Tom Forcade: D. O. A.

DOA: Chapter 39: October/November 1978

This page from the D.O.A. Filmbook, a special issue of PUNK Magazine published in 1981 that we couldn’t sell for a buck or two back in the day but now sells for hundreds of dollars. Go figure.

Narrator: In our last episode, PUNK Magazine’s distribution and advertising deal with “High Times Media” came to an end, Sid Vicious was arrested for the murder of Nancy Spungen, and PUNK Magazine attempted to throw an awards event amid the chaos.

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The Last Days of Tom Forcade: October 1978

According to Sean Howe’s excellent book about Tom Forcade’s life and death (Agents of Chaos), Tom went to Los Angeles with several films he wanted to produce: Polk County Pot Plane (aka The Smugglers); Cocaine Cowboys (a truly bad film that stars Jack Palance, Tommy Sullivan, Andy Warhol and Victor Bockris, you can watch it for free on TUBI if you’re interested: https://tubitv.com/movies/724832/cocaine-cowboys), and the Sex Pistols US Tour documentary (untitled at the time, but this became DOA: A Rite of Passage and this film is why I have been writing this overlong description of the making of it, which began in 1977 when the Sex Pistols US Tour was first announced. Check out past newsletters for the full story if you are interested.

According to Sean Howe’s book, Bockris told Forcade to buy an ounce of cocaine for the upcoming meetings with Hollywood film executives. This was how business got done back in the day, and Forcade had connections for the best cocaine, which opened a lot of doors. Bockris and Forcade were able to set up several meetings with film producers, including a few “Hollywood Heavy Hitters,” the biggest being Robert Evans, a Hollywood producer who produced many of the most successful feature films of all time: Love Story, Marathon Man, Chinatown, The Godfather, Black Sunday, The Cotton Club, and (as the head of production at Paramount) many Oscar-nominated and winning feature films (Rosemary’s Baby, The Odd Couple, The Italian Job, True Grit, Serpico, The Conversation etc.

Robert Evans calmly explained to Tom why his films were not marketable. I heard that Evans dismissed the idea of a documentary about the Sex Pistols with: “Who cares about a band that broke up six months ago?”

Tom Forcade went into a serious depression afterwards. His dreams of becoming an influential film producer were apparently over. After his return to New York at the end of October he fired several High Times employees. He started using a lot of Quaaludes, which was alarming to many people around him since he was obviously depressed and doing “downers” wasn’t going to help.—————————————————————————————————————

Enter Spacely: November 1978

John Spacely posing in front of the iconic wall painting that advertised “Story of a Junkie,” a documentary by Lech Kowalski, the director of DOA: A Rite of Passage.

Just a few days before Tom Forcade decided to end his own life, things drastically changed at the PUNK office. After the disastrous Punk Awards event at the Club Hollywood, an office supply salesman (who got so stinking drunk that he was kicked out of the event!) stopped by our office at 225 Lafayette Street to collect a bill for a bunch of stuff we had ordered a few weeks before. At the time we figured we were going bankrupt, so why not go for broke and buy a bunch of stuff from this door-to-door office supplies guy before we go out of business? Hey, we were facing thousands of dollars in lawsuits and printing bills, and none of us made any money from working at PUNK Magazine. So why not get a few pens, pencils, and free stuff? At this point we just didn’t care. But this salesman guy refused to accept it: He insisted on saving the magazine! So I hired him as our Publisher to save our sinking ship. We had nothing to lose and something to gain.

The office supply salesman was the notorious John Spacely, who ended up with a dope habit worse than Sid Vicious and a self-destructive personality that rivaled Sid and Tom Forcade. Shortly after I agreed to bring him on as Publisher, I called Tom Forcade to give him the good news: I finally found a business manager who could help revive PUNK Magazine! Instead of responding to my phone call as good news he sounded like he was depressed and out of it.

I always wonder: What if Tom Forcade had met up with Spacely? He was an engaging guy (even though he was a massive fuck-up in the end), but I think Spacely might have been able to bring Tom out of his funk. After all, he was a former member of the “STP Family” (a crazy gang of stoned-out hippies in Colorado) and had so many radical hippie/drug/radical political connections that he could have become Forcade’s new best friend. Maybe Tom would have snapped out of it if Spacely had become Publisher of PUNK Magazine a few weeks earlier, and they would have got along great, like good, old, drug buddies and ‘60s hippies tended to do. This could have saved both of their lives.

Instead, Spacely drove PUNK Magazine out of business for a long time to come… And ended up with a Wikipedia page longer than almost anyone else who worked at PUNK Magazine!

To read my “Spacely Story,” check out my blog:

http://johnholmstrom.com/blog/strung-out-johnny-spacely

Spacely’s Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Spacely

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November 16, 1978

Jim Drougas, manager of the New Morning bookstore that Tom and his wife Gabrielle Schang owned, stopped by Forcade’s loft on University Place for lunch shortly after noon. At 1:00 pm, a loud POP! Noise was heard from Tom’s bedroom... He shot himself in the head and died shortly afterwards. A few hours later I was at the CBS Records office that afternoon when the news report came over the radio. I was stunned. Even though Forcade tried to keep his identity as secretive as possible, his death became huge news.

Like almost everyone else who worked with Tom, I had a difficult time accepting his death. People as rich, powerful and intelligent don’t commit suicide. So many people depended on Tom to help make things happen.

A few days later. I went to view his body at a funeral home: Yup, it was Tom. They did a good job of putting his face back together after the gunshot. There were people who still think to this day that Tom was somehow the victim of an assassination contrived by people close to him, but I never believed them. I saw and heard how depressed he was. I remembered that he told me that Sid Vicious was not the most self-destructive person I had ever met. As shocking as his death as, I wasn’t too surprised that he killed himself.

High Times held a press conference a few days later where high-level staff and his now-widow Gabrielle Schang tried to explain what happened and what was ahead for the company and so forth. Most of the people who spoke were so emotional that it was tough to watch. Tom was a huge figure in alternative media. His death marked the end of an era. In many ways, this event marked the end of the 1970s counterculture. I figured this was the end of PUNK magazine… And probably the end of the Sex Pistols documentary. Maybe even the end of High Times magazine.

There was a memorial service at the Windows of the World, the famous restaurant that was atop of the World Trade Center. It was more like a party, like an Irish wake that I’m familiar with, where people get drunk and share stories about the recently-departed. But although I always feel that these occasions should celebrate our recently-departed friends and relatives (since death is a natural part of life), this wasn’t that kind of thing.

I have never seen so many people act so weird at a memorial. One crazy Yippie/Zippie type recognized me and verbally harassed me, screaming at me: “YOU MURDERED TOM! If it wasn’t for that punk shit, he would still be alive! This is all YOUR FAULT!” This went on for a while… No fun!

I knew that there were people at High Times who felt that way. They were hippies who hated the punk movement and everything we stood for. Not all of them, of course. I got along great with most of the people who worked in the editorial department, and they don’t believe me when I would tell them about our haters. Then, after the memorial service I was invited to an after-party at a High Times Editor’s apartment and it started all over again, this time from a different Yippie/Zippie: “YOU MURDERED TOM!!! This is all your fault!” Someone suggested that I should leave the party, so I did.

It was a tough night. And those were tough times to live through. And it didn’t get any easier.

The Tom Forcade Story:

For in-depth videos about Tom Forcade, I suggest checking out High Times Editor-In-Chief Steven Hager’s excellent video collection on YouTube, this is just one of many videos he has produced about Forcade, This one covers his suicide. I urge you to watch it and check out Hager’s other YouTube video content. I don’t always agree with his point of view on things, and we often had a contentious relationship but he does a lot of research and deserves to have his video content viewed by more people:

NEXT: The Aftermath (Surprise!)