Roar, p.1
ROAR, page 1
Also by Bruce Wagner
Force Majeure
Wild Palms (graphic novel)
I’m Losing You
I’ll Let You Go
Still Holding
The Chrysanthemum Palace
Memorial
Dead Stars
The Empty Chair: Two Novellas
I Met Someone
A Guide For Murdered Children (writing as Sarah Sparrow)
The Marvel Universe: Origin Stories
Copyright © 2022 by Bruce Wagner
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
Jacket design by Erin Seaward-Hiatt
Print ISBN: 978-1-956763-22-5
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-956763-26-3
Printed in the United States of America
for my publisher
ROAR: Roger Orr, American Master is a work of fiction. Roger Orr is a chimera. My intent was to create a subterfuge—a dream—whose scaffolding is the traditional form of an oral history. I hope that by the end of the novel the scaffolding will fall away.
CONTENTS
Editor’s Note
FIRST LOOK
BOOK ONE
BIRTH OF A NATION
1940–1955
Chapter 1—Tennessee’s Partner
Chapter 2—Golden Slumbers
Chapter 3—Seraphita/Seraphitus
Chapter 4—On the Road
BOOK TWO
SNAKESKIN
1955–1970
Chapter 5—Razzmatazz
Chapter 6—Fire Sale
Chapter 7—Pilgrim’s Progress
Chapter 8—Romantic Comedy
BOOK THREE
GRACE WAR
1970–1985
Chapter 9—The Horror
Chapter 10—Silver Hill Linings
Chapter 11—Grace War
Chapter 12—Arrival
BOOK FOUR
IMAGINARY PRISONS
1985–2000
Chapter 13—Hallelujah Boogie
Chapter 14—It Was a Very Good Year
Chapter 15—Daddy Dearest
Chapter 16—Painted Red
BOOK FIVE
BYE BYE BLACKBIRD
2000–2018
Chapter 17—Smuggler’s Cove
Chapter 18—Changes
Chapter 19—The Costume Party
LAST LOOKS
EDITOR’S NOTE
In the end, it was thought that an oral history—a kaleidoscope of voices, both famous and obscure—was best suited to convey the life of one of the most celebrated, complex, controversial artists of our time. For a more orthodox presentation of the life and works of Roger Orr, the handful of extant biographies and documentaries will serve the reader well.
No doubt there will be many more.
I met Roar in the early Seventies, in my twenties. For the next four and a half decades our lives intersected personally and sometimes professionally. I can’t remember exactly when I proposed a biography; I must have been kidding (or drunk) because the idea of myself, a novelist, embarking on a nonfictional history of a human being was outlandish. Yet the ambitious prospect of it did make me swoon. Roar himself proposed I interview friends and family—and critics too—instead. That sealed it for me, for in my mind, I would simply take dictation; I could lazily have my cake and read it too. There was no deadline, no contract, no pressure. Still, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of urgency because there were a thousand people I needed to contact—many of them, as Roar described, “with a foot in the grave. They may as well put the other one in their mouth.”
I arrived at a hundred doorsteps armed with an elegantly handwritten letter: “I, Roger Orr, do hereby grant you sanction to speak with the gentle soul named Bruce Wagner. (Please insist he show identification.) Torah! Torah! Torah!” I wouldn’t understand the “Torah” reference for years to come.
Some of those whom I interviewed passed away years before I met Roar; some died while I was literally en route to their homes; two expired mid-interview. In many instances, when I felt it important for the voices of the departed to speak from the grave, the medium of archival material has been employed. Through the years, when respondents rudely expired before publication, Roar enjoyed saying, “Another one bites the dustjacket.”
I thank all of the living and dead who contributed to this book.
But my heart and my gratitude begin and end with Roger Orr. It’s a cliché to say the worst clichés are true but here it is: we will never see the likes of him again.
No doubt he’d add, “You should thank God every day for that, bubbeluh.”
Here are two friends, at the end of one life.
—headstone of Jan Morris and her wife
FIRST LOOK
VINCE GILLIGAN (showrunner) He was more than once-in-a-generation, he was that thousand-year storm.
GWYNETH PALTROW (actress, entrepreneur) You couldn’t have invented him: a film and theater director of genius, an Academy Award-winning actor, a legendary stand-up, and celebrated songwriter, playwright, novelist, sculptor, and dermatologist.
A dermatologist! Most people don’t know that.
JOHN LAHR (writer) In terms of multiplicity, one thinks of Chaplin, whom of course Roar knew. He knew everyone on earth. But Chaplin never wrote a novel, and if he did, one doubts it would be the masterwork of The Jungle Book. And Chaplin certainly wasn’t a dermatologist.
CHARLIE CHAPLIN (actor, filmmaker)1 We met in 1971. A puzzle piece, but the most adorably charming one I’d ever met. He laughed when I started calling him “the Enigma Variations”—after Elgar—but it was true.
STEVE ALLEN (comedian, entertainer) He used to say he was a riddle wrapped in an enigma. But he’d always add, “a Nelson riddle.”
JASPER JOHNS (artist) Easy to know—yet hard. Erudite, with a virginal, rapacious intelligence. One of the rare souls one feels instantly comfortable with. At first blush, you had the sense of having known him forever. You knew nothing about him, of course, nor ever would.
DENZEL WASHINGTON (actor) A white man raised in great privilege who learns in midlife that his biological mother was Black—and his biological father a violent racist. He’d say, “It don’t get any better than that, Denz.”
MERYL STREEP (actress) I have a photo on the piano of him with Sinatra, Streisand, and Muhammad Ali—but your eyes go only to Roar. The rest are just staring at him, wanting his love and attention. And laughing, you know, glamorous big-laughing, larger than life, like that famous photo of Gable, Cooper and Stewart at Romanoff’s. I don’t know where they were, what party or event, but everyone was in a tux, even Barbra. Roar’s looking straight at the camera with that sly little trademark smile but you have the sense he’s alone. That sadness . . . oh! I get tears.
DICK GREGORY (comedian)2 We used to gig together. At the hungry i . . . and in Reno. This was a long time before Roar knew where he came from. Before Bird and all that jazz. The boy was white as a sheet of paper! We were friendly competitors—you know, always telling each other our shit wasn’t funny. He’d hear me do my act on a good night and just shake his head. Click his tongue and look real, real sad. “Only connect,” he’d say. “Only connect, Sandman.” He called me Sandman ’cause he said my act put people to sleep! We fucked with each other like that. He called me Sandman so I started calling him Sad Man ’cause he had that thing in his eyes. The cat was wounded. You’re born with that look. Can’t be taught.
WOODY ALLEN (actor, filmmaker) He was the inspiration for Zelig but in reverse—he was Zelig in the center, not the fringe. Everyone else, regardless of their fame, was reduced to being Zelig just by standing next to him.
TREVOR NOAH (comedian) He and Dick Gregory were close but the one nearest to his heart was Richard Pryor. They were born in the same year, 1940. Pryor was raised in a bordello, a far cry from “Parnassus,” the palace in Pacific Heights where Roar was brought up.
DICK GREGORY I was writing my memoirs and he said, “I got a title for you, Sandman: Black Out.” Damn good. But I was a little ambivalent. ’Cause I didn’t want black to be out, I wanted it to be in. “White Out”? Ha! The main thing was, I needed to make the name of the book my own. A few months later, I told him, “Gonna call it Nigger.” His face got all kinda deformed and I thought Oh shit, the motherfucker hates it! Which would have hurt, feel me? ’Cause I respected the fuck out of that man. I got all tense. Then he smiles—remember that smile he had? Big as the sun—and gives me a hug. “Sandman? That’s genius. And that’s why I’ll never be you. I’ll never have those big balls.” He had mad balls, was born with ’em, but was generous to a fault. But it was important to me that he liked it—loved it—because I was still waking up at three a.m. and saying, “Do I really w ant to call my book that?” I was worried it was too forced-outrageous. Sensational, exhibitionistic, whatever. After he said the title was great, I still had doubts. Called him one morning for a little reassurance, and he said he’d kill me if I backed down.
That’s the gift he gave everyone: the truth. The truth, and an unconditional generosity of heart and spirit. And he was always right, except when it came to himself.
But even when he was wrong about that, he was right.
MARVIN WORTH (producer) [Pryor] was his first choice for Coloring Book, Roar’s version of the Sirk movie, Imitation of Life. He was always going back to that theme. The movie never got made and that’s one of the regrets of my life. Did you know Pryor was arrested in Germany when he was in the Army? In the late Fifties. Richard was watching Imitation of Life and there was a white soldier in the audience, some piece of shit who thought it was funnier than a Road Runner cartoon. He shouted at the screen, you know, mocking the Susan Kohner character—the girl who was “passing”—and generally laughing his cracker ass off. Richard and a bunch of black soldiers beat the shit out of him. Pryor did time for that, two years in the stockade.
So much for joining the Army and seeing the world.
GOLDIE HAWN (actress) We had a house in Point Dume, not far from the place Roar had at the Cove. We threw a little dinner party for him. I was giving him a tour of the house. We were in the bedroom and he said something so insanely funny, I wouldn’t dare try to tell you what it was. Then he did a dancer’s pivot and vanished into the hall. A master of timing, a master of the exit. I laughed so hard I shat myself and blacked out.
ERIC IDLE (author, comedian) He was legendary for being able to do that. He’d drop a bomb and leave, then people would shit or piss themselves and fall unconscious. It’s where we got the idea for the Python sketch, “The Funniest Joke In the World.” The joke that literally kills.
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON (author, activist) I really do think he was a bodhisattva. Late in life, he got recognized as a tulku—a reincarnated master. So was Steven Seagal, because of the donations he made to a monastery. When I told Roar that, he said, “Why, of all the nirvana!”
EDDIE IZZARD (actor, activist) I don’t know if it’s apocryphal but he was in the UK because he was made a KBE, which is quite rare for an American. He spent time alone with the Queen and she roared with laughter—how aptly named he was! Servant scuttlebutt was that a neat rivulet of stool dribbled down her leg but I don’t believe it.
Still, that was the effect he had “on cabbages and kings.”
ELON MUSK (inventor, entrepreneur) People think it was my kids who were responsible for the Tesla fart app. Nope: it was courtesy of Mr. Roger Orr. He said he wanted to be the Dylan, the Kanye, the Sondheim of electric farts. True to his word, the man got involved. He didn’t come up with “Short Shorts Ripper”—but “Gentle Roar” was all his.
AMY SCHUMER (comedian) He was the greatest stand-up, ever—Pryor himself said that. Chappelle’s obsessed with those early performances. We all are. And that he did them when he was a kid was just . . . impossible. Patti Smith said he was the Rimbaud of comedy, but I thought she was talking about Stallone. . . . Those LPs he did had amazingly surreal moments—totally worthy of Perelman. I heard that Spike Milligan lifted some of the bits for The Goon Show but don’t know if that’s true . . . classic vaudeville and hyper-cerebral too. They’re all on YouTube. I don’t know a comic who hasn’t studied them like the Dead Sea scrolls. Scroll down!
HOWIE MANDEL (comedian) He did one of those famous cold calls. I don’t know how he got my number but hey, it’s Roger Orr, he’s got everyone’s number. Right? I thought it was a prank because I talked about him all the time in interviews. He said he wanted to be a judge on AGT [America’s Got Talent]. I burst out laughing and said, “Okay now, seriously—who is this?”
RUPAUL (drag queen, television personality) Growing up, he felt he was a girl trapped in a boy’s body. We talked and talked about that. He came to embody so many things about this contradictory age. That’s always the way it is with visionaries. They don’t come along too often. God gives you a tiny allotment then says, “Th-th-th-that’s all, folks.”
CAITLYN JENNER (activist) He said I was the bravest person he ever met. But without Roar I’d never have had the courage. So, he was being kind. The most fearless soul I’d ever met.
JAN MORRIS (writer) He wanted to do an opera about my life. I loved him but that was something I simply wasn’t interested in. He wrote Swan Song instead. I was the oyster who made that pearl—it makes me smile. Naturally, it’s entered the canon, like everything Roar did.
KATY PERRY (singer) He wrote an opera about a hermaphrodite, a word that’s fallen into disrepute because it’s considered . . . whatever. I have a lot of trans friends who love that word. But the opera was about him. He called it “my schoolboy Madame Butterfly.”
STEVEN SONDHEIM (composer, lyricist) Swan Song was far better than Puccini. Much closer to Mozart than Puccini.
CAITLYN JENNER We talked about everything, including the Pronoun People. Roar’d say, “I don’t mind being called ‘they’ but when I got implants, my tits thought they were being spoken about in third person. They said, ‘How rude!’”
DR. TERRY DUBROW (plastic surgeon, television personality) I was at a party with Brooke Shields, and somehow Roar’s name came up. I was such a fan. Well, of course she knew him and said, “He loves your show.” I was, like, “Huh?” Roger Orr was a fan of Botched! I’d read his book in med school—Orr’s Textbook of Dermatology. So I reached out to ask if he’d do a guest consult on Botched for a patient with vitiligo and rheumatoid arthritis. We do something like that now and then. I was instantly embarrassed—the note was fawning—and worried I’d get an angry call from Brooke, saying, “You idiot. Why did you do that? What were you thinking!”
Months later I got a response. A lovely thank-you, ending with “Sorry—no skin in that game anymore.” It’s framed and on my desk.
GWYNETH PALTROW He was a friend of Dad’s. I was probably about seven years old when he came to the house for dinner. My mom loves scented candles, and they were burning all over the place whenever we had guests. He came back from the bathroom, sniffed the air and smiled. Mom said, “Vanilla rose.” And he very dramatically, you know, very arch, stared into space, and mused. “No. It smells like . . . my vagina.” This was a long time before he had the surgery! My parents fell on the floor. I’m so glad he lived long enough to see the Goop candle—my homage. He asked if he’d be paid a royalty—kind of half-joking?—and I said something stupid like, “Oh c’mon, Roar, you already are royalty.”
He held the candle in his hands, smiled and said, “Gwynnie? Stop making scents.”
KEITH RICHARDS (musician) His chemical intake was . . . Promethean. Drank like Dylan Thomas and drugged like Neal Cassady. Good songwriter too; great songwriter. Very Jacques Brel. Wrote a lotta crap for his movies—“soundtrack songs” I call ’em—but did some amazing ballads that were never recorded. Mystical love songs on par with Leonard Cohen, like “Heaven Can’t Wait.” That’s one I wish I’d done.
FRANCIS BACON (artist)3 He showed me some sculptures. He called them “doodies,” sardonic doodles, throwaways. The call of doodie was how he referred to the moment inspiration came. I thought they were as good as anything Giacometti had done.
TOM STOPPARD (playwright) A consummate alchemist. Paul Allen rented an entire cruise ship and had it completely redone for a weekend party he threw in Saint Petersburg. (Yes, a weekend party.) I was at a dinner table with Roar, Carrie Fisher, Terry Gilliam, James Watson, Martha Stewart, and Deepak Chopra. I don’t remember a thing anyone said—except for Roar telling me he loved Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and “You should really write something about Shakespeare in love.”
He had a way of planting seeds.
FRANCIS BACON4 He enjoyed dressing like a girl when we went out. He was beautiful. I was quite in love. This was a bit before he became “Roar,” Renaissance Genius of the World. He was still Rodge, soaking up theater in London and whatever spilled anywhere near. He was rough in bed. I liked it cruel though that’s not what he was about. But he could play cruel. A chameleon, with a cock fatter than Lucien [Freud]’s. With Rodge, you never knew exactly who you were fucking. Wasn’t that the thrill.
