“I had a bottle and a half of Wild Turkey left. “A couple of days later, George said, ‘You can’t control the amount you drink.
Don’t drink anything all day, and I’ll let you have a drink then.’
“So there was this one occasion – especially unfortunate, since I think it left a bad impression on Bill Lee – when George said, ‘Okay. Let’s just see if I can drink moderately.’ Zevon tells the story: “I said, ‘Now look, George, we don’t necessarily have to buy all this stuff that the hospital tells us. George Gruel, Zevon’s live-in aide-de-camp and a warm and wonderfully understanding man, had some doubts as to what might happen. Lee had liked 1978’s Excitable Boy, and Warren wanted to play a tape of “Bill Lee” (later included on Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School) for him. The reason for that final binge – not that an alcoholic needs any special reason, Zevon will tell you – was the visit of Montreal Expos pitcher Bill Lee, about whom Warren had written a song. Zevon – bright, cleareyed, looking as sleek and powerful as Sugar Ray Leonard these days – is talking about the last time he fell off the wagon after his voluntary rehabilitation at Pinecrest, a private hospital in Santa Barbara. I weigh the same now as I did in high school.” There’s no keel over, make a young and pretty corpse. It’s just the worst death – a chickenshit, shivering, quaking, whiny death. This is suicide, the same as the gun barrel in the mouth, except that it’s infinitely more cowardly. Don’t let me die a fucking coward, not this way! Shit! Anything but this! I’m dying from having avoided the pain of living. I said, God, just give me one more chance, man. “This time I really felt that way morally about life. Each time he woke up, he’d scramble for the pistol and count the bullets, terrified there’d be one missing.)
44 Magnum, stumbled up the driveway to Mulholland, taken dead aim at a passing car and pulled the trigger. (Zevon had a recurring dream: that he’d grabbed his. I had my hand on the phone, I was afraid that I was going to start hallucinating and shooting guns – I didn’t know what was going to happen.” “The last time I detoxed, I really thought I was going to die. “From what I know about alcoholism,” Zevon is saying, “I’d say there’s nothing romantic, nothing grand, nothing heroic, nothing brave – nothing like that about drinking. I’m reminded of Hitchcock’s movies, where the horror happens in broad daylight. Since Warren and I are both night people, we’ve decided to do our tapings from one or two in the morning until dawn, then laze around in the backyard and watch the planes, magnificently framed against a faraway mountain range, make their long, slow descent across the San Fernando Valley toward the Burbank airport. “Very California,” he smiles, with a certain amount of grim satisfaction.) Lankford, who’s currently starring in Knots Landing, has gone to bed hours ago. He is particularly chagrined by a four-foot-high red bathtub. (“This stupid, pretentious, screenwriter’s idea of a screenwriter’s idea of a screenwriter’s house” is how Zevon describes it. We are sitting up late at night in Warren and Kim’s rented home in the Hollywood Hills. How True Is 'Respect'? Fact-Checking the Aretha Franklin Biopic And, since I was around for a few key incidents, I hope I do, too. Eventually, a dedicated drunk will maim or kill everything he touches, often putting himself at the bottom of the list. But you’d write it that way only if you didn’t realize that alcoholism is a disease, and that your true alcoholic is about as colorful and heart-warming as a pale white body on a concrete slab. There was even a laugh or two here and there: the protagonist buys a Christmas quart for his in-laws, discovers it’s the only liquor in the house and drinks it all himself before they can sample a drop. Most of it happened, some of it still might. Starring Richard Dreyfuss as our wild and crazy hero, Diane Keaton as ex-wife Crystal, Warren Beatty as Jackson Browne, Gregory Peck as private-eye novelist Ross Macdonald (real name: Kenneth Millar), actress-girlfriend Kim Lankford as herself, with a special guest appearance by Jack Klugman as “the Doc.” Zevon: a drinking-man’s drinking man, someone who can talk about booze the way Pete Townshend talks about rock & roll. How Warren Zevon, after some heartwarming and colorful misadventures, licked the Big A and lived happily ever after. That’s what this story’s supposed to be about.