J Gatsby's True Hollywood Crime and Mystery Blog
A sneak peak at J GATSBY'S
MURDER
ON THE SET
Larry got a call from the “Runaway Switchboard,” who told him to come get his defiant daughter or they were going to call the media and set the story loose. Larry is on set directing his first big budget film, Deadly Illusion. The producers have given him twenty million big ones to make this movie. Larry usually directs films for under a million. It’s only a week into shooting and it’s been one endless disaster after another. In his mind everyone is incompetent. He must wear all the hats and wear them better than everyone, and this is how Larry gets the least and the worst out of all his crew members. With twenty million bucks and two hundred crew members to employ, his dream is disintegrating in his hands and some runaway switchboard is threatening to make him famous as a shit father if he doesn’t get over to 42nd and West End Avenue in the next fifteen minutes. It’s like a reverse kidnapping and he’s being forced to take me back! I loved it. I felt empowered! He could be shamed into taking me back.
Reluctantly, Larry comes and retrieves me at the runaway holding facility. In Larry’s mind, Janelle, Melissa, and I had all turned into screaming geese right in the middle of his biggest directorial break ever. We were doing it all on purpose. He was sure it was revenge for him abandoning us. Who wouldn’t want to get rid of these nasty geese, thought Larry. He put me up at the Mayflower Hotel with the biggest goose of all, his mother. She was glad to play grandma and hang out with me, because Carolyn was sure I must be potty trained by now. I was never so glad to have run away from home in my life. Grandma Carolyn and I got along famously, and we would watch game shows on TV all day and night. We’d order up five-star grub from the restaurant downstairs. Whenever grandma wanted to take a nap, I would hang out in the hotel bar at the Mayflower or go explore the city. Jimmy, the manager always treated me like I lived there. Everything I ever got there was free with no strings. Whenever I went to the lobby, I got to meet all sorts of interesting artists, musicians, actors, and wild characters. Then I’d go back upstairs and report all my findings to my grandma Carrie. She laughed at all my jokes. Then my dad had to go have a big fight with one of his executive producers.
They blamed Larry for running the Staten Island Ferry, with the entire cast and crew aboard, onto a barge in the middle of the Hudson River. It was also the same day New York City got hit with a historical snowstorm which almost froze everyone on set to death. Daddy and the producers got into a screaming match in the middle of the hotel. The Deadly Illusion producers are calling Larry an animal because instead of helping to get everyone off the ferry before it sank, he was more concerned with forcing the crew and cameraman to film the disaster. Larry insisted it was great footage and then he asked, “How could the fucking ferry sink into the Hudson if it was stuck on the barge? Nobody was in danger of anything, except getting a little cold.”
The producer exclaims, “It was three degrees out there! The cast and crew had to be Heli ported off the goddamned thing and it cost us fifty grand! Fifty grand is what you usually make an entire movie for, Larry. You have no idea what you’re doing. You’re fired,” he smiled. “Now get the hell out of the Mayflower Hotel.”
For revenge, instead of leaving the Mayflower, Larry did the opposite. He went out and found Michael Moriarty, who was having lunch around the corner, an actor who hadn’t worked in years but was about to launch one of the longest running TV series ever, Law and Order. But today, Michael is still wondering how he’s going to pay the rent. When Larry shows up and asks Moriarty if he wants to star in a movie. Moriarty is all in. Plus, he likes my dad’s sense of humor. Good, my dad tells him, “Because there’s only one catch; you have to start work tomorrow at six am and you have to stay at the Mayflower Hotel.”
Then Larry calls his old friend, David Carradine, who complains he also hasn’t worked much since playing Grasshopper on Kung Fu. Larry asks Carradine what he’s doing tomorrow first thing in the morning. Then he hired a film crew and told everyone to meet up in the lobby of the Mayflower at the same time the Deadly Illusion crew and talent were showing up. The next morning at six am, with David Carradine, Michael Moriarty, and an entire new filmmaking team in place, here comes Larry Cohen. He’s marching into the Mayflower Hotel with his F U Crew proclaiming he’s there to make his own movie and there’s nothing they can do about it. It drove those producers of Deadly Illusion crazy.
This famous Larry Cohen flick is called Q. Yes, it’s true. And little did Larry Cohen know, right after he would die, an asinine conspiracy theory would be set loose on the world, and it would also be called Q. It wouldn’t be surprising if every member of the cult had a copy of this film about the flying serpent over New York City. There’s even a prehistoric alien nest involved here.
When they finished the film, Daddy didn’t want to pay to clean up the Chrysler Building’s Attic. This is where he staged and built this prehistoric 100-foot-wide bird’s nest without a permit. Then he left it there without saying a word. He paid the janitor two grand to keep his mouth shut. The little man said nothing and retired. The new janitor comes to work and a few weeks later, he ventures up to the attic of the Chrysler building to explore. “Oh my God! It's the largest bird’s nest in the world,” exclaims the new janitor!
He tells security, security tells management, management tells the owner. The owner calls universities across the globe and informs them there may be a prehistoric nest in the building. Scientists from France, Germany and Denmark fly in to take samples. The next day, the headlines of the NY Post read; LARRY COHEN STRIKES AGAIN!
