If you are dispatched to a film or TV set and need to do a little sleuthing about your subject, forget the hair and makeup people. Yes, they love to gossip, but it’s usually about everybody else, not the celebrity they are currently fussing over. Even if it’s clear that they can’t stand their charge, the most that you will get is eye-rolling, because painting a famous person’s face can yield a day rate of thousands of dollars, and working on a set means a steady paycheck, so it doesn’t behoove them to tell you anything.
Ditto the crew. They are usually loyal to “the talent” because they won’t want to be blackballed for future work. They want to remain firmly in the union, and who can blame them? And film sets are so incestuous that loose lips will swiftly be discovered. Production assistants and interns will flee from you in terror, chauffeurs often have to sign confidentiality agreements, and the catering people are never alone because someone is always hanging around the craft services table.
You need someone nonunion. You need someone who is completely mercenary.
You’ll be needing the van driver.
Usually on a television or film set there is a scraggly guy who ferries various items or people around in a van. Often he is a local who does not work on sets for a living. He is your man.
I learned this unsavory fact when I was sent to Wilmington, North Carolina, to the set of Dawson’s Creek for a rendezvous with then-rising star Katie Holmes. I had spent the day with her and found her to be sweetly wholesome. She told me she had grown up completely sheltered and happily naive in Toledo, Ohio, in the protective shadow of her older brothers. She attended an all-girl Catholic school, where the nuns told her that sex means love to girls and love means sex to boys.
In normal circumstances I would have liked her (although she had a grating habit of pronouncing “especially” ex-specially), but Rolling Stone wasn’t Ladies’ Home Journal. The cover images that sold the most briskly were of half-naked starlets, and we were encouraged to inject as much sex, drugs, and rock and roll into the text as we could reasonably get away with. Racy, she was not. I left our first interview with mixed feelings. Why did I have to tart everyone up? On the other hand, our chat had not been compelling.
Afterward, a bored Dawson’s rep showed me around the set, then pointed at a brown van that was parked on a road near the entrance. “He’ll take you to your hotel,” he said.
A guy with a thin mustache and a tank top greeted me unsmilingly. He grunted, tossed his cigarette out the window, and turned on the ignition. Remembering my father’s assertion that most unfriendly-looking people are actually shy, I cleared my throat.
“Not much action around here, huh?” I asked. He grinned.
“Nope,” he said. “Most days I just sit around, have a smoke. It ain’t so bad.”
“How long have you been working here?” I said. After a while, I could ask questions on autopilot, and supply smooth follow-ups, without actually paying attention to what was said. It was all about modulation. Like a dog or a cat, I would snap into focus only if a voice abruptly raised or changed tone.
“About a month,” he said. “I’m done next week. Got some business to take care of in Winston-Salem.”
I nodded, gravely but sympathetically, as if I knew what he was talking about.
“Mind if I smoke?” he asked.
“No, go ahead.” I hated cigarette smoke but wanted to appear breezy and hip.
He sparked one up and chuckled. “The only action I saw was with that little girl Katie and Josh.” I sat up. That would be her costar, Joshua Jackson. Easy now. Clearly, he didn’t know I was a reporter, but just assumed I was one of the many people who streamed in and out of the place. “They’ve been at it for a while, now.”
“Oh?” I said lightly.
“It’s the worst-kept secret on the set,” he said. “Ask anybody.” A Grinchlike grin crept across my face and I restrained myself from giggling. Thank you, my good man, and best of luck with your endeavor in Winston-Salem!
The next day as Katie and I had coffee together, I told her that I learned from a well-placed source that she and Jackson were an item. My conscience pricked me when her soft smile died and she buried her head in her hands. She whimpered a confirmation. I got my story. Everybody wins! Well, sort of.
In the music world, the tour-bus driver can be another rich trove of information, provided that he is a mercenary hire for a band’s summer tour and not a regular driver with a decade of loyal employment. During a trip to Boston to spend time on the tour bus with the now-forgotten band Days of the New, I chatted up the bus driver while the group was outside arguing with their manager.
“Do you always work with these guys?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” he said cheerfully. “It varies.” Aha. I put my notebook and tape recorder down, signaling that I was off duty.
I smiled eagerly, like a fan. “Who was the wildest group that you’ve ever driven?” I asked breathlessly.
He considered for a moment. “Well, the strangest thing I’ve heard lately is about that fellow from Alice in Chains. A buddy of mine told me about it, he’s a driver, too. That fellow—”
“Layne Staley?” I prompted. “The lead singer?”
He rubbed his chin. “Yeah. Him. That fellow does a lot of drugs.”
“Right,” I said.
“Well, my buddy saw him recently, and says that the guy shot up a lot, and sometimes he used dirty needles. Got gangrene in both wrists. Had to have both hands amputated.”
My heart quickened as a familiar sensation flooded me—equal parts excitement and self-loathing at the discovery of a lurid story. “Are you sure about that?” I asked.
He swigged from his Styrofoam cup of coffee and allowed a small belch. “My buddy doesn’t lie. He saw it with his own eyes.” He looked at me pointedly. “When’s the last time you saw a photo of him?”
I scanned my mental archives. “I don’t know,” I admitted. Staley hadn’t been at any shows lately, but I assumed it was because of his drug jamboree, which was hardly a secret.
The bus driver shrugged. “That’s because they want to keep it out of the papers. Although it’s not like his career’s over because he doesn’t play guitar. I’m telling ya. The guy doesn’t have any hands.”
The next morning I flew back to New York and hastened to the office. I threw my bag down and speed-walked over to the cubicle of my editor, Karen. She was in the midst of closing a story and was staring intently at the screen.
“Listen,” I said quietly. “I have it on good authority that Layne Staley has no hands.”
She squinted up at me as if I had a bug on my face. She had long ago become inured to most of my dramatic schemes but I could see she was curious. “What are you talking about?” she said. “I think I need a cigarette for this.” She grabbed a pack of smokes. “Come downstairs with me.”
I told her the story while she puffed furiously. Then she took me into the managing editor’s office and made me repeat it. “Well,” he said. “If it’s true, then you’ll have to do a story on it. Let me just check with photo to see if there is anything recent on him.”
My heart leaped. Breaking news, and I was at the front lines! I trumpeted my report to a couple of the younger staffers, reveling in their satisfyingly shocked reaction, then walked purposefully back to my desk to commence my research.
Five minutes later, Karen dropped a photo of Layne Staley—both hands perfectly intact—on my desk.
“That was taken last week,” she said. I could see she was holding back laughter, but she softened when she saw my crestfallen face. “You shouldn’t be so disappointed to learn that a person has hands,” she said. “It’s good news, not bad news, that the poor guy isn’t an amputee.”
Then I started to laugh, too. Although I wasn’t laughing a week later when coworkers were still greeting me by hiding a hand in their sleeve and waving a cheery hello with their “stump.”