Tales of a Failed Filmmaker – Crashing Billy Crystal’s Party

I was working at Universal Studios in the late ‘90s filing contracts, and sometimes I saw strange things when I would leave.  Once I had a couple friends visiting for some reason.  I don’t remember for certain why they were there, but I remember one of them was a costumer, so I think I was introducing her to someone.  Anyway, I had a really crusty car at the time.  When it moved it sounded like it was having a perpetual fart.  It was barely holding together, having rust all over, several colors of paint, and a window that was being held up with a stick.  There was even writing on the back, “OBO” which stood for “Or best offer.”  It had said “900 OBO” but I had wiped off the 900.  I couldn’t get the rest off, so it remained, and the car became known as Obo.

As we were leaving, we got stuck behind a line of fancy black cars, many of them limos.  They were stopping in front of the Europe part of the backlot, letting people off, then continuing forward.  When we got to the front, valets opened the doors and rushed, almost pushed, us out, then one took the car and “sppppppp” sped the car away.  We were all dressed better than the car looked, so we sort of fit in with the suit and tuxedo clad men and women in their fancy dresses, so we strolled into the event.

There were tables with large meals on them, so we sat down to eat.  Pretty soon, Billy Crystal stepped up to the mic at the front and began speaking.  Soon we realized we had stumbled into a charity event and eating plates that were costing others thousands of dollars to attend.  We felt guilty, (but not too guilty to have another course or two,) so we eventually wandered off.  We walked up the hill toward the suburbs area.  During the day, it was hard to go up here because the tour trams went through, but in the evening, it was an easier walk.

We got to a point where we could see a huge cliff wall that had been built over the water where actors were climbing around.  They were shooting Jurassic Park 3.  I knew it had been written lately; I had don’t the paperwork for the writer’s contract.  It had been Alexander Payne, an acquaintance whom I had met a few times at the Nebraska Coast Connection.  It was a bit depressing to see how many hundreds of thousands of dollars he was being paid for something he wrote over a weekend, (we did the paperwork on a Friday and the script came in on a Monday,) but I needed to get over that and focus on my own work.

We weren’t there long before someone found us and told us we couldn’t hang around, so we strolled back to the event which we passed through to return to my car.  I gave the ticket to the valet and waited.  It was quite a while before we heard “sppppppppp” in the distance, and after several more limos and fancy black cars passed by picking up their wealthy patrons, my little crusty Obo pulled up and we climbed inside under the judgmental gaze of those around.  Then we scurried out of there, the car sputtering fumes and going “spppppppppppppp!”