Janice Dickinson: Supermodel Out of Control

The credits for the E! True Hollywood Story come on and I realize that it has been years since I have watched an E! True Hollywood Story. But the unfamiliar graphics soon cut to a very familiar glamorous and ever-changing face. The THS voice-over guy says, "Supermodel. Super-sexy. Supercharged. Her name is Janice Dickinson, and she's got one hell of a story." And then, as if to assure us that this is no lie, we cut to Janice saying, "I was never able to go to my father and get a hug without thinking he was going to try to rape me. I'm lucky...that I didn't pick up a gun and blow his fucking head off." I mean...awesome. That sets the bar pretty high for the rest of the hour, but you know that if anyone can top the quotable Janice Dickinson, it is Janice Dickinson herself. As a few other preview bits come up, the words "Damaged," "Driven," "Self-Destructive," "Reconstructed," "In Your Face," appear on the screen. Mr. Voice-Over tells us that Janice runs at full throttle, and that it's one wild ride. And then in a shot that miraculously got by the FCC, we see Janice on the runway in a sheer shirt with her nipples proudly on display. Say what you want, but E! rules, and so does Janice Dickinson. I mean, actual nipples! Let the THS begin!

We begin with clips of Janice that prove how outrageous she is. In one, she is desperate for sex from any available and moderately attractive man. In another, she says, "I'd better behave myself. IM-possible!" In another, she walks to the end of a runway and opens a jacket to reveal the aforementioned nipples, this time blurred out. And in another, she tells a woman that her breasts feel great, and that maybe she'll become a lesbian. Which...I know that she's kind of insane, but in all honesty I wouldn't mind having her on my team. She couldn't be worse than Portia de Rossi, right? In another clip, Janice says she needs an accounting firm to count up all the husbands and A-list actors she's had in her lifetime. Mr. Voice-Over says that one thing Janice is not is over the hill. A very pretty and elegant-looking Janice tells us that she just wrote an article for Harper's Bazaar about how fifty is the new thirty. Pictures of her flash and she looks just like Jane Seymour. Except that she's Dr. Dickinson, Self-Medicated Woman.

Later in 1980, Janice met Bruce Willis, then a bartender who liked to play tough guy, physically threatening and chasing other guys who would ogle Janice. Janice says he's tough and daring in life just as he is in the movies. She also calls him "Bruno." Their relationship lasted only a few months, and soon Janice was on the prowl again. Her childhood friend Eric says that Janice was always looking around the corner for the man -- the one who could provide her with even more passion. In fact, it was the passion herself that she was looking for. And now I have fallen into the lurid style of one Norman Mailer. "The more passion the better. But, you know, that in itself is a horrible disease. You can never fulfill yourself doing that." We see photos of Janice in a kimono, and some giant sparkly turban. A giant sparkly turban screams passion! It's what's been missing from my ever so dull life all this time. Janice's motto was to live each moment as if it were her last. Her sister says that all of the men that Janice has been with have fallen for the supermodel image, and that she doesn't know how a person can get beyond that. And I think it's mean that her sister just kind of said that Janice has no redeeming qualities. And I also think it's mean that THS chose now to freeze on a print of Janice in a crazily high-waisted garter belt and white bra with what appears to be an upside-down tiara gracing her forehead. Photo art direction by Jay Manuel, Sr.

In 1981, Janice rocked out at a nightclub with Mick Jagger. She says that she was on the floor dancing with herself (uh oh oh oh) when she saw Mick, who was a good deal shorter than she. But, she says, short doesn't matter when you're hot. Tell it to Emmanuel Lewis! Janice started to do a Mick impression for Mick, big lips and all. She told Mick that she could outdance, outrun, and outsing him. She has an awful good memory for someone who has lost more brain cells than a thirty-time concussion victim. Mick was impressed by her bravado and lack of fawning over his stardom. Soon, he filled up her hotel room with pink roses, which Mr. V.O. calls "a British invasion" and Janice calls "courting me." Janice knew that Mick had a girlfriend, and she also wasn't that into him, but upon advice from her friend, she decided to go out with him for the story of it. But eventually the tables turned, because Janice fell in love with Mick and lost her power. She says, "The minute a woman, like, shows her vein, the guy'll just, like, walk all over it." Too, too true, ladies.

The satisfaction that Janice didn't get from Mick, she could get from the fashion scene. Monique tells us what we have long suspected, that the life of a supermodel is very difficult and exhausting. Janice says that once Monique questioned her schedule and said (in a French accent, of course), "Ooo do you think you are, Superman?" To which Janice replied, "No, honey, I'm Supermodel! And you will refer to me as supermodel." And Monique said, "Zat you vill bee, super mo-del!" And that is how the term came to be. And even after the fine people at the O.E.D. chase back the etymology of this word, you will have to beat this woman down if you claim otherwise. Janice's sister tells us that she was working all the time and couldn't stop, and that she was on the "treadmill to nowhere." Don't all treadmills go nowhere by definition?

At the pinnacle of her career, Janice "developed a nasty cocaine problem." She talks about her cosmopolitan lifestyle and rigorous work schedule and says, "How do you think we kept going those days? Vitamin B shots just didn't cut it. We were taking cocaine." As if to prove the influence of drugs, we see a shot of Janice in a fluffy pink sweater-dress with clown-like embellishments. Janice became a full-blown addict and, after seven years on top, started her inevitable decline. Even Monique found it difficult to book her because she was becoming so unreliable. We see several wasted-looking shots to corroborate this.

"And then...the lights went out." In 1982, Janice was planning to launch an ill-advised singing career at a benefit at Studio 54. We see a wasted, sweaty-faced, short-haired photo of Janice with a microphone, and then a poster publicizing the event. These were not pretty years for Janice, no thanks to the devil's white powdery friend. Edward Tricomi says that Janice was backstage and seemingly doing fine, and then started slurring massively ten minutes later. Janice insisted on going onstage, however, and after garbling a few phrases, she passed out cold. Even her sister says that it was a disaster, and that she was lip-synching badly to her own music. A trendsetter in many ways, was Janice Dickinson. Soon Janice started having hallucinations and was doing enough cocaine to require an intervention. Janice says that on Intervention Day, she was still lit from the night before, and thought everyone was there for a party. But they pointed out her slow downfall filled with missed work and copious negativity, and then said, "Pack your bags, y'all, you're going to a twenty-eight-day stint at St. Mary's!"

At St. Mary's, the Minneapolis rehab establishment, nobody liked Janice or believed her tales of hanging out with Warren Beatty and the Rolling Stones. But eventually she opened up about the true source of her problems -- her troubled childhood. For the first time, she tells us, she was able to tell about her unresolved issues from being abused on a daily basis for sixteen years by a pedophile father. Her voice starts to crack a little when she says this. Stay strong, Janice! Her sister tells us that their father came to rehab to do group work with Janice, and that she started talking about the situations of their childhood. Their father walked out, and Janice fell apart. Janice tearfully tells us that she told him, "It was painful for me growing up in a house of rage and hostility. And that's what drove me and propelled me during those years. For escapism." She continues, "I mean, he split. And when he split I realized...Motherfucker. He can't even sit there and listen to all the shit that he put outo on his little girls." She is making me so sad! I can't even think of any jokes. Janice completed rehab but wasn't clean for long, no thanks to the drugged-up fashion world. She says that she didn't quite bottom out then. Yay, more to look forward to!

By the late 1980s, Janice was tired. "I burned out in France, I burned out in England, I burned out in Germany," she says. "It was time to go to Los Angeles and see what I could do on the magic screen." Something tells me she knows a lot about magic screens. In 1986, thirty-one-year-old Janet made the move and met up with Simon Fields, who produced music videos for Madonna, Prince, Michael Jackson, and other hot acts. Janice says that Simon was different from any man she had ever met because he was funny and extremely good-looking, but had a sense of vision. Beverly Johnson says that Simon was a very straight-laced English kind of guy, and so attracted to his opposite, the coke-loving Janice. The two started dating, and four months later she got pregnant. They wed in an extravaganza of '80s hair that made Janice look a lot like Stephanie Zimbalist. And this means that, at least for a while, Janice was Mrs. Fields. Take a moment to imagine the secret ingredient in those cookies, if you will. Soon, Janice gave birth to a boy, Nathan, who (she says) humbled her and taught her to act like a human being. She put her Hollywood ambitions on hold (which, seeing the later clip of her acting, we all must recognize as a good thing) to be a mom.

In 1989, Janice and two-year-old Nathan flew to North Carolina, where Simon was producing his first feature film -- get ready for it --Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I see what she means about vision. Janice's mom also visited the set, and for some unknown reason brought her dad, who was a very old-looking sixty-seven and suffering from heart disease and early Alzheimer's. Since Janice still hated him, there was tension on the set, which finally erupted when she saw him kick her son. She, in her own words, went apeshit. She said that she would not let her son be abused like she had been, and so she told her mom that she was going to put her dad in a home. She's stopping the cycle of abuse! Unless it involves telling a hopeful young girl that she looks like Jay Leno. She called 911 because her dad was having an attack and hitting everyone. Her mom told Janice to make sure her dad had his heart pills. So they followed the ambulance, and then Janice threw his heart pills out the window. And then in a totally straightforward manner she says, "He was already in custody of the ambulance, but...I still feel like that I should have told them that he had a heart condition, but...when I left him at the hospital I told him, 'Bye bye, I'll see you in the life, because this life you've made it miserable for me. How dare you did [sic] what you did to me and our entire family, and I just...Die, motherfucker. Just die." And I mean, awesome. Janice says that she knew he was lucid, and that she meant every word. That was the last time she saw him, and he died the day. And she maybe kind of killed him.

Janice's sister says that Janice was and is still very unforgiving, and that sometimes you have to move on. She says you can blame your past experiences for the person you are, or you can take responsibility and become the person you want to be. I don't know. In this case I say blame away. Janice says that she didn't attend her father's funeral, and that she has anger issues. Janice clearly does not trust our powers of inference. She admires her sister for being able to forgive her abuser and overcome her issues, but Janice can't forgive him.

Meanwhile, and quite predictably, Janice's marriage to Simon Fields was starting to unravel through no fault of his. Janice was boozing it up and had to go to rehab again. She says she still hadn't come to terms with her unresolved issues from childhood. Simon filed for divorce in 1992, and the two engaged in a bitter custody battle over five-year-old Nathan, in which Simon said Janice was an unfit mother. Which, I mean, I love the woman and all, but he might have a point. They were awarded joint custody, with Janice getting much less time with Nathan. She threw herself back into modeling, and also discovered a talent behind the camera. We see a THS set-up shoot in which Janice photographs a young model against a blue screen. The whole thing looks like what you'd find if you answered one of those sketchy classified ads for "models wanted" that Oprah always told you to stay away from. Beverly says that Janice is talented, and that she was able to commandeer Beverly's own daughter on a shoot, going so far as to call the attitude-laden teenager to "stop being such a B," which Beverly found quite amusing. And I think Beverly's inability to say "bitch" shows us why Janice has her own True Hollywood Story and Beverly doesn't.

By late 1992, Mr. V.O. tells us (hoping that we won't remember it was mere months after she divorced Simon), Janice's heart was on the mend. She hooked up with twenty-six-year-old TV producer Michael Birnbaum, and also "jumped in the ring" with Sylvester Stallone. We get a black and white shot of a bottle of K-Y Jelly, and I wonder exactly where this is going. Then we focus on an EPT stick, and it all becomes clear. Janice was pregnant, and didn't know if Michael or Sly was the father. She says that it was a heavy scene, and she was trippin' out big-time. She finally told Sly that she believed the baby was his, and though he had doubts, Sly ended his five-year relationship with model Jennifer Flavin to be with Janice. That's right. A five-year relationship, during which he may have gotten another woman pregnant. Weep no tears for Sylvester Stallone, my friends. Beverly tells us that Sly claimed he would stay with Janice no matter whose baby it was. Beverly thought that it was difficult for Janice to accept such an outpouring of love and stability. Well, that's because he was lying. Janice says that tabloid reporters were going through her trash pulling out Tampax and beer bottles, which she found invasive, perchance because a person generally shouldn't use either of those things while pregnant. ["Plus, flush your Tampax down the toilet like a normal person! (Don't flush your beer bottles.)" -- Wing Chun] In 1994, Janice gave birth to her daughter Savannah, and looked forward to settling in with Sly. But a month after Savannah was born, Sly had a change of heart and asked for a paternity test, which proved that the baby wasn't his. "I got dumped like a hot potato," says Janice. Janice's sister tells us that Janice desperately wanted to baby to be Sly's because she adored him, and that the two could have really made it. Except for that pesky other guy's baby thing. Sigh. Life.

Dreading another custody battle, Janice chose not to tell Michael Birnbaum that he was Savannah's father, and started hitting the bottle yet again. Around this time, a very wasted and obviously beer-goggled Janice hooked up with Albert Gerston, a pudgy, tan, and bald forty-three-year-old real estate developer and club owner who loved to party. This was clearly not a good scene for Janice. Nevertheless, she married Gerston on Valentine's Day, 1995, and wore a red lace dress and tights that screamed "drug-induced haze." Her sister tells us that the wedding was incredible, and we see the equally hideous red bridesmaid's outfits. I think this is what might be commonly referred to as "bottoming out."

Within a year, the marriage was over. Janice started to focus on her kids. Eric Salter says that Janice has done an amazing job with her kids, and that they have kept her sane, or, he reconsiders, "saner." We then see footage of an adorable Nathan at age eleven or so, saying that most of his friends' moms are quiet and don't say what they think. His mom, however, says what she thinks and is not afraid to put herself on the line. Janice screams, "Yes!," pleased that Nathan has correctly memorized his line. However, Janice was still a big boozer. We see an interview of her in 2002 saying that she finally got sober when it was her time, on July 17, 2000. She called Tony Peck, who suggested that she try a twelve-step program, and she says that her biggest problem was admitting that she had a problem. Two rehabs later and she can't admit she has a problem? Intriguing. Later that year, Janice finally told Michael Birnbaum that he was the father of seven-year-old Savannah. She more or less says that she was a bastard for holding out for so long and then dropping that on him. When Michael and Savannah met, however, Janice says it was extremely touching to notice how alike the two were. She adds that Michael is a much better parent than she is, encouraging Savannah to actually pick up a book once in a while instead of watching TV and eating Fritos all day. She says that they're very close now, and that Savannah is going to change her last name to Birnbaum. Janice says, "I'm like...okay," and gives kind of flabbergasted look which makes it all seem a little sad for her.

And then, a bit of Janice Dickinson trivia! "[Janice Dickinson] once jumped into the lap of a very surprised American president. The commander-in-chief and Janice happily chatted away." Was that president (a) Ronald Reagan, (b) George Bush, or (c) Bill Clinton? I say either (a) or (b), because no way Clinton would have stopped at "happily chatting." In any case, the answer can be found at E! Online.