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However the best time we had at that show is without doubt that last night we were in New Jersey having dinner with Michael Berryman in our motel du jour’s bar and grill… The three of us really connected at that dinner where Michael opened up about his early years struggling with his medical issues and the reality of his physical appearance. One has to admire a man who survived painful surgeries as a small boy, then overcome his shyness enough to become an actor. He got his start from producer George Pal, of all people, who caught sight of Michael working in a flower shop. The result of that meeting was Michael’s screen debut in Pal’s last film DOC SAVAGE – MAN OF BRONZE. This led to Michael getting a small part in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST and the rest is, shall we say, history.

I had also known Pal towards the end of his life and we both compared stories about this wonderful man’s generosity with those in our profession. When I was just getting started as an agent, George personally took me through the Paramount lot and introduced me to all of the casting directors like Hoyt Bowers and later Bobby Hoffman who would cast the Robin Williams show MORK AND MINDY. In spite of George Pal’s reputation as a wholesome producer/director, I told Michael my favorite Pal story where the director and I had just finished lunch at Hollywood’s oldest restaurant, Musso and Frank’s. As we were exiting there was a theater across the street playing in 3-D the x-rated film THE STEWARDESSES. As we looked over at the marquee George turned to me and said, without a blink, “Look what’s playing over there; you can almost smell the pussy from here.” I was so stunned to hear something like that coming from the lips of the man who created the puppetoons that for once I was speechless.

Michael is not unlike the proverbial iceberg in that what you see is but the surface, and there is so much more underneath. Since there is only a year between us we grew up in the same era and went through some of the same cultural experiences, especially when it came to the sixties. Michael had been a wild boy with motor-cycles, and had more than his share of encounters with the infamous Hells Angels in San Francisco during the summer of love and beyond. While he could have cultivated a darker image, his gentleness is always right on the surface as he has been a defender of all animals and wildlife since day one. He told us he was currently raising, single handed, a family of wolves on his property out in the California desert area of Palmdale. He explained that, raising them from cubs, he was totally in tune with their karma and firmly believed in the Indians’ concept of respecting the earth and all who live on it with non violence and peace.

At that time Michael had just completed a small but pivotal role of the Skull-like keeper of the gate who allows Brandon Lee’s character to leave the land of the dead in the prologue for THE CROW, and was an on-set witness to the untimely death of its star. It was dramatic to listen to him recount how it all went down. Michael was angry at the waste of a talented actor like Brandon, and was skeptical about just how much of an accident the handling of the gun in question really was…. I will leave the rest for Michael to explain, as I am sure he will someday. His part was removed from the finished film, but the footage is still available (at the moment) on you-tube.

As the evening progressed we all decided that Margaritas were in order and so we
began knocking them back with some real sense of urgency. The result involved the three of us posing for some rather outré Polaroids utilizing our tables floral arraignment to better advantage as the picture will attest.

The next morning before any of us were fully awake, the motel’s desk clerk, having misunderstood our arrangement with Chiller Theater and its host Kevin Clement, slipped bills for three days lodging under all our respective doors, unaware that we were invited guests of the convention and thus not libel for charges. I assumed it was an error and so I just went back to sleep and decided to ring up Kevin and sort it all out later.

At dinner Michael had told us that although he was not a violent man he could still muster up a volcanic temper when the occasion demanded it. I thought about that as I began to hear shouting from the lobby down the hall from our rooms. It seems that Michael had been forewarned about Kevin’s bad habit of being unavailable when these “minor” problems arose over money and was not going to have any of it. He took the
Desk clerk by storm telling him that if he did not want to see Michael Berryman “go ATOMIC” he better get this cleared up at once. I called Martine and told her what was going on, so we made our way to lobby to watch Michael sort it all out.

The last memory I have of our HILLS HAVE EYES comrade in Margarita overdrive was seeing Michael “Go Atomic” and save the day and our wallets. In the words of my friend, the late great Terry Southern, Michael was always “tops in his field and a grand guy, and so say all of us.”

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