Sudden Money

It's hard to believe what has happened. Everything good that could happen to a book happened to Helter Skelter. It sold 200,000 in trade and 200,000 in book club, at ten dollars, and 6,000,000 in paper at $1.95. Then there was the fourhour television show based on the book, and for that we got a sizable amount.

I bought a mansion. It was built by people who owned a hardwood company. The floors are teak, the walls are rosewood, the banisters and everything are walnut and all the closets are cedar lined. It's a very beautiful wood house and something that I've always wanted.

I gave up my '65 Ford for a new Mercedes. The '65 Ford I gave to my brother's girlfriend.

One important thing money has done for me is to enable me to do more traveling and devote more time to researching a book.

Helter Skelter was contracted originally with Putnam's, and after I'd gone through the advance and was nearly three years into the book, Putnam's turned it down, because to them, the Manson case was no longer topical. W. W. Norton picked it up and their enthusiasm charged me during the last phase of the writing. The next thing, the Book-of-the-Month Club took it and we were on our way.

As it unfolded, the whole thing was kind of unreal to me. It still is. In selling the paperback rights, we were thinking in terms--really high terms--of getting $250,000. At the final bidding, Bantam bid $771,000. Things like that--if you've never had any money--are unreal. You actually pinch yourself, hoping you haven't hallucinated the whole thing.

One thing I thought a lot about when I came into more money than I'd ever dreamed of having was that I would just lie back and play with it, in a sense: manage it, tread it, do something here and there with it, and stop writing altogether. But my work habits are too strong. I knew my work habits were very strong when I went to Hawaii recently for two weeks on my honeymoon: After the first week, I was itching to get away from there and back to the typewriter.

I spend my money, baby. That's no bullshit; I spend every penny of it. Success in this business comes and goes, and I know I ain't gonna be on top forever, so I'm having a good time while I'm here.

As a kid, I was rich one day and the next day my brothers and I were out in the street with shoeshine boxes. Then we got rich again and poor again. So I see ups and downs and don't trust any of it. So I'm having a good time, I'm not socking any away. I'm spending all of it.

What on? Same thing as always. I'm spending expeditiously. Nothing bizarre, nothing mad. I spend to help other people. People who are down. That's the only way, baby. Help other people.

Oh, yeah: I bought a horse. Paid $3000 for the horse and, so far, he has won exactly a half million. Some investment, huh?

Oh, yeah: Me and Howard Koch, my buddy, are going to build a private club, with an exclusive membership. You gotta own horses to get in. This club is going to be so exclusive that I don't think Howard and I are gonna let ourselves become members; that's how exclusive it's gonna be. The whole thing is on paper now, and from what I can see, it'll probably be on paper forever; that's how the project is going.

The only really bizarre thing I've done with my money is develop a game collection in my house--like, old board games, old pinball machines. I've got one that dates back to 1906, pre-coin machine. We've set aside a room for games and the collection is growing all the time.

Being successful is kind of dull, in ways, once you get there. The major change in my life is that, basically, I have less time to enjoy myself. Before developing Pong and creating this company, I was a $1000-a-month engineer and all I ever wanted to do was get together a quarter of a million someday, invest it and be a bum, traveling around the rest of my life. Well, now I've got lots more than a quarter of a million and I'm able to accomplish what I always thought I wanted, but now I've decided against it. It turned out that my work was just too much fun. I work 12, 14 hours a day and it's a real challenge: a lot of interesting people, interesting things to do, making decisions that can really make things happen. I love it.

Am I spending much money? Well, it's not easy to spend a lot of money. I mean, what do you do with money? I've got my own boat--an Ericson 41--I own a house, I own a '72 Buick station wagon and a '70 Volkswagen convertible. That's about it; no chauffeurs, no servants of any kind. Most of my money is tied up with the company, but I do like to play the market a little.

The thing that amazes me is just how really few things there are to spend your money on. I find that I get lots of enjoyment out of a good stereo; that's something you can have fun with. I bought a motorcycle; that's something you can have fun with. I bought a boat; that's something you can have fun with. But other than that, you know--what is there? I don't consider collecting Oriental art fun. Maybe some people get off on it and it is something you can spend money on--but I don't think it's any fun at all.

I like the idea of running a company, a business, a manufacturing concern. That's what I enjoy most out of my success. But I'll tell you one other thing I've always wanted to do--and it's something unique--and that is to design and build my own amusement park. It's only in the planning stages of my mind right now, but that's a project, as far as I'm concerned, that would be an awful lot of fun.

We were students when we got into porno, hippies in the Haight-Ashbury, and we've grossed maybe $20,000,000. So we've seen a lot of money come by. Some of it sticks, yeah, but we've always had a pretty modest lifestyle--a regular apartment, a regular car. You get some money, some things change. Every day is a little different. Let's see: I got a '69 Ford van and an old motorcycle and a little 20-foot sailboat, and our living quarters are, you know, ordinary. We went through a few things: bought a house, got married, spent a lot of money, divorced the old lady, threw her out, you know, sold the house, and right now I live under a rock, pretty quiet; I mean, nothin' that would make a great Playboy Philosophy story.

We've kept the money movin', kept it in circulation, we got, like, a big operation, lots of employees, a big nut. Lots of legal cases; we've donated a lot of money to judges, bailiffs, courtrooms and police. I'll tell you: We've been under the gun constantly, we fight daily in court, we've spent millions. It never stops. I've been in and out of the shithouse many, many times. See, we got into this to make a buck and our motivating factor has been trying to make a living.

As far as the monetary, I've always been taken care of fairly well. If I had one hang-up in the past, I dreamed of owning fancy cars. I used to have '56 Chevies and that type of stuff, and they were fast cars but nothing like I have now. Obviously, now I have the money to do most anything, and I've always loved cars, so I have a lot of cars: a Mercedes, a Porsche Carrera, a Ford Pantera, a jeep, a station wagon and a BMW. In other words, I'm sort of a car nut.

I've always wanted a nice home for my family, so now I have a very big, expensive home that I just built. The house is a very expensive investment, like a half million dollars; that's a lot of money. It's at Silverado. I had a small condo there, then a larger condo, then I built the house.

One thing I've always wanted is a special room all my own, and I've got it now. It's a big trophy room with Brunswick's best table in the middle, and it's all done in sort of Scottish-tweed colors; the rugs and stuff are made with Scottish tweeds. The curtains are done that way, too, and it's all done in hardwood floors. It's sort of my room. The only trophies in there are the ones I've won since I turned pro. My parents have the others.

The other thing I dreamed of was going all over the place on fishing trips. I'm a nut on fishing and now I'm able to take any exotic-type trip I want. So I've fished Canada, Scotland, New Zealand, Montana and Mexico. And next I'm going on a trip to Florida for black bass. Right after I finish my next tournament.

Although I wrote my first book in 1959 and my first movie in 1960, there's no doubt that I never realized how obscure I was until I wrote The Exorcist. Everyone assumed it was my first book. When I was writing screenplays and scripts like A Shot in the Dark and John Goldfarb, I was making big money by my previous standards. What I made with those scripts was big money, by God, compared with what I used to make as director of publicity at USC, which was $7750 a year. To go from that to The Exorcist was astronomical.

When I got that big money all at once, I immediately began to wonder who was going to take it away from me and when it was going to be taken. You find your personality doesn't change much, but there are lapses; all of a sudden, it dawns on you that you have money; you say to yourself: It happened. I mean, If I'm sitting down and the thought comes to me, I have to stand up and I look at it from a distance, and then I say to myself: My God! I'm a millionaire!

So what I do with my money is put it in the sock; I'm always looking over my shoulder. I put some into scholarships, because that is how I got to go to college.

Nothing too bizarre. I did invest in a restaurant in L.A. called The Palm. You know, a writer's dream is always of having a general store, the kind of place that would bring in an income of some kind, so that one day, if he wanted to, he could quit writing. I guess it was just a reflex; I had to have my general store. Our place is related to the Palm restaurant in New York, the famous one that's been there about 50 years. Ours is successful, too, thank God. I go in there pretty often, I like the food a lot; maybe that was my motivation.

I've got a nice house; a nice home means a lot to someone who used to get evicted every three months. To have a home, a piece of property of your own, makes you feel very good. As long as you don't have an earthquake. See, rich or poor, there's always something coming up on you.

Before I hit, I was making exactly 24 thou a year as a creative director in an advertising agency. I always dreamed I'd make big money someday and I always knew it would happen. I didn't know how, but I knew it would. I had this inclination that someday it would happen and I just kept pursuing these little avenues. I hit it big in 90 days: From October first to December 31, we made about $1,800,000. Out of that, I probably cleared a little less than a mill. Whatever happens when the IRS finishes with me is anybody's guess; I'll have to make another mill this year just to stay afloat.

My wife and I were living in a little cabin in the Santa Cruz hills and we started the Pet Rock thing as sort of a mom-and-pop venture: she writing out orders and I on my lunch hour going down to the warehouse and sticking shipping labels on cartons. We were working literally out of an 800-square-foot cabin. I knew we had a damn good product, but I had no idea it would get that big. I thought we'd sell maybe 100,000 units overall. We were pricing them at four dollars retail, selling them for two dollars to wholesalers, and our cost for an individual unit was--ha-ha-ha--two bits. We sold somewhere around 1,000,000 of them.

It wasn't the rocks so much as the book that went with them. I'm a fairly good comedy writer, so the whole crux of the product was a 36-page little mini-training manual. What I did, really, I wasn't selling rocks, I created a new way to sell books. I packaged a book with a prop in it. Fads come and go, so I'm saving what I got out of this; I'm just stashin' it here and there--ha-ha-ha--find a little oil, find a little gas, this and that, trying to shelter it. I'm not gonna spend it out; that's nonsense. I worked. You know, I'm gonna be 40 years old this year and I've paid my dues and I'm not gonna let this go by the boards.

New purchases? Well, shoot, I bought a Mercedes 450 SL and a new house that has a swimming pool that's bigger than the old house. And a big change in my life is that I get an awful lot of mail now. I get letters from people who want me to give them $40,000 so they can start a children's day-care center, you know, a lot of weird shit like that.

Well, I bought my own saloon. Damn right. I always wanted to own my own bar, and by God, that's the first thing I did, and now I got a place to sit and think of new ideas. That's where I got the idea of Pet Rocks, you know, one day sitting on a stool in a bar.

So now I got my own saloon. I bought a local pub in Los Gatos and I'm gonna rebuild it and call it Carry Nation's. She was the old broad who started the whole temperance movement, and I figured it's a great paradox for a bar to be called that.

I won't work in there. I'll probably be the cheerleader, but I don't think I'll be tending bar or anything. I bought an existing local joint that is just the pits, but it's got to be the greatest location in town, and I picked it up real cheap and I'm gonna dump probably 100 grand into it and open up a show place.

Even though I've got a couple more products scheduled, I don't have any strong driving desire to make money the rest of my life. Like, it's not a big thing with me. I got all I need right now to be happy. I'm just real happy, real calm; the bills are gettin' paid. I got my saloon. The Pet Rock was a windfall, but the saloon was my lifelong dream.

Before I came into any big money, before I was famous, I was a high school student who did modeling on the side, so, I mean, I had an income, but it was small compared with what I have now. I always dreamed that if I ever got rich, I'd buy a Ferrari and a yacht and all sorts of things, but what really happened is that I'm investing it wisely; my money is taken care of for me. It's the type of thing where my money is put to good use, it's kind of being saved, so I'm not into spending it like crazy. I'm on an allowance and I really haven't made any mad-money purchases. I'm just going along. Well, yeah, I got a really big house, God, I don't know how many rooms--about 20. It's in Beverly Hills. And I have another house in northern Nevada, like, you know, around Lake Tahoe.

I'd rather not say how much money I've got. It's up there pretty far. My lifestyle, well, I'm sort of a very earthy person: I like plants and cooking and things like that. Like cooking lasagna. I have an interest in animals and I have cats and dogs and things like that. I'm going to buy my cat a guinea pig; I don't think those guinea pigs bite, so they won't fight. I'm hoping they'll get along.

Since becoming famous, the craziest, zaniest thing that's happened to me is I got my shirt ripped off me in Sacramento. I was doing a theater appearance and the fans were really going crazy, and they just ripped the shirt off me, so I was walking around with no shirt on. I mean, it wasn't a publicity stunt, it was just for real. It's crazy as hell having lots of fame and money, I'm telling you the truth.

You have to understand that there's money and there's money. Yeah, I've been doing a TV series and have made a lot of money, but, I mean, there are people in this town who could eat series actors for breakfast. I'm talking about big, big money.

What do I do with my bread? Well, I found that the more money you make, the more things you want. But, basically, being a house guy and not much more, I've never had any real goals about when I'd have money. Just getting a nice house, a beautiful house, was enough for me. So I got it. It's a beauty, not a big, glamorous house or anything--about ten, twelve rooms--an old Spanish house in an older part of town.

I like wine very much, so I put a wine cellar in the house. I mean, I enjoy wine enormously, and I've been collecting for about a year and a half; there must be close to 1000 bottles down there. I have some 1894 madeira, which is absolutely wonderful, and some awfully good Burgundy and some super Bordeaux. A nice selection all the way around.

A couple of years back, when I was 21, I was grinding lenses in an optical laboratory for 80 bucks a week. I wasn't pleased; I was disgusted with what I saw happening in this country in relation to eyeglasses. Let's just say the work I saw being done in eyeglasses was not up to my standards. So I just left and said I'm gonna do my own glasses, make my own personal glasses based on my ability: the best glasses in the world. Frames and lenses, the whole thing.

I opened my own retail outlet based on my ability to perform, and as soon as the word got around that I did perform, in a matter of months everybody in town came and wanted their eyes taken care of.

Word spreads. I mean, if you do Hefner, you might as well count on the whole club. You do McQueen, you've got the films; you do Elvis and Elton, you've got the record industry.

I never solicited anybody; they've always sought me out. We were fortunate: We got the Beatles and some of the Stones. Elton John came in on his own. Really, it's been such a delight; I think we've handled just about every major celebrity in the world. Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross, all of them. Just about everybody. It's really a pleasure.

My life changed quickly--from 80 bucks a week on up. And my only motivation was that I just wanted to make good glasses; I had no idea it'd make me rich. I'm not at liberty to discuss how much I actually make, but we've got 12 outlets now and more on the drawing board and I'm making a hell of a lot more than 80 a week.

The most outlandish thing I do with my money?' Ha, you couldn't print my answer. Even in playboy. Go and print that: that what I do with my money is so outlandish it's unfit to print.

Let me bring you up to date on my Rolls-Royces. I don't know how many Rolls-Royces I bought. I lost count. I got three sittin' upstairs right now, though; so if you'd like to buy one, I'll sell you one, because I'm broke. Sincerely, no kidding, I'm building new stores with my bread.

What do I do with my own personal take? I don't make that much. The whole thing with me, I'm the take, be-cause I'm the me, understand?

No, I haven't bought any fire engines. Amusement parks, yeah, you could call my bedroom an amusement park--if you like Disneyland. It's got a big bed in it and a lot of navigational equipment. It's got a steam room and a video-tape projector and a color television. It's in Beverly Hills.

What I'm doing is writing checks "To happiness," and I'm gonna keep writing those kinds of checks for the next 75 years.

It's ridiculous. I mean, I got a ridiculous amount of very big money from Cuckoo's Nest. And it's still coming in. It's so much it's utterly ridiculous. You can't count it. But let me tell you: Money can get in your way.

It's a strange thing, this business; it's either feast or famine. Either you're going crazy or you don't know where your next job is coming from, or you have all this great fortune happen to you.

But money, it's hard to talk about, and I'll tell you why: In this day and age, what's going on right now in this country, nobody who's making money wants you to know what kind of money he's making. Because there's crazies going on. And with so many people having so little money, nobody with big money wants it to be known. So I don't blame people like myself for not talking about it.

I know a lot about this; I know myself and I know a lot of other people who have come into pretty sudden money, and I'll tell you what: My key is low profile. This is low-profile time, man. Nobody is going to tell you that he just made a million bucks. Nobody. And I'm gonna cool it, and relax, and cut out smoking and drinking, and get my body back into shape, play some tennis, maybe.

Right, I made a hell of a lot of money on Cuckoo's Nest, but I really don't want to talk about it. I'm low profile, man.

Sudden money is going from zero to $200 a week. The rest doesn't count.