I said, God, just give me one more chance, man. “This time I really felt that way morally about life. Each time he woke up, he’d scramble for the pistol and count the bullets, terrified there’d be one missing.) 44 Magnum, stumbled up the driveway to Mulholland, taken dead aim at a passing car and pulled the trigger. (Zevon had a recurring dream: that he’d grabbed his. 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.” “The last time I detoxed, I really thought I was going to die. “From what I know about alcoholism,” Zevon is saying, “I’d say there’s nothing romantic, nothing grand, nothing heroic, nothing brave – nothing like that about drinking. I’m reminded of Hitchcock’s movies, where the horror happens in broad daylight. Since Warren and I are both night people, we’ve decided to do our tapings from one or two in the morning until dawn, then laze around in the backyard and watch the planes, magnificently framed against a faraway mountain range, make their long, slow descent across the San Fernando Valley toward the Burbank airport. And, since I was around for a few key incidents, I hope I do, too. Eventually, a dedicated drunk will maim or kill everything he touches, often putting himself at the bottom of the list. 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. 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. Most of it happened, some of it still might. 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 “the Doc.”
Zevon: a drinking-man’s drinking man, someone who can talk about booze the way Pete Townshend talks about rock & roll. How Warren Zevon, after some heartwarming and colorful misadventures, licked the Big A and lived happily ever after. That’s what this story’s supposed to be about.