The Secret Lives of Brando, Pacino, Dolly Parton, and More

1977: Dreaming of Brando

November 3

First contact with Brando. At least, close. Got his secretary/assistant’s number. So, I called. She said that Marlon would do this, and that it should be about the Indians. He was back East but back next week. She would give him my number and he’d get back to me. I said, or else I’ll call him.

Had a Brando dream. He was sitting on a couch, his hair in a ponytail. I went over to him and tripped, sprawling on my face. He said nothing. I asked if I could call him Marlon. He said no. I followed him to an elevator, then to a room with people there, walked past them to a smaller, darker room with cushions on the floor. He said nothing. We sat in silence. I felt like the writer who once went to interview William Faulkner and sat in silence with him, finally standing and saying goodbye.

I’m obviously nervous about this one.

Christmas Day

“Marlon is a liar,” Pat Cox said at Bernie Wolfe’s house. “He was very mean to Wally. He’s very destructive. He’s often hostile. He still has some of Wally’s ashes. I tried to sue him to get them back, but I couldn’t find a lawyer to take the case. No one wants to sue Brando. He and I were both jealous over Wally, it’s true. We were both possessive of him. Marlon’s insecure around intelligent women. He probably wants to see your questions because he’s such a liar, he has to prepare for them. If a woman won’t go to bed with him, he thinks she’s a lesbian. He needs to be stroked. Don’t say what a great actor he is, tell him what a great man he is. We’re not talking. We have a mutual dislike for each other.”

Bernie’s wife, Dolores, told this story about Brando at a party soon after she and Bernie were married. “Brando kept following me around, getting real close, staring, not saying anything. He made me uncomfortable. Finally, he said, ‘Mrs. Wolfe, you are fascinating to look at, but your nose, what I would like to do to your nose.’ ” To which Dolores replied, “Mr. Brando, although my nostrils are flared, unless you are very underendowed, there is nothing you could do to my nose that hasn’t already been done.” Brando backed away, only to nod to her later and indicate hats off.

1978: On the Road With Dolly Parton. Ten Days on Brando’s Island.

March 11

Dolly Parton wore green. A light green silk pantsuit and a dark green shawl. Red lips that wore down to natural as she talked, then excused herself three times to freshen up, saying she looked “tacky” when natural. I found her natural look more appealing.

She read the Streisand interview and liked it but didn’t know I did it. Her manager, Sandy Gallin, told her that Playboy is the classiest magazine to do an interview. But there are some Bible totin’ folks who are her fans and that concerns her. She’ll pose for the cover if the bunny costume can be altered so the crotch can be lowered and she doesn’t reveal too much boob.

We talked about weight. I said that’s why I wore my African fugu; she said that’s why she wore the shawl. Calls herself “plump.” Says she jumps on a mini trampoline for exercise. She talked fast. Addressed her looks for 15 minutes before I asked about them. She said she just figured that’s what everybody talks about with her first, so might as well get it over with. When I told her that I saw Streisand for nine months, she said, “We could have a baby if we started now.” Then she said she could understand why Barbra didn’t mind having me come around. Dolly can be funny, charming, disarming. Easy to talk to her. But difficult to interrupt.

She sat on a couch with her feet folded under her and spoke for five hours about her ma, her pa, her husband, her career, ghosts, taking pail baths, growing up mature, writing songs. She talks about being honest, about her talks with God, about her outrageousness. Has no trouble talking about anything, though when I asked her how old she was when she lost her virginity, she said if she told me, people would think she was perverted.

She rarely goes to movies and has never seen a Mae West film. Hardly reads, except positive-thinking books. She’ll act in movies, but she won’t learn to act. She writes as many as 20 songs in a day, 14 of which get recorded.

Says she feels she’s at the beginning of a five-year cycle or rise. Aware of her great appeal to the gay crowd. “I’m thinkin’ of entering that Dolly Parton look-alike contest on Wednesday,” she laughs. “Wouldn’t it be hysterical if I lost?”

March 28

Marlon Brando finally calls and asks, “Do you want to do this in Tahiti?”

It’s taken longer to get to this point than it did with Streisand. But no matter how long it will take to get to Tahiti, it will be worth it. He’s one of the few icons who will last into the next century. Like James Joyce, Picasso, Nureyev, FDR, Mao, Lenin. For actors, it’s Chaplin, Olivier, and Brando.

“Love to,” I say.

“Okay. I’m not really interested in talking about acting or anything; I never talk about that. It’s meaningless. It’s gossip trade. But maybe we can do a separate story about tourism in Tahiti. They need some kind of help. But I can’t give short shrift to what’s happening with the American Indians. And to some extent we could talk about the environment, which is certainly cheek by jowl with the Indian issue. So maybe those two things could dovetail.”

“No problem,” I say.

“How old are you, Larry?”

“31.”

“Okay. I want to say that I’m disturbed by the extended runaround you’ve been getting from me. It’s just been one crazy thing after another. But it’s an obligation, not only to you, but to Hugh [Hefner], who came up with $50,000 to get Russell Means out of jail. He did it on trust, and I’m grateful. I certainly feel that I owe him a debt.”

“I’m looking forward to this.”

“Okay, then, if anything comes up, call me, will you? I’ll be in touch, and I’ll tell you what to bring and all that stuff.”

We hang up, and I’m elated. Going to Brando’s island. Perfect place, away from the rest of the world, to do an interview.

May 6

At the Howard Johnson’s in Winchester, Virginia, to join Dolly Parton’s bus tour. She greets me by phone from her room. “I’ve got lots of stories,” she says. “Here’s the plan. After the sound check [for the Apple Blossom Festival concert], you and me will talk on the bus until I get tired, or you do, then we’ll call it quits for a few hours. After the show, if we feel like it, we can talk some more. And all day tomorrow. We’ll be honest with each other; when we want to take a break, we’ll just say so. And now, you’re on the bus.”

May 7

As we cross Virginia, Dolly comments on the scenery and how it looks like where she grew up. I realize that for four hours, I haven’t looked out. I’ve just focused on her face. I’ve asked her so many questions, she says, “Is this a magazine assignment or are you planning to write a two-volume book?” I tell her just a few more days, and then maybe a few hours in Oakland when she appears with the Beach Boys and Linda Ronstadt, and then again before the interview is scheduled for an update. “Okay,” she says, finding the gum she had stuck under the sink and sticking it back in her mouth, “Whatever you need.”

She talks about becoming a female Elvis Presley, how her vision of herself is reaching millions of people. At the motel, we talk for six hours, from 11 p.m. until 5 a.m. No taping, just exchanging stories from God to ghosts.

May 25

Marlon wants me to write him a letter outlining the specific areas we will discuss and then he will have a lawyer draw up an agreement for me to sign. I took a deep breath and said no. If Brando doesn’t like my questions, he can always ask me to leave his island.

May 27

Sent Brando a Mailgram saying the interview should be free-ranging and not narrow and one-topic. He got it and said, okay, come as planned on June 9. Nothing to sign.

June 8

Called Brando’s personal assistant, Alice Marchak, and asked if there’s anything I might bring Marlon. She suggested a nonfiction book, perhaps Colby’s CIA memoir or something on electronics. But she warned me if I gave him a book, he might read it instead of talking to me.

June 25

Took three days before Marlon agreed to let me turn on the tape recorder. I’d ask, “Feel like working?” He’d answer, “No, not really.” So, we sat and stared at the bay and talked, off the record. He’d say, “It’s all very elemental here: the sea, the sky, the crabs, the wind. If the mermaids don’t sing for me here, they never will.” I joked, “Yeah, this is the life, Marl, just sitting here in silence, in the elemental wonder of it all.” When I mentioned acting, he’d say, “Acting bores me.” And I said, “I know, but if I was talking to Heifetz, I’d be asking him about music, and if I was with Mickey Mantle, I’d talk to him about baseball.” And he’d respond, “If you were with William O. Douglas, would you ask him what Marilyn Monroe thought of him?”

And on it went. We ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner together, went night sailing, walked on the beach, sat on the pier under a strong moon, played chess until 1 a.m., and somehow managed to tape 15 hours of conversation that I’ll transcribe myself because he spoke very softly. Not as psychological as Streisand or as playful as Parton, but it’s Brando. Witty, funny, serious, and memorable. Took 68 pages of notes that I’ll add to this journal.

1979: Brando’s Disappointed. Al Pacino Wants the Guy Who Did Brando. The Sterilization of Native American Women.

January 24

Got a three-page letter from Marlon about our interview.

“Disappointment is waned and smoldering resentment is lapsed.”

Great opening sentence!

He complained about how it was edited to include what he felt was trivial conversation to the detriment of all he had to say about the Indians. But then he wrote, “I might add that you did indeed make me sound more intelligent from the way I remembered speaking to you. Thank you for that.”

He asked if I could present him with all the raw material “because there were things that I said that I would like to use at some other time in some other article.”

And then he wrote, “I must tell you that people have said many kind things about the article, and I have received letters praising the article. I am grateful to you for having helped me to appear more organized and articulate than I would have been had you printed it verbatim. As I put it all together now, our experience seemed to have been a very useful one. Belated thanks to you.”

He went on to criticize the editors and added a PPS: “Fuck the press. Unless you know them and trust them and know them not to be at the mercy of the editors. It’s the same old story.”

June 19

Al Pacino read my Brando interview and said he’d consent to do one if “the guy who did Brando” did it. So, it looks like I’ll be going back to New York.

July 17

Wrote to Brando to let him know that Playboy’s given me a researcher to investigate the issue of Indian sterilizations, an issue he wanted me to write about. Told him about the tribe in Claremore, Oklahoma, where, supposedly, 85 percent of the women have been sterilized. Wanted his help to reach Dr. Connie Pinkerton-Uri, an Indian activist, who has a lot of information about this, and also Jimmie Durham at the UN. I went to see Durham when I was in NY, but he never showed up.

July 20

This morning, Dr. Connie Pinkerton-Uri called. She’s been to Wounded Knee, shot at, bullet grazed her hairline, addressed congressional hearings. She told me about a tribe in Oklahoma where, she thinks, 100 percent of the women were sterilized, but they fear for their lives and it’s hard to get them to talk about this because they don’t want their husbands to know. White women will make decisions about their bodies on their own, but Indian women like to talk with their men, and since most have been sterilized without their own knowledge, they’re ashamed. It’s hard to document. Women don’t trust the system. What can you promise them that hasn’t already, in some way, been broken? Indians have no faith in the justice system. Two suits about sterilization were brought in Oklahoma and California, and the one in Oklahoma took only 20 minutes for the jury to find the doctor not guilty.

July 25

Al Pacino wants me to see a screening of And Justice for All in Levittown on Saturday night and meet with him at his 68th Street apartment on Sunday afternoon. The studio will send a limo. Spent all day at the Academy Library yesterday, wrote 300 questions.

August 16

It’s been a few weeks since I wrote in this journal, because of all the time I spent with Pacino in New York. He was nervous when we met, but we got along like brothers. Got 37 hours on tape. Since I returned, he’s been calling, concerned that he said too much. Can’t write much now because I’m on a deadline. Have to get this done in four days, and I’ve only finished indexing the 2,000 pages of transcript.

August 18

Pacino called. Said he hopes that this part of our relationship is over and that we can now enter a new phase, that of friends. I did 31 pages of the interview yesterday, 14 the day before, and hope to get another 25 pages done today. He said he moved his bed to the window. “I’ve been living here for six years with the bed in the wrong place. I’ve also moved the building onto Fifth Avenue, from Madison,” he joked. Then he said, “Even if this is the greatest interview in the world, if I had a choice, I’d rather it not be printed.”

August 20

Finished Pacino: Four 12-hour days, 108 pages. I think it’s good.

August 23

Al was so worried about what he might have said that he went to the Playboy office and spent four hours with my editor Barry, who let him read it. When he got home, Al called to say how amazed and pleased he was. “That human thing came out. Nobody knows this about me. I’m a very simple kind of person. It’s not sensational. I saw our relationship. It’s not glib, it’s just these two crazy guys talking. You’re not stroking me. It’s not like movie star talk. It doesn’t make me sound like a jerk or like the smartest person in the world, which is okay.”

September 20

The phone half rings, and I pick it up, thinking it’s my wife, Hiromi. “Hi,” the voice says. “I knew it was you,” I say. “How’d ya know, by the ring?” Dolly says.

I recover, and she talks about her recent tour to Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Japan, and Hawaii. Australians, she says, “are like Southern people, real down-home.” She says she’s down to 112 pounds and feels good about that. Says she’ll be in LA in November for the 9 to 5 movie. “You’re so busy,” I say, “the only way I’ll get to see you is to write about you.”

“Maybe we can get married,” she says. Of all the stars I’ve met, she’s the most naturally flirtatious.

We talk about writing and how frustrating it is to start something and have to stop. She doesn’t even try to write if she knows she can’t finish. “Listen,” she says, “when I get an apartment out there, you’ll come by for dinner.”

September 22

Ran into Colin Higgins, who is writing the script for 9 to 5. He wanted to thank me for a scene he’s using that came from my interview with Dolly, about how she had a gun in her bag and threatened some drunk guy to leave her alone or she’d turn him from a rooster into a hen.

November 13

Lawrence Turman, a producer at Universal, sent over a script for Pacino, saying he’s a difficult person to reach and if I can get him interested, I could be an assistant producer. His cover letter, misspelling my last name, mentioned how terrific my interview with Al was. This town is so deep in desperation and bullshit.

November 19

Iran hostages began to be released today, but only women and Blacks.

Spoke with Pacino for 45 minutes. He’s doing Brecht’s In the Jungle of Cities, but it’s not going well because the director isn’t flexible. Dino De Laurentiis asked him to direct something, not act. “Your interview is going to get me work.” He bought a house along the Hudson but doesn’t know when he’ll go there. Said he switched from eating blueberries to nuts and raisins. Is concerned that Billy Friedkin has been fooling around with Cruising, making a lot of changes in the editing; he didn’t sound happy about it.

November 22

Terrorists have captured the Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia. In Pakistan, the US embassy has been burned down and two Americans killed.

1980: Preparing for Hitchcock. Dolly Parton Forgot Her Gun. George C. Scott, Tough Guy. In the Jacuzzi With Patty Hearst. Elliott Gould Wants to Live Forever.

January 3

Going to Paramount to screen some Hitchcock films. Spoke to Ernest Lehman, who wrote North by Northwest and Family Plot. He just attended a luncheon honoring “Sir Alfred’s” knighthood. I asked how Hitchcock was. “He’s 80. Weighs a lot. Doesn’t move well. Your interview will be difficult. He’s created an image with the press by being shrewd with his aphorisms and cleverness. If you get him on a good day, he can surprise you. Talking about sex, he’s remarkably candid. He claims to be celibate for the past 60 years. He tells four of the filthiest jokes you’ve ever heard, right in front of secretaries.”

January 7

Al got in last night. Said he was waiting to hear from Billy Friedkin to see how Cruising is coming along. He called at 1:45, wanting me to meet him for lunch at the Imperial Gardens on Sunset at 2:30. When I got there, Al was there, leaning against a post near the front door. The restaurant was closed on Mondays. “How long you been waiting?” I asked.

“Since I called,” he said. Forty minutes. He let his driver go eat lunch. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s okay, I watched cars, and then I realized they were watching me.” We got in my car and drove to the Pear Garden. But they were closing, so we went to the Aware Inn, also closed. The Old World was open, so we went there and asked for a quiet table. Al was in an agitated state.

He said when he got to the Todd-A-O Studio in Hollywood, where Friedkin was editing Cruising, Friedkin refused to let him see the rough cut. “It’s not ready,” the director said. “I’m mixing the sound. You’ll have to wait a month.”

A knot began to form in Pacino’s shoulder. “I have no power,” he said to me. “There’s nothing I can do. I just wanted to see what he’s doing, is that so bad? I mean, I’m in it too. It’s my life up there. I can only help it.” He knows it’s a controversial subject, and he wants to make sure it’s not going to be antigay. “If it is, I’m not taking my percentage. I mean that.”

I wondered if this might be his first X-rated film. “It should be double X, with one X burned into Friedkin’s forehead,” he said.

January 9

Al came to our house and stayed for three and a half hours. We took a walk around the canyon. When three barking dogs came running toward us, Al froze. Then we walked on. He talked about the nature of relationships, of his being selfish, and that he wants to do films that have dignity, films like what Spencer Tracy did. He turned down Starting Over and now regrets not having read Kramer vs. Kramer. He wants to look deeply into love. Bobby Deerfield aimed at that, he said, “but it missed, it was too subtle.” He wants to show another “more normal” side of himself onscreen.

January 10

Spoke with Elliott Gould, who said, when I asked him what he was up to, “I’m adapting the Torah, for a subterranean life.” Typical Elliott response. Talking to him is taking a mental coaster ride. He’s the opposite of Al or any of the other stars I know. He talks fast, jumps all over, has opinions, and is always concerned with survival and moving on. His is a complex story—from his childhood ads for Fox’s U-Bet to his marriage to Barbra and his second marriage to Jenny, his three kids, working with Ingmar Bergman, appearing on the cover of Time, smoking dope during interviews, his close relationship with Groucho, and his continuing self-analysis.

When I mentioned I was preparing for Hitchcock, he said, “I’m supposed to do his next movie, me and Liv Ullmann. I had dinner with him. He said, ‘You’re an Indian…and you’re also a clown.’ He can hardly stand. I said we’d wheel him around. He said he’s great from the waist up. You know he’s never eaten a tomato or an egg. He said, ‘It’s all music—pictures are like playing the piano, actors are notes, each is an element.’ ”

January 14

Hitchcock ill, not up to being interviewed. Indefinitely postponed. Leaving me, with all my preparation, up shit’s creek.

February 6

Herb Steinberg at Universal calls re Hitchcock. “I’m afraid it’s a scratch. Can I go off the record? He’s been in the hospital for five days. He just got out. We don’t know if he’ll recover.” I say I’ll call back in a few weeks, just to check. But it’s off. Fuck.

February 12

Yesterday, went to 20th Century Fox, stage 6, to watch Colin Higgins direct Dolly, Lily Tomlin, and Jane Fonda in 9 to 5. When Dolly saw me, she waved me over. We embraced in front of the production and lighting crew.

She looked like a yellow darling, in her yellow Lana Turner sweater. Dolly will do for sweaters what Brando did for T-shirts. She said she’s going to do The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas with Burt Reynolds next, and she’s cut another album. She’s bored waiting around the set and feels she can’t read or write or compose between takes, though she did manage to write the theme song for the movie the other day.

“Do I look like a secretary?” she asked.

“No,” I said, “you don’t. But maybe a very expensive secretary.”

She said that she had never been on a movie set before, and it was so much fun because “I’m a real fast learner. I don’t need to be told but once and I got it.” She spoke about how she, Lily Tomlin, and Jane Fonda work. “Lily works slow, but that’s okay, she’s responsible for a lot of the comedy. Jane works quick, ’cause she knows what she’s doing. I work quick because they figure it wouldn’t make no difference, I’ll do it the same anyway.”

February 14

Picked up Dolly at Fox and we drove to Santa Monica and Malibu, with her saying, “You can’t drive for shit, just like me.”

We took a walk along the beach, but not on the sand because she had on high heels and didn’t want to take them off. While we walked, a large dude was sitting on a bench, and when he saw us, he said something loud about her appearance. Dolly gripped my arm and said, “Shit, and I left my gun in my purse in your car.”

After we ate lunch, we drove to Bel Air, five hours later, and she started telling me how close she felt to me and how special I was and that my eyes misted whenever I talked about sensitive stuff. I asked her to sing the theme for 9 to 5 that she had composed in two days. She began to click her long red nails against each other to simulate the rhythm of a typewriter. I think it’s going to become the national anthem for secretaries.

April 11

Al called. He was so disappointed with Cruising, he met with his lawyer to give his money to charity. “I found out that they screwed me on the contract. It was not a good deal. I may never see any money.”

He said he won’t go to the Oscars, even though he was nominated (his fifth) for And Justice for All. “I don’t like to go and sit there for three hours when I know I’m going to lose.”

May 3

Met with George C. Scott at his Beverly Hills house on Roxbury. White-bearded, wearing glasses, a well-worn beige sweater with sleeves pushed up past his elbows, B&W herringbone slacks and brown boots. He is tall, his teeth are chain-smoked yellow, and his lower teeth are crooked. We sat outside at a redwood table. He brought his own tape recorder, I turned on my two, and for the next five hours, I never looked at my questions. Later, when I went over them at home, I saw that I asked him 165 of my 710 prepared questions, which was quite a bit, as I usually only cover a dozen or so prepared questions in the first session. But with Scott, there was no room for small talk. His answers were often brief, and that should change as he gets more comfortable doing this. I wore my African fugu, and it occurred to me that Scott was still a Marine at heart. He believes we should have invaded Iran within the first 72 hours of the hostage taking; that we should have let the Army decimate North Vietnam; that Reagan will be president; and that if Nixon was president, we wouldn’t be in the mess we have in Iran.

He mixed a bowl of Bloody Marys and drank two glasses, then some tequila, and a few beers. When we broke, I said about our conversation, “It wasn’t so bad, was it?” “No, it wasn’t,” he said. “It gets worse tomorrow,” I said. “I know,” he said.

May 4

We only had two hours, from 10 a.m. to noon, but we got a lot done. This interview is not a game to him, as it was to Brando. Nor is it a coronation, as Streisand took it. Or a coming out, as it was for Pacino. Scott is all business. He doesn’t like feeling captive, which is how he feels doing this interview. He said he’ll have a car pick me up when I go to see him next week in Greenwich, Connecticut. Not sure I want that—I don’t like feeling captive either.

May 16

Back from the East Coast, where I spent three days with Scott, and a few days with Pacino, and with my family. Drove myself to Scott’s 16-acre estate, with a long driveway, a stone bridge, and a gated entrance. He has a modern stable of horses, and two large dogs (a mastiff and a shepherd). Got four to six hours on tape each day. He drank and smoked throughout. He was very touchy about Ava Gardner, whom he fell for and physically abused (“I don’t talk about Ava”), but though I disagree with most of his views, I got him to talk about them.

The only time he asked me to turn off the tape recorder was when I asked him about guns. Yes, he sleeps with a .357 Magnum and has two loaded shotguns in the closet, and yes, his wife, Trish, has her own gun. And the reason? Some years ago, Scott and his then wife, Colleen Dewhurst, were living in a one-bedroom two-story apartment in Greenwich Village. They were asleep. Scott was naked. Colleen nudged close to him, and he thought she was having a bad dream, so he put out his hand to pat her back and she slipped under his face and whispered, “Someone’s in the room.” Scott said he nearly had a heart attack. He could hear a guy breathing right over them and could smell the alcohol on his breath. Scott leaped up and shouted and the guy took off. Scott grabbed the guy’s hair on his way down the steps and then chased him outside, where he stood stark naked in the street. He suspected it was another tenant in the building. The next day, Scott saw the guy he suspected and said, “What was that all about last night?” The guy said, “What?” And Scott took off his glasses and knocked the guy down, then jumped on him. “I was going to kill him. I was going to pound his head in the sidewalk.” But the guy talked him out of it and Scott got up, turned his back, and the guy kicked him in the spine. It really hurt and now Scott was running from the guy. “It was like the Keystone Cops.” After that, Scott went out and bought some guns and has had them ever since.

The transcript is more than 200 pages.

May 31

Went to see Dolly at the Bel Air Hotel. We recorded for an hour for a Playgirl interview, ate lunch, and then talked for another hour. I asked her if she ever thought of putting out a Dolly’s greatest hits album. She laughed and said there were two already: “Dolly Parton’s Greatest Tits.” Then she said, “You know, you have more material than anyone else and I’m glad it’s you, because if anything happens to me, I know you’ll know what to do with it.”

When I got home there was a phone message from Christie Hefner. Could I join her, Patty Hearst, and her husband for lunch at the Mansion tomorrow?

Finally, it’s happening. A journalist’s dream: going head-to-head with one of the biggest stories of our time. A story that captured the world’s imagination. My Japanese mother-in-law doesn’t know about Barbra Streisand or Dolly Parton, but she knows who Patty Hearst is. Yes, indeed, I’ll be there.

June 1

When I walked into the breakfast room at the Mansion, Christie waved and told me to pop into the kitchen to let them know what I wanted to eat. Patty and husband Bernie were there. I shook their hands and, after placing my order, sat down next to Christie. They had been talking about rape and rape prevention. Bernie, a San Francisco policeman for 10 years, said he goes on TV to speak about the subject. As he spoke, Patty muttered, “Charming.” I thought it was a strange topic of conversation, considering what happened to Patty six years ago, when she was 19 and kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), becoming a fugitive for 19 months. She was sentenced to seven years in prison for bank robbery and the felonious use of firearms, that President Carter commuted after she served three years.

Sitting across from her, she didn’t seem as diminutive as I thought from all the photos and TV coverage of her. She is small and fragile looking, with a bony face, thin hair, deep brown eyes, and the nostrils of the rich: long, thin, and a bit pinched. Yet, there is steel in her eyes and when she talked, I sensed her determination and strength. She’s a young woman who grew up a Hearst. She understood money and how the rich play—by yachting, hunting, traveling, and eating well.

While we ate our seafood salads, Bernie and Patty talked of their recent hunting trips. At San Simeon, they hunt boar, deer, and turkey. On their turkey shoot, Bernie related proudly how he blew apart a turkey with his shotgun. Then Patty was given the double shotgun and she shot two turkeys with one blast of sprayed pellets, then hit another. “Three in two shots,” she said. “And they thought I wouldn’t get any.”

Christie asked how you get the pellets out of the turkeys. Patty said you have to eat fowl very carefully because you usually find lead in the meat.

Patty was taught to shoot by her father, Randolph, when she was 12. No wonder, when the world saw the pictures of “Tania” holding the machine gun at the Hibernia Bank, it looked like she knew how to hold it and to use it. Because she did.

Patty was funny about her father, who was a sucker for schemes and scams, like a machine that turned lead into gold that he believed was real. He’d been shown a Rube Goldberg–like device, where lead was put in and gold came out, and he took it to a big mining company that he owned and showed it to the foreman, who watched the demonstration and said, “I don’t know how you do it, but it can’t be done.”

After lunch, Christie suggested we go Jacuzzi in the grotto. They all had suits, and I had to go with the butler to find one. Bernie mentioned that he and Patty were in the World of Playboy section of the magazine, posing with Hefner. He said that Patty’s father wasn’t happy about it.

That gave me my opening. With the hot water pulsating, I turned to Patty and asked, “Will your father mind you doing a Playboy interview?” And she snapped back, “Why should he? I’m 26 years old. I can do what I want.”

Bingo! All I needed to know. Obviously, this was something she wanted. So, the ice was broken, and we talked business. It’s not going to be an easy interview. She’s been analyzed up the wazoo by the top lawyers and psychiatrists in the country, examined and cross-examined, and is stone-faced about it by now. It will not be short.

That business done, we left the Jacuzzi and went across the grounds to the game room to play pinball and shoot pool. Patty and I played eight ball, which she won when I sank the eight ball.

July 6

Al called. He said he’s been going up to his country house in Sneden’s Landing, though he hasn’t slept there yet. He told Marty Bregman to see Scarface, with Paul Muni, and Bregman flipped out. Al is thinking of doing a remake next year with Sidney Lumet directing. Brian De Palma also wanted to do it, but Pacino felt better with Lumet.

July 12

Went to introduce our baby to Elliott & Jenny at their house in Brentwood. El’s concerned about death. “When we’re here, the thing to do is to be here. That’s the first thing—to just be here. There doesn’t have to be another purpose.”

Elliott continued in this vein, and Jenny said, “He carries the weight of the world on his shoulders. That’s the trouble with Jewish men.”

“Robert Altman told me that people think I’m crazy,” Elliott said. “But he said, ‘I know you’re not crazy, even though I can’t figure out half of what you say. I know you know what you’re thinking.’ ”

Elliott said that he used to be concerned when he’d talk to people and they wouldn’t understand him, or they’d lose his thread of thought, but now he doesn’t care whether people understand him or not. When he spoke about all the bullshit he’d been through in the industry, I told him that he had the best internal shock absorbers of anyone I knew. He thought about it and said that he hurt a lot inside. Then he said, “But shock absorbers keep you bouncing back. Yeah. Shock absorbers.”

I told him about seeing Barbra at Sandy Gallin’s party and that she didn’t recognize me. He said he wasn’t surprised; he, too, goes blank when he’s with people. “Even with you, and we’re friends, if I saw you in some place like that, I might go blank. That’s a subject worth exploring—what happens to famous people in public.”

July 16

Today, Ronald Reagan gets nominated for president at the Republican National Convention.

August 7

Al had asked me to read a script for him. Born on the Fourth of July. I did and told him that it was right three years ago, but no longer. He agreed. “I’m not going to do it,” he said. “But you’re right, it was right three years ago.”

September 3

Christie called to say Patty Hearst is ready to talk and gave me her number. Patty told her that she wasn’t going to do any publicity for the book other than this interview. I then called Patty, who said we should do it at the end of October, when she gets back from London.

September 22

Heard from “Patricia Hearst.” She doesn’t say Patty. She talked with her publisher, Sam Vaughan, who explained to her that Doubleday is considering first serial rights to the book, and they think a Playboy interview will hurt those sales. They think there’s a lot of news value in the book and believe it will be one of the biggest books of the year and they don’t want anything to jeopardize their investment. So that would delay any interview for months after the book came out.

December 10

Went with Elliott to MGM to see a screening of The Formula. We smoked a joint outside, and a few people stopped to ask for his autograph. Made me think of John Lennon, signing an autograph for Mark Chapman, who shot and killed him two days ago. It made me so angry, the stupidity, and the reality. The outpouring of emotion and the heavy media attention attached to his senseless murder is stunning. “What a way to go,” Elliott said.

Then he went off on a tangent, that is his thought process, and I wish I could accurately capture his stream-of-consciousness manner of speaking. Somehow, he got to belief, and he said, “Imagine when you get to where you don’t believe in anything.”

“Except yourself,” I said. “You’ve got to believe in yourself. Like Lennon said on his ‘God’ song, how he didn’t believe in anything—not the Beatles, not Jesus—just ‘Yoko and me.’ Someone you love.”

“But that implies having to be saved and you don’t always have to be saved.”

“That’s why it’s ‘Yoko and me.’ You save each other.”

“Some don’t need to be saved,” Elliott said.

“We all do,” I said, and gave him another joint for the road.

December 27

Long talk with Al, beginning with his having doubts about remaking Scarface. “I don’t know whether I should do it or not. It’s a 50-year-old classic. Brian De Palma wants to do it. It’s a great character for me, but why are we doing it? To show off? I’ve done that already. I don’t want to get into hype anymore, I hate that. I’ve been the victim of hype the last couple of movies I’ve made. I take it too seriously, these fucking things. Serpico was truly about corruption, but it was so good because it was about a guy who was human, and you could touch him. I don’t know anything anymore. I could make 20 movies, or I could make none. Do I go back to the stage and do what I do? I think that’s what I should do, until I find something I like.”

I asked if he’d seen Raging Bull yet. “Haven’t seen it. I heard mixed things. He’ll cop the Oscar.”

1981: Dolly Vetoes Charlie Manson

January 16

Playboy asked if I would consider doing Charlie Manson. I was surprised, because I remember that they once said that under no circumstances would they interview Manson. But apparently, now that he might be available, they’ve changed their mind. But my editor has reservations about me doing it, because he feels it could be dangerous, since I just had a kid and live in the Hollywood Hills, where Manson’s people did their dirty deeds. He asked me to think about it over the weekend.

Charlie Manson. The personification of evil. I remember being in India with my friend Glenn, after leaving the Peace Corps in Ghana, and how the people shied away from him because his hair was long, he had a beard, and he resembled Manson. The whole world knows about Manson. I’ve always thought that given a choice to interview anyone in this century, I’d lean toward Hitler. Manson, while no Hitler, is our Satan. A chance to wrestle with evil, to contest the black forces. But then, playing with my daughter Maya, thinking of all the fucking crazies still out there, what if they found out I was seeing Charlie? Would I get calls? Threats? Visits? Once my address was found, how vulnerable would we be? Is it worth the risk?

I decided to make some calls to ask friends for their opinions. I called Larry Schiller, who has been around these kinds of stories for a long time. He dealt with Gary Gilmore. And with Manson and some of his “family.” “You’ve got to do it,” Schiller said. “It’s a chance of a lifetime. How can you say no?” Then he added that Manson would do to me what he did to him before he met him: “Set off a bomb in front of my house. But that’s all. It was just a scare message. I still get letters from Squeaky Fromme. But other than that, nothing. Because when I met him, I was straight with him. That’s what you’ve got to be. You can’t fuck around with him. You have to tell him up front that there’ll be things in the interview that he won’t like and that you’re going to pursue all avenues. He’ll respect you for it. But if you do anything behind his back, if you misquote him or change his words, then you’re in for trouble.”

Harlan Ellison was pretty strong that I shouldn’t do it. So was my friend Noah benShea, who kept saying “Pass. Pass. Pass. Look what happened to Ron Hughes, his attorney who disappeared. Don’t get tied up with black energy. He’s the scum of the earth. Why fuck with your head? Every time his probation comes up, you’ll be reading the newspapers. Especially if you make him look bad. And if you make him look good? He doesn’t deserve that. And if you hold back out of fear, then you’re corrupting your integrity. Control your own destiny.”

Then, out of the blue, Dolly Parton called. “Hi guy,” she said.

“How interesting that you called,” I said, “I’m in the process of making a decision.” I told her about Manson, and she quickly and forcefully set me straight.

“I think he’d steal your soul,” she said. “I can’t even look at a picture of him. If you did it, I know I wouldn’t want to have much to do with you. It’s not the kind of thing you could take pride in doing. And you wouldn’t make a difference; the attention would be on him, not on you. I know it’s an amazing story, but being the way we are, you and me, with the wonderful, pure force in you, just one minute with him could destroy all that we can be about. That’s how spirits work. You’d have to be brave to deal with him, and I know you are, but it’s something you don’t tempt God with. I’d be afraid it would get to me. With us talking about working together, just when we’re about to do it, this devil has come up between us. The connection we’re about to have won’t come to be if this comes to be. You and me would be more like in a battle and I’d be looking at you differently, because it would change you and you may not even know it. The darkness is something not to get involved with. As good as you are, it would be a mistake. I’m talking now as a friend. And I want you to think about it. Have you talked with Manson yet?”

Good thing I hadn’t, or she would probably have hung up on me. But Dolly pretty much made my decision for me. No candy if I play with the devil.

These diary entries have been condensed and edited for clarity.

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