band that played around in LA and on one notable road trip. We called it the Cheap Dates. We had Jamie James of the famed Kingbees on guitar, Tony Sales from Iggy and Bowie fame on bass, my brother from a different mother, the fabled Jeffrey “Skunk” Baxter on pedal steel (confidentiality agreement with Jeff prohibits me from getting deeper into his life, but he is my adopted big brother and TJ’s godfather). We all sang, and it made for a whacked-out bluegrass, rockabilly, country sound. We played every Friday night for a year at the Roxbury, which was not known as a live-music venue and which added to the nuttiness of the whole thing. My girlfriend at that time, actress and former Playmate Julie McCullough, and her friend Tia Carrere were the promoters, and it made for some memorable gigs. After the first few gigs, Rolling Stone magazine did a half-page feature on us, and we eventually went into the Paramount Studio and cut a demo. I still have it on a cassette. We were going to try making an album and touring, but Harry got a movie, Jeff got a production gig, and it just never happened that way.
We did take a road trip to San Francisco to play a few shows. We rented a van, and we hired a roadie type who drove and did the gear. We had a movie star and four musicians who hadn’t been in a van with the equipment for a long time. The concept was noble: we wanted to bond as a band. It was all going fine until we hit a little traffic about two hours into the trip. Everyone turned quickly into Diana Ross, and we regretted not flying. Tony Sales called his dad, legendary old-school Borscht Belt comedian Soupy Sales, who was in New York.
“Dad, it’s Tony. I’m stuck in a van with some guys, and we’re bored. Tell us some jokes.”
He put him on the little speaker of an old cell phone, and we huddled around, looking for something to beat the boredom of that mind-numbing traffic.
“What do you get when you mix a Dutch impressionist painter and a New York City cabdriver?”
We all gave up.
“Vincent Van Gogh Fuck Yourself!”
This went on for a half an hour, and the distraction was greatly appreciated. We made it to San Fran and played the gig. We unanimously agreed to fly home. The van ride was fun but not fun enough to do it again. Harry got the senior-citizen discount at the airline ticket counter. That was nineteen years ago. I hope I want to do a gig when I’m that age.
Harry invited me to go with him to a barbecue at the home of Edward Bunker. He’s a gritty ex-con, a street-style writer from LA, a real character. Harry had done a movie called Straight Time based on one of Bunker’s books. I had read the book and was excited to meet the writer. Harry drove along Mulholland. There was a stub from a valet parking ticket stuck under the windshield wiper. It was really annoying him. I suggested pulling over and I’d take it off. He kept driving and put the windshield wipers on. While steering with his right hand he used his left to try to snatch the stub off every time the wiper brought it close enough. We weren’t slowing down, and Mulholland is the trickiest of roads at the best of times. We were sliding around a few turns while Harry was becoming more intent on plucking this ticket stub off, without slowing down. I was thinking of Eddie Cochran and James Dean and decided that driving off Mulholland Drive in Harry Dean’s Acura was not a fitting rock-and-roll legendary ending for me. Maybe the wind helped, or maybe he got a finger on it, I don’t know, but the ticket flew off the windshield, and we slowed down and had a nice drive into Hollywood. He was listening to “Margaritaville” by Jimmy Buffett over and over. He wanted to learn the words and try to play it at a gig. The car had a cassette player, and each time he tried to rewind the tape, it flipped sides, and it was a whole process to get the song back. There were quite a few snarls of “Goddamn it, Slim!” of varying volumes and intensities flying around the inside of the car. We were sitting in front of the house, and I could smell the barbecue and hear the guests talking, but we sat in the car playing that song over and over, discussing the finer points of that song. I was going crazy; I wanted to go in, but it was his friend’s house, and an introduction from Harry would be better than me walking in cold. We eventually went in, and I had a memorable time with a favorite writer of mine and an assorted cast of eccentrics. Thanks again, Harry.
The phone rang while I was trying to write this story. It was from a blocked number. It was time for The Chase, a game show that features a three-hundred-pound English trivia genius nicknamed the Beast, so I knew who it was.
“What’s your middle name?”
“Thomas.”
“Full name?”
“James Thomas McDonnell.”
“Wow, I’ve known you all this time, and I never knew that. To me, you’ll always just be Slim.”
Like I said, I’m flattered to just be called.