Today in the mail I got an issue of Playboy from 1982. Yesterday, one of my room mates found an unlabeled sausage, cheese and crackers platter outside our door. Though we still don't know who left it, we ate the whole thing. I do know where the 26 year-old Playboy came from, I ordered it online very late at night from a vendor on Amazon in a bleary haze after spending all day on airplanes from Philadelphia to Burbank.
On the cover is Mariel Hemingway and the text, MARIEL HEMINGWAY GETS PHYSICAL! AN EXCLUSIVE PHOTO SESSION PLUS SCENES FROM HER DARING NEW FILM, "PERSONAL BEST". I've never seen Personal Best but I am a big fan of Star 80 and Mariel Hemingway in Star 80. Star 80 was directed by Bob Fosse, co-stars Eric Roberts, and chronicles the short life of 1980 Playmate of the Year, Dorothy Stratten. It's an excellent movie, came recommended to me by a professor, is listed as an influence in the published script of Boogie Nights, and really doesn't get the respect it should.
At a movie memorabilia shop in Burbank, I was sifting through a discount bin for screenplays. While the good scripts were kept behind the counter on a wall, selling for about twenty dollars a piece, I was going through a pile of five-buck rejects. Among several copies of Meteor Man was the screenplay for Star 80.
"What's the matter with it?" I asked the clerk, "Is it water damaged?"
"Nah," he said, "just nobody wants it."
Like Charlie Brown and his tree that just needed a little love, I bought it and took it home. The next week, for my first birthday in California, I went to another movie memorabilia store on the same block and bought a couple of posters for my blank walls. I got Chinatown and, since they didn't have The Lost Boys, I bought an original print poster for Star 80. It's in a frame now, next to my bedroom door. As for the DVD, I put off buying it in hopes that the success of Chicago would convince Warner Brothers to put out a better version like Fox did with All That Jazz. But, the only way it's available is an insulting full screen version. And that's a shame because in addition to being a well crafted story it also captures the vibrant visual tackiness of early 80's Playboy culture.
Oh, well, I bought it anyway.
Later, flipping through one of those Playboy 50th Anniversary coffee table books, I saw two pages dedicated to one photo of Mariel Hemingway doing a nude split on a gym mat. Whoa. I pulled the photo offline and used it in my Who I'd Like to Meet portion of MySpace along with Mr T. I had to wonder what the other pictures of the EXCLUSIVE PHOTO SESSION had. I figured a few pages of tasteful nudes that were almost but not quite as awesome as the one in the coffee table book. So, on a lonesome night leading up to Christmas in LA, I went online and spent $2.82 (plus $4.50 for shipping) on the April, 1982 issue featuring an interview with Ed Koch, full page ads for men's shoes, an article about the upcoming teen releases Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Grease 2, a gauzy spread of Miss April, and the promised exclusive photo session with Hemingway.
I looked forward to its arrival like Ralphie with his decoder ring. The magazine was delivered in a discreet hand-addressed manila envelope with an illegible note of thanks inside from the vendor. I paged through it at the dining room table to find that the infamous "split" picture was the only photo from that session ever published. There was nothing new for me in this ancient gentleman's magazine. It was accompanied by stills from Personal Best and an article about Mariel that ended with a tease to catch her in Bob Fosse's upcoming biopic, Star 80.
Thanks, Playboy, I will.
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