A: (laughing obnoxiously, ending with a wet belch)
E: For Aileen, fun is being obnoxious and attending rodeo events with Karl Marx impersonators.
A: And whittling. I'm proud to say I've won the Ohio State Whittling Championship three years running.
BW: The last time we talked, you were at the peak of your respective careers. There was Aileen's impending movie deal, the plans for the new album, Erica's romance with rocker, Sting –
E: He's really much more than just a "rocker," Barbara.
BW: Agreed. He's something of a pop icon, an arrogant Machiavellian poet, able to blend subtle jazz hues in with fresh French rap jams, Egyptian melodies and old-fashioned gospel rhythms, topped off with a boasted ability to sustain intercourse for seven hours... But you were a couple in 1989, were you not?
E: I'm afraid I signed a non-disclosure agreement prior to the initial coupling, as I was quite illegally below the age of consent, even for the state of Georgia. But to some extent, yes we were a couple.
BW: After your joint appearance with Sting in Cuyahoga Falls last week, during which Aileen parachuted from a Huey directly into the audience – and may I just take a moment to congratulate both of you on what was surely the finest performance of your career to date, excluding perhaps the "top of the building" concert, which was quite good, considering it had already been done by the Beatles, U2, and even parodied on The Simpsons -
[Metallic click of a switchblade.]
A: Hey! We didn’t come here to be insulted!
E: Aileen, put that thing away...thank you. It's true, Barbara, it had been done before. As you were so kind to point out, even the cartoon image of George Harrison on that Simpsons episode shrugged and said, "It's been done." But I ask you: did the Beatles, or U2, or even Homer Simpson's B-Sharps have the brass onions to shove officers of the law OFF that roof when they tried to break it up? No. Selwyn pioneered that frontier.
BW: And remarkably, you were never convicted of abuse against the badge.
A: Never convicted.
BW: Well, to return to my original line of questioning – having been on-stage with Sting, seeing him for the first time in over ten years, did that rekindle any flames for you, Erica?
E: Absolutely none. The only flames I saw were in the parking lot of the Blossom Music Center, as that charter bus from Akron was doused with kerosene and ignited.
BW: That was truly tragic. I understand there are some victims still in the Burn Unit of the ICU over at Cuyahoga Falls General.
E: I'm afraid I have to disagree with you there, Barbara. It might be tragic for those victims, and their families, and maybe the people who were counting on those victims to show up for work the following Monday, but is it really so tragic for you? Or for me? Had you honestly given it a moment's thought before now? Will you next be asking me what sort of tree I think I should be?
BW: There's no need to be hostile. And besides, you've never answered my question about Sting. No feelings whatsoever, eh?
[Once again, the switchblade is flicked open.]
A: She already told you NO! Damn!
E: Will you give me that thing...thank you. You can't just go waving a knife around when people are watching.
VO: Clearly, the subject of Sting is a sensitive one for both Erica and Aileen.
[Footage of Sting snarling at an intrusive camera man as he and Erica leave Philpott's All-Nite Grocery Pit in Cuyahoga Falls. Mandy Candy Sandy is thrusting a microphone at him.
MCS: Sting, you've been quoted as saying that your "seven hours of Tantric sex" includes dinner and a movie. Are you in the middle of such a date right now?
MCS: Can I quote you on that?]
BW: Ladies, are there any plans to blow the dust off the practice session recording of that unfinished album, and possibly share it with the world?
A: No. We're in the middle of recording a brand new album at Pink Confusion Studios, in the Falls. It's scheduled for release later this year. We previewed some of the new material at the show with Sting.
BW: The new material you're referring to would be two songs not previously heard, "Flogging the Carny" and "Intestinal Duress."
E: Yes, we're actually here on location in Cleveland to shoot the video for "Intestinal Duress," for which we've had to import a gigantic pit of ordure.
A: Humongous.
E: The good folks over at Big Dutchman Wholesale Poulterers have been instrumental in turning our dreams of such a pit into a reality.
BW: Overlooking this transparent plug, I shall proceed. Aileen, were you disappointed that Jodie Foster was cast in the lead role for The Silence of the Lambs instead of you?
A: Had you done your research, Barbara, you'd know that I was up for the part of Hannibal Lecter. Jonathan Demme felt the role was made for me. I remained in character for weeks after my audition, but the studio was unconvinced. Whatever. I needed a rest from the tour anyway.
BW: Everyone knows that you were incommunicado for over a year after the breakup of Selwyn, Erica. I realize this is a delicate subject for you. Can you shed a little light on that year for us?
E: The year was 1990. I was obviously devastated over the breakup of the band. The tour had been going so well until that date in Atlanta.
BW: You're referring to the incident –
E: - Yes. Well, I knew right then that we couldn't go on. That all we had accomplished was now bitter ashes in my mouth. There were never any charges brought about, but I just...
[Erica is unable to continue.]
A: I vividly remember Erica coming into my hotel room because I was so angry that she'd intrude –
E: - There were all those young boys she'd picked up earlier in the day. Scott –
A: - Ah, Scott. I heard later the incident left him so scarred that he joined the Navy, but anyway, Erica was in floods of tears and Sting was unconscious in the next room, and there was all the blood –
E: - Blood everywhere -
A: - Just everywhere. And all those magazines with page 53 torn out. It was a definite turning point in the tour, Barbara.
BW: It was, in fact, the ending point for the tour.
VO: The next day, the equipment was packed up and shipped back to Ohio. The crocodiles were returned to the zoo in Paraguay. Sting awoke alone in a cheap motel room, in a puddle of vomit.
[Clip of a 1991 Sting interview from Entertainment Tonight:
Sting: I never found out whose it was...]
VO: And Aileen and Erica boarded separate planes – one going to Los Angeles, the other bound for destinations unknown.
BW: So, Erica, where were you for that entire year?
E: I was backpacking around Eastern Europe.
BW: Sounds dangerous.
E: Oh it was, Barbara, it was. As a matter of fact, during my stay at a disreputable Greek bordello, I was drugged and sold into white slavery in Pakistan.
BW: Pakistani flesh peddlers, the scourge of civilized Eastern society. However did you escape?
E: After about three weeks, some Christian fundamentalists raided our camp as we were making our way to the Afghan border. They 'rescued' me. I spent the next six months trying to escape their prison camp in Wichita Falls, finally gnawing my way out of the particle-board box they kept me in and hitch-hiking my way back home. As you might imagine, being in a culture which was so foreign to me certainly gave me the creative impetus I needed to get back to business.
BW: And you went on to publish The Selwyn Diaries, a collection of your memories from that monumental last world tour. But the book ends the day after the last show in Atlanta. Why is that?
A: Well, that's where the tour ended. Was she supposed to make shit up?
BW: Yes, but readers were left wondering about those last fateful hours.
E: Barbara, to quote Hall and Oates, "some things are better left unsaid."
BW: Another point many people have made about The Selwyn Diaries is how much more complete a picture we would have about that tour if Aileen's portion of the diaries had been included in the publication.
E: Perhaps.
[An uncomfortable pause.]
BW: Okay, do you deliberately try to be controversial?
E: I believe it was the great director François Truffaut who said that one never finishes a film, rather, one must give it up. And I believe this is true in all walks of life.
BW: And by quoting the oft-pretentious Sting just then, you are deliberately trying to be difficult. There I have my answer.
A: I'm not sure how paraphrasing the pretentious intelli-babble of a pop star is 'being difficult,' but if that's how you see it, our work is done.
BW: Aileen, you have been linked romantically with a wide spectrum of men, including Matthew Perry, Billy Corgan, the Montreal Expos and the young donut pseudo-philosopher of Cuyahoga Falls. But we really want to know if there is any truth behind the rumors that Rod Steiger was more than just a friend to you?
A: Well, there were some intimate dinners at Spago, but that's about it. I’d wanted to meet Rod since the day I saw him on late night TV. I thought his Napoleon was excellent. He showed up at a difficult time for me, but we had some problems and now I don’t need him anymore.
VO: Brazil. 1990.
[A montage of Aileen and Rod running naked on the beach, getting drunk at bars and attending high society events in Rio.]
VO: What was rumored to be a storybook romance between Rod Steiger and Aileen quickly turned sour as their differences came to light.
[Footage of Rod looking on incredulously as Aileen crosses a picket line of political prisoners' wives and mothers, over and over again.]
VO: Soon Aileen was slumming, as she called it, alone, picking up boys that were barely of age just to watch them exercise and get into street fights late at night.
A: Rod ended up being something I wasn't expecting. I mean, he was all right at first, but when it turned out that he hated me showing off how much better I was as a rich American, well, that was it. I care for things, but that was crossing the line.
BW: In the year following the breakup, you did a lot of charity work for children.
A: Is that what my PR office is saying?
BW: Yes. Is it all a pack of lies?
A: Hell yeah! The tour took a lot out of me, what with my fish dependency and all. I was tired of giving. I took some time off, wrote a few poems, did a little city planning.
BW: It's true that you transformed the notoriously horrid borough of Brooklyn into a teeming intellectual community, a haven where artists the world over could gather and create beautiful, soaring...things. You were on the cover of Newsweek above the caption "The Most Brilliant City Planner of the Late Twentieth Century." Pretty heady stuff for someone who never even graduated from high school.
A: (to Erica) Give me the knife.
E: No! Just calm down... Take a cleansing breath.
[After a moment.]
BW: My comment has upset you.
A: Whatever! For your information, Barbara, and that of your drooling legions of The View-watching housewives, I have a high school diploma. I also have two college degrees.
BW: But you never attended the graduation at the BBMS. You never returned to that school after the tour ended. According to Erica's account of the tour, she alone reaped the benefit of Sting's tutelage while you spent your free time in the company of filthy and dangerous young men.
A: Sting’s 'tutelage' included bondage, spackle, Slim Whitman and only a little Shakespeare. You'll notice that Erica is the one without a college education, while I bear the scars of his damned spackling knife!
E: Calm down...deep breath...stop picking at that scab, people will see you.
BW: Have you ever thought of what you wanted on your tombstone?
A and E: No.
[Cut to shot of Barbara, alone in an elegantly appointed drawing room.]
BW: Like so many things in their lives, the interview with Aileen and Erica concluded abruptly at that point. They returned to the set of the video, and have declined to return ABC's many subsequent phone calls. Since then, Erica has been repeatedly seen in Sting's company around the country, giving fuel to the rumors that they are back "on" once again. Aileen has reportedly been busy enhancing and completing her half of The Selwyn Diaries, to be released concurrent with the new album this fall. A miniseries adaptation of the Diaries is in negotiation, to feature Vanessa Redgrave and Ice Cube. Selwyn has no plans to continue the tour this summer. The appearance with Sting in Cuyahoga Falls was nothing more than a comeback show, a testing of the waters, so to speak. With the acclaim they received for that one show, there's no doubt that Selwyn will be taking the world by storm during next summer's concert season. I’m Barbara Walters.
