July 17Wrote to Brando to let him know that Playboy’s given me a researcher to investigate the issue of Indian sterilizations, an issue he wanted me
July 17
Wrote to Brando to let him know that Playboy’s given me a researcher to investigate the issue of Indian sterilizations, an issue he wanted me to write about. Told him about the tribe in Claremore, Oklahoma, where, supposedly, 85 percent of the women have been sterilized. Wanted his assist to reach Dr. Connie Pinkerton-Uri, an Indian activist, who has a lot of information about this, and also Jimmie Durham at the UN. I went to see Durham when I was in NY, but he never showed up.
July 20
This morning, Dr. Connie Pinkerton-Uri called. She’s been to Wounded Knee, shot at, bullet grazed her hairline, addressed congressional hearings. She told me about a tribe in Oklahoma where, she thinks, 100 percent of the women were sterilized, but they fear for their lives and it’s tough to get them to talk about this because they don’t want their husbands to know. White women will make decisions about their bodies on their own, but Indian women like to talk with their men, and since most have been sterilized without their own knowledge, they’re ashamed. It’s tough to document. Women don’t trust the system. What can you promise them that hasn’t already, in some way, been broken? Indians have no faith in the justice system. Two suits about sterilization were brought in Oklahoma and California, and the one in Oklahoma took only 20 minutes for the jury to find the doctor not guilty.
July 25
Al Pacino wants me to see a screening of And Justice for All in Levittown on Saturday night and meet with him at his 68th Street apartment on Sunday afternoon. The studio will send a limo. Spent all day at the Academy Library yesterday, wrote 300 questions.
August 16
It’s been a few weeks since I wrote in this journal, because of all the time I spent with Pacino in New York. He was nervous when we met, but we got along like brothers. Got 37 hours on tape. Since I returned, he’s been calling, concerned that he said too much. Can’t write much now because I’m on a deadline. Have to get this done in four days, and I’ve only finished indexing the 2,000 pages of transcript.
August 18
Pacino called. Said he hopes that this part of our relationship is over and that we can now enter a modern phase, that of friends. I did 31 pages of the interview yesterday, 14 the day before, and hope to get another 25 pages done today. He said he moved his bed to the window. “I’ve been living here for six years with the bed in the wrong place. I’ve also moved the building onto Fifth Avenue, from Madison,” he joked. Then he said, “Even if this is the greatest interview in the world, if I had a choice, I’d rather it not be printed.”
August 20
Finished Pacino: Four 12-hour days, 108 pages. I think it’s good.
August 23
Al was so worried about what he might have said that he went to the Playboy office and spent four hours with my editor Barry, who let him read it. When he got home, Al called to say how amazed and pleased he was. “That human thing came out. Nobody knows this about me. I’m a very simple kind of person. It’s not sensational. I saw our relationship. It’s not glib, it’s just these two crazy guys talking. You’re not stroking me. It’s not like movie star talk. It doesn’t make me sound like a jerk or like the smartest person in the world, which is okay.”
September 20
The phone half rings, and I pick it up, thinking it’s my wife, Hiromi. “Hi,” the voice says. “I knew it was you,” I say. “How’d ya know, by the ring?” Dolly says.
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