The Kristoffersons Make It
HE CAME WOBBLING straight toward me, aiming himself somewhere in the direction of the stage. I was fifteen, had obtained my first backstage pass as a representative from the local underground paper …… and I knew this was my shot.
I introduced myself to an amiably blitzed Kris Kristofferson and, for the length of my interview pitch, the singer/songwriter/actor sincerely tried to focus on exactly who was talking to him. Nodding vaguely — perhaps consenting, perhaps searching — he lurched onstage at the San Diego Civic Theatre, working through a full bottle of tequila during his two-hour set with Rita Coolidge. A man having that much trouble remembering his own lyrics wouldn’t soon be remembering an interview for the San Diego Door.
Kristofferson, in fact, didn’t even nod later as he walked past me outside the dressing-room door. He simply hooked my arm and pulled me along with him. Heading for a cantina on the other side of town, Kristofferson was to meet the family and friends of his new wife. We would somehow do the promised interview there.
We arrived at the bar/restaurant and Kris strolled inside. They stopped me — I looked my age. Kristofferson put up a polite argument for a moment, then grumbled to himself and disappeared inside the bar. I headed for the door.
“Where you goin’, hoss?” Kristofferson had emerged with a drink. “Come back here.” He settled into a gauche red leatherette chair next to the cash register and, as I fumbled with my tape recorder, began relating anecdotes from the set of the movie he’d just shot with Bob Dylan and Sam Peckinpah—Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Those tales from the secrecy-laden set in Durango, Mexico, were enough to entice a certain youth-culture tabloid into publishing me for the first time.
FIVE YEARS LATER I am sitting in the Albuquerque Hilton, headquarters for Convoy, another Peckinpah film, based on the C.W. McCall single and starring Kris Kristofferson and Ali MacGraw. I have since become a contributing editor of that same tabloid. I call set publicists who are “pleased to hear from me.” Film executives take my calls. Yet no one has approached Kristofferson about doing an interview…the set has, in fact, been closed to journalists. “It’s a little tense—you didn’t know?” a film spokesman asked.
I write a note to the actor, whom I haven’t spoken with in years, stuff it in his already crammed message box and proceed to spend an evening doing what Albuquerqueans seem to do on Thursday nights: Dick Van Dyke is always great to see. Lou Grant is interesting. A local anchor man has the manic look of a mass murderer…. … Still no phone call from Kris. I wander down to the newsstand, past hundreds of shoe salesmen conventioneers, and pick up a stack of fan magazines which bugle Kristofferson’s name on their covers. They all tell the same story: Rhodes scholar turns country singer turns bankable movie star … …fabulous.
As Mike Wallace sits down to tell Johnny Carson about his low regard for “overwritten” personalities, I can’t help but wonder what kind of walls Kristofferson might have built since his openness at the San Diego cantina. These very thoughts are interrupted by the phone.
“Jesus fuck,” barks Kris Kristofferson. “Hope I didn’t wake you up. This is it, you know. This one’s just about done me in, this fucking one. This fucking thing is… … crazy. I’m just a basket case … …all my circuits ..….” He pauses. “How ya been? What’re you doing here?”
I tell him. “Okay,” says Kristofferson. “I’m leaving on the first plane out in the morning, going to New York for some concerts. Let’s fly together. I’ll call you in the morning.”
The next morning in the lobby, Kristofferson comes flashing around the corner, moving swiftly and looking gaunt and bedraggled in a black shirt, frayed brown cords and boots. His pale blue eyes, fixed on the floor in front of him, are visible from across the room. Several women do a double take, but he is already gone, having first hooked me by the arm again. We talk on the way to the airport.
“I’ve done five days’ work in two days, and more than that in one, “he says. “Now it’s their turn to finish the movie. Everybody’s going crazy, right down to the still photographer. I gotta get out of here.”
Once on the plane, all he wants is some sleep, and the shades do not help. The seat left empty next to him is promptly filled by a chatty head stewardess. Kristofferson is met at La Guardia by manager Bert Block, a graying music-business veteran with a black cap and a caseful of offers. But Kris just wants to get straight to the New York Hilton to rejoin his wife, Rita Coolidge Kristofferson.
By the time the limo door has opened, Kristofferson had already tipped the driver handsomely, signed a scrap of paper for the man’s wife and grabbed the luggage. “See you tomorrow,” he tells me, friendly but tense. “I’ll call you.” He disappears into a mass of tour groups. The reason for the swiftness is soon obvious — a clutch of three female admirers lying in wait almost catch him.
I cannot resist walking up and asking — why is this man so desirable?
“It’s his shoulders,” says one. “The way they taper.”
“He’s so gentle looking,” says another. “I loved him in Sailor Who Fell from Grace….” She giggles. “He seems like he’d just take forever.”
“Great ass,” chirps the third.
They all agree on this point.
ANOTHER MAN MIGHT return the affections of at least a small fraction of the many ladies who quite literally fling themselves upon Kris Kristofferson in a given day. But at forty-one, Kristofferson is by all indications a faithful husband. When my phone rings the next day, it’s an infinitely more relaxed and urbane man who says he’ll meet me downstairs for rehearsal.
