Serving Celebrities: The Complete Collection (28 page)

I didn’t hear anything else about the film until one day while perusing the L.A. Times Calendar section; I noticed a film opening of
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
. I told my girlfriend, now my wife, we’ve got to go to see this film as soon as it opens because I keep on running into Nia and maybe I didn’t see her play but I have to tell her that I’ve seen her film -- even if it’s only opened for a weekend.

Deb and I went to an afternoon showing of the film in one of the smallest theaters in the Beverly Center -- a few less chairs; it would be considered a den. We sat there waiting for the film to begin so that we could honestly tell Nia and Ian that we saw their film (of course Ian has a role in it). When the theater went dark, just before the film started, a woman in front stood and turned to the rest of the small audience and asked, “Whose Greek here?” There was a loud ovation (an ovation of about fifteen people). The things I have to do for my sister’s friends.

We actually liked the film a lot. In fact, we started telling everyone we knew that they should go see the film -- that it had heart. Deb and I took most of the credit for the large turn-out in the coming weeks, helping “
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
” into the record books as the highest grossing romantic comedy ever. The film just got bigger and bigger, but Nia didn’t change. I would still run into her here and there, she would tell me about how well the film was doing, I would tell her how much Deb and I liked it (no need to go on about our word-of-mouth campaign on her behalf).

I was working the Writers Guild Awards that year, when it was up for Best Original Screenplay (it lost to Michael Moore’s “
Bowling for Columbine
”). Nia was riding high on the success of her movie and it was hard not to be happy for her. Deb and I watched with friends as it was nominated for an Oscar (but lost to Pedro Almodóvar for “
Talk to Me
”).

Nia and Ian went on to make more films and starred in television shows. It was one of those “A Star is Born” stories… and I was there, the whole time thinking that she was either lying or confused… or both. But after all the success Nia never really changed, every time we ran into her, she was always friendly, now realizing that I wasn’t a mute (but probably still thinking I lived under Dee’s house).

It was amusing to watch how the world had changed for her. One time Dee invited Deb and me to a silent auction fund-raiser for my nephew’s school. Nia was there shopping and checking out items for sale. Suddenly, a woman approached Nia and exclaimed, “You’re that big fat Greek girl?” Nia smiled warmly, looking pleased to be noticed, not looking offended because the woman just called her fat (Nia’s not fat -- just the wedding was). She thanked the tactless woman and told her that she was there helping her friend’s child’s school -- it’s nice when people you know make it in this business… it’s even better when they are nice, also.

P.S. Come to my one man show, “My Big Fat Irish Drinking Problem.” Please come, Tom and Rita. Please?

The Ties That Bind Me to Bruce Springsteen

T
he first time I saw Bruce Springsteen was in 1978. I was living in Galveston, Texas, while working as roustabout for Texaco, loading the boats that went out to the oil rigs. One of my room-mates, at the time, spotted an ad for a Springsteen concert in nearby Houston. He told my other room-mate and I, that we had to see him. I didn’t have a lot of money but they talked me into going… and my life has not been the same since.

Blinded By the Light

I have never seen someone so exuberant about anything in my life like Bruce Springsteen’s passion for the songs he was playing -- it just blew me away. I wanted to feel like that about something… someone… anything. Here was this guy, a lot like me, who got up there and put on such a performance, it was moving, it was fun, it was exciting, and all the time it was honest. I never felt that I was being bull-shitted. I never felt that he was talking down to me… only that we shared something -- we shared something that night that was true, we shared his music.

Bruce, at the time, was a skinny little guy, who had this big black man on sax and a really cookin’ band. I couldn’t believe that someone could go and play for that long, for almost three hours and when the band finally finished, we were all drenched in sweat. After that show, I bought all his albums and really got into what he was singing. The songs were very cinematic and intensely touched me -- it was like my life put to music. I was eighteen at the time and like many of Bruce’s songs; my life was all about girls, cars and a shitty job that I didn’t like… I also had a difficult relationship with my father. The more I listened to Bruce, the more I felt that he really understood what I was going through day in and day out. I felt that Bruce was someone just like me (forgive the fact that he was a rock star at the time) and that he actually cared about my life.

The other thing that he showed to me was that you can get out of where you grew up and try to fulfill the yearnings that you had. If Bruce could leave Freehold, New Jersey, I could leave Tewksbury, Massachusetts. If Bruce could try to be a rock star, I could try to be an actor. With this feeling, I left my childhood and moved to New York City to be an adult. In those difficult days, when I knew just a few people in the city, Bruce and his music kept me good company. A lot of his music is about wanting more than you got and trying to get it, no matter what you have to sacrifice. Those who have never moved away from their families will never understand how difficult it is to leave and make a new life… or how lonely it is.

Darkness on the Edge of Town

As the years and the albums rolled by, I would try to see Bruce in concert as much as possible but most of the time it was just a single show per tour. Other times I came close to running into him in real life. One time, while I was driving a taxi cab in New York City, I picked up three guys in front of the Guggenheim Museum. They were very excited and talking amongst themselves. One of the guys told me that they saw Springsteen there, he was just checking out some exhibits. I was impressed, then they told me that he and his date had taken the last cab, just before I arrived. I had missed him by minutes -- he could’ve been my fare (I spent the rest of my night regretting waiting for that last yellow light to turn, not going uptown earlier, stopping to go to the bathroom -- it wasn’t helpful or realistic, but it still didn’t stop me).

The New York years were fun and it was always kind of special to see him in New Jersey and at Madison Square Garden but it was so hard to get tickets. I once waited in line all night, in the rain, to only get some shitty seats to the
Tunnel of Love
tour, but at the time it was worth it.

One benefit I got from following Bruce, is that some of my closest friends started out as just another Bruce fanatic. As we went to shows together, reviewing the new album and reacting to every Springsteen crisis has kept us together for more than twenty years. Nothing is better than sitting around with friends talking about all the great shows we’ve attended. Other friends come and go, boyfriends, girlfriends, wives, husbands, but Bruce and the E-Streeters keep on. We’ve been through Steve leaving (both Miami Steve and Little Steven), the Julianne fling (We knew it wasn’t going to last), Patti and her ascension from back-up singer to wife, the breaking up of the band (I was crushed), his kids, political Bruce (thank God, he’s a liberal), the re-uniting of the E Street Band, Steve on the Sopranos, whispers about marriage troubles, Danny and Clarence’s recent passing. Yes, I need to get a life… but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen soon so I’ll settle for what I got. Through all this, I’ve always tried to meet Bruce -- if only to tell him what his music has meant to me.

Hungry Heart

The first time I ran into Bruce was in many ways a very fortunate turn for me. I had just moved to Los Angeles and I was working as a bartender in a restaurant where the manager was a true-blue dickhead. Before moving to L.A., I had worked in a hotel on Martha’s Vineyard and I thought that maybe it would be a good idea to get into a hotel in Los Angeles, where I would get better benefits and more free time to write (which is why I came to L.A. in first place, having given up the ghost on the acting career). I sent a resume’ to most of the hotels in the Hollywood area and I was asked to interview at a hotel in West Hollywood, the Sunset Marquis Hotel and Villas.

Being new to Hollywood, I didn’t know my way around town yet and it took me forever to find the hotel when I went in for my interview. The hotel is a small structure, sort of resembling a nursing home, set into the side of the Hollywood Hills, on a side street, south of Sunset Boulevard. If you’re not sure exactly where it is you will probably have a hard time finding it. Between its location and discreet entrance, it doesn’t look like a hotel, and in my point of view at the time, it didn’t look like a hotel where you could make a lot of money, either.

I went in and talked to someone at the front desk, who called the food and beverage manager. They told me to sit down and wait for him. I took a seat in a chair, right beside the small newspaper stand in the lobby. Looking around the lobby, I couldn’t help to notice how “un-busy” it looked. There didn’t seem to be anyone sitting around the pool and not many people were coming and going. I waited and read over my resume’, preparing myself to let this food and beverage manager down lightly, as I refused the position he was obviously going to offer me. I hoped he would not be too disappointed if I didn’t work for him.

Then an arm reached for the newspaper stand and a somewhat familiar voice (usually backed up by tape-hiss and him telling some story about his father) said, “Excuse me, mind if I take a paper?” I looked up and it was almost like a mirage in the desert of celebrity adulation. I had had this daydream so many times before, and with Bruce reaching for the newspaper, it was almost like he was offering his hand, to introduce himself. I was frozen; deciding whether this was that dream again or was it really him, because it looked like him and sounded like him. I blurted out the only thing I could think of at the moment, “I’ll take the job!”

Bruce looked at me strangely and took his newspaper. I just stared at him as he went out to the patio. I was still in a daze when the food and beverage manager arrived. He took me into the empty restaurant and we talked about something (I assume it was about the job -- but I’m not really sure). I kept checking out the hallway, to see if Bruce was passing by. The F & B manager then took me on a tour of the hotel but all I wanted to do was search for Bruce. The only thing I remembered about the tour was standing in the garden of one of the villas and the F & B manager telling me that they had hosted Bruce and Patti’s baby shower there a few weeks before. I have no idea what I said but it must have been pretty impressive or they were in desperate need of help, because I got the job as a butler. When I left, I wasn’t all that sure about when I was supposed to start and I had no idea what it paid, or if it paid at all -- but at that moment I would have taken it for free… I talked to Bruce Springsteen -- it was nonsense, but I did talk to him.

After formally accepting the job, I spent the next three years keeping a look-out for Bruce. Some days I would walk by the patio and he would be having breakfast with his family, or I would be walking through the gardens and they would be sitting on the grass with some friend.

One evening, when his manager, Jon Landau, was staying in one of my villas, I brought a beer and a cappuccino to him and Bruce, who was sitting on the couch. Bruce said “hi” as I laid everything out. I wanted desperately to tell him what his music meant to me but I couldn’t, especially with Landau there. I had so wanted to meet him and tell him how his music had affected me that when I had my chance I could barely talk. When he said “hi” to me I was so nervous it became more about not dropping the tray that I was holding and trying to come up with something that wasn’t stupid to say to him. I just safely nodded, “hello.” I would do my job and as soon as I stepped out the door, I berated myself for what I should’ve said but didn’t. This is also something I do after every pitch meeting, interview and first date I have -- but this was Bruce.

What was cool was getting the odd tidbit of information that not many people knew. One day I came down from the villas and ran into this goofy assistant F & B manager. Most of our assistant F & B managers were goofy. It was the one job that anyone who had been there for a while wouldn’t take -- even if included a raise. The hotel would hire the assistant F & B Manager and as soon as they went into the red, the assistant F & B Manager would be the first person to be sacked. We went through four in the three years I was there. Because of the short shelf life no one on the staff ever took the assistant F & B manager seriously -- we knew they wouldn’t be around in a short while. It was sort of like the new guy in the platoon in Vietnam; until you could prove that you were going to stay around for a while you were considered dead meat, even though you were walking. We would just put up with them until they were eventually gone.

I ran into the first goofy assistant F & B manager and he’s standing by the pool with this “Boy-have-I-got-a-secret” look on his face. So now I have to sidle up to him and find out what he knows. “Hey Greg,” I say, “What’s new?” Greg stands there rocking back and forth, with his lips clenched. “Nothing,” he says, through his tightly-sealed lips. Obviously, the hotel’s general manager and F & B manager have told him not to tell the staff -- now I have to find out. “Come on, Greg. What is it?” Greg keeps rocking, “Nothing.” “It’s something, Greg. I can see it. It’s something important.” “No, it’s not.” Greg says, still swaying, like his whole soul wants to jump out of his body and tell everyone. “Sooner or later I’m going to find out and then it won’t be a secret.” Foghorn Leghorn stares at me… he so wants to tell me. “Just give me a hint,” I beg. Greg sways and thinks about it -- he really wants to tell me but can’t. “Just a hint…” I pry. Finally it’s too much, he breaks down. He looks around to see if the coast is clear and announces, “The boss is getting married.”