to his name as well as a tenacious intelligence. This reunion lasted all of six months and ended with a cocaine-fueled car accident and a passenger’s ruptured spleen. His next semester was spent in rehab, the first of many stints. Since we are on Richard, we might as well stay with Richard, who at the time of this story was forty-five and living in Los Angeles, Anaheim to be exact. He had been in Southern California for twenty-three years, after his third and final attempt at college, at UC Irvine. Being an exile from the East was a point of pride for Richard, like a solid golf swing in a game he despised. Fifteen years sober, married with two children in their teens, Richard was handsome in the style of generations of handsome men who marry and pass along their handsome genes like pieces of family silver, in a pinch pawnable. His face was colored with almost exotic damage, like a psychological tan. He. Had. Lived. And similar to an athlete who has a hard time shakingpast glories, who misses the sanctioned violence of football or hockey or lacrosse, Richard Dyer was stunted by the depths of his early misery.
I myself was never a fan, but that’s beside the point.
The day after my father’s funeral, Richard had perhaps the most important meeting of his life. Right in the middle of his normal routine as an addiction drug counselor at Promises—group in the morning, one-on-ones in the afternoon—was a forty-minute drive to Culver City and the Sony lot, in particular the Judy Garland building and the ground-floor office of Rainer Krebs, through this door here. The interior seemed swiped from the 1950s of the imagination. Each piece of vintage modern furniture was a classic from that decade, along with the color-field painting on the wall and the rya rug on the floor and the most beautiful standing lamp in the corner, its black and red and white shades resembling hairdryers for three perfect pinheads of various height. Truth be told, nobody from that era ever lived in a room like this; what was once straightforward and utilitarian now stretched up on its toes. But it was an impressive collection, even to a nonexpert like Richard, who walked in and had the knee-jerk desire to smear his feces all over the wall.
“You recognize it?” asked the EVP in Charge of Production. His name was Curtis and he wore a bow tie and a seersucker suit and that was all Richard needed to know about the man.
“Recognize what?”
“The je ne sais quoi of it?”
Richard, on his best behavior, shook his head.
The pre-meeting, a minute old, was already shaping up to be a disaster.
“That’s a clue,” Curtis said.
“A clue for what?” asked Richard.
“Think French, think nouveau roman, think Academy Award winner.”
“I’m sorry?”
“
The Erasers
,” Curtis said, grinning like the canary that had eaten the cat.
Oh Christ. Richard hadn’t seen the movie, not yet, which was stupid since it was their most successful release, both critically and commercially, their obvious pride and joy, and he should have at least watched it before the meeting and been prepared to talk about it and tell them how much he love-love-loved it. Typical. His big chance and he had already sabotaged himself, like the loser he was and the loser he would forever be, from clueless boy to idiot teenager to delusional adult.
Who are you fooling, you motherfucking shithead?
The old Richard could have gone on like this to the point of running to the parking lot and doing complicated crack math in his head, but the new Richard (5,475 days sober) took a fair-minded, even-keeled breath and pushed his shoulder against that banging door. “Oh yeah,” he told Curtis, “I see it now. Such a wonderful film.”
“You remember Daniel Dupont’s office. Well”—Curtis let his expression hang for a moment, almost like a boxer’s taunt—“here it is, exactly the same, except for the rug. The rug had to be changed. Obviously.”
Richard nodded
Of course
.
“We
I myself was never a fan, but that’s beside the point.
The day after my father’s funeral, Richard had perhaps the most important meeting of his life. Right in the middle of his normal routine as an addiction drug counselor at Promises—group in the morning, one-on-ones in the afternoon—was a forty-minute drive to Culver City and the Sony lot, in particular the Judy Garland building and the ground-floor office of Rainer Krebs, through this door here. The interior seemed swiped from the 1950s of the imagination. Each piece of vintage modern furniture was a classic from that decade, along with the color-field painting on the wall and the rya rug on the floor and the most beautiful standing lamp in the corner, its black and red and white shades resembling hairdryers for three perfect pinheads of various height. Truth be told, nobody from that era ever lived in a room like this; what was once straightforward and utilitarian now stretched up on its toes. But it was an impressive collection, even to a nonexpert like Richard, who walked in and had the knee-jerk desire to smear his feces all over the wall.
“You recognize it?” asked the EVP in Charge of Production. His name was Curtis and he wore a bow tie and a seersucker suit and that was all Richard needed to know about the man.
“Recognize what?”
“The je ne sais quoi of it?”
Richard, on his best behavior, shook his head.
The pre-meeting, a minute old, was already shaping up to be a disaster.
“That’s a clue,” Curtis said.
“A clue for what?” asked Richard.
“Think French, think nouveau roman, think Academy Award winner.”
“I’m sorry?”
“
The Erasers
,” Curtis said, grinning like the canary that had eaten the cat.
Oh Christ. Richard hadn’t seen the movie, not yet, which was stupid since it was their most successful release, both critically and commercially, their obvious pride and joy, and he should have at least watched it before the meeting and been prepared to talk about it and tell them how much he love-love-loved it. Typical. His big chance and he had already sabotaged himself, like the loser he was and the loser he would forever be, from clueless boy to idiot teenager to delusional adult.
Who are you fooling, you motherfucking shithead?
The old Richard could have gone on like this to the point of running to the parking lot and doing complicated crack math in his head, but the new Richard (5,475 days sober) took a fair-minded, even-keeled breath and pushed his shoulder against that banging door. “Oh yeah,” he told Curtis, “I see it now. Such a wonderful film.”
“You remember Daniel Dupont’s office. Well”—Curtis let his expression hang for a moment, almost like a boxer’s taunt—“here it is, exactly the same, except for the rug. The rug had to be changed. Obviously.”
Richard nodded
Of course
.
“We
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