This memoir is the result of a yearlong collaboration between Jay Bernstein and me. Jay had wanted to write a history of Hollywood as seen from the inside looking out, interweaving his personal experiences during a period just short of fifty years. I worked daily with him for a solid year, piecing his amazing story together. Then suddenly on April 30, 2006, Jay succumbed to a massive stroke. Fittingly, Farrah Fawcett stayed by Jay’s side at the hospital until his final breath on earth.
A few weeks later, a memorial service was held for Jay at Paramount Studios. It played to a packed house at the Paramount Theater, an event Jay would have appreciated, with 500 stars, directors, producers, friends and fans in attendance. In my mind the service reaffirmed that Jay was more than another Hollywood character.
Although Jay had vivid recollections of almost every person he represented, befriended and combated during his career, he was aware that only a handful could be explored in a memoir. Therefore he chose a select few people around whom to weave his story, not all of whom he considered friendly witnesses to the events.
“I’m not interested in other people’s viewpoints,” he once said to me. “They would be at odds with mine. I want to tell my story of Hollywood as I saw it, as it happened to me, without a Rashomon effect.
“Let’s say we take an Australian aborigine to Africa to see his first elephant,” he continued. “Before we show him the elephant, however, we blindfold him. Then we put him behind the elephant and take the mask off. All he sees is a big asshole and a tail. Then we put the blindfold back on the aborigine, take him away and ship him home. He doesn’t know anything about elephant tusks, trunks and ears, but back among his kin he is nevertheless the resident expert on elephants. Well, the world is replete with aboriginal elephant experts, particularly when it comes to the Hollywood jungle.”
Jay thought of himself as a product of television more than of motion pictures, but an interesting fact surfaced during the final stages of assembling his story. His clients were nominated for more than a hundred Oscars and received in excess of forty.
Finally, Jay had wanted to write more thoroughly about certain people who are hardly mentioned in the preceding pages, in particular Stan Moress, Stan Rosenfield, Jon Morton, Gray Frederickson, Michael Mesnick and especially Delmy Tochez, all of whom were close friends or members of his “team” at one time or another, some for much of his adult life.
Alas, he died too soon.