Reflections on an interview with Robert Durst
NOV. 13, 2003. Front page The New York Post. My exclusive jailhouse interview with Robert Durst.
Besides this week’s murder conviction, that one was a different murder matter. It was his gruesome Texas trial where he hacked up a body — and was found NOT GUILTY. Calling me collect from his Galveston cell, he said he was annoyed. “Irritated,” was his word.
“I’m upset,” he told me two hours after the verdict. “On television just now the DA said, ‘Durst is not welcome in my house.’ I don’t think that was a nice thing to say. I thought that was nasty. I thought he’d be fair afterward, but what he said on TV worries me. When I was charged with murder, I ran away. So I don’t know if he’ll go after me for bond-jumping, which is punishable by a minimum of two to a maximum of 10.”
After the verdict, the guards gave Durst a special dinner of turkey, chestnuts and stuffing, with french fries instead of mashed potatoes.
And it’s where I learned the difference between “jail” and “prison.”
“Jail” is where you’re taken until trial. “Prison” is following conviction.
HM Queen Elizabeth has finally ascended to the highest pantheon. Not just Her Majesty. Not just as monarch of Britannia, Australia and a few inches of Ireland. Not just being civilization’s longest reigning sovereign. You may have heard Her Maj just got throned in Madame Tussauds’ waxworks. Their place in England. In Blackpool. What you haven’t heard is that one of their execs told me, “To get every strand of hair perfect, etc., and to carve out such a figure takes 11 months.” Meghan and Prince Empty, too busy in New York swanning over de Blasio, did not show for this unveiling.
Songwriter Burt Bacharach. Was Marlene Dietrich’s accompanist, was Dionne Warwick’s hit-maker, wrote for shows, theater, movies such as “Bonnie and Clyde,” hundreds of hits such as “What the World Needs Now Is Love,” “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on my Head,” “What’s New Pussycat,” “Promises Promises,” “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” “That’s What Friends Are For,” “Alfie.” So where’s his six Grammys and three Oscars? “On my mantel in California. In the living room. I throw them a kiss periodically.” Burt and Steven Sater just released their Broadway Records’ “Some Lovers.” On it, Kristin Chenoweth, Jennifer Holliday, Katrina Lenk, etc., etc. So what about the style of music he once wrote? “I don’t think it’ll come back. Surviving in this climate, with today’s hip-hop noise environment, is tough. You still get my songs on NPR. And I was performing live until the pandemic — but now I don’t really miss that traveling from airport to airport. My days are still writing songs, work with a trainer and, besides trying to stay healthy, I’m right now sitting by the pool on a 92-degree day.”
Old and new
Old places close, new places open. Rubin Cabrera’s newie, Casa 51 on West 51st, will do Variety Life’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” plus theater, decadence, tango plus your credit card . . . More. In the ’30s, the Hotel Edison ballroom was “It!” Monday and Tuesday Bond 45 at the hotel has Vince Giordano & the Nighthawks. Jazz, dancing. Rufus Wainwright even schlepped in for a set.
Oy, all right already with the Pawling weddings. Security guys all over. Hirelings standing with clipboards. Drones overhead. A cranky neighbor nearly shot one down for flying over their private property. To think it’s where the quiet Quakers and George Washington and Lowell Thomas once called their privileged playpen.
Drunk to a girl at the bar: “You may kiss me if you can tell what I’ve got on my hand.” Girl: “A 600-pound alligator.” Drunk: “That’s close enough.”
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.
