by

                                        PAUL KYRIAZI

                        Everything that follows, happened.

                              The Bad and the Ugly

February 2^nd, 1975.

     “Hey. You know who lives up there in that house?”

     “Who?”

     “Burt Reynolds, the actor,” the drug pusher says.

     That information really got the 32-year-old, muscular man’s attention. “Oh, yeah?” Vaughn Greenwood says as he shoves his just bought drugs into his pocket and hands over his grimy twenty-dollar bills. “That football movie. Right?”

     “Yeah. And that canoe movie, too,” the pusher adds. “Big hits.”

     “Maybe I’ll pay him a visit,” Greenwood says.

     “Yeah, whatever,” the pusher says. “Stay cool, brother. You know how to find me when you run out of your stash.”

     Greenwood keeps his eye on Reynold’s house that is up a hill amongst other hillside homes. “Yeah, sure.”

     The dealer and his backup man walk off leaving Greenwood, who already had nine killings under his belt, contemplating the movie star’s home. Should he go back to his own run-down house, pick up his machete and come back to this star’s nice home and show him who’s the better man?

     Yes, I will, Greenwood decides and heads for his dilapidated Skid Row house. Skid Row covers fifty city blocks in east central downtown Los Angeles. It’s a long walk there, and another long walk back, but The Slasher knows it would be worth the trek.

     He returns to Reynold’s neighborhood just before midnight, goes around back and climbs the dirt hill that leads to Reynold’s home. Breaking a window, he enters it, machete in hand. Greenwood is ready to slash Reynolds or whoever else might be there. He isn’t known as the Skid Row Slasher for nothing.

     Walking room to room, The Slasher finds no one. Knowing that Reynolds would eventually come home, he decides to wait it out and hide in the bedroom closet. A sleeping Reynolds would be an easy, and prime target.

     Opening the closet door, Greenwood eyes the Holy Grail of many film fans. The hat and serape that Clint Eastwood worn in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. One can only choose but wonder if Greenwood knows that movie or the costume. But he immediately fancies it and puts the serape over his huge neck and shoulders which has gained girth from years of prison bodybuilding. Then he dons the hat, making him bad and ugly, and far from good.

     He slowly closes the closet door and stands in the darkness, gripping his machete tightly.

     Would Reynolds be asleep when The Slasher strikes and be awaked by the pain of the machete cutting into him? Would        Reynolds live long enough to see himself being killed by a Clint Eastwood costume wearing giant?

     Events that started in 1971, would result in Burt’s deliverance from the Skid Row Slasher.

                                           Burt and Miko

“Wake up, Doc,” Miko Mayama says. She gently shakes the sleeping Burt Reynolds in bed. What’s up, Doc? was the first English words she had said to Burt when they first met in Japan five years earlier. She sometimes calls him Doc, conjuring up happy past memories.

     “What?” Burt groans, rolling over onto his back to see his beautiful Japanese live-in girlfriend smiling down on him.

     “You’re due at the studio in two hours. How about some breakfast?”

     “Oh, yeah,” Burt remembers. “Dina’s Place or whatever it’s called.”

     The 32-year-old Burt first met the 29-year-old Miko when he was on his way to the Philippines to star in the treasure hunt movie Impasse. During his week layover in Japan, he saw a kabuki play with Miko in it. He was struck by her face, extra-long black hair, and voluptuous figure. After meeting her backstage, her throaty, sultry voice completed the allure.

     They saw each other every night that week, though neither could speak each other’s language.

     Burt could make it clear that he wanted to take her to America after finishing his movie in the Philippines. Using Miko’s brother as an interpreter, Burt got her parent’s permission to take her to America. He got her a part in Impasse, then they flew to America. “I plan to spend the rest of my life with Miko,” Burt told his friends.

     Burt’s Police Chief father spent three years in Japan after being a hero on Normandy Beach during World War ll. So, Burt didn’t think he’d have a problem taking his new love to Florida to meet his parents. The first thing his father said when he saw Miko with Burt was, “What are you going to do, open a restaurant?”

     Burt was furious. He grabbed Miko and left. Now, though five years had passed, Miko’s wedding finger was still naked.  

     “Why did you decide to do Dinah Shore’s TV show,” Miko asks, as Burt crawls slowly out of bed.

     “Why not?”

     “Well, after that Cosmo nude centerfold you did that cost you the Oscar for Deliverance …”

     “Don’t rub it in.”

     “You said you wanted to cut down on TV interviews.”

     Burt stands up and stretches. “Well, they lured me in by agreeing that I could a stunt for my entrance.

     Miko handed him a shirt. “A stunt on a talk show?”

     “Yeah. I’m going to dive from her kitchen counter onto a breakaway table.”

     “Isn’t that too much risk for a talk show?”

     “I’ve done harder stunts for lousy movies with less of an audience than Dinah’s got.”

     “Well,” she shrugs. “Better wear some pads.”

     “Nah. I’ll be alright.”

                                         An Even Dozen

Vaughn Orrin Greenwood had killed two men in 1966, but got clean away before the bodies were discovered. He attempted to kill another man, was caught in the act, and sentenced to five years in prison. He was released in 1974, while Burt Reynolds was in Georgia State Prison filming The Longest Yard.

     Immediately upon his release, Greenwood claimed his third victim, a 46-year-old alcoholic drifter, on the same spot he had killed his first victim a decade earlier.

     Now standing in the darkness of Burt Reynold’s closet, Greenwood The Slasher contemplates the pile of eleven bodies he had left in his wake, hoping, knowing that Reynolds would make a nice movie-star cherry on top of an even dozen bodies.

     He squeezes the machete in his hand to make sure it’s still there, and then refocuses his mind back to the purpose. He knew … and he knew.

                                        The Stunt Man

“What are you doing up there?” singer Dinah Shore, 23 years his senior, asks Burt. He’s standing on the kitchen counter of her set, which is a copy of her real kitchen.

     “I’m gonna come to you.” With a pre-arranged drum-roll, Burt hurls himself off the counter, diving onto a small table that breaks almost sliding into Dinah’s ankle. The set shakes so hard it dislodges a large painting off the wall.

     “Burt, Burt,” Dinah surprisingly calls out as she quickly kneels down next to him on the floor. “Are you alright?”

     Later in the show, Burt starts showing the ‘certain point on the hand’ that when massaged, relaxes you, making Dinah almost unable to get her words out correctly. “When the hus … husband comes home from the off … office … when he … Ohhh,” she sighs and then breaks into song, “I’m in love, I’m in love with a wonderful guy.”

     At the end of the show Burt tells her, “I’d like to take you off to Palm Springs possibly for … you know …”

     “How long?”

     “… to get acquainted…”

     “Oh, really?” she says looking at him. “Now?”

     “Well, after the show …”

     “Well, goodbye folks,” Dinah says, looking back at the camera. “I hope you enjoyed our show today.” She blows a kiss to the audience as Burt makes a devilish smirk.

     They do go to Palm Springs for a golf tournament. Dinah plays. Burt carries her clubs. They both know they’re in love, but they don’t want to rush it.

     Burt follows her from city to city on her golf tour. Finally, he has to go to Chicago to do a play. That night, from the stage, Burt looks out into the audience and is surprised to see Dinah. That same night, she invites him to her hotel room.

     Burt later said, “For the first time, I was sharing intimacy with my heart full of genuine, unconditional love. I not only loved Dinah, I admired her. I never felt that way about a woman before.”

                                         Back in the Closet

In the darkness of Burt’s closet, The Slasher is getting impatient. He’d been standing there for an hour or more waiting for his movie star target to come home and go to sleep. The machete weighs heavier than before in his hand.

     Enough of this, he thinks. What if Reynolds never comes home tonight? There must be easier pickings. He opens the closet door and walks out of the bedroom, still on guard in case Reynolds is in the living room. But there’s not a sound. Not a light on.

     The Slasher heads up the hill to another home to take out his frustration on whoever he might find there.

                            Breaking Up is Expensive to Do

“Miko, I have to talk with you. And it’s going to be a little rough,” Burt says entering his home and tossing his car keys into a brass bowl by the door.

     “What is it, Burt?” she asks as she approaches him in the living room.

     “Well, you know that I did the show with Dinah, a few days ago.”

     “Yes,” she says, sitting down on the leather sofa.

     Burt sits next to her. “Well, I told you that I decided to accept an invitation to the celebrity golf tournament in Palm Springs.”

     “Yes, was everything okay there?”

     “It was fine, Miko.” He takes a deep breath. “But I wasn’t there alone. I was with Dinah.” He shook his head. “I mean, I wasn’t exactly ‘with her’. But we were together … hanging around. You know.”

     “Ah … No I don’t exactly know … But … maybe …”

     “Yeah. I think I’d like to … that is, I know I want to pursue that possible relationship, but I don’t want to hurt you.”

     “We spoke of marriage,” Miko says gently.

     “I know we did, darling. But I think that’s not possible now.”

She looks down at the floor. “So what do we do now? I mean, what do you want me to do?”

     Burt leans back on the sofa. “Well, I think it’s best in a couple of days that you … you know … slowly find another place and move out. But you can take whatever you want. I want us to stay friends and …”

     “Stay friends?”

     “At least not enemies.

     “Yes.”

     “So take anything you want when you leave.”

     “Well, I would like you to pay for an apartment for me. And some money for a while.”

     Burt sits up slightly perplexed, then chuckles. “Oh … I thought you just might take some record albums.”

     This was six years before Lee Marvin was sued by his live-in girlfriend of three years of what would become known as Palimony.

     “Also,” Miko continued quietly, “I’d like a car. A Cadillac convertible.

     “Well, all right,” Burt nods. “What kind of money are you thinking about?”

     She shrugs. “How about $500 a week for two years?”

     “I can do that.”

     “And make that an apartment by the beach, if you can.”

     “Okay. On the ocean, it is. Anything else.”

     “No, that’s fine.”

     “And what record albums do you want?” Burt chuckled.

     “Come on, Burt. This is sad.”

     “Yeah, I know.”

                                   Night of the Slasher

Burt leaves Dinah’s house around 2:30am arriving at his house at 3:00am. He takes off his clothes and goes to bed, quickly falling asleep.

     A half-hour later, he’s awakened by a scraping sound in his bedroom. He sits up and looks down to see the man who lives at the house next door crawling toward him on the floor. He’s a bloody mess and so injured that he can’t speak. The man he was living with has been killed by The Slasher and this man, though seriously wounded, managed to escape and crawl to Burt’s house and bedroom.

     Burt jumps to his feet to call for an ambulance. As he grabs the phone, he looks out of his bedroom door into his living room. Standing 15 feet away from him is the slasher, machete in hand, staring silently at him. He’s wearing the Clint Eastwood hat and serape. To Burt, he looks like a psycho-killer in a badly cast movie: a character actor too much in character to be believed.

     Burt quickly slams the bedroom door shut and begins looking for a weapon: a bottle, a knife, anything.

     Hearing the backdoor slam shut, he figures the slasher has gone. He makes the phone call and soon the police helicopters start circling noisily above him. Then comes the sirens of the ambulance and police cars.

     And the Slasher? He slid down the back hill and escaped. Burt has escaped too … from death. Deliverance just a few years after being delivered from B movies via Deliverance. 

                                     The Deadly Note Pad

The next day, Burt flies off to Nashville to make W.W. and the Dixie Dance Queens. The day after that, Burt gets a call from the Los Angeles police. “We got him,” the detective says.

     “What?” Burt replies.

     “We’ve got the slasher. When he slid down the hill behind your house, an envelope of food stamps addressed to him came out of his back pocket. We traced it to him and got him.”

     “Thank God, “Burt says. “I don’t want him on the loose and visiting my place again.”

     “Would you mind, flying back and identifying him to the D. A. It would make it a lot easier putting that monster away.”

     “Sure. No problem,” Burt says.

     Arriving at the Los Angeles Police Station, the detective takes Burt deep into a basement that holds the most violent criminals. “So you’re sure you saw the guy clearly?” the detective asks.

     “Yeah, sure,” Burt says as they walk. “I looked right into his eyes.”

     “Now when you enter the room, don’t look away from him. Look right at him. Don’t be intimidated.”

     “I’m not going to be intimidated,” Burt says. “Don’t worry about it.”

     They enter the room where The Slasher sits in handcuffs guarded by two large policemen, though not as large as The Slasher.

     Burt sees that The Slasher has a massive neck and shoulders earned by being in prison for 23 years of his life, doing nothing there but lifting weights. Add to that disconcerting image, The Slasher is smiling at Burt, as if to say, Just try to identify me and see what happens.

     Later, Burt would say, “He was so big and mean looking that if O.J. Simpson read for The Slasher’s character in a movie, he’d be too weak.”

     Also seated in the room are a public defender, representing The Slasher, and a judge wearing his black robe.

     As he stares at Burt, The Slasher is continuously writing something down on a pad next to him. But he never looks down at it. He continuously keeps his eyes on Burt as he writes. Then The slasher slowly breaks into a hideous smile, as if to say, I’ll get your sooner or later, movie star.

     The public defender, representing The Slasher, stands and asks Burt, “Do you know who this is?” pointing to The Slasher.

     “Yeah,” Burt says casually. “That’s the guy in my house with the machete.”

     The defender approaches Burt. “How can you say for sure?” 

     “Because I saw him, and he has my clothes on.”

     “What do you mean your clothes?”

     “That’s my serape that Clint Eastwood gave me from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. And there’s a cleaning slip inside it with my name on it.”

     The judge motions to one of the policemen who turns over the serape that The Slasher is wearing. Pinned to the back of it is a small piece of paper that reads: Reynolds.

     All this time, The Slasher is staring at Burt. And without looking down at his pad, The Slasher is writing and writing.

     The judge says to Burt, “You’re an actor, aren’t you?”

     Burt smiles and says, “Well, the jury’s still out on that.”

     “This is not The Tonight Show, Mr. Reynolds,” the judge says seriously. “Just answer the question.”

     “Yes, sir.” Burt says, changing his tone. “And I also would like to point out that he’s wearing my I.D bracelet.” I nailed him, Burt thought.

     “Okay,” Mr. Reynold’s,” the judge says. “That’ll be all for now. Thank you for coming in.”

     “No, problem, your honor,” Burt says standing. As Burt passes by The Slasher, he looks down at the pad The Slasher continues to write on. Burt sees, written about a hundred times: Kill Burt Reynolds, Kill Burt Reynolds, Kill Burt Reynolds.

                                            Deliverance

The Slasher was convicted on nine counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison. The judge recommended that he never be released because, “His presence in any community would constitute a menace.”

     So they could positively identify the Skid Row Slasher, once he was found, the police held back one fact to the press: The Slasher always took off the shoes of his dead victims and pointed them at each side of his head.

     Years later, on a reunion TV show, Burt said to Dinah Shore, “If I hadn’t been with you that night, I would have come home probably at nine. The guy would have been there, and I’d be lying on my bedroom floor right now with my shoes pointed at my head. And my obituary would have said, ‘His only good movie was The Wild One, which I wasn’t even in, because they often confused me with Marlon Brando.”

     “But you had made Deliverance by then,” Dinah said.

     “Yeah, that’s true,” Burt agreed.

     “That’s one of my favorite movies of all time. You should have gotten the Academy Award for your character of Lewis.”

     “Thank you,” Burt said to her. “And thank God for Deliverance. I waited 15 years to do a really good movie. I made many bad pictures in the past because I was never able to turn anyone down. And I found out that the greatest curse in Hollywood is to be a well-known unknown.”

     After four years, Burt wanted to marry Dinah, but she refused, so though they remained devoted friends, they ended their close relationship.

     A year later, Burt told friends: “Breaking up with Dinah was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I knew it was time to get married or move on, and she refused to marry me.”

     On that TV show, Burt told Dinah, “If I have any class in my life and my career, you gave it to me.”

     Dinah emotionally said, “You gave me confidence as a woman.”

     Burt’s ex-girlfriend, Miko Mayama, went on to rack up 29 movie and TV credits. Playing Charlton Heston’s mistress in The Hawaiians, she steals the show with her nude descent into a hot tub. Exactly one day before the two-years of Burt’s agreed payments were up, Miko married Barbra Streisand’s manager.

     Burt made the movie City Heat with Clint Eastwood. According to Burt, early in their careers, his and Eastwood’s Universal Studio contracts were terminated on the same day. A studio executive said: Clint’s Adam’s-apple is too large, and Burt can’t act.

     On the way to their cars Burt said to Clint: “I can always learn to act. But you’ll never get rid of that damned Adam’s apple.”

     Burt has 186 TV and movie credits including four TV series: Riverboat, Gunsmoke, Hawk and Dan August.

James Brooks offered Burt the astronaut role in Terms of Endearment, but he turned it down to make yet another action-comedy movie: Stoker Ace. Jack Nicholson won the academy Award for the astronaut part.

     Burt said, “I owed my director friend Hal Needham a lot in my life, so I did his movie instead of Terms of Endearment. My career never recovered from that. That’s when I lost my fans.”

     Burt ranked #1 box office star, five years in a row, from 1978–1982. The only other actors to rank #1 five years are: Bing Crosby, Shirley Temple, Tom Hanks, Clint Eastwood, and Tom Cruise, who has seven years to his credit.

     The movie Deliverance had put Burt on top. His character of the macho Lewis still impresses to this day.

     Burt was at the table-read for Quintin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. He was to play the part of George Spawn. Burt’s son Quinton said, “Dad was studying his lines for the movie when he died.”

     Two years before that, Burt said, “I made big money, went bankrupt, but I sure had a lot of fun.”

                                           *** END ***

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