Love Life (27 page)

“I weigh two hundred fifteen pounds,” said Bernie with utter conviction.

Spade and I looked at each other disbelievingly.

“And you, Mr. Schlatter?”

“Two hundred five pounds!” he said.

Spade could take no more.

“Sir, I weigh two hundred eighty-five pounds,” he volunteered.

We took off safely.

It wouldn’t be the last time Bernie’s idiosyncrasies almost got me into hot water.

In spite of his love for sports, he always had terrible seats. When you would bust him on it, he would protest, “But I
like
my seats. They’re near the exits!” Bernie also loved playing craps and Sheryl and I often went with him to Vegas, where he would bring fifty thousand dollars cash in a brown bag.

“I have great seats for the Holyfield fight,” he told me on one such trip. He must’ve sensed my lack of enthusiasm because he added, “Don’t worry, I spend so much at Bally’s my host got ’em for us!”

Since I was a fight fan, Sheryl, Bernie and I went. It was Evander Holyfield vs. Mike Tyson. About as big a marquee fight as you could possibly want. The Strip was on fire that night, as it always is for the Big One, but that evening it was thick as a brick, even by Vegas standards. We knew we were in for an adventure but could not possibly have imagined what lay ahead.

In the VIP holding area of the MGM Grand we mingled with fellow actors, singers and star athletes. We chatted with Garry Shandling, Dennis Miller, Christian Slater and Nic Cage, until we were led en masse into the arena. I’m not too proud or blasé to deny that one of the better perks of success is the thrill of being led from the top of an arena all the way down to the front row. As we arrived ringside, Cage settled in next to Slater while Shandling and Miller tried to figure out who’d sit where. I’d been ringside before, a number of times, and seen Hagler, Tyson and others; I couldn’t wait to see the sweat fly and feel the lovely violence, which is palpable at that range.

An usher looked at our tickets.

“Oh, right this way, Mr. Lowe,” he said, and we followed him to the other side of the ring.

I waved over to the gang, who seemed confused that we weren’t in the same area. I shrugged and pantomimed, “Let’s meet up later,” as Bernie, Sheryl and I fell in line again. This time the usher turned and began marching up the stairs and out of the VIP section.

It got ugly quickly.

Soon we were so high above the ring that I could barely make out the faces of my friends sitting ringside, although the look of horror on their faces as we were led to Siberia was something I was glad not to witness.

Like Sir Edmund Hillary summiting Everest without oxygen, our harrowing, debilitating ascent seemed to take forever. I’m certain Sheryl had never climbed higher in high heels. She might as well have been on a StairMaster.

Finally, mercifully, it was over.

“Here you are, Mr. Lowe,” said the usher, who seemed to have the cardio capacity of Lance Armstrong on dope. “Enjoy the fight.” Panting, I looked around. We were in the absolute top row of the arena. Bernie had struck again.

“Yo! Rob Lowe! Whatcha doin’ up here!” shouted a large man with tattoos, wearing an oversized Oakland Raiders jersey.

“Just checkin’ out the fight!” I smiled.

I helped Sheryl to her seat. She was being a champ, sucking it up and acting cool as a cucumber. Bernie, for his part, was silent and avoiding all eye contact, mopping the raining sweat off his brow.

“Hey! Hey! Excuse me! Hey! Yo!” yelled another guy holding a clown-sized cup of beer. “Hey, my wife says you’re
somebody
! Are you
somebody
?!”

I tried to pretend I couldn’t hear but my silence only emboldened him.

“Are you famous? She says you’re famous! What do you play in?”

I wanted to tell him I didn’t “play” in anything but had acted, directed, produced and written some things he might have seen.

“What do you
play
in? Can my wife kiss you?! She wants to kiss you!! I don’t care, fuck it, it’s Vegas, right?! What do you play in?!”

This kind of patter happens more than you might think, and I’ve come to accept it as the cost of doing business. I also knew that it was likely to continue unless something more interesting got the couple’s attention.

Happily, in the third round, Mike Tyson had one of the greatest meltdowns in the history of all sports and bit off Evander Holyfield’s right ear. This shut the guy up. Finally.

The entire arena was on its feet. No one knew what to think. Was the fight over? What was going on in that ring? God knows from our seats we could barely tell it was a boxing match at all. When the referee disqualified Iron Mike and ended the fight, the crowd’s mood turned ugly. Like a switch being thrown, the place felt very unsafe. Bernie, always a pro at reading a room, whispered to me urgently.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here, kid.”

Taking direction is what I do for a living, so I grabbed Sheryl and hightailed it. For once, I was happy to be so close to the exits.

The doors to the arena had barely slammed behind us when the crowd went absolutely bat-shit. I could hear yelling and the unmistakable rumblings of an angry mob. Quickly, we made our way from the MGM sports complex into the casino, where we caught our breath. Soon, surly, wild-eyed fight patrons began filling in around us.

“I’ll see you kids at brunch, I’m going up,” said Bernie wisely.

“Sheryl and I are gonna gamble,” I said stupidly.

My wife loves her some casino. She is completely capable of sitting
uninterrupted for eight or nine hours in front of a slot machine. She strokes it, talks to it and gazes upon it with a face that is usually reserved only for the handsome werewolf guy on
True Blood
. Since I am not single, don’t drink and hate gambling, for me Vegas always becomes a lonely adventure in room service and ESPN. For me, “what happens in Vegas” is . . . not much.

But not tonight.

In the time it took Bernie to walk to the elevators, the entire casino floor had been transformed into a sea of fight fans bent on destruction. Packs of scary-looking dudes eyeballed anyone who glanced their way. The area was thick with people. If there was such a thing as maximum capacity, the casino was now very close to it, and suddenly it was very hard to move.

Sheryl and I exchanged glances. It was a very bad crowd; we were packed among them like sardines and it was time to get out.

Then came the unmistakable sound of gunshots.

Pop. Pop. Pop. In rapid succession. The triple burst that is the proper way to shoot a semiautomatic handgun. Between recreational shooting in my civilian life and working with all kinds of weapons over the years on sets, I knew what I heard. Someone in the crowd was a shooter.

In the panic that exploded, men were throwing their wives under tables, screams rang out and people began to scramble in confusion, pushing and knocking over anything in their way. I grabbed Sheryl by the arm, hard. Her eyes were huge and scared.

“Follow me!” I shouted.

I put her behind me, lowered my shoulder and began to jog through the panicked and roiling crowd. I watched as a gang of young men overturned a blackjack table. I saw people grabbing and pocketing the chips that flew everywhere.

This escalated things quickly. Now the security staff began wading in,
meaning business, and from the looks on everyone’s faces on both sides of the equation, I knew people were about to be badly hurt.

There was a single, piercing woman’s scream followed by aggressive male yelling. I could see a crowd of probably a hundred people start to run from whatever was going down. Within a second it was a stampede in the casino.

I threw Sheryl around a corner as the mass ran past us. We found ourselves at the top of a long, thin hallway leading to a single half-open door.

“C’mon!” I said, heading down the hall, but it was too late; behind us people, running at top speed and frantic, began to fill in the hallway, packing at our backs, pressing on us, ready to trample us. More rushed in behind them. A security guard appeared from the other side of the semiopen door, saw the stampede coming his way and panicked. He fumbled to kick open the doorstop in an effort to close it.

I knew that if he was able to close the door in front of us, Sheryl and I would be crushed. Together, we ran as fast as we could. The guard had released the stopper and was beginning to slam it shut. He was standing in the remaining space between the door and the jamb as I lowered my shoulder and speared him, lifting him off his feet. Sheryl and I blew past him as he lay on the ground gathering himself. We kept running and I never turned back.

Eventually, we made our way to a friend’s room to wait out the chaos, which had now spilled into the streets. Looking out the window, I saw a man lying motionless on the concrete below. I couldn’t tell his condition but he was alone, lying facedown in an awkward position, unmoving.

After a few hours the sirens began to quiet and I began to feel it might be safe to venture outside. I thanked my pal for the safe haven and called to Sheryl, who was gazing out at the street. I went to her and put my arms around her.

“I think we can go home now,” I said.

She nodded and I could tell she was still a little scared. Below us, the man still lay motionless, alone and forgotten. I never found out what became of him.

Clearly Las Vegas is light-years from the days of the mob and its lawless history. In fact, there is probably not a more closely regulated or corporate destination in the world (which is why its over-the-top sales pitch of Krazy Debauchery for the Masses makes me chuckle). But when the next day’s paper carried only an innocuous blurb about “champagne corks popping” and “confusion” in the casino, I knew that Sin City was still a company town. Zero mention of the riot, the stampede, the gaming tables being overturned, the missing chips or the man lying on the concrete. Apparently, the town’s motto is true. Vegas can truly still keep a secret.

I vowed to never attend a sporting event with Bernie ever again. But we continued our daily talks filled with the discussion of the details of life: kids, finances, career planning, gossip and anything and everything that might be of interest.

In the summer of 2008, after a number of years of health struggles, Bernie was rushed to a hospital in Los Angeles. Although his family and many friends hoped for another recovery, another crash diet or new fitness program, there was a sense that Bernie, despite his will and strength, had reached his limit.

Bernie was in the ICU for weeks. He barred all visitors. Sheryl and I of course were having none of it. We crashed our way into his room whenever we could. By this point, one of the greatest storytellers I have ever known was communicating via handheld chalkboard. Although he was fighting for his life, all he wanted to talk about was mine.

He was half-asleep as we entered but gamely tried to rally at the sound of my voice. Soon he was asking questions. “
Brothers & Sisters
?” he scrawled, referring to the show I was currently doing.

“New deal at ABC!” he wrote, underlining it, and I could see in his eyes his desire for one more killing, one more big win for his client.

I held his hand. Sheryl fixed his hair. He was happy to see us but embarrassed to be seen as he was. We entertained him with stories of the things he loved. The LA Kings, the Hollywood industry inside scoop, redheaded Jews and people whose names ended in vowels. When it was time for us to go he threw down his chalkboard and raised himself up to speak, but I couldn’t make out what he wanted to say. As he lay back down he had tears streaming down his face. And I knew him so well that I understood at once the gesture that followed, which meant: “Isn’t this just such
bullshit
, kid?!”

Standing behind him, Sheryl, who had always been mad for him, was silently weeping. I shot her a look: “Don’t let him see you like that.”

We both hugged him good-bye and I’m sure we all knew it was the real thing. I kissed his head, looked into his eyes and told him I’d be by the next day right after I was done shooting.

I didn’t cry until I got into the hallway.

I was sitting next to Calista Flockhart, among a crew of seventy-five, preparing for my close-up on set in a hospital ICU when my phone rang. I knew before I answered. Bernie was gone. I hung up in a daze and the cameras were already rolling. Calista held my hand. An actor playing an ICU nurse was reading her lines: “Congratulations! You are having a baby boy!” The camera began to push in, till it was inches from my face, until my eyes lost focus as I tried to stop them from filling with tears.

“Aaaaaaand cut! Let’s print that and move on,” said the director. And so we did, because that’s how it is.

When you live as large as Bernie Brillstein, when you are as revered
and loved and have influenced so many, you better secure a very big venue for the memorial service. With the exception of Lew Wasserman’s memorial, there hadn’t been a turnout like there was for Bernie in decades, and so the service at Royce Hall at UCLA was standing-room only on a beautiful day in mid-August.

Bernie, who absolutely hated poorly run events and had even less patience for dull ones, would have been apoplectic with agita. He also would’ve been literally sweating the guest list (“Why is
that
fucker here?” or “How great is Jen Aniston?!”). Luckily for Bernie, two of his great collaborators were in charge of the giant memorial: his former partner and now president of Paramount Pictures, Brad Grey, and Lorne Michaels. It was a perfect match. Brad kept everyone in line, made things happen, and Lorne produced it down to the smallest grace note. When it was over, it would go down in Hollywood history as one of the most memorable and moving tributes. (Although it was a great movie and became a hit,
Tropic Thunder
had the misfortune of premiering at the same time, ten blocks away, to a deserted red carpet. Everyone was at Bernie’s send-off.)

There was not an agent, manager or television or movie executive who wasn’t there. There were the figures who knew the quiet, personal part of Bernie. The lover, who had time for almost everyone he met, the dreamer who saw an entire career just by looking into an artist’s face. And people like his favorite waitress at Nate ’n Al’s deli, who had served him for thirty years and whose child’s school tuition Bernie had helped fund. There are 1,834 seats in Royce Hall; that day every single one was taken, and many more stood.