A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (54 page)

Is there anything else you
’
d like to say to our readers?
Well, no, I have nothing to say, except help me get a job teaching somewhere! If anybody knows of any position at a college that needs an acting teacher, let me know.

Then genius strikes. There is one man from the world of entertainment who might have thought of this himself, one man with a brand-new middle name, Hellion, one man who tours with a multimedia show featuring slides of dwarfs and retarded people.

Crispin Glover.

He
’
s perfect. So perfect.

Marty McFly.

We call the agent. The agent has no idea what we
’
re talking about. We fax the letter, altered to include flattering comments about all of Glover
’
s work, including his invented nickname. Then we wait.

A day later the phone rings.

I pick up the receiver and put it to my ear, in the way customary to those answering phones.

“
Hello,
”
I say.

“
This is Crispin Glover.
”

He is calling from Tennessee, where he
’
s filming a movie with Milos Forman.
Crispin Glover
’
s on the phone!

He has read the proposal and he loves the idea. He has, as a matter of fact, been wanting to do something like this. He wants to do it, and he wants to do it whole hog—wants to really fake it, wants pictures, proof, and wants then to go underground, to set up a system where no one close to him will give it away, wants to leave it be for months, have the funeral, the eulogies, the comments from other actors, all that, the whole nine yards, and to then come back alive, triumphant! It
’
ll be great. This will be the thing that
’
ll put us over the top. I am on the phone looking over the center of San Francisco, the park and the giant SFMOMA humidifier and a sliver of the bridge and hills, and I am weak from the excitement.

“
This
’
ll be great!
”
I say.

“
Yeah, yeah,
”
he agrees.
“
So what kind of timeline are you on?
”

He can
’
t do it. He can
’
t see why we can
’
t just push the thing back a little bit, or do it next issue... but he doesn
’
t see, he doesn
’
t see that all six of our advertisers cannot be kept waiting, and our hundreds of subscribers cannot be kept waiting. We
’
ll call back if either of our schedules changes.

“
You know who,
”
I say.

“
No,
”
says Moodie.

“
He
’
s our only hope.
”

“
No way.
”

“
We have no choice.
”

“
Oh man.
”

“
He
’
ll be fine.
”

“
Fuck. Okay.
”

Adam Rich.

Nicholas from
Eight Is Enough.

We already sort of know him. One of our contributors, Tanya Pampalone, had gone to grade school with him, and they had kept in touch. With her entree, we had worked with him twice previ
ously. First, we had run a short interview with him, in which he talked to Tanya about his shoes and an umbrella he planned on buying. An excerpt:

tanya:
How many pairs of shoes do you have?

adam rich: Ten, I
’
d say ten. I have one umbrella. I just bought this umbrella. When I bought this umbrella, it had stopped raining and I thought that I had better buy an umbrella and it won
’
t rain anymore and I
’
ll have it for the next time. But it has continued to rain and it has rained continuously since I bought this umbrella.

tanya:
Do you think it
’
s because you can predict the future?

adam rich: No, it
’
s probably because I bought the umbrella.

We call Adam at his L.A. condo and explain the concept to him. He listens. We explain that it
’
ll be this elaborate hoax, that it
’
ll be serving a higher purpose, that of satirizing the media
’
s interest in celebrity death, parodying their eulogies, that this will make national news, and that outside of the feeling good he
’
ll be able to do as a result of his role in providing this educational service to a needy America, everyone will think he
’
s bleeding edge for even associating with us.

You
’
ll be in on every step, we say. You
’
ll have full approval on everything.
“
It
’
ll be great,
”
I say, believing it will be great. I have in my heart the firm belief that if he plays this right, it will mean not only the final breakthrough for us, but, perhaps more important, the certain revival of the career of Adam Rich.

I picture him sitting in a small and dingy Hollywood condominium, surrounded by junior Emmys or whatever, his hands on a Nintendo, a fridge full of yogurt and ice cream sandwiches, his days spent gardening, watching satellite TV.

He agrees.

“
This is going to be great,
”
I tell Toph. We
’
re in the bathroom. He
’
s sitting on the toilet; I
’
m cutting his hair.

“
He agreed to this?
”

“
Yeah, yeah, totally. Put your chin up.
”

“
And what
’
s the point of this again?
”

“
You have to get your chin up.
”

“
Okay, so...
”

“
The point is, we
’
re making fun of these celebrity eulogies you see in magazines, where—
“

“
What
’
s a eulogy?
”

“
Like a tribute. These eulogies where, when celebrities die, suddenly everyone cares, they
’
re given these massive funerals, people cry, people weep even though they
’
ve only known the guy on TV, some character he
’
s played, lines he
’
s read...
”

“
Huh. And people will believe this?
’

“
Yeah. People are dumb.
”

I turn his head toward the mirror, comb his hair straight down, comparing the left side and right. I have again done a masterful job. He still looks like a prepubescent heartthrob—the nose upturned, the hair long in the front—even though it
’
s starting to thicken, darken, curl and kink like mine. I do not like seeing myself next to him. Next to him I am a monster. The facial hair I am cultivating is ridiculous, grotesque. My sideburns do not meet my hair, and are so sparse that they look less like facial hair, and more like leg hair. Worst of all, the goatee I
’
m working on is failing miserably, because I can
’
t even grow hair on the sides of my mouth, giving me a perpetually in-progress, fourteen-year-old
’
s look. I am wrinkled, bloated, with deeply carved laugh lines, and my eyes are too close together, and too small, squinty, mean. And my nose is shapeless, too big. Next to his face, his twelve-year-old face, smooth, proportionate, soft, harmonious, I look distorted, as if digitally manipulated, my skin pulled the wrong ways, everything stretched or compressed, grotesque.

“
People are going to be pissed when they find out,
”
he says.

“
Well, we hope so. These are the people we want to upset. Anyone who cares about him in the first place, who would at all be
moved by the death of someone they saw on TV, deserves to be duped. I mean, why should anyone pay attention? Why should some dramedy star moron loser be mourned by millions, when other people are not? When the average person, who lives a happy and maybe even in some ways heroic life, can only attract twenty or thirty people to a funeral, when— I mean, it
’
s unfair, it
’
s abominable, right?
”

“
Huh. Well, to tell you the truth, I think it
’
s kind of sick.
”

“
That
’
s what we think.
”

“
No, I mean, I think what you guys are doing is sick. You
’
re using Adam Rich to make a point—
“

“
Of course.
”

“
That point being that you people are just as good as celebrities like him. You think he
’
s vapid, dim-witted, with his stupidity arising, first and foremost, from the fact that he is famous and you guys are not. The fact that at nine he was hanging with Brooke Shields, that a hundred million people know his name, a hundred million more his face. And no one knows yours.
”

“
You
’
re breaking out of character again.
”

“
I mean, you people cannot stand the fact that this silly person, this Adam Rich person, who you feel is nowhere near as smart as you people, who did not go to college and did not write captions in the yearbook or run the school
’
s art gallery or whatever, who has not read the books you have, has the
gall
to be a household name (or was at one time) around the world—for something, like acting in a dramedy, that you find unimpressive. So you make fun of him, first with the umbrella interview, and now with this so-called well-meaning hoax—I mean, can it be any more gruesome and transparently symbolic, you people killing this contemporary of yours, a kid on TV when you were kids watching TV, this victim of your predatory mentality, who you claim is in on it all but who really has no idea of the scale of, the potential consequences of this thing—and certainly not your motivations,
the bitterness simmering just below the surface, the desire to dirty him, humiliate him, reduce him to you, to below you—I mean, does he have any idea about the jokes made at his expense at the office? Could he ever imagine the malice involved? It
’
s disgusting. I mean, what
is
this? What does this mean? Where does anger like that come from?
”

“
It
’
s not anger.
”

“
Of course it is. These people have already attained, at whatever age, a degree of celebrity that you assholes will never reach, and you feel, deep down, that because there is no life before or after this, that fame is, essentially, God—all you people know that, believe it, even if you don
’
t admit it. As children you watched him, in the basement, cross-legged in front of the TV, and you thought you should be him, that his lines were yours, that his spot on
Battle of the Network Stars
was yours, that you
’
d be so good on that obstacle course—you
’
d win for sure! So doing all this, when he
’
s no longer such the world-conquering celebrity, gives you power over him, the ability to embarrass him, to equalize the terrible imbalance you feel about your relationship to those who project their charisma directly, not sublimated through snarky little magazines. You and everyone like you, with your Q & As or columns or Web sites—you all want to be famous, you want to be rock stars, but you
’
re stuck in this terrible bind, where you also want to be thought of as smart, legitimate, permanent. So you do your little thing, are read by your little coterie, while secretly seething about the Winona Ryders and Ethan Hawkes, or even the Sari Lockers—

“
Remember the Sellout Issue? When everyone went to L.A. and New York to interview all these budding celebrities so you could make fun of them? There was that girl from
Father of the Bride,
and the guy from
“
Baywatch,
”
the Australian guy, and of course the Doublemint Twins. You had to make them all look like imbeciles, even while in person you were smiling with them, joking, being kind, accepting theirs. Same with Elle Macpherson.