Excerpts from Rafferty Returns

In my first Hollywood incarnation, I had meticulously constructed a public relations firm, Riffraff, that specialized in handling the difficult, the ethically challenged, and, on occasion, the depraved. From late-stage philandering Bob Meyer, mid-career Lindsay Lohan, post-blowjob Hugh Grant to Kurt Cobain’s lovely widow, Brad Pitt’s latest divorce, and a wide variety of stars and politicians in the midst of scandal. I made them clean up, recant in public, avoid jail time, go to rehab, and ask for forgiveness from the paying customers. Importantly, I made the ugliest problems disappear.

 

After a few really good years, I merged my PR firm with a mammoth global English operation and signed a lot of complex papers, without much scrutiny. I sensed greatness ahead. In 2020 the Covid recession and the UK operation’s bankruptcy came. I was left holding the bag. Then the suit with the ex-wife, the Brentwood house she got, and other expensive bits and bobs. Among them the Riffraff Building on Wilshire, an I.M. Pei penthouse in Century City, a Soho loft on Wooster and Broome, four cars, and an eclectic art collection. All evaporated. All I had left was a reputation for managing the most complex, sensitive, and ugly monsters in the Hollywood jungle.

 

In the two years after, there was only one person left in Hollywood who wanted to remember who Jon Rafferty had been or could be, or just how many rabbits I could yank out of almost any hat. Jake Burnham, Chairman of Selwyn Bros.-Ince, one of the “Big Four”—Warner’s, Universal, Selwyn, and Disney. Selwyn had twenty-six sound stages, fourteen thousand employees worldwide, and a twenty picture per-year release schedule. Jake had problems that needed fixing. Quickly and quietly. Thus, I was rescued as Selwyn’s Director of Special Projects, as long as I could deliver the results Jake Burnham was counting on.

 

Jake’s definition of “special projects” was, shall we say, flexible. My years in the Hollywood world of cutthroat PR had required deep media contacts, unique relationships with humans high and low, and many kinds of leverage. The Selwyn job was to control the public narrative around harmful or embarrassing events, or erase them. To be good with cops, reporters, P.I.s, mobsters, jilted lovers, outright crooks, their expensive lawyers, and a wide variety of quiet power brokers. I had represented, married, helped, hurt, savaged, partnered, and built deep credit with many of them over time. It was a political job, hewing close to scandal, occasional crime, ruinous press, and reputational murder. It was about holding in check everything that could harm the studio and its extended family. Prioritizing anything that could threaten Jake Burnham.

 

Serious interactions with the FBI and the sketchy truce I maintained with a few of LAPD’s senior officers and the Motion Picture Association’s Task Force on Piracy gave me believable law enforcement credibility. I was able to get to key police players and keep most of them inside the tent. My rarely used P.I. license covered my guns and give me a dubious badge to flash as needed. I was a year into the gig, and I liked it more than an honest man ought to. These days, most importantly, I found the idea of a studio paycheck deeply appealing.

 

Selwyn Bros.-Ince’s needs were ravenous, far-flung, and sometimes impossible to meet. The job almost paid well. My offices were in a ‘30s Mission Spanish building. I got to hire as needed and had an expense account to almost envy. In return, I had to protect the company and my boss from every sinister and ugly thing lurking beyond the gates. I kept a reliable Walther 9 mm, oiled and loaded, in my desk; a chrome .45 under the dash in my car; and a sawed-off Remington pistol-grip shotgun at home by the bed. Life insurance.