From top: The crowd at Bernie Mac’s Chicago memorial; Flowers on Bernie Brillstein’s Walk of Fame star.
“Lorne, these people are dead,” Grey said.
“You’re in Hollywood, you can do that,” Michaels responded.
In the end, Grey told the crowd, a nice family from Encino buried their loved one later in the week.
Humor was also the commanding guideline at comedian Bernie Mac’s mega-memorial last year, for which seemingly all of Chicago packed into the city’s 10,000-seat House of Hope church to pay their respects and listen to eulogies from Chris Rock, Cedric the Entertainer and Samuel L. Jackson. “You laughed, you cried, you got inspired,” says Marty Bowen, the United Talent Agency partner and producer who represented Mac. “It was like a three-and-a-half-hour performance.”
More like a Jonas Brothers concert. Thousands camped outside to secure seats, and commemorative T-shirts were sold. During his speech Cedric the Entertainer aptly remarked of Mac, who died at age 50 of an immune disorder: “He’s still the hottest ticket in town!”
At the other extreme are ultraformal memorials such as the one held for Lew Wasserman, the agent-turned-Universal Studios titan. Wasserman’s career straddled Hollywood, politics and religious causes, and his 2002 memorial felt like a tribute to a head of state. Bill Clinton and Steven Spielberg were among those who addressed a crowd of 4,000 in the Universal Amphitheatre, a space traditionally used for premieres and rock concerts. “It was very dignified and had a great warmth and humor,” says Lansing, who attended. “It made you proud of being a part of this business.”
Not everyone appreciates such heavily attended rites. In the opinion of former superagent Sue Mengers, “real” memorials are “small and intimate, like when Brando died. I wasn’t there, but I know it was at someone’s house and it was small,” she says. One memorial that Mengers approved of was that for Psycho star Anthony Perkins. Held in 1992 at the home Perkins shared with his wife, photographer Berry Berenson, on L.A.’s Mulholland Drive, the event was limited to close friends, including Mengers, Mike Nichols, Sophia Loren and interior decorator Paul Fortune. “It was kind of like a great Hollywood party with a sad premise, but somehow we transcended that,” Fortune recalls. “Marisa [Berenson, Berry’s sister] got up and sang songs; Mike Nichols told stories. Sue was rolling these huge joints. At one point we were all sitting around listening to people chatting, but it wasn’t like eulogies, it was kind of like gossip, actually.”
The proceedings were also intimate—though more somber—after Heath Ledger overdosed last year at age 28. As the press went haywire over the news, two subdued memorials took place for the Brokeback Mountain actor. The first, at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary (where Marilyn Monroe, Billy Wilder and other Hollywood icons have been laid to rest), was small and mostly for family. A week later Sony Pictures, which produced Ledger’s last film, The Dark Knight, hosted big names including Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, Naomi Watts, Ellen DeGeneres and several CAA agents at a larger event on the studio lot. Todd Haynes, who directed Ledger in I’m Not There, delivered a eulogy; musician Ben Harper, a close friend of the late actor’s, performed; and a slide show of images from Ledger’s life was set to Neil Young’s “Old Man.”
