me while I was waiting at a stoplight, and it seemed that this was God’s or some other big spirit’s way of telling me that I was being a huge asshole.
Yet ever since all of the bullshit with Billy in New Orleans last fall, I have been thinking that maybe I should take his umbilical cord to the lab and determine once and for all if I really am his father. If I’m not, I might sever ties with him (Lucy would never speak to me again though, I’m sure). I’d be able to stop pretending that everything between Billy and me is fine. He could keep his trust fund, and I would do my best to step out of his life. It might even be a relief to him. It’s quite probable that it would be.
I went on with these thoughts in J2 for a number of pages, but the conclusion I finally came to was that it doesn’t matter in the end if he’s my biological son or not because I have raised him as if he were. Based on this alone, he is my son.
F. A GENTLEMAN AND A THIEF
This young guy I know from Sony who was in a class or two with Billy at UCLA—a nice enough kid, I thought, before I caught him in my dressing room several months ago, about to lift my sunglasses—somehow found the balls to ask if I’d let him interview me for a documentary he hopes to make about me and a couple of other actors who have worked with foreign directors. He said he wants to look at some of the differences between our American and foreign roles and make the argument that Europeans are less afraid of progressive tactics like continuous takes and extreme close-ups and allowing actors to write their own lines like Mike Leigh does (but only after a lot of discussion with his cast about each scene’s goals), and Europeans also focus a lot more on character than plot. Hardly a revolutionary argument, but I was curious about what this kid would come up with and I told him that I’d give him the interview if he let me approve how he used my footage.
We taped the interview up at the Griffith Observatory, early in the morning before it got too hot and too many people showed up to walk the trails. I go there to run or hike sometimes, with George, my driver, joining me if I browbeat him enough because he spends too much time sitting when he’s on the clock. I planned to get in a run after the interview if it wasn’t too warm of a day. The kid, Jim Marion, was so nervous and grateful that I actually showed up that I almost had to laugh. I didn’t mention the day I caught him in my dressing room because we didn’t need to revisit that scene, and when he started to bring it up, I held up my hand and said, “Stop. Ancient history.”
“I just wanted to say that I know how it must have looked. I really was—”
“Jim, like I said, ancient history. Ask me your first question.”
“Okay,” he said, pressing a button on his little handheld camera. “How was it, working with Jean-Pierre Jeunet? I heard that you were just over in France acting in his new film.”
“It was a lot of fun,” I said. It really was. As with Amélie, Jeunet filmed more than half of The Hypnotist in the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris where he lives with his American wife, who is a film editor. Every morning while I was there, all the mornings I’ve ever been there, probably, I had a delicious café au lait and a chocolate croissant that the hotel brought in from the bakery next door. So many things are made or designed with such patience and care over there. I love all of the sounds in the streets too—the motorbikes that whine like wasps; the people calling to each other in mellifluous French, laughter often following; the way high heels clack against the old cobblestones. French women take good care of themselves and dress very stylishly; they also have an attractive briskness about them that most American women do not. There was always something or someone beautiful to look at. I just wish that I could speak more and better French.
“Can you tell me a little bit about his process?”
There were a few yellow jackets buzzing around us, but I