Saturday, August 20, 2005

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Friday, July 22, 1983

It was the second Diana Ross concert because they decided to redo it (cab $8). Cornelia came. Rob Lowe didn't come. The concert was anticlimactic because it was just regular.

But then afterwards the kids started rioting, and if it weren't for the police the whole place would have gone crazy. It was 99 percent black. The guy who owns Café Central took us out of the park so we came out at the right spot uptown to go to Café Central. He had a cane.

And when we got there, Rob Lowe came and Andrew McCarthy who's also in the movie Class. He gets Jacquelin Bisset. And he's just regular, a nice kid.

At Café Central they're trying to treat people rotten to be like Elaine's. The waitress came to our table and said, "You've got to leave this table, its reserved for Lorna Luft." And Cornelia just burst out laughing that anyone would ask her to move to make room for Lorna Luft. And it was so stupid because if they'd just been nice and said, "Would you mind since there's not many of you now, moving to a smaller table?" I mean, they knew we were leaving anyway because we'd said we were going to the 11:00 show of Class, which Rob and Andrew had passes for. Maybe this kind of treatment makes some people want to go there, but it sure doesn't make me want to go there (dinner $100 with tip.)

So then we went over to 66th and Second and Cornelia was chattering away, she repeats everything over and over, just like her mother, she has to keep talking. And Andrew was rolling his eyes.

The movie was so great and cute. Afterward I tried to sell Andrew and Rob's autographs in the lobby for a nickel, but nobody bought any.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Thursday, July 21, 1983

I could never really describe the Diana Ross concert in Central Park. The sky darkened and the rain came and it was the most incredible thing I've ever seen. Just the event of the century--her hair blowing and soaking wet, and if only they'd had a covering on the place where she was, she could have kept on singing and the kids would have stayed and she would have had her concert for TV. But they stopped it in the middle of the storm and they're going to do it again tomorrow. She was crying, and Barry Diller was trying to get her to stop but they said that she'd waited for twenty years to do this. The lighting made it dangerous, I guess, but it was like a dream, like a hallucination, watching this spectacle. it was like the greatest scene from a movie ever. When they do her life story in the movies you can just see this huge event and then later she's crying and saying, "Why did this happen to me?" and then drinking and slitting her wrists. But oh, the thunder and lightning looked so great. So beautiful.

We were in the VIP area, but because I'd had Benjamin bring an umbrella, we weren't sitting under the canopy. And Rob Lowe was with us and he's so beautiful. It's like his eyebrows are penciled on and his lips painted on--everyting so perfect. Adn he's just like the kids we know, just regular, and he's looking for girls, that's all he can think about. I asked him to draw me a pussy and he drew a pussy and then I said, "What's that?" and then I drew a cat. And he and his girl friend are sort of breaking up because whenever she called him on location in Canada the operator would say, "He's in Nastassia Kinski's room," so then when he would tell her the next day that his phone had been out of order she would tell him to stop lying. and he says he's not in love with Nastassia, though, that it's just sex. but he was wearing a toy snake around his waist which was a joke on her Avedon poster, so he was thinking about her so maybe he is in love. He's nineteen. And he was just after any old lady. Jus anybody. Like Susan Sarandon. She was there with Richard Gere and Silvinha.

And oh you should have seen it. Jerry Zipkin in the soaking rain. And I felt so sorry for Jon because he's worked so hard on this, because Paramount owns Showtime which got the film rights.

And then finally people were leaving the park and so we followed the black and wound up coming out at 72nd Street near the Dakota. and we had to climb a wall and fall into three feet of mud. It was like being in a war zone. And then after we got out of the park I took Rob Lowe and Benjamin to Café Central--I said all the stars go there, Matt Dillon and Sean Penn--and then we got there and had drinks and absolutely nobody was there (drinks $83.50).

Then I got home and called Rob Lowe at the Sherry and he said that he was waiting for a phone call from Nastassia, so that I should just go ahead without him over to the Gulf+Western building for the party. So I went and when I got there, he was getting out of the cab. so that was kind of mean. I was hurt. I guess he didn't want to be seen with us again because we were being campy and outrageous. And I said to him, you know, "I just was going to give you a ride, that's all--it was no big deal."

And Cornelia had been at the park, too. And a newspaper photographer took her and pushed her next to one of the people who were stabbed, just to get that kind of picture of a socialite and a stabbed person. Cornelia didn't know what was going on.

And at the party at the Gulf + Western Rob was after Cornelia and Maura. He and Cornelia kept going off alone.

I gave Diana Ross a Diamond painting. She was looking at tapes of the concert. Barry Diller came over and I told him the concert was so great and he said, "You always like disasters. You liked Grease II"

Harvey Mann who works for Liz Smith was there and he was asking me if I'd heard anything more about Calvin and AIDS. he said that they'd killed the rumor in their column. And then Calvin came in and he kissed me so hard and his beard was stubbly and I was so afraid that it was piercing into my pimple and being like a needle and giving me AIDS. So if I'm gone in three years...

And by the way, Rob Lowe also said that up in Canada where they were all shooting Hotel New Hampshire, Jodie Foster was reading the Philosophy book.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Wednesday, July 13, 1983

Okay, well this was the night of the glittering event, the premiere of Staying Alive. Got up early.

Paige was having a lunch for two gay guys from Diener Hauser Bates. One had my old first person who told me about the gay life.

Went to meet Maura at 6:45 (cab $7) at the Russian Tea Room. And then we went over to the Ziegfield and there were the crowds lined up. and now there's a new thing-for Good Morning America when they photograph you they say, "Are you aware that you're being photographed for Good Morning America? And do you give your consent?" I said, "I do."

And then eighteen bodyguards came in and Stallone and his wife arrived and I was on the aisle and he saw me and stopped and said he was glad I'd come. Then the lights went down and Frank mancuso gave a speech. And then Sasha Stallone gave an emotional speech about their autistic child that the benefit was for, and all I could think of was Bad because we were the first to have an autistic kid in a movie.

I loved Staying Alive. Then the party at Xenon was at 11:45, so we went over there and on the way we ran into Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon. I'd never met him and I had copies of Interviews with me, the new one, and he said, "Oh, I already bought that one." And she doesn't have any wrinkles and she's like 110 years old or something.

Then coming out of Xenon were eighteen bodyguards and in the middle was John Travolta in his tuxedo and I caught his eye and he came over and said hello. So that was two in one night.

ORIGNIAL ENTRY: Wednesday, June 8, 1983

The fake Poitier kid called the office and said (laughs) he was coming for lunch. He's beautiful, like a mulatto girl. Lispy. I screamed at Jay and said that if he let him set one foot in the door I'd kick them both out. Jay still isn't convinced the kid isn't real! But then he never did come.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Tuesday, June 7, 1983

It was really busy at the office. Jay came in the back to where I was working and told me that Sidney Poitier's son was there. And everybody at the office, they all believed it. It was like believing in the Du Pont twins or something. Jay really fell for it. finally we got him out when he said that his mother Diahann Carroll was coming to meet him there, so I said, "Oh, you mgiht miss her if you don't wait for her downstairs." Oh, and Diana Ross was going to be coming with her. I forgot. Diana Ross, too. And still they all believe it.

So cabbed up to the Museum of Natural History ($8) on traffic. Saw Halston's show then went to his place. And when I got there Halston said, "A very strange thing happened. My doorbell rang and there was this boy who claimed he was the son of Sidney Poitier and Diahann Carroll and he said he was meeting you here for dinner, and I told him, 'Listen, darling, you're not invited.'" I guess when this kid was at the office in the afternoon he must have overheard that I was going to Halston's for dinner.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Sunday, June 5, 1983

Cabbed to the Water Basin on 32nd Street and the East River near where the helicopters take off ($6) to go to Brooke Shield's eighteenth birthday party. Brooke was sweet, her mother thanked me for coming. The usual people were there, Cornelia with her Beau. Couri Hay and Scavullo and Sean Byrnes. And Ted Kennedy, Jr. came and said hello. Brooke ate with us, and it's just so funny to see her with her little girlfriends, because here's their 6' goddess and then there short little ducklings who're smart--I mean they're smarter than Brooke, but it's just like two such different things. She looks twenty-five. If she could only get her voice down to sounding less feminine she could really make it in the movies.

And Brooke thanked me for the present of putting her on the cover of Interview, but I'd already given her a painting, so she was just being nice saying that.

And she gave out pictures of herself in a little silver frame, which was a cute idea. The food looked good, everybody looke pretty. Slipped out at 12:00 and went ohome to walk the dogs.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Sunday, May 15, 1983

Called PH and she'd just interviewed the guy who directed War Games, and he told her that when he directed Saturday Night Fever, John Travolta didn't want to wear the famous white disco suit because he didn't think white was cool--he wanted to wear a black one. But then the guy pointed out to Travolta that if he wore black he'd fade into the background and you'd only be able to see the girl he was dancing with, so he changed his mind fast. That'll be a good scoop for Interview.

Went over to the Criterion to see Breathless (tickets $10). It's strange to see Richard Gere doing this. If it'd been somebody like Matt Dillon it would have been like a James Dean movie. It's that Sartre way, the nothingness thing. You would think existentialism would be still modern, but it isn't. He does bad things and you see his ass all the time, he just drops his pants every chance he gets. But it's strange to see someone that age doing that, but maybe that'll bring back that kind of person. It was written by our old frind, Kit Carson. The movie had an old-fashioned feeling to it.