Barrel Fever

DON’S STORY

THANK you very, very much. I really just don’t believe this is happening. I mean, this is what, the third time I’ve been up here tonight: Best Actor, Best Director, and now Best Picture. How am I going to carry all these awards home? In a truck? Ha ha.
Let me take a moment here because, like I said, I really didn’t think this was going to happen. I’ve spent a great deal of time wishing it would happen but to have it actually take place is, ha ha, just a little overwhelming.
As I mentioned earlier this evening, while receiving my Academy Award for best actor, I arrived here in Los Angeles, California, almost a year ago with no experience whatsoever. I’d never acted or directed or produced a thing in my life. I was just a guy from Cumberland County, North Carolina — a man with a dream.
“What’s going on here?” you’re probably asking yourselves.
“Here this Don, this dreamer, never acted a day in his life and yet there he is sweeping the Academy Awards. How did he do it? What’s so special about him?”
Well, that’s what my movie, Don’s Story, is all about. It’s all right there: from my dropping out of high school at age seventeen to my packing for Hollywood at age thirty-six. I imagine it’s what’s not in the movie that probably interests you right now.
“How did he do it? This nobody, this dreamer.”
Well, like I said, I left Cumberland almost a year ago on a Greyhound bus with a small bag of potato chips, eight dollars, and a dream. I stretched out and took two seats until somewhere outside Gatlinburg, when I was forced to surrender one of them to a woman by the name of Mrs. Patricia Toni. Mrs. Toni was headed to Encino, California.
“What’s in Encino?” I asked, trying to be a good neighbor.
It turned out that Mrs. Toni’s daughter was in Encino, in a hospital suffering from exhaustion. I don’t know much about exhaustion, but I imagine it must be very tiring, so I said, “Oh, that’s terrible.” And she unfolded her newspaper and said, “You’re darn right it’s terrible.”
At every stop along the way Mrs. Toni would buy the local newspaper and discuss the stories about crime and murder.
“Listen here where it says this man walked into a gas station and shot four people. Didn’t even get gas or rob the place — just opened fire and killed four people. That’s a low deed in my opinion. I think that’s really terrible. If I was on that jury I’d convict him so fast it would make his head spin. I wouldn’t waste time eating up the taxpayers’ money. I’d just fire up the gas chamber and move on to the next case. The son of a bitch. It says here where he shot a five-year-old boy right through the neck. Bullet went in one side and out the other. I think that’s terrible, don’t you?”
Well, I didn’t know the gunman. For all I know he might have had a pretty good reason to do what he did, but to make things easier I agreed and said I thought it was terrible.
“You’re darn right it’s terrible. Right through the neck. The neck is a very sensitive area. Everyone knows that. This is just terrible. I thought it was terrible the other day when that crackpot in Little Rock stabbed his mother’s collie to death. Stabbed it seventeen times, a beautiful collie named Moxie. The mother cried and cried. Seventeen times he stabbed that dog. Once or twice would have done the job, but he did it seventeen times and I think that’s terrible. Don’t you?”
Crimes happen all across this country and Mrs. Toni made note of them day and night all the way to Reno, where she slept through our stop and missed her opportunity to buy a fresh newspaper. At this point, after having spent almost three days together, she finally asked me my name and where I was going and why, and I told her that my name was Don and that I was going to the Los Angeles area to make a name for myself in the motion picture industry, and she looked at me and said, “You’ve got to be kidding — You?” Then she turned to the man across the aisle and pointed at me and said, “This one thinks he’s going to be some kind of a movie star.” And she put her hands on her stomach and bent over laughing and I just sort of … punched her. I jabbed her real quick with the bathroom key I’d gotten at the last station. I just sort of … poked her with it just real … quick and, ha ha, she made just the biggest stink about it. She made the bus driver pull over and she lifted her sweater and showed everybody the little mark on her side — just a little nick, and she was pointing at me and saying, “I think this is terrible. I mean it. Here I get on this bus to visit my daughter who is clinically exhausted and I’m practically stabbed to death in broad daylight. This is the sort of thing that makes the papers as far as I’m concerned. ‘Woman Stabbed on Bus.’ This is terrible.”
So the bus driver threw me off onto the dusty highway. No refund or anything, just tossed me out. By this time I had only two dollars left so I stuck out my thumb and was picked up by a man named Enrique Moldonato and tonight, standing onstage here at the Academy Awards, I would like to thank him publicly. As luck would have it he was going all the way to Los Angeles and dropped me off at a Laundromat close to his home. Luckily, the Laundromat had a phone book and I had a quarter so I put two and two together and phoned Paramount Pictures. When the receptionist answered I said, “Let me speak to the person in charge there.”
She said, “One moment, please.”
Then, in the background I heard her say, “Mr. Tartikoff, you have a phone call.”
And I heard him say, “Oh, good.”
He came to the phone and I said, “Mr. Tartikoff, my name is Don Singleton and I’d like to make a motion picture.”
He said, “Hmmmm. A motion picture about what?”
And I looked over and saw someone empty the lint tray from one of the dryers and I said, “A motion picture about my life.”
“I’m all ears, Don,” Mr. Tartikoff said.
Just then the operator came on the line and told me to deposit more coins and Mr. Tartikoff said, “Don, are you calling from a pay phone?”
I confessed that I was and he asked if there was some way we might talk in person, so I gave him the address and shortly thereafter a big limo pulled up and Mr. Tartikoff entered and put his hands to his mouth and yelled, “Is there a Don Singleton here?” and I said, “Yes, that’s me.”
We shook hands and he looked around and he said, “Say, Don, this place is really damp. What do you say we go someplace else?”
He said he’d been invited to a big celebrity party and asked would I like to come along and I thought about it for about, ha ha, two seconds and said sure. Then his driver opened the door and we got into the limousine and on the way to the party Mr. Tartikoff, Brandon, asked me questions about my life.
He poured us each a glass of scotch from the bar and studied me and said, “What are you, Don — about thirty-five years old?”
“Thirty-six.”
“Have you ever worked?”
I told him I’d worked almost four years as a dishwasher at the K&W Cafeteria. I worked there from the age of seventeen until I was twenty-one, when I got fired for spitting in the food.
“They fired you for that?” Brandon said. “That’s crazy. Why, everyone I know spits in things all the time.” He spit into his glass and drank it. “That’s no reason to fire anyone for God’s sake.”
Then I spit on my fingers and leaned over and rubbed it into the driver’s neck.
Brandon looked at me then and said, “I’ve got a feeling about you, Don — a good one,” and we chinked our glasses in a toast.
At about this time, the limousine turned off the road and we headed up a long tree-lined driveway, up to a big mansion with white columns and stained-glass windows and a shallow moat filled with swans and turtles and someone came and opened the limo door and I looked up and saw Barbra Streisand and she was wearing … well, the exact same thing she’s wearing tonight as a matter of fact. She and Brandon embraced and then she turned to me and raised her eyebrows like, “Who the heck is this?” Brandon told Barbra Streisand that my name was Don and that I used to wash dishes at K&W Cafeteria and, ha ha, I tell you, Barbra Streisand just couldn’t ask enough questions.
“A dishwasher! Tell me, was it a conveyor run-through Waste King Jet System or a double hot sink layout? What detergents did you use? At what temperature does a drinking glass become quote unquote ‘clean’?” She took my arm and led me into the house, which was just absolutely teeming with celebrities: Joey Bishop, Faye Dunaway, Shari Lewis, Kevin Costner, Gene Rayburn, Tatum O’Neal, Tom Cruise, Cathy Lee Crosby, Carol Channing, Buddy Ebsen — the list goes on and on and on. Barbra Streisand handed me a champagne cocktail and introduced me around and, ha ha, I felt like giving a press conference, so many people asking questions about my life.
“What did you do after you lost your job at the cafeteria?” Chastity Bono asked.
And I said, “Nothing, just sort of hung around the house.”
Michael Douglas asked what my parents had to say about that, and I said, “Well, you know my parents.” And then I realized that no, these celebrities didn’t know my parents. In my movie, Don’s Story, my parents are played by Charles Bronson and Don Rickles. I think they both did a fantastic job — especially Don Rickles, who played the part of my mother. Quite a few actresses were eager for that role, but as director I chose Don Rickles not because my mother is funny — far from it — and not to boost Mr. Rickles’s career, but because, ha ha, you put a wig on that guy and he looks just exactly like her. Ha ha. And Charles Bronson — what can I say? He’s one of the best in the business. And that’s the funny thing about show business, that it’s a constant learning experience … for everybody. Last year when those celebrities asked what my parents were like, I had a hard time coming up with the words.
I lost my job at the K&W at the age of twenty-one and for the next fourteen years my parents never, for one moment, let up on me. They were all the time trying to make me feel bad for being myself and not working. If I had a nickel for every time they pounded on my bedroom door screaming, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN THERE?” I’d have several million dollars. Well, ha ha, I guess now I do have several million dollars but I would have had it a lot sooner.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN THERE?”
And I’d say that I was planning to take Hollywood by storm and they’d yell, “YOU’RE OUT OF YOUR MIND. YOU’RE INSANE. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? INSANE. COME OUT OF THAT ROOM AND GET A JOB. YOUR BROTHER HAS A JOB AND HE’S MISSING HIS LEFT HAND — IF HE CAN WORK SO CAN YOU. DO YOU HEAR ME? COME OUT OF THAT BEDROOM.”
“That must have been very difficult for you,” Dr. Joyce Brothers said. And I admitted that, yes, it was. Then someone asked what kind of a lock I had on my bedroom door and Brandon Tartikoff caught my eye and made a cutting gesture against his throat and, ha ha, even though I’d been in Hollywood for less than two hours I knew what that meant, which probably has a lot to do with why I’ve walked away with tonight’s Best Director award. “Cut!” Thanks, Brandon.
I hated saying good-bye to all of my wonderful new show business friends but it was time to go so Brandon led me out the door to our waiting limo. And just as I was settling into the backseat I saw Barbra Streisand turn to Vincent Price and say, “I like that kid. He’s a survivor.”
So are you, Barbra. So are you.
We left the party and went to a restaurant named Spago, where Brandon and I spent the next several hours talking and eating spaghetti. He seemed so interested in every aspect of my life and was full of questions.
“So tell me, Don, after you left the cafeteria you mean to say you did absolutely nothing for the next fourteen years? God, that’s fascinating.”
I noticed people at the surrounding tables perk up and try to listen in on our conversation so Brandon had us moved to a private booth.
“What was your day like? When would you wake up?”
I told him I’d usually open my eyes at around one-thirty or two but wouldn’t get out of bed until two forty-five, when my mother put on her fluorescent vest and left the house to do volunteer crosswalk service at Brooks Elementary. Then I’d go downstairs and root around the kitchen and watch TV until around four o’clock, when her car would pull up in the driveway, at which point I’d go back to my room and lock the door and stare at my hands until around five-thirty.
“I noticed your hands,” Brandon said. “They’re really special. When was the last time you trimmed your fingernails?”
“Nineteen eighty-three, eighty-four.”
“Do you ever wash your hands?” he asked.
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not.” I wasn’t being difficult — just mysterious.
Just then the waiter delivered our check and he said, “I noticed your hands the moment you walked in. They’re fascinating. Hands tell so much about a person. I think you should get a job here!”
“Back off,” Brandon said. “I think Don’s had enough restaurant work to last him the rest of his life.”
When we got back to the limo Brandon asked if I had a place to stay and when I confessed that I did not he used his car phone and made a reservation at the Beverly Wilshire hotel. Then he said, “So, all right, Don, say it’s five-thirty and you’ve spent the late afternoon looking at your hands. Then what?”
I told him that then my father would come home from work and, ha ha, Oh, Lord, I could hear him all the way upstairs. “WHERE IS HE? WHAT’S HE DONE TODAY? WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HAVEN’T SEEN HIM?” Then he’d look in the refrigerator and start yelling, “GODDAMN HIM. WHERE THE HELL IS THAT LEFTOVER STUFFING FROM LAST NIGHT? GODDAMN IT. HEY YOU UP THERE — I’M TALKING TO YOU.”
“That’s a very funny impersonation,” Brandon said. “I mean, I don’t know the man from Adam, but I can picture him perfectly. Do more, please.”
“WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR PROBLEM? HERE I’VE GOT A FULL-GROWN SON WHO WON’T FIND A JOB — WON’T EVEN LEAVE THE GODDAMNED HOUSE AND COMES DOWN HERE WHEN MY BACK IS TURNED AND EATS MY STUFFING. I WORKED HARD FOR THAT STUFFING. DO YOU HEAR ME? FROM NOW ON THIS KITCHEN IS OFF-LIMITS TO YOU, MISTER. NO MORE FOOD FOR YOU. YOU’LL BE EATING THE INSULATION OUT OF YOUR WALLS BY THE TIME I’M FINISHED WITH YOU, GODDAMN YOU.”
Then he’d come pounding on my door and I’d put on my headphones and listen to records in order to drown him out.
“Did you have a big music library?” Brandon asked.
I told him that I had two records, Uriah Heap’s “Look at Yourself” and “Don’t Look Down” by The Ozark Mountain Daredevils — both records I had bought while working at the cafeteria.
“Those are really great records,” Brandon said. We arrived at the hotel and checked in to the room, which was, ha ha, really big, with a living room and a bedroom and curtains and a coffee table. I just couldn’t get over it. Brandon went over to the bar and poured us a nightcap and said, “All right, Don, so you listen to your records — then what?”
I explained that I’d listen to the records until after my parents fell asleep, usually around eleven-thirty or twelve, and then I’d go downstairs and see what I could find for supper. After about 1986 my parents would just cook enough food for the two of them, but I could always find a little something. Sometimes it might be just a couple handfuls of raw macaroni or a half-stick of butter, but it was always something. Then I’d root around for change in my mother’s purse or under the sofa cushions.
“Every night?”
“Every night, and over the years it really, ha ha, added up. Then I’d watch TV until the regular programming went off the air and the pattern shows came on. I’d watch maybe a few hours of the pattern to clear my mind and then I’d go to bed and start all over again the next day.”
Brandon offered me a lit cigarette and looked down at his nightcap, asking, “Why did you leave, Don? Why?”
I told him I left the day after my father put padlocks on the refrigerator and all the kitchen cabinets. At that point I counted my change, scratched and ripped up every piece of furniture in the house, and walked out the door to meet my destiny.
Brandon shook his head and said, “Don, this story has everything.”
And I signed a contract that very night. It was just that simple — just the way I always thought it would be.
And I’d like to thank Brandon for recognizing my abilities and giving me complete artistic control from casting right on up. I’d like to thank Uriah Heap and The Ozark Mountain Daredevils for providing the musical score. I’d like to thank all the members of the academy for their votes but, most of all, I’d like to thank the citizens of this country for making Don’s Story the number-one top box office draw that it is because, let me tell you, academy or no academy, it is your continuing support, loyalty, and devotion that make this award so heavy and meaningful. Certain people might be watching this broadcast with rage and jealousy — certain people who have mistreated and under-estimated me are probably wishing they had the chance to take it all back and start over again with a fresh slate but I’m afraid it’s too late for that. It’s something I wouldn’t mind talking about but I see our host off to the side of the stage pointing to his watch and so I’ll take that as a hint and say good night, thank you, I love you.