Dick Zanuck

My best friend for a couple of wild years…

It was a sunny day in July, 2012, and I was about 2/3 of the way south of San Francisco on Hwy 5 to LA. I had taken off mid-day driving my truck to LA, for the memorial that Thursday of my college buddy Dick Zanuck.

For almost 3 hours I cruised without the radio, fueled by a blended-ice double-shot latte as well as a little sativa to enable right brain function — focusing on stuff Dick and I did together— since I was scheduled to talk at his memorial at The Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverley Hills the next day.

And lo and behold, after all those hours of concentration, he came alive in my mind. Not in physical body of course, but in spirit. He was there!

And I thought this is probably what is meant by the concept of immortality. People leave their bodies, but their essence remains alive in our memories.

There are plants that grow steadily for weeks and then suddenly shoot up. Same thing with concepts. You think about something or study a subject and one day, poom! You put it all together and enter another realm of consciousness.

That’s what happened to me that day, thinking about Dick and our stunts and adventures in the ‘50s. I never put it all together before, but when I finally did, it was rich — the stuff we did, the fun we had came alive.

Phi Gamma Delta (Fiji House) at Stanford, 1954. Zanuck is 3rd from right in 2nd row. I’m in middle of front row with (ulp!) white bucks (well, at least I rubbed ashes on new white bucks to get some character).

We were roommates for a couple of years. We were similar in our interests: surfing, sunshine, hanging out at the beach, volleyball, boozing, partying — and girls. We decorated our room with spears and African masks that we borrowed from 20th Century Fox prop rooms (his dad, Darryl F. Zanuck, was head of Fox in those years).

Dick was going to be a movie producer, and there were no classes at Stanford that could teach him about this profession. I was going to go into the insurance business with my family, and there were no insurance classes at Stanford.

So we didn’t attend a lot of classes. Whenever the surf was up in Santa Cruz, that was our priority. We went to a movie almost every night, at Fox theaters using his pass that got us in for 25 cents. We played a lot of 2-man volleyball. There were a lot of (sometimes fiendish) practical jokes.

We made a lot of trips to LA., and to the family house in Palm Springs. We’d go to a party, have a good time and take off for LA, arriving in the early dawn. The Zanucks had this large wonderful house on the beach in Santa Monica, where you’d go to sleep at night to the sound of crashing waves.

We took an epic trip to Baja, borrowing a jeep and trailer from 20th Century Fox— surfing at Punta Colonet. We also made two road trips to Mazatlan in the mid-’50s; we were the 2nd surfers (Matt Kivlin was the 1st) to go there.

We were a good combination of Northern California boy and Southern California boy. I loved the looseness of LA. One of those things I remember in crystal clear fashion, was rolling down Highway One at Malibu at dawn, with DJ Dick (Huggy Boy) Hugg playing “Loop de Loop Mambo” by the Coasters on the radio (there were no DJs like this in San Francisco), then going into a drive-in where there was a cabinet with all the pies and a mirror reflecting them to to produce a double image.

LA was visual. LA was loose. LA was image. The water was 5-10 degrees warmer. Music on the radio was way better.The girls were friendlier. In the ‘50s, there were a third as many people in California as there are today, and LA (at least Malibu) was a paradise. We got balsa wood surfboards from Dale Velzy and surfed at the Malibu Colony when you could walk down to the beach through vacant lots. It’s where I got my first ride (on Dick’s brother-in-law Bobby Jacks’ 60 pound, 11-foot balsa/redwood surfboard) leading to a lifetime of surfing.

After graduation, we went our separate ways — he ended up producing over 30 films, including Jaws, The Verdict, and then in 1989, with his wife Lili, the Academy-Award winning Driving Miss Daisy. On the other hand, I started smoking weed in the mid-’60s, dropped out of the straight world in 1965, took up with the countercultural movement of the era, and worked as a carpenter. But even though we had chosen different paths and were in opposite political camps, we still communicated and visited and had that spark of competitiveness and fun up until he unexpectedly passed away in 2012.

There were 5 speakers at the church, which was packed: Dean Zanuck, Tim Burton, Sherry Lansing (head of Paramount), Clint Eastwood and lastly — ulp! —Lloyd.

I was really nervous when Clint finished. Sherry reached over and patted me and said “You can do it.”

So here’s my talk. It actually went over well, since this was a side of Dick they knew nothing about — his wild years before settling down.