He would often come to me with odd requests, and though I wasn’t his manager or anything like that, I often seemed to be the one most up for his adventures and or antics, if only because every documentarian secretly or not so secretly wants to be a superstar hotshot movie director and swing on the chair thing and tell million dollar actors what they’re doing wrong, et cetera et cetera. Anyway, he’d often lean over to me and say,
“Hey Frankie, you know what would make this whole day just go so much better? Some mango ‘Ritas and a pedicure” or
“Hey Frank, you know what we should do to get inspired? Lay down some bets at the donkey show. Then maybe we treat the performers to some Pac-Man at the arcade. I got a sack of Canadian quarters to get rid of. Hell, let’s just sneak out now.”
His manager hated when we did that, like a couple slackers cutting Spanish class, and I think he came to blame me. But it was in those moments I was sure he was going to be totally truthful with me. It was like he couldn’t help it.
And then there’d be other times that he’d be up all night, on acid and whatever else, blasting Robert Johnson and stuck pacing between his office and the corridor to his living room, wondering if he was doing enough to become the rockstar that he knew he could someday be. Acid, opium, ecstasy, and mushroom tea. Or was that me? Some nights, to be entirely honest, it could get hard to tell the difference.
But the oddest request he ever made of me happe-
<notes here illegible, seemingly soaked in bourbon> The rest of the story has been dried out and put back together over on the Shaggy Palms email list – click here!