The Crackup and Resurrection of Warren Zevon. Alcoholism. That's what this story's supposed to be about. How Warren Zevon, after some heartwarming and colorful mis- adventures, licked the Big A and lived happily ever after. Zevon: a drinking- man's drinking man, someone who can talk about booze the way Pete Townshend talks about rock & roll. 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 . Most of it happened, some of it still might. 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. 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. Eventually, a dedicated drunk will maim or kill everything he touches, often putting himself at the bottom of the list. Warren Zevon knows this. And, since I was around for a few key incidents, I hope I do, too. We are sitting up late at night in Warren and Kim's rented home in the Hollywood Hills. He is particularly chagrined by a four- foot- high red bathtub. It's a beautiful sight, somewhat unreal. I'm reminded of Hitchcock's movies, where the horror happens in broad daylight. It's a real coward's death. 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. Each time he woke up, he'd scramble for the pistol and count the bullets, terrified there'd be one missing.). I said, God, just give me one more chance, man. Don't let me die a fucking coward, not this way! I'm dying from having avoided the pain of living. This is suicide, the same as the gun barrel in the mouth, except that it's infinitely more cowardly. It's just the worst death – a chickenshit, shivering, quaking, whiny death. There's no keel over, make a young and pretty corpse. I was fifty pounds heavier then. I weigh the same now as I did in high school. Lee had liked 1. 97. Excitable Boy, and Warren wanted to play a tape of . George Gruel, Zevon's live- in aide- de- camp and a warm and wonderfully understanding man, had some doubts as to what might happen.
Zevon tells the story: . Let's just see if I can drink moderately.'. You can have a drink when he gets here. Scared to Death, also known as The Aberdeen Experiment and Scared to Death: Syngenor (DVD sleeve re-title), is a 1980 B horror/science fiction film directed by. Narrated by Peter Falk, the subject of the documentary is a group of juvenile delinquents and their. The sudden and/or violent deaths of persons connected in some way to the Clinton machine have been at best shoddily investigated by public officials. Don't drink anything all day, and I'll let you have a drink then.'. You didn't stop yesterday. You didn't stop today. When are you going to stop?'. I said, 'When that's gone.'. And for a few days, it wasn't bad. Once again I thought, Aw, see, they make more out of it than they should. Then one night I got what was like the flu, only it wasn't the flu. I really didn't know if my brain was frying, I felt so feverish. There was no getting warm enough. I was lying there, shaking and praying. I'm not even a religious man, but there comes a time . Asylum had just released Warren Zevon, and I'd listened to nothing else for days. Though I loved the record and had, in fact, been familiar with Zevon's music for years, seeing the man onstage was like experiencing – what? Scott Fitzgerald, Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, the New York Dolls, Norman Mailer, Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry and Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer novels at an impressionable age. Rightly or wrongly, your life got changed. The Zevons – Crystal then seven months pregnant – stayed in New York for a few days, and the three of us became fast friends. Mutual interests, etc. All I wanted to talk about were Zevon's songs, while Warren and Crystal simply brushed aside my questions and kept asking me about Ross Macdonald, whom I'd recently met in Santa Barbara. They'd read all his books and could quote passages verbatim. Provided it's all right with Millar, I said, I'll take you with me to visit him for a day or two. It was as if I'd invited them to meet God. Though I knew Zevon had something of a drinking problem, I had no idea then how deep it went. This was in the spring of 1. In the late summer of 1. Warren Zevon and I became . She sounded very distraught. Warren's drinking had gotten much worse. They'd had a fight, and he was in New York now to talk to friends: Bruce Springsteen, producer Jon Landau, guitarist David Landau, critic Jay Cocks, me. How do you introduce this particular topic into a casual conversation? Warren, old buddy, not to change the subject or anything, but have you ever considered committing yourself? Just terrific. As it turned out, I needn't have worried. About thirty seconds after I'd knocked on his door, Zevon announced: . The answer's important. It went like this: By asking the question, you've already answered it. So why not try to get some help – a hospital or something? There's probably one in Santa Barbara. You've got nothing to lose, absolutely everything to gain. After all, if you decide you don't like being sober, you can always buy another bottle, can't you? Warren looked greatly relieved. All he'd really come to New York for was confirmation. He'd known for a long time what he had to do. He just didn't know if he could do it. We talked for hours that night: our life stories. Fear was a major theme. Zevon, who'd spent some time with Igor Stravinsky as a teenager, wanted to make his mark in classical music as well as in rock & roll. There was this unfinished symphony, hanging like a stone around his neck. Me, I wanted to write a series of detective novels, be the next Ross Macdonald. About dawn, we agreed we owed it to ourselves to take separate shots at it. And to give each other all the support we could. Things had gotten pretty corny by then. If there had been a knife, perhaps some blood would have been mingled. One of the reasons the Zevons moved to Santa Barbara was the hope that clearing out of Los Angeles would curb Warren's drinking. On his own, he'd attempted to stop, but it didn't work. And the calmness of Santa Barbara, which he'd . Our initial reason for looking in the Santa Barbara area is simple: Ross Macdonald lives there. It's quiet, peaceful, safe, beautiful. The idea that I can't afford the house makes me nervous. The idea that I can afford the house makes me nervous. I have the guest house professionally soundproofed and build a four- track . By the end of the evening, I was hanging from it, of course. After they left, I mentioned it. There was nothing wrong with having a few beers, he claimed. He said he wasn't going into the hospital, that he could quit by himself. He got mad and went out to the studio. I just sat straight up in my bed, and the sound of those shots was like a bolt of lightning going through me. My first thought was that he'd shot himself. Then I thought, Well, there were three shots. But it wasn't until I started walking across the yard that I started to think of the possibility that he might shoot me, that Ariel . I opened the door and went in, and he was just standing there with the gun, staring at the couch. He was obviously drunk. Then I saw his album cover – the Excitable Boy cover, a portrait of him – propped up against the couch. There were three holes right in the middle of the face. Then he laughed – a real nervous laugh – and said, 'It's funny, isn't it?'. This time, it's really not funny.'. He was like a little boy, kind of pulling at my arm and crying, 'It was all a joke. After he checked in, he said: 'Call Joe Smith . It was his way of making sure he stayed. Some days, he can't even dress himself. Jackson Browne and I drove up to Santa Barbara the next day for what was called an intervention. Several other people were coming, too. Crystal had explained to us what we'd have to do: make a list of all the times we'd seen Warren drunk and tell him – in no uncertain terms – exactly how he'd acted. Under hospital rules, the whole thing would be a complete surprise to him. Intervention. The very word suggests such a cold and exact, sanctioned and yet sinister interference with another person's life that I still get the shakes whenever I say it out loud. Is it a Nixonian noun for some act of official pornography, a euphemism for gang rape by governmental robots? In a way, it's what Pinecrest has instead of God. While an intervention can seem as harsh and fear- provoking as the idea of eternal damnation, it's also kindly and forgiving. Put it this way: an intervention is an execution with a happy ending. I remember wondering how this was going to help. Now that Warren had committed himself, wasn't the long recitation of his ? Wouldn't it shatter whatever confidence he'd built? And who the hell were any of us to sit in almighty judgment of him? Crystal assured us that the results would be positive. At the hospital, we had what amounted to a rehearsal. Present were Jorge Calder. Two doctors read what we had written and, in most cases, insisted that we get a lot tougher and more explicit . Crystal's parents led off, and you could feel their rancor slash like a razor blade. Sweet Jesus, I thought, get me out of here. This hospital's crazy. Next in line, I was trembling so badly that I wasn't sure I could speak. Here is part of what – in a very strange voice – I read: Warren, I've seen you drunk probably five or six times, may be more . The set was so painful that I had to leave. Your timing was shot, your remarks to the audience didn't make sense and none of the greatness of your music came through . You said you admired F. Scott Fitzgerald, felt that Ernest Hemingway took the coward's way out. It took a lot of courage for you to come to Pinecrest, and I admire you for doing it. I think you did the right thing. If you hadn't, there'd have been The Crackup, which we've also talked about. I love you and I'm proud to be your friend. My comments were mild compared to what had preceded and what followed. After about an hour, everyone was finished.
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