When we pulled into the economy hotel, Tony set his jaw. There were two empty cop cars. “I’ll do all the talking. You make nice to your movie star.” Tony knocked on the star’s room and a cop opened the door.

Senator Pat Geary in Godfather II | Source

The room looked like it had been hit by a storm. There was mattress stuffing, pillow feathers, and curtain shreds on the floor. There was not much blood, just some streaks on the walls and curtains. Not like the blood from Senator Pat Geary’s dead hooker in Godfather II. The perpetrator was long gone.

Tony moved the cops and the hotel guy to a corner. The young movie star, as opposed to the old movie star (who had a penchant for senior ladies), sat on his bed in his underwear. His eyes looked broken, his strong body, numb. We knew each other but not well. He was waiting for me to talk.

I was not new to movie stars. Harrison Ford and Eddie Murphy were my friends. But as I walked to him, I knew I could not be just his friend. I needed to be his doctor, his priest, his father, his PR handler. I needed to be his godfather. I put my right hand on his naked shoulder and then I lifted his shamed face upward with my other hand. All godfathers looked you in the eye.

“It’s going to be all right,” I said. “You’re going to be fine. You must not talk about this to anyone, however. Not even the producers of the movie need to know.” As I heard myself speaking, I could see the Palm Springs’ street lights exploding from the bullets of the love-happy movie stars. “This man is going to take care of things.”

Instinctively, Tony Pellicano turned his head even though I spoke in a hush. He knew it was his close-up. He nodded at the movie star, grimaced and then went back to dispensing the cash and the threats to the guys.

“There will be no police record. There will be no publicity. The only way this gets out is if you leak it.” He nodded. The white in his eyes seemed to return from their hiding place. He rose from the bed and hugged me.

In that moment, I knew that I had become a godfather because I could swallow a sin and no one ever would know it existed, but for God, or the Hall of Souls, or a power of consciousness yet discovered.

I would have known nothing about such a culture had it not been for the movies and books. Young Tony Pellicano learned from it, too. Johnny Fontaine, the boozing, gambling movie star- singer in Mario Puzo’s Godfather novels owed his allegiance to his godfather. Don Vito Corleone did many favors for Johnny’s stardom, and Johnny returned the favors.

Tony and his entourage left the corner and went out the door. Before he left, he whispered. “Keep him in his room. We’ll have it made over when he’s out later today. He just needs to let the owner know when he’ll be gone from his room.”

Then Tony left as well. I explained to the movie star what we were going to do about the room. “I am sorry this happened to you,” I said as I looked down at him. He knew I was gay. We never talked about it before. But I was never in the closet and I never made it an issue. People talk and everyone knew. It just was what it was.

When I was President of Production at Disney, I was politely asked if I would consider getting married (at the time to a woman) because of the family brand. I said I would not. Today, I could have brought Disney down financially over such a request, but those times were different. We have come quite a distance from our dark past.

When the cops and Tony left, the movie star wept in shame and relief. “There, there,” I said.

“I thought he was a nice enough guy,” he confessed in a blather. “I had no idea he was a psycho.”

“But you didn’t pick him up because he was nice, did you?”

“No, I picked him up because he looked almost exactly like me. Kinky, huh?’ he asked with a weak laugh.

The movie star was in love with the image he had created. It wasn’t real. Perhaps on some level it was his narcissism that was his undoing. He never was able to emerge as an empathetic human being on screen. He became trapped in the studied, manly demeanor of his projection. His screen-shine could not be sustained. His stardom faded. He died at an early age, leaving five ex-wives behind.