The Art of Men (I Prefer Mine Al Dente) (12 page)

It turned out Steve Dontanville was partly wrong: I was going out for the role of Lieutenant Saavik, a half Vulcan, half Romulan. So here was this girl, half Vulcan, no emotion, half Romulan, known for anger and rage. This had the makings of one hot-tempered sociopath.

I was stoked. I could also emulate Spock, as one of my eyebrows naturally arches up when I speak, especially if I’m querying something, and I had dark hair and, and, and . . .

It dawned on me driving to my first interview,
Seriously, who the hell could play this better than I?
My answer was no one.

I drove to Paramount, long boob-length hair blowing in the wind, top down on my Toyota convertible with the $16,000 stereo called my car, wearing a turquoise sweater, little turquoise jeans, big turquoise sunglasses, and spike heels. That day, I was one badass bitch and no one was gonna take down this role but me.

I gave them my name at the guard gate at the gloriously infamous Paramount studios. The guard said, “Yes, Miss Alley, here is your parking pass.” “Miss Alley.” Oh jeez, my Romulan blood was beginning to boil, in a good way.

Here I was, this girl from Kansas who, a year and a half before had been a cocaine addict in Wichita. Here I was with my parking pass, and guards calling me “Miss.” It was explosive.

I started across the lot in my four-and-a-half-inch heels and my little-assed jeans. He’ll never remember this, but Eddie Murphy walked past me, and I think he checked out my fine ass. Anyway, I pretended he did, which gave me even more confidence.

I walked into the casting agent’s waiting room, and the receptionist asked me to take a seat. There were only about three other girls in there. This is when I decided to do something that I have done in every waiting room with every actress over the last 30 years. I beamed them. I just looked straight at each girl with my green eyes and got the idea of boring a hole in their brain with the concept,
Yes, I’m a badass, and you don’t have a prayer in hell of getting this role, so you might as well pick your ass up off that chair and head on outta here.
I accompany this high beam with a smirky smile that makes Jack Nicholson look like a schoolgirl. It worked then and has since. I feel them quiver, quake, and begin to dismantle themselves. I’ve never revealed this weapon, trick, evil intention, whatever the hell it is. It’s just my own private Idaho when I go on auditions.

Don’t feel too sorry for the other actresses. Believe me, I learned this trick the hard way, from some of the most ruthless brain-beaming actresses in Hollywood. It’s an old trick, really.

“Kirstie Alley? They’ll see you now,” said the receptionist.

Oh god, how I hated the sound of my name rolling off her tongue.

Two syllables and two syllables, Kir-stee Al-lee. How stupid, the sound of my name. Not like the actresses I adored, Meryl Streep, two syllables then one syllable. E-liz-a-beth Tay-lor, four syllables and two syllables. Cath-er-ine De-neuve, three syllables and two syllables. See what I’m saying here? Kir-stie Al-lee: two syllables and two syllables, almost rhyming, for god’s sake, and sing-songy, as my third-grade teacher had said in criticism of my poetry. I thought long and hard about changing my name to a different-syllabled combination: Kirstie Streep? Too obvious. Khristina McKay? Too
Wide World of Sports
. Kirstie Collette, my name combined with my sister’s—yet still stupid because two syllables and two syllables, and not in a cool way like Marlon Bran-do.

Nick Meyer, the director of
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
, offered his hand for me to shake.

The casting director said, “Nick, this is Kir-stie Al-lee.” My confidence took a slight dip, but I feigned holding it together.

What I wasn’t aware of was that Nicholas Meyer would become the first champion of my acting career.

Nicholas Meyer was cool-looking, with jet-black hair and cool blue eyes. He wasn’t tall, but he was one of those guys that exuded stature and, god help me, mega-intelligence. He was intimidating, in-tim-i-dat-ing—five syllables.

He was also a genius. His IQ would have made any Mensa member quail. And he had a charismatic, glorious smile. Thank god I knew my lines cold, because the sight and presence of him would have given me early onset amnesia.

“So Kirstie [Al-lee].” He didn’t say my last name, but he didn’t have to, it was implied, “Where are you from?”

“Wichita, Kansas.”

This was the time in my life when I was very clearly a Kansas girl. Many Kansas people do not extend answers to questions. Examples: “How are you?” “Fine.” “You like it here?” “Yes.” “How long have you lived here?” “A year.” “What do you think about Hollywood?” “I like it.”

So this was the entirety of my interview with Nicholas Meyer. Shockingly, he said, “Okay, let’s read this.” And we did.

Up went my eyebrow, curbed was my emotion, with just a hint of rage underneath. Yet when we got to the last scene, where Spock dies, I had a light mist in my eyes (contrived) and a slight break in my voice.

“Hmmm, I liked that,” Mr. Meyer said. “Can you come back Wednesday?”

Can I? Can I? Can I? Yes, I can—Yes I CAN!

  •  •  •  

“How’d it go?” my nonsigning agent asked when I got home and called him. There were no cell phones in 1980, so you had to drive all the way home to tell your agent the good or bad news.

“How’d it go? It went great!” I said. “They want me back on Wednesday.”

“Okay,” he responded. “I’ll call the casting director and get the time.”

There were no computers in 1980, no Google or IMDb. There was no hotline into what the directors had done, or whom they were married to, or what schools they went to. It never crossed my mind to research directors or producers because things like that didn’t exist at that time. There may have been some actresses who were more savvy than I was, but I certainly wouldn’t have thought of it. I just ate a lot of pineapple and worked out like a lunatic and studied my lines.

I had a date later that week with a guy who was ultrahandsome and had been asking me out a lot. He was hard to resist because he was seriously hot, but I kept turning him down, and unlike most boys I turned down, I told him the truth. “I’m up for this role in a movie, and I don’t wanna blow it. I don’t want to drink or stay out late, I just want to get this role.” He was an actor who had done his fair share of work, so he would laugh and flirt and say, “You can do both, you know.” I would whinny like a horse and respond, “Let me just get this role and then we’ll go out.” He was very hard to resist, but I vowed to stay steady on the course, be good, keep my integrity, and
Rocky
my way to triumph.

I read for Nicholas on Wednesday. He had more people in the room, most of whom were producers. He smiled, he was happy. Oh, and I wore the same turquoise sweater and tiny turquoise jeans. I had no money, and it was the only sexy outfit I had.

He asked if I could come back a week from Friday and read again.

“Yes, I can!”

By Monday of that week and after a very long boring weekend alone, working out and eating pineapple, actor boy called. John was his real name (and probably still is).

“You wanna go out Friday?” I thought,
What the hell
, I will have already read my final time for
Star Trek
earlier on Friday, and I would want to celebrate and make out with John and eat something, anything other than pineapple.

“Okay, cool, we’ll go out on Friday.”

“Eight?”

“Perfect.”

I spent all week exercising, working on my scenes, and eating papaya. On Friday I picked up my turquoise outfit from the cleaners. I was now superstitious about it and decided to just keep wearing what was successful.

On Friday I did my final reading, and I nailed it. Nicholas was amazing. He was sweet and professional and presented me to all the new producers like I was a seasoned actress. Nicholas knew I had never had a single job as an actress, and I’m sure he was smart enough to know that everything on my résumé was a lie—all my “productions” of fake plays and all my “film parts” in Kansas, for god’s sake, that never existed—and yet he still presented me like I was a great actress and a pro.

I HAD done a great job on that reading. Nicky told me I did, and I could perceive that glorious energy that flies around the room when people are really interested in you.

I felt so happy, so proud of myself that I’d worked so hard on the script and had forgone parties and bad food to get that role. My integrity was intact. I hung my turquoise outfit in the closet; it was like my talisman. It hugged me tight and carried me through the auditions. Yes, I’d earned the date that I was going on in six hours, and I was also getting a free meal at a nice restaurant, and I was fucking hungry!!!

I got all fixed up, fresh clothes, not my “uniform” that I’d joked with Nicholas Meyer about in my meeting earlier that day. I told him it was the only thing he would see me in until I donned a
Star Trek
outfit, so could he please speed it up. I was ridiculously happy.

At about seven o’clock I started feeling really weird. I couldn’t tell if I had food poisoning, which was doubtful since I’d had no food. Then I began feeling really anxious, like I was going to have an anxiety attack. It escalated. God, it felt like what I envisioned a nervous breakdown feeling like. Shit, I was going nuts or getting ready to have a stroke or coming down with some bizarre strain of exotic papaya disorder.

I went in and lay down on my bed. It was getting really bad, and I was getting scared. I gave my roommate, Alice, John’s phone number and asked her to call him and apologize. I begged her to let him know I really was sick and wasn’t faking and felt horrible about canceling. She came in afterward and said he was cool and that he said if I needed anything to let him know. Jeez, cool, hot, AND considerate? There I was, ready for the asylum.

About 30 minutes later, Alice walked in and told me my sister was on the phone. I said, “Oh god, tell her I’m sick and I can’t talk right now.” But my sister said, “Get her on the phone!!”

She told me our parents had been in a car wreck; that our mother was dead and our father was in the hospital dying.

Suddenly, everything went still. There was no more anxiety, no more instability, no more sickness, just dead calm. As horrifying as it was, my perception now matched the truth, and I understood what had happened.

I don’t have a perfect recall of all of the next week because it felt like being swept up in some time-stopping bog where every moment was in slow motion. I flew all night to get to Kansas, on borrowed money.

It took three or four planes to get to Wichita, which is ironic since Wichita is the “Air Capital of the World.” I didn’t speak to any of the people who sat next to me on any of the legs. I couldn’t speak and I couldn’t hear. My only interest was getting home.

What do you do when parents die? You do what adult children of dead parents do: you make arrangements. Our mother was dead, but our father was struggling for his life. So we straddled that fence of making arrangements and grieving for our dead mother and spending the rest of our time by our dad’s side at the hospital.

On one of those days, it seemed like a Monday, my agent called me. Not because he knew what happened but because he needed to schedule yet another audition for fucking
Star Trek
. Oh my god, I’d forgotten all about
Star Trek
and Hollywood and agents and Nicholas Meyer and countless producers and the pearly gates of Paramount.

“Steve, my parents were in an accident, my mom died. My dad is in intensive care, and I can’t come back for a meeting.”

Steve was shocked, of course, and very sad and respectful of me but he was, after all, an agent.

“They want you Wednesday for the final audition with all the producers and all the brass at Paramount. This is the critical meeting and the last audition. It is between you and two other girls.” I told him that my mother’s funeral was on Wednesday and that my father could be dying and that I would not be going to LA until after my mother’s funeral and unless my father was out of intensive care and doing well.

Steve said, “Okay, let me figure this out. I’m not going to tell them about your parents. You have never had a part, you aren’t even in the Screen Actors Guild, for god’s sake, and you just lost your mother. There is no way Paramount studios will ever entrust a forty-million-dollar movie to an actress with all that shit happening in her life.”

I said, “Steve, as soon as my father is out of intensive care I will fly to Los Angeles. You tell them that. You tell them I want this more than anything but not more than I want to see my dad well.”

He said, “You’re not gonna get it, then,” and I said, “I understand.” And then I laughed, “
I
wouldn’t even hire me.”

So Steve called them and told them the whole story, and Nicholas Meyer said, “We will wait for her.”

When Steve told me this, for the first time since the accident I fell apart. I could not believe the kindness and the humanity of Nicholas Meyer, the producers, and Paramount studios. You hear lots of horror stories about Hollywood; I’m happy to say I’ve never encountered them. Can you imagine the sheer gratitude that I experienced when these powerhouses, knowing full well what had happened, sweetly said they would wait for me?

I was shattered in the best possible way I could have been shattered. The juxtaposition was mind boggling.

I came to my senses and thought,
By God, if those people can be so nice to me right now, I can do my part to make this go right for them
.

I grabbed my eight-by-ten head shot and drove to the hospital. I walked into the intensive care unit and held up the glossy for my dad to see. He was on morphine, and I assumed he was unconscious. But I was banking on the power of the soul. I was betting that I could reach way in there and appeal to the being who is my dad.

“Daddy,” I said with the photo held in front of him, “I have a chance to be a movie star, and I really want to be a movie star, but unless you get well fast and get out of here I’m going to miss this opportunity. Thank you.”