Just My Bill

 

Bill Zehme, in his element.

"I started spelling “chemo” k-e-e-m-o whenever I wrote it out because I thought that made it sound fun. And then “hot sauce” and “glow juice.” It’s so easy to fall into a vat of hopelessness. You better bring some levity to this. And you better laugh every day. Because if you forget how to laugh, cancer will just spin you out." -- Bill Zehme, Chicago magazine, Dec. 2016

My ol' buddy Bill died this weekend, at 64, nearly 10 years after being diagnosed with stage 4 colorectal cancer. We first found each other and bonded in the mid-80's when we were both young celebrity journalists, and we ended up helping each other get launched at various places. 

But I hadn't seen Zehme since he came to New York in February 2013 for an Andy Kaufman event in a 50-seat gallery, Andy being one of his many, many showbiz deep dives, this one came out booklength - 1999's "Lost in the Funhouse: the Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman." 

It was typical of Bill to choose to decipher one of the most confounding, hard to nail down celebrities to walk the earth and approach it with the same work ethic and clarity of wordsmithery that shamed most other people who toiled in the trenches of celebrity journalism, whether he was doing so for Playboy, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Esquire, or - less characteristically - Spy. 

Bill was a fanboy, but not a mindless one. He spelunked for humanity where most would only see cartoons: subjects who few would take seriously, like Liberace, Regis Philbin (with whom Bill wrote TWO very Bill-titled books, "I'm Only One Man!" and "Who Wants to Be Me?"), Jay Leno, and Barry Manilow ("If he could be anyone else, he would be Sting. 'He's on his own path,' [Manilow] says, admiringly. 'I wish that I could be as brave as he has been with his career and his life.' Next choice: Tom Waits. 'He sings from his kishkes.'").

Also, impenetrable subjects like Warren Beatty, who refused to answer any questions, so Bill published the timed length of Beatty's infernal pauses and summarized, "To interview Warren Beatty is to want to kill him. It is also to become fond of him. He seduces anything that is not mineral."

Also, Carson, who talked to nobody, Letterman, who didn't suffer fools, Bozo the Clown, and Sandra Bernhard, whose public persona everyone was afraid of. When he handed in his profile for the Rolling Stone Comedy Issue I edited, I tripped on his first line: "She's not so scary."  Spoiler alert, I protested. But Bill won me over -- it's the question everyone wanted to know, and once you got that out of the way, you could hang with her, as he did, most improbably. 

Sandra: Not so scary?

Bill was a tall guy -- in fact one of his email handles was "TallGuyInc" -- and had the unassuming, midwestern, gee-shucks I can't believe I'm talking to you demeanor that ingratiated him with everyone - subjects and editors. Perhaps he was overcompensating for his 6'5" height to put people at ease. He saw the world clearly, but he also cherished the value of cheeseball showbiz, and found ways to convey his enthusiasm and insight with mighty turns of phrase, never falling into the trap of repeating himself. 

He was also the world's biggest Chi-town booster -- I visited him there several times, and he showed me Wrigley Field, the Twin Anchors - one of Sinatra's favorite local hangs -- and a Greek Taverna with live Opa Opa music whose name escapes me. He later wrote a book decoding Sinatra's approach to life, which included mid-90's correspondence between him and Sinatra - who otherwise had not cooperated with a member of the print media for 25 years.

Bill, Cubbie booster, me, ye olde Wrigley

But he also ably navigated LA, where he would later relocate. And when Spy magazine held a promotional event there, he miraculously pulled strings with his hometown employer, Playboy, to get Spy's editors invited to a shindig at Hef's mansion, grotto and all. 

I saw Bill a couple more times in both cities, then lives intervened. He divorced first.  I had cancer first, around 2010, and kept it pretty mum. Bill's first hit in 2013. 

As the quote up top shows, Zehme tackled his cancer with the same kind of cheerful derring-do and devil-may-care breeziness as his art. 

But despite the "lookback now that it's over" tone to that uncharacteristically personal article, the fucking disease wouldn't leave him be. It derailed his personal Moby Dick of a project, a comprehensive Carson biography; the fact he confoundingly had no health insurance (Oh, Bill!) both ate up his book advance and lost him his domicile (as he would call it). He got some TV documentary work to tide him over, but he never finished the book, which was to be called “Carson the Magnificent: An Intimate Portrait.” 

Before a 2017 trip to Chicago, I reached out to try to see him, and he made it seem possible, but then pulled back. My sense from other friends was that he didn't want old pals to see him in his current state. 

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And then this: 

In the cosmic way the universe works, after Willis Reed died, BUT BEFORE BILL DID, I was going through one of my many unsorted piles of my life to dig out an autographed photo of Reed - and out fell an envelope from the Vanity Fair Chicago office, postmarked September 2, 1986, that I had no recollection of receiving or saving. 

It hailed me, in Bill's inimitable all-caps, as "THE AMAZING DAVI!!" - a reference to my then-recent freelance piece for US magazine about The Amazing Randi, the magician who had recently been awarded a MacArthur Genius recipient. 

I set it aside to read after I finished my work this weekend; in the interim, I got a text from our mutual friend David Rensin that Bill had been in hospice (which I hadn't known) and had passed. 

This morning I trepidatiously opened the envelope,