Chapter 4: Lunch & Death

Chapter 4: LUNCH & DEATH

Circle was finally closing down and I carried on in the same cycle with Jerry.   He was really getting to me and the more he drove me crazy the more  I parked at will. No Parking! No Standing! I parked anywhere and everywhere. I was determined to drown him in Parking Tickets.

Richard was to leave for warmer climes. They were going to shoot the final scene in Antigua but things got complicated and they dropped it and the picture wrapped as it was. 

 I said good-bye to Ron and Richard. Ron and I wrote back and forth for years. He had given me a script of his to read and I did a quick rewrite and added some new ideas. Ron really liked it wanted me to go to France and write the screenplay for him. We even had a part planned for Billy Connolly. He arranged for Warner Brothers to pay me 25 thousand for a First Draft. He said I could use his house in Normandy a little castle and I could use his Maserati. It was sounding too good to be true   Sure enough the Screen Writers Strike came along and everything was put on hold for several months and the deal just disappeared.

I had a last few drinks with Timothy Rowse and it was the last time I saw him. Later Ron told me that Tim had called Richard from a Jamaica Jail. And Richard had bailed him out of bad cheque thing and got him out of the country, but I never saw Tim again.

It was Friday and I didn't have to get fired this week. I was going to the country for the weekend. Jerry and Barry were upset because they had decided to quit drinking cold turkey but were afraid they would get sick and had hoped I would keep a bottle for them in case of emergency.

So after much discussion it was decided that they would wait outside while I hid the bottle in the apartment. The idea being that if they got sick they could phone me and I would tell them was it was. I hid the bottle and went to the 22 for a drink. It was only 5 o clock and I had planned to leave at 6 but I ran into some interesting conversation and was still there at 6:30.

I get a desperate phone call.

"Where is it "says Jerry? He was out of breath and already agitated. I vainly tried to dissuade him but I was tired of being a pawn in their game and told him. "Lost Weekend".

15 minutes later he phoned back almost screaming, they still couldn't find it.

Remember I said James Mason hid the bottle in the ceiling light fixture.

He phoned again in 5 minutes already more relaxed.

"That was pretty funny" he said.

On Monday Jerry and I went to the 22 as usual Jerry was in a funny mood and told me that he realized that I was really doing the work and that he would let me produce the next movie while he would be Executive Producer. He got a piece of paper from Daytime Don and scribbled a contract on it. That during the next movie he would pay me 1600 dollars a week plus expenses while we shooting and six hundred a week in between. He said he would get Milton the lawyer to draw it up properly. I agreed to the terms and we had a couple of drinks to celebrate and Jerry knocked back about four fast doubles.

Bill Marshal walked in and looked around and came over. He looked at both of us and asked facetiously if he could borrow my services. Jerry said he could as he was going to lunch with other Don and would be busy for the next few hours. I agreed and Bill explained that he was supposed to meet John Hillerman who was directing Patman but he also had another meeting. He asked me if I would meet Hillerman and buy him a couple of drinks and explain that Bill would be a bit late. He left and I sat with Jerry until John Hillerman came in about 15 minutes later.

I walked over and told him the story and we sat down at the producer's table. We had met before of course but hadn't really talked much. We were having a great chat and generally trading movie stories when Jerry who was now very drunk and staggered over to the table he loomed above us like a towering inferno. He teetered back and forth for a minute and then collapsed into a chair with a great plop. John looked aghast he did not know Jerry and didn't know quite what to do or say. Jerry looked and him and sort of slurred and bellowed

"Do you know Mr. LeDrew is going to produce my next picture?

Hillerman had no idea about whom or what Jerry was, he could take no more and moved off quickly in the general direction of away.

It was not a day for telling Jerry what a drunken idiot he was until the contract was signed, but anyway the other Don who was meeting him for lunch came in and they tottered off to the Courtyard Café.

I looked in vain for Hillerman but he had disappeared. I phoned Bill's office and explained that I had lost John and went off to get the contract copied so that we could send it to Milton the Lawyer.

I had been working for Jerry for about a year now I started on Double Negative was my first movie and I had learned a lot. Working with Jerry was a constant struggle he had been teaching Philosophy at the University Of California and decided to come back to Toronto to  make a movie. Honestly I did much to cover his ass for one thing I had a lot of friends in the biz and got a lot of good advice which kept us going. When we hooked up with David Perlmutter  who was Executive Producer. He called Jerome ‘Boy Producer’. 

As I said eating with Jerry was always uncomfortable because of his feeding habits. During the shooting however there was a perk. Jerry was very concerned about what the crew said about him. He would buy me a $200 to$400 dollar bottle of wine with lunch if I would tell him what the crew was saying about him. This was fantastic I got to drink some magnificent wines at the Courtyard Café. Also I couldn’t  afford to get loaded at lunchtime (somebody had to stay sober) so I would have a glass or two and tip the maitre de the rest of the bottle. This made me very popular at the Courtyard Café and I could do no wrong there.

One of the Maitre De’s told me he had overheard an American producer telling a bunch of Canadian Investors that Gary LeDrew was responsible for American Movies were being shot in Canada.

He said that he visited my bar a few years before, that first of all he liked talking to me and when I had explained to him about the difference in the dollar. That it was 20% cheaper to shoot in Canada and that is what he told everybody else and why he was there now. I know this sounds a bit much and I wish I remembered who it was, but I will take it as a compliment.

I did a couple of swift moves during the shooting which Jerome was very proud of.

We were shooting at Grenadier Pond with the whole crew and Howard Duff and when we came to Maury Chakin’s scene of him feeding the ducks. Suddenly we get this wacko, a neighbour who said we were endangering the ducks? Thirty thousand a day it is costing and this crazy brings the shooting to a halt. He was yelling and screaming and nobody knew what to do. So I called our security (a couple of off duty cops) to watch me. I confronted the guy talking in a loud voice I was nice“ hey fella we won’t hurt the ducks” etc. But between in a whisper so only he could hear me I called him every profanity I could think of and told him he was having sex with his mother etc. He finally took a swing at me and I had our cops arrest him for assault. They took him to the station. We shot the scene and I dropped the charges. Two of the policemen returned to ask me about our company. “The chief wants to know what Udo stands for like cbc, nbc etc? I explained about Jerome calling it after Richard Widmark as Johnny Udo in Kiss of Death. The cop shook his head” How the fuck can I go back and tell him that!”

Next was a 3 million dollar house in Rosedale. We paid 15 thousand a week to rent for 5 weeks  plus hotel for owner and family.

Two weeks into the shooting the owner shows up and I hear screaming. Get out of my house! You violated the contract! I called my lawyer etc. Everybody is running out of the house the director Michael, Susan etc and the locations manager is also running.

Jerry tells be to fix it. I confront the owner. I know what his game is. “So what do you want?”

 He is still screaming “You violated the contract.” 

“Never mind the BS I say just tell me what you want.

He sees I know.

“We want to be upgraded to a suite and room service.”He says matter of factly.

 “OK” I say you got it now get out and he left smiling. When he was safely away everybody came back to admire my minor triumph and Jerry gloated at my feat.  The owner might as well of held a gun to our heads.

I was feeling pretty good when I got back to the 22 about an hour later. It had been a struggle but Jerry had finally recognized my contribution and I was going to finally get paid properly. Bill was sitting at the producers table when I came in and I walked over to apologize. "Nevermind ," said Bill "You had better see to your Guv'nor." While I was out Jerry had choked on a piece of blue liver at the Courtyard . He was so drunk he just collapsed and they all thought he had had a heart attack. The ambulance was there in 15 minutes but it was too late. Jerry hung on in coma for a few weeks, but he died. Drinking had killed him striking from a different direction. I felt sorry for Jerry but the situation left me suddenly with out a job or pay cheque and I had to scramble to get by. Richard came back in the New Year to reopen Camelot. He greeted me warmly. He looked really good I think he had an operation on his pinched nerve. And he was really on the wagon. This meant he didn't hang out in the bar much. We got together only a couple of times. He offered me his seats for Camelot. I was used to the music business where I got free backstage passes all the time. I didn't know the theatre tradition that   I had to pay for the seats until I went to the will call to pick them up. Yikes $75 each. It was too much for my blood and I sold them to Ivor. I regret not going but such is life. Richard had no more need of a drinking buddy so I didn't see him much again. Although I corresponded with Ron Berkely for many years. Months later I met Jerry's uncle in the 22 he had been helping to settle up Jerry's estate. He told me the only thing he couldn't figure out was the parking tickets. " How could somebody rack up $3000 worth of parking tickets. I just couldn't tell him why. I actually went on to even bigger and better failures but I blew it all when Mckeckans famous budget did us in and gave it up.
So close but no cigar