Is My Bow Too Big? How I Went From Saturday Night Live to the Tea Party (10 page)

Star

She’s gonna be a star

At least that’s what it seems

She’s gonna be a star

If only in her dreams

She’s gonna be a star

At least that’s what they say…

She might just kill herself today.

W
hen you’re on a hit TV show, everybody wants you. Doors open, and suddenly, I’m in eight movies, jetting between NY and LA weekly, sometimes on the MGM Grand: a luxury airline. It was red and purple inside. It looked like Vegas. On one trip to NY promoting the movie
Casual Sex?,
Lea Thompson and I each had a big bed where we watched movies with the curtains drawn, and ate a thirteen course dinner with flowing chardonnay in goblets.

“What time do we have to wake up tomorrow?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Isn’t this great?”

“Yeah. Which course is this?”

“I think it’s the fifth one.”

“Wow. I’ve never lain in a bed on a plane before,” I said. “It’s like we’re flying through the air like Superman, but on our backs instead of our stomachs.”

“Yeah.
Burp
.”

Quickest five hours I ever spent.

On one of these flights, I went to the restroom just as a movie star (who shall remain nameless) was exiting. The powder room was full of marijuana smoke.

He said, “Oh, sorry,” when the cloud of smoke poured out on me.

“That’s okay,” I said. “I’ve smelled it before.”

“Come and join us,” he said.

I really should “network,” I thought, but decided against it. After my restroom visit, I walked back to my seat. He saw me, smiled, and gestured for me to sit in his private booth. He was very famous. “This is my manager,” he slurred.

His manager looked sober and embarrassed.

“Where do you live?” said the high movie star.

“Weston, Connecticut.”

“Oh, I’m going to Connecticut. Wanna share my limo? You could give me a blow job.” His face was completely serious. This wasn’t a joke.

My face turned white.

His manager apologized with a red face.

I smiled and stood up. “I better go back to my booth. Got some reading to do.”

People are strange.

Casual Sex?
Was the biggest movie role I ever had. I was the co-star. The title was misleading. Perverts were disappointed and nice people stayed away because it sounded wild. It wasn’t too wild. I was naked in it though. How can a Christian justify being naked on a thirty foot screen? Well, this is how:

My first movie, not counting
Double Exposure
or
Stoogemania,
where I only had two lines and then did a handstand, was
The Pickup Artist.
I was twenty-six and in NY for the first time. Warren Beatty hugged me on the set—an awkwardly long hug. He didn’t say anything. I laughed nervously. He was the producer. Robert Downey, Jr. was in a kissing scene with me, or rather, I was in
his
kissing scene. I keep thinking these are
my
movies, even if I have only five lines. People like Hall and Oates would show up on the set and visit us. I shamelessly took pictures with every famous person I could to add to my wall of fame. When I first got the part, I went to my pastor and asked him if a Christian should play a “bad girl” in a movie.

I told Pastor Lane, “My role doesn’t require cursing or nudity, but I don’t know if I should play a bad girl.”

He nodded kindly. We were sitting alone in the wooden pews of the Gothic cathedral, First Baptist of Pasadena. Sunlight streamed through the stained glass windows. I looked up at the ceiling. It was so high. I’d never been in a Baptist church this beautiful. Our churches back home had aluminum chairs, florescent lighting, concrete walls, and low ceilings of white rectangles with holes punched in them, and no windows. “It seems like the only roles for women are ‘bad girls’ unless you are in
The Sound of Music.
Maybe this is a test. Maybe if I turn down this role, God will give me
a Sound of Music.”

Pastor Lane’s eyes sparkled with joy and love. His manner was always peaceful. The Holy Spirit shined out of him like he was a lantern. “I think you should do the acting role to the best of your ability, and in your real life be the best Christian wife and mother you can be.”

“Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might,” came into my brain. “Even playing bad girls?” I asked God curiously.

In the movie
I Love You to Death
, I bravely auditioned for the famous director Lawrence Kasdan (
The Big Chill
). I even cried at my audition, on purpose. I was acting my heart out for the role of Lacey, Kevin Kline’s character’s mistress. I got the role, but then, I was told that I had to pose in a series of negligees and bras and panties so that the director could pick my wardrobe for the scene. Oh my. Well, a bra and panties is the same as a bikini bathing suit. I had knots in my too-puffy stomach. Waiting in the parking lot outside the wardrobe department, I met Kevin Costner.

He said, “What are you doing here?”

I said, “I’m supposed to get the director’s okay on my wardrobe for
I Love You to Death
. Are you in it?”

“No, I’m just a friend of Larry’s.”

I wished I were the friend of a famous director. It must help in getting roles; then again, maybe not.

I said, “Oh. I’m so nervous.”

“Why?”

“Because I have to model underwear for him.”

“So?” This guy was confrontational and cold.

“Well, besides being a Christian and being taught to be modest, my stomach is poofy. I did just have a baby. Well, a year ago,” I sighed.

“My wife had two babies and her stomach is flat,” Kevin bragged.

A few years later, I read that Kevin’s wife was divorcing him for cheating on her. Well, I reasoned, I guess a flat stomach doesn’t guarantee fidelity. Maybe poofy isn’t a deal breaker.

I left Kevin to look at a rack of lingerie choices. They were all way too skimpy. I was clammy. My head was swirling. What if I get fired when he sees my body? That would be psychologically hard to recover from.

Why didn’t I fast for the last few days? Oh yeah, I did. I picked out a few outfits and asked where a changing room was. The wardrobe designer looked a bit exasperated. I guess she was used to exhibitionists. One actress friend of mine often answered her trailer door naked and once said to a roomful of us, “My boyfriend thinks my breasts are fake because they are so perfect!” while admiring them in the mirror nude.

I took my “nerves of steel” from my gymnastic training and put them in place. I stood in front of the wardrobe lady. “Where is Mr. Kasdan?”

She directed me to another room. He was there. He stared at my clothed body critically. I giggled and posed nervously, then ran to the changing room. I returned to be observed in my underwear. “I feel so naked,” I said, laughing nervously.

Mr. Kasdan looked. He said, “Hmm. What else do you have?”

The wardrobe lady chattered and swung hangers back and forth for Mr. Kasdan as he looked on with his famous artistic director’s eye.

He hates my body
, I thought.

“What else do you have?” he asked.

Oh man. Does he mean underwear or actress bodies? I’m a mutant. I’m like a big fat man with a high voice. I’m the hunchback of Notre Dame, and finally the secret is out. Everybody knows. Somehow, some bikini underwear outfit was chosen. I have no memory of it because my brain clicked off somewhere during the third outfit.

My agent called the next day.

“Am I fired?” I mumbled meekly.

“What?” He was always in a hurry.

“Nothing.”

“Uh, you have to sign a paper, a nudity clause. It’s standard procedure.”

“What’s a nudity clause?”

“Basically, it says that you will show partial buttocks or breast in the movie. They can sue you if you don’t.”

Well, I had no intention of being nude, but I signed the paper. I had already invested too much into this Lacey character.

One day in Tacoma, WA, where we were shooting the movie, Kasdan told the cast that we were to go to the Pizzeria at 6 p.m., where we were to improvise, walk about, chat, and mingle “in character.” I wanted to do everything right. I wanted to be a movie star. I wanted to be Julie Andrews. Did she have to do all this? This was a bit of a dilemma, because “Lacey” is a mistress, therefore, she would probably never mingle with Kevin Kline’s character’s wife and family. Should I hide in the shadows or under a table? I was trying to figure this out when the phone rang.

My mom said, “Vicki, your Washington relatives are coming to see you. They live real close to where you’re shooting that movie. Only a couple hours away.”

“Oh? But I hardly know them. I only met them once when I was eight. I don’t even know what they look like. And didn’t they say that show business was a sin?”

“Yes, well…”

“I guess it isn’t a sin if they want to meet Kevin Kline and Lawrence Kasdan, or whatever.”

“Well, they’re on their way. I gave them your number.”

“Okay. Bye.”

I slinked into the pizzeria at 6 p.m. trying to look invisible. I supposed that’s what a mistress would do if she were showing up at the place that her lover’s family would be. I noticed that William Hurt and River Phoenix didn’t really seem to be “in character.” Maybe they are such good actors they are “in character” and I can’t tell, or maybe, they think this is stupid and they are just sitting there laughing at the rest of us. I’d never heard of this before. But this was only my fourth movie (sixth if you count
Stoogemania
and
Double Exposure.
In
Stoogemania
, I was Nurse Grabatit—pronounced Grab-at-it, if you don’t want to be vulgar—and I was supposed to help the patients in a mental hospital overcome their addiction to the Three Stooges. Somehow I ended up doing a handstand on a table in a nurse’s uniform and landing on my butt in a big bowl of spaghetti!)

I shuffled around the Tacoma Pizzeria, close to the wall. When I saw Tracey Ullman, my eyes quickly darted away. She was playing Kline’s wife. My character wants Kline’s character to leave Ullman’s character. It was confusing, but on top of it all, a group of gawking strangers were standing at the restaurant door. A production assistant slipped in and whispered, “These people say they’re your relatives. Do you want me to get rid of them?”

“Uh, no, uh, they
are
my relatives. Uh, I guess I should say hi.”

I started walking toward the door nervously. No one from the real world was supposed to know we were here. We were working. This was a movie—a serious one with serious stars—not a tourist attraction. Kasdan will wonder why they are here and how they found me. I didn’t know what to say when my Aunt called and asked for my address. They couldn’t afford to spend the night there, yet they drove all that way. They would think I was a prima-Donna if I ignored them. How was I supposed to explain to them that I was “in character”? “Hi, Aunt Shirley, I’m not Vicki, I’m Lacey, the pretend fornicator of Kevin Kline who’s pretending to be Joey.”