BY ROGER WATSON
I have been bingeing on the US comedy series 30 Rock, written by and starring Tina Fey alongside Alec Baldwin (whatever became of him?), and I am loving it. I used to catch the occasional episode on long-haul flights, but the series is currently on Netflix, so I get a few episodes in every night—that is, provided Mrs Watson is not in the same room; she hates it.
In a recent episode, one of the characters, involved in a session of one-upmanship, said, “Well, I once met JJ Abrams.” Any of my close friends (both of them) reading to this point will say, “Cue Roger’s story about when he met JJ Abrams.” Well, it would be selfish not to share it.
I was invited to spend a week lecturing at the University College of Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2012, and I was accommodated in a suite at the Palomar Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. The hotel was a twenty-minute walk from the Faculty of Nursing, where I was working. My host was the flamboyant and generous Courtney Lyder, dean of the faculty. I was picked up at LAX by limousine, arrived at the Palomar, and thus began one of the most memorable weeks of my life.
I first met Courtney, a Trinidadian who was fluent in Japanese, in Dublin when we were on a panel conducting a quality assurance review of the nursing provision at University College Dublin. Our mutual interest in travel, the fact that our first degrees were in biochemistry, and a shared appreciation for malt whisky meant we became firm friends. Our research was also in gerontological nursing, so we had that in common, and my invitation to UCLA was to lecture on my research into mealtimes and older people with dementia.
Courtney met me in the bar of the Palomar that evening and began to orient me to my surroundings. He explained that we were in the heart of the residential district of the stars. Rihanna lived in his apartment block adjacent to the hotel on one side; Janet Jackson lived in a house somewhere nearby; and Bruce Willis—often to be seen in the same bar with his wife—lived in the block adjacent to the hotel on the other side. We scanned the bar, but there were no celebrities in that evening.
It turned out that Courtney was also a local celebrity. On visits to various bars and restaurants around the boulevard, I discovered a restaurant with a Courtney Lyder burger and a bar with a Courtney Lyder cocktail (you can check the Courtney Lyder food and drink tributes on his Wikipedia page). Without exception, the bar staff were not seeking careers in bar work. They were all aspiring to work in Hollywood, and working bars in Beverly Hills meant that they could encounter stars who might put in a good word for them. I suppose, I thought at the time, it is good to have dreams.
I had been keeping my eyes peeled for stars but had seen none…until. One evening in the bar of the Palomar, Courtney waved to someone at another table. The person indicated that we should join him, so we took our drinks over. I missed his name, but Courtney introduced me as a visiting scholar at his school and told him about my work. Our host took great interest and asked some very intelligent questions about the management and treatment of dementia.
I was on the verge of asking what he did, but Courtney, realising I had absolutely no idea to whom I was speaking, said, “This is the man who produced the series Lost.” Well, I was still none the wiser, having tried a few episodes and becoming, well, lost. I told our host that, and he laughed, saying, “A lot of people say that.” A burger and fries arrived for him; he generously shared the fries and ordered us beers.
We said our goodbyes, and on the way to my room I Googled “who produced the series Lost?” to be informed that his name was JJ Abrams. Turns out he’d produced quite a few films and series. Nonplussed but knowing my wife was a bit of a film buff, I phoned her and told her I had just had a beer with a guy named JJ Abrams. My wife is not easily impressed (at least by me), and I could hear her stuttering and stammering until she got out, “But he’s mega!” So, I had been in the presence of one of the greatest film producers of our time without being aware. Every time we watch a film now and see that it is produced by JJ Abrams, my wife shoots me a glance and says, “Don’t!”
The rest of my week in Beverly Hills passed relatively star-free, except one afternoon as I was walking to the university to give a lecture. I arrived at a crossing, and someone arrived from the building behind me and stood beside me. I glanced down and it was none other than Bruce Willis. He looked up (you’ll be getting the message that he is quite a small man) and smiled at me as if to say, “Yes, it’s me.” I followed him across the road, and as he was going in the same direction as me, I continued behind him. At one point he ducked into a doorway and checked his tie was straight, came out, and walked into the next restaurant, where a lot of people stood up to say hello to him. My guess is he was negotiating his next starring role.
In addition to not putting my hand in my pocket once—my bar bill at the Palomar was taken care of—and sharing a $200 bottle of Rioja over dinner and getting a fifty percent discount on a silver necklace with a diamond-encrusted heart pendant for my wife’s fiftieth birthday on Rodeo Drive (Courtney knew the owner), I was handsomely paid for my week’s work. I did some running and walking in the area and saw Sunset Strip and the Avenue of Stars. I saw the Holiday Inn where Whitney Houston breathed her last.
That was the first and, so far, the only visit I have made to LA. I encountered the remarkable Courtney Lyder several times thereafter in Washington DC, where he mounted lavish receptions and hosted dinners at the top restaurants during the annual meeting of the American Academy of Nursing. Eventually the petty-minded and the penny-pinching at UCLA ousted him for his expenditure on flight upgrades, even though the amount of money involved was minuscule compared with the money he raised as dean for the university through his copious contacts with the rich and famous.
Courtney left UCLA quietly in 2015, drifted into obscurity, and is incommunicado. To his credit, and to my certain knowledge, Courtney—who is both black and gay—never weaponised his protected characteristics in support of his case.
Unlike the character in 30 Rock, I really did meet JJ Abrams. But the greatest privilege of that remarkable week was spending time with the unforgettable Courtney Lyder, whose generosity opened a door onto a world I would never otherwise have seen.
Roger Watson is a Former Registered Nurse and Editor-in-Chief of Nurse Education in Practice.