F L A U N T
My mother was obsessed with fame. Her bibles were Movie Life, Photoplay, Movie Story, Inside Hollywood, and a number of other weekly broadsides stuffed with “true” stories concocted by PR teams. She believed every word and was determined to make me a child star. Long bus rides around Hollywood, longer lines of desperate moms dragging sniveling snotty children behind them. We did these cattle calls for months, starting with Paramount and Warner Brothers, eventually ending out in the Valley at Burt’s Mammoth Pictures. Herman Burt was a terrible man and a much worse filmmaker, but he gave me my break. I played a crying baby left on a doorstep in a box. Apparently, I had an extremely dirty diaper. A series of grownups are about to pick me up and hug me when they get a whiff, and then they cannot pass me off to someone else fast enough.
We shot the whole thing in an afternoon. I did not have great expectations, but against all odds it became a hit and I became a star. I spent what seemed like a lifetime wrapped in a diaper and dropped in a box. Herman was a lot of things, but a creative genius was not one of them. My mom got a divorce, abandoned my brothers and sisters and we moved to Beverly Hills. On my ninth birthday a young actress broke her back trying to pick up my box and the ensuing lawsuit spelled the end of Baby Dinkwater.
There had been some lean years. We ate the dog and sold almost everything we owned except for my mother’s beloved collection of diamond encrusted toothpicks. I had never been to school and started running with a dangerous crowd. We smoked cigarettes and shoplifted and threw rocks at Cop cars. I was 13. I was running from the fuzz, they had me cornered in a deadend alley, but I was pretty crafty by now. I jumped up onto the fire escape ladder, pulled myself up onto the first balcony and scampered away over the roof of the building. I waited for the cops to split and then scampered back down. There was a man standing there. Fedora, topcoat which I recognized as Cashmere smoking a Turkish cigarette.
“That was a pretty fancy move.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You do this kind of thing all the time?”
“Got an extra smoke?”
He pulled out a silver cigarette case and pulled one out.
“Ordinarily I’d tell you it’d stunt your growth, but in this case, I think that’s a pretty good idea.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. He gave me a light and handed me a card. Pruitt Farnstown. Vice President of Production. Brilliant Pictures.
“Come and see me tomorrow.”
I was back in business.
A clown was lost in a neighborhood. I spy him and immediately concoct a plan that involves a mud patch and a banana peel. After the gag, the clown finds an axe and chases after me. I end up getting him to slip and fall off a cliff. It’s a massive hit and Bucky is a household name. The studio threw a party. Pruitt gave me a cigar and popped open a massive bottle of Champagne.
“It’s from France and it’s going to make your life one hundred percent better.” I had my first drink that night and goddamn, Pruitt was right.
We made a series of shorts and then segued into features. I hired my old crew and we tore up Hollywood. I emancipated at 15 and moved the whole crew into a big house above the Sunset Strip. Somebody told me that Fatty Arbuckle used to live there, but I didn’t believe in omens and had no idea who he was. On weekends we tore across the southern border in my fleet of Corvettes. I had been a Champagne man until then, but fell in love with Tequila and was smuggling dozens of cases back to LA two or three times a month. I also smuggled in a Señorita I met at Caesars down in TJ.
We threw a blowout at Fatty’s. Everybody was there, Pablo Picasso, Elvis Presley, Groucho Marx, Jimi Hendrix, I mean everybody. Pruitt was there. He was very drunk and insisted on speaking to me privately.
He warned me that my “heavy drinking” and “psychopathic behavior” on set was endangering my career. I was like, “Hey, it’s 1970, I can do whatever the fuck I want.”
I left the studio and started my own production company. Lost everything; my TJ girlfriend, Fatty Arbuckle’s house, the Corvettes.
I was living rough, subsisting entirely on Four Lokos and Menthol cigarettes, when the fates once again intervened. Out in front of the Frolic Room trying to raise enough scratch for a Rum and Coke when a man walked by, did a double take and leaned down.
“You Dinkwater?”
“Maybe.”
“You like girls?”
“I’d like a Rum and Coke more, but yeah.”
“It’s one fifty a day, you need a herpes test.”
He handed me a card. Gil Gallant Super Vixen Pictures. I was back in business. I won’t give you the synopsis of Ass Ass, use your imaginations. I was splitting my time between Vegas and the valley. I won “Best Male Lead” at the 1981 AVA’s. I had a permanent suite at the Sands, including a dedicated cocaine room. Life had once again become great. I swear I wasn’t even in town when that girl jumped out the window. That’s right, I said jumped, despite all those lying headlines in those fake news outlets, The Times, The Post, etc., etc.
I ended up doing 31 months in High Desert State Penitentiary, and it was inside that my real life began. Besides getting a master’s degree in distilling Pruno, ketchup is the secret ingredient, I also finally had my political awakening. All at once I realized I was being lied to my entire life. There was a powerful force controlling every aspect of life in this country and it was my job to expose it to the light.
My crowning achievement, the pinnacle of my long successful career is my YouTube channel where I rip the band aid off of all the lies we’re being told by the very people we trust the most. Contrary to what people say, many people say, I am not a savior, not a god. I am a truth teller and for forty-nine ninety-nine plus shipping and handling I will share with you the most important truths of our generation. For an additional one hundred and seventy-nine dollars plus shipping and handling I can send you a bottle of my award-winning Truth Serum. Made down in Kentucky at the Temple of the True Truth compound and theme park, it is one full quart, because the metric system is from Satan, of mind washing eighty proof enlightenment. Supplies are limited. Act today! I know I did.
Photographed by Christiaan van Heijst
Written by Bill DiDonna
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