Inside Rex Reed’s Dakota: An Afternoon of Unrepentant Opinions and Hollywood Tales

Below are highlights of my 2022 interview with Rex Reed. (Listen to the full episode here.)

On living and dying in The Dakota

I don’t want to sell it. Where would I go? I spent a lot of time getting this apartment just the way I wanted it, and I wouldn’t want to start over now. You can’t find Regency doors. Now you just get flat-surface doors in apartments, and you don’t get all these wonderful custom-fitted shutters. I had a will, and everything was all spelled out, and all of the people in the will died, and now I’ve got to do it all over again. And I’ve got to think up new people to leave things to. There’s no dog. There are no children. I have no family. I have some cousins, but I have no nieces, no nephews, no siblings.

Sexuality

I’ve never been openly anything.

Roommates

No, never. I’m a loner. I like it. Because I don’t have to disagree with myself.

Friends

I have a huge group of friends, but a lot of them have died. The older I get, the older they get. 

Woody Allen

I like Mia. And I like Woody. And I think it’s very unfair how people have turned on him. Because I don’t think Woody is insane. I think, yes, he does depend on his shrink a lot. He goes every day, I think. But I don’t think he’s crazy.

The 2022 Oscars

The worst year in Oscar history. I have so little interest in awards shows. I hate them. They’re all alike.

‘Nightmare Alley’

It has flaws, but it’s one of the most interesting films of the year. It’s a remake of a great movie, in which, unfortunately, the director, Guillermo del Toro, chose to add things from the novel that were not in the first film, and all they did was bog down the movie. But it’s still one of the most interesting films in a terrible, terrible year.

‘West Side Story’

That’s a great film. It’s made by real artists. There are very few real, genuine artists left. Spielberg is one of them. To me, it is the best film of the year.

On ‘V/H/S/2’

I think you have a right to review anything that’s bad. I don’t care whether you see it all or not. No need to sit through all of that one, although I have to tell you I’ve already forgotten it. I don’t remember even seeing half of it. It was so bad that you could just forget it immediately.

Cancel culture

You don’t get fired for having opinions that people disagree with. I mean, this is still a free country. I don’t apologize to anybody for anything. I was not very tolerant of mediocrity, and none of that has changed. That is my biggest problem today because I am drowning, as we all are, in mediocrity. That’s what they’re selling today.

Bette Davis

She used to call me… The phone would ring at four o’clock in the morning, and she would say things like, “Who is this?” And I would say, “This is Rex Reed.” “Oh, my God, I’ve dialed the wrong number.” Well, of course, she did not dial the wrong number. She wanted to talk to me, but she was embarrassed to admit she was lonely or in her cups. This kind of thing went on for years. The same thing happened with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, who lived in Westport. We became great friends. I used to hold Paul down on the bed while he did his sit-ups from the floor. I used to help him do his sit-ups. That’s how friendly we were.

What happened to celebrity journalism 

It ended because there are no interesting celebrities anymore. Or if there are, they’re very few and far between. It’s all up to the interviewer to make them interesting. They’re not interesting.

Jared Leto?

No. He’s not interesting.

Lady Gaga?

Not remotely interesting. You go interview her.

Melissa McCarthy?

I have nothing against Melissa McCarthy. I just think she made a lot of trashy movies that did nothing to elevate her image. It worried me that she didn’t do anything to better herself on the screen. She just settled for mediocre.

‘Bridesmaids’

Oh, it was horrible. I don’t think anybody is hilarious who shits in a sink. That’s not my sense of humor.

‘Can You Ever Forgive Me?’

I really, really loved her when she finally did a serious film. She was absolutely terrific as journalist Lee Israel. I loved that film. I loved her in it.

Frank Sinatra

When Sinatra was mad at me, what did he do? He lost 25 pounds. I didn’t call him fat. I just said that he looked like the Pillsbury Doughboy. He was sloppy. He looked like he had slept in his clothes. And they were charging big money. That was Madison Square Garden. I reviewed his appearance there, and I said he was sloppy, and he appeared to have been in clothes that he had slept in overnight.

‘Myra Breckinridge’

I just went along with it. It’s a movie, after all. And I got paid very well; enough money to buy a 1780 farm in Connecticut, with 38 acres of land. So when people say, “Why did you do Myra Breckinridge?” the answer is pretty obvious.

My father saw it. And he said, “Son, I don’t think I understand this movie.” I said, “Don’t worry. Nobody else does, either.”

David Gest

I’ve never seen a living human being who looks more like he’s been dressed by a mortician. David Gest always looked embalmed. That’s why when he died, they didn’t have to do a thing.

Hugh Jackman

I think he’s amazing. I think he can do anything.

Lauren Bacall

She was an asshole. She was as mean as a snake and cruel, and we never got along. But then, when she had her stroke, and she was in rehab, and she wouldn’t go to rehab, and she was walking on crutches, walking her dog, I offered to walk her dog. And then I started making her things and taking them to her. And we have a party in the Dakota every year, an annual party, where everybody in the building contributes something. Roberta Flack used to make spoon bread, and Yoko Ono would do sushi, and everybody contributed. And Lauren Bacall asked me if I would take her to the party, and so for three years after that, until she died, I took her every year. Her whole attitude totally changed after her stroke. Her career was over; she couldn’t get a job. And she became friendly.

John Lennon

I’m the one who put him in the police car. The telephone rang, it was Ruth Ford who got me this apartment, and Ruth called, and she said, “I just heard an explosion, and I think it’s our boiler, I think something’s happened to the furnace. Could you go down and see what’s going on? And I hear people out there, voices, something’s happened to the building, and then call me back?” I said, “Sure, Ruth.” And I went downstairs, and that’s what I found.

Well, he’s on the pavement, and Yoko is hysterical. The doorman was all folded up on the sidewalk. And then he quit; he never came back to the building, the doorman.

The whole evening was traumatic, but the ambulance never came, and the cops did, and so I helped them put him in the police car. He died at the hospital. I thought he would live. But I thought they’d fix him up.

The Beatles

When John Lennon was arrested for drugs, and they were threatening to throw him out of the country, he asked a lot of people to write letters of recommendation to the government, and I wrote one. He was the neighbor, and I wrote one. And here is this world-famous, I mean, I hate rock music, so I don’t care for The Beatles’ music, never did. Unless it was done by other people, it was a Sarah Vaughan album where she sang The Beatles, which was fabulous, but I didn’t care for them.

You know how he thanked me? He sent me a subscription to TV Guide. I said, “What is this?” Because you know something, they were very square, oh, he wasn’t hip. That was the best gift he could think of.

The Manson family murders

I was invited that night. Jacqueline Suzanne (Jackie) was a very good friend of mine, we were both at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and she was promoting Valley of the Dolls, I was promoting a book, one of my books, and we were both at the Beverly Hills Hotel. And Jackie called me and said, “I’m going to dinner at Sharon Tate’s, and she wants you.” I said, “Jackie, I don’t want to go out, I’ve been interviewed all day long, I don’t want to be on, and I don’t want to be charming, and I hardly know her.”

She wanted me to come to the dinner, and I said, “I don’t want to go. This is lemon meringue pie night at the Beverly Hills Hotel; it’s my favorite thing on the menu here, and I love it. And only this one night of the week do they have that.”

She says, “Well, I’m not going to go if you don’t go.” I said, “Well, go ahead and go. She says, “No, I’m going to come over in my gown, and we’ll have dinner on trays in your room.” In my suite.

So neither of us went, and she called and woke me up at, I don’t know, 6:00 in the morning. She said, “Johnny Carson just called and woke me up, and told me what’s going on, you will not believe, everybody at that dinner party was murdered.”

I joked for years that I was going to write a book that I was saved by lemon meringue pie. I’m telling you, I’ve got a million of these stories.