Hella Nation - Evan Wright [148]
Dollard argues that those most critical of his career abandonment are either his ex-wives and mother, who depend on him financially, or those whose “empty lives making crap films” he now rejects. “People expect me to regret going to Iraq, because I lost everything,” he says. “What’s really going on here is I left the whorehouse. The people who stayed behind are the ones saying I’m a psychopath. Why? Because I rejected being a self-centered, moneygrubbing pig, which is what you are supposed to be in this town if you want to be considered sane.”
Dollard’s mother believes that her son is a near genius “at taking any information and transferring it into self-serving data.” A case in point is his argument that his recent trips to area mental wards prove his mental health is solid. “Psychiatrists checked me out. If I were truly pathological, they never would have released me,” he says, accidentally banging his cigarette against the side of his face. Sparks fly from his smoldering whiskers. “I have often asked myself the question ‘Am I a psychopath?’ But it just doesn’t add up. I am one of the sanest people I know.”
Dollard sucks mightily on his mangled cigarette. The aroma of burned hair lingers. “The only exception is, if you fill me with drugs and alcohol, I do become insane. I concede that point.”
I ask him whether there is any difference in his thought process when he’s sober or on drugs. Dollard laughs. “None. When I’m on drugs, the same garbage comes out of my mouth, only it’s amplified.”
THE PITCH
LATE AUGUST 2005. Pat Dollard is bombing down Sunset Boulevard at the wheel of his new, gray Hummer, on his way to a meeting at William Morris. He handles the massive vehicle with about as much caution as the average eleven-year-old at the wheel of a carnival bumper car. “I love the Hummer,” he says, weaving through the lanes. “It’s like driving your fucking living room from your Barcalounger.”
Sober for nearly 120 days now, Dollard’s comeback is well under way. He has created a ninety-minute rough cut of his documentary, now titled Young Americans. Both Soderbergh and Simpson viewed it in his apartment and, as they say in Hollywood, “went crazy.” Soderbergh has offered to help arrange distribution. Simpson has scheduled a screening at William Morris this morning at eleven, with the idea that the agency that once fired Dollard will take him on as a client.
A couple of weeks ago, Dollard received an unexpected cash windfall. Hence, the new Hummer, including a new set of “US WINS” plates. His military fatigues—what he now refers to as his “Travis Bickle uniform”—are neatly pressed. His hair is slicked flat on his head, and he is clean-shaven.
Three days a week he’s been training in krav maga, Israeli martial arts. “I have to get my body up to the level my mind is at,” he says. “When I was in Iraq, I learned all this will-to-power shit. I could kill now.”
The exception to his new, squared-away life is his failure to obtain treatment for the cataract clotting his right eye—a result of Dollard’s fear of doctors and hospitals. Driving partially blind has become a sort of experiment. Cutting recklessly through traffic, Dollard laughs. “I’m just a puppet in the hands of God, dude,” he says, repeating a saying he picked up at an AA meeting.
Nowhere is God’s grace more evident than in Dollard’s resurrection in Hollywood. People who long ago wrote him off have begun to pop out of the woodwork. In the past few days, even one of the most powerful men in town, ICM’s chairman, Jeff