David Van Houten Psy.D and I have been friends for over 40 years. He is a main character in my 1,000 page manuscript, optioned by producer, Marie D. Jones for a TV series. David is writing a memoir about living in New York during the tumultuous 70's and 80's including his tenure with Paramount Pictures.
Excerpt from the Grease opening in London
We were in one car with John in a limousine. Olivia Newton John, who joined us for the tour, was in the car behind. As we got closer to Lester Square the crowds were enormous, thousands and thousands of people there to see the man I’m setting next to! In those days there were two important differences (negatives). 1. windows on Limos weren’t blacked out, so you could see into the car and second, security was very Lazy Fare. In that, we only had a couple of guards drive in with John, however, the tons of police we have come to expect at these things and for people who are much less apt to create the frenzy John created, just didn’t exist.
If you Google Grease premiere London, you can see what it was like. The real drama occurred with people, who we were trying to not run over as we inched to the entrance, began to recognize John in the car and reacted, well you can only imagine. They began jumping on the car and beating on the windows. We inside were terrified, plus the driver, who was a fellow who was not particularly trained, panicked. We were trapped.
To be honest, I don’t remember what we did then. Though, photos and video cameras showing John and I shoving our way through the crowd, alone. We realized we were on our own since no one had pictured how getting from the car to the theater front was to really happen. My feeling was that no one else was going to help us, so I’d better earn my salary and grab John and just get him in. I’m sure after time, movie stars learn to anticipate this, or rather, their handlers do, so the kind of ciaos we experienced that night doesn’t happen, because, it’s actually dangerous.
