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Carrie at ease, accompanied by mariachis. |
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Debbie Reynolds with the Olympic champion Bob Mathias and the actress Celeste Holm in 1952. |
ACAPULCO, MX (By Carrie Fisher, NYTimes) November 20, 2005 Accompanied by my friend Lynne Scott, whom I've known since the long-ago days when I was briefly engaged to Dan Aykroyd (Lynne was dating Dan's brother), I arrive in Acapulco, Mexico, in early June to work on a cable movie, "Romancing the Bride."
Lynne and I are whisked from the airport to our hotel, the Fairmont Acapulco Princess, and check into the Pierre Marques, the smaller boutique part of the establishment, where "Romancing the Bride" will shoot. That's right - we'll be shooting the film at the hotel, which was for me one of the major selling points of the project. I'll be able to roll out of bed, get made up and walk to the set while my 13-year-old daughter, Billie, and her friend Olivia, who arrive tomorrow with my assistant Kim, frolic in one of the several pools or in the nearby surf. The Princess and the Pierre are set on a long, lovely beach, where, because of fairly constant breezes, you are released from the iron grip of daily heat and humidity.
The Acapulco Princess is also where Howard Hughes spent the end of his life, suffering from severe and undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder. Hughes reportedly wore Kleenex boxes on his feet and let his hair, beard and fingernails grow disproportionately long. It's been said that he had his food passed to him through a little slot in the door and wiped the doorknob (and whatever else might be infested with germs) with tissues I assume he got from the boxes on his feet. He passed his days wandering around his room, repeating phrases over and over, until he died, at 70, probably of starvation. His last words reputedly were: "The way of the future, the way of the future, the way of the future." All this happened in one of the suites where we are shooting a scene.
When the rest of our party arrives, the girls and I decide to exchange our two adjoining rooms, with two queen-size beds in each, for a one-bedroom bungalow with a little pool on the patio, a partial ocean view and a king-size bed in the bedroom.
There is a cot in the living room, and guess who gets it?
Yes, that's right - me, the mother, the one who has to get up at 5:20 almost every morning, and who has a ridiculous amount of dialogue to memorize. So, while I work, Billie and Olivia coax Kim to take them swimming, Jet Skiing, ATV riding on the beach or surfing. Or Lynne takes them to get manicures and pedicures, since the hotel has an all-new spa facility and the film company got me a few gift certificates for treatments, which the girls immediately grabbed.
Acapulco has little in the way of shopping save for one large Wal-Mart, but somehow I don't see this as an enormous enticement.
The girls, on the other hand, are enthusiastic. Between the lure of a well-stocked DVD section and the convenience of being within walking distance of the hotel, visiting Wal-Mart rapidly becomes routine, along with ordering room service and watching hours of American television.
And then Billie's father, Bryan Lourd, becomes concerned about kidnapping and hires a security guard for the girls. And this guard's name is Bacca. And what was he called while in the military? Chewie.
Our guard's name is Chewbacca.
So I withdraw my usual "no Princess Leia references" restriction and insist Chewie call me "Leia" for the duration of the trip.
Not that he ever does.
We are running out of time, and we still haven't been to see the Acapulco cliff divers. So Chewie and his harem of women head out to dine at La Perla at El Mirador hotel to watch sturdy men fling themselves from cliffs 136 feet above the sea, landing in an 11-foot-deep inlet below, filled with waves crashing up against the sides of the rocks. This ritual has been performed since the mid-30's - when movie stars began vacationing here - making it a trendy place to travel to, or to honeymoon in. (When Elizabeth Taylor married Mike Todd in Acapulco in 1957, my parents, Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, were their witnesses.)
In the 50's, my father told me, La Perla was operated by Teddy Stauffer, a good friend of Errol Flynn and briefly the husband of Hedy Lamarr, so it was natural for all their celebrity buddies to come down and enjoy this sleepy Mexican town. The stars who frequented the restaurant autographed the walls, and their signatures were then chiseled into the wood. There is Johnny Weissmuller, the Olympic swimmer who played Tarzan, who not only shot some of his films here but also made the treacherous dive with the local divers. There are my parents, their signatures side by side, as if they imagined they'd remain together forever. Gary Cooper, Elizabeth Taylor, Merle Oberon, Rita Hayworth, Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner ... you name them, if they were from that era, they are here.
I bring Billie to see her grandparents' names. Even she gets a little, well, I can't say thrill, but it's like finding their names carved on a tree or written on a handball court somewhere - so oddly unexpected, even though they're famous.
We sit down to dinner and they bring us our menus, and what do you know? Among the many celebrity-named dishes on offer - honoring, among others, Anthony "Queen," Sean "Conery" and, of all people, Gary Busey - there is my dear old dad. Fish Eddie Fisher, stuffed with vegetables. Now, it's not every day you can order your father for dinner. Oh, sure, parents eat their young with some regularity, but the chance to nibble on a parent, and never mind the consequences? I order Eddie for dinner and "Brook² Shields for dessert, a delicious banana-with-strawberry-sauce affair. The Eddie doesn't taste very good, and I don't care for the aftertaste.
Sitting at our table, we watch the seven divers in tiny black bathing suits climb the cliffs from which they will fling themselves into the sea. But first they pray to whatever saint protects them as they bravely execute this age-old skill.
The highway overlooking the inlet is crammed with buses and people watching the diving, which happens five times a day: once in the morning and four times at night, the last being performed with torches. In between turns, the divers come around, talk to you and let you take your picture with them.
We save one activity to conclude our stay in Acapulco with a sort of bang: a speedboat ride through the canals of the Puerto Marques lagoon, where the first "Tarzan" films were shot. At 100 miles an hour, the trip is like the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland gone berserk. Our wisecracking tour guide notes that I bear a striking resemblance to "what's her name ... that lady from 'Star Wars."'
"You can't imagine how much I get that," I say.
Twisting vines hang from the enormous mangrove trees, vines that Johnny Weissmuller swung from all those decades ago. When we slow to a stop in a dense curtain of greenery, our guide asks who among us wishes to swing like Tarzan, and to my surprise and delight, Billie takes him up on his offer. Climbing to the hood of the boat, she shimmies up the vine like a regular Jane.
I am as proud as a jungle mother can be. My one regret is that I don't have a movie camera. So I shall have to rely on memory - mother memory - for the scrapings I can salvage from Seρor Senior moments.
