THESE LAST FEW DAYS I HAVE FELT DEATH STALKING, HOVERING IN THE WINGS. IN DAVENPORT WE WERE SHOWN THE DRESSING ROOM WHERE CARY GRANT DIED. THE ANNIVERSARY OF MY MOTHER’S DEATH HAS BEEN MUCH ON my mind, and then an NPR interviewer asked me all about death for a program this weekend on that subject. And now it strikes with the devastating news that my good friend Michael Kamen has died suddenly of a heart attack at the ridiculously early age of fifty-five. Michael had been bravely fighting M.S. for a number of years but seemed to be overcoming its invidious clutches, so that this was unexpected and totally heartrending news.
Michael was my friend since the early seventies, a classically trained American musician with two lovely daughters whom he adored and a lovely English wife called Sandra. He lived in great style in a splendid house in Notting Hill Gate, London. He was a total musician, equally at home in the symphony hall and the rock-and-roll recording studio. One minute he would be conducting Pink Floyd’s The Wall in Berlin, the next waving a baton at Pavarotti and Sting at La Scala, Milan, then jetting off to Hollywood to compose film scores for Mel Gibson’s Lethal Weapon movies, then zooming off to Canada to conduct the opening gala of the Winter Olympics, and back to Hyde Park, London, for the Queen’s Jubilee. In short, a polymath. A man of great talent. A humane man, a wonderful, lovely, lovable, laughing big bear of a man. I hugged him recently at the opening of the movie The Concert for George in L.A., and he had his usual big wide smile and an elegant cane. You can see him in that movie, thin from the M.S., conducting the strings for that concert, with his usual beaming smile.
I was shocked when Tania told me the dreadful news but somehow managed to contain it until I spoke with Sandra in London, when she said “there are no words,” and I lost it. She was bravely planning an L.A. tribute to Michael. She said friends had been calling from all over the world weeping, and I lost it again. I know exactly how they feel. I spoke briefly with his longtime partner and friend Bob Ezrin, but what can you say? There are no words. I met them both in the late seventies in New York, when I was attempting to make a film version of The Pirates of Penzance and Jim Beach (the Queen manager) recommended Michael to score and Bob to record. We became great friends and spent happy holiday times in Barbados, where Michael would rent the same rickety old house perched precariously over a cove just south of Bridgetown. We hung out for hours drinking margaritas and laughing, always laughing. He always found me funny, and made no secret of it. He would collect things I said and remember them and quote them back to me with glee. Sometimes he would make me laugh by telling me a funny line, and when I laughed out loud and said, “Now that’s funny,” he would say, “It should be, you said it.” For instance margaritas in his house were always known as Mrs. Lots because I once spat out one he had mixed, complaining it was far too salty, saying, “It was like going down on Mrs. Lot.” Now I have no one to remember my jokes.
Last year in St. Petersburg, we were returning from a sumptuous Summer Palace of the Czars to that most elegant of cities by hydrofoil. A very sweet, elegantly dressed, elderly lady came slowly on board and then asked me very politely if she could sit next to me.
“Well okay,” I said, “but you keep your hands to yourself.”
Michael nearly fell overboard.
Michael always made me feel good. He always made me feel he loved me and wanted to be near me, and I can’t bear the thought that he has gone. One memorable weekend in a hotel room in Rome we wrote and recorded an entire pseudo-Handel miniopera for The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, called The Torturers’ Apprentice. A chorus of eunuchs sang lustily
A eunuch’s life is hard,
A eunuch’s life is hard,
A eunuch’s life is hard,
But nothing else is….
I was looking on my computer and found I had written a speech for him as recently as September, which I was going to record on film, as I couldn’t make a dinner honoring him and presenting him with an award. Sadly no one came to film it, but this is what I had written:
Hello Michael.
Unfortunately my parole officer wouldn’t let me be here this evening.
He says there are too many film producers present.
As you know this is the charity season, when film producers and studios give to charity all the money they’ve stolen from people like us over the past year, thus gaining an undeserved reputation for humanity while grabbing a large tax credit.
And I wouldn’t honestly be seen in the same room as some of these shits.
Indeed, as you know I have been fucked by more film producers than Joan Collins.
So my advice to you, Michael, is to get out quick.
Don’t wait for the rubber chicken.
Don’t even count your fingers.
Just leave now.
[Cell phone rings.]
Excuse me. Hello. Oh hello, Harvey. Yes, lovely to hear from you. I’m making a film, well it’s a charity film. A tribute to Michael Kamen. No, it’s not important. Oh. I’d love to be in a movie. Five thousand dollars? For eighteen weeks in Poland in the winter? Playing a sympathetic Nazi? With some nudity? Sure. That sounds good money for Miramax. Yes, that sounds lovely. Looking forward to it. Bye.
Sorry, Michael. Where were we? Oh dear, we’ve run out of time.
I was going to talk about your humanity. What a decent chap you are.
How I have known and loved you since 1976 when we tried without success to make a movie version of The Pirates of Penzance, and have watched with pride as your career flourished and you became THE Michael Kamen—the celebrated composer of Mr. Holland’s Anus. The man who wrote “Have You Ever Really Really Really Really REALLY Ever Loved a Woman?”
But I think we can take that as read, blah de blah de blah. Fabulous blah de blah de blah great musician blah de blah. I think that’ll do it.
[Off camera.]
Hey, I’ve got a movie from Miralax…
Good-bye, my friend. I really miss you.