Vampyres of Hollywood by Adrienne & Scott Barbeau Page B

machine. Maybe she thought I’d grow up to be another Christopher Plummer. I didn’t care about the von Trapp kids, though. It was the German soldiers with their smart gray uniforms—shiny belts and boots and guns—that captured my attention. The one thing my mom didn’t want—that I’d follow in my dad’s footsteps and be a cop—and the first movie she shows me gets me hooked on the trappings of law enforcement.
    After I came along she gave up acting and went into on-set catering. “I’ve eaten so much bad food on a set—I know what actors want,” she said. She was right. And she could cook! My dad’s people are Welsh, but my mom’s are Italian, so cooking’s in her blood. She was so good, stars started requesting her, and within a couple of years they had clauses inserted into their contracts that King’s Catering, The King of Caterers would do the food. By the mid-seventies, Mom had seven trucks working and she floated from one movie set to another, overseeing the ragu and the outdoor barbecues. She knew Clint’s preferences, always kept a special aside for Meryl. Pacino and De Niro gave her hugs when she showed up, and Shirley MacLaine once gave her a gift certificate for a psychic reading.
    My mom kept mementos from every movie and TV show she appeared in: scripts they gave her, costumes she bought at discount, photos she got signed, and props she walked off with. In her catering years, she made sure she got several scripts from each film signed by the entire cast. And if production was tossing out the personalized chair backs because the stars didn’t want them, she grabbed those, too.
    When eBay came along, she turned the catering company over to my brother and two sisters and started selling movie memorabilia. Last year she cleared close to six hundred thousand dollars and my parents bought their second condo in Miami.
    My dad just retired from the LAPD and his father and grandfather walked a beat in New York. Before that, though, things got a little iffy. My great-great-grandfather was part of the Tweed Ring, taking bribes for Boss Tweed to grease the way for the Erie Railroad because, according to the family legend, “it was better to receive the bribes than to pay them.”
    My dad’s proudest boast is that he’d spent nearly thirty years on the force and never fired his weapon at another human being. I don’t remember the last time I’ve fired my weapon off the range. I love watching cop shows: guns fired in practically every episode…and no one ever does paperwork! Fire a shot in anger in this city and you drown under the form filling.
    There are three boys in the King family and four girls. My older brother and two older sisters run The King of Caterers now; they’ve branched out into celebrity functions, births, bar mitzvahs, and weddings, and I hear they’re developing a range of celebrity sauces. I’m the only cop in the family. I reckon I only became a cop to do something—just one thing—to make my dad proud.
    And I’ve never regretted it.
    But there are moments, like when I drive into a studio complex, or step onto a stage, or wander through a set, when I really do think, What if…? How different would my life have been if I’d gone down the path my mom had so carefully laid out for me? She really wanted me to get into the business and she had the contacts then to get me a foot in the door. I might have been a movie star.
    I moved through Anticipation’s backlots, keeping to the shadows so I wouldn’t sweat. December in L.A. and it was eighty-seven degrees. I’ve heard people grumble about the weather in L.A., but I’ve been in New York in December and, believe me, I know which I prefer.
    I knew very little about Anticipation Studios, but that was hardly surprising. Beyond the biggies—Warners, Paramount, Universal, 20th Century Fox—there are dozens of small studios scattered across the city. Well, someone has to fill the gaping maw that is TV-land. All I knew about