Uh, forget what we were doing. This is really good.
Oh, Christ.
Whew.
Uh, listen - - a bar of soap?
This is better than - this is good.
- Oh, yeah. Yeah. - This is good.
- Not bad. - Not at all.
Could you go over there to that side, please?
Oh, certainly.
Whoo!
I'm guilty, huh?
We're all guilty, god knows.
J fourteen junkies too weak to work &
jd one sells diamonds for what they're worth &
& down on pain street &
j disappointment lurks j
j; Son, don't be home too late &
j try to get back by eight &
j son, don't wait till the break of day &
j 'cause you know how time fades &
j time fades away j
j you know how time fades away &
How are we doing?
We're ready anytime you want. Let's roll it.
Roll it, I guess.
Now, we're gonna roll. There should be some silence.
U h, ma yes? Y?
- Do you want us to roll now? - Certainly.
- We're rolling. Quiet, please. - Sure, why not?
We're rolling now.
- Are we rolling now? - We have been for some time.
We have been rolling for some time.
As I suspected. You thought I didn't know.
I could see you knew from the way you were acting.
What I want to get to - how much film do we have left in that?
Why don't you tell a story?
Uh, how much film - first, tell me the story about the film.
- Two minutes left. - Two minutes left.
It'll never work for two minutes. George, you think it'll work for two minutes?
- Huh? - Think we'll get the story in two minutes?
- No, no. No, no. - I doubt it. I doubt it very much.
No. No way. No way.
How could you tell a Steven prince story in two minutes?
Two minutes. I don't know.
- I lost $17 in Vegas. - You lost $17 in - what is that, $17?
Hello.
Who the hell is that? “Who is that?
George, you get it. You get it. Everybody sit down, please.
We already got the pizza, right?
We got the pizza. What is this?
On.
Let's see what he has to drink!
Do you give up?
Yes.
Okay.
- I give up. I give up. - Do you give up?
- All right. - I give up.
Who is he?
Who is he? Who is he?
I think that's the pizza man.
You give up? Yeah.
It's the Italian crab.
- You give up? - All right, I give up.
- You give up? - I give up.
All right, Steve. You fuck.
You fuck.
Oh, you bastard.
Well, now that he's finally arrived -
Steve? Is this your quarter?
Oh, Jesus, we dropped this. We dropped the Pepsi-cola.
Well, sit down.
Hello, Steve.
- Now we can eat. - All right, give me a kiss.
Just a big, wet one.
Oh, careful. Careful.
Just a second. Move the sofa over here. That's better.
- That's better. - Let's make some room over here.
- Make a little room this way. That's fine. - You give up?
- Yeah, I give up.
Whew. Steven, you son of a bitch.
You! Scorsese!
What? 'What?
Well, I think now that both of you are here, we can tell some stories.
And, uh, I had a couple of friends
who had a ranch.
And we all went down there,
and we got ourselves... Some really great, great grass.
- I mean, great. - It was good, huh?
- It was fantastic. - It was good.
And it must've been about, uh, 11 or 12 of us in a room,
something like this.
And we're sitting in there and we're smoking and we're smoking.
And I, uh -
right where this would be was a hallway,
and it was from one room leading into the kitchen.
It was like from the dining room leading into the kitchen.
It was just, you know, like, a little space there.
And I'm sitting there and I'm just smoking away.
And all of a sudden I see this black thing go by like that.
And I turned to the guy and I said, "Charlie, uh, you got a monkey here."
And he says, "no, there's no monkeys here."
And I said, "yeah, I just saw a monkey. I just saw it walk by there."
And he said, "no, no, that's bubba." And I said, "that's bubba?"
He said, "yeah, that's bubba." He says, "bubba, come in here!"
Bubba comes in.
Bubba is a fully-grown silverback gorilla.
Nine hundred pounds, four-and-a-half feet tall.
Right? Comes walking in. He's got a straw hat on.
- And he's wearing short pants. - No!
Okay? All right?
Really. Really. He was toilet-trained.
He was toilet-trained.
And when you would go -
when you would say to him, "I'm right, aren't I, bubba?"
He would shake his head "yes."
You'd say, "that's wrong, isn't it, bubba?"
He'd grunt, shake his head "no."
And it was like the old story, you know.
"Where does the gorilla sleep? Anywhere he wants to."
You know, who's gonna bother him? Who's gonna bother him?
And...
He just - he was very frightening,
because he was just so human-like, you know.
But he's big and strong. H-he -
he showed us one of his tricks.
He took a Cadillac tire and turned it inside-out with his hands.
That was a cute trick, I thought. A steel-belted radial tire.
Ba-dum! Ba-dum!
Just with the hands. Oh, god -
- he was - he was taught that? Yeah. Yeah.
He also was taught to straighten out a horseshoe. Straight.
And gorillas have a thing that they're very clean
and they like to go through hair and take the ticks out, right?
And he sticks his hand -
this girl's talking, she didn't know where he was.
He sticks his hand through her hair and starts looking for ticks.
She went 40 feet in the air, screaming, running out of the house.
Yeah. They're never seen - they're never seen again.
Once I remember - once on a Thanksgiving dinner,
uh, we got a telephone call from Texas.
And they had built a brand-new 16-inch Cannon.
Sixteen-inch - took a 16-inch shell, you know?
And they had built it,
and they had put a round in the chamber,
closed the chamber and fired it, and it didn't go off.
And they didn't know what to do.
And they called him up.
And this is Thanksgiving meal and he's sitting there on the phone,
and he said, "well, let me - did you try this? Did you try that?
You tried all those things, huh? You got a newspaper there?
Okay. Open the, uh, breach door.
Stuff newspaper in around the breach door.
Slam the breach door closed.
Get yourself about 200 yards of rope.
Tie it on to the - to the cord.
Move way back and pull it."
They moved way back and pulled it. You could hear it through the phone.
You know, like that.
What it was, was they designed it,
and it was, like, the breach door didn't close a 32nd of an inch off.
So the firing pin was missing by a 32nd of an inch.
So when you put the newspaper in, it made perfect contact.
They would call him up for little things like that.
And, uh...
My mother, without a doubt,
cooks the most bland food in the world.
No taste at all.
No taste!
- This man is saying that about his mother. - Right.
She was - she was really terrific.
And she was a very strong lady.
Uh, I can remember one -
one -
one winter, a blizzard -
she had planted the tree when we first moved into this house.
And now the tree was, like, you know, 20 years old.
And, uh, it was just a beautiful tree.
And this blizzard was just ripping it up by the roots.
And my father, my brother Ronnie, my brother Jeffrey and myself
are looking out the window at the hurricane
and watching the tree being torn up, and it was just terrible.
And, uh, my brother Ronnie looks out the window and he says,
"look at that. There's somebody out there.
Who's that asshole with their back holding the tree up?”
And my father said, "that's no asshole. That's your mother.
Get out there! Get out there!"
"Get a block and tackle! Get some rope! Go down the street!"
Then my father went out and stood in the middle of the hurricane, and he was,
"put a line on that! Get a line over there!
Get some boards up under that!"
My uncle, uh, he's Abe lastfogel.
He owns the William Morris agency.
And his older sister, bessie, is my grandmother.
And, uh, she used to, uh -
she used to -
what kind of woman?
She was just a real Russian Jew.
She used to teach advanced ball-busting 302
and, uh, phd ball-busting.
Phd? Yeah.
She was a ball-buster
from the word go.
She cracked nuts from day to night, man. She was unbelievable.
And she - she was just -
when she'd take us out to dinner,
uh, I-If the string beans were cold -
"send it back!"
You know, that kind of thing.
The wine. You know, she - she taught me to drink wine.
And she'd taste the wine, and she'd taste it.
"It's no good. Break the case."
I mean, what's this -
- she ran a paper company. Yeah?
- She ran a paper company till she was 84. - Uh-huh.
She was right in there all the time.
She was sitting in the office,
and darting through the fire escape comes this thief with a gun.
And he wanted the payroll for the -
he wanted the payroll that was in the safe
for all the guys downstairs in the paper mill.
And she's talking on the phone.
He says, "all right, put down that phone! And don't anybody move!"
And she says, "you just wait one minute!
I'm talking to my daughter on the phone,
and when I'm finished talking to my daughter, I'll get to you."
- "Henrietta? Henrietta?" - That's true.
"I'm going to have to hang up now. I'm being robbed."
Hung up the phone.
Is she still alive?
She - sh-she's still alive.
About a year ago she had a stroke,
and, uh, she's, uh, paralyzed and she can't talk.
And, uh...
Uh...
I was 16, but I liked to make money.
Uh, I, uh, had an idea.
Because the great neck area is mostly Jewish people.
And Jewish people like to have bagels on Sunday morning.
So I went over the queens line and bought hot bagels,
uh, for a very small amount of money,
and brought them into great neck
and sold them for a very large amount of money
to the people in great neck, turning over quite a profit.
After a while I had five guys working for me.
I didn't even have to get up out of bed.
They were doing the whole thing. I had a whole route and everything.
What did he call what?
What did you call your bagel business?
Hot bagels.
On that note, move on the next subject!
There's something here about sailing.
About an alcoholic skipper and a pitcher.
- I have absolutely no idea what - - You have no idea.
- It says, "Steve tells -" just a second. - Yes, you do.
- You know this story. - Just a second.
I just want to read you what this says,
after a great deal of research we did on the whole thing.
"Steve tells about filling a pitcher with vodka."
All right, we better cut that out. Note to the editor.
We better cut that out because it'll blow the ending of the story.
- Okay. Wanna tell the story, Steve? - Uh, yeah.
Uh, this man, um, who was a really, very good sailor,
decided that he would take us out and treat everybody.
This was the 4th of July,
so it was a big, big thing.
And he had - a really big thing.
He had a drinking problem which I did not know about.
He was an alcoholic.
And everybody in his family knew about it,
and they were all keeping the booze away from him.
But I was his friend.
I mean, I had some camaraderie going with the guy.
And he said, "Steve, come here.
I want you to go downstairs, go in the foot locker,
and I want you to get a pitcher that looks like water.
Put some ice in it and put two bottles of vodka in there."
"And bring it back up here.
I'll ask for some water.
Right? Can you do it? Right?"
"Yeah," I said. "Okay." Right?
I didn't know. What do I know? Okay.
So, uh, we're out there, and it's -
"Steve, would you get me some water?"
Down, bang, vodka. Back up there.
And he's sitting in the back there knocking these drinks down like this.
And his wife and everybody else is up there getting suntans and everything.
And everybody - "gee, dad's doing great.” and he's in the back -
oh, hey!
J over the bounding main &
he's really having a great time, you know?
And all of a sudden it starts to get dark.
And we're out there in the middle of the long island sound,
and it's getting dark, and we don't know where we are.
And his wife realizes -
she goes back there and she realizes -
"oh, he's drunk."
"You bum."
He runs us right into a sandbar.
Grounded.
Okay? He says, "all right, just everybody shut up.
I don't want to take any more shit from anybody, all right?
I will get us out of here.”
He goes down, goes - gets his special emergency kit out.
Takes his flare gun out. He's got 30 flares.
He stands there, and every time a boat passes he fires a flare.
It's the fourth of July. Everybody applauds.
Forty flares.
Not until the next morning did the coast guard tow us off.
And his wife's going, "you bum!
You asshole!"
You know...
Oh, god.
Tell Marty about that, uh, cable.
That cable that started sparking.
- I don't think that that's - - Oh, come on, Steven.
- He doesn't want to tell it. - That was an accident.
- I had nothing to do - - Who died? Who died?
- I had nothing to do with it. - Now, wait a second -
if the kid didn't play with the cable to begin with,
he wouldn't have gotten electrocuted.
And I had nothing to do with it.
I've always said that. I've always said it was an accident.
- It was in tompkins square park. - Oh.
It was in tompkins square park
when I was on the mobile tour in tompkins square park.
Oh, yeah.
And he we had these connectors that connect together like this,
and we ran, like, 2,000 feet of cable from the generator trucks.
- Yeah? - And, uh...
Some kid pulled apart two of the cables.
Uh-huh.
When I saw the meters go down,
I, uh, ran immediately to see where the break was.
We came running up on this kid.
He was standing against the metal fence in, uh - in a puddle of water.
He was holding it by the rubber, but he had pulled it out,
and he had the two brass -
the brass was sticking out on both things like that.
And I, you know - in that neighborhood,
their first instinct is to run.
'Cause they figure you're gonna give them hell.
I said, "listen, no one's gonna hurt you. No one's gonna do anything to you.
You know, don't worry about anything."
And he dropped one cable into the fence and dropped the other cable into the, uh -
- oh, no. - Into the water.
And it was a DC generator truck.
So it took me about a minute to get to the generator truck
before I could the hit the switch off.
- What happened? - He fried.
- He was dead? - Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Died.
Yeah. He, uh...
- Well... - That was...
The set we were putting up was lady in the dark.
Oh! Lady in the dark.
I was in charge of a crew, 'cause I was the head tech student.
And they would bring in union carpenters.
And I had five union carpenters working under me.
And I had to build the whole thing out on the side of the stage. Okay?
I had the blueprints and everything, and they says,
"oh, this fucking kid, 18 years old, and we're gonna have to work under him."
And I'm working. And I could work pretty fast.
I could keep going. I mean, I could go for a pretty long time.
I'm working there about 20 hours, and I'm getting tired.
And I'm watching this guy, and he is moving along,
and he's been working about 36 hours and not a sign of tired.
And I walk over to him and I said, "how can you do this?"
"Come on behind the scene dock here."
And I said, "okay, sure."
He takes out a syringe, fills it up with pure methedrine.
You know, crystal meth.
- Uh-huh. - What is that?
That's - that's... pure speed.
- Pure speed? - Pure amphetamine.
- Oh. - And he goes...
On my leg like that.
Puts the shot in like that.
And then vroom! Takes the shot out and walks away.
And I'm standing by the scene dock and I'm going, "no. He didn't do that."
I whip out of there and I go, "all right, you guys! Here's the blueprints!”
I whip through my one assignment,
and the head carpenter comes over to me and he says,
"that was really great.”
I said, "what else you want me to do? What do I got? Props? Props?
Lights. Painting. What? What is it you want me to do?"
Seventy-two hours I was running around like a m-maniac.
- How much did you take? - As much as he gave me.
Ji son, don't be home too late j
j try to get back by eight &
j son, don't wait till the break of day &
j 'cause you know how time fades away j
j time fades away j
j you know how time fades away &
- Oh, god, was I scared shitless. - So, what happened?
Well, I had a plan, and, uh, like I said, and -
my father was a colonel in the army.
I know the army. My brother was a second lieutenant.
I know the way the army thinks, the way that they're set up.
So I had my plan based on that.
I went in - you take -
first you take a, uh - a mental test to see how smart you are,
so they can place you in what field.
I answered every question truthfully, but I just left -
- didn't say yes or no to one question. - Uh-huh.
- What was that? - The one question?
- Wait, wait, wait. - Wait. I'll tell you.
Uh, and then I took my physical examination.
I passed with flying colors.
Now, when you cause them a problem,
you're immediately separated from the people who are going in
and the people who are causing the problem.
You are sent to the problem line. And I was sent to the problem line.
And I was sent - and my case was reviewed by some second lieutenant.
Some 90-day wonder, you know?
The guy was about maybe two days older than I was...
And knew nothing about the army.
And he had the "passed" stamp. He had the "passed" stamp.
And I could read the word "passed" upside-down as he went down -
as he was gonna go "wonk!" On my paper.
But he stopped because he said, "you have to answer this question.”
And the question was,
"have you ever had a homosexual relationship?
Do you have homosexual tendencies?"
Latent. Latent homosexual tendencies.
And I said, "I can't answer that question."
I said, "my father's a colonel in the army.
He's had a heart attack.
Uh, my brother's a second lieutenant.
I refuse to answer that question.”
He says, "you have to answer that question!"
I said, "I refuse."
He said - no. Then he calls his captain in.
The captain comes in and says, "you have to answer the question."
I said, "I'm not gonna - I refuse.”
Captain says, "all right, w-we give you our word
that only military personnel will have access to this file."
I said, "oh, your word? That's your word?"
He said, "yes." I said, "okay. Yes, I have."
He said, "failed. Leave." Boom. Bonk.
One o'clock in the afternoon. I was out.
I was out. That was it. Out.
One o'clock in the afternoon. And I got a 4f.
And they weren't giving 4fs then, either.
Wasn't bleep - - no.
No, he wasn't there at the time. You know?
Oh. 'Cause the rumor around town was that you named him as co-respondent.
Yeah, I did.
Oh.
- I did. I did. - True.
- Yeah. - Then you did.
Yeah, I named him - they asked, "will you name the co-respondent
who you had the homosexual relationship with?"
- Oh, god. - And I said, "get."
That's telling 'em.
And their father.
Then I was in New York,
and I was still working for the Shakespeare festival at that time.
I had just finished up.
Hair just opened at the downtown theaters.
I did the lights for harr.
Then I went to work for Fred weintraub, who I had worked on and off for.
You knew Fred a long time?
I knew Fred a long time because he managed the pickle brothers.
I knew Fred since I was 16.
Fred would refer to me as his Nemesis.
I made the night deposits for the bitter end and the tin angel.
I used to make it across the street in a bank.
And this bank was in the middle of a whole city block.
It was right in the middle. Nothing was on either side of it.
You could see everything that went on there.
You just had to open it and drop the thing in the box.
That was it. There was nobody around or anything.
And I used to carry a gun. I have a permit to carry a gun.
And I carried a gun. It was freezing at night.
I put my key in, pulled the thing down,
went to drop the night deposit in,
and a knife came - shh - right there.
And I said, "it's not my money. Take it."
The guy took it and he ran. He ran about 20 feet.
And I pulled the gun out, and it was an automatic,
and I cocked it, and he heard the metal slam home.
And he just froze.
And I said, "don't move."
"You scared the shit out of me.
You move and I'll kill you.
Really."
And I had him lie down on the ground.
- And then Jack the cop came. - Who's Jack the cop?
Jack the cop is the guy who's on, uh, the, uh -
- the bleecker street, uh, route. - Oh, yeah. That's right.
Okay. And Jack comes over and says, "what have you got here?"
And he took - he took my gun away,
and he, uh, -
you know, released the h-hammer and he put it back in my thing.
He says, "what do you got here?" I said, "this guy robbed me."
I said, "arrest him."
He said, "no, if I arrest him,
I'm gonna have to go downtown to fill out reports for 18 hours.
I'll go around the corner. You shoot him."
This guy's laying down on the ground.
"Don't kill me! Don't shoot me!"
"You shoot him, and then the detectives will come.
They'll have to fill the reports out."
And every time the guy started doing something, he'd hit him with the club.
"Quiet! I'm talking!
Quiet. Be quiet. Boom. You shoot him, and then I'll come -
- quiet. Boom." - So, what happened?
So, then he finally picked the guy up and arrested him to make the collar.
What was it like with drugs at this time? Was it rough stuff yet?
Uh, yeah, well, I was starting to get into, uh -
when I was working at the tin angel,
I was, uh, getting into heavy drugs, pretty heavy drugs.
I'd done acid, and acid didn't particularly interest me.
And, uh, cocaine, you know... T-take it or leave it.
Grass or hash.
But, uh, heroin always interested me.
And, uh, I got, uh - yeah?
Started using heroin every once in a while.
After a while, I got to using it, I guess, as a crutch.
Because, uh... I would be high all the time.
- Yeah. - And I was 21 years old.
And I was road managing.
And I was - it was a big job. It was a big responsibility.
And I had to deal with a lot of people who didn't want to know about me.
I had to deal with promoters, 50-year-old promoters.
I had to deal with, you know, stage managers,
guys that were three times my age.
They didn't want to know about me.
And I would come on the stage
and, uh, after a while, I had a reputation -
"don't even walk past him."
Don't -
"don't - don't even talk to that person because he got -"
I'd go, "fuck you!”
"Oh, fuck you!
I can't have that dressing room?
Well, let me tell you something, brother.
You got 12,000 people out there, and they want to see Neil diamond, right?
He's not coming tonight.
You're gonna go out and tell them? I'll see you.
They're gonna rip this place apart. Goodbye."
So, you were taking heroin during all that?
Yeah, I was taking it all during that time.
Uh, and I got into it very heavily.
How many year period when you were road managing?
Uh, I was road managing for about two years.
Two years. Two, three years there.
Before that, I was, uh, at the tin angel.
But I was doing heroin for about five years.
For about three of those years, it was - for two of those years, it was very heavy.
It was like once every four hours.
Oh.
See, when I scheduled plane flights for Neil,
uh, nobody knew about this,
but we never made a plane flight that lasted more than four hours.
We'd always make connections. They never figured it out.
They figured, "Steve knows what he's doing.
I mean, obviously he's in charge. He knows what's happening."
We'd never be more than four hours.
You really functioned better with road managing?
Carrying all that equipment and the shows, back and forth?
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, sure.
Because it's - it's, um, an energy. It's -
after you're over the, uh -
you're into the initial of it, of the life juice.
It's like a tana leaf.
Right?
- It's like a tana leaf. - 7he mummy's tomb.
Right? You gotta - kharis must have the tana leaf, you know.
And it's a life juice and you don't need that much sleep.
You need maybe two hours of sleep.
And the rest of the time, you're on the nod anyway.
I mean, I had a house when I was working for Neil.
I had house up in marmont.
And then eventually, uh -
I was still living in the house when I kicked dope, when I stopped doing it.
And I was off dope for months.
And one day I walked into the kitchen,
and I realized that the ceiling in the kitchen was painted green.
'Cause my eyes were never open that much to see the ceiling.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
I mean, I was like this.
Did you ever get arrested or anything?
Uh...
Uh, I was, uh -
oh, there's a long answer there. Long pausing, long pausing.
I was involved - yes. No, I wasn't - I wasn't arrested.
I had a friend who was a dealer, who was a very heavy dealer in smack.
And they could never pin smack on him. They could never pin a heroin rap on him.
But he'd taken some guy someplace and beaten him up.
And he was an ex-prizefighter.
So they, uh... had warrants out for him
for... you know, assault with a deadly weapon and kidnapping.
And he met -
he came to the house and he brought a kilo of heroin.
And I put it in a special spot, in a special place that I had built.
I had built a special chest of drawers
that was, like, Chinese and had a special bottom.
This is while you were still road managing?
Yeah. And, uh -
and then he came in and he went to sleep in the bedroom.
And I was watching television in the den, and his girlfriend Betsy was there.
And we were expecting two other people.
So the doorbell rang. Betsy goes downstairs.
She answers the doorbell.
And it's, uh,
the entire narcotics squad for Hollywood,
coupled with the federal agents.
Fifteen of them. Fifteen of them.
And they just - shh!
They put tape over her mouth, put a gun to her head.
Then they snuck up the front staircase and the back staircase.
Now, leading into the living room - the television is where you are.
I'm sitting here on the couch. Over there are those beaded curtains.
Yeah.
Out of peripheral vision -
I'm sitting there eating a box of cocoa Jacks.
I'll never forget it.
Out of peripheral vision, I can see...
A 12-Gauge shotgun and two .38s, you know, right there.
And I - and I turned over and I went -
the whole box up in the air.
And the guy went...
He went like this.
"Put your hands on your head and sit over there."
And I did, and then they let the guy in the back.
They let the guys in the back.
And they all jumped this one guy who was asleep who they were after.
And then he called me into the kitchen, this sergeant.
I'll never forget that guy, boy.
He called me into the kitchen and he said, "is there any -"
he said, uh -
he said, "let me see your arms.” he looked at my arms. He saw tracks.
He said, um -
now, this is the first time it ever happens to you.
And the first time it happens to you,
it's just such not a believable reality.
He didn't say anything else to me.
He didn't question me. He didn't talk to me about anything.
He just said, "you have the right to remain silent.
Anything you say may be..." He just started reading me my rights.
I started to cry hysterically.
And when I get hysterical, I have a thing in my nose, a bad vein,
and I started to get a nosebleed that just wouldn't stop,
and it started gushing down, and it was just -
and it ended up, I was laying on my bed.
One policeman had a cold cloth behind the back of my neck.
Another policeman had a tissue up my nose.
And another one was saying, "you're not going to jail.
Please stop crying."
"Please stop crying. You're not going to jail."
I mean, how could they bring in all these heavy dope dealers with this kid?
"I don't know anything about any heroin. I don't know anything about -
I don't know anything about it."
They handcuff him, handcuff his girlfriend,
take him out, I go downstairs, I lock the door.
I can see them down in the courtyard.
They're packing their shotguns up in their cases.
As they're packing their shotguns up in their cases,
I'm breaking out the heroin out of the drawers.
I was getting off before they were in the cars.
I used to cop from this guy, big. His name was big.
He was, uh - he was a four-foot negro.
His name was big.
He had two sh - uh, two toes shot off in Vietnam.
He shot them off himself so he could get out.
He was - he was a dealer. He was on 14th street.
And we used to go down there.
I used to go into, uh... this hallway
that smelled from urine - guys would urinate in there.
Go up the flight of stairs, knock on the door. "Yeah, who's there?"
"Steve." "Steve who?"
"Steve, your ass. Steve. Open the -"
you'd go in, and it was a shooting gallery.
You'd go and use his works, you'd buy the dope.
- Oh, / see. - Right?
Now, they had this couch in there. Couch was like this.
Only the back was broken down
and they had a, uh, blanket over it.
And I come in one night,
and, uh, there's three guys ahead of me waiting to get off,
there's a guy getting off at the table,
and these three guys are standing up against the wall.
And, uh...
I see them standing there and I look, and, um...
I see the couch, and I sit down on the couch.
Just sit down there.
And the second I sit down, all the eyes in the room snap on me.
And, uh, big says, "hey.
You remember Joey."
I said, "yeah, sure. Yeah. I know Joey."
"Well, you're sitting on him.”
I said, "oh. Oh, yeah?"
The guy was dead.
"Hmm. That's all right."
And I just put the blanket down and got back on the end of the line.
I mean, I wasn't gonna lose my place in line.
But out of that, you, uh - you know, a lot of close calls.
Uh, I managed to get a lot of, um, medical supplies,
medical equipment that you didn't normally have.
Like, we had oxygen.
We had an electronic stethoscope that gave a tape readout
so you could tell how many heartbeats.
We had adrenalin shots.
We had all kinds of stuff,
the kind of shots to bring you through when you od.
And this girl once od'd on us.
And she was out, man.
And it was myself and his - her boyfriend.
And he said, uh - and her heartbeat was dropping down.
And we got everything out, oxygen, and nothing was working.
And he looked at me and says,
"well, you're gonna have to give her an adrenalin shot."
I said, "what are you talking about?"
I said, "you give it to her." He said, "I can't.
It's like a doctor working on someone in his own family."
I said, "that's bullshit! You've known her two days.
What the fuck is going on?"
You know? And he said, "no, I can't do it."
So we had the medical dictionary.
You know how you give an adrenalin shot?
Okay, the adrenalin needle's about that big,
and you've got to give it into the heart,
and you have to put it in in a stabbing motion
and then plunge down on the thing.
I got the medical dictionary out, looked it up,
got a magic marker, made a magic marker where her heart was,
measured down, like, two or three ribs and measured in between there.
And I just stood there and I went -
and then...
And she came back like that.
She just came right back like that.
So, what about Neil?
What kind of relationship did you have with Neil? Neil diamond.
When he found out that I was pretty heavily into heroin -
which it took - he was, like, the last to know.
Uh...
Just because I kept it pretty cool from him.
Some of the other people in the band knew, but he was, like, the last to know.
And he did it very, uh -
I was really, at that point, at the peak of being into dope,
at the peak of the high.
He came to me and said, "listen, I'll put you in a hospital.
I'll take care of all your hospital bills.
And when you come out, I'll help you get started
in anything you want to do.
Uh, would you consider doing that?"
And, uh, of course, I thought it over
and made the really intelligent decision.
"No." -
"no."
Then I worked for him for a couple of more months,
and then he stopped performing.
He went on a vacation.
Did anybody talk to you about it or say anything?
Yeah, I spoke to him a couple of times about it.
Uh, I remember one time I spoke to you about it, Steven.
I was telling him, "what, are you crazy?
Are you out of your fucking mind? What the fuck are you doing?
What are you doing?
You want to kill yourself? Is that what you want to do?
You want to go out that way?"
And Steven says to me, "that's not a bad way to go.
I mean, you just get higher and higher
- and higher and higher." - And higher.
And higher and higher
and higher and higher.
"And you just fly away." Yeah.
I really can't think of a -
I mean, there's no nice way to go.
But if someone was to come up to me and say,
"sorry, you leave at 3:00,"
I'd say, "well, how about going out on smack?"
Whew.
The whole school closed down. No changeovers, everything.
And everybody had to go home. Everybody had families.
I had no place to go.
And I wasn't about to go back to New York.
So, I had a friend who was working -
uh, whose father had a brand-new gas station
about ten miles outside of barstow.
And, uh, he said -
- outside of where? - Barstow. Barstow.
And, uh, h-he said
that there's a guy there who's taking off for easter vacation.
So if I wanted to make some extra money during easter vacation,
I could take over that job, you know, working in a gas station.
I figure it's a good idea.
So I went out there and I went with the guy.
And, uh, I worked in a gas station.
Now, I worked alone
from the hours of 10:00 at night
until 2:00 in the morning.
So my hours were 8:00 to 4:00.
But there were other guys on during those times.
But from 10:00 to 2:00 in the morning, I worked alone in this gas station.
And, uh...
I'm in the gas station.
I'm in this little office.
It's about, uh, that big, you know?
About that big around.
There's only room in there for the cash register and a chair.
And I'm sitting in the chair and I'm sleeping.
I mean, I'm really - I'm 40 winks. I'm out.
And I hear a noise.
So I get awake, get up, get up out of the chair,
and I walk out onto the -
there's a little stoop, you know?
On - so you step down.
And I looked out way at the other end of the gas station, 50 yards.
It's one of those big, huge, super-big gas stations.
Fifty yards down there, we had these tire racks
with the chains that went through the tire racks.
Okay, there's an econoline Van down there.
And this guy had these chain cutters,
and he's cut the chains,
and he is packing this econoline Van
with - with, uh, tires.
He had every inch of that Van that you could possibly imagine
filled with tires.
He had the last two tires that he was gonna put in.
He was just about to put them in there.
Then he would've closed the door and driven away.
Just as he's about to put them in, I go, "hey, you!"
The guy turns around.
He's half-Indian, he's half-Mexican.
He was zonked out of his mind on speed.
He's got no t-shirt on. He's sweating.
He's got a knife in here.
It's about a 14-inch knife.
Pulls the knife out from where he is.
I'm standing there, rubbing the sand out of my eyes.
Pulls the knife out and goes -
and starts running at me.
Running at me, right?
And I'm standing there and I'm looking at this man
running across at top speed with this knife in his hand.
And the only thought that came into my mind was, "wrong.
This is definitely wrong."
And I walked in - I walked into the office -
walked into the office.
Uh, right behind the cash register,
the owner kept a .44 Magnum.
A six-shot. Right?
I turned, I cocked it.
Turned around, and the guy was just coming through the door.
Just coming through the door - the doorway.
And just as he was coming through the door, I fired.
And I hit him right in the chest.
And as fast as he came in that door, he went out. Okay?
I blew him out past into the pumps.
I blew him between ethyl and regular.
Seriously, he was out there -
he was out there slumped between ethyl and regular.
Now, the guy must've been - 'cause he had the knife out,
and the blood was just down the front of him like this.
And there was a hole in his chest you could've driven a truck through.
But he was on speed or something,
because he, uh, made, like,
a last nervous move up off the pumps
to come at me like that.
At which point I just took the revolver
and emptied it in him,
blowing him out of the gas station.
Wow.
Six shots with a .44 Magnum.
Then I went on the phone and I called the highway patrol
and I told them I'd just killed a man.
And I hung up. And I said where, and I hung up.
And then I went and sat down in the little chair
in front of the gas station.
And in the desert, before you could hear the sirens,
you could see the lights.
Red flashing lights, blue flashing lights,
green flashing lights, helicopters flashing up.
And they came and - riot squad came in.
And I was still sitting out on the porch with the gun in my hand.
Some sergeant came up. He had the gun on me at all times, his gun on me.
But I was just sitting there in shock. I was completely in shock.
He took the gun out of my hand and they took me to the hospital.
And then I had to be, uh, examined
by three psychiatrists
for the coroner's inquest.
The guy was wanted.
He was, uh, escaped
from some, you know, detention camp or something.
He was a rapist, a known rapist.
Uh, not important, but, uh...
At any rate,
they, uh, made me go through three days of examinations.
And the main question on their minds was,
why did I shoot the man six times?
Because obviously the one shot killed the sucker.
And I said, "il didn't -" which I didn't.
I did not remember the other five shots.
'Cause I blew him 25 yards outside - out of the, uh -
right out of the - right out of the station.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was -
what a wonderful way to spend my easter vacation.
Did you ever think about why you shot him six times?
Yeah. Because, I mean, I had -
the experience of just shooting him that one time,
I mean, every - just shooting a man -
I mean, the experience of doing that and seeing him standing there, bleeding,
I mean, I was completely intense.
Anxiety. I was shaking.
And then he got up like he was gonna move towards me.
And, um, my father always taught me,
never aim a gun at anybody.
Never, ever aim a gun at anybody
unless you're gonna shoot them.
And if you're gonna shoot them, kill them.
Would you mind pointing that gun in another direction?
Don't ever let - don't ever let him get up again.
If he gets up, he's gonna kill you. And he got up.
What'd you really think when he was coming at you, though?
When he was coming at me? Yeah.
Before I squeezed the trigger, when he was coming through the door,
I could see the sweat off of him and I could see his eyes.
And his eyes were just glass.
I mean, yeah, I'll never -
I'll never, ever forget the expression of that guy's eyes.
- Whew. - It was just -
I mean, he had written all over him, "I'm going to hurt you."
While holding the knife.
"I'm going to cut you up six ways from Sunday and mail you."
Jesus.
I mean, that was strictly - you know, that's when -
that's when reaction has to take over,
when survival has to take over.
You've gotta - at that point, you have to make that decision.
So that was my easter vacation.
So, what's the relationship now with, uh, family life?
Your parents, your wife, that sort of thing?
My -_- - before this cuts off.
Uh, yeah. Well, uh...
My - my position with my family is -
like, my father, uh -
I was speaking to my father just the other day.
And, uh...
He, uh -
I could tell him - he always knows that I'm a survivor, you know?
I'll get through anything.
He knows that I can hack it doing just about anything.
So he's not worried about that.
But he asked me if I was enjoying what I was doing.
And I said, "yeah, I am enjoying what I'm doing."
And he said, "that's good."
I told him that I finally thought that I'm doing something now
that I've worked up to doing - wanting to do.
Well, okay. Uh... Could we cut one second, Mike?
I want to ask you about your father again
and the last telephone call you had with him.
'Cause it seemed very matter-of-fact. You seemed a little too objective to me.
I don't know. It just seemed -
you know, 'cause when you talked to me on the plane, there was a little more -
a little more, uh, sincerity to it.
I don't know. It kinda was just - it just seemed thrown away this time.
'Cause I don't quite understand. Was that the whole conversation?
No.
Your relationship with your parents is what? Your father is always -
all right. I see what you - all right, yeah.
- Explain a little more about - - Right, right, right, right.
Yeah.
- So, about your parents. - Uh -
- their reaction to now. - Their reaction to now.
My mother's reaction to now is that I'm out here, I'm in Hollywood,
and I'm making movies, and that's great for her.
My father's reaction is - my father's dying of, uh, heart -
he's got a fatal heart disease, and he's dying.
And I have a very hard time talking to him on the phone.
And he said to me...
"Ll know that you're a survivor
and that you can do good in whatever you do.
But are you having fun?"
And I said, "yeah. I'm enjoying what I'm doing.
I really like doing what I'm doing."
He said, "are you happy?"
Yeah, he said "happy."
No, you said, "are you having fun?”
Let's try it that way. That was perfect. I just want to get it down the other way.
- "But are you happy?" That's all. - The same way?
- Yeah. - Okay.
So you spoke to him on the phone. What did he say?
He said, uh -
okay, hold it a second.
So, your parents' reactions now. Your father?
My mother's reaction is that she's very happy
at what I'm doing here.
And my father's reaction is -
he's - he's dying of heart disease.
And I have a hard time relating with him sometimes.
And he called me on the phone and he asked me -
well, he said to me, "I know you're a survivor
and I know you can do well in whatever you do.
But are you happy?"
And I told him, yeah, I was happy.
J thirteen junkies too weak to work &
jd one sells diamonds for what they're worth &
& down on pain street &
j disappointment lurks j
j; Son, don't be home too late &
jd no, no, no j
j try to get back by eight &
j eight &
j son, don't wait till the break of day &
j 'cause you know how time fades away &
j time fades away j
j you know how time fades away &