P. J. O’ROURKE LIVED IN A TRIANGLE-SHAPED apartment above the Queens-Midtown Tunnel in Manhattan. The living room came to a point like the bow of a ship heading uptown on First Avenue. Other writers knew P.J. as an editor at the National Lampoon, where they had put a dog with a pistol in its ear on the cover with the headline “If You Don’t Buy This Magazine, We’ll Kill This Dog.” I’m not sure why, but that cover line and that pointed apartment seemed to make sense together.
We often wound up at the same bar or table or party—sometimes in that order over a single night. He looked a little like Ringo Starr, but in a handsome way, and he had lots of girlfriends and writer friends, too. He told me that whenever he had a little money in the bank he applied for higher credit lines and that I should, too.
“It’s not like we’ve got a secure future,” he said, but it was also clear that he was going to figure out something smart for himself—maybe even as a writer. He had just gone freelance. “Time to grow up,” he said. “We’re screwed.”
P.J. had been a liberal with long hair and underground newspaper credits—his politics formed by the Vietnam War, the subtext of which, he said, was “saving one’s own butt.” That changed at the Lampoon. His most famous piece was “How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink,” which P.J. used as a liftoff to become what he called a “pants-down Republican”:
I think our agenda is clear. We are opposed to: government spending, Kennedy kids, seat-belt laws, busing our children anywhere other than Yale, trailer courts near our vacation homes, all tiny Third World countries that don’t have banking secrecy laws, aerobics, the U.N., taxation without tax loopholes, and jewelry on men. We are in favor of: guns, drugs, fast cars, free love (if our wives don’t find out), a sound dollar, and a strong military with spiffy uniforms.
P.J.’s work as an editor and writer at the Lampoon nailed a sensibility many of his colleagues cashed in on when they stepped easily into the movie business, starting with Animal House (1978). P.J. took his shot with a Rodney Dangerfield vehicle called Easy Money and used the payday as a down payment on a small house in New Hampshire and a Porsche. Problem was, he hated the work as much as he loved that 911 Turbo.
“It’s just a stupid movie,” P.J. said when we were driving from New Hampshire to Boston. He was going to drop me at the airport and then spend the day working with Rodney on the script.
“Come on…” I said. Like everyone I knew in journalism, I was envious of movie money.
“I should know how bad it is,” he said. “I’m writing it.”
There were three other writers on Easy Money, including Rodney. The setup was that a hard-drinking, pot-smoking, obsessive gambler had to change his ways to inherit $10 million from his puritanical mother-in-law. The marketing language would read: No Cheating! No Gambling! No Booze! No Smoking! No Pizza! No Nothin’! We’re taking all the fun out of life—and putting it into a Movie!
P.J.’s script called for Rodney to lose thirty pounds as he got healthy over the story arc.
“He’s never going to do that,” P.J. said.
“Good luck,” I said, getting out of the Porsche at the shuttle terminal.
“No more movies,” P.J. said.
I wondered how high he had pushed his credit lines.
−ENDIT−